3x07 Moondust

[7.210] Nearly three-quarters of the way through season 3 of The Crown, I’d break down its abiding themes to the following -- it’s tough getting old, so let’s dramatize that by doing a gussied up version of a sappy Hallmark movie.

I’m being glib there, so forgive me. I like the theme of reckoning with aging! I am not far removed from being in Philip’s position (in age, certainly not in station), so his anxieties resonate with me more than most. I’m a sucker for stories where people idolize something far off in the distance, only to come to realize there's something realer and more meaningful closer at home once they see the object of their longing up close enough to see its flaws. (Hello Across the Spider-Verse fans!) This stuff works on me.

But there is, perhaps, a lack of ambition to it. As I’ve said before, the production on The Crown is still glorious. Simple but strikingly-framed shots of Philip sitting as the odd man out in a room full of priests sends a powerful message on its own. The intercutting of real life moon footage with slow motion, slice of life spectating and celebration from the extended royal family helps put you in the moment and feel what it was like to see humanity reach the moon for the first time. The lighting choices throughout the series help convey the moodiness of installments like this one. And something as basic as the slow, steady zoom on Philip as he gives the big speech quietly signals to your brain that this is something important.

It’s all a hell of a coming out party for Tobias Menzies as Philip. I’ll confess to still missing Matt Smith a bit in the role, but Menzies is proving himself an able replacement for the Duke of Edinburgh’s middle years. Philip is no shrinking violet, quick with a sharp remark and an insistent demand. But this is also a point in his life where he’s feeling things that he’s not comfortable expressing -- a spiritual crisis, a yearning for accomplishment, a sense of unworthiness -- and yet the actor must convey them.

So seeing someone try to keep up their emotional walls, as more and more slips through the cracks, is a hell of a challenge for a performer. Menzies accomplishes it with flying colors. And even his closing monologue, the most writerly and on-the-nose section of the piece, is buoyed by the plain discomfort of such a proud, confident man, brought low enough to ask for help. None of it works without a Herculean performance from the episode’s protagonist, given the bluntness of the speech despite the poignance of its message, and Menzies awkward, halting, fidgety description of his own aching of heart and mind, brings it all home.

Hell, “Moondust” even has a great, if secondary, role for Elizabeth, who’s taken more of a backseat this year, it seems. For one, she’s a perceptive partner, recognizing that Philip’s going through something, not pushing him, but gently trying to help him.

More than that, when he’s miffed at the unremarkableness of the astronauts he’d put on a pedestal, Elizabeth recognizes that steadiness, plainness, even dullness, are features that make them good for a role that requires snootfuls of procedure and protocol to be able to deal with a crisis. The episode’s not that subtle about why she can relate, but it’s a canny observation, especially when she recognizes how it’s going to put the first three men to step foot on the moon into a “fishbowl” for the rest of their lives, something she knows all too well.

The problem is that, despite the great performances and keen insights, the material here is rather hamfisted and even sappy. The script has Philip repeat the point that he believes in action over thought. It drives home that his duties are unfulfilling by scheduling him for concrete luncheons and denture factory tours. He’s rude to the clergymen in a way that's over-the-top so it has more meaning when he inevitably follows his mother’s counsel and returns to them. He holds his wrist after practicing polo. He does something stupid and reckless to get two percent closer to the moon, because it’s the closest he’ll ever get.

We get it. Increasingly, The Crown seems to feel compelled to hold our hands through its point. It’s enough to have Philip look at the recap of the moon landing with tears in his eyes without him explicating his emotional state and regrets about not accomplishing the same to the astronauts himself. We can recognize that his mother’s death affected him and that her words stayed with him by his meaningful expressions in her empty room, without needing to her him underline all of that in his closing speech.

And we can understand that his quest for the moon is a metaphor for his quest for spiritual meaning in life without the script laying it all out for us. I’m no fool. I know that, especially as it rose in popularity, The Crown was aimed at general audiences, and that studio executives fear alienating their viewers if the key emotional beats or plot points are too opaque. But darn it, The Crown can do these things just as well with a lighter touch and still get its message across. We’ve seen it!

An episode like “Moondust” still has a lot going for it. The meditation on aging is poignant. The sense of wanting to accomplish something and gazing down the road not traveled ties Philip to Elizabeth in her equine daydreams in a deft way. The production values continue to be impeccable. The performances still elevate the material. The social commentary on “men of action” learning to accept their feelings is salient. And there remains grand resonance in the discovery that what you thought you wanted doesn’t quite glimmer the way you’d hoped, and the thing you’d overlooked or even scorned might have more value than you’d imagined.

It’s all just a little too heavy-handed, a little too tidy, and a little too corny to reach the level of profundity that The Crown aspires too. The elements are there, and the observations are sharp. But I worry that the show is forgetting how to put them all together.