The War
So, basically, I just liked this shot -- the planes! The blimps! The Windsor Castle tower! This is also as good a point as any to note that the entire world of The Crown is hazy. Inside. Outside. Everywhere is vaguely smoky. It nearly makes ME want to take up smoking.
The Lessons
The interiors here at Windsor are VERY VERY well done (whether this is a set or a location is unknown to me; regardless, it is an excellent job), and it is also here where we learn that it was decided that wee Liz only got educated in Constitutional Facts (via the Vice Provost at Eton) and Etiquette, and, like, the pianoforte and the quadrille or whatever, like it's 1873 and not 1940. I understand that it was customary for certain clutches of upper-class British women to be fairly poorly educated in the traditional sense, but The Crown implies that Marg and Liz barely even got an elementary level education, which I suppose is acceptable -- as Elizabeth keeps saying -- if they were just going to marry some posh random (although I obviously disgree with that) but seems batty when you know at least one of those women is going to have a kind of serious job one day.
The Bird
Indeed, while Eton's Vice-Provost stresses to Elizabeth that the MOST important thing is for her to understand the consitution backwards and forwards -- and, indeed, that education serves her well in this episode, although she CLEARLY needs tutoring as an adult as well, and good for her for getting it -- Little Liz seems to find this questionable. Good instincts, princess. Also: Can we talk about the fact that Eton's Vice-Provost has a live bird flapping about his office? That is terrifying.
The Chintz
I just enjoy this upholstery. This also seems like a good episode at which to discuss the show's characterization of the Queen Mum. My personal understanding was that the Queen Mum was awesome and sassy and beloved and The Crown does NOT agree wth this at all. She is not particularly likeable. I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts about this -- Heather is more knowledgeable about the Queen Mum than I am, for many reasons, including the fact that the Queen Mum was alive when she was growing up in England.
The Retirement
In short: Tommy is taking his mustache and retiring, and Liz wants Bertie from Downton to take over his gig, but Bertie isn't senior enough for the job. Blah blah blah, she tries to overrule this, but eventually loses that battle. I mostly just appreciate this color on Claire Foy.
CORGIS
THE CORGIS! So many corgis. I want to cuddle them all and give them treats.
The PM
So, the other plotline in which Elizabeth learns to assert herself involves a power struggle between Churchill (who has A STOKE that he tells her is a cold) and Eden (who had SUCH ISSUES with his gallbladder and bile duct that there is literally a medical paper called Anthony Eden’s (Lord Avon) Biliary Tract Saga). In short, no one is telling HER what is happening between the two of them, she finds this out, and she is RIGHTLY PISSED that she's being kept in the dark. Her tutor -- a charming old boozehound called Professor Hogg, who is fictional, I believe -- tells her to give them a proper dressing down, in the fashion of a disappointed nanny, and indeed she does. Which was also quite satisfying. I may have liked this episode more than I thought I did.
The Bertie
I don't blame Elizabeth for wanting to flout chain of internal courtier command to make Bertie From Downton her personal secretary, as he is a delight. (His actual name is Martin Charteris and his obit is WELL worth your read.) I love you, Bertie. EDITH never would have gone over Mustache's head to have a tree trimmed in front of a grace and favor flat that didn't even belong to her yet, thus scuttling your promotion more quickly than it might otherwise have been scuttled.
The American Hospital
Admittedly, I was not alive in the 50s, but I feel confident that American hospitals were not THIS DARK even then.
The Red Drawing Room, a Name I Made Up For It
LOOK AT THIS ROOM!
The Prof
I am sure -- given the way this show has run to this date; I have not watched the entire series yet -- that we will never see Prof. Hogg again, and that saddens me. I would watch an entire TV show about a functionally alcoholic tutor to the Queen. (Obviously, he brings her the joy of knowledge, and she introduces him to a recently widowed lady-in-waiting, with whom he finds love despite the difference in their classes.)
The Fight
This is also what I wear to watch TV.
Having said that, this was a really satisfying scene -- this show is good at fights, which I appreciate; both Heather and I LOVE writing fights -- wherein Elizabeth yells at her mother for COMPLETELY NEGLECTING her education, and the Queen Mum says all KINDS of hurtful things in return, including that at least Liz got more education than Margaret did (cut to Margaret crying into a priceless bowl somewere), and that Elizabeth herself is ALSO a terrible mother, and that NO ONE "wants a bluestocking" for a queen, which is...an INSANE thing to say.
Churchill's Office
This just seems like paradise. I want to work without having to even sit up. Although I do NOT want to have a series of strokes that I then have to conceal from Heather so that she doesn't tell me to step down for the good of Fug Nation, so....
The Tree Trimming of Doom
If I long to work from bed, a la Churchill, I ALSO enjoy standing at my large window spying on what people are doing outside and getting irritated by it, more often than not. TOMMY LASCELLES I ALONE UNDERSTAND YOU.
The Mirrors
This was just a beautiful shot, I thought. Those mirrors! FABULOUS.
The State Dinner
Right, the plot. Sorry. So, for Reasons, Elizabeth is hosting a state dinner for Eisenhower -- her panic at knowing she's not going to be able to converse with him (and not being able to converse with state leaders in general) is what leads her to hire Prof. Hogg -- which is eventually then cancelled for Other Reasons. (This entire episode was Setting Things In Motion That Never Came to Pass, which is I think what made it feel a little unsatisfying to me; it was ALL guns revealed in the first act that didn't ever go off.) I really wanted you to see all of this AMAZING CHINA. (If you go to visit Windsor Castle, there is a whole room that's just full of various china settings that the crown owns and it's fantastic if you're into place settings. We must have spent like an hour and a half in there when we went on our research tour for The Royal We.)
This Other Drawing Room That Probably Has a Name
This set is also spectacular.
The Chaz
This dude is one of the....I don't even know. He was in the scene wherein Tommy Mustache and the Archbishop of Canterbury (a great band name) told the Duke of Windsor that he couldn't come to the coronation, and he spends a lot of time reporting to Elizabeth about a variety of things, but also pops over to talk to Churchill. BUT! This actor is the one that many of you were noting looks so much like Current Prince Charles that it is distracting they didn't save him for later seasons, right? I agree.
The Library
THE SHELVES!!!
The Nursery
Elizabeth sends the troops out to find her childhood notebook -- she has NO idea where it is, which is amusing, and ergo footmen have to tear apart Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Balmoral, and also Buckingham Palace. I mostly appreciate this wallpaper. Anyway, you'd think she'd just be able to look up the passage from the book she was referencing in the Buck House library but I am a person who keeps all of her day planners for years and years and years in case I want to look things up in them, so who am I to judge?
The Dressing Down
I did very much enjoy all the dressing downs Elizabeth handed out, both to Churchill (whose lecture included the suggestion that give her the respect that her "office and rank deserve," rather than that which her "age and gender suggest") and to that old pain in the butt Lord Salisbury, who is the one who kept everything from her, and kept being like, "UH CHURCHILL HAS A COLD WHY NOT HAVE IKE OVER FOR A HUGE STATE DINNER" and then "OH WAIT NEVER MIND," and who I would have tossed into the tower for a nice long weekend. But I would make a very mean monarch.
The Suggestion
...I have a few thoughts about what I'd like Philip to do with himself, but all of them are very impolite.