Thursday, 8:30pm, ABC1
Stream on ABC’s iView
Aisha word association:
Mortar and pestle / Susie Porter / olive oil / bars of handmade soap from the markets / Feist / watching Australian Story / joining Facebook a few months ago to connect with old friends / willingness to pay for metered parking / full piece swimmers / Gorman customer loyalty VIP sale nights / not being self-conscious about having a cleaner / handwritten shopping lists / Schweppes lemon & lime mineral water / dessert wine / renting a beach-house in an unpopular holiday spot / bookclubs about The Slap
I think part of the reason I enjoyed this week’s episode so much is that it was full of relatable reference points – a fact made apparent by the green and yellow wheelie bin we see Aisha taking out at the start of the episode, oh but also at the end of the episode (why is it always bin night on The Slap?). Plot-wise, plenty happened too, but it doesn’t seem to get laid out with the same debt to utility as some of the other episodes. The world presented here feels completely inhabited.
Aisha leaves her well-rendered home to go on a 2-day Veterinary conference, and then to meet Hector at a tropical resort for their anniversary. But given Aisha’s talent for ruining things that are meant to be nice, their holiday is a disaster. Hector confesses to the affair he had with Connie (though he doesn’t reveal her identity, calling her Angela). She is crushed, though never in turn revealing the affair she had with Art Ramirez (a TV show’s funny idea of a babe) at the conference a few days earlier. Quelle intrigue! We the audience are privy to both affairs before each of the characters, which means we don’t feel too shattered by their indiscretions – I’m more stressed out about how much they’re spending at the hotel minibar.
Hector and Aisha are not just flailing because of their infidelities, or their disappointment at not being able to get in a good mood on their holiday – but they both have a different take on a secret that has been repressed from us until this episode. It turns out Harry actually violently attacked Sandi 9 years ago, breaking her jaw, leaving her terrified and turning to Hector and Aisha for help. Hector thinks his cousin Harry is reformed while Aisha now sees the slap as part of a larger pattern of violence they have helped perpetuate. It’s an interesting point about how the exchange of information – whether you reveal it, withhold it, or let it fester – is the real currency of crisis in the domestic middle class. Far more than actual stuff that actually happens.
Aisha + Dreamboat Ramirez
The Slap is very ‘can women have it all’ about addressing Aisha’s other relationships, and we see her juggle love, friendship, family and career. When one quadrant of her life is functioning well another suffers. Her relationship with Rosie is at its most frayed in this episode, as Rosie is still wounded by Aisha’s association with Harry and the damaging information that got used against her in the courtroom. In what is meant to be the most galling scene of the episode, she tells Rosie about the domestic violence Harry committed 9 years ago. This scene is a mirror to Hector’s selfish off-loading of his affair which left Aisha with the lonely psychological burden of coming to terms with it. The ethical and legal obligation to tell Rosie about Harry has passed, and telling her now is just a matter of clearing Aisha’s conscious and Fwd:ing on the torment.
This scene is emotionally complex, it’s the pay slip for watching the 7 preceding episodes. It asks the question, why do we scurry around preserving the friendships with people who are a bit shit? (See the brilliant Another Year for a longer riff of this theme) And it also shows the fallacy of opting to be a bystander – Aisha’s non-disclosure of Harry’s secrets meant she actively worked against her friend’s cause. Attempting to be neutral is usually a failure in some unanticipated way.
In contrast to this, Sandi, whose house we are in by the next scene, is not at all conflicted. She is completely partisan. Which is exactly what most people are like. And it’s kind of a refreshing way to end the episode, having been largely in the company of a mooning Aisha. It’s also a nice truth about the way sustainable friendships are often struck up between mooners and non-mooners.
A lot of the feel of this episode owes something to the embarrassing genre best exemplified by Eat Pray Love and that Baz Luhrmann tourism commercial. There are lots of lingering shots on Aisha’s clavicle as she exhales, exhausted by her own life. The cool thing about Aisha was that she was already pretty evolved, she doesn’t need to dabble in poxy notions of self-forgiveness, or be entranced by a noble savage to achieve transformation. The change she experiences towards the end is subtle but important. She commits to her taut relationship with Hector by reluctantly turning up at Sandi and Harry’s, she lectures Harry when she gets there and she deletes a flirty email from Art Ramirez. Life’s movements are really just dispatches from the various moods you find yourself in, Aisha’s actions are wholly dependant on whether or not she was having a dangly earrings kind of day.
There is a really nice brief scene with Hector, Aisha and the kids and Hector’s parents, Koula and Manolis, who have returned from controversial trip to Greece. That the trip was disappointing means the air has been cleared, and the family enjoy an evening of genuine warmth. Even though Manolis’ episode was only last week, it’s weird to see him show up in Aisha’s episode. It’s sort of like seeing Simon Crean on the news, you can only just recall a time where he was the protagonist/leader of the opposition, but he’s totally just been chillin’ in Greece/on the front bench this whole time. It’s like ‘Oh hey Manolis/Simon Crean, how you been.’
In the scene Aisha is making the Greek dish Strapadsada. Because I am such a Slap completist and also because I am confused by any Australian TV show that isn’t Masterchef, I cooked Strapadsada last night. My recap of the process was that I quickly skimmed the recipe and thought it seemed easy so arrogantly refused to refer to it again while cooking. My review of the results is that it worked well but I couldn’t really decide if I liked it that much.
Sophie Braham is a writer from Sydney. She tweets here
