Diksha Sundriyal
FX’s ‘Adults’ begins on a train with five friends: Billie, Samir, Anton, Issa, and Paul Baker. Except for Paul Baker, they live together in a house in Queens, which is revealed to be Samir’s parents, who are away on a very long trip. As the group talks about what to eat for dinner, their conversation is interrupted when they see a random man touching himself. While everyone on the train is uncomfortable, Issa questions how this has become so normal. To challenge the man and his obscene act, she starts touching herself, but this puts the limelight on her.
As her friends try to stop her, people make videos of her while she rants on, and the man, who is still touching himself without a care, seems to enjoy it even more. Later, when they are off the train, Issa starts to worry if she overreacted in the moment, while her friends try to console her that she didn’t. This scene sets the grounds for the core of each person’s character in the group, and we see their quirks getting more pronounced as the events of the first episode unravel. SPOILERS AHEAD.
An Acquaintance’s Face Leads Billie to Take a Major Career Leap
One morning, after Issa fails to convince her friends to allow her boyfriend, Paul Baker, to move in with them, Billie discovers that their acquaintance, Kyle Haberman, has suddenly become famous. It seems that he was molested at his workplace by a senior, and now, he is coming out with the story in the form of an article, which has gone so viral that Billie has become jealous of him. Later, when she discovers that her boss has decided to have Kyle on the show, she shares it with her friends, who reveal that this is the Window she can use to advance her career. According to their logic, the whole thing with Kyle has put the bosses on high alert regarding their young employees.
Anton reveals that he knew someone who used such a Window to advance his career at lightning speed. They encourage Billie to do the same thing. Initially, she has reservations about it, mainly because she doesn’t even know where to start. But then, at work, she seeks out her boss and winds up saying all the right things, such that the boss decides to have a meeting about her career on the coming Monday. Meanwhile, Samir becomes obsessed with finding out if he has ever been bad to any of his exes after Billie tells him that half the time, men don’t even realise that they are making a wrong move on someone. Whatever comfort he may have been seeking turns to dust when one of his exes tells him that he once had sex with her while she was so drunk that she was barely conscious.
Because this counts as assault, he becomes even more intent on talking with more people to get the assurance that he is not a bad person, but the more he tries, the worse it gets. Samir is not the only person who has to deal with a backfiring at work. When Billie discovers that Monday is a holiday, she becomes desperate to have a meeting with her boss as soon as possible, as the Window will be closing after Monday. The more she tries to salvage the situation, the worse she makes it, and the interaction ends with her basically threatening her boss in so many words. Now, instead of the promotion, she prays for not getting fired. In the meantime, Issa and Anton meet with Kyle and get involved with his fundraising campaign, while Samir becomes so obsessed with being told that he is a good guy that he fails to solve the problem of no hot water at home.
Billie’s Medical Crisis Puts Samir in an Unexpected Position
The concern about getting fired puts so much stress on Billie that she ends up shitting blood. At the hospital, she discovers that she needs a colonoscopy. However, that means that while she is being treated, someone else will have to act as her proxy and make her medical decisions for her. While Issa enthusiastically volunteers for the task, Billie puts Samir in charge, believing that he will keep a cool head for the short span of time and that she won’t be able to make decisions for herself. Some time later, the doctor tells Samir that Billie will be fine, but she will need to get an endoscopy done in a few weeks to make sure everything is okay.
At first, Samir is cool about it, but when Anton and Issa point out that Billie might get fired and not have insurance in the coming weeks, he becomes convinced that she should get the procedure done now. He forces the doctor to do the endoscopy alongside the colonoscopy, but things escalate when the doctor tells him that Billie will need to have another test done in a couple of months, and a highly motivated Samir decides that that test should also be done right now. It is when he actually sees the whole thing happening that he realises that he may have gone too far.
Meanwhile, Issa starts to wonder if her friends will ever take her seriously enough to make her their proxy. She has a chat with God at the nondenominational church, but even that doesn’t seem to make the day better. While she is busy ranting her heart out, Anton has fun hanging out with Paul Baker. Later, he asks Issa if they should ask Paul Baker to move in with them, to which she points out that she has already proposed this idea several times to the group. However, Anton and the others don’t seem to have paid attention, which frustrates her even more.
Billie’s Financial Situation Worsens Drastically
When Billie finally comes out of surgery, Anton tells Samir that she has received an email from work, which reveals that she has indeed been fired. When the duo argues over who should break the news to her, Issa rises to the occasion and handles the situation pretty well. Back at home, Anton proposes the idea of asking Paul Baker to move in with them to Samir, who also seems to have forgotten his conversation with Issa on the matter. By now, Samir has accepted that he is perhaps not the best person to make any decisions at the moment.
He discovers how much of a mess he has made when Billie tells him that she was with the company on a contractual basis, which means that she never had health insurance to begin with. Now, she has a $15k bill from the hospital because of all the procedures and tests she didn’t even know she was subjected to, and has no job to pay off the said bills on top of the financial burdens that she already has, with her student loans and whatnot. At least, she still has a roof over her head, but it remains to be seen how long that security will continue, as everything else seems to be falling apart.
Read More: Is Adults a True Story? Are Billie, Samir, Anton, Issa and Paul Baker Based on Real People?
