Julia

Crepes Suzette Season 1 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

Julia

Crepes Suzette Season 1 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

Julia is in her element! The show is going like clockwork now. Russ has figured out how to direct a cooking show, and the gang is on the road to San Francisco. Well. Most of the gang. Alice, the person who sold The French Chef to San Francisco, is not going or getting credit for any of it. To make it worse, Russ calls her Al. As a fellow Alice, might I say, I hate being called Al. Very few people have tried it, and when they have, they have been met with stony silence. Much like the Alice here!

It’s okay, though, because Alice gets a whole subplot with Bebe Neuwirth — a true get for Alices everywhere. Are you tired of the name Alice yet? Well, buckle in!

Julia and her entourage are traveling to San Francisco to promote the show and her book. Editor Judith has scheduled a book signing on Julia’s free day. Paul has a day of plans for them, but he says they can spare an hour for her signing. He’s going to take her to a gallery in Sausalito, and then they’ll get artichoke risotto. Not gonna lie, these plans would be an effective threat to me. Like, “If you don’t take the garbage out by 2 p.m., I’m taking you to a gallery in Sausalito, and then you’ll be eating artichoke risotto.”

Julia seems excited about it, though. Also, Paul says artichokes are an aphrodisiac and that women were banned from eating them in ancient Rome? I couldn’t find anything backing up the ancient Rome part, but I did find something that said women in 16th-century Europe were not supposed to eat them.

At the book signing, the entourage arrives at an empty bookshop. But it’s one of those fun reveals where the huge line is lined up on the side of the building! See, this is why this show is a delight. You know Julia Child is going to do fine. The excited crowd is always (sometimes literally) right around the corner, waiting to acclaim her. The signing is clearly going to take longer than expected, and Paul goes to the gallery by himself while Julia says hello to her old friend James Beard. Yes, that James Beard! I knew nothing of Beard aside from the awards named after him, but he and Julia met in 1961, and they truly loved each other. He had his own cooking show well before Julia’s, from 1946-47, called I Love to Eat, but it didn’t do well.

There are so many fascinating people orbiting Julia, which you don’t always find in biopics, or if you do, it’s a bunch of other famous people. The people around Julia are famous in the world of cooking, but not necessarily outside it. In this episode, James talks to editor Judith about publishing his next cookbook. Judith claims she is not a cookbook editor; she works on fiction. Judith Jones, eventual acclaimed cookbook editor, won the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.

James invites Julia and her group out for dinner. Paul is at the hotel in a bubble bath (relatable) and does not come. Julia and James get drunk and he invites her to a second location for a surprise. While this is going on, Judith gets on the restaurant phone to talk with Blanche Knopf, who tells her that John Updike’s book has been shortlisted for the National Book Award. Judith is extremely excited and does a fun little dance out of the phone booth. In case it isn’t clear, I love Judith. Also, I realized I ship basically everyone on this show. It’s that scene in Community where everyone looks at each other as a potential sexual partner, only here, many of them are married, so that’s not cool. But they’re also fictional! And in my fictional world, I want Russ and Judith to hook up, but I also want Judith and Blanche to hook up. Pairing everyone with Judith is my main thing. She tells Russ she translated The Maids by Jean Genet, and then he says he used her translation when he directed it! How am I supposed to take that? A casual conversation between acquaintances?? Have you met me? Oh, I also want Avis/Alice, which does work because neither of them is attached, and they did some great bonding this episode.

What is going on with Avis and Alice in this episode? Since the rest of the gang is in California, Avis and Alice work on planning out the show for that week. Or at least it starts that way. Alice also complains to her mother about how much easier it is being a white man than a Black woman (valid) and how she gets zero credit at work (also valid). She and Avis prep food in Julia’s kitchen, and Avis tells Alice how she and Julia met. Apparently Avis’s husband Bernard wrote an article about why he hated stainless-steel knives, and Julia wrote him saying she also hated stainless steel knives, only Avis was handling his correspondence, and here we are. Avis does a bad Julia impression. Alice does a much better one.

That evening, while the gang is at dinner (look, I just like picturing them like the Little Rascals, so they’re gonna be “the gang” for a while), Avis and Alice go to Avis and Julia’s usual place, only instead of a table, they’re in a cozy booth! Avis says she’s been talking about herself too much and asks Alice why she works in television. In response, Alice talks about the first episode of The Twilight Zone and quotes the opening, ending in “the dimension of imagination.” She knew from then that she wanted to work in television. I LOVE THIS, I don’t care if it’s entirely made-up. TELEVISION.

Avis makes some assumptions about Alice’s background and explains the French menu to her before discovering that Alice studied French in college and went to Paris with her parents. This is a real shoes-in-the-carpetbag moment, amirite, Gilded Age fans? I will never get over that.

Back at the James and Julia Show, James takes Julia to a gay bar in the Mission. The only time I’ve been to the Mission was when I took myself on a self-guided tour of filming sites for the movie Vertigo and visited Mission Dolores, but James’s place seems much more fun. It’s called The Sword & Crown, and a drag queen is onstage singing “Mambo Italiano” when they walk in, Julia looking v uncomfortable. Remember, Julia Child exhibited a fair amount of homophobia in her lifetime before seeming to have a change of heart in the 1980s during the AIDS crisis. She primarily disliked effeminacy in men, which is why it’s a little confusing when she gets onstage with a drag-queen version of her called “Coco Vann.” The show does portray her as uncomfortable in the bar and when first meeting Coco, but Julia very quickly comes around to her, and then they sing “I Had to Be You” (jokes!) together.

Paul is grouchy when James and Julia come back to the hotel very drunk, and I have never related to a character more in my life. I am the grumpy spouse trying to sleep when people come back from the bar. To Paul’s credit, he later regrets his grumpiness and realizes Julia has also given up some of her own wants throughout their long marriage.

Julia makes crêpes Suzette on San Francisco television with James’s help. She is her delightful and charming self and the KQED San Francisco men say they’ll tell the Philadelphia station to acquire The French Chef. Paul goes off on his own and sees Claire Foster. They don’t explain who Claire is, but when you search for her, a Jane Foster shows up? Jane was an artist and an OSS friend who was accused of being a Soviet spy. She also grew up in San Francisco, and Claire lives in San Francisco, so let’s assume Claire is partially based on Jane. But more importantly!! CLAIRE IS ALL-YOU-NEED-IS-A-LIGHT-JACKET, a.k.a. Heather Burns from Miss Congeniality. This is the most excited I got all episode, except for that weird moment where I thought Blanche and Judith might be together. Heather Burns will live forever in the hearts of Millennial women. Claire tells Paul her husband is being transferred to Chicago and describes its food as “pizza pie and Polish sausages.” I was going to get up in arms about this, but she’s not wrong.

James and Julia say good-bye, and he tells the cab driver to go to 19th and Diamond Street. This seemed like a very deliberate reference, so I looked it up. I couldn’t find anything that seemed relevant from the past, but there is currently a school there called the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy.

Back at the hotel, Paul and Julia talk about her fame, which she was scared of, but now finds herself enjoying. They snuggle, and we are finished with yet another cozy episode.

Julia Recap: Julia Does San Francisco