2x05 Marionettes

[8.5/10] Pretty easily my favorite episode of the season so far. This is the first episode of the season not to focus on a romantic storyline of some kind, and also hits on one of my favorite overarching themes of the series: the extent to which Elizabeth is The Crown and should present herself accordingly, versus the extent to which she’s still a real human being and should let the public know that. I find the transition of the English monarchy as a stuffy and insular institution of the past to a...still stuffy but more open institution of the present much more engrossing as a hobby horse for the series.

I especially like Lord Altrincham as an aw-shucks gadfly to the monarchy in general and the Queen in particular. I’ll confess, the episode played with my sympathies perfectly as regards him. As I’ve hopefully made pretty plain, I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the state of state-sanctioned hereditary privilege, so I was initially pretty on board when a “Peer” (if not a “peer”) was willing to criticize the Queen.

Then, the initial reports focus on pretty superficial digs which makes it seem like his gripes are mostly sexist in origin (a vibe that's aided when it comes with Philip’s rude comments about Elizabeth’s haircut). Except, then you find out that his criticisms were in response to a painfully out-of-touch speech the Queen gave to a car factory that wouldn’t feel wrong coming out of the mouth of a Marie Antionette caricature, and that Altrincham’s reaction to it as a catalyst for his complaints is legitimate.

You especially start to side with the guy when he feels like a humble little publisher with a cute amiable concordance with a coworker and flashes of inspiration that lead him to rush out of the dentist’s office not once but twice, who finds the stones to hold his own on national television against a tough interviewer and makes his case reasonably and eruditely. And even for a skeptic like me, the fact that he is not, in fact, a revolutionary or royal-hater, but rather someone with honest critiques who means to help the institution survive, makes him seem noble and relatable, beyond his flustered-but-steadfast reaction to every interlocutor from a news show stage manager to the Queen herself.

I also legitimately like his suggestions. I’ll confess to not having strong feelings about debutante balls, but I especially like his idea to sweep out the old courtiers. I’ll confess, I low key hate Tommy Lascelles (even if I feel a little more for his successor and stooge, Michael), given how far that royal scepter is lodged up his backside, but I also find his old fashioned disdain for anything with the slightest whiff of impropriety quietly hilarious, so I’d actually be loathe to see him go.

But this episode makes a good case that his (and by extension Michael’s) way of doing things is out of date, not suited to a public that wants something different from its royalty than a moving statue. The constant reassurance about newspaper coverage and public sentiment are clearly wrong, unsuited to modern times. While I’m not sure how much likely replacement Marvin has any more of a foot in the “real world” than Michael, he’s younger and more open to change,and at least perceptive enough to get that the car factory speech was going to be trouble.

Part of the soft tragedy of last season was Elizabeth giving into Tommy’s cajoling and picking Michael over Marvin as her private secretary, a sign of her acquiescing into “the old way” despite her personal wants. The way this ties into that, and gives her a good reason to follow the instinct she had in the first place. Lord Altrincham’s suggestions, and more importantly the ruckus he causes, give her cover to do that.

I also love his suggestion to televise the Xmas address. It’s a prompt that works in tandem with Philip’s suggestion to televise the coronation as a recognition of the need to adapt so that the monarchy can survive. And if there is one technology that defines the latter half of the twentieth century, it’s T.V. Embracing that is an embrace of both technological and cultural change, with Elizabeth stooping to appearing on th idiot box, but also placing herself in a more intimate and vulnerable medium.

That dovetails perfectly with my favorite of the Peer’s suggestions -- open up. I love it because it runs entirely to the hoary approach that poor Elizabeth has been weighed down with since she ascended to the throne, one which insists on stately distance from the people and any sense of humanity. But I also love it as a quiet suggestion to, if you’ll pardon the reference to a similarly situated show, let Elizabeth be Elizabeth.

Lord Altrincham’s point is a fair one. Apart from the substance, the Queen’s speech to the factory employees is boring, detached, bland. But as we see from her smart remarks with the critic himself, Elizabeth is witty! She is, at least with Claire Foy’s delivery and a writer’s pen, eloquent and full of personality. The notion of letting the public see that side of her, one that's clever and dare I say it entertaining, makes sense as a tonic to Tommy and Michael’s august dullery.

More to the point, it fits with the larger aim and success of The Crown itself. The series is certainly glossy and serious. But its whole purpose, at least as I take it, is to humanize the distant figures at the center of its narrative. Even me, who hasn’t much interest in the English royalty, finds the personal element of these particular challenges -- both the larger than life ones a royal family faces, and the more relatable ones made more complicated by that royal designation -- completely compelling. Lord Altrincham’s recommendation is the 1958 equivalent of suggesting Elizabeth do what The Crown itself is trying to do: let people in to see the real person behind the much ballyhooed crown.

Elizabeth doesn’t embrace the idea with ease. Her expression after doing the Xmas address tells that tale as well as her complaint about being a “common showgirl” during it does. The Queen Mother’s gripes about the evolution of the royal role seems hopelessly out of touch (“We have to don gloves to greet the commoners -- who knows what disease they might carry!”), but also somewhat sympathetic as an unfireable member of the old guard who watches the world she knew steadily slip away. As silly as it is, the scene of them welcoming common folk into Buckingham Palace itself for an audience with the Queen is a momentous sign of not just change, but flexibility.

That's the cinch of this one. So much of The Crown to date ahs been about the corruption of Elizabeth, the way her ascension is something that robbed her of her humanity and turned her into a mere appendage of this brittle and ossified institution. Only now, the worm is starting to turn. Such snobbery and aloofness is now a liability, not a shield. And it is Elizabeth’s willingness to open up, to show at least pieces of the human being behind the throne, and listen to someone bold enough to call out the monarchy, that allows her to sustain it.