EyewatchTV211

I've gotten better, but I used to confuse Ashley Williams and Rachel Boston. I don't particularly care for either of them either.

But A Christmas Prince was Netflix. 😭

I think this was likely their policy in the past. However, more recently they've had divorced main characters more often. I think it started this year, so it may have been introduced by the new boss woman. I don't know what's with all of my superficial comments recently, and this is a somewhat older movie that I'm going to comment on - I was flipping through Netflix and had to pause and do something else, so it started playing the trailer for the movie I randomly had stopped at at the time, A Christmas Prince. I watched this back closer to when it first came out and was unfamiliar with the main actor at the time, and I thought he was pretty unattractive. I've since seen Ben Lamb in other things and thought he was very attractive and had to keep looking up why he looked somewhat familiar. WTH did the makeup/hair people and whoever else do to him in A Christmas Prince to make him look so blah? I don't think that's what they were going for. Is it just me?

The singing made me nervous, too. It's crazy to think about how we're going to see things that used to be "normal" so differently from now on.

Not sure if you want to be spoiled at all from the books, but there is talk of how she did it in the books in our books vs. series thread.

The show hasn't explained how they envision her doing it, but if you go in the book vs. series thread, I and RachelKM (more recently) describe how they explain it in the books.

Right. We don't know for sure Penelope's motivation. She did try the discreet route with Colin earlier when she only told him Marina was in love with someone else. That wasn't enough. By the time the decision was made to elope to Gretna Green, others have already explained why there was no realistic way to discreetly tell him in time. So we don't definitively know, based on what was actually shown on screen, if Penelope was doing it for Colin or doing it for herself. At this point her motivation is vague, which is why it has created so much debate.

He must actually do both if he also played Billy Elliott (the kid).

The kid supposedly is actually a hockey player 🤷‍♀️ https://twitter.com/shermwolfe/status/1345563392422117377?s=19

Marina came from the country. If she took any notice of farm animals as Colin suggests to Eloise in that awesome scene ....😉😂

In Romancing Mister Bridgerton, Pen says she lost nearly two stone, but she still describes herself as not being thin. She "...could now call herself 'pleasantly rounded' rather than a 'hideous pudge.' She was still nowhere near the slender ideal of womanhood that ruled the day..." So I guess people could still say that they relate to her because of that. I didn't see that many people using her weight as an excuse, though. I relate to book Penelope more primarily due to personality traits and also somewhat to my own physical insecurity that isn't related to weight but to other aspects of my appearance. Speaking for myself, I would put myself in the boat that someone else on this thread (or maybe the Lady W thread) already described - I still see it more as me supporting book Penelope, who I see as true canon, and being disappointed that the show messed that up as opposed to me just excusing show Penelope because she's fat. And suspecting that the show creators didn't realize that they messed her up and probably weren't intending to. I remembered this being referenced in Colin/Penelope's book and went back to check. In the books, Colin does in fact spend a lot of time traveling, as he heads off to do after season 1 of the show. It isn't spurred by the events of the show, but he does travel. When he returns in the book, there's exploration of his seeming "need" to travel and difficulty staying home for long periods of time and not knowing exactly why. There's one section that says, "Every now and then, he simply had to get away. There was no other way to describe it. Away from the ton, who thought him a charming rogue and nothing else, away from England, which encouraged younger sons to enter the military or the clergy, neither of which suited his temperament." So I think he doesn't want to do those things and is able to get away with not doing those things because the family is well off enough that he doesn't have to and is more understanding of his choices than the typical family like theirs might be. They just want him to be happy. Colin is trying to figure out his path. And as the show has already started showing with Benedict, he is able to find his path with his art.

And on a superficial note, I thought Sir Phillip was pretty good looking himself, the little we got to see of him. I would have accepted his offer in a heartbeat if that was me at the time. 😄

I also mentioned this in the book vs. series thread but

I actually wasn't explaining that related to the argument for how to handle the Colin/Marina situation. I was more using it related to your comment that she seemed very young on the show (as Penelope) compared to in the books. I would need to go back and reread how she came across in the earlier books when she was actually that age, since there's mostly just reference to her recalling, at age 28, how she was at the previous time. But it isn't like book Penelope was necessarily much more mature/savvy either, since she wasn't the one who figured out the publishing stuff. Thinking about it, it actually does seem kind of youthful that her first Lady W writings were her way of complaining about all the people who were mean to her and venting it. She was just skillful with writing. I still think the TV series will have to eventually keep the background about the solicitor doing much of the work setting her up if they want to maintain any sense of reality. No matter how intelligent or savvy people want to say TV Lady Whistledown is, even if TV Penelope truly shares those traits, there's no way a 17 y.o. society girl would have any idea how to set up a gossip column business, let alone make it actually happen when other people are involved in the process. I think his book references that he lived at the family residence still at that point. I could be recalling that incorrectly.

From the episode 8, After the Rain thread: I reread most of Romancing Mr. Bridgerton after watching the show so I could enjoy Penelope and Colin again. While Penelope did seem a bit young and naive on the show, it isn't like she was the one who figured out all that needed to be done to get published in the first place in the books. She originally just wrote for herself to get out her anger and frustration at the people who treated her poorly. Then, while going to the bathroom one day when everyone was out of the house, she had left her writing out and her father's solicitor happened to show up and read them and loved it. He was the one who set up everything for her. He was even the one who came up with the idea of giving it away for free the first two weeks before charging people. So while she didn't come across as maybe quite so young at the start of Lady W, she also wasn't fully the brains behind how the process all worked.

Responding in the book vs. series thread

I was wishing the same. I actually assumed she didn't at that point because she was trying to keep that part of Marina's secret. That she was hoping it would be enough for him to hear that Marina was in love with someone else. Unfortunately, it wasn't, and everything else happened the way that it did. Everyone else has said enough about that, so I won't bother commenting on the rest.

I agree that the show doesn't seem to realize the ugly light it casts considering so many here now hate Penelope while she was generally liked from the books. The show finished filming right before production universally shut down. I think February? Or early March at the latest. It hasn't officially been renewed, but there's reference to possibly starting to shoot season 2 in March. So I guess it is expected to return. I don't know how many seasons they are hoping for. Someone else on one of these threads mentioned something about 5 books at the most - not sure where that information came from.

I started re-reading that book after watching the series - that's the only reason I was able to note some of the specifics. Otherwise, I have the worst memory in the world and wouldn't have remembered anything. I actually tried to say something similar in response to someone's post in the episode 8 thread, but I guess referencing that her writing was targeted to mean people and not nice people was considered spoilery outside of this thread and was removed. I added the post back under spoiler tags. 🤷‍♀️

And people spill a lot within her hearing since they don't even notice her existence.

You and I seem to share a brain with this series. Her voice and facial mannerisms are totally Keira Knightly, even if she doesn't look like her (except maybe the mouth).

Benedict's story is pretty much Cinderella.

I thought the exact same thing. I actually went to look up the actors on IMDB to see if the ages actually matched, but there was no age for the Benedict actor and I decided not to go crazy searching further for something insignificant.