Fact-checking The Bold Type: 'Tearing Down the Donut Wall'
Welcome to Fact-Checking The Bold Type! A weekly post where we recap the week’s episode, but also add some insight into which of the editorial storylines would actually happen at a magazine — since, you know, EW is one of those! Let’s get into it.
We start this week’s episode with donuts, which is just lovely really. There’s a reason behind it though: The girls are cake-tasting for Sutton’s wedding, which feels rather premature since I don’t think she’s even set a date yet? But, hey, it’s donuts!
Anyway, once we get to the office it’s pitch-meeting time, and as always, Jane has a half-baked idea. She wants to do a wedding roundup. Oliver walks in mid-pitch and, excited for the fashion aspect of it, asks if it’s going ahead, to which Jane responds “yes” and Jacqueline responds “no.” The boss doesn’t think there’s anything new about this idea (she, unlike Jane, has heard of bridal magazines), but Jane wants to do it as a kind of millennial check-in on weddings and how they’re evolving. She also thinks that their audience wants to know the Scarlet staff’s opinion on matrimony, so wants to have Sutton model dresses and get everyone else’s input too. For some reason, Jacqueline agrees.
So Jane starts her reporting, interviewing the staff mostly about how “meh” they find the idea of marriage and weddings in general. It gets even better when she asks Jacqueline if she can interview her too. After a moment of fond reminiscing about the morning of her own wedding and doling out the advice to “eat a banana” before you walk down the aisle, Jacqueline sends Jane out of her office to take a call from her estranged, abroad husband, Ian. Of course, Jane accidentally leaves her phone recording in Jac’s office so later when she comes to transcribe her interviews, she instead gets to hear all of her boss’ tense conversation with her husband.
While Jane gets all gooey over weddings, Sutton — the actual bride-to-be — is somewhat less willing to throw herself into wedding prep. Remembering how her mother always thought she needed to have a man and be married to be happy, Sutton’s nervous about the whole concept. So when Oliver gets a call about his niece ripping her school uniform and needing to have a new one brought to the school, Sutton jumps at the chance to get out of the office and away from wedding chat. At the school, she finds out that Oliver’s niece Carly purposefully ripped her uniform and refashioned it in a way to express her individuality. Not a fan of uniforms herself, Sutton doesn’t think Carly should have to put a fresh uniform on and as a result, they’re both told to leave. When they get back to the office, Oliver is unimpressed that Sutton essentially got his kid kicked out of school for the day and the girls convene in the fashion closet to advise her on how to get back in her boss’ good books. Sutton admits she doesn’t like uniforms because it makes everyone feel like clones and that’s what she’s worried about feeling like on her wedding day too.
The next day, Sutton and Oliver talk things out and Oliver makes her realize she can have a happy marriage to Richard and not end up like her mother. All of that is reinforced when she tries on a very traditional and stunning dress for the shoot and realizes she kind of likes the way she looks in it after all. She realizes it’s not about the uniform or her mom; she’s making her own path. She tells Oliver she’s lucky to have him in her life and when it’s time to really look for a dress, she’s not going to limit herself. Later, Sutton comes up with the idea to let Carly redecorate her bedroom at Oliver’s place so that she can express herself in some way. Oh, and Sutton’s brand takes off because Scarlet tags her in a post of her modeling the wedding dress.
Also, at the shoot, Jacqueline corners Jane and demands to know why she turned what was supposed to be a reported feature into a listicle about wedding dos and don’ts — a decision Jane comes to after thinking it would be unfair to Jac to write about happy marriages right at that moment. Jacqueline is furious and Jane tries to explain she did it for her boss. Jacqueline walks off. Later at the office, Jacqueline comes to talk to Jane and tells her she thinks she was protecting something way more personal than Jacqueline’s story; she was really protecting her fantasy of the happily-ever-after. Jane asks what happened with Jac and Ian, and Jacqueline explains that she stopped making time for him. Jane says she wishes she could have a do-over on the story and Jacqueline gives her two hours to do it. So Jane goes home and calls her dad to hear about her parents’ marriage rather than just their wedding. She also tells her dad about her relationship with Ryan. After that enlightening conversation, she is able to write her groundbreaking piece about marriage being a leap of faith.
While all that bridal drama is going on, Kat is focusing on much less permanent types of romance. She’s decided to go on a date with a girl who is precisely not her type so she won’t get attached and it can just be a hookup. Only, after she brings her date home, they end up going on another date with the girl’s friends the next night. Realizing mid-date she’s in too deep, Kat bails halfway through. The next day, she meets up with the girl to apologize and when the bartender overhears the breakup and gives her a free drink to make her feel better, she ends up bringing him home instead. I guess that solves the problem of being over-invested in girls?
Back at the office, Jacqueline — who is officially separated from her husband while he’s out of town on business, anyway — asks Oliver for a makeover to help her find herself again. Let’s see if she’s reacquainted with her single self next week!
A fact check or two:
Jane pitches a feature and then makes it a listicle without bothering to notify even one editor in the process. Inaccurate. Jacqueline is quite-rightly furious about this massive change in plan, but Jane’s rogue switch-up would never have even gotten to that point. There’s no way she would’ve been able to change her entire story without editor approval — regardless of whose feelings she was trying to protect.
Given two hours to rewrite her story, Jane decides to commute home and do it there. Inaccurate. Two hours to turn around a reported feature that she actually doesn’t really have a ton of reporting for? Sure, yeah, go ahead and waste 45 minutes of that on the New York subway.
The girls get really fancy free breakfast at Scarlet, which they eat out of Anthropology bowls: Inaccurate. I mean, this could certainly be true at some publications, but for my own peace of mind, I’m going to say that this would not be part of the publisher’s budget.
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