Bridgerton Season 3, Part 1
Some reactionary, hastily formed thoughts
Things I do not care for/about in the third season of Bridgerton, so far:
Colin’s asshole friends: I am unsure why, but the Bridgerton brothers spend very little time together in this season. Benedict is always off aimlessly searching for a rich widow or some swingers to seduce; Anthony spends about 5 minutes of his screen talking to anyone but Kate. So poor Colin (and poor us) gets to spend a bunch of time hanging out with nameless rich dicks instead of any other characters we care about. This is a stupid use of everyone’s time.
The Mondrichs’ champagne problems: I have liked the Mondrichs from the beginning and always thought their perspective as non-Ton characters was one the show sorely needed, but season 3 has veered away entirely from including any other strata of society. It has no time to stop and chat with a modiste or a lady’s maid, so the Mondrichs have to suddenly accede to fabulous wealth and a position that is somehow so elevated that they can just hang out with Lady Danbury in the Queen’s box in episode 4. We’re asked to believe the only true struggle these newly rich individuals have in being accepted by high society is that Will wants to keep running his gentleman’s club, which is… ludicrous? The show changes their fortunes through a wild deus ex machina moment barely worthy of Dickens’ most fabulous tales and then doesn’t do anything interesting with that change. Alice doesn’t like the old clothes she’s inherited because they’re too traditional (albeit covered in sequins like everything else this season). She doesn’t like that she gets a whole bedroom to herself. Her housekeeper is kind of snooty in that one scene. These aren’t plot; they’re just filler and they waste a lot of a viewer’s patience. At least continue to show the world of gentleman’s boxing we got to see some of in the first two seasons. That was a built- in excuse to have your men all sweaty and muscley AND was somewhat historically accurate.
Benedict, full stop: The show has always had a Benedict problem, one it seemed to realize when it was announced they would be skipping his story to give us Colin and Penelope’s first. Benedict’s book is third in the series and is a pretty charming Cinderella tale. I’m sure they’ll get around to it but by putting it off another season, they are once again confronted with the problem that he has nothing to do. Season one established him as the most adventurous and curious brother; he wanted to see the world beyond the Ton and ventured into artist orgies and met some gay people and carried on with a faux-French modiste. In season two he did more of the same, but with less specificity, meaning we saw him sort of hold a paintbrush once or twice and have a threesome (Bridgerton code for “get this guy a wife stat”). Season three has dispensed with the art part altogether and instead just has him wander around catching the eye of dashing widows and complaining that he has nothing to do now that Anthony is back from his honeymoon and can take over running the estate. He’s bored; I’m bored. I get that there’s a lot of siblings in this family and a lot of side characters that have acquired more prominence as the show has progressed but Benedict is going to have a season; it would be weird for them to just never do that book. It would be nice if they actually spent some of the multiple years we have known him to grow him as a character so when we are called upon to care it’s not so hard.
Lady Danbury’s rakish brother flirting with Violet Bridgerton: Ok, fine whatever Violet deserves hot men flirting with her just as much as her daughters do but this storyline is so half-assed. Lady Danbury has some sort of serious issue with her brother (so much so not even one of her closest friends, who she has known for decades as established in Queen Charlotte knows he exists (?)) but we don’t know what it is so it’s kind of hard to care. He’s a rake, according to her, but since the most rakish thing he’s done is pick up a widowed mother of 47 children’s glove and make some servants giggle, I remain unmoved. Neither I nor Violet know enough about him to care. Just tell me his deal or move on.
Eloise: I am fine with her having a friendship with Cressida, as totally improbable as that is given what we know of her character (so improbable it gets relegated to a “this happened while we were in the country just go with it” parenthetical). But Eloise has nothing else to do this season except occasionally hang out with Cressida, be sad she isn’t friends with Penelope, and not want suitors. In previous seasons she had drive and purpose; she was obsessed with finding out who Whistledown was and discovering her own strengths outside of the marriage mart. Since she (and we) found out Penelope is Whistledown her motivations are just gone. She's just sort of there to advance the Cressida storyline, and I care about 1000 percent less about Cressida than about Eloise (mainly due to Cressida’s hairstyles, which give me the headache). Should she not still be give a shit about Whistledown? Should she not be trying to stop Penelope from continuing Whistledown or something? Like so many characters that had things that drove them in the other two seasons, she now is just sort of there.
The Puritan vibes: More on this in a full post later, but, um… where did all the sex go? This is Bridgerton. The bodices should be heaving. The camera should be lovingly caressing heated flesh. Intimacy coordinators should be working overtime. Instead, there’s this weird cutaway thing that keeps happening where something sex-related will start to happen onscreen and either the characters will be interrupted by something or the camera will just blink away to some other thing like we care about 85% of the plot in this season (we don’t!). I’m fine with this when it’s a demimonde scene that’s mainly there to establish the boys have “experience” but what’s with cutting away from Kate and Anthony?? If we’re to care so much about the Mondrich marriage, could we not stay with them while they experience some conjugal bliss? What happened to showing a relationship like Anthony and his opera singer that, while not an endgame love scenario still established him as a sexual character? In the other seasons, there was so much buildup to the main lovers’ first bedroom scenes; Simon whispering to Daphne about touching herself comes to mind, or all the insane tension between Anthony and Kate, but in this season we get ONE short kiss and ONE dream sequence in which Colin and Pen just make out a bit. I’m not saying everyone has to be feeling each other up behind the circus tents like the Featherington girls but this season feels distinctly uncomfortable about sex. The only people who seem to be having it are the Featheringtons (which is played for pure comedy) Benedict (with someone who has no character or personality except rich and horny) and Colin (who only has been briefly shown having threesomes with nameless prostitutes; not a great look). So when we finally get to one of the most beloved and famous scenes in Bridgerton book history, “THE Carriage Scene,” it’s all too sudden! We’re not ready for Pen and Colin to throw their shyness to the winds and get freaky in a moving carriage. It doesn’t feel natural because the show hasn’t done enough to establish the chemistry between these characters and hasn’t built up an atmosphere of general horniness, like in previous seasons.
Things I liked in the third season of Bridgerton, so far:
Cressida: They’ve done this girl even dirtier than usual this season with the outfits and the hair, but I do appreciate making her more than just a sharp-tongued harridan. The fact that she hasn’t found a husband because she’s mean is somewhat interesting and seeing her try to be nicer under Eloise’s influence is also mildly interesting. I hope this is all leading to something.
The Featherington’s pregnancy bit: This is all played for pure laughs and it is genuinely quite funny, but it also requires these characters to all continue as cardboard cutouts. But it’s fine and I just hope the show doesn’t feel like it needs to humanize them all later on a la Cressida.
Penelope’s glow-up: They show has so consistently fucked with Penelope for two years on every single wig and outfit that when she decides to change her look she genuinely does look 10,000x better.
The carriage scene: The one sexy scene in the entire show so far, so good job. Genuinely good acting from Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton. Colin is able to fully show what a soft little sensitive baby boy he is (and stop pretending he’s some heartless rake, which none of us ever bought) and Penelope gets to finally believe that not just someone but THE someone could actually want and love her. Well done all.
Things I am unsure of in the third season of Bridgerton, so far:
Francesca’s timing: The show is set to go for five seasons, as of right now, so it makes some sense to move her love story up to be concurrent with Colin’s so you can make four be Benedict and five be Eloise and the other kiddos can just be kids (even though the book series does get into their love stories once they’re grown), but I desperately hope they don’t give Francesca’s story such short shrift in the second half. It’s a really sweet story and she’s an immensely engaging character. I would rather we get like 90% less Featherington comedy in the second half to make room for her. Or like 90% less Mondrich unimportant drama. And 100% less Benedict. Let her story breathe! Concentrate on what actually matters instead of trying to distract us with all this other ephemera. I promise you, eight children’s love stories is plenty to keep us entertained.