Summary
Even with a death to cover up and an injury to tend to, sometimes young love is the only thing that matters.
This recap of The End of the F***ing World season 2, episode 5 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
You can check out our thoughts on the previous season by clicking these ones.
Picking up where we left off, Bonnie is shocked to find herself collapsed on top of Gus’s corpse. You can see how that would be surprising. Alyssa and James are still none the wiser; the former is occupied with self-loathing, and the latter, despite having spent the night in the bath, thinks things are looking up. Even when they can’t find Gus anywhere, they don’t think there’s any cause for alarm. Bonnie, meanwhile, is struggling to stuff his body in the wardrobe.
When the mechanic comes out to fix James’s tire, she informs him and Alyssa that the puncture wasn’t an accident — Alyssa jokingly suggests it might have been Bonnie, not realizing how right she is. They also both think that Bonnie spent the night with Gus, though to sleep with him, not splatter him all over the room. When Alyssa brings it up in the car, Bonnie has to get out to be sick, giving James chance to ask where they stand. Alyssa, predictably, isn’t in the mood to talk about it. She wants to get back “home”, to Todd and Leigh, and her mother.
With things between James and Alyssa worse than ever, they stop off at a pharmacy so Bonnie can acquire some items to treat her injury. The pharmacist, who claims to be a feminist, assumes she’s being domestically abused. She goes to patch herself up in the bathroom and Alyssa, obviously wanting to avoid talking to James, sends him to see what’s taking her so long (I laughed out loud at the flapjack line.) Naturally, the pharmacist thinks James is the abusive spouse and denies Bonnie was ever there, and is incredibly proud of himself for doing so, but they run into her outside. She needs some food so she can take the painkillers without being sick.
Things remain frosty and only get more so with James’s attempts to defuse the tension with facts (“This is a Lazy Susan!”). Alyssa presses Bonnie about what’s up with her and she confesses her boyfriend was murdered and that her parents don’t speak to her anymore. Alyssa is in a hurry to get going, and Bonnie remembers she left her gun in the pharmacy bathroom. When she returns, though, it isn’t there.
James and Alyssa continue to bicker. He claims it’s cruel to kiss someone and then be mean to them, but Alyssa is still annoyed about the letter: “You dumped me, in a letter, like a Victorian.” James finally confesses that her mum made him do it, which she responds to with a simple, “Right.” The pharmacist, meanwhile, introduces himself to Bonnie as Kevan (Paterson Joseph) and tries to play the good-hearted interventionist, having evidently discovered the gun. Bonnie isn’t interested in his ministrations, though, and demands the weapon back.
Outside in the car, James and Alyssa continue to work through their issues. James’s usually unflappable exterior even cracks a bit, driven to rage by Alyssa’s insistent attitude. Finally, he’s had enough. He sets off, leaving Bonnie behind to hold Kevan at gunpoint. He wets himself out of fear. When she leaves to discover the car gone, she takes it quite well, all things considered.
Thanks for reading our recap of The End of the F***ing World season 2, episode 5.
