An embarrassingly overdue thought on the Priest from Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag”:

There’s no single way to see the Priest’s choices – his choice to join the Catholic Clergy, to embrace a life of celibacy, and ultimately to forego love with Fleabag. Perhaps he is protecting himself from the pain he has experienced in past relationships? My view, on the other hand, is that the Priest has chosen his life as a means to control himself from hurting others – that his past is riddled with unhealthy (dare I say “abusive”?) relationships in which he has hurt people whom he intended to love. That when he says to Fleabag, “I know [sex is] what you think you want from me but it’s not. It won’t bring any good. I’ve been there many, many times…” he knows something that she doesn’t about his own behavior and propensity to control and abuse in relationships – even those in which he tries to perform love.

This interpretation – while just one among many – offers an opportunity to “turn the mirror on ourselves” and what our collective reaction to their relationship says about the state of romance, love, and partnership in today’s world. The pleasure viewers took in the Hot Priest character and our ignorance of his controlling behavior reveal our culture’s complicity in a world so steeped in rape culture and emotional abuse that we lose ourselves to the sexual fantasy.

Fleabag’s relationship with the Hot Priest – seen as a former abusive partner – also offers a sympathetic but not fully hopeful view of abusers as knowing victims of their own behavior. Practically every relationship in the show – romantic or otherwise – reeks of control and abuse. Only in Fleabag’s brief encounter with the Priest do we see a character potentially aware and taking account of his own capacity for harm.

In the first scene of season 2, as he pours wine, uninvited into Fleabag’s glass, all the while asking deeply personal questions of Fleabag and her family, for example “Why aren’t Claire and Martin drinking alcohol?” Pouring wine into a woman’s glass uninvited is an obvious signal of potential abuse and control. Asking deeply personal and intrusive questions upon first meeting may seem sweet but is also an indicator of what psychologists call “grooming” behavior in which an abuser initially makes another person feel exceedingly comfortable. The Priest even goes so far as to tell Fleabag that “If you ever need someone to talk to… I’ll be there…I’m always there…” – a promise of care and openness that he completely reverses by the end of the season, when he bans her from ever coming to the church again.

Of course, his position as a Priest is itself an allusion to positions of power, control, and abuse in society. Not only have Catholic priests become nearly synonymous with pedophilia, but the role of being a Priest necessarily involves control and power over the members of a church. The priest is the sole holder of the ability to absolve people of their sins and the confidante people’s personal secrets.  Fleabag points this out as the Priest suggests she step into the confessional booth [“Come with me. I know what to do with you,” he says…controlling much?].  In describing what will happen in the booth, Fleabag mocks, “I tell you all my secrets so you can ultimately trap and control me.”  Funny because it’s true.

And in everyone’s *favorite* moment – for which there are now themed coffee mugs, t-shirts and socks – as Fleabag expresses the desperately vulnerable desire to be told what to do in every aspect of her life – rather than addressing her pain, the Priest simply gives in to her request with the immortal command “Kneel” – a command that evokes images of both religiosity and sexual subordination. I can only see the scene – it’s mood, lighting, cinematography, etc. – as evidence that there is a darkness to the Priest’s past that has led him into the cloistered and self-controlled life-style in which he claims to have “found peace.”

Our Hotty Priest gives us plenty of other hints at his own need to control his lust, such as  “Did you know there was a man who wanted to be a saint so badly that he castrated himself just to stop himself?” Well that’s a dead give-away isn’t it? His family background – alcoholic parents and a pedophile brother – also signals that the Priest may be trapped in a cycle of violence – unable to break his own behavior from potentially abusive behavior he received as a child.

Finally, the elusive fox, an embodiment of the Priest’s fears. The fox appears – or frightens the Priest at least – in moments in which Fleabag is present, suggesting that the Priest’s fears may center on Fleabag. But a fox is a sly and manipulative creature. Thus, the fox that haunts our Priest may symbolize his own manipulative and abusive behavior with respect to intimate partners over which the Priest lacks control. That is why he has chosen a life of celibacy – to protect those he loves from his own lack of self-control.  The fox slinks after the Priest in the last scene, as he departs from Fleabag – a sign that he continues to be plagued by his own propensity for violent behavior and abuse.

But the most disquieting and perhaps beautiful thing about Waller-Bridge’s construction of the Priest is that, ultimately, he is good. He has chosen a life for himself that involves sacrifice (as he himself point out) in order to protect others. It is difficult to reconcile sympathy paired with fury for an abuser – a feeling known to many who have survived abusive partnerships. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, knowingly or not, brilliantly demonstrates the complexity of a controlling yet loving relationship, and in so doing has helped us all reflect on the unsolvable complexity of the relationships, fantasies and people that occupy our own lives.