Flack Review: Summer (Season 1 Episode 2)
With only six episodes ordered for its first (?) season, Flack had to hit the ground running — and it did.
Anna Paquin’s Robyn is an epic departure from Sookie Stackhouse, as established in the first scene of the first episode, resuscitating a young gay man and then telling him exactly why he won’t go to the press with what’s happened without so much as breaking a sweat.
On Flack Season 1 Episode 2, “Summer,” she needs to decide if she is a take-no-prisoners American PR exec living — and loving? — in London or a Carrie Bradshaw redux. In fact, all four of the female leads come off as the third Sex & The City movie that is seemingly just not meant to be.
Robyn’s client woe of the week is a teenager who won a reality competition series, but whose career has stalled at 17. Robyn suggests the leaking of a lesbian sex tape, and subsequent apology to a dwindling fan base, right to the kid and her parents, without so much as batting an eyelash.
This is where Flack shines. The inner workings of the PR world, where celebrities are made and played on a daily basis, revered one minute and reviled the next, is quite the playground.
Unfortunately, Robyn’s surrounded by characters whose inspirations are quite obvious. Sophie Okenodo as Robyn’s boss is still channeling Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada with Melody (Rebecca Benson) a knockoff of Anne Hathaway’s character.
Only Lydia Wilson (About Time), Robyn’s colleague and partner in crime, is managing to stake out new territory, despite shades of Kim Cattrall’s Samantha. Her suggestions regarding reviving the teen’s stalled career render the leaked sex tape tame by comparison, with her already trademark flip delivery priceless.
Sure, she can’t decide if the violent sex she’s having with her boyfriend is enjoyable or not, but she’s got her job down.
Robyn’s personal woe of the week is her pregnancy, which affords the actress to show the softer side of this new character, especially as she confides in a nurse, “I mess everything up, but I don’t want to mess this.”
Her boyfriend Sam (Arinze Kene) is on board, grappling with thoughts of fatherhood, and perhaps oblivious to Robyn’s occasional slurp of red wine and rooftop smoke.
One of those smokes, with Lydia, gives us all we need to know about both of these characters, no matter how disparate. Lydia shares the tale of “The Scorpion & The Frog,” wherein a scorpion stings a frog that is transporting him across a stream after promising he would not. All he can say as they both sink to the bottom is that it’s in his nature.
Lydia has embraced what’s in hers; can Robyn do the same?
“Summer” is a solid episode with an opening scene almost as jarring as that of the premiere, and being invested straightaway in two characters out of the four is better than just one. Or none. Just lean more Entourage and less toward Sex & The City.
Robyn: I mess everything up, but I don’t want to mess this.
What did you think of this episode of Flack? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Flack airs Thursdays at 10/9c on POP.
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Vinnie Penn
A morning radio host by day, and writer...well, the rest of the day, Penn's work has appeared everywhere from Maxim to Cracked and Parent, with him being Head TV writer/recapper for six years for MSN.com. He also did a season of VH1’s popular Best Week Ever and has appeared on Showbiz Tonight, That's What He Said (YourTango), and Fox & Friends. His latest book, "Route One Food Run," was released June 2018.