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avalonauggie · 4 months

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Re: last reblog bc I don’t want to put my outright criticism on a post full of Bridgerton fans BUT—

there’s accepted norms of a romance novel series that straight up make for bad television, and just because it’s escapist fluff doesn’t mean it should be immune from all analysis.

F’ex: the structure of the seasons is repetitive in a way that makes sense for a book series. Each installment covers a different couple meeting, encountering obstacles and overcoming them to get their HEA. That is what people come to the romance genre FOR.

It’s absolute dogshit for a tv show, though! We have all joked about tv shows being allergic to change, shows where a major development at the end of one season will be returned to the status quo by the end of next season’s premiere, because to resolve the larger story means the show is out of gas.

Romance series run on variations on a theme. Tv series run on keeping the larger story spinning out, and in a lot of romance series there ISNT a larger overarching plot. For the pure fluff escapism value authors/publishers/readers want something they can pick up any installment of and not have trouble following it. These types of books I feel like…just can’t be adapted for tv in the same way bigger grander fantasy epics are.

Netflix made a passable effort and clearly it has a dedicated audience, but the fact is that by season 3 the plot feels repetitive and boring in a way that if wouldn’t, if I were reading a book.

The OTHER problem is, yeah, the efforts at diversity. And I feel like it’s only gotten more glaring as the show has progressed.

I honestly feel like Netflix and Shondaland could have just gone ahead with the colorblind casting in season 1 and not made any mention of it, or leaned on the “it’s escapist fantasy!” angle and who gives a fuck about the pedants on Twitter who’d rage at the altar of Historical Accuracy. I feel like that would have been the braver choice tbh.

But they didn’t do that! They supplied a Watsonian justification for Black nobility in regency England, and making that kind of choice about your worldbuilding raises a shitton of questions that I don’t think they were prepared to answer.

Alix, you may say, it’s not meant to be questioned like that! It’s a sugary cupcake! well I’m sorry but it’s a different experience watching a show vs reading a book, where everything between the covers exists in that little bubble. A show expands the world of the story, there’s colors and fabrics and the narration isn’t just following the MC, there’s a camera capturing the MC, and her friends and family, and the servants in the background, and I can’t NOT think about the things implied by what the camera shows.

So here’s the thing: Bridgerton rests on an ahistorical conspiracy theory that Queen Charlotte had African ancestry, which is problematic on its own, but it takes this assumption and extrapolates it to “hey the king was so in love with his wife that he ENDED RACISM (for some people)(in this specific place)” in order to justify the casting choices of the showrunners.

So yeah I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder what Black Queen Charlotte feels about the slaves in the new world who are making her wealth possible so she can have clockwork ballet dancers in her giant wig. Or what Lady Danbury feels, or what Simon Basset feels, or MY GOD what Will Mondrich feels. (The mondrich’s arc in season 3 is honestly the most disappointing because it was legitimately interesting to see the contrast between free Black britons and how their lives touched the bejeweled elites in precarious ways, but no! Their son is a duke or an earl now so hey, they get to wear the fancy clothes and go listen to Vitamin String Quartet with the rest of the characters!)

But none of the Black characters (the ones who are given personalities and are more than tokenized room meat, anyway) seem to have any response to this world other than “we’re very lucky to be here.” And that’s disappointing but hey it’s a romance novel the audience doesn’t want to be bummed out.

But now I have to wonder, what’s the East India company doing in this world? what’s happening that caused the Sharma sisters to come into the story in season 2? Was there a similar anti-racist royal triumph for the Desi nobles at all the balls? For the East Asian nobles? where did they COME from? And what’s it like for their cultures OUTSIDE of England? But bridgerton isn’t interested in exploring any of that, and we just need to forget about it and enjoy the fluff. Right?

Season 3 seems to be leaning into the “hey look, this world is so wonderful that ANYONE can wear fancy dress and find love! Look how diverse it is!” even harder than the previous two installments, which is honestly…worse? I feel like it’s worse.

I can believe the nobleman in the wheelchair, especially since he’s introduced as a sort of lowball training wheels flirt target for Poor Awkward Penelope, and ok he does come back in the balloon ep so it’s not like they put a disabled man in the show for one scene to prove how progressive they are 😑 he’s in TWO scenes, guys! Totally different! But honestly this is the regency, there SHOULD be some fucking…napoleonic war vets around somewhere. It’s not completely unbelievable.

I have GOT to wonder what the fuck is going on with the one Deaf debutante signing her dismay to her mom in BSL that the Queen wasn’t impressed with her curtsy, though! In what world was this girl not left to waste away at the family estate???? How did George and Charlotte’s love conquer racism AND uhhhh longstanding historical attitudes towards disability??? It strains belief. Also she’s only in that one scene so she is ABSOLUTELY just a token. Thanks lady so and so! Hope you find a husband, I fucking guess!

And speaking of finding a husband, here’s the thing that really pisses me off personally about Bridgerton. the more diversity the show puts into each scene and season, the more glaring (and, frankly, insulting) it is that queerness is still demonized in this beautiful fluffy sugary escapist fantasy.

Benedict had one (1) artist friend in season 1 who turned out to be a Secret Homosexual living in Bohemian Debauchery, and two of the prostitutes Colin sleeps with in season 3 share a really tepid nude embrace with off-camera kissing noises when he’s too troubled by the realization of his feelings for Pen to like. Enjoy his threesome he paid for. Hooray.

It’s fucking rotten, really, to be presented with this world that says “everyone is welcome here!” In big glittery begowned spring colors, and then offhand says “not YOU though.” It’s disgusting, and cowardly, and really exemplifies how the people making this show want to have their cake and eat it too, be diverse but not too divisive, and toe the line of mainstream audience acceptability. Yes there’s a lot of steamy sex scenes and female pleasure but in the end, it literally is all in the service of a world where everyone, EVERYONE who’s allowed to be a character, is focused nonstop on finding love in a marriage.

I didn’t know a lot about the Bridgerton books when I started watching season one, and I was pleasantly surprised by the very clearly baby gay sibling Eloise, who chafes at the feminine expectations her family and society puts on her. But then…in the books, she marries a widower and eventually falls in love with him I gueee, and in the show….all of her individual potential is sidelined in favor of her now-rocky friendship with Penelope. And I need to give the show credit, the writing of these storylines about growing pains and female friendship and social ostracism fucking HIT. It’s deeply affecting and done well.

So it’s clear that the show isn’t afraid to shy away from SOME heavy emotional content! Just not the queer kind! Or the kind that questions where the money is coming from. Or the kind that questions whether Francesca needs to find romantic love at all, mom, since she’s clearly happy without it!

I don’t know if I’ll watch the second half of season 3 when it drops. Honestly, the ball scenes, the gossip, all that was done SO well that it left a bad taste in my mouth, just like real middle/high school dances did. I am left feeling like in this beautiful glittering amatonormative world, someone like me would still be too much of a freak to find any happiness, despite how welcoming it purports to be. And that just sucks.

Another quibble I have with season 3 is how vastly it’s expanded the characters it gives plot lines to. Like. Ok. Sure. I have to question why it was ok to do this and divide the screen time away from the main character in the installment when the MC is a fat girl. As opposed to the previous seasons. And I don’t think this was even a conscious decision, likely. BUT it’s a little odd to have the steamy escapist sex romp elements be given less screen time in favor of redeeming Caustic Bully Mean Girl Cressida, you know? Why does Penelope have to share tv real estate when Kate and Daphne didn’t? Kate HAS MORE SEX SCENES IN THIS SEASON THAN PENELOPE????

Last point and this is mostly a joke but HEY at least the overwhelming amount of synthetic fabrics means that England isn’t obsessively focused on destroying India and the Americas in its insatiable hunger for cotton, right?

Right?

Ok anyway Bridgerton is afraid of the questions it raises by the choices it makes, it is a cowardly show attempting to hide all criticism under the veneer of escapist fantasy, and it’s increasingly straining to work as television as the charm of the novels grows stale and repetitive.

#that is it goodbye and good luck!#I am gonna go back to the good shit (KJ Charles and North & South)#media analysis #bridgerton critical #leaving replies on this for now but I will block at a moment’s notice #quarterly hateratde delivery right here

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