Ladies of London Recap: Freaks and Freak Outs

Ladies of London
Whey Out of Line
Season 4 Episode 9
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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This is as good a time as any to remind readers that I hate cheese. As James Joyce said, it is the corpses of milk. Nothing reminded me of that as much as when Kimi and Myka, after doing runway walks in their hairnets and drab white protective garments, shoveled the graves of whey out of a slurry and pitched them into a giant bin. They were making cheddar cheese in Cheddar Gorge, a quaint little village also owned by Marchioness Emma’s Longleat estate, even though it is a 40-minute drive away. Then the whey is packed, shaped, and aged in caves like Batman’s Robin’s. In fact, cheddar comes from the old English word meaning “hidden place,” and I wish that all cheddar, in fact, all cheese, would hide itself from me for eternity. While we’re at it, I also hate eggs, and with Kimi making an omelet, this whole episode was really a challenge for my delicate palate. Mark ordered pigeon at the Bath Arms Pub Dinner, which I would totally eat as long as its eggs and any cheese were nowhere near my plate.

As food-centric as this episode sounds, it wasn’t really all about eating, drinking, and making merry, even when Kimi suggested they start the morning with Patrón or Miraval “if we want to be healthy.” The episode was almost entirely about Margo and her continued freak-out. This was really Margo’s Scary Island episode, in which she had multiple freak-outs on multiple people, found herself totally isolated, and left without a trace, just like Kelly Killoren Bensimon in those famous RHONY episodes. Well, that’s not true. Kelly at least left a note for her host, something Margo couldn’t manage.

The episode begins where the last episode left off: with Mark storming out of Longleat because Margo wanted to have a conversation with him. As Mark gets stuck in the garden trying to make his way through the Love Maze, Kimi catches up with him and Martha is shortly behind. He says that he’s not going to have some kind of giant confrontation at his best friend’s house. Well, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if he had just talked to Margo, heard her out, then dismissed her forever. The resistance is what’s making Margo scream across the garden, a transgression that is apparently so great it’s like breaking all Ten Commandments (even dishonoring her father and mother) all at the same time. Also, getting into confrontations at your friends’ houses is a little bit of the job, no?

Margo, thinking it’s the right move, then goes to join them, trying to force this issue with Mark when she could have just stayed silent in the garden and festered a little bit, letting her irritant go gentle into that good night, scrolling through regional Grindr from his room in the eaves of the pub. Missé, doing everyone a favor, comes in after her and scoops Kimi out of the mix, knowing it’s not her issue and that the Doyenne of the Dastardly would just make it into an absolute bloodbath. Margo is still upset with Mark, saying that she doesn’t care that her dress isn’t good enough. He says it’s not that it’s not good enough; it’s that it’s transparent. Margo keeps haranguing him, asking why he’s scared to talk to her. It’s getting so bad that Martha gets stressed out and has to light a cigarette on-camera. Mark puts his hands on Margo’s elbows and says, “It’s not that I’m scared to talk to you. It’s that I don’t care.” 

Okay, that is not the move at all. First of all, the touching, which Margo recoils from, was unnecessary. Even delicately putting your hands on someone in that heated situation is crossing a personal boundary. I would have backed away just like Margo. Also, telling her he doesn’t care is sort of the callous arrogance that Margo is reacting against. When Margo asks why he’s obsessed with her, he says, “Why wouldn’t I be obsessed? Have you seen yourself?” It’s not just the content; it’s the sneering tone. When Margo recounts this to Emma and Lottie shortly after, they tell her it’s a joke — that’s just how Mark is. But a joke, even a mean-spirited one, is meant to amuse, meant to make someone laugh. Mark’s comment wasn’t meant to amuse; it was meant to demean, and that’s just what it did. Margo retorts by calling Mark creepy and saying he’s a “weird, nasty clown” as he walks out of the scene, leaving the women to figure out what to do with Margo. The sit-down afterward is awkward, with Kimi upset that her friend left and she has to sit with this “boring” woman, but I must say: Excellent work all around, Ladies (and Mark). This is what clocking in looks like, and I couldn’t be prouder. 

As everyone heads back to their cottages, Emma does the classy thing and goes to Missé, Lottie, and Margo’s cottage to check up on Margo. She says that Mark left to avoid making a scene, and Margo says she didn’t want a scene; she wanted a conversation. This is a valid point, but she went about trying to get that conversation by making a scene. Emma and Lottie both try to tell her that it’s not that deep and that the Brits understand what is going on and Margo doesn’t. Margo says in confessional that they are trying to blame cultural differences when it’s really Mark being an asshole, which, to some extent, is true. But at this point, Margo needs to realize that she is in a losing position. Everyone is against her, she’s at Mark’s bestie’s house, and there is no winning. Right now it would be best for her to sit on her feelings, ignore the topic, and talk to only the people she likes until she goes home. 

That’s the spirit Myka is trying to channel in the morning, telling Margo that the day is all about F-U-N fun. Emma does have some great activities planned with one bus going to make (bleck) cheese and another to go exploring caves. Emma, Kimi, Myka, Martha, and Mark all go to the milk graveyard, and on the way Mark is upset that Margo called him a “freak,” which is a word that we didn’t hear her use. She called him “weird,” “creepy,” and a “clown,” but not a freak. Mark was very triggered by the word because, as a gay man, he was made to feel like a freak when he was bullied as a young person, and he even says that he can’t introduce his parents to his partner because they won’t accept him. He can’t marry the man he loves because people think he’s a freak. This, of course, made me feel terrible for Mark, and, well, if his parents won’t accept his partner, he should know that his friends will, society will — we all will. He’s perfect just the way he is, and maybe unburdening himself of these expectations from his parents will open him up a bit, make him (gasp) a little bit nicer to everyone around him. 

Margo asks how someone who has been bullied can bully others, but that’s what always happens. I mean, have you met gay dudes? Many were made fun of as kids, and they take it out on one another with casual cruelty in every venue where they congregate. We weren’t allowed to be assholes as teenagers, so we’re spending our adult years reliving that youth by slagging each other on Grindr, making bitchy comments at gay bars, and getting into literal fistfights at circuit parties. You want to see an angry gay mob? Just dare to bring up open relationships on the corner of the internet that used to be called Twitter. All that said, I don’t think Mark was bullying Margo, though he was being a dick. 

I also don’t think Margo was trying to call out Mark’s sexual orientation when she called him weird and creepy, but I also can see how that was so triggering that he had an actual emotion — not only in public but also on-camera. In England, you can get 20 years to life for that. In their own van, no one is on Margo’s side. Lottie tells her that Mark feels singled out as a gay man, and Missé tells her that the insults about her clothes and behavior aren’t just coming from Mark; they’re coming from her friend Martha and the other women and are being repeated by Mark. This is when Margo starts to spiral. She feels as though no one is on her side, there’s no exit, no one understands her, and she’s viewing the world and these interactions in a fundamentally different way than everyone else. 

When the van arrives at the caves, Missé has to wee so badly that she bolts out and runs across the car park like Lara Croft looking for a cursed relic. Margo, meanwhile, is freaking out, crying and hyperventilating. Producers step in and try to right the situation, and they briefly get Margo on the path into the caves when she has another breakdown, this time sitting on a bench next to a giant statue of Wallace and Gromit. Kids are walking by — they’re scared of the screaming lady — and it’s all so comical that you have to laugh or else you’d cry, but Margo is not laughing; she’s just crying. 

This is when producers put her out of her misery and take her back to Longleat. Lottie and Missé call Myka, the most sympathetic of the bunch, to tell her that Margo “isn’t well” and left them. When Myka reports this back to the group, Mark asks, “Did she trip?” I love where his imagination is going in this moment. He just sees her, in one of the caves, tripping on some loose rock and falling all the way down into the deep, dank dark, her limbs and shoes and bangles rumbling at various and sundry angles as she approaches her doom. She just went home and cut off communication with everyone, a much less dramatic end to the freak-out. 

Back in the city, Margo invites Myka over and tells her that she had a panic attack that lasted for three days. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t eat, and every time she thought of Martha, she would get upset again because, while Martha defended her to the group, she was never supportive one-on-one. Myka says all that’s left is to have a chat with Mark to apologize for making him feel like a freak, and if they can do it alone in person, they might make some headway. Margo writes him a text that starts with “Look …” — which is never the first word one wants to read in a text unless it’s followed by “out your window. There is a sack with $1 million in unmarked bills in front of your house.” 

Meanwhile, back at Longleat, with Margo gone, everything is running smoothly. Everyone goes to feed the Rothschild giraffes, the world’s richest giraffes, from which Nicky Hilton’s husband is descended. The sun is setting, and its slanting golden rays make the evening feel like a vast expanse of tenderness. They all change and settle in at the pub, where a dinner awaits them outside among garlands of flowers and flowing cocktails. Their laughs and chatter fill the countryside and one another’s hearts, the merriment binding them all together like caterpillars in one big cocoon. This is what they needed: one ingredient removed from the potion and suddenly everything about the night, everything about the future, seems like magic.