Overview
Season 1 of Sex/Life has Episode 7, “Small Town Saturday Night.” It goes deeper into Billie’s backstory. It lets viewers in on the root of the identity crisis she has been suffering from. It, however, steps away from the shorter, flashback-filled, steamy city life to focus on the more intimate, quieter, reflective parts of her life, which involve her pre-Brad self. It also gives the audience a glimpse of who she was going to be in an alternate, different turn.
We see Billie, in the present, more conflicted than ever. She has to deal with her obsessive attraction to Brad, which is hugely emotional, and her love for her family. Fantasy and reality start mixing in dangerous ways for Billie, and she is trying to hold on her life from falling into pieces. In the present, she has already lost Cooper’s trust because of her journal, and even though she tries to play the role of a good mother and wife, everything is getting impossible to balance.
Then a trip comes that shifts the tone and pace of the series: Billie goes home to Connecticut for her father’s birthday. What begins as a family visit evolves into an encounter with her life as a whole, including people and the version of herself who lived in that small town. The pace of life there is quite the opposite from her life in New York: calm, slow, and serene. Unlike the memories she has of her life with Brad, which tend to be more vibrant and sexual in nature.
We first meet Billie’s father, who is friendly yet a little old-fashioned, and her mother, who is the ideal version of the life Billie has run away from. Their suburban house brims with both memories and unacknowledged expectations and comes to symbolize for Billie her present life: married, with children, yet unfulfilled emotionally. Her mother is pushing a version of life that is fixed in her own head, warning Billie without context to not “mess up” what she has. It is evident she is always running away from the limited life that is epitomized by her parents.
On this trip, Billie reconnects with Devon, her high school boyfriend who has settled down with a family. While their conversations may seem light, they carry a heavier burden of unfulfilled dreams and regrets. Devon fondly recalls the high school love he had with Billie. For Billie, it brings to mind a simpler time before reality struck, back when she believed she had a bright future ahead. Now, with Disney and small town ideals fading, she ponders what has, what she truly desires, and towards what future she’s dreaming or running to with Brad.
The emotional fallout from Billie’s journal continues to plague Cooper. He put on a brave face and ignores the storm brewing within, but the emotional stress is inescapable. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it, his trust in Billie is gone. Cooper’s colleague, Francesca, starts to take interest in him. She pays attention to him, lightly flirts and engages him in a way that he is not receiving at home. While nothing physical has transpired, it is obvious the emotional betrayal is well underway.
On the other side of the story, things are difficult for Brad too. He sends Billie a heartfelt voicemail, a confession of sorts that reveals he has always loved her. He vows that he has changed and is open to building a life — and a family — with her. For the first time, he speaks not as the playboy she left behind, but someone genuinely ready to commit. This voicemail is a turning point in the episode. Billie is wistfully listening to the voicemail in her childhood bedroom filled with pictures of her younger self, and the voicemail changes the weight of her dilemma.
Billie’s self-reflection and internal turmoil is the climax of the episode. Mirror in front of her, she sees a girl, a mother, and a lover. A available journal, her life with Cooper, and the house in the suburbs all coalesce with her past with Brad. A still frame of Billie looking beyond the window towards the night sky brings the episode to a close. Emotions intricately charged and softly delivered while poising the Big Bang of her time, she figures out that blending what shaped her life and what is now tangled in it, is not the easiest thing to do.
Cast & Crew
Sarah Shahi as Billie Connelly
This episode showcases one of Shahi’s most reflective performances. She captures the internal turmoil of Billie with her face, her body, and her voice-over narration, all of which show conflict.
Mike Vogel as Cooper Connelly
Vogel portrays the sad and silent agony of a man struggling to hold his family together. His emotional disengagement is growing and, while very subtle, is powerful.
Adam Demos as Brad Simon
Demos is physically absent for most of this episode, but his voice message makes him a notable character and presence, as it carries a lot of emotional weight.
Margaret Odette as Sasha Snow
Sasha’s brief reminder to Billie of the independent woman she used to be, and the one she can potentially become, allows for her character’s brief appearance.
Peter MacNeill and Elizabeth Shepherd as hypothetically cast Billie’s parents give a glimpse to the family background that shaped Billie’s character.Created by: Stacy Rukeyser
Turn the focus inward, and as Billie’s internal identity struggle takes the forefront, Rukeyser artfully balances this episode’s sensuality and sentimentality.
Directed by: Jessika Borsiczky
The cinematography tells a deeper story with Billie’s past, her humble beginnings, and her present which is glamorous. The use of lighting and set design show the contrast of her life.
IMDb Ratings & Reception
As of now, the series Sex/Life has a mixed rating of about 5.3 out of 10, but the 7th episode is often praised as one of the more emotional and introspective episodes. Critics have noted that, unlike many other episodes of the show that are laden with sexual content, this one is more dominated by character development and has an overall more subdued feel.
Audience reception is mixed and varied. A portion of the audience perceives the pace of the episode to be much slower compared to the other episodes, while the other half saw it as a much needed to space to develop Billie’s character. Many perceived this as a moment of sane and composed clear headedness before she makes a series of chaotically decisive moves in the season finale.
Themes & Analysis
Episode 7 is emotionally introspective and deeply thematic. Billie is balancing two sides of the spectrum, the loving mother and faithful wife that is expected of her and the sexually liberated woman that she is, was, and maybe, just maybe, still desires to be.
While watching this episode, there is painfully familiar feeling in the air. It is not a skipping down the memory, but rather a confrontation of it. In the case of Billie, it is fair to assume that she does not miss the small town she lived in, but instead, she yearns for a person who does not truly exist — Brad. What she is really attempting to capture is not just a man, but that a version of her who was boundless.
Besides the physical aspects of it, there is the emotional quagmire of infidelity, and in this case it is of utmost importance. Cooper and Billie are both dissolving. Their children’s lives are dangling over a precipice. This show is extremely candid in the sense that it does not show any sort of moral bias — it simply tells the reader that love, sex, identity and self-realization are hardly ever neat and tidy. After all, love is complicated.
Conclusion
In the case of Billie, she is losing herself over the selection of two very different lives and thus very different men. This episode is a extremely emotional in a season that has feeling wild. In this case, the emotional turmoil that the show has thrown us in is rather exposing and elongated and serves a purpose — and hopefully this serves to make the watch insightful. In this case,, there is a man desperate for something that he lost a long time ago and it is of the utmost importance to show the the sense of the journey in the context of the people from the town.
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