'Funny Woman' Recap: Season 2 Episode 2

Funny Woman airs Sundays at 9:00 pm on WTTW and streaming. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Barbara has succeeded in getting Dennis, Bill, and Tony hired to work on her new show, Just Barbara, to the TV executive Ted Sargent’s distaste – but the reunion is less joyful than it might be. They’re struggling to come up with plots for the sitcom, and Dennis is subdued and careful in his interactions with Barbara. He’s still figuring out how to divorce Edith and so can’t begin the romance with Barbara that he and she both want.

He and Barbara are more patient than Vernon Whitfield, the man with whom Edith cheated on Dennis. Vernon doesn’t want to wait for a divorce (clearly) and Edith wants to start a family with him. So when he spots Dennis in the lounge of the TV station, he starts a conversation. He denigrates Dennis’ work and tauntingly invites him to be a guest on his pretentious panel show Pipesmoke – on which Edith is a producer – to defend the modern sitcom. Dennis agrees, to everyone’s surprise.

Bill and Tony then take Dennis to Savile Row to find him a “revenge suit” to wear when he appears on Pipesmoke. While Dennis tries on suits, Bill makes out with a male clerk behind a curtain. Tony chides him to be more careful – especially because he and Bill need to deliver good writing for Barbara now that she has gotten them hired on Just Barbara. Tony also worries about the book Bill is writing about his life – what if Bill exposes Tony too much?

Tony’s wife June is pregnant, but that doesn’t mean that the pair of them feel ready to become parents. Tony worries that his writing will suffer once the baby is born, while June admits to thinking about other men. But they’re ready to muddle through it all together.

Marge is continuing to date the carpenter Roger, who supports her as she organizes a campaign in favor of equal pay. She’s gotten other clerks from the department store and even her boss to join her, and they’re all using her flat as a base to paint signs. Diane is filming it all – having realized it’s difficult for her to get a job onscreen, she has decided to learn how to work on the other side of the camera.

Diane has also done some digging to find Barbara’s estranged mother. Barbara’s Aunt Marie is frustrated that her father George won’t talk to Barbara; she always disagreed with him over hiding the notes Barbara’s mother sent to her. When Barbara goes to visit her mother thanks to Diane’s information, she asks what her mother wrote in those letters. Her mother hesitates, but then tells her she once wrote about a butterfly that landed on her. She wanted it to fly all the way to Blackpool and land on Barbara as well.

When Barbara returns to her flat after this fraught meeting, she’s upset to find it full, with Marge and the other workers partying after an equal pay protest that got a mention in the newspaper. Barbara is rude to Marge and they argue while Roger tries to smooth things over – but fails. Barbara packs her things and leaves with her suitcase in a huff.

She goes to stay at the home of Pandy, the bohemian lady she recently met thanks to Diane.

Other people she met at Pandy’s party have shown up again, too. Barbara has learned that Lynda Jay, with whom she conversed, is a newspaper columnist – who apparently has made a career of tearing women down, according to Diane.

Barbara has also paid a visit to the Hollywood agent Marc Allen at his hotel after her phone call to him from Ted Sargent’s office. She wants him to be her agent – but he’s leaving, already late for the knighting of one of his clients at Buckingham Palace. She ties his bowtie for him before he goes and tells him she’s interested in doing a film now – things aren’t going well with Just Barbara. He mentions a French film from which the lead actress just dropped out; Barbara could take the role, even without speaking French. She mostly just has to pout – but she has to get on a plane that night.

Barbara’s not sure she’s ready to do that. She has to watch Dennis on Pipesmoke first, anyway. As Dennis waits to go on set, Vernon tells him, right before cameras roll, “I’ve screwed your wife, now I’ll screw you.” The comment throws Dennis off, leaving him bug-eyed and barely able to get out a sentence, to the despair of his watching friends.

Vernon moves on to his other panelists, a professor of Shakespeare and a bishop, denigrating sitcoms with them. Dennis finally begins to find his footing as Barbara sneaks into the studio to watch the show live. Vernon shows a clip from Jim and Barbara of some bathroom humor to illustrate his argument that sitcoms are worthless and pandering, then insults Barbara’s abilities and performance.

That lights a fire under Dennis. He argues that Vernon thinks comedy belongs to him and his high-brow friends, but it doesn’t; they begin talking over each other. Vernon gets agitated and swears on air, requiring the live show to cut and end midstream. Dennis and his friends are triumphant.

Edith tells Dennis that he got the show shut down. She begins to flirt with him as Barbara appears in the booth, telling him that watching him argue was thrilling – she wishes he had fought that hard for her. She kisses him just as Barbara sees them together. Barbara flees right before Dennis, unaware she is there, pulls away from Edith.

Barbara gets on a plane to France to start filming.