'Little Fires Everywhere' Recap: Episodes 4 & 5 of the Hulu series with Reese Witherspoon & Kerry Washington

Explicit content warning

04/06/20 • 78 min

RECAP Part 3, Episodes 4 & 5: the past begins to catch up with them *** Mia and Elena Showdown. Elena now knows Mia is involved in helping Bebe and she takes the gloves off. Mia doesn’t back down, and we get two rounds of the battle royale between these powerful matriarchs. It culminates with one of the best lines in the show, when Mia tells Elena: “You didn’t make good choices, you had good choices.” And everyone is delusional. (1:11) *** The Pearl-Moody-Trip love triangle gives us whiplash. First Trip teaches Moody how to escape the “friends’ zone” with Pearl by telling him to “stop, drop and roll.” But then Pearl pursues Trip and we were not happy with Trip blaming Pearl for his inability to complete the act. So low! Turns out Trip realizes he cares about Pearl and all that got in his head. Did Moody lose Pearl to Trip or was it really to Lexi? Or was it messed up that Trip went after his brother’s crush? (11:28) *** Elena’s backstory has her unraveling and us freaking out. It starts with a young Elena in Paris in 1976 -- we meet her ex-boyfriend, Jamie, and the path not taken. When Elena reaches out to Jamie, now a reporter at the New York Times, for help in her investigation of Mia’s past, it leads to dinner and way more than 4 ounces of alcohol! The showdown between these two leaves us with so many unanswered questions since it’s clear this isn’t the first time they have crossed paths since they broke up in college. (26:17) *** Carinn brings out her crystal ball imagination on the Jamie Elena saga. Is Izzy his child? The rationale behind this theory is highlighted in a few lines that might have gone by unnoticed. (42:40) *** The adoption battle heats up. The book was very even-handed between Bebe and Linda, but we have a different reaction seeing it on screen -- there are certainly more shades of grey. (50:47) *** Mia’s backstory seeps through. We question why Mia has been sitting on a piece of art worth $400,000 and one with significant nostalgic value that she is so willing to discard for Bebe. We speculate about Mia and Pauline’s past and where the TV adaptation is going to take this back story. (56:04) *** Lexi's abortion. We wonder why Lexi couldn’t confide in Brian or one of her other friends, but instead selfishly uses Pearl as it suits her. None of this is helping our views about Lexi. The scene where Mia calls her out is intense! (64:00) *** Izzy Had Her Moments. We feel for Izzy as she starts to lose her connection with Mia and then desperately tries to get back in her good graces with an apology collage that ends up in flames. And that is not the only fire reference burning things up. (69:47) *** The 90s references are still on point. The clothes, the music, the Halloween costumes...it is all sooo good. (75:02) Stay Complicated! Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @popfictionwomen and on Twitter @pop_women. To do a full deep dive, check out our website at www.popfictionwomen.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

Jessica Simpson & 'Open Book' Memoir

Jessica Simpson: complicated but an open book Our second episode of Pop NON-fiction Women, there are no real spoilers as we highlight Jessica Simpson's Bombshells, Baller moments and Boys ** Carinn "accidentally" read this book in 48 hours. She had low expectations, but once she started reading it Jessica drew her right in with her honesty, vulnerability and over-the-top stories of love, addiction, relationships, career and motherhood. Open Book surprised us at every turn. (00:26) ** The book is full of Bombshells! *** Jessica Simpson’s rock bottom moment starts off the book and right away we find out this is not your “normal” intervention. Let’s just say it involves colorists flown in from LA, a makeup artist and a gaggle of her friends to intervene with her drug and alcohol issues. Her drinking was way more out of control than we knew. (6:44) *** Sexual abuse. Jessica reveals for the first time publicly that the daughter of a family friend abused her for years during her childhood. She talks about how she felt the need to protect her abuser, the shame she carried, and the way she came to view sex as power or a lack thereof. (15:40) *** Mickey Mouse Club nemeses. We love the dish on how Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera haunted Jessica since they were kids trying out for the Mickey Mouse Club and coming up together in the music industry. (20:28) *** Jessica surprises us as a philosopher, witch, woo-woo, intuitive person who sprinkles the book with profound words of wisdom. (23:08) *** Losing her virginity wasn’t all that and religion still plays a major role in her life. (25:53) *** Mommy Issues. Jessica reveals the complicated relationship she has with her mother, with whom she is very close. We’re starting to see a pattern for her across her relationships. (29:04) ** Baller moments *** Jessica agrees to pay off Nick Lachey in their divorce, promising her father at the time that she would make all the money back. Baller Jessica tells us she did -- give or take a billion (32:06) *** We no longer discount Jessica’s entrepreneurial endeavors and success. She has built an empire, above and beyond her peers, making her a total baller. She signed a non-compete with Vince Camuto as the cherry on top of her business savvy. (34:10) *** Who needs Wharton Business School - not her soon to be husband - nah, Jess says come to the Jessica Simpson school of business. A GED worked out just fine for her. (38:32) ** The Boys of Jessica Simpson’s life - aka where it gets juicy *** Nick Lachey. Jessica talks about trying to be married while under the microscope of a reality TV show, Newlyweds, but we wonder whether these two ever had a chance at all...their self-destructive fight cycle, their age difference, her emotional affair with Johnny Knoxville, it’s all in there. It’s a love story, but it's definitely complicated. (40:32) *** John Mayer. Getting dirt on the relationship between Jessica and John Mayer is the reason Carinn picked up the book. Did John Mayer manipulate her for material or was he addicted to her...who knows, but it is super interesting and very intense. (51:36) *** Eric Johnson. The last “boy” — Jessica Simpson’s current husband — is an enigma: a former NFL football player, a Yale graduate, a vegan and a yogi. She refers to him as her “sexual shaman.” (67:08) *** We loved hearing the family relevance behind all of Jessica and Eric's baby names! (73:38) *** What’s missing? Carinn wants to hear Nick Lachey and John Mayer’s account of how things went down and Kate was interested in more about Ashlee Simpson’s side of what it is like to be Jessica’s sister. There is still a lot left unsaid! (75:34) Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @popfictionwomen and on Twitter @pop_women. Email us at cjadebarry [at] gmail. To do a full deep dive, check out our website at www.popfictionwomen.com Stay Complicated! Subscribe or follow for new episodes every Wednesday See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next Episode

'Fleabag' One Woman Play & 'Run' Premiere: Phoebe Waller-Bridge & Vicky Jones

A DOUBLE EPISODE: Fleabag One Woman Show and Recap of Vicky Jones’ Premiere of Run *** Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s original one woman stage show of Fleabag was released to the public for the first time on streaming services to support COVID relief organizations! Talk about silver linings!!! *** Kate and Carinn compare and contrast the TV series and the play, then tie it together with the premiere of Run, Vicky Jones’ new show on HBO. (1:47) *** There are a lot of similarities between the Fleabag one woman stage show and the TV series. (3:14) *** What stood out for us, though, were the differences. The play was very British, seemed tonally crueler, sadder, and heavier and there were some characters and storylines we missed. Do you know what bap is???(5:54) *** The stripped down one woman show also produces some vulnerable, dramatic moments that we don’t get in the TV series. Sometimes theatre produces a different kind of magic. (15:06) *** The ending of the one woman show is one notable place where it diverges from the TV show and we are conflicted on the fate of Hillary the guinea pig and what that says about Fleabag. (19:20) *** The play was groundbreaking at the time it premiered in 2013, for sure. But would we have found Fleabag to have been too unlikeable? (24:55) *** What did we take away from watching this? Carinn is so impressed with the evolution of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s work and the fact that the re-imagining of Fleabag was a long haul. Kate is impressed with Phoebe’s acting chops. (28:07) *** We transition to introducing Run, Vicky Jones’ brand new “rom-dram” for HBO. Carinn loves the theme of running away together and Kate loves it for the theme of the one that got away (36:25) *** Carinn worries about the joke from Vicky that last year Phoebe "became famous and I became a mother." She hopes Jenny Robins is making this a threesome rather than a love triangle for our favorite creative partners and besties (42:32) *** Run recap. Listen to our initial feelings on the premiere of Run and whether we’re in for the season. (hint: YES). (47:18) *** Kate insists we need a pact like RUN, but Carinn suggests they already have one: everytime she texts Kate, "I have an idea," and Kate texts back, "I'm in!" See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices