S03.E08: Dangling Man

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I just can't with Uncle Nazi, but I can imagine him truly believing that he was an individualist and a free thinker so that he can play the role of the victim, the good guy who was forced to give up being king by his evil uptight family who disapproved of him because he was "staying true to himself."

Philip not remembering Adeane's name or the fact that he retired - is this supposed to be a sign that he really pays no attention to the little people or that he's getting old and forgetful?

While I get that Philip loathes David, I found it a bit obnoxious for him to tell Martin that Elizabeth would not visit David while she was in Paris. Your wife has a mouth and she's quite used to using it to answer for herself so STFU.

I didn't know whether to laugh or roll my eyes when Charles told Camilla that where he lived was "not very grand" and "normal."

[dubbel zout]

3 hours ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

I didn't know whether to laugh or roll my eyes when Charles told Camilla that where he lived was "not very grand" and "normal."

I took that as a reference to his apartment, not Buck House in general. The private apartments supposedly aren't really all that lavish, and they haven't been maintained all that well, which is one reason it's costing such a fortune to refurbish everything. Apparently the wiring and plumbing is in terrible shape. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

18 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

I took that as a reference to his apartment, not Buck House in general. The private apartments supposedly aren't really all that lavish, and they haven't been maintained all that well, which is one reason it's costing such a fortune to refurbish everything. Apparently the wiring and plumbing is in terrible shape. 

It's hard for me to take someone's assessment of their living situation as "not very grand" when he's having servants cook and serve a candlelit dinner for him and his date and then reminding him that it's time to watch his uncle on tv.

[PeterPirate]

According to this article from Town & Country, Charles met David for only 45 minutes, and there were other guests around.

Quote

To illuminate Prince Charles's relationship with the Duke of Windsor, Town & Country turned to two historians: Andrew Lownie, author of The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves, and Christopher Wilson, who penned A Greater Love: Prince Charles's Twenty-Year Affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. 

Wilson refers to prince's diary entry, in which Charles describes arriving at the duke's Parisian residence to find a party full of the "most dreadful American guests I have ever seen." Charles added, "The whole thing seemed so tragic—the existence, the people and the atmosphere—that I was relieved to escape it after 45 minutes."

Edited November 30, 2019 by PeterPirate

[dubbel zout]

Young Camilla is played by Emerald Fennell, late of Call the Midwife and the showrunner for the second season of Killing Eve, among other projects. She's very talented, IMO.

[mledawn]

"Do I need to brace myself for a nautical metaphor?" HAHAHA Anne is awesome.
Andrew Buchan always does play a good cheesey fella.

The music when Charles was waiting on Camilla's arrival was perfect.

I agree with everyone that the Nazi association has been glossed over in a way that almost seems irresponsible. How is it possible Charles was unaware of that? This is another situation where I wonder/question the creative license taken by the show.

[Clanstarling]

On 11/28/2019 at 4:38 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

I didn't know whether to laugh or roll my eyes when Charles told Camilla that where he lived was "not very grand" and "normal."

I laughed. I mean, yeah, I don't find the "apartments" particularly grand, in fact, I find them pretty depressing and unimpressive. But when you've got servants making you dinner, and you and your sister share a separate apartment in a home with 4 miles of corridors, normal's not quite the word.

[TVForever]

On 11/17/2019 at 7:47 PM, phoenics said:

Wait - Princess Anne and Andrew Parker-Bowles?  LOL WTF?

Glad to see I wasn't alone in my surprise. Were those two really hooking up? I never knew that bit of history!

[Badger]

On 11/25/2019 at 8:40 AM, benteen said:

Very good episode.  Was excited to see Derek Jacobi in the role as Edward (although I agree Alex Jennings was better) and he was good, enjoyed his last scene with Olivia Colman a great deal.

There playing around with the timeline is starting to show and is not appreciated.  Edward didn't die until 1974.

No, he died in 1972.  His younger brother,  The Duke of Gloucester died in 1974.  

[Scarlett45]

On 12/5/2019 at 10:08 AM, TVForever said:

Glad to see I wasn't alone in my surprise. Were those two really hooking up? I never knew that bit of history!

Yes they really hooked up. These elite social circles were so small tons of people dated or at least knew each other from various families. I am enjoying the sibling relationship between Charles and Anne this season- it’s very charming. The hair stylist for Princess Anne has done a great job. It’s era appropriate but very sophisticated. 

[politichick]

On 12/2/2019 at 11:56 AM, mledawn said:

The music when Charles was waiting on Camilla's arrival was perfect.

OMG, Frankie Valli, Beggin'. I have lost count of how many times I've listened to that song on YouTube, And that scene was perfection, the way the gates swooped open at the start of it.

Love, love, love Princess Anne and her clearheaded honesty. She was way more modern than I realized. I loved this episode and this season.

[chaifan]

On 11/25/2019 at 12:49 PM, kwnyc said:

Real life pictures of Camilla Shand around this time show her to be a Swingin' 60s kind of gal. Though she still had some o' those  British jacked teeth.

I think the biggest problem with getting modern day actors cast as Brits from that era is the teeth.  Most shows aren't about to spend the money on the dental prosthetics to get the look right.  But the mouth/smile is so much a defining part of someone's looks it will throw off even a good look-alike in other respects.   I think the hardest part about comparing Camilla to the actress who plays her is that this is the first really publicly well known character that we (the viewers) know almost nothing about at this point in her life.  There's nothing to compare the actress to, other than old pictures.  We don't know if she's really capturing Camilla's personality, speech, mannerisms, etc., because there's no record of it from back then.

Speaking of having a record to compare... Elizabeth's public speaking voice is so grating.  It's like she's a complete different person, imitating how actors from really early films spoke.  I really noticed it at the scene of the speech in France.  And it sounds accurate, based on film clips I've seen of the real Queen from that time. 

[paramitch]

On 11/27/2019 at 8:42 AM, Blakeston said:

This was a strange one. They'd already laid out how awful David was in season two, up to the point of showing a photo of him with Hitler, and now they want us to see him as a sympathetic free-thinker?

Uncle Nazi was anything but a free-thinker. For one thing, he was bamboozled by the Nazis into thinking they posed no harm to the UK.

And he was attracted to Wallis because a) they had a weird mother/son dynamic, and b) when she wasn't acting like his mother, she was acting like a dominatrix. To the point that she would order him to act like a dog, and he would get on all fours and bark!

Letting someone make your decisions like that is the exact opposite of being a free thinker.

This all makes me think that the writers come up with a general theme for an episode, and make it fit by twisting history however the hell they feel like it, regardless of whether it's believable, or consistent with other episodes.

"Charles wants to be independent with the woman of his choice. And Uncle David wanted to be with the woman of his choice, and he died around this time. So let's present Uncle David as a freethinker who Charles wanted to emulate, and make them out to be great friends!"

Or "Elizabeth is jealous of Margaret, and Margaret is charming in a way Elizabeth isn't, and Margaret met with LBJ - so let's pretend that Margaret charmed LBJ into giving the UK a billion pounds!"

This show has always taken a certain amount of dramatic license, but this season it really bothered me.

I'm so frustrated with this season. Season 3 so far, more than any other, is reaching for parallels, stretching history, and painting fictions instead of exploring the rich and interesting stories that were openly available to them.

Anne's dalliance with Parker-Bowles was brief, and was never at the same time as Charles/Camilla. Charles barely knew his uncle, although I'm sure he felt affection, and I'm also certain he knew of his uncle's Nazi sympathies (which are and were very well documented). While Menzies has been given some good material that enriches Philip as a character (if, of course, it's true), poor superb Olivia Colman is left simply to smile or frown as the script dictates -- is she warm this week? Cold this week? Kind or cruel? Etc. As always, I never feel like I am getting a sense of Elizabeth the woman at all.

I'm enjoying this season but am a bit disappointed in what we're being given because so much of it feels like an agenda versus an organic story based in truth.

And this entire episode basically adding a faint golden light to Uncle David the Nazi Sympathizer and hoodwink, despite the superb actors (and I adore me some Jacobi), made me a little nauseous. I hate episodes like this, when I actually have to wonder if the writers of the show remember, like, their own past episodes. Grr.

[AnnaBaptist]

On 11/30/2019 at 3:21 PM, dubbel zout said:

Young Camilla is played by Emerald Fennell, late of Call the Midwife and the showrunner for the second season of Killing Eve, among other projects. She's very talented, IMO.

Holy cow! That's Nurse Patsy? Wow.

[Sew Sumi]

14 hours ago, AnnaBaptist said:

Holy cow! That's Nurse Patsy? Wow.

I thought she looked familiar! 

[Milburn Stone]

On 11/27/2019 at 4:42 PM, Blakeston said:

Uncle Nazi was anything but a free-thinker. For one thing, he was bamboozled by the Nazis into thinking they posed no harm to the UK.

And he was attracted to Wallis because a) they had a weird mother/son dynamic, and b) when she wasn't acting like his mother, she was acting like a dominatrix. To the point that she would order him to act like a dog, and he would get on all fours and bark!

Letting someone make your decisions like that is the exact opposite of being a free thinker.

This all makes me think that the writers come up with a general theme for an episode, and make it fit by twisting history however the hell they feel like it, regardless of whether it's believable, or consistent with other episodes.

Word.

I wasn't so much bothered that Charles had no idea about his uncle being a Nazi collaborator, as I was that the writers seemed to have no idea he was a Nazi collaborator. (After telling us in Season 2 that he was.) We weren't just seeing a glorified picture of him through Charles' eyes, we were asked to accept a glorified picture of him, period. But the Royal Family were not "bad guys" for shunning him, and they didn't do it because of his "creativity."

Edited December 29, 2019 by Milburn Stone

[Ellaria]

On 12/25/2019 at 4:30 PM, Milburn Stone said:

I wasn't so much bothered that Charles had no idea about his uncle being a Nazi collaborator, as I was that the writers seemed to have no idea he was a Nazi collaborator. (After telling us in Season 2 that he was.) We weren't just seeing a glorified picture of him through Charles' eyes, we were asked to accept a glorified picture of him, period. But the Royal Family were not "bad guys" for shunning him, and they didn't do it because of his "creativity."

Well said. IMO, the writers “changed” the primary narrative about the Duke of Windsor in S3 because they needed it to serve their focus on Charles and “true love.” For whatever reason, they assumed that they had to portray a less complicated, more idealized view of the Duke in order to create a parallel that never really existed.

I found that difficult to accept based on what they presented so effectively in S2. The writers asked me to overlook his Nazi sympathies and the fact that his relationship with Wallis was not a “love story for the ages.” We could have seen him thru Charles’ eyes, skewed by his naïveté and diffidence. However, there should have been some callback to the arrogant man that we saw last season. 
 
It is fine for The Crown’s version of Charles to view Uncle David as an idealist, etc. It is not fine to ask viewers to do the same. 

 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Ellaria Sand

[Aliferously]

On 11/26/2019 at 12:39 AM, andromeda331 said:

Its really hard to imagine Charles not knowing how bad his great-uncle was just as it was hard to believe Elizabeth didn't know how bad her uncle was.  Its hard to imagine the Queen Mother with her clear hated for Edward VIII never said anything? She never once went off on rants about how horrible he was? Its really hard to believe. She has such hate for him its really hard to believe she never told Elizabeth all the reasons why he was so bad. She just doesn't seem like the type to hold that in. Its hard to believe Tommy never said anything. He knew how bad Edward VIII was and also how he operated. There's no way he wouldn't have prepared Elizabeth for dealing with her uncle. There's no way grow up Charles wouldn't have heard all about how terrible he was from his mother, grandmother and his father. Philip had such a hate for him its hard to believe he held back.

I'm sure everybody knew/knows. 

Over time, the anger might have dissipated into simmering resentment, though. 

 

I don't know to what extent the real Royals are allowed to watch the show, but I'm sure this was one of those choke on your drink ones because none of it really rang true. 

I'm going to third and fourth Charles not being in the know about his uncles Nazi sympathies. Isn't that standard history book material?

I also thought the Duke of Windsor died later then 1970. 

Oh, so that's where I recognise the actress who plays Camilla from. I've watched Call The Midwife on and off and I don't keep up with the revolving door nurses.

 

Edited January 5, 2020 by Aliferously

[Umbelina]

I was watching THE QUEEN again last night.  Of course, same writer as the series and THE QUEEN, Peter Morgan.

I can't help but notice that while he is equating Charles' relationship with his uncle's free-thinking and "thwarted love affair" he also managed to cast Alex Jennings as both men.

Maybe his lack of imagination as far as Charles is simply due to that.  "Oh hey, same guy, so let's pretend they are linked!"  Who cares if we are making all of this shit up?

[PeterPirate]

On 12/29/2019 at 12:39 PM, Ellaria Sand said:

Well said. IMO, the writers “changed” the primary narrative about the Duke of Windsor in S3 because they needed it to serve their focus on Charles and “true love.” For whatever reason, they assumed that they had to portray a less complicated, more idealized view of the Duke in order to create a parallel that never really existed.

I found that difficult to accept based on what they presented so effectively in S2. The writers asked me to overlook his Nazi sympathies and the fact that his relationship with Wallis was not a “love story for the ages.” We could have seen him thru Charles’ eyes, skewed by his naïveté and diffidence. However, there should have been some callback to the arrogant man that we saw last season. 
 
It is fine for The Crown’s version of Charles to view Uncle David as an idealist, etc. It is not fine to ask viewers to do the same. 

 

I once took a class in physics and was taught that electrons are both waves and particles.  One has to adopt the same thinking to watch this show and maintain one's sanity.  

I think the Derek Jacobi version of David Windsor is more true to the real thing, so we get to see that.  On the other hand, Alex Jennings was sooooooo good as Uncle Nazi, and we get that too.  

 

 

[Wordsworth]

On 11/28/2019 at 7:38 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

"I just can't with Uncle Nazi, but I can imagine him truly believing that he was an individualist and a free thinker so that he can play the role of the victim, the good guy who was forced to give up being king by his evil uptight family who disapproved of him because he was "staying true to himself.""

 

I think he was trying to reinvent himself for the modern generation.  His generation valued duty; the new one valued love.  His generation fought a war; the new generation protested against it.  In this new generation, a king who abdicated in order to marry the woman he loved and tried to negotiate in order to stop a war might be seen as progressive in contrast to the stodgy Royals in Buckingham Palace.  It rather reminds me of how some prominent German Nazis, like Albert Speer, promoted themselves as having been fooled by Hitler or having grown disenchanted toward the end of the war.  

I don't know how successful the Duke was at that rebranding, but that would seem to be his tactic for the interview and in this close relationship with a great-nephew that he barely knew.  Did Charles and David write that many letters back and forth?  

As for his past indiscretions, I'm sure Charles was told about them, but...again...different generation.  No Nazis to fight in 1970.  The existential war England fought in the 40s had nothing to do with him or his fellow young adults so carrying on his grandparents' and parents' grudges may not have appealed to him.  David was his mother's favorite uncle, after all, despite everything that had happened.  I doubt everything he heard was bitter.  And there were aspects to David that did not involve Nazis so I'm sure that any discussion between Charles and his great-uncle probably skipped that topic.

Though Derek Jacobi is a marvelous actor, I was disappointed that they replaced Alex Jennings who seemed to embody the role.  Jacobi doesn't have the Windsor look that Jennings does.  I think the episode would have been more powerful had Jennings been back for David's swan song.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Anothermi]

On 5/28/2020 at 9:06 AM, Wordsworth said:

I think he was trying to reinvent himself for the modern generation. 

My memory of what opinion I had of Edward and Wallis back in the '70s was that they embodied an epic love story. Clearly the propaganda effort worked.  I wasn't really aware of the Nazi connection until this show. Although I was NOT deeply concerned about the Royals (except that The Queen reminded me positively of my own mom) the abdication-love-story was one of the few things I thought I'd learned back then.  Time reveals. 

 

 

Edited August 20, 2020 by Anothermi
clarity

[Omeletsmom]

On 11/25/2019 at 10:08 AM, pasdetrois said:

She wasn't an heir, but there is an unauthorized biography of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother that asserts that she is the daughter of her mother and a staff member (footman? groom?). If I recall correctly, there were fertility difficulties and a suitable candidate was brought round to do the deed.

 

She was the ninth of 10 children.  I find that claim really hard to believe.

[iluvobx]

On 11/19/2019 at 9:25 AM, Roseanna said:

The King has no political power, he must do what his current Prime Minister "advices" him to do, so I don't think history would have changed a bit if Edward VIII hadn't abdicated.

I am not sure if his realationship with the Nazis was at all so clear as the series present, but I write more about it in the thread about history of monarchy.  

I think it really was clear.  BBC has done a series concerning the private papers of the monarchy.  It turns out that David was a much more SOB in real life than what was portrayed or originally thought.  He liked no one but himself and his pleasures.  I believe that if he had not abdicated, Britain would not be what it is today.  (I have recently learned that The Queen/King does have the authority to replace a Prime Minister).

David did have an agreement with the Nazis to help put him back into power.

[buttersister]

The show was kind in its portrayal of David. 

[iluvobx]

59 minutes ago, buttersister said:

The show was kind in its portrayal of David. 

Way too kind.

[buttersister]

Absolutely, iluvobx. It was an unfortunate, inaccurate choice. The problem is that the series includes some true events, is well-written and lavishly produced, which gives it an impression of authenticity. To diminish David's treasonous politics and claim meetings that never happened misleads. I can't imagine young Elizabeth seeking advice from the narcissist uncle who abdicated his responsibilities, forced her father onto the throne and ultimately, derailed the life she had planned.

[Camera One]

It does make me uneasy to watch this revisionist history.  By jumping from one character to another haphazardly this season, it's impossible to really understand or know any of them.  So now Charles is at the palace, and he's about to see the disgraced uncle in France, but we don't get to see him talk about it (or anything else) with his mother, or his father, or his grandmother.  It's like they need to have misunderstandings occur, so just don't have the characters communicate or interact with each other at all.  The whole Mother Gothel gets her hands on her gullible son's personal letters must have totally happened, right?

I'm finding Anne and Charles quite watchable, maybe because of the actors are likeable and have chemistry, and it's a nice break from the cipher aka Elizabeth doing yet another poker face so the audience has no idea what she's thinking, or if she's even thinking at all.  

[Macbeth]

I can buy Charles not knowing about David's Nazi past.  A lot of that information was treated as top secret by the government.  There is no way with the family having so little interacton with David would the Queen feel the need to tell Charles.  

 This particular episode is largely a work of fiction - Charles relating to David.  The story that comes out in the press is that Charles did visit him but it was a party and left early.  But I also think a lot of this series is a work of fiction.  I mean the BRF have worked very hard to hide behind protocol and mystery.

The series tries to bring up all the relevant facts it can - stuff that is well known like David's close Nazi ties.

When it comes to how to portray certain events - they will choose the most dramatic storyline like Dickie's coup.  It's possible it happened that way - it's possible it didn't.

They have outlines of events that is well known to the public regarding the BRF.  They rely on historians trying to fill in the events.  But so much will end up being guess work and will choose what is the most compelling story to watch.

 

[VCRTracking]

I did like Phillip not remembering the other secretary retired a few months earlier and that he gave him a clock!

Edited June 13, 2021 by VCRTracking

[Spartan Girl]

On 11/18/2019 at 10:05 AM, PeterPirate said:

I think the prank Charles played on Camilla is a key moment of the entire series.  Seeing any member of the royal family laugh out loud is a rarity for this show. 

I must admit it was refreshing to see Charles smile and laugh. It was a pretty funny prank.