Summary
Things come to a head in a gripping, excellently-written penultimate episode, as truths are revealed and shots are quite literally fired.
This recap of The End of the F***ing World season 2, episode 7 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.
I’d almost forgotten about Bonnie having killed Gus, but we’re reminded at the start of this penultimate chapter by a blabbermouth copper describing the crime to a shop assistant. With confirmation that little narrative detail is still in play, the same cop is summoned to another incident, his car still full of balloons for his daughter’s birthday.
We rewind to a while earlier, to Alyssa and Bonnie have their cafe stand-off. Only, it’s not much a stand-off yet. Bonnie has returned Alyssa’s veil and is playing nice to such an extent that Alyssa declares her “harmless”. As James approaches from outside, though, he sees Bonnie wielding the gun. It’s him who calls the police — or tries to, anyway, but gets no luck with the nearby payphone. Luckily he’s got a while since the place isn’t as empty as it seemed; an older woman is working her way very slowly through her meal.
Bonnie changes the subject to James, trying to encourage Alyssa to bring him here, while James himself climbs through the bathroom window. He’s right on time to overhear Alyssa saying she’s getting a divorce — and to see Bonnie pull out her gun and finally confess to Alyssa why she’s here. Things click into place for Alyssa regarding the bullets. Bonnie demands to know what happened to Koch. Alyssa recounts the story, and it’s evidently painful for her to relive it. It might be just as painful for Bonnie, hearing what Koch was really like. Just as the story is heating up, a car pulls in outside. Bonnie says if Alyssa doesn’t get rid of them, she’ll kill them as well as her.
Needless to say, it’s the chatty cop from the cold open who just arrived. He wants to have a look around and finds something interesting during his investigation — apple strudel. While serving him, Alyssa spots James hiding in the kitchen. True to form, the cop starts gabbing about the murder again, which obviously means a lot more to Alyssa and Bonnie than it did to the shop assistant. When he pays for the strudel, Alyssa writes “Help Me” on the receipt, but the dope refuses to take it. On his way out, though, he spots Bonnie’s gun.
After the cop has left, Bonnie points that gun at Alyssa, instructing her to lock the door, which she does. Bonnie inquires after James, and he chooses that moment to drop a knife in the kitchen, causing quite a racket. Bonnie goes to investigate and spots him. Uh-oh. When she gets them both sat down, the hard conversation commences, since Alyssa lets on about just how many women Koch had relations with, and the evidence they found that confirmed it. In some way, Bonnie already knows this is true, but she’s in denial. She claims they both have to be punished for what they’ve done, but Alyssa rightly points out that they already have been. In her mind, she never leaves that room. On some level, Bonnie understands. After envisioning shooting both of them — now wouldn’t that have been a cliffhanger — she asks Alyssa, “What do I do? What do I do with all the pain?” Alyssa doesn’t have a good answer, but when Bonnie turns the gun on herself, both Alyssa and James save her from suicide. In voiceover, Alyssa says that the problem with people who don’t get a lot of love is that they don’t know what it looks like, so it’s easy for them to get tricked. As the blue lights of the police cars outside began to light the cafe through the windows, I thought about how incredibly true that line is.
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