Sanditon 3.2
Aug. 29th, 2023 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessEvent of the episode: a musical evening (opera). Constant of the episode, anvils covered with ‘Honesty is the best policy’ dropping from the sky all around. Jane Austen character I found myself thinking the most of: Anne Elliot, some of it was because of her literary tastes, but there was another reason that I don’t remember too.
We started off referencing…’Gladiator’ which was bizarre. Ralph had sent Charlotte a note with some hay (??) to tempt her back home, but she was staying in Sanditon For Georgiana. And on the one hand, she was best for walking the walk rather than talking the talk of supporting Georgiana (the Parkers), but Lady Susan would call her out on avoiding Ralph.
Speaking of, I only now realised Tall Lady Susan is played by Isabella off ‘The Palace’. But did I miss the bit in the episodes= or past episodes where we learned that she was the King’s mistress? Speaking of Kings who have had mistresses, they can’t have known when writing and shooting this (it was filmed back to back with s2) that we’d be watching it in the UK with a new king. For once, they were just following the history books.
I am starting to think that this series’s stealth heroine may be Miss Hankins. She’s a literary critic, managed her brother (you know, the one who patronises the Almighty) and was being courted by science!!! I like Lydia and how good-humoured she is about her grasping mother and Leo and Augusta’s shenanigans, although we haven’t learned what her moral fibre is compared with her brother, e.g. how much self-respect is she going to have over chasing Colbourne, who totally forgot about her? Leo’s best moment was her disgruntled reaction to Lord Edward. Wise girl. (Her second was correcting her uncle that she’s Major Colbourne, not Corporal Colbourne.)
I really dislike the redemption arc they’re plotting for Edward. Good for Augusta for calling him out on showing an interest in her only once he’d heard about her inheritance, where she showed a touch of Lady Denham (so if the show is going for Edward/Augusta for reals, that’s the only way I’m going to find it interesting, because I still think it’s horrifying. Give him a redemption arc if you must, but don’t drag a barely grown woman into it.) But all the rest of her behaviour was giving him green lights.
Unlike her uncle guardian, her new uncle in law totally clocked this. So, hello, Samuel Colbourne, the hot lawyer I demanded. Nice to see Original Colbourne interact with another guy who isn’t a rival twice over. Although I thought Colbourne was sticking to the Romantic Hero rulebook nicely, he was blatantly eavesdropping on Georgiana and Charlotte, before realising his lawyer brother might take Georgiana’s case on. Samuel might even win, as he’s up to snuff.
I could quibble with some of the way Samuel handled Georgiana, (not the point that she needed to have an idea of the barrage of abuse she’d be facing, but how high handed he was about it, and also how he magically acquired all the info about the case) but I could totally buy him looking around Sanditon and thinking that there’d be several potential legal cases here. But his final interaction with Lady Susan threw me, it seemed to come out of nowhere, other than her needing an ego boost.
Anne Reid and James Bolam were doing a spoken word version of ‘Ah yes, I remember it well’ from Gigi, although the confirmation that he truly (mind the anvil) had left her at the altar was a bit !!! No wonder she’s mad with him. (I also wonder if it’s foreshadowing for Charlotte doing the same to Ralph…)
Because of Xander’s eavesdropping, he got to spend a lot of time with Charlotte. (I would totally point out that he’s too cheap to get a butler or a manservant to open the door, and, more importantly, Mrs Whately wasn’t there when Georgiana and Charlotte came calling. Presumably she was still busy personally getting Samuel’s room busy?) So there was awkward conversation and almost too many stolen looks. But the dropped glove and then the later pay-off of Charlotte being unfaithful to her fiancé’s hand worked. So, he now knows for sure that there’s a hope, which he hasn’t since he learned of the engagement.
Interesting that we didn’t get to see any conversation between Georgiana and her fake beau, who spent the whole episode being short. I mean trying to get Arthur to change his mind about him. Did other people get any subtext there? Because it still feels like Arthur is sublimating, it’s all about pulling off the show, here for Tom (for all that Arthur represented honesty, I note that he didn’t go and blab about the King’s no show to Tom.)
Bringing in all these lords and ladies, dukes and royal mistresses is going way beyond Austen’s usual spheres, and because it’s an ITV show, the episode was most exercised by the plan to build the grand hotel on top of the fisherman’s cottages. Like the viewers, Tom knows Mary is going to go ballistic when she finds out, but delayed telling her. Of course, neither he nor his rich investors raised the question of who owns the land and what are they going to do about the fishermen. The beginning of that plotline was daft, why bother to flatter Mary and ask her opinion about where to site the hotel and then react as if it was a genius idea, but rubbish it the second she left the room, Mr Price? Kneejerk sexism? (As ever, there was some clunky writing going on.)
The actress playing Miss Greenhorn was miming so hard. (The shots of the tents on the beach just seemed to emphasise this.) Her speech was anvilicious, but they justified having a pointedly black (okay, but wouldn’t she be chubbier?) singer by her inspiring Georgiana to face the haters in the case. So, apparently Georgiana and Charlotte are going back to London, which is even further away from Ralph.
We started off referencing…’Gladiator’ which was bizarre. Ralph had sent Charlotte a note with some hay (??) to tempt her back home, but she was staying in Sanditon For Georgiana. And on the one hand, she was best for walking the walk rather than talking the talk of supporting Georgiana (the Parkers), but Lady Susan would call her out on avoiding Ralph.
Speaking of, I only now realised Tall Lady Susan is played by Isabella off ‘The Palace’. But did I miss the bit in the episodes= or past episodes where we learned that she was the King’s mistress? Speaking of Kings who have had mistresses, they can’t have known when writing and shooting this (it was filmed back to back with s2) that we’d be watching it in the UK with a new king. For once, they were just following the history books.
I am starting to think that this series’s stealth heroine may be Miss Hankins. She’s a literary critic, managed her brother (you know, the one who patronises the Almighty) and was being courted by science!!! I like Lydia and how good-humoured she is about her grasping mother and Leo and Augusta’s shenanigans, although we haven’t learned what her moral fibre is compared with her brother, e.g. how much self-respect is she going to have over chasing Colbourne, who totally forgot about her? Leo’s best moment was her disgruntled reaction to Lord Edward. Wise girl. (Her second was correcting her uncle that she’s Major Colbourne, not Corporal Colbourne.)
I really dislike the redemption arc they’re plotting for Edward. Good for Augusta for calling him out on showing an interest in her only once he’d heard about her inheritance, where she showed a touch of Lady Denham (so if the show is going for Edward/Augusta for reals, that’s the only way I’m going to find it interesting, because I still think it’s horrifying. Give him a redemption arc if you must, but don’t drag a barely grown woman into it.) But all the rest of her behaviour was giving him green lights.
Unlike her uncle guardian, her new uncle in law totally clocked this. So, hello, Samuel Colbourne, the hot lawyer I demanded. Nice to see Original Colbourne interact with another guy who isn’t a rival twice over. Although I thought Colbourne was sticking to the Romantic Hero rulebook nicely, he was blatantly eavesdropping on Georgiana and Charlotte, before realising his lawyer brother might take Georgiana’s case on. Samuel might even win, as he’s up to snuff.
I could quibble with some of the way Samuel handled Georgiana, (not the point that she needed to have an idea of the barrage of abuse she’d be facing, but how high handed he was about it, and also how he magically acquired all the info about the case) but I could totally buy him looking around Sanditon and thinking that there’d be several potential legal cases here. But his final interaction with Lady Susan threw me, it seemed to come out of nowhere, other than her needing an ego boost.
Anne Reid and James Bolam were doing a spoken word version of ‘Ah yes, I remember it well’ from Gigi, although the confirmation that he truly (mind the anvil) had left her at the altar was a bit !!! No wonder she’s mad with him. (I also wonder if it’s foreshadowing for Charlotte doing the same to Ralph…)
Because of Xander’s eavesdropping, he got to spend a lot of time with Charlotte. (I would totally point out that he’s too cheap to get a butler or a manservant to open the door, and, more importantly, Mrs Whately wasn’t there when Georgiana and Charlotte came calling. Presumably she was still busy personally getting Samuel’s room busy?) So there was awkward conversation and almost too many stolen looks. But the dropped glove and then the later pay-off of Charlotte being unfaithful to her fiancé’s hand worked. So, he now knows for sure that there’s a hope, which he hasn’t since he learned of the engagement.
Interesting that we didn’t get to see any conversation between Georgiana and her fake beau, who spent the whole episode being short. I mean trying to get Arthur to change his mind about him. Did other people get any subtext there? Because it still feels like Arthur is sublimating, it’s all about pulling off the show, here for Tom (for all that Arthur represented honesty, I note that he didn’t go and blab about the King’s no show to Tom.)
Bringing in all these lords and ladies, dukes and royal mistresses is going way beyond Austen’s usual spheres, and because it’s an ITV show, the episode was most exercised by the plan to build the grand hotel on top of the fisherman’s cottages. Like the viewers, Tom knows Mary is going to go ballistic when she finds out, but delayed telling her. Of course, neither he nor his rich investors raised the question of who owns the land and what are they going to do about the fishermen. The beginning of that plotline was daft, why bother to flatter Mary and ask her opinion about where to site the hotel and then react as if it was a genius idea, but rubbish it the second she left the room, Mr Price? Kneejerk sexism? (As ever, there was some clunky writing going on.)
The actress playing Miss Greenhorn was miming so hard. (The shots of the tents on the beach just seemed to emphasise this.) Her speech was anvilicious, but they justified having a pointedly black (okay, but wouldn’t she be chubbier?) singer by her inspiring Georgiana to face the haters in the case. So, apparently Georgiana and Charlotte are going back to London, which is even further away from Ralph.
