Armpit hair, condom jokes, and finally discussing bisexuality.
What happened last week? Leila broke up with long-term girlfriend and business partner Sadie after feeling pressured into marriage and children. Leila moved out, realized that she might be bisexual, and attempted to win Sadie back, but Sadie had already fallen into the arms of another woman.
While walking through the market, Leila, who is still trying to secretly navigate her newly realized bisexuality, asks for Gabe’s opinion on her armpit hair while he is distracted by his phone. He responds with a yelp, but apologizes, saying that it’s her choice whether to shave. However, when she presses him for an honest answer, he asks how she let it get so out of hand.
Gabe asks her what she likes and she responds that she doesn’t know; which to the audience is more a nod to her sexuality than her armpit hair. As they leave, Leila laments that she has to go to work and see Sadie and Hye Me, after catching them in the bed together (and putting gum in Hye Me’s hair).
At work, all Leila can do is make snippy comments under her breath about Hye Me, who’s had to have a drastic haircut to remove said gum…
After work, Leila, Gabe, and Deniz head to a strange performance art piece that I frankly can’t even begin to explain. It involves chicken feathers, a bucket of dirt, and repeatedly striking oneself in the chest…
As the performance ends, the trio run into Sadie and Hye Me. Leila makes the introductions short before coming right to the point and asking if they’re a couple; at which point Deniz makes a hasty exit to the bathroom and Hye Me addresses the awkwardness of the situation.
Of course, Gabe can’t actually keep his mouth shut and points out that Leila is a millennial too, which leads him to an important life lesson: don’t try to undercut Leila’s anger. Leila then rails on him about his attempt to continue a relationship with his student, Francesca, who dumped him in the previous episode, but continued to text him.
When Sadie asks if something’s wrong, Leila laughs it off, saying that she’s fine, before delivering a barrage of backhanded compliments to Hye Me. When Sadie snaps, Gabe and Hye Me decide to get some beers and let the ex-lovers talk. At which point, Sadie tells Leila in no uncertain terms that Leila was the one who left and Leila responds that she only asked for a break. (Ross and Rachel, anyone?)
When Leila’s lesbian friends show up, she begins to voice her doubts about Beth’s bisexual girlfriend, Katie, really being interested in women, because “it’s easier to fall in love with a woman”; a comment that irks Beth for obvious reasons and demonstrates Leila’s internalized biphobia.
When the conversation moves on, Leila is drawn back to Sadie and Hye Me, so Gabe suggests that they and Deniz go to a power ballad night in SoHo with his friend Jon-Criss. At the pub, Deniz stays for about a minute, Jon-Criss goes to dance, and Gabe decides to get drunk after spotting Francesca there. He then asks Leila (before he’s actually had any alcohol) who she’d go for if she was straight, except for him, of course.
Once Gabe has left to give Francesca a G&T – that she didn’t ask for- Leila spots a guy from across the bar and they decide to head outside for a “smoke”. Now, Leila doesn’t actually smoke, which the guy realizes right away and asks how long she was going to keep up the pretence, but everything is going fine until Leila jokes that she “would have quit right after the birth of [their] firstborn”.
Even then, cigarette guy seems to be on board, until she jokes about putting holes in the condom and he makes a swift exit. Oh dear.
However, there is hope that Sadie and Leila could get back together as Sadie laments to Ester that Hye Me spent an hour describing her dream this morning and asks about Leila. At the same time, Leila is confessing to Gabe that she shouldn’t have broken up with Sadie and he comforts her.
On the bus home from SoHo, Jon-Criss invites Leila to a party, which actually consists of low-lighting, dreary music, and boring people, but they decide to have fun by staging photos of them having fun and sending them to Gabe. (It’s just like my Instagram page.)
This leads to Leila having the first heart-to-heart about her bisexuality with Jon-Criss, explaining that she’d always been attracted to men and women, but that she didn’t know what to do with it and that she’d probably have “taken the path of least resistance” if she’d fallen in love with a boy in her teens instead of a girl.
Leila: “Sometimes I think that if a guy has swept me off my feet in the same way that girl did in that support group for cutters when I was 19, I’d have been straight… Coming out to my parents was the worst thing I ever had to do and I don’t think I’d have put my family through that if I thought I had another option.”
But then, after a voicemail from an annoyed Gabe breaks the tension, Leila and Jon-Criss begin making out in the bathroom and decide to have sex on the floor; laughing as they try to find a condom.
So, will Leila and Jon-Criss get together or will she and Sadie reunite? Find out next week.