Julia: Lobster Américaine is the season 2 finale. I’m already missing the weekly joy of seeing Sarah Lancashire embody the iconic Julia Child in this marvelous series. So far no word on whether there will or will not be a third season. I know there’s plenty more story about Julia Child and her career on public television in a changing America to tell. Here’s hoping! There are spoilers ahead.
Julia: Lobster Américaine leaves a few open threads dangling to make us want to know more. I’ll discuss those first and move on to the situation with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
Alice (Brittany Bradford) and Isaac (Tosin Morohunfola) get engaged. The cool thing about this news is that Isaac is going to move to Boston so Alice can continue to advance in her career where she is. As Isaac says, he can work anywhere, but there’s only one Julia.
Blanche Knopf (Judith Light) tells Judith Jones (Fiona Glascott) she wants her to take over her role as head editor at Knopf. Blanche is owning up to her horrible abuse of Judith in the past and trying to make things right. But this wish to advance Judith Jones has to go through the board and will face opposition.
Judith tries to recruit Madhur Jaffrey (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) to write a cookbook about Indian cooking. We know as fact that Madhur Jaffrey, who considers herself an actress first of all, became a well-loved authority on Indian food with Judith Jones’ help. That story would be a lovely one to tell in parallel to Julia’s if there is a season 3.
That thing with the FBI
Julia and Paul (David Hyde Pierce), along with Avis (Bebe Neuwirth) strode into WGBH and told everyone that the FBI had been pressuring Julia to tell them about all the subversive liberalism at the station. They concocted a plan to foil the investigation. FBI man Frank (Paul Guilfoyle) interviewed a bunch of folks at the station who gave him hilarious answers while he chewed on Double Bubble chewing gum.
He left. They thought they’d won.
When Frank came back with a search warrant, they had five minutes to hide all the evidence. They hid it in plain sight. Julia was recording an episode of The French Chef about cooking lobsters in the American style while the search was ongoing. They never searched the set. Ha, fooled them.
The show was nominated for an Emmy, which necessitated a big party. After the party Julia and Paul had sex. Julia got to utter the last line of season 2 from their bed where so much of their conversation takes place. It was clever and funny, but I won’t reveal it. I’ll save that one last spoiler for you to discover.
Julia tells so much more than the story of Julia Child. It’s a history of the women’s movement, of the political turmoil of the 1960s, of the civil rights movement, of the growth of public television. The characters, real and created, used to tell this story are so well written and acted. Everything about the series is pure excellence. I hope Max sees fit to renew it for another season.
Scott Ellis directed this episode.