There’s a lovely symmetry between Youth‘s premiere and finale episodes that goes beyond the episode-closing scenes of mother and son finding refuge in each other. In “Lockjaw,” series creator and star Sharon Horgan established the early buy-in for her new show, and in “Agent Of The Year,” she offers more reasons to spend time in this world, building a bumpy bridge to the future.
Much as she might like to, Alex has little time to wallow in self-pity after walking out on Patrick in “Last Night On Earth.” She manages to get in a quick sympathy session with Delly, who, like a good sister, sets aside any resentment about shouldering more of the care of their parents while Alex was in the throes of love. She wipes away her tears, returns her dress, and tells Alex it’s better to know now that Patrick still wants a family of his own, and Alex agrees, even if part of her might like to reschedule the pain she’s currently feeling for five years from now.
Alex manages to pull it together for the Women’s Literature Awards ceremony, where her plus-one is once again Ruari*, but she’s so out of sorts that she’s dressed herself a bit Dynasty and has overlooked the fact that Ruari’s suit seems modeled after David Byrne’s Stop Making Sense getup. Thanks to Derek Guy, I probably spend too much time thinking about tailoring, but it’s an important detail. The suit doesn’t seem to be a hand-me-down from his dad because 1. Lorcan is shorter than Ruari and 2. Lorcan probably wouldn’t bother to save anything to hand down to Ruari and 3. Lorcan probably wouldn’t have answered any calls from his son asking to borrow a suit. The ill-fitting fit is a reminder that Ruari has no shoes, or rather suit, to fill; he’s having to make up what manhood looks like on his own. It’s easy (and correct) to blame Lorcan, but Horgan, who wrote the finale, doesn’t let Alex off the hook either—Mom’s obliviousness in this moment suggests she hasn’t fully lived up to her responsibility either.
It might not be right or mature, but right now Alex is preoccupied with her latest breakup with Patrick, who keeps calling and messaging her to try to explain the pros and cons list. She types out a kiss-off text only to backtrack and send this instead: “You gave me a UTI.” It’s silly, sure, but it buys her time to sort out how she feels, which she can’t do at this moment because she’s dealing with that UTI, the Women’s Lit awards, Ruari, and an irritated Sam. Before the night’s over, Alex’s woes will have tripled (at least), and director Jim O’Hanlon is there to track the chaos from inside the banquet hall and out into the streets, where it eventually takes out a cyclist.
At least Alex and Sam are finally on the same page about Malcolm, because Sam doesn’t want to waste anymore time on anyone who doesn’t think she—that is, her agency—is good enough for them. Alex reads through the lines and tries to commiserate about their respective romantic relationships, but Sam’s already got the stiff upper lip in place again. She thinks Frank’s suggestion that they spend time apart is just a provocation, or at least, that’s what she’s telling herself in order to focus on the task at hand. Alex could stand to suck it up, too, but, as Frank’s therapist might say, avoidance isn’t the answer either. Sam’s refusal to accept comfort here is in contrast to her behavior earlier in the season, when she looked to Alex for reassurance. It definitely looks like the work relationship, now that Alex has been made a junior partner, has taken a toll on the personal one.
Sam seems to be putting up more of a wall on both fronts, which is an intriguing development for a potential second season. She insists on signing Coco August (Kat Sadler of the excellent Such Brave Girls)—an erotica/romance author whose most recent book, Mummy Ache (my god), was about an incestuous relationship—despite Alex’s objections. When she finds out that a rival agency has signed Yafa, she’s as livid as Livonia. She tells Alex she’s “delusional” for thinking that Yafa would have mainstream success, which is too much for her friend/colleague. “You wanna talk about delusional? Look at your marriage,” Alex snaps, which shocks both Sam and Ruari. But when we last see Sam this season, she’s crying quietly as Frank leaves so maybe the issue is more with Alex’s delivery.
Alex’s big night plunges further into hell from here: Malcolm is supposed to be seated at her table, but he’s schmoozing with Grayson Cole again. Jessie Findlay, who scores the only win for Sam and Alex’s agency, doesn’t show up. After being shoved off the red carpet and forced to carry her mother’s purse, Livonia threatens to reveal that she’s the one who’s been writing Harriet’s books since her mother “unretired” herself. (That includes the racist Wagon Burner, a revelation that’s also begging to be explored in a new season.) I couldn’t find the real-life counterpart for the Women’s Literature Awards in England, but if it’s anything like what unfolds in “Agent Of The Year,” I hope it’s televised—and not just because James Norton makes a cheeky appearance as himself.
Plum is also nowhere to be found, and Ruari’s worried that it’s because she’s trying to avoid Malcolm (who she recently revealed sexually harassed her). When he tries to talk to his mom about it, Alex misinterprets his anxiety, assuming he’s the one who did something to put Plum off, which leads him to call her a hypocrite for trying to work with a man who treats women that way. Alex offers a mealy-mouthed defense: “This is a terrible thing to say, okay? But sometimes this is just the shit that women have to deal with.” Ruari leaves, disgusted, and when he returns with Coco’s vodka, he starts downing it himself, and it’s not long before Alex is keeping a similar pace. A high point comes when she goes on stage to accept Jessie’s Best Newcomer award, but that’s sandwiched by Malcolm saying he had a role in the win and Ruari telling Coco that Alex loves working with “perverts.”
Ruari’s being unfair—I have to wonder if he’d criticize Alex this way if he wasn’t interested in Plum and also very drunk. But right now, Alex can only see her failures: Losing Yafa, disappointing her son and boss, missing whatever signs she’s now imagining might have indicated that Patrick still wanted to have kids. And when she’s already that down, well, it’s not too far a trip to end up in the bed of the gross man she’s been avoiding all season. The scene in Malcolm’s bedroom, despite the placement of Alex’s shapewear, is ambiguous; he seems like the kind of guy who’d be only too happy to torture Alex by letting her mind fill in the blanks. But Alex’s broken heart and disappointment have led her to make bad decisions all season long, so who knows what actually transpired? It is enough to make her stomach turn when Sam calls to congratulate her on signing Malcolm and earning her bonus.
But the real devastation comes when she encounters Patrick outside her building after her walk of shame. It’s really too bad that they’re in such different places, and I don’t mean as far as age or what they want in the future. Despite his nearly three months in therapy, Patrick still doesn’t fully know how to be in a relationship—more specifically, how to patch things up after a fight or misunderstanding. He’s honest with her, which is commendable, but right now he could use more tact. When he says he had to talk himself into being with her, that’s a dig at his inveterate bachelor ways, but that’s not what most people, certainly not Alex, would hear. When he says “I don’t want to lose something this good for something I’m not certain I even want,” it’s almost romantic, but it also smacks of compromise to Alex. “You don’t even know what it is that you’d be giving up, okay? I do,” she tells him before letting go one last time.
A defeated Alex heads up to her flat, where she mirrors Ruari’s actions in the premiere by getting into his bed. The same way he initially couldn’t tell her what happened at Kent, she can’t bring herself to say anything about Malcolm, especially not after Ruari apologizes to her for what he said. She takes the blame for Ruari lashing out and for Lorcan not being there, which seems a little much but she’s been shaken to her core. Alex hasn’t regressed, exactly, but like her son, she’s having some serious doubts. What’s going to happen when Ruari’s ready to leave the nest again, which, for both their sakes, will hopefully be soon?
That’s a problem for next season, I suppose, and I do hope there will be one. I started watching Youth thinking I’d be drawing parallels to Better Things, and they’re definitely there. The series may have been overly ambitious at times, or rather, overextended, but there’s just so much potential here: for a story about defining modern masculinity when your role model is a woman (I do think, despite his teen-ness, Ruari looks up to Alex), or one about how thorny female friendships can be when they depend on one person being up when the other is down. Looking back at the past eight episodes, though, Youth‘s first season was more of a romantic comedy than anything: Girl meets boy again (and again and again and again), is anxious about having aged out of being a “girl,” gets some things right and many others wrong. It might look like Alex is (foolishly, confoundingly) giving up her happiness with Patrick—and I do think the decision is somewhat driven by fear of future rejection—but another way to look at it is that she’s giving him the chance to figure out what happiness actually looks like for him. It’s the act of a woman in love, and of a woman who remains resolute about finding it again.
Stray observations
- • *I glommed on to the “Ruairi” spelling at the start of the show, and I stuck with it but have since learned that it was incorrect. My apologies to all the Ruaris out there.
- • To get back to the ticking clock, Livonia suffered in silence for decades and had a stroke the moment she decided to take some credit for herself, so maybe Alex is partially right for being so much more transparent.
- • James Norton: “I’ve never seen this many happy women in one room since Taylor Swift played Wembley. [Pause.] I was backstage.” Ormund’s bitchiness lives on! And after seeing him on SNL UK, I hope “James Norton as himself” becomes a thing.
- • Malcolm’s the kind of perpetually single man who actually has a bedframe and multiple pillows, but apparently selling 250,000 copies of Goblin Seed isn’t enough to buy a proper frame for his poster.
- • The casting of the core group was great, but I also want to shout out Freddie Meredith, who’s having a banner year after joining SNL UK and being nominated for Best Newcomer at Edinburgh Fringe.
- • Aran Murphy’s done such an admirable job pulling double duty on HBO with Youth and War, offering distinct flavors of a teen from a broken home.
- • Was this Rupert Friend at his most charismatic? Only time—and another season of Youth—will tell.
- • That’s a wrap on Youth season one recaps—thanks for following along! Look for our post-finale interview with Sharon Horgan Monday morning.
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