2x03 Lisbon

[7.3/10] This is a weird episode. It seems meant as a resolution to the marital difficulty storyline that's been percolating through the opening of this season. The shit finally hits the fan, as the Parkers’ divorce goes public and suddenly the shining good feelings that seemed to wash over both Elizabeth and Philip are overwhelmed by the torrent of rumors and speculation that follows in that wake.

The problem is that The Crown all but gave away the game in the opening of the season. We already saw Elizabeth and Philip sniping at each other in the aftermath of all this as the opening scene of the season. So there’s not much in the way of dramatic tension here. We know that things will explode. We don’t know exactly how, but given what was set up in the prior two episodes, it’s not hard to guess. SO much of this episode feels like playing out the string.

There is some personal investment in seeing Elizabeth react to Philp’s affairs not just being a personal challenge, but now being a public humiliation that she’s forced to deal with and have paraded around in the papers. Once again, since The Queen must be reserved in everything, seeing Claire Foy emote or betray clear hurt, anger, and bewilderment as this state of affairs, while putting on an air of placidity on the surface makes for a masterclass of acting.

Otherwise, though, there’s a lot of shots of people looking pensive on beautiful vistas, or a score of grand drama playing over a tabloid newspaper story. As much as I admire the production design and impeccable cinematography of The Crown, it all starts to feel like a bit much.

I also find Philip’s reaction to Mike Parker kind of odd. The tenor isn’t “Well, we’re both shits and it got out. Sorry, but you have to take the fall on this.” Instead, it’s for him to chastise Mike for writing about it and “breaking the rules.” It’s not crazy behavior from a self-absorbed philanderer like Philip, but I don’t know. Something about the presentation makes it feel like the show’s on his side at least a little, and I have trouble sympathizing with the side of “Shame on you for writing an indiscreet letter that shined a light on our misdeeds.”

That said, strangely enough, I found the non-royal parts of this one much more interesting. I’ll admit my ignorance of modern English political history once more. But purely within the confines of the show, I find the persona of Anthony Eden fascinating. The idea that he wasted his best years in Churchill’s shadow, waiting for the man to retire, and by the time he was too desperate and in too ill-health to make an impact as Prime Minister is its own kind of tragedy.

Elizabeth seems to recognize that. And while the man’s fiery speeches show he’s already doomed, you get the sense that he was played by a conniving operator in Harold MacMillan, which only makes his downfall seem more like a sad end. Despite his flaws and mistakes, he gets a certain absolution from the Queen for his predicament, which makes us apt to sympathize with him too. It doesn’t excuse, you know, an unnecessary war and supply crisis that he had a firm hand in, but it makes him an interesting and pathos-ridden character on a personal level.

ALso outside of the explicitly royal circle, Eileen Parker is kind of my hero. I’ve made no secret of my disdain for prickly Tommy Lascelles. So seeing him try to come out of retirement to lean on ehr to delay making any public announcement of the divorce, only for her to tell him off as a shill and a sucker, is a hell of a hoorah for me as a viewer.

More substantively though, despite sympathizing with Elizabeth, I like the way she kind of tells of The Queen even more. I’ll confess, at one point in this episode, I told my wife that it was hard to take some of this interpersonal conflict as seriously as high drama when there are legitimate national and international crises going on just beyond the Queen’s windows. So there’s something roundly satisfying about the Queen personally asking this (I think?) commoner to delay her announcement as her favor, only to be told that she’s already suffered through years of any unhappy marriage as a “favor” t o the Crown, so as not to disrupt thing during Margaret and Peter’s to-do, and that Elizabeth is ignorant of how many such royal “favors” have wrecked lives and marriages to date.

I kind of love that. The interpersonal issues among the royals are interesting from a television narrative perspective. But I like Eileen’s part of this story as an acknowledgement and rebuke that such drama rests atop real people, who aren't insulated by the same kind of wealth and privilege, who have to live their far more regular lives in the shadow of the monarchy’s needs and pleasures. To have some say “enough is enough” and do what they need to do for their own sanity and well-being in that situation is courageous and low-key inspiring.

All that said, I do feel for Elizabeth in this. It’s not subtle, but I like the scene where she welcomes the new prime minister who laments “Eden’s War”, only for the Queen to balk a little, remind MacMillan that he supported the war, and make the point that one must “clean up their own mess.” She’s clearly dressing down MacMillan when she means to dress down Philip, who’s inconveniently absent. But I like that as a nice bit of psychological projection, showing how the personal bleeds into the political.

That said, I don’t know how I feel about the resolution to all of this. The conversation between Elizabeht and Pihlip in Lisbon is still an excellent bit of acting and dialogue-crafting. But it doesn’t have that much more power now than it did in the season premiere. We already knew that Philip had been having affairs. The firm details don’t matter that much. So while I don’t mind watching it again, it’s not as if the context changes much the second time around.

But what I find particularly odd is that the solution to the problem is...giving Philip the royal title of prince? Okay, I guess? The dialogue tries to dress it up, basically saying that Philip wants a title to command some respect from the palace stagehands who infantilize and micromanage him. But it’s a strange ransom to not cheat on your wife, especially since Philip seemed to already have his “Come to Jesus” moment about the error of his ways in the last episode.

I don’t know how it solves anybody’s problems. Maybe that's the point. Maybe it doesn’t, and we get plenty more of this stuff in the episodes to come. (I wouldn't really look forward to that -- three episodes is plenty.) But considering it’s the climax these three episodes have been building too, the connection between the marital issues the Windsors have been aching and the answer of basically giving Pihlip a promotion seems strained. (Plus hey, I’m sure it’s true-to-life, but it doesn’t help that Philip looks pretty darn silly in his floofy crown and furry cape.)

His closing conversation with Mike is a little more interesting -- an acknowledgement that a certain era is over. And the commentary about Elizabeth’s views of her children as mere appendages of the crown, reminders of her own death and replacement, is intriguing as a possible future tack toward exploring that part of her world -- something that's been mostly kept to the side until now. But the suggestion of more kids as a response to all this also feels like a peculiar connection to make.

Now look, this is history (at least kind of) not fiction. The writers are stuck with the events as they happened. But the way they draw lines between personal or psychological reactions and major public developments lacks a certain narrative catharsis. Framing matters. Juxtaposition matters. The suggestion of cause and effect matters. People are strange creatures. Their choices and reactions don’t always fit neatly into narrative boxes or straightforward plots. But as a three-episode arc at least, The Crown struggles to weave its historical facts into a comprehensible, meaningful, or complete story.