'Little Voice' Episode 6 Review: Everything goes wrong on Louie's birthday, Bess may have a drinking problem
Spoilers for ‘Little Voice’ Episode 6 ‘Tell Her’
The tragedy of ‘Little Voice’, Apple TV+’s musical drama is that Bess (Brittany O’Grady) can be unreasonable, stubborn, and unwilling to take help even when she needs it the most. It’s also what makes ‘Little Voice’ as realistic as can be. The show, after all, delves into complicated emotions and relationships.
Episode 6, ‘Tell Her’ begins with Bess daydreaming about the man she loves, Ethan (Sean Teale). She knows that she can’t have Ethan because he is already with someone else. And Ethan knows that too. But that doesn’t change how Bess feels about him. But her feelings also make her behave more aggressively. She refuses to watch the music video that Ethan shot and created for her.
Her feelings also make her inattentive at work and irritable. So much so that she almost gets into a fight with one of her customers at the bar. Unable to process her feelings, she also begins to drink more – just another similarity that Bess has with her father, Percy (Chuck Cooper). Samuel (Colton Ryan) is worried about her as he sees her constantly drinking through their performance, so much so that she is unable to walk straight afterward. But Bess is only annoyed further by his concern and decides to hang out with Jeremy (Luke Kirby), the man who produces her music at the studio.
They get drunk and we see Bess waking up at her own apartment the next day. And while we don’t know if Bess went back with Jeremy to his place, he keeps making innuendos at the studio, suggesting that Bess may have slept with him. An annoyed Samuel snaps at Jeremy but this only seems to aggravate Bess further.
Bess’ behavior with her roommate Prisha (Shalini Bathina) is also terrible. When Bess wakes up, she sees Ananya (Nadia Mohebban), the woman Prisha likes, at the apartment. When Prisha tries to talk to Bess about how she arrived home a complete wreck, Bess lashes out and tells her that she must feel tired from lying to her parents about being gay, lying to Sundeep (Gopal Divan), the man her parents are trying to set her up with, and lying to Ananya about seeing a man for an arranged marriage. She leaves home before things could get worse.
But things do get worse in a wholly different way. It’s her brother Louie’s (Kevin Valdez) and things don’t go the way as planned. At all. Percy tries to steal a record for ‘Annie’, the musical -- he wants to give it to Louie as a birthday present -- and gets caught. Bess has to use what little money she has to get him out of trouble. But by the time they get to Louie’s birthday party, the ice cream cake has melted, they’re late. And they don’t have a gift for him. Louie’s disappointment coupled with the fact that Bess realizes that Percy was trying to steal and that it was not a misunderstanding only gets her down further.
The cherry on top of the molten ice cream cake that this day turned into was that Bess left her song notebook in the train, distracted by all her feelings. What Bess has to deal with on a good day is still a lot more than what most people do. With six jobs, very little money, a brother who is on the spectrum, and a love life that’s going nowhere, things are already difficult. But when you add a drinking problem, misdirected anger, and an unwillingness to seek help to the mix, it gets worrying.
New episodes of ‘Little Voice’ drop every Friday, only on Apple TV+.