PANTS ON FIRE? TIME TO GET CHECKED! reads the sign above Dylan (Johnny Flynn), our protagonist. He’s in an STD clinic waiting room in Glasgow, and his folded arms and grim face speak volumes. Next to him sits Luke (Daniel Ings), sidekick/loose-canon. Unlike Dylan, Luke is perfectly at ease in the STD clinic: propping feet on the table, munching on snacks, and making conversation with a nurse who knows him on a first-name basis.
If waiting in such a room wasn’t enough trouble, in walks one of Dylan’s exes. He tells her he’s “waiting for someone.” Before we get a name, the episode cuts to the title: CRESSIDA. Just a minute in and viewers are hit with a barrage of problems and questions; it’s a perfect cold open.
The romantic tragicomedy follows three young Brits—Dylan, Luke, and Evie (Antonia Thomas)—as they navigate the pre-dating-app highs and lows of romance during the mid-2010s. The overarching premise is introduced in the very first scene (S1E1), when Dylan is diagnosed with chlamydia and urged to tell past lovers they might also be infected. Dylan, thoughtful and foolish romantic that he is, rejects sending out the impersonal, clinic-issued notes. Instead, he tries to tell each possibly-infected ex/hookup in-person.
Unlike other single-camera, laugh track-free comedies of the time like New Girl or You’re the Worst, Lovesick isn't afraid to get downright melancholic. Love is hard (dare I say sick?), and series creator Tom Edge lives in that space between the dimple and the tear duct. Edge also isn’t afraid to tinker with the standard linear form common to the genre, as each episode takes place over two timelines.
The pattern (I hesitate to say “formula”) is to focus on one of Dylan’s exes/flings per episode. Each episode starts in the present, with Dylan about to contact a former lover. The majority of the episodes then flashback to the past, allowing viewers to see how Dylan screwed up the affair. At the end of each episode, we return to the present to see how the girl responds to the news that, so sorry, you might have chlamydia.
Lovesick’s stroke of brilliance is that its experimental temporal structure doesn’t merely assist its tragicomic tone; it creates it. In the present, jokes are less frequent and have more bite. The color palette is drama-movie blue. But when Dylan remembers the past, it’s as bright as a Judd Apatow flick. In the past, the stakes are lower and the characters smile with a cheek-cramping frequency. The audience ends up perceiving the past the way the characters might: through sunshiny layers of reconstruction.
What makes “Cressida” tower over other episodes is the introduction of a worthy rival, the romantic payoff from two preceding episodes, and the gleeful references to the 90s films Point Break and Notting Hill. If this isn’t enough, let’s say you’re a tougher critic who judges an episode’s perfection based on the inclusion of a dance battle highlighting river dancing, boy oh boy is this perfect.
After the cold open, the episode flashes back to ten months earlier, when Luke sprints into his and Dylan’s apartment. Luke has just discovered that Ilona (Cara Theobold), a girl he’s pined over for ages, has finally become single before her birthday party. Luke says he’s (creepily) been saving a condom with her name on it and that she’s his “fifty-year storm.” When Dylan doesn’t understand the Point Break reference, Luke spends the next minute and ten seconds (!) of the episode dramatically reenacting the cult classic. By the time Luke describes one of Point Break’s last images—Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) throwing his FBI badge into the water—Dylan is in tears (played for comedic effect).
Arriving at the end of the Point Break recap is Evie, dropped off by her fiancé. Luke whisks the three of them to the Scottish highlands so he can woo Ilona during her birthday party. When the fabled Ilona descends her family mansion staircase, the song “She,” made iconic by Elvis Costello in the film Notting Hill, swells romantically. Luke’s jaw drops and his eyes go gaga with infatuation. Conflict ensues when Luke’s rival, Ivan (Tom Stourton), meets Ilona at the bottom of the stairs.
The episode’s B storyline consists of Luke and Ivan vying for Ilona’s attention. Ivan is handsome, has mastered the eye-crinkle, and is a talented dancer; no other episode of Lovesick features a rival as multifaceted. Luke ends up prevailing—besting Ivan mid-dance battle through a perfect Riverdance routine, a sequence that features absurdly high kicks, slow motion, and the reintroduction of Costello’s “She.” Seeing Luke and Ivan go head to head is the most entertaining B story of the show’s three-season run.
The A line, which at first seems to take a backseat to the B, revolves around Dylan and Evie recreationally completing Luke’s absurd to-do list (cook a meal, kiss a man, be “amazing” at drinking games). It’s an entertaining series of activities in its own right, but structurally it allows Dylan and Evie fun and games, as their long-held romantic spark is fanned by checking items off Luke’s list (and also by their copious consumption of alcohol).
But what about the titular Cressida? Up until this episode, each episode is titled after the girl Dylan has slept with and has to contact. Cressida appears at the party, flirts with Dylan, and shoots him seductive glances, but in “Cressida,” Dylan ends up having sex with Evie. THE TITLE IS A RED HERRING! The episode subverts expectations to surprise viewers with a scene of two of their leads hooking up.
As I mentioned, Lovesick’s tone walks a tightrope between humor and melancholy, which is underscored by the episode’s theme: the hollowness that comes from prioritizing sexual wants over personal needs. After the party, Luke learns that Ilona isn’t the person he made her out to be, and the next morning, Evie wakes up to a regretful Dylan. She has to come to terms that by having sex with her best friend, she might have just ruined her future marriage.
True to form, the episode ends in the present. Evie leaves the STD clinic’s examination room and enters the waiting room. She, and now likely her fiancé, has chlamydia. Evie bikes home to Obél’s somber song “Riverside.”
To end the episode on a light note, Dylan goes out with Abigail (Hannah Britland), a girl from his past hookups list. Her buoyant personality stays chipper, even upon hearing the news that Dylan had chlamydia. The episode ends with the duo exchanging coy, hopeful glances over beers.
While these glances are the episode’s final images, what really lingers with me is Luke’s epiphany after hooking up with Ilona. The next morning, Luke and a defeated Ivan sit on a leather couch in the mansion’s lawn. They exchange heartfelt compliments and shake hands. Then Luke reaches into his pocket, retrieving the condom with “Ilona” written on it. He tosses it into a wine bucket, one whose ice has long since melted. The condom bobs, forgotten in the dawnlight, just like a certain FBI badge thrown into the sea.
Jordan Hill is a second-year MFA candidate and Sanders Fellow at FIU. He is a Sundance Co//ab Imagined Futures runner up and a Screencraft Cinematic Short Story finalist. His short films have been screened internationally, and his first fiction publication, “Marching Towards Golgotha,” is forthcoming in The MacGuffin.