‘Single Drunk Female’ Recap: ‘New York’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode Seven of ‘Single Drunk Female’. To revisit the previous episode, click here.
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One particularly unsettling lesson that each and every one of us are taught at some point in our lives, is to let the past go. Which at first glance, is a lesson that appears to have merit. Since deep down, we all understand that troublesome times from yesterday and yesteryear will haunt us if we let them… so what better way to be free of their grip than by letting them disappear into the ether. But it doesn’t take long for us to learn… that’s the wrong way to handle our past. Because it doesn't just fade away, it gets pushed way down and eventually, it bubbles up from the subconscious we buried it within to give us strife and anxiety and the only way to truly resolve it and the pain it causes us… is to confront it and make peace with it.
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If anything, that particular lesson and process is top of mind today, simply because… it is precisely what Sam Fink experienced during this week’s episode of Single Drunk Female on Freeform. For when we catch up with Sam in ‘New York’, she has returned to the Big Apple, in the hopes of landing a writing job at Smug Media and well… the instant she stepped off of that bus with James, the instant the past started to bubble up for her. Because every place she and James went before her interview and his meeting with an investor for his app, provided her with an echo of her past life in NYC. The kind that evoked a sense of shame and disappointment over the fact that she spent most of her time in the big city, under the influence of alcohol. But before she could really reflect upon this surge of memories, she had some business to tend to.

For the time had come for her interview with Smug Media, and she did need to impress since she genuinely believed that this job was the answer to her problems and would get her back on track immediately and for a time, it appeared as though Sam was on the fast track to getting exactly what she wanted. Because her interview with Nathaniel, while awkward… was successful. To the point where he asked her to attend a more informal meet up with one of the editors she’d be working with and well, that particular meet up… dropped quite the surprise in her lap. Because Nathaniel made it clear that her new role at Smug Media, would entail her working the city’s party beat and the reality of that and how little her former boss respected her sobriety…  allowed for quite the epiphany to wash over Sam.

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In that, New York was a toxic environment for Sam, one that helped to indulge and enable her addiction and that it no longer suited her or her needs and having that epiphany present itself, alongside having the past come back to haunt her, made her realize that she needed to make peace with yesterday and the reality regarding New York. For only then could she genuinely move forward and look toward tomorrow. Which is what she quietly did after that meet up, and that was powerful and inspiring to see play out here. Since you so rarely see characters confront their past in the raw in such a subtle and relatable manner and once again, this show deserves a round of applause for presenting another important aspect of the road to recovery in the raw.  
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But what also made this episode of note, is that it took the time to show us how confronting our past and making it peace with it can be supremely beneficial in the end. Since it can in fact, open our minds up to new possibilities in life and new ways to heal ourselves and that was explored through James. Because while Sam was confronting her past in a healthy manner, James was presenting the power of his sobriety app and pitching how it could help so many and wouldn’t you know it? The powers that be loved it and bought it, giving James new direction, and peace and hope, and it was just wonderful to see this plot thread be injected into this episode as well, since it too was loaded with powerful and inspirational messages.

If anything, this was just an incredible episode when all is said and done. Since it once again offered the audience a raw and visceral look at a critical moment in the recovery process and did so in a manner unlike any other story in this vein. Since it treated this pivotal moment for Sam, as any other day. A move that keeps in tone with the mantra ‘one day at a time’, but also reassures viewers that might need advice in this moment, to just approach big stuff like confronting one’s past, as just another step on the road to recovery and that’s simply stunning and wonderful to see here. And now that Sam has finally let go of yesterday and understands that a new path is the only way forward, it will be quite interesting to see how she applies that knowledge to her recovery and her future, as we begin to inch toward the end of the first season of this incredible story. Until next time.     

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