Beginning with Sarah’s other marital breakdown – the one prior to episode one’s aborted wedding to Tammy – the eldest Pfefferman sibling and ex-husband Len make custody arrangements for their children.
Shelly, meanwhile, is also raking over an old marriage, hosting Maura after the accommodation she was staying in was sold off. But soon they are doing more than just cohabiting, as Shelly reminiscences about Maura’s old “flickety-flickety thump-thump” technique, and the latter reluctantly pleasures her in the bath.
Just as episode one centred on a wedding, this episode assembles itself around an occasion: an industry party hosted by Josh at Maura’s old house, held to launch Fussypuss – a reconstituted version of his old group Glitterish, now featuring Tammy’s ex-stepdaughter Bianca – and rehabilitate the career he all but destroyed by throwing a chair at his boss’s head in season one.
But just as Fussypuss start to sing a song about a “hollow man” – whilst looking meaningfully at Josh, possibly not just because he’s their manager – an apparently off-the-wagon Tammy crashes the party to confront Sarah.
Bare-faced and groggy, Sarah has seemed permanently hungover since the pair’s heady relationship ended, but Tammy is still in an altered state, initially not even seeming to grasp that they are no longer together.
“I am a beautiful soul,” Tammy bellows to the party’s guests, upstaging Fussypuss’s performance with her own. “You are all monsters!”
Tammy clearly now views herself as a victim of not just Sarah but the entire Pfefferman family’s mild sociopathy.
As in the end of the previous episode, in which we saw the characters faction off into their own separate rooms, the family soon disperse into their other lives: Maura to a nightclub with her friend Davina; Ali to a party at Syd’s; and Raquel and Josh to their bedroom.
Strangely, Josh seems unperturbed by Tammy’s interruption, possibly because he has something else on his mind. His son Colton, who attended the party, has announced he is considering moving to LA for his senior year. Josh suggests to the now permanently furrow-browed Raquel that he move in with them.
Having been tending to other people’s pain all day, and now having to take on Colton, Tammy, it seems, might not be the only human casualty the Pfeffermans leave in their wake this season.
Talking points
- Flashbacks. It’s becoming clear that the Berlin flashbacks are somehow linked to Ali. After the end of the opening episode saw the dancing girl appear on her balcony, the same scenes we saw in episode one also surface when she dives into the pool at the party. But this time there are also bleary, dreamlike images of somebody setting a pearl in melted chocolate, a man with a Nazi armband, and Ali herself walking along a track.
- Family. The interconnectedness of the Pfeffermans as a unit – how the characters affect each other’s lives – is starting to be felt in a more striking way. Sometimes it’s blindingly obvious, as in the way Sarah’s behaviour has affected her children, but other times it is more subtle and involved: the idea that Sarah’s decision to leave Tammy might have ruined Josh’s career, for example.
- Sexuality. In series one, Maura’s story was almost exclusively about gender, rather than sexuality – although her children commented that she seemed to have an endless string of girlfriends as Mort. Now, though, she seems to be establishing her new identity through desire, or lack thereof. In the bathroom, she refuses Shelly’s reciprocal offer of sex, and is completely uninterested – if not repulsed – by the young men who approach her and Davina on their night out, instead preferring to track her own reflection in the club’s mirrored walls.
