'Flack' Season 2 Premiere reveals Robyn has a long way to go in rebuilding bridges she burned in Season 1
Spoilers ahead for 'Flack' Season 2 Episode 1
'Flack' Season 2 Episode 1 is set six weeks after where we left Robyn in season 1. From the get-go, we dive right into Robyn's (Anna Paquin) messy life which sees her continue to work as a publicity manager, but this time around she claims she is trying to work through her problems. She made it clear in the first season that she is prone to self-sabotage.
She ruined her relationship with Melody (Rebecca Benson), Eve (Lydia Wilson) and her sister Ruth (Genevieve Angelson) all in one day and now, she has promised to clean up her act. Only, she is in for a surprise. Robyn is pregnant. It is an ironic turn of events really because she and her ex-boyfriend had tried to get pregnant in the first season. Of course, she took pills to ensure that it did not happen but now, she is pregnant.
The episode also sees Daniel Dae Kim as Gabriel Cole. He is in the aviation business and is looking for a fixer to help him with a tweet that he posted about one of his competitors "not having a penis". Things have snowballed for him from there and an attempt at drawing attention away from a launch that was supposed to take place weeks ago puts him dang in the middle of a different pile of sh** that he didn't expect to clean up. He acts like a douchebag and hits on Eve every chance he gets. She puts the brake on it the first time around, but by now we how adventurous Eve is when it comes to men.
Gabriel and Eve begin to talk about the differences between living in America versus living in the United Kingdom and Eve clearly roots for the latter. When Gabriel tries to convince her otherwise she brings up how America is not really that great a place if you are "Black, Mexican, or a woman". The conversation had pretty much veered away from work and Eve is dipping her feet into the pool of reckless behavior again as she blurs the lines between personal and professional. It's not surprising really considering how everyone who worked with her so far had done the same. In fact, her former intern Melody was fired by Robyn because she had begun to traverse the same path. In a way, she had shown Robyn what was wrong with the way she or Eve led their lives. This moment of epiphany is one of the reasons Robyn promises to get herself back on track starting by rebuilding the bridges due she burned in the past.
Meanwhile, Robyn's client, a model named Sophie, is held in prison for aggravated assault. She punched a guy at a club and now his lower jaw bone is fractured. Footage from the security camera at the club has already surfaced on social media and is raking in views even as Robyn tries to come up with ways of making the charges against Sophie disappear in the first place. Robyn struggles to solve this need on her own and reached out to Eve for some help. Initially, Eve doesn't respond, but she gets onboard after reconsidering. It is a momentary lapse, but it still is very much present and Robyn has to go a long way before she can mend this relationship.
Robyn also meets up with her ex-boyfriend Sam (Arinze Kene) to confess about her pregnancy. He is initially thrilled, but after a moment realizes that the baby might not be his. When Robyn tells him that she isn't sure whose baby she is pregnant with, Sam loses his calm and tells her to leave. When she claims that she is sober, Sam refuses to believe her because all she had done so far was lie to him. So that's another relationship that Robyn might not be able to rebuild.
Then we have Melody. After being fired by Robyn, she has taken up a job as a barista in a coffee shop and is trying to give interviews at other publicity firms in London, but one doesn't work out well for her when she realizes that Robyn or the firm is not ready to give her a good reference. In fact, one of the interviews that she was scheduled to attend cancels on her because they didn't receive a good reference. While Melody believes that Robyn was the one who gave the bad reference, it turns out that Eve was the one to sabotage Melody. Eve hires Melody as her assistant.
The one person who hasn't changed at all since we met her in the first season is Robyn's boss Caroline (Sophie Okonedo). She is eccentric as ever and continues to be blunt despite how uncomfortable certain conversations could be. This episode also sees Caroline meet her ex-husband portrayed by Sam Neill who introduced Gabriel to her before the two take off to tie up their personal business. This smart, independent woman learns about how her ex-husband had blood cancer after the two of them spend time having great sex in a motel room. She keeps the facade of being unaffected by the news until the man disappears into the washroom before she curls up in bed and even that moment of vulnerability is something that Caroline cannot afford to have in public. This momentary change in her behavior is interesting, but we want this dude of hers to be explored further in the upcoming episodes.
PS: Gabriel tells Eve that he is tired of actresses and models that he meets often because they have this "Melania Trump's dead eyes thing going on" and it is a killer moment.