![]() ![]() ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ Is Toxic Behind the Scenes, Staffers Say And throughout both seasons to this point, we are reminded again and again that Jessie has the attention span of a flea and the maturity of a middle schooler (maybe). The New Year’s Eve episode comes right before the one with the pregnancy test, and it features multiple encounters with members of Tom’s inner circle - including his suspicious agent Cath (Minnie Driver) and obnoxious brother Vinay (Parth Thakerar) - that leaves Jessie wondering how much longer the relationship can last. ![]() Jessie inevitably begins to panic, realizing that she has wasted the money her parents spent to buy her a plane ticket home, and that she has no job and no real reason for still being in England other than this guy with whom she can’t stop arguing. Season Two picks up exactly where the previous finale left off, on that homage to the final shot of The Graduate, with Tom and Jessie in the back of the bus, not sure what to do after their alleged happily ever after. But when Tom offers to accompany her on the bus ride to the airport, Jessie realizes that she wants to stay and give things another shot with him. (At a New Year’s Eve party in this season’s third episode, one of Tom’s movie friends quickly excuses himself from a conversation with Jessie once he realizes that she works at a cinema rather than working in cinema.) There are various professional complications and romantic misunderstandings, and eventually Jessie decides that she has failed at everything she has tried in England, and that it’s time to give up and move back to New Zealand. And on a more practical level, she is a nobody, and he is a celebrity. ![]() (Near the end of the episode with the pregnancy test scene, he resists the overwhelming urge to have dressing on his Caesar salad because he has to look good for a film shoot the next day.) She is frequently wrong with absolute conviction he’s sensible but also wracked with self-doubt. There is an unmistakable attraction between them, but they are fundamentally mismatched on almost every other level. Jessie and Tom spend most of the first season hooking up and then breaking up. Let’s pull back a bit to take a wider view than the one offered by that bathroom mirror. Though Matafeo primarily does off-kilter comedy on this show - a later episode finds Jessie and Tom fighting because she doesn’t like him describing her as “kooky” - this is utterly raw and compelling dramatic acting from her, and suggests a serious, Fleabag-esque pivot for Starstruck. Well, less “crying” than “full-throated, agonized sobbing and wailing.” It is obvious in this moment that Jessie has tested positive, and is grappling with the biggest stupid mistake in a lifetime filled with thousands of tiny stupid mistakes. It is clearly not what she wants, and she begins crying. The shot switches to Jessie sitting on the toilet as she holds up a home pregnancy test to study the result. The scene in question opens with Jessie reflected in her bathroom mirror as her phone timer goes off. It is the beginning of the fourth episode of the second season of Starstruck, the exceedingly charming British romantic comedy co-created by and starring Rose Matafeo as Jessie, a directionless New Zealander living in London who stumbles into a relationship with action movie star Tom ( Nikesh Patel). The clubhouse leader for the funniest TV scene of 2022 does not start out seeming as if it is going to be funny at all. This post contains spoilers for the second season of Starstruck, which is streaming in its entirety on HBO Max, and we highly recommend you watch it before we ruin an utterly hysterical punchline. ![]()
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