[The comic’s series about addiction and relationships is both a
tender exploration of trauma, and extraordinarily funny. This is TV
that gives you a crash course in empathy] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

FEEL GOOD SEASON TWO REVIEW – MAE MARTIN’S QUEER LOVE STORY IS A
DEADPAN DELIGHT  
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Rebecca Nicholson
June 4, 2021
The Guardian
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_ The comic’s series about addiction and relationships is both a
tender exploration of trauma, and extraordinarily funny. This is TV
that gives you a crash course in empathy _

One of TV’s sweetest romantic storylines ... Charlotte Ritchie and
Mae Martin in Feel Good., Photograph: Netflix

 

I devoured all six episodes of Feel Good (Netflix) in one evening, and
much like the remarkable first season, it did not make me feel good,
all the time, but it did make me feel as if I had been given a crash
course in empathy and kindness. Co-created and co-written by comedian
Mae Martin and the writer Joe Hampson, this is the
semi-autobiographical story of Mae, a standup comedian who falls for
the previously straight George (Charlotte Ritchie)
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replacing their other addictions with keen, occasionally obsessive
love.

Channel 4 did not pick up this second season, but it is a relief that
Netflix did. It goes further into the mire of trauma, while
maintaining one of TV’s sweetest romantic storylines. After the end
of season one, in which Mae unravelled, returned to old habits and
imploded their relationship with George, there is an attempt at a
reset. Mae is dropped off at rehab by their parents – Lisa Kudrow
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a brilliant comic actor, and she is perfect here, as the brittle
mother terrified of the past repeating itself. At the clinic, demons
resurface, as does an old drug debt, in the form of a fellow patient
with a good memory who likes to piss in the food.

If this all sounds bleak, well, it is and it isn’t. Largely, the
show chooses humour over misery, hope over despair. It is sensitive
and smart in its portrayal of PTSD, and deals in shades of grey,
examining events with the kind of complexity that is often absent from
public debate but is very much the bedrock of private discussions.

We are aware that something bad happened to Mae as a teenager, and
this is gradually brought into focus, provoking the question of what
does it mean to be a good person, or an awful person, and whether
there is any such thing as either. There is a smaller storyline,
simmering in the background, about Mae starting to recognise their
non-binary identity, but much of this is about questioning binaries in
all situations that do not require them.

There is an emotional heft, but almost every time Feel Good approaches
earnestness, it swerves off. Mae’s standup act went viral in the
first season, and has now brought circling vultures, specifically an
opportunistic agent, Donna, who sees the mainstream potential in Mae
as a marketable “lonely millennial”. “You’re an addict,
you’re anxious, you’re trans,” she practically drools (“Am
I?” says Mae, baffled). Donna pushes Mae to expose a fellow
comic’s misdeeds, live on television, on an inane panel show. Would
this be triumphant, or a disaster? Right, or wrong? The lines are
blurred.

Unsurprisingly, Mae is finding it tough to tap into the kind of
standup that won them a following last season. “Do you want to talk
about my personal despair?” gets a rousing cheer, while an
apocalyptic monologue about a bad hotdog gets them booted off the
bill.

But if Mae is struggling to find anything funny, Feel Good viewers
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have plenty to choose from. The nightmarish prospect of being stuck in
an ancient Egypt-themed escape room with your ex plays out to
predictable bedlam. Mae’s parents are extraordinarily deadpan and
Kudrow is a treat. Rehab is a chaotic bust. Mae has a number of
nicknames, many self-inflicted, from Peewee to Adam Driver, from John
Wick to Little Piss Rat and Your Majesty. There are brief sexual role
plays that exist only as short punchlines, but steal an entire
episode.

Both George and flatmate Phil are given far more depth this season,
and Phil even gets a trip to Canada. As George, Ritchie yet again
proves that she is one of the most skilled actors in British comedy,
and her scenes with her reckless father, played by Anthony Head
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are wonderful. As Mae has to figure out what is holding them back, so
George has to work out what she wants from life and love on her own
terms. At work, she meets Elliott (Jordan Stephens), “a bi poly cis
man” who prides himself on his emotional literacy, and who takes a
shine to her but is mortified by what she actually wants him to do.
“George! Where did you learn to normalise that aggressive
language?” he chides, before handing her an anthology of feminist
essays on sexuality. She starts to pay more attention to her teaching
job, and gets interested in saving bees. If Mae is addicted to love,
then George is addicted to Mae, and both must work out how to break
old habits.

Martin and Hampson have made a delicate comedy and a tender love
story, grafting both on to an undercurrent of pain, without ever being
maudlin about it. Feel Good is a beautiful achievement, kind, human,
as clever as it is funny.

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