‘A Teacher’ Episode 7 Review: Eric moves on to wild nights and a HOT striptease, but can he ever forget Claire?
Spoilers for ‘A Teacher’ Episode 7
A wild night. A crazy party. And a bunch of boys. ‘A Teacher’ begins on a rather confusing note after the last episode. To put things into perspective, there seems to be a massive time jump between Episode 6 and Episode 7. Eric Walker (Nick Robinson) has moved on after the controversial affair with his teacher, Claire Wilson (Kate Mara).
For starters, we see Eric at college, partying with other frat boys. Some of them joke about his fling and ask questions like “You hooked up with her?” and “You banged her and sent her to jail...” Not just that, they crack jokes about her t*ts too. We don't really know what is going on in Eric's mind but he seems pretty unapologetic for what he did in front of his friends. It's also a classic example of how peer pressure makes young boys mask their real emotions.
We see him having sex with someone entirely new — and the girl asks him if “she” (Claire) taught him the moves he had pulled in bed. “Yes she taught me a whole lot of new stuff,” Eric says. In another scene, he has a conversation with one of his friends and tells him, “It was messed up. The prosecutors came down too hard.” Consoling him, his friend says, “You liked her... She liked you. It's not a crime.” He even goes on to say there are more important things to talk about. “Talk about f**king Syria,” he says.
Eric pretends to be normal but it clearly affects his conscience. When he is alone in his room later, he googles her name. He sees news reports and social media posts floating around about the charges against her and how the headlines read she pled “guilty to sex charges”. He tries to move on, but the fallout from the affair continues to resurface in unexpected ways.
At a family dinner, Eric's mom Sandy Walker (Rya Kihlstedt) says she is glad he is doing so well. She insists he goes for a counseling program. That's when Eric comes to a breaking point and loses his cool. He asks her to not bring it up again and again. It is then that his mother reveals that the prosecutor calls and she will be released from behind the bars soon. “You are going to need somebody to talk to,” she tells him. Eric cuts off the conversation midway and leaves to meet his girlfriend.
Once at her house, she tells him, “I owe you an apology.” She confesses she was really insensitive about the entire teacher ordeal. Eric asks her not to be sorry and kisses her but in response, she says she wants to go “slow”. He snaps back, “So why the hell am I even here?” and angrily says, “I texted ‘you up’? That means ‘let's f**k’. Now what the hell is this bullshit?”
As an escape route, he goes out with a bunch of rowdy boys on a drive. He has an accident as his friends are rash driving. He has head injuries and there's blood all around. While all his mates are concerned about him, he yells with his fists in the air! “You sure, you okay?” they ask, and then switch to calling him a “f**king maniac” and a “champ” for being such a sport despite getting hurt. One of them says, “Your face is f**ked, dude.”
Later, at a boys club, a gorgeous woman named Karen comes for a hot striptease. She teases everyone in the room while pulling off her clothes one by one, but as she approaches Eric and sits on his lap, he screams, “Just f**king stop,” and leaves the room. One of his friends comes and tells him to stay. “It's just a stupid tradition. Karen f**ks with everybody.” But Eric makes it clear that he doesn't want to be a part of it and storms off.
Back at his dorm, he meets a guy sitting in the corridor as his roommate is hooking up with some girl. The two lie down on the grass. That's when Eric confesses, “I miss her...” Why can't Eric forget her? Will he ever be able to have a normal relationship with another girl? Can he really move on? Written by Boo Killebrew and directed by Andrew Neel, the episode makes you ponder those questions. Eric didn't even know how Claire took advantage of him. With people bringing up the same subject, it might have a deep effect on his psyche as he is mentally struggling in the toxicity of it all.
‘A Teacher’ premiered on Tuesday, November 10, 2020, at 3 am ET on FX on Hulu with three back-to-back episodes. More episodes in the 10-episodic series will follow every week starting from Tuesday, November 17, 2020, at 11 am ET.
