3x04 Bubbikins

[7.6/10] Philip’s mother has largely been a specter on The Crown. We get one scene in the very first episode where the royal family tut tuts at her for wearing a habit to her son’s wedding. But otherwise, she is merely a haunting reminder to Philip of his trauma, used to explain how his own broken family informs his damage and misbehavior in the present. The show uses her to represent the idea that Philip never had a good model to follow on how to treat a spouse, only a cautionary tale of cruelty and neglect that affects him still today.

It’s not wild for the show to keep her absent. The Queen Mother is around, but has been more of an appendix than a character since season 1. And yet, the amusingly-titled “Bubbikins” suggests that Philip’s mother, Princess Alice, has been away because he’s been keeping her away. Part of that is the trauma, a reminder of the painful childhood he withstood and lingering grievance over her not being there to raise him. And part of it is embarrassment, a continual blanching at her lack of decorum and composure that leaves him not wanting to be seen with her, let alone associated with her.

That is profoundly sad, on multiple levels. And it’s particularly challenging for Philip when political tumult in Greece means his mother must come to stay with them at Buckingham Palace right when he’s in the middle of staging a documentary to try to convince the British People to, well, like the royal family again.

The notion is absurd on its face, as young Princess Anne seems to instinctively recognize. Let me be clear -- I’m in the same camp as John Armstrong, the caustic columnist who takes Philip to task for pleading poverty from a palace when ordinary Britons are genuinely struggling to make ends meet. The idea of giving the royals a raise in the midst of an economic crisis, on the backs of the taxpayers, is an utterly ridiculous suggestion.

But by god, it’s funny! Watching the family try to be normal with cameras all in their faces while they’re staged into various bits of dullery is amusing for all the reasons Philip doesn’t intend. The absurdity of him trying to show that they’re a great value for the money by having the public watch them host fancy parties and have private secretaries do much of the work and dart from palace to palace is funny on its face.

Plus, it must be said, Margaret is in rare form in this one! Her noting that their T.V. special is like a wildlife documentary, only this time the royals are “the endangered species” was arch as hell. Her wry comment when the footage shows the Queen Mother from behind that “at least they got your best side” is a riot. Her dry bemusement that people watching their television to watch the royal family watch television is “plumbing the depths of banality” had me in stitches. And her acknowledgment that none of this is normal behavior for them, but instead is some bizarre “nightmare christmas” was hilarious. Margaret is still something of a child in her attitude, but damn if she doesn’t get off some outstanding bon mots.

The calls of “bullshit” coming from inside the house are just one of the many ironies at play in “Bubbikins”. Another is the fact that Philip wants Anne to solve the PR problem. He thinks “launching” her as a down-to-earth young woman will help improve their public image. With his mercenary bent, he thinks presenting her to the monarchy’s harshest critic will help remediate the issue. And by god, she sits for no interview, but she solves the problem.

Anne puts her grandmother in front of John Armstrong. The grandma and grandchild seem to have an instant bond, and maybe it’s just because Anne is a little more down to earth, but she sees in Princess Alice what we see. The show’s editor juxtaposes the stately opulence of Buckingham Palace with the squalid convent Princess Alice can barely keep afloat. Philip is in his royal finery on a goodwill tour all but demanding more public funds, while Alice is in a plain gray habit, pawning treasured sapphires so her order can keep taking in the needy and giving them the medicines they require.

In effect, Armstrong recognizes what we recognize -- that Alice isn’t like the other royals, that she’s suffered terribly, that she’s done more good for the ordinary person than all the state dinners and car factory speeches ever could, that she’s lived a remarkable life far away from the luxuries her son enjoys, that she’s self-sacrificing, that she’s overcome tremendous physical and emotional challenges and weathered abuse and still aims to do good in this world. If you want to win over the royal family’s hater-in-chief, Anne ended up finding the perfect way to do it.

Despite my own jabs, I don’t want to tweak Philip too hard for thinking his dumb documentary would win the people over. After all, what is The Crown but a grand effort to help make average schmucks like us sympathize with and even feel for the most privileged people in the world. If it worked on us, it can work on them. There's another irony for you.

But the greatest irony in the episode is simple but powerful, and it stems from the reconciliation of mother and child. Philip understands through the story in the paper what his mother went through, and apologizes for his “faithlessness.” Alice grants him her own form of absolution and explains how she was crushed by a lack of hope once they were exiled from their home. The two find a common ground that's been lost between them since Philip was a boy, and it stems from the PR nightmare that the Duke of Edinburgh has been trying to snuff out from the beginning of the episode.

In the end, the person Philip needed to put forward to improve the family’s image is the very person he’d been trying to hide from view for fear of tarnishing it. And as the touching stroll, arm-in-arm attests, the person he’d needed the most was the one he’d been pushing away.

I had a long break in watching this show and it seems to help me enjoy it. This episode was quite interesting, focused on the mother of Prince Phillip, Princess Alice, who is rather not as well-known as other members of the Royal Family. She turned out to be a captivating character, a princess who chose work with the poor instead of living in luxuries. The relationship between Prince Phillip and his mother is especially gripping as he seems to believe that his mother abandoned him and is reluctant to have her transported to Britain from war-torn Greece, and when she is at the Buckingham Palace, he doesn't even want to meet her. The article about her allows the prince to understand his mother better and to realise what she had suffered in her life, as as result the two finally reunite and start talking. This is all Princess Anne's doing, who arranged for the interview with her grandmother instead of with herself as her father wanted. The prince has a better relationship with his daughter than with Charles, and he treats her as a partner and confidante, often asking for her advice. She is another interesting protagonist in this episode. There is also a question of faith, taken up by Princess Alice in her conversation with her son at the end of the episode, and a stark contrast between mother and son, the first a stark believer for whom the faith means everything, allowing her to have survived all the mistreatment and hardships she had suffered, the latter mostly indifferent to religion and belief. From what I read about Prince Phillip, it turns out that he was rather agnostic and definitely did not take his mothers advice "to find a faith."