Cucumber: “Episode 3” / Banana: “Episode 3”

I was starting to think Freddie’s face was stuck like that. Until now he’s had all the range of a magazine model, pretty, unavailable, and disgusted with you. He’s the same old Freddie all through the quiet morning visit with Henry’s family, Cleo and the kids, although there’s a hint of something more when Cleo stops by his room to tell him to send Henry home. The camera pushes in on him as he says with the low-key thrill of provocation, “I don’t give a fuck.” (That’s not the “something more.”) Then she gives him one last mom stare and leaves, and it seems to take. But from the moment he runs into old family friends Sally and Gregory, Freddie’s a different person. He retreats into his shell, and that’s just the beginning of Freddie Fox’s surprisingly rich performance this week. Is there some family history he’s trying to shake? Is he just embarrassed he dropped out of college? No, Gregory was Freddie’s old flame. He was also his teacher and pederast.
It’s a relief (and, this being a Russell T. Davies joint, a punchline), to hear someone finally say out loud in no uncertain terms, “This man is a rapist!” It’s been an elephant in the room but an invisible one, because of course Gregory and Freddie wouldn’t define their relationship that way, one out of legal and social self-preservation and the other out of deep psychological self-preservation. Freddie even rolls his eyes and denies it after Henry shouts, which is what gives the moment its humor, well, that and the fact that Gregory has wrestled both Freddie and Henry to the floor in an attempt to keep Freddie from sending Sally a picture of Gregory getting dressed at his place, the high stakes never undermining the slapstick lunacy. But regardless of how Freddie sees their relationship or his own maturity at 15 or his wild imbalance of power with his teacher at the time, the fact is Gregory took advantage of Freddie, and suddenly Freddie isn’t a stand-in for Grindr millennials but a very specific person who’s been warped by very specific events in his life. There’s a reason our first inkling of what’s weird between Freddie and Gregory has to do with the fact that Freddie couldn’t hack it in school after his affair with his high school teacher.
Before we know the details—and see the graphic comic panels Freddie’s drawn of them—what’s weird is Gregory’s predatory intensity. He deliberately unscrews the lid on his daughter’s drink in order to spill it on her in order to send his wife with her to the bathroom in order to get some alone time with Freddie, and he goes right from baby talk with his child to looking Freddie in the eyes and saying, “It’s like I can smell that space between your legs.” He doesn’t even know where to go or how to get away, but he has to have Freddie one last time, and Freddie’s so unusually demure that it highlights the power Gregory has over him. Cue a montage set to caper music as Gregory tries to shake his family and arrange for a quickie with Freddie in a public restroom. It’s exciting before we know exactly what their relationship was. But then Freddie stands outside the restroom door, held back by jitters. He flakes, and when he steps outside and takes a breath of fresh air, it feels huge, but Cucumber doesn’t dwell. All that energy built up by the montage gets released instead in a rapidfire comic bit where Henry watches as Freddie rushes in the door to release his own energy with two Grindr hookups and Dean.
But Freddie can’t stop thinking about his, as he sees it, first love. First he texts Gregory, knowing he’s not in town but hoping for something anyway. Or maybe he’s just hoping to rile Gregory up again, the way he did when he left him hanging. When Gregory responds with a nicety and a “Delete this number,” Freddie hauls out his comic panels and texts a particularly salacious one to Gregory. That gets his attention. He shows up at Freddie’s while nobody’s home, leading to an incredible sequence of emotional shifts and power plays and eventually the dogpile, our heroes rescued by a kick from Lance of all people. The whole final act is an intoxicating tonal whirl: the tension produced by the confessional comic, the nonchalance of Dean, the jealousy of Henry. Freddie and Gregory are trying to be quiet, because Gregory’s still trying not to get caught. Then Freddie asks to top, and it feels a little sinister, like it’s a trap, but it’s also maybe cathartic for Freddie to turn the tables on this guy finally. When Gregory decides to call it quits, Freddie says to the ephebophile, “Am I too old for you now?” He has a beef with Gregory, but not for the predatory sex. He’s upset because their affair forced Freddie to stay in the closet. Gregory passed on shame to Freddie.
The themes of the Gregory story run throughout the episode. That childhood repression resonates with Henry’s story, as his sister tells everyone how he’d seize up in terror whenever a shirtless man would show up on TV. Daniel and Lance are blurring the lines in an instructional setting, too. Henry’s taken aback by his more indirect exertion of power over adolescents, when he drafts Adam and a peer to do a shirtless lip-sync video for cash that results in them kissing. Daniel and Lance and Adam and his friend are all looking for excuses to touch each other, to undress together, to test the waters. While Freddie and Gregory chat like they’re survivors of a torrid love affair and Adam and his pal are great at pretending like they’re not actively interested in kissing each other, underneath is a story of trauma and experimentation and boundaries. The subtext isn’t just expanding or augmenting the text. The subtext is the real story of the episode.
Take the sequence after Lance kicks us to a blackout. When we come to, there’s a wide shot of the apartment, Henry on the left, Lance on the right, and Gregory between them but down the wall from Lance a little ways. Freddie’s off-screen. He’s being protected. Another angle shows just Henry and Freddie, and Henry tells him to send the incriminating text to Gregory’s wife. Back in the wide shot, Gregory lunges, but both Lance and Henry move in. They’re standing between Freddie and Gregory, two responsible adults restoring the boundaries between the one-time teacher and student. It’s the turning point of the episode.