The justification is that Bella is now attending a support group for survivors of sexual assault that is chaired by a former classmate, Theo we visit their high school during their teenage years. I May Destroy You episode 6, “The Alliance”, continues this complexity in a half-hour primarily devoted to a flashback. Here, I May Destroy You episode 5 is showing a different kind of bias where Bella’s assault was taken even more seriously by the police than she herself seemed to be taking it, Kwame’s, because he’s a man, and because he’s gay, and because he was assaulted during a deliberately discreet anonymous meeting, is mocked and dismissed. Yet in doing so he opens himself up to further humiliation at the hands of a useless police officer – a black one, one imagines intentionally – who shows no sympathy or sincerity in asking for the details of what happened. He’s also struggling with the idea of an unconventional violation that he was subjected to in the previous episode by his Grindr hook-up, and after googling whether humping without consent constitutes rape, he decides to follow Bella’s example and report it. ![]() This contrasts starkly with what Kwame experiences in “It Just Came Up”. When Bella publicly outs him, she becomes a social media celebrity and a minor hero. Zain’s assault is subtler and more insidious than an outright attack, but his removal of a condom midway through sex without informing Bella, and then gaslighting her into thinking it was her responsibility with hapless statements such as, “I thought you knew,” and, “Couldn’t you feel it?”, constitutes rape, both legally and morally. I May Destroy You episode 5, “It Just Came Up”, is pretty in keeping with the show’s core ideals though, as Bella inadvertently realizes that her new fling, Cambridge-educated creative writer Zain, might have raped her too. Primarily, the show uses sex, and especially the idea of consent, as its core subject, but in much the same way that the piecing together of Arabella’s sexual assault often gives way to episodes set many months or years before it, so too do different themes branch out of that central umbrella topic. The frequency with which jokes are deployed here, in both forms, only reinforces the idea that people, particularly women, people of color, and anyone who falls outside of the confines of heteronormativity, are constantly in conflict. The show understands what a vital tool humor is, both as a sword to be wielded in attack and a shield to be raised in defense. And what might be most striking about it is how it continues to be consistently funny even as it depicts extreme trauma and unpacks deep-seated corrosion at the heart of our culture. Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You might be the best show on television right now, but it’s also the hardest to watch, the most painful to think about, and the most uncomfortably truthful. You can check out our thoughts on the previous two episodes by clicking these words. ![]() ![]() This recap of I May Destroy You episode 5, “It Just Came Up”, and I May Destroy You episode 6, “The Alliance”, contains spoilers. “It Just Came Up” and “The Alliance” prove that Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You is perhaps the best show on television right now – at the very least it’s the toughest to watch, and the most difficult to think about.
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