Marathon

**Marathon** is the third episode of the fourth season of the Freeform drama series *The Bold Type*. It aired on February 6, 2020.

## Synopsis

Kat goes out of her way to help a transgender runner get into the New York City Marathon, while Jane and Ryan try a different kind of marathon to rebuild their relationship. Meanwhile, Jacqueline's work situation leads to tension with her husband.

## Plot Summary

Jane gets a new shorter hair cut, which is a fun change. However, she has been having issues with Ryan. The couple hadn’t had sex since he got back from his book tour. Jane in her head every time they get intimate and can’t have sex because she keeps thinking about how Ryan cheated. Fortunately, Scarlet is covering the NYC Marathon in a big way and Jane — still desperate for her own vertical — is going to use her lack of sex life as inspiration for a story. After hearing all about tantric sex from someone on his basketball team, Ryan thinks they should give it a go and Jane can write about the marathon experience for work.

The next day, Jane goes to the girls for advice and Sutton tells her to ask Ryan about the illicit kiss — she might be thinking it was worse than it really was. So Jane and Ryan go for a walk and he explains the whole thing. Basically, he was incredibly drunk and the random girl kissed him and he kissed her back. Then he felt terrible and called Jane. He tells Jane he regrets it every single day and she believes him. They hug and she invites him over the next night for tantric sex research for her article. But now Ryan’s the one all in his head and has trouble performing. Jane submits her article.

Oliver has Sutton running errands, including grabbing his prescription. While at the pharmacy, she bumps into a girl who’s on the fashion design program with her. This bubbly gal tells Sutton how she’s now selling a jacket at Bloomingdales. Feeling she has nothing career-wise to boast about, Sutton tells her she got engaged. Later, she’s feeling dejected about the whole thing and the state of her career, worrying she’s made a mistake sticking with styling when she had shown so much promise with designing. Jane and Kat advise her to speak to Oliver, but she doesn’t want to be a whiney millennial. Eventually, during the photoshoot for the marathon coverage Scarlet is doing, Sutton gets up the courage to tell Oliver she’s not feeling satisfied doing all this random work. She suggests hiring another assistant so she can do more styling. Oliver tells her they’re on a hiring freeze, but that the next career step for her is a promotion to stylist — it’s going to take a while, so she’s just gotta hang in there. She accepts this, but Kat has another idea. They’re going to make her more promotable by developing a Sutton brand via Instagram with all Kat’s social media expertise.

Meanwhile, Kat orders lunch and when the delivery girl shows up they get to chatting about running. Kat’s working on profiles of diverse people running the race. Delivery-girl Chloe mentions she got bumped out of the marathon because of a paperwork glitch. She ran the qualifying race when she’d been taking estrogen for over a year and her testosterone level was low enough for even the Olympics to classify her as a woman, but her registration was outdated and they still had her listed as a man. In that category, she wasn’t fast enough to qualify. Kat, always an advocate for the overlooked, decides to help Chloe run and buys her a bib that an injured runner was selling on the internet. However, when Kat tells Chloe the good news, she’s not exactly thrilled. She wants to run as herself or not at all. Her life has been full of people telling her she can’t be her and she can’t let running be another thing that won’t accept her. Kat tells Jane she’s worried she offended Chloe and Jane’s kinda smug about it since Kat’s been calling her out a bunch lately for her cultural indiscretions. Kat agrees they need to both do better. Kat has a plan and ends up talking a member of the marathon committee into letting Chloe run as herself by dropping into conversation Scarlet‘s 3 million readers.

Chloe runs the marathon and stops mid-race to chat with a tipsy Jane, Sutton, and Kat who are sipping Bloody Marys roadside as they watch and drunkenly decide they’ll run next year. Also, Jacqueline’s husband is heading off to work overseas and has had it with his wife never prioritizing him. She point blank asks him how unhappy he is with their marriage and he tells her he’s about as unhappy as she is.

## Cast

* Katie Stevens as Jane Sloan
* Aisha Dee as Kat Edison
* Meghann Fahy as Sutton Brady
* Sam Page as Richard Hunter
* Matt Ward as Alex Crawford
* Melora Hardin as Jacqueline Carlyle
* Stephen Conrad Moore as Oliver Grayson
* Dan Jeannotte as Ryan Decker