this is the first time I've cooked
Mar. 24th, 2014 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessThe Musketeers
1.09
I really enjoyed this episode. It was the episode I hoped it would be from last week’s trailer. WARRIOR NUNS. Ahem.
I know it’s an odd jusxtaposition given the last two sentences I typed, but the King and Queen’s dynamic reminded me of Austen, specifically the dynamic between Anne Elliot’s parents in Persuasion. Ha, maybe it was the Anne thing. She is the more sensible brake, not foolish enough to flatter the King in every regard and capable of nudging him into doing the right thing if the Cardinal isn’t too deeply enmeshed.
For her husband to turn around in his cups and petulantly say he wanted her dead because she wouldn’t give him babies (maybe it's you, not her, Sire) and laugh at his every utterance was jaw-dropping. For the Cardinal to take that as an indication he should arrange a hit was also jaw-dropping. On the face of it.
The King forgetting he’d said he wanted her dead and turning on a dime when he found out she was in danger was typical. You’d have thought Richilieu would have waited for him to say it when he was sober. It wasn't even a command, exactly.
Also, I did think ‘er, hang on’ about the question of what Spain would say when its recently dead princess was replaced by some German, and I was surprised that geopolitics didn’t play a part in Richilieu’s thinking. Does he really find the Queen a threat, she supports him in curbing her husband from acting too impulsively quite often, even if she favours the Musketeers etc?
He and Milady did hire that best assassin they could find. If it wasn’t for chance, Gallagher would have got the Queen and if he and his O’Musketeers weren’t facing up to The Musketeers in a show called The Musketeers, they would have killed the Queen.
I didn’t expect Richilieu to have moral qualms (but Milady sort of seemed to) but I wasn’t sure about the move tactically. Ah well, there was some sense of both Milady and Richilieu having initial qualms at killing the Queen before going ahead with their plans.
Because yeah, killing the Queen?
Another well-played for them at setting up the Vater just in case, and the menace from the Cardinal at Milady for failing to execute the plan perfectly was brilliant.
In case I forget, very nice banter between all the Musketeers at various points.
I’ll state me big quibble with the episode here, though. They fridged another lady for Aramis. And this was solely to give him manpain (he still hasn’t twigged about Adele). And I am going to call the show on being lazy here. Isabelle/Soeuer Helene had made it clear that she’d chosen being a nun over him (a nun in the nice quiet order of weaponisation, run by quite the Mother Superior) and that she didn’t believe they’d have been happy together. There was plenty there to chew over instead of adding a dose of grief.
What I’m saying is they could have just injured Helene. (The nuns were motivated enough already.) I don’t think Aramis needed that push towards the Queen, having him deal with Helene’s rejection of him and reality check about his dream, relive the fact that he wasn’t allowed to be a father, her being in danger of her life and proximity would have done it.
I suppose that having the King not just be what he is, but expressing a wish that she was dead was meant to secure audience ‘permission’ for adultery round 2. It’s thorny for me, but I find myself responding differently to Constance/d’Artagnan, because I think Anne, obviously, has a better grasp of her duty as a married woman and thus a queen, so it was never likely because of the situation to be more than a one-night deal (which is good because Aramis is lying to himself when he thinks he could have stuck with one woman on a farm, given that we’ve seen him make cow’s eyes at half a dozen or more, and the echo in this episode for me was for the prince’s mother). This is dependent on them not exchanging Meaningful Looks at each other all the time and giving themselves away.
I mean, there is some element of her seeing the best of him and him seeing her as a woman. (In terms of what she was wearing for most of the episde, having her hair down and not caged emphasised this.)
Obviously, Anne is going to be pregnant and carry Aramis’s child, which I find mildly hysterical.
Oh, and bless her for wanting to help and for sometimes being useful and sometimes not, and sort of knowing it.
I spent a lot of the episode wishing people would not stand so close to the windows (more the women who were bringing the musketeers the weapons). It was refreshing to have it mainly be about gunplay and siege mentality. Gallagher totally had a cowboyish sillhouette.
But despite myself, I really enjoyed this episode, and Athos’s threat to the Cardinal and the touch of vulnerability about Milady promise much for the next episode. Which will be the final episode of this series, I think.
1.09
I really enjoyed this episode. It was the episode I hoped it would be from last week’s trailer. WARRIOR NUNS. Ahem.
I know it’s an odd jusxtaposition given the last two sentences I typed, but the King and Queen’s dynamic reminded me of Austen, specifically the dynamic between Anne Elliot’s parents in Persuasion. Ha, maybe it was the Anne thing. She is the more sensible brake, not foolish enough to flatter the King in every regard and capable of nudging him into doing the right thing if the Cardinal isn’t too deeply enmeshed.
For her husband to turn around in his cups and petulantly say he wanted her dead because she wouldn’t give him babies (maybe it's you, not her, Sire) and laugh at his every utterance was jaw-dropping. For the Cardinal to take that as an indication he should arrange a hit was also jaw-dropping. On the face of it.
The King forgetting he’d said he wanted her dead and turning on a dime when he found out she was in danger was typical. You’d have thought Richilieu would have waited for him to say it when he was sober. It wasn't even a command, exactly.
Also, I did think ‘er, hang on’ about the question of what Spain would say when its recently dead princess was replaced by some German, and I was surprised that geopolitics didn’t play a part in Richilieu’s thinking. Does he really find the Queen a threat, she supports him in curbing her husband from acting too impulsively quite often, even if she favours the Musketeers etc?
He and Milady did hire that best assassin they could find. If it wasn’t for chance, Gallagher would have got the Queen and if he and his O’Musketeers weren’t facing up to The Musketeers in a show called The Musketeers, they would have killed the Queen.
I didn’t expect Richilieu to have moral qualms (but Milady sort of seemed to) but I wasn’t sure about the move tactically. Ah well, there was some sense of both Milady and Richilieu having initial qualms at killing the Queen before going ahead with their plans.
Because yeah, killing the Queen?
Another well-played for them at setting up the Vater just in case, and the menace from the Cardinal at Milady for failing to execute the plan perfectly was brilliant.
In case I forget, very nice banter between all the Musketeers at various points.
I’ll state me big quibble with the episode here, though. They fridged another lady for Aramis. And this was solely to give him manpain (he still hasn’t twigged about Adele). And I am going to call the show on being lazy here. Isabelle/Soeuer Helene had made it clear that she’d chosen being a nun over him (a nun in the nice quiet order of weaponisation, run by quite the Mother Superior) and that she didn’t believe they’d have been happy together. There was plenty there to chew over instead of adding a dose of grief.
What I’m saying is they could have just injured Helene. (The nuns were motivated enough already.) I don’t think Aramis needed that push towards the Queen, having him deal with Helene’s rejection of him and reality check about his dream, relive the fact that he wasn’t allowed to be a father, her being in danger of her life and proximity would have done it.
I suppose that having the King not just be what he is, but expressing a wish that she was dead was meant to secure audience ‘permission’ for adultery round 2. It’s thorny for me, but I find myself responding differently to Constance/d’Artagnan, because I think Anne, obviously, has a better grasp of her duty as a married woman and thus a queen, so it was never likely because of the situation to be more than a one-night deal (which is good because Aramis is lying to himself when he thinks he could have stuck with one woman on a farm, given that we’ve seen him make cow’s eyes at half a dozen or more, and the echo in this episode for me was for the prince’s mother). This is dependent on them not exchanging Meaningful Looks at each other all the time and giving themselves away.
I mean, there is some element of her seeing the best of him and him seeing her as a woman. (In terms of what she was wearing for most of the episde, having her hair down and not caged emphasised this.)
Obviously, Anne is going to be pregnant and carry Aramis’s child, which I find mildly hysterical.
Oh, and bless her for wanting to help and for sometimes being useful and sometimes not, and sort of knowing it.
I spent a lot of the episode wishing people would not stand so close to the windows (more the women who were bringing the musketeers the weapons). It was refreshing to have it mainly be about gunplay and siege mentality. Gallagher totally had a cowboyish sillhouette.
But despite myself, I really enjoyed this episode, and Athos’s threat to the Cardinal and the touch of vulnerability about Milady promise much for the next episode. Which will be the final episode of this series, I think.
