'The Bold Type' Season 4 Finale: Sutton finds herself home, falling back into the vicious circle of despair
Spoilers for 'The Bold Type' Season 4 finale 'Not Far from the Tree'
When Sutton Brady (Meghann Fahy) returns to her hometown in Pennsylvania, she cannot find her mother Babs anywhere. Sutton had even left a message on her phone so as to not catch her off guard, but Babs (as usual the unreliable guardian) is nowhere to be found. After Sutton's disastrous fight with husband Richard Hunter (Sam Page) about having children, he leaves her. This was a long time coming given the massive age difference between the two, and more obviously, the fact that they never really discussed having children before tying the knot.
Sutton doesn't even know who she is without him - lost, depressed, heartbroken, forlorn and everything in between. When her best friends Kat Edison (Aisha Dee) and Jane Sloan (Katie Stevens) convince her to come to work, she can barely hold herself together. So she decides to visit her mother Babs at home.
You might recall that the last time we saw Babs was towards the end of Season 2 when her daughter visited her for the birth certificate. At the time, Babs had promised her that she was sober and that despite working at the same bar where she used to pass out once upon a time, she is going to AA meetings. But now in the Season 4 finale, she is nowhere to be found. So Sutton ends up at the bar where she works. There, she learns that Babs is not on the clock. But she meets her old high school flame Billy.
Played by Fahy's real-life boyfriend Billy Magnussen, Billy Jeffries is now married with kids. But a night of drinking and reliving their old life together doesn't stop them from spending the night together. The next day, they are awoken by Billy's wife, who while dragging him away tells Sutton she's worse than her mother Babs.
Depressed, she returns home only to find the house empty. She then finds out that Babs is on yet another bender. When she opens the refrigerator only to find two bottles of alcohol.
So Babs has returned to her old self - spending alcohol-fuelled nights everywhere, going on benders and more importantly, ignoring her daughter altogether.
This is a wake-up call. Suddenly, everything becomes clear to her. She had left her hometown, her home and life with her alcoholic mother to escape to a better life. And she does until she really needs her mother and she isn't available for her.
Seeing those bottles of alcohol, on a bender herself, Sutton realizes that she is, after all, not at all different from her mother. It is a vicious cycle and she now realizes that she is a part of it, locked in it, unable to escape. No matter how much you try, life will bring you back to confront the past and sometimes, the future is very similar to the past.
You can catch all four seasons of 'The Bold Type' on Hulu.