[6.7/10] There’s a couple of really interesting scenes here. First and foremost, I really like the scene between Mrs. Thornton and her son. You can tell how much she loves John, to the point where she’s willing to swallow her distaste for Margaret because she believes this strange southern girl will make her son happy. But the second she learns Margaret’s rejected him, she’s even more affronted and angry than John himself is. Her talk of a mother’s love being true and forever, in contrast to the “puff of smoke”-like qualities of a girl’s love is telling in a “No one’s good enough for my boy,” sort of way, and John’s “No one loves me” statement adds some pathos to him, which is the first time I’ve found him even mildly human or likable.
But I’m also intrigued by the scene with Nicholas and Mr. Hale. The show stacks the deck a little bit here, showing Nicholas in a bad place after the strike he worked so hard for ends and his daughter dies in tandem. It’s plain from these events and his comments that he intends to take his frustration out on Boucher, which gives him psychological guilt after the guy kills himself. I’m always compelled by stories where the characters’ psychological pulls are clear, even when they lead to bad ends.
But there’s also something particularly striking about his conversation with Mr. Hale. There’s a naive both-sides-ism to Mr. Hales pronouncement that surely “men of ideas” like Nicholas and Mr. Thornton could come together and avert war in favor of Heaven’s grace. And yet Nicholas’s response is cutting -- basically that God wouldn’t want this sort of inequality, where some live in luxury and power and others are forced to scrape by in the shadows. The internal beliefs and drives of Nicholas are one of the richest elements of the show.
Were that the same could be said for the romance material. I’m not particularly engaged (no pun intended) with the fall out from Margaret and John’s rejected proposal. Mr. Bell causing trouble and the introduction of a romantic rival to Margaret dutifully moves it along, but I’m just not invested in the two of them or their romantic lives.
That’s amplified by the convenient crossed paths in London that put both the central couple and their chief rivals in the same space, not to mention the frankly insane and wacky misunderstanding that leads to even greater strife between Mr. Thornton and Margaret just when she’s starting to admire the dude. Maybe it’s just because this story is so clearly following the Pride and Prejudice blueprint, but so much of the emotional trajectory seems too familiar and predictable, and there’s not enough chemistry to make up for it.
The death of Bessie has more punch, but even there it’s strangely subdued and uninvolving. The episode puts the focus on Nicholas’s reaction, and that makes sense given the need to explain his actions and what’s behind them. But I also wish we got to see more of a reaction out of Margaret. The episode seems to be underscoring that in a difficult time where Margaret is reeling from all that’s happened, she lacks for a confidante to help talk things out, but that seems pretty mild by comparison.
But maybe that’s because there’s a pretty insanely high body count for a period piece in this episode. It’s not just Bessie who dies, but Mrs. Hale, Boucher, Boucher’s wife, and the random dude who pops out of nowhere to antagonize Margaret’s brother, Frederick, only to...die from a light tumble down the stairs? OK...
Packing that many deaths into one episode is a bad idea because it dampens the impact of any single one of them. Bessie’s death is important for its effect on both Nicholas and Margaret, but it’s effectively forgotten after the first fifteen minutes. Boucher’s death should be significant in terms of its effect on Nicholas and what it means for the soul of the strike that mysteriously dissipated after one confrontation with police, but it’s largely subsumed by the death of Mrs. Hale and the bizarre murder mystery plot that takes over the last part of the episode.
Even Mrs. Hale’s passing feels oddly anodyne. There’s a few good scenes involved, particularly the sparsely-attended funeral which signifies how far from home the Hales still are, and the scene of Mr. Hale talking out his daily plans to his wife as though she’s still alive, humanizing a pretty ridiculous character. Oddly enough, the strongest part of it is the scene between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Thornton, where Mrs. Thornton’s inclination to dislike Margaret is again put to the test by the universe seemingly calling on the mill matron to care for this southern lady. But really, Mrs. Hale’s illness and death plays more like an excuse to bring Frederick back into the fold and cause problems for Margaret than as an affecting thing in and of itself.
Don’t get me started on the murder investigation. If there’s one trope I loathe in fiction, it’s wacky misunderstandings. It would have been trying enough if Mr. Thornton had witnessed Margaret denying that she had a gentleman caller only to be hugging a mysterious man at the train station, to the point that he thinks she has a secret beau. But the fact that Frederick randomly murders a random dude from Helstone who happens to be in Milton and knows Frederick and is trying to accost him is a bridge too far. And that’s before you get into Mr. Thornton just happening to be at the train station that night, and also being the magistrate with some power of the ensuing criminal investigation, or the whole thing secretly revolving around some assistant grocer witness whom we never actually see.
It’s all just painfully contrived and, frankly, pretty dumb. I get the need to show Thornton doing something decent on behalf of Margaret, even when he thinks she’s found another man to romance her, to show some nobility on his behalf. But this is a pretty half-baked situation in which to do it.
Maybe this is one of those situations where adaptation into a mini-series format inevitably condenses things to the point of implausibility and you just have to go with it. To be frank, I don’t think there’s any great way to tell the story of conveniences and contrivances that leads to Margaret being suspected of being involved, or at least witness to, this random murder. But at the very least, if these deaths were spaced out in time, their impacts allowed to be felt more and for longer before we jump to the next thing, there’s some strong material there. I guess, for the time being at least, we’ll have to be resigned to more scenes of brooding through cotton fluff instead.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-09-13T16:48:50Z
[6.7/10] There’s a couple of really interesting scenes here. First and foremost, I really like the scene between Mrs. Thornton and her son. You can tell how much she loves John, to the point where she’s willing to swallow her distaste for Margaret because she believes this strange southern girl will make her son happy. But the second she learns Margaret’s rejected him, she’s even more affronted and angry than John himself is. Her talk of a mother’s love being true and forever, in contrast to the “puff of smoke”-like qualities of a girl’s love is telling in a “No one’s good enough for my boy,” sort of way, and John’s “No one loves me” statement adds some pathos to him, which is the first time I’ve found him even mildly human or likable.
But I’m also intrigued by the scene with Nicholas and Mr. Hale. The show stacks the deck a little bit here, showing Nicholas in a bad place after the strike he worked so hard for ends and his daughter dies in tandem. It’s plain from these events and his comments that he intends to take his frustration out on Boucher, which gives him psychological guilt after the guy kills himself. I’m always compelled by stories where the characters’ psychological pulls are clear, even when they lead to bad ends.
But there’s also something particularly striking about his conversation with Mr. Hale. There’s a naive both-sides-ism to Mr. Hales pronouncement that surely “men of ideas” like Nicholas and Mr. Thornton could come together and avert war in favor of Heaven’s grace. And yet Nicholas’s response is cutting -- basically that God wouldn’t want this sort of inequality, where some live in luxury and power and others are forced to scrape by in the shadows. The internal beliefs and drives of Nicholas are one of the richest elements of the show.
Were that the same could be said for the romance material. I’m not particularly engaged (no pun intended) with the fall out from Margaret and John’s rejected proposal. Mr. Bell causing trouble and the introduction of a romantic rival to Margaret dutifully moves it along, but I’m just not invested in the two of them or their romantic lives.
That’s amplified by the convenient crossed paths in London that put both the central couple and their chief rivals in the same space, not to mention the frankly insane and wacky misunderstanding that leads to even greater strife between Mr. Thornton and Margaret just when she’s starting to admire the dude. Maybe it’s just because this story is so clearly following the Pride and Prejudice blueprint, but so much of the emotional trajectory seems too familiar and predictable, and there’s not enough chemistry to make up for it.
The death of Bessie has more punch, but even there it’s strangely subdued and uninvolving. The episode puts the focus on Nicholas’s reaction, and that makes sense given the need to explain his actions and what’s behind them. But I also wish we got to see more of a reaction out of Margaret. The episode seems to be underscoring that in a difficult time where Margaret is reeling from all that’s happened, she lacks for a confidante to help talk things out, but that seems pretty mild by comparison.
But maybe that’s because there’s a pretty insanely high body count for a period piece in this episode. It’s not just Bessie who dies, but Mrs. Hale, Boucher, Boucher’s wife, and the random dude who pops out of nowhere to antagonize Margaret’s brother, Frederick, only to...die from a light tumble down the stairs? OK...
Packing that many deaths into one episode is a bad idea because it dampens the impact of any single one of them. Bessie’s death is important for its effect on both Nicholas and Margaret, but it’s effectively forgotten after the first fifteen minutes. Boucher’s death should be significant in terms of its effect on Nicholas and what it means for the soul of the strike that mysteriously dissipated after one confrontation with police, but it’s largely subsumed by the death of Mrs. Hale and the bizarre murder mystery plot that takes over the last part of the episode.
Even Mrs. Hale’s passing feels oddly anodyne. There’s a few good scenes involved, particularly the sparsely-attended funeral which signifies how far from home the Hales still are, and the scene of Mr. Hale talking out his daily plans to his wife as though she’s still alive, humanizing a pretty ridiculous character. Oddly enough, the strongest part of it is the scene between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Thornton, where Mrs. Thornton’s inclination to dislike Margaret is again put to the test by the universe seemingly calling on the mill matron to care for this southern lady. But really, Mrs. Hale’s illness and death plays more like an excuse to bring Frederick back into the fold and cause problems for Margaret than as an affecting thing in and of itself.
Don’t get me started on the murder investigation. If there’s one trope I loathe in fiction, it’s wacky misunderstandings. It would have been trying enough if Mr. Thornton had witnessed Margaret denying that she had a gentleman caller only to be hugging a mysterious man at the train station, to the point that he thinks she has a secret beau. But the fact that Frederick randomly murders a random dude from Helstone who happens to be in Milton and knows Frederick and is trying to accost him is a bridge too far. And that’s before you get into Mr. Thornton just happening to be at the train station that night, and also being the magistrate with some power of the ensuing criminal investigation, or the whole thing secretly revolving around some assistant grocer witness whom we never actually see.
It’s all just painfully contrived and, frankly, pretty dumb. I get the need to show Thornton doing something decent on behalf of Margaret, even when he thinks she’s found another man to romance her, to show some nobility on his behalf. But this is a pretty half-baked situation in which to do it.
Maybe this is one of those situations where adaptation into a mini-series format inevitably condenses things to the point of implausibility and you just have to go with it. To be frank, I don’t think there’s any great way to tell the story of conveniences and contrivances that leads to Margaret being suspected of being involved, or at least witness to, this random murder. But at the very least, if these deaths were spaced out in time, their impacts allowed to be felt more and for longer before we jump to the next thing, there’s some strong material there. I guess, for the time being at least, we’ll have to be resigned to more scenes of brooding through cotton fluff instead.