The Bisexual looks at the difference of dating men and women from the perspective of a person who finds herself doing both. It’s an honest look at the last taboo, bisexuality and what it means to refuse to compromise on what you want.
Leila has to deal with the fallout after being outed.
What happened last week? Leila spent the episode trying to hang onto her identity as a gay woman, while reconciling her feelings for Jon-Criss, but it all came to a head when Sadie catches the pair kissing outside of a nightclub and goes off at Leila. Leila then ends her relationship with Jon-Criss.
The episode starts with Leila signing up for a dating site and selecting “both” under the interested in heading, which signifies how far she’s come in acceptance of her bisexuality. She goes on a date with a man, where she discloses immediately that she’s bisexual, that she’s just getting out of a 10-year-relationship, and that she’s trying not to be an “emotional intimacy whore”, all before they’ve ordered dessert. But that isn’t enough to put the guy off, as the next scene shows them having sex, while Leila asks him if he’ll spit in her mouth. He does and it wasn’t pleasant for anyone.
Leila: I can’t tell if it’ll be hot or disgusting. I’ve seen it in porn.
Thankfully, we cut to Sadie, who has started her day with a trip to her gynecologist to talk about the chances of her getting pregnant. He reassures her that plenty of older women can still have healthy pregnancies, with odds for insemination increasing if they are aroused at the time. I’m not sure how that works for artificial insemination and clearly neither is Sadie because she makes a joke about him giving it a try, which does not go down well.
A terrible day at work
When Sadie arrives at the office, she ignores Leila’s request for help with paperwork and slams the door to her office, although Leila tries to play this off as a joke. However, none of the staff believes her as Leila overhears Hye Me and Ruby describing the office as a “shitshow” since the founders split up and gossiping about Leila dating men now, something that Ruby says doesn’t surprise her because Leila looks quite “mannish” so it’s “more gay for her to be straight”.
Despite all of this, Leila to comfort Hye Me about her break up with Sadie and tells her the company is lucky to have her, but Hye Me throws it back in her face, calling her “full of shit”, “cheap”, and “nasty”. Still, this doesn’t get her fired or even disciplined.
Leila and Sadie decide to hold a meeting for their staff to air their grievances and it works as well as you might expect, with Sadie storming off halfway through and Ruby nearly having a breakdown.
At lunch with her mum, Sadie brings up a friend of hers who’s recently had a baby on her own, likely in order to tell her mum that she wants to get pregnant, but her mum ridicules the idea of bringing a baby into the world without two parents and tells Sadie that “motherhood is shit”. That’s some great parenting.
This does nothing to lighten Sadie’s mood, which means that upon her return to the office, she and Leila have a stilted conversation, where Sadie refuses to talk about her meeting and changes the subject to Leila’s relationship with Jon-Criss.
Leila admits they’ve broken up, but Sadie still wants to know how long Leila has fancied men, even blaming herself for not being able to satisfy Leila. Leila stresses that it wasn’t relevant because she was “in love” with Sadie, but when Sadie fights her, Leila admits that Sadie didn’t satisfy her because she stopped trying and was just too rigid. This causes Sadie to snap.
Sadie: You know why I’m like that. You have to be a robot to be successful in this industry…Have you any idea what it takes to be a dyke growing up in Burnley in the 80s?
Leila tries to talk to her, but Sadie tells her that she’s better off without Leila and leaves the room.
And a worse night
Back at home, Leila is curled up on the couch in the fetal position when Gabe announces that he’s going to his sister’s, but she looks so pathetic that he asks her to come along. There they watch Gabe’s niece and nephew put on a cute little dance show, which pulls Leila out of her funk enough to join in, but once the kids are in bed, the conversation turns to Gabe and Leila’s inability to form lasting relationships.
As they leave, Gabe tells Leila that she’s lucky because, as a bisexual, she doesn’t have to “lock herself down” to anyone. Once he realizes that he’s dug himself a hole, Gabe tries to explain that no one expects bisexuals to settle down because they’re attracted to so many people. It doesn’t go well, as anyone could have predicted.
Leila: You think because I’m bisexual, I can fuck any person I meet?
Tanya is throwing a party on her houseboat, so Leila heads there hoping to catch Sadie, but she’s too late. Tanya reassures her that no one hates her for sleeping with a guy, although Sadie would care no matter who it was, and then confesses to Leila that she has feelings for her. Then, after a tentative kiss from Tanya, the pair start to make out and strip down.
Afterwards, as Leila gets dressed, she asks Tanya if she’s ever been with a guy and Tanya admits that she did when she was a teenager. She then explains that Leila’s a little bit like her first boyfriend, because they’re both a little “self-involved”.
Leila doesn’t take that well and Tanya tries to tell her that it wasn’t an insult, but soon both women are in tears. Leila wants to leave, but worried that Tanya will be lying awake feeling “shitty” about it, she stays until Tanya falls asleep.
Leila then visits Deniz at the store, who is angry at her for keeping her relationship with Jon-Criss a secret, but Leila is angry at her for giving up on her dreams of becoming a chef and encourages her to apply for another position. But Deniz says she can’t keep trying because she isn’t like Leila and she can’t let her family down.
It’s a sad note for the episode to end on, but we certainly have a lot of questions for next week. Will Leila keep seeing Tanya? Will Sadie go ahead with her quest for motherhood? And will their working relationship ever be mended?
