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The Crown Season 3 & 4 [Spoilers]


DMC

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3 hours ago, Maltaran said:

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

Yeah I certainly didn't either, and it does not appear to be at all.  They just stopped at 1990.  Harry and Markle got married in..2018.  Granted, the last two seasons covered 26 years, but I highly doubt the final two were ever imagined to cover 28 - especially considering Morgan went back and forth on even having a sixth season.

19 minutes ago, Mladen said:

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.

I agree that it makes sense the 5th will almost certainly climax with Diana's death.  Which does raise the question what they're gonna do in the sixth?  There's still Margaret and the Queen Mom's deaths - which happened like a month apart - and of course Charles' marriage to Camilla.  Really, I never anticipated them making William and Harry actual characters in the series - at most kind of like what Charles and Anne were in the second season.  Plus at a certain point you got the other three kids' kids (or at least Anne's and Andrew's) and you're really Martin-ing the damn thing out into a sprawl.  Hm..

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Maybe end it with Andrew meeting Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton, and you know, that NY reality tv show guy, and they all hangin' out together like guys do at Victoria's Secret model events and Miss Universe in Russia? :P

No. They'd do a lot better sticking to the 5 season plan and a redemption learning arc conclusion for the Queen to be more caring.

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24 minutes ago, Zorral said:

No. They'd do a lot better sticking to the 5 season plan and a redemption learning arc conclusion for the Queen to be more caring.

Eh, this sounds like Morgan would conclude the series by just remaking the third act of The Queen.

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From what I read, the original plan was to do 6 seasons, but they scaled it back to 5, and now they've gone back to 6 again. Whether that is true or not, or just bluster to justify the change, we probably won't know till both 5 and 6 come out. I don't know what they would do in season 6 though, in terms of incident there has been very little of note to happen in the Royal family since the death of Diana. They have mostly kept themselves out of the public spotlight and played it incredibly safe. If you don't go into Harry and William's falling out (which I don't think they will) then there doesn't seem much to say. Kate and William are far too dull to ever put on screen.

Anyway, I finished this season, and yes it was generally more enjoyable than the last. It was incredibly soapy and at times melodramatic, but that maybe helped it. The closer the time period got to events that I recognised from the time the more obvious it is that the show is creating a total fiction, but with a skeleton of reality to build on. 

I actually think they did a decent job of remaining relatively fair to all involved. I had read that it portrays the Royals and Thatcher in a very bad light, but from my perspective I think everyone in the show is reasonably rounded, neither good nor evil. They all have motivations to do good in some ways, even if their actions are not.

For instance  I think Thatcher gets the rough end of the stick at times and while the show doesn't explicitly say she was terrible, it uses fluffy language around 'you changed the country forever' with a wink to the audience. It did at least put forward the idea that Thatcher was attempting to fix a broken country, which is kind of true, even if she did a lot of damage at the same time. Having said that, there were a few moments which really crossed a line, implying she wouldn't impose sanctions of South Africa because her son was doing business with them and then the fiction of her asking the queen to suspend parliament. 

Of everyone on the show I think it's Charles who comes out looking like the villain of the piece. I get that he feels hard done by, his rushed marriage to someone completely unsuitable, but so many times he just comes off as callous and cruel. I don't know how true that is, but I remember seeing that in reality immediately after Prince Harry was born, rather than stick around to support Diana, he buggered off to play golf and didn't come back. Clearly he doesn't give a damn about them. 

But the whole show is really about how the characters must fit into the institution and sacrifice themselves for it, and that theme runs through every season. It is amazing that someone like Charles never really understood that, Diana certainly didn't, or wasn't prepared for it. 

I'll be sad to lose this group of actors for the next season (don't know who is sticking around, will they mix it up?) , there are some great performances. Charles is literally uncanny, I did in the end quite enjoy Colman's queen, and Menzes' Phillip is fantastic. Can't say I loved Diana's performance though. The real diana did have a quite 'put on' voice which I guess is hard to emulate, but I don't think the actress ever really made it seem very natural, and she did the slanted head big eye thing a little too often. 

 

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7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I actually think they did a decent job of remaining relatively fair to all involved. I had read that it portrays the Royals and Thatcher in a very bad light, but from my perspective I think everyone in the show is reasonably rounded, neither good nor evil. They all have motivations to do good in some ways, even if their actions are not.

I would disagree with this, especially considering...

8 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Of everyone on the show I think it's Charles who comes out looking like the villain of the piece. I get that he feels hard done by, his rushed marriage to someone completely unsuitable, but so many times he just comes off as callous and cruel. I don't know how true that is, but I remember seeing that in reality immediately after Prince Harry was born, rather than stick around to support Diana, he buggered off to play golf and didn't come back. Clearly he doesn't give a damn about them. 

Loving another woman is one story, being a bully completely another. And Charles in this series is a bully and if I may say, abuser. The bully of the worst kind. He doesn't just come of as negligent or careless, he was actively breaking Diana's spirit. He was practically verbally and psychologically abusing her in TV show.

Also, I am not sure whether the portrayal of negligent father is accurate. From what I have learned from various news sources, he is quite a good father (if we are to trust media on this). If I understood correctly, he was supporting Harry's exit from Royal Family, even advising them what can and what can't be done (per some royal commentators). But Harry and Meghan made a spectacle of it. 

Charles loved another woman, this we know as a fact. But whether he was a negligent abuser as portrayed in TV series, that we don't know.

 

6 hours ago, Zorral said:

No. They'd do a lot better sticking to the 5 season plan and a redemption learning arc conclusion for the Queen to be more caring.

Well, Peter Morgan wrote The Queen and the point there was that Queen chose her family over her country. And country didn't forgive her for that. There is a wonderful line that Helen Mirren uttered perfectly "THEIR grief?!" which expressed Queen's inability to prioritize the grief of the public to the devastating grief her grandsons were feeling at the moment.

 

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Well as I said, Charles definitely doesn't come out of the show looking good. I'm not sure I quite agree that he was trying to actively break her spirit. The only scene I can think of where that was possibly what was happening was where they were arranging her itinary for New York, but even that is a little unclear. Yes he had her watched and wanted to know the minute she strayed, but mainly so he could use it as a good reason to escape the marriage. 

What I took from it was that he wasn't deliberately trying to abuse Diana, only that he was so cold a person that literally couldn't connect with her on any level, that the effect was often abusive. He is essentially a spoilt child and a narcissist, thinking mainly about his own happiness and prestige and unable to really empathise with another point of view. 

There might be some truth in that as well, we know that his reaction to the australia trip was one of extreme jealousy that Diana was taking his spotlight and felt resentment of her popularity. That doesn't strike me as the behaviour of a loving husband, but definitely someone who is very self concerned. 

But what I think the show does a decent job of is giving context to why Charles might be like that. I didn't come out of the show hating him, even if some of his actions appeared cruel. He's been put in a crappy situation, basically since birth and has been brought up by a cold emotionless family and that has merely continued through him. The show does at least attempt to, even in a small way, to explain why characters do crappy things. 

 

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Loved the show, but I think what I find most disturbing, is how we're now discussing the semantics of abuse. I don't think any abuser thinks they're an abuser, I don't think an abuser's intentions are important, abuse is abuse, and Diana's account of things has been, quite literally, documented. In her own words, pun intended.

EDIT: Just to clarify, not fighting, not accusing anyone of anything, just passing by.

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7 minutes ago, Kyoshi said:

I think what I find most disturbing, is how we're now discussing the semantics of abuse.

I definitely vote we do not turn the thread into such a discussion.  I suspect we can all agree from about the end of Terra Nullius to the end of the season, Charles' behavior is depicted as abusive.  Hopefully we can leave it at that.

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