“I Don’t Know What to Do with It”

In season 2, episode 4 of the critically acclaimed British television series Fleabag, the eponymous main character speaks to her best friend, Boo, in a flashback following Fleabag’s mother’s funeral. “I don’t know what to do with it,” Fleabag tells Boo. “All the love I have for her.” Here, Fleabag demonstrates what I refer to as affective excess—an overwhelming emotional response that feels too much for an individual to bear alone. In this case, Fleabag feels too much love for her mother but has no mother to receive it. Boo responds in her typical, guileless way: “I’ll take it. No, I’m serious. It sounds lovely.” The series implies that Fleabag channeled her love for her mother, and the grief accompanying her death, into her relationship with Boo. However, after Boo also dies, the viewer is introduced to one of the show’s central questions: Where can one place their affective excess when the usual channels are no longer available? The show explores how the intersecting demands on Fleabag—as both a feminist and a neoliberal postfeminist agent—leave her without an adequate outlet for unburdening her excess grief and guilt, ultimately rendering healing and relief impossible. Despite her avowed atheism, Fleabag appears to eventually find relief through spiritual means, specifically confession. This article argues that while Fleabag offers a powerful feminist critique of neoliberal society, it also presents an implicit reflection of the limits of feminism and advocates for a transcendent element in human relationships as the only adequate place to unburden affective excess.