Conversations with Friends – Episode 12 Recap, Review & Ending Explained

Openness

What does Melissa say about Frances’ break-up with Nick?

Episode 12 of Conversations with Friends begins with Frances suffering a headache in a college class. Philip notices and asks if she’s okay. She brushes him off.

Frances later receives a copy of the magazine where her story was published. She flips to her story but doesn’t take any joy from it. She tries and fails to compose a message to Bobbi.

Frances calls Melissa to ask why she showed Bobbi her story. Melissa asks why she didn’t show it to Bobbi herself. Frances thinks Melissa just wanted to hurt her.

Melissa calls out her narcissism, claiming she asked Bobbi how she felt about the story. She then asked to see it.

She says Frances treated Bobbi with contempt, just like she did Melissa. According to Melissa, Frances took every opportunity to make her feel “pathetic and conventional.”

Frances says she was envious of her career and life. Melissa states that her actions, her writing have an impact. Frances gave up when things got complicated; now Nick’s struggling again, and she’s acting like the victim.

Frances apologies. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s just having a hard time. Melissa composes herself and asks if she’s okay.

“I just haven’t been the person that I should’ve been. I wish I had been more thoughtful.” Frances then hangs up.

Does Frances apologize to Bobbi?

Frances later calls Bobbi with no answer. She emails her an apology, which acknowledges how Bobbi must have felt about the story. The story was based on a feeling, not in reality. She says they never talked about why they couldn’t be together, and she has lately been reacting against that.

“Our relationship isn’t a game. I should have never treated it like one,” she writes. “I think about you constantly, and I want to sleep with you again. If you’d ever want to do that.”

Frances says she thought she was too selfish to be capable of love. But she’s wrong. She loves Bobbi and always has.

Bobbi calls to tell her she appreciated the email. They plan to meet up after Frances sees her dad.

Does Frances’ dad recover?

Her dad comes to Dublin, and they eat at a diner. He’s seems out of it but claims that he’s doing better.

Frances says she’s glad he’s doing well. “You’re a good girl,” he says before they part ways.

Do Bobbi and Frances start dating again?

Bobbi shows up at Frances’ door. They agree they need to be more straightforward with each other. Frances says she wants to kiss her. “I’d like that,” Bobbi says.

They have sex and lie together afterwards. Bobbi sees the cut on Frances’ leg and asks what happened. Frances says she did it after she left, but she won’t do it again.

The next morning, Frances asks what happens next. Bobbi doesn’t want to move back in. She asks what Frances wants, and she doesn’t want things to be the way they were between them. They were acting like they owned each other. She wants them now to be committed to each other in their own way. Bobbi agrees.

Does Frances still hate Dennis?

Frances talks with her mom, who sheds light on the person her father used to be. He was funny and kind. She doesn’t want Frances to hate him. 

Frances says she doesn’t. She loves him and just wishes things had turned out better.

Her mother does too. But no one can be in charge of that. “You just make decisions and you hope. You hope.”

Do Frances and Nick get back together?

A montage shows Bobbi and Frances enjoying their lives together, and we see Frances come back into herself.

At the store, Frances answers a call from Nick. He meant the call for Melissa, but asks how Frances is. She says it’s good to hear his voice and talks about being back with Bobbi. They are not exclusive, but they love each other.

She tells him about her consultation. She said it went fine, but it didn’t. Frances has endometriosis, which is painful and means she might not be able to have kids. That, combined with the fact that Nick was sleeping with Melissa again, made her feel like her body wouldn’t feel good to him anymore.

Nick cries, wishing Frances had told him about all of this. Instead, he felt like she didn’t want him. Frances says she was a hypocrite for not liking that he loves Melissa, when she loved Bobbi all the while.

He says the day they first kissed, he stayed in the same room for hours in case she were to come back. “I have this impulse to be available to you all the time.”

“Nick,” she says to him. “Come and get me.”

The Episode Review

I think Conversations with Friends provides us with a beautiful ending, albeit one that’s incomplete.

We get to see Frances in a relationship where she’s allowed to be herself and where she is allowing Bobbi to be herself. They finally found a healthy framework for their relationship. I simply wished we could have seen a fuller scope of how they made it work between the two of them.

There’s a lot, actually, that Frances never had to work through. She learned amazing lessons and experienced growth, which we witness… but the turnaround comes too quickly. And the resolution between Frances and Nick isn’t really a resolution at all.

We never get a glimpse as to how polyamory is going to work between the characters, or how Frances is going to deal with her jealousy of Melissa. (She’s acknowledged her hypocrisy, but can she combat it?) I adore the unconventional nature of the series and how it advocates for different types of love and for the possibility of loving more than one person. Unfortunately, it never successfully demonstrates how this can work.

For such a long and slow-moving narrative, Conversations with Friends disappoints in its lack of a well-rounded conclusion.