The Crown Season 3 & 4 [Spoilers]

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Interview with Fagan.  He's not happy about how he's portrayed.  For one thing, he's a lot better looking than the actor.

I mean, it was fairly obvious the story of the episode was basically entirely fictionalized - kinda like Churchill's storyline in the smog episode in season 1.

[Mladen]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Yeah it would have been nice for Diana to ask exactly how she hurt Camilla?  Would have liked to see him try to explain that.  As for wanting to punch Charles, I feel like the casting call should've simply read "must have punchable face," and in that they got their man.

Oh, I wanted her to tell him "Sorry, darling, not my fault people like me better than her" or something like that. 

That said, I feel like Diana is the ghost that will forever haunt Windsors. She has been dead for more than 20 years, it's almost 30 years since the divorce and 40 since the marriage and YET it still has the power to move the people. After all that time, we are still not over her fate. I really can imagine someone in the Buckingham Palace saying "Jesus, we thought we are over Diana"

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Mladen said:

After all that time, we are still not over her fate. I really can imagine someone in the Buckingham Palace saying "Jesus, we thought we are over Diana"

I dunno, I definitely blame the paparazzi for her fate and certainly death more than the Windsors.  And in terms of the show, while it was refreshing for Liz to wholly tell Charles off in the finale, her point about Diana is not without validity too - she also was extremely privileged and knew what she was getting into.  Is it abhorrent how the Windsors ostracized her?  Of course, but outside of the show if was hardly a travesty.  Even after the divorce she still lived in Kensington Palace.

[Crixus]

Some great comments here. Amazing cast. I love Tobias Menzies, he's fab in everything he does. 

[Heartofice]

Isn't the point of the Crown to assume it's all made up, and then just try and spot which bits are true and marvel at them.

[Zorral]

I marvel at how dull and dreary are these way over-privileged from generations of birth privilege, who can't even see how they are nothing but whiney-blame, unimaginative twits -- because they can't imagine a life for anyone that isn't what they know, i.e. at the very pinnacle of privilege and entitlement, not merit, merely birth order.  But it's never enough, is it.  Interesting to me how very boring Margaret is on the screen, just as she was in real life.  Nobody would ever have given her the time of day unless she was a princess -- and that's her entire identity.

Nearly finished watching the season. Have 9 and 10th episodes to go.

[Mladen]

15 hours ago, DMC said:

I dunno, I definitely blame the paparazzi for her fate and certainly death more than the Windsors.  And in terms of the show, while it was refreshing for Liz to wholly tell Charles off in the finale, her point about Diana is not without validity too - she also was extremely privileged and knew what she was getting into.  Is it abhorrent how the Windsors ostracized her?  Of course, but outside of the show if was hardly a travesty.  Even after the divorce she still lived in Kensington Palace.

I was speaking more about PR, not really about responsibility for death. I can imagine some PR expert in Buckingham Palace looking at this season and probably some headlines and telling "Again with this..."

4 hours ago, Crixus said:

Some great comments here. Amazing cast. I love Tobias Menzies, he's fab in everything he does. 

Oh, yeah. He is great. That said, I can't remember when I liked the character he played

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Isn't the point of the Crown to assume it's all made up, and then just try and spot which bits are true and marvel at them.

Pretty much yes. I think the most of what we discussed is related mostly to the series' narrative and not actual facts.

***

I forgot about mention of abdication when Queen Mother and Princess Margaret argued. One really can not blame all on abdication but it did completely changed their lives. They were transformed to what Charles called "fringe royals" to the "main event". But even considering "fringe" pats of the family - Anne, Edward and Andrew, you just see how miserable they all are. Even more than that, there is nothing nice one can say about them. Like Duke of Windsor said in first season... They are ordinary, but put them crowns on their heads and you have a show. It's borderline pathetic.

 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Mladen said:

I was speaking more about PR, not really about responsibility for death.

Ah, my bad.  As far as PR goes, I think it's hard to argue the show in general has been absolutely great for the royals.  The worst thing that could happen to a ceremonial monarchy is its people not caring about them, so raising interest - which the show undoubtedly does - is generally a good thing.  Plus, Morgan's characterization - even this season - still humanizes them much more than the still arm's length ethos of their real life PR strategy/strategists.  Even in a lot of their bad decisions - like Liz stopping Margo from marrying Townsend (which is itself almost certainly fictionalized) - you still develop an understanding of why the royals are making these seeming preposterous choices.  Going "behind the scenes" in such a way (unless Morgan drastically changes his depictions) is going to inherently evoke empathy.

I agree this season, and the whole Charles/Diana soap opera plus Liz's upcoming annus horribilis, is not the best thing for the public to relive from the royals' perspective.  But even then, I think the humanization factor still wins out, expect for Charles.  But then everybody already hates him - for the very reasons that are being fictionally portrayed!

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Isn't the point of the Crown to assume it's all made up, and then just try and spot which bits are true and marvel at them.

Yeah, that's not a bad way to watch.  Conceptually, the show is basically integrating all the characters' real-life wikipedia pages and then being like "how can we make an interesting period drama with compelling intra-familial conflict out of this?"

[Zorral]

Woo -- that confrontation between Charles and Diana in the final episode -- that was horrible to watch.  It was just awful, those words he says to her, the words that cannot be taken back, so clearly he must mean every one of them.

Diana dancing with stars at the White House, but also that Diana who went to mine fields in Africa -- that is the Diana the penetrated my personal fog for sure.  Though still ... no matter how young and self-centered she was, with that kind of empathy and capacity for sympathy, she should have realized that her birthday present would steal Charles's thunder,  that above all he could not bear this, not from his wife too, when his whole life his mother did it.

I did not weep for the Iron Lady.  I wouldn't have given her that Order of Merit.

The writing for this season, like the music chosen, was top notch.  So right, connecting threads from even as far back as the first episode to the final one.  I keep studying how the writing works with what the camera gives us -- and really, mostly, it is the camera that gives us this story.  Yet there isn't all that much on the screen, one thinks. But that cannot be so.  Some specially talented writers and directors / camera people who know intimately how to bring image and words together, that seem almost static, yet these keep moving the action along.

The writing continuity is what is striking. How the episode featuring Margaret and the mentally challenged relatives long, secretly incarcerated in asylums connects to the final episode in which Charles uses the threat of legally declaring Diana mentally defective and taking away the children. We first see Diana when she first meets Charles, when she’s rehearsing a play and in costume.  He was clearly charmed by this, so is this why she tries it desperately again – not just once but twice. But what is cute in an unknown 16 year old for a much older fellow is at best annoying in a wife and mother of his children, and utterly infuriating to the needy, insecure, equally desperate for attention, husband.

[SpaceChampion]

Emma Corrin to reprise Diana role for flashbacks.

[maarsen]

Just one comment to add. When Charles went to see Diana's sister did anyone else notice the decrepit mansion with peeling paint on the window sills and the mouse that ran across the floor? 

[Zorral]

I though the mouse ran in one of the royal residences, either Buckingham Palace or Windsor, not Althorpe?

But ya, I sure did see that mouse.  Thought of the episode in Victoria, when the mice are allowed to run rampant at Buckingham due to the objections to certain innovations that somebody tried to institute.

 

 

[maarsen]

Could be. I do remember  seeing a lot of peeling paint in the establishing shot too. I wonder if that was the actual state of the house used as a set. I also wonder if the mouse was staged or one did actually run across and the director decided to keep it in the shot. 

Quote

 

 

[Mladen]

So apparently, Harry and Meghan signed the deal with Netflix for their TV show (or whatever they will be producing) with one condition - for Netflix to end "The Crown" before their wedding  

You know, just when you think that the show made them all look like A-holes, the reality proved to be much worse  

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Mladen said:

So apparently, Harry and Meghan signed the deal with Netflix for their TV show (or whatever they will be producing) with one condition - for Netflix to end "The Crown" before their wedding  

 

Harry didn't want the show to end before he wore that Nazi costume in 2005?

[Denvek]

10 hours ago, Zorral said:

I though the mouse ran in one of the royal residences, either Buckingham Palace or Windsor, not Althorpe?

But ya, I sure did see that mouse.  Thought of the episode in Victoria, when the mice are allowed to run rampant at Buckingham due to the objections to certain innovations that somebody tried to institute.

 

 

It was Windsor, while everyone was waiting to hear the results of Charles's proposal.

[Zorral]

9 hours ago, Denvek said:

It was Windsor, while everyone was waiting to hear the results of Charles's proposal.

Thank you!

[Zorral]

"For the African Women Who Love Diana, ‘The Crown’ Feels Personal

In her lifetime, the Princess of Wales was adored by many women in Africa and the diaspora, who then passed that loyalty on to their daughters."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/arts/television/the-crown-african-women-princess-diana.html?

Quote

....Diana’s poise, care for her children, charity work and devotion to the African continent, which she visited several times, all appeal to women — and their daughters — who still feel a strong connection to the princess. Some African women even bear her name. A search for African mothers and Diana on social media yields hundreds of posts.....

....

Many women said in interviews that because Ms. Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, is biracial, her experience may even be harder than Diana’s.

“‘The Crown’ crystallizes that the only way this family knows how to function is by everyone sacrificing individuality for the sake of the monarch, which means the monarch sets the ceiling,” said Ms. Sykes, the Tanzanian business specialist. “You can’t be more charismatic, have a better relationship or have a better work ethic. But when I look at Harry and Meghan, it’s clear that they exceed the ceiling, like Diana did. Like Diana there was never a world where Meghan was going to last in that family.”

And it shows why Diana, Harry and Meghan all walked away from the royal family. Many women said they felt like in leaving, Harry broke some kind of generational curse that befell the Windsors.

“It’s like there’s some energetic spiritual line here that has Meghan, Diana and Harry on one side and the rest of the royal family on the other, and the same thing that told Diana to leave told them to leave, too,” Ms. Sykes said....

 

[Maltaran]

On 11/23/2020 at 2:16 AM, Mladen said:

So apparently, Harry and Meghan signed the deal with Netflix for their TV show (or whatever they will be producing) with one condition - for Netflix to end "The Crown" before their wedding  

You know, just when you think that the show made them all look like A-holes, the reality proved to be much worse  

I don’t think the Crown was ever intended to go that far anyway

[Mladen]

8 hours ago, Zorral said:

"For the African Women Who Love Diana, ‘The Crown’ Feels Personal

In her lifetime, the Princess of Wales was adored by many women in Africa and the diaspora, who then passed that loyalty on to their daughters."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/arts/television/the-crown-african-women-princess-diana.html?

 

I am not sure we can take "The Crown" as the history lesson. I know the lines get blurry, but even if I am not acquainted with Windsor family and their history, I would not take what "The Crown" serves us as a fact.

That said, I wouldn't say that Harry and Meghan are the only ones "exceeding the ceiling". Also, it is amazing the effort being made to make Markle a new Diana. One has to admire that PR.

2 hours ago, Maltaran said:

I don’t think the Crown was ever intended to go that far anyway

Me neither, but apparently Harry and Meghan made that condition. I suppose there was a fear with regard to the show's sixth season as 5th season would be enough to cover the 1990s. So the question was how far they were going. As I understand, the current plan is to do 5th season which would cover 1990s and Diana's death. Sixth season is not suppose to continue the show chronologically, it seems.