2x04 Beryl

[6.0/10] Once this one ended, I legitimately went to check the run time, assuming that this had been an extra long episode. Nope. Same basic runtime as the rest of the series. It just felt interminable. Sigh.

What kills me is that I love what The Crown is trying to do here. There’s some strong ideas at play in the episode. In many ways, Margaret has been betrayed by the monarchy. She is a princess with scads of wealth and privilege that others would kill for. But at the same time, she is a free spirit confined to an institution with rigid expectations. It denies her the right to marry the man she loves. It forces her to wait out separation periods only to have the rug pulled out from under her. She has every right to be disillusioned by the entire “circus” as Philip once put it. He’s been ill-served by it.

I love the idea that she’s searching for a rejection of that. She has been trained since birth to uphold an image separate and apart from who she really is. It’s not to the level of ELizabeth having to be The Crown, but she’s expected to project the same image of genteel irreproachability that the rest of the royals are, and it’s a facade. The central irony at the heart of the episode is that on the outside, she has a fantasy life, the kind that, per her stuffy photographer, the common folks aspire to. But on the inside, she’s depressed and quietly dying, and if anything,aspires to a life free of all that pomp and bullshit, that would let her be who she is deep down.

It is a great maximalist performance from Vanessa Kirby, who gets a little mannered in places, but is largely impressively raw and vulnerable, both in Marget’s wounded mania, and in the ten thousand yard stare that reveals the emptiness she’s combatting. As I’ve said before, it’s easy for me to kind of scoff at these pampered royal ninnies, but this show has a good way of showing that despite the jewels and the ceremony, they still can’t help but be human beings, with the psychological hurts and aches anyone might suffer.

That extends to the Prime Minister, one who’s softly devastated at his wife’s infidelity and an overheard conversation about how much she reviles him. And it even extends to the Queen Mother, who offers blissfully ignorant solutions to her daughter’s problems, but herself tears up a little to hear her son-inlaw talk about the joys of marriage, plainly recalling her own lost love. It’s all solid, engrossing stuff, even in a season that's been far more focused on romantic drama and less on other examinations of political and family dynamics like season 1 was.

Then fucking Tony arrives. And good god spare me. He is completely insufferable -- a faux-bohemian pick up artist whose tactics are negging and trolling women like Margaret until he can lord some condescending hipster authority over them. It’s hard for me to remember when I’ve instantly loathed a character this much.

And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that in principle. I find the guy annoying as all hell, but you can see why Margaret would fall for someone like that given her situation. You understand her yearning for what life is like outside of the confines of the rarified air in which she lives her life, so that someone who doesn’t fete her because of her titles, who looks askance at the monarch industrial complex the same way she does, who has the temerity to talk down to her and treat her like she’s any other girl, would be thrilling to her in its way. As my wife noted, given the circles Margaret occupies, she may not have the natural defense mechanisms other young women develop against such approaches.

My concern is that I’m not sure the show knows this guy is an asshole. Maybe I’m giving too little credit. Maybe it gets that he’s a shtitbird and not an iconoclastic romantic rogue. But I think the show wants their scenes to feel charged and romantic and tantalizing, while I found them some combination of infuriating and interminable. We spend so much time with the two of them doing their little dance, while Tony spouts hollow pablum about truth and seeing the real and blah blah blah. It’s so transparent, and he’s such an obvious schmuck.

Yes, I get it. The usual royal photographer generates fantasy and fairytales. While Tony uses his art to show people as they really are.But the dramatization is so heavy-handed and facile. And rather than seeming sexy or rakishly charming, Tony comes off like a pretentious, shallow-brained wanker, and spending overlong scene after overlong scene of him pulling his affected artist Prince of Persuasia routine on Margaret is the utter pits. What a bucket of cliches and red flags that guy is, and I hope the writers understand that.

That said, once he’s out of the picture, there is power in the final edit. Cutting between the cold, stately domestic life of Philip and Elizabeth on the one hand, and the passionate, uninhibited basking of a practically glowing Margaret paints quite the picture. It’s just a long, unpleasant slog of douchebag nonsense to get there.