Welcome back to The Bold Type, where it’s probably for the best that this season is ending because we’ve tried but it’s been a bit of a hot mess, right? The writing has been inconsistent at best and the stories have been mostly one-offs that didn’t get the depth they deserved. And the ones that have carried through are boring?! Anyway let’s get into it.
Let’s start with Sutton, whose company credit card/cocaine lil snafu gets brushed off with laughter by the girls as they ‘practice pack’ Sutton’s suitcase for her Paris trip, so I guess there will be no consequences for that even though the fashion department budget was such a big thing last week. Regardless, Sutton finds out that she needs her actual birth certificate, instead of a photo copy, in order for her passport application to go through. Which means the three musketeers are going on a road trip to Harrisburg (which is painted as a nowhere one-bar town even though it’s actually the capitol city of Pennsylvania). The plan is to sneak into Babs’ (as Sutton calls her mother) house while she’s gone and try to find the certificate without ever seeing her. Sutton’s resentment toward her mother’s alcoholic behavior throughout her childhood is strong.
The road trip itself is the most entertaining part of this episode, because the three of them together has always been the heart of the show. Jane is day-drunk (more on that in a bit) which has her feeling loose and goofy and setting up some of the funnier scenes of the episode. However, watching this reunion of Sutton and Babs really made me wonder why Sutton has never showed any apprehension about drinking when it comes to herself and/or her friends, because her mother’s alcoholism is clearly a defining feature of her life. She doesn’t trust Babs at all because of it- even when her house is clean and neat, she’s sober and holding down work (at a bar?!), going to AA meetings twice/day and acting generally motherly. I’m not saying Sutton should trust that she won’t relapse, but I’d expect her to have shown some kind of wariness toward, for example, a drunk Jane on this day of all days.
Regardless, after a heart-to-heart with her mom (and a friendly reunion with an ex boyfriend who seems cool until he calls Kat and Jane ‘hot’ for dancing together…why?!), Sutton agrees to Babs’s request that they just check in every once in a while, and the three drive away with the certificate. We then find out that Kat is also going to Paris and always was, which is a surprise to Sutton?! That makes zero sense since they tell each other everything.
Speaking of Kat, she tries to talk Jacqueline off her decision to remove comments from the Scarlet website re-launch, but Mama isn’t having it. Despite the fact that Jaqueline uncharacteristically let Kat all the way off the hook for her shockingly poor decision to sign a contract she didn’t read last week, she’s extremely defensive about her no-comments decision without letting Kat get a word in. I think we’re supposed to believe this is because of an article about ‘The Death of the Celebrity Editor’ featuring Jacqueline as the celebrity editor, but the kind of downfall they’re setting her up for is weak and out of character. Mama Jacqueline has always been above petty hot-take articles. As she points out in this episode, she dodged actual sniper bullets as a war reporter, she’s a Boss.
But she’s suddenly about to topple; all signs point toward ‘Rushed Storyline To Nix a Character’ (another one of which unfolded on our screens in a very different show/way this week). The website relaunch draws nothing but backlash against the loss of comments, after which Jacqueline calls Kat for advice. Kat says to apologize and re-open them, which Jacqueline does, but it’s clearly too late for her.
Anyway Kat’s other big thing is that she’s decided the open relationship thing has created too much distance between her and Adena, who is riding a creative wave that has her working a lot. So after yet another steamy makeout with a bartender in Harrisburg (I won’t even talk about how Kat attracts every queer woman around her and is into all of them, and that her bisexuality is erased because she only seems interested in women), she decides she wants to be monog! So she goes home to tell her girlfriend, who is also very happy! And then Adena goes to work in the studio.
The fact that Kat is upset over this really grates on me. Listen, I *really* want to love this couple, and I do, but Kat has monopolized the entire relationship and not given space for Adena to be herself, too. It seems like Kat wants Adena’s 24/7 undivided attention, rather than encouraging her to grow and thrive as her own person at the same time. Adena has done that for Kat, and I wish the writers would allow these two smart, ambitious women to support each other without making their love of work—one major thing they have in common—tear them apart. Nikohl Boosheri was upped to series regular this year, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. It sure does feel like she’s about to be written off the show. Will we lose her and Mama Jacqueline? The show was renewed for seasons 2+3 last year (with a new showrunner, which is obvious in a bad way), but I really question if it can capture its season 1 magic again with all this.
Anyway I’m getting ahead of myself! Let’s talk about Jane, the most vanilla story of them all! (Too harsh? It’s been a long week). The inexplicable and very forced love triangle between Jane, Perfect Ben and Pinstripe escalates this week. Ben gives Jane a binder worthy of Amy Santiago from Brooklyn 99, filled with scientific papers about the BRCA gene and her fertility options. Coming on a little strong, bro! This stresses Jane out, so after randomly running into Pinstripe in a Safford elevator again, she leaves work to drink with him (?!), to the point of actual drunkenness. She then goes back to the office (?!), where the website is relaunching, and gets dragged by Kat and Sutton on the aforementioned road trip.
When the musketeers are driving home, Jane finally looks at the binder and decides she’ll freeze her eggs. The next day, she’s attempting to hail a cab when Pinstripe shows up on the same street corner (he’s following her, right?) to deliver the news that Safford accepted his book proposal and he has her to thank for encouraging him to write it. I don’t remember that but I also zone out a lot when Pinstripe is around. Then he tells her he’s serious about her and walks away? Am I the only one who sees him as kind of the Mon-El of this show? He’s not quite as horrible, but still. Why is he here?
That’s it for this week, friends! Let me know what you thought of this episode and this season- I’m interested in other thoughts and opinions. Next week, we go to Paris! (in a funny twist, I’ll actually be in Paris! Gay Games 2018! But I’ll also be right here, so come back for some season finale fun!)
