S01.E04: Holding The King

[Door County Cherry]

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George's hidden struggles--and the extreme measures he's undertaken for a chance of future happiness with Charlotte--finally come to light. 

 

[quarks]

I found this episode difficult to watch - at least in part because I was expecting a very fluffy show, much like Bridgerton, and this episode was....not that.

That said, the second this episode was over I marathoned right into the next one.

[TiredMe]

Yea no feeling thrilled about my light fluffy show after this one. Plus does not his issues surface quite some years into the marriage? Idk, I feel like I did not need to see all this. 

[Atlanta]

I just wanted to yell, "Get Dr Evil out of there!" Don't let him near the king or Charlotte. 

[mrsbagnet]

I couldn't tell if the doctor was really trying to help George or if he was trying to manipulate and gain control over him for his own purposes.

[buttersister]

Was all that torture really necessary (to show)? Sadistic-porn is not what I'm looking for in a Bridgerton story. Show some, make your point, let the "doctor" give progress reports (I don't call "again" and everybody get out of here something that should have been tolerated) and let's move on. 

[Atlanta]

This is when I wish worlds could collide and Claire from Outlander shows up. LOL 

[pasdetrois]

I'm disappointed in this series. I know it's meant to be somewhat fanciful, but endless torture of a powerful king while no one intervenes is so unrealistic as to be just stupid. What were the writers thinking?

[shapeshifter]

4 minutes ago, pasdetrois said:

endless torture of a powerful king while no one intervenes is so unrealistic as to be just stupid. What were the writers thinking?

I was also disturbed by this and did a bit of research, which I posted in the next thread. Here's the portion not spoilery for this thread:

On 5/6/2023 at 8:01 PM, shapeshifter said:

The real life King George III was apparently treated successfully by a doctor Francis Willis, but this might not be entirely true, given the way royal illnesses were kept secret, as depicted in this series. Anyway:

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Willis's treatment of the King at The White House, Kew, included many of the standard methods of the period, including coercion, restraint in a strait jacket and blistering of the skin, but there was also more kindness and consideration for the patient than was then the norm.

When on 26 February 1789 Willis's bulletin described the "entire cessation of his Majesty's illness" he became a British celebrity and was soon recognised through five portraits by John Russell, one of the most renowned portrait painters of the day. Willis commissioned a special medal to commemorate his own achievements. The Reverend Doctor Francis Willis was rewarded by the King with £1,500 a year for 21 years and assistant and son Dr John Willis with £650 a year for the rest of his life.[11] The King's recovery made Willis's national reputation and he had to open a second establishment at nearby Shillingthorpe Hall (in the parish of Braceborough) to accommodate the numbers of patients seeking his help. Shillingthorpe Hall was demolished in 1949.

The front of the medal issued by Dr Willis to commemorate his 'cure' of King George III. The rear says Britons Rejoice, Your King's Restored, along with the date of 1789.

Twelve years later in 1801 King George suffered a relapse and his symptoms returned. On the second occasion he was treated by two of Francis's sons, also physicians, John Willis and his younger brother, Robert Darling Willis. The King had a final relapse in 1810 that proved incurable and he lapsed into an illness and madness that lasted until his death in 1820.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Willis_(physician)#Treating_the_King

George's condition after Chalotte rescues him from the dungeon reminds me of JFK's sister's lobotomy Lobotomy's were not being done at the time of this story, but they did mention trepanning in the previous episode, which George's mother refused to allow. She never officially signed on to torture either. She rejected those doctors and went with this one because he said in the last episode he was going to use talk therapy — for which Sigmund Freud is usually credited with inventing, but not until about 100 years later.
I would have liked the Shondaland doctor to have been an early pioneer of talk therapy, aka psychoanalysis, but I suppose the torture was more common.  

[DearEvette]

My least fave episode of the season so far.  It is interesting to see events from George's perspective and I like seeing more of how he and Reynolds interact with each other.  Nice to get some depth to that relationship.  But I hated the scenes of Dr. Quackery.

One thing I did appreciate is that George was not 100% in thrall to this doctor.  He submitted to all of this voluntarily because he wanted to get better and felt this was his route, but then when he wanted to he cut the guy lose.  It wasn't some weird psychological dependence. 

Which was good because I got weird vibes from the doctor.  He seemed more invested in his propinquity to the Throne and using George as his royal guinea pig more than actually being invested in curing George.  When George cut him lose, he didn't argue to remain because he thought he was seeing some improvements or on any merits about George's well being.  And then when George saw he was still there, Dr. Quack sounded smug about it that he had successfully circumvented George's will and had one upped him. 

Based on how George is acting, I can't figure out what the modern day equivalent of his illness is supposed to be.  I know that the two leading theories of George's madness are Porphyria and Bipolar disorder.  Given how they are portraying George's episodes here it feels like the show is hedging it's bets and trying to maybe portray both?  I can clearly see in some of them what looks like manic episodes.  But the episodes of acute confusion and disassociation are said to be symptoms of the other. 

I really need Charlotte and George to stop being at cross purposes so much.  The first season of Bridgerton  there was this great scene of Charlotte and George and the way it was played you could tell there was deep love there.  I want to get there.  There are two episodes left!  Come on show!

And Finally, the rendition of Deja Vu at the top of the episode was fantastic.

[ursula]

13 minutes ago, DearEvette said:

And then when George saw he was still there, Dr. Quack sounded smug about it that he had successfully circumvented George's will and had one upped him. 

Any doubts I had about the Doctor - was he a well-intentioned quack - vanished when he deliberately triggered George's anxiety attack by lowkey threatening Charlotte and dropping the bomb of her pregnancy on him. I really wish Charlotte had had him shot.

Yeah, they seem to be going the Hollywood Mental Illness with George. He seems to be suffering from an uneven combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Edited May 10, 2023 by ursula

[Enero]

46 minutes ago, ursula said:

Any doubts I had about the Doctor - was he a well-intentioned quack - vanished when he deliberately triggered George's anxiety attack by lowkey threatening Charlotte and dropping the bomb of her pregnancy on him. I really wish Charlotte had had him shot.

Yeah, they seem to be going the Hollywood Mental Illness with George. He seems to be suffering from an uneven combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

This. My problem with the doctor besides him calling that cute puppy  a “stupid beast” and having it confined to a cage, the torture and utter disrespect towards George, was that his “treatments” did not include any attempt to have George continue to interact with his family and others. It was complete isolation, especially the last sessions. I wonder what would’ve been his game plan if he’d succeeded in breaking George like he planned? Cause George would’ve been no use to the country or Charlotte if that happened. His mind would’ve been gone. Would the doctor have tried to skip town? Cause surely there would’ve been hell to pay had his treatments resulted in George becoming completely incapacitated. 

 

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Based on how George is acting, I can't figure out what the modern day equivalent of his illness is supposed to be.  I know that the two leading theories of George's madness are Porphyria and Bipolar disorder

@DearEvette I thought George suffered from severe anxiety disorder, which can include delusions. For his episodes seemed to be triggered by him becoming upset, stressed or having anxiety.

Edited May 10, 2023 by Enero

[janie jones]

Yeah I think the doctor had no intention of helping George. He just wanted to experiment on him. He made the mother and the other doctors think he was just going to talk to George, not torture him.

[peridot]

This was an interesting episode.  I liked seeing George's point of view of events so far.

It seems George's illness is triggered by stress.  I thought the doctor was a good guy at first, but then he kept trying to isolate George and complain about how the new house might trigger a relapse.  That poultice-making in the kitchen was very insidious so that George could relapse.

I didn't realize that the house did all that preparation when George moved back into Buckingham.  It must be awful to not trust your own actions.  I really hated the end scene when George went back into that bastard's lair.

[Gloriosa]

I found this episode to be mostly filler.  There was a little movement toward an explanation  of George's actions, but not much!

[Maya]

Hated this episode. Hated the doctor and the dogs in cages in the science lab. 

[Mikay]

I found this episode to be devastating to watch. I’d argue that we learn a lot about George from this hour of television. The show seemed to suggest that he’s had health/mental health issues for his whole life, and that he’s internalized the idea that his issues reflect poorly on the nation. That’s a lot of pressure. He’s willing to accept horrendous, but largely accurate for the time mental health treatment, to be worthy of Charlotte and be worthy of his position as king. He wants to get better and yet the treatment for mental health issues is basically just psychological and physical torture. As someone with my own mental health issues, I could really relate to that feeling of not being good enough or stable enough for relationships, work or even life. Being mentally ill can be very alienating. Though obviously we’ve come a long way from openly terrorizing patients. 
 

 

[chaifan]

On 5/10/2023 at 8:44 PM, janie jones said:

Yeah I think the doctor had no intention of helping George. He just wanted to experiment on him. He made the mother and the other doctors think he was just going to talk to George, not torture him.

I got the impression that the doctor went in with good intentions, and to do the talk therapy as Agatha had said.  But, once George confronted him about keeping the best medicine/information to himself, and giving the doctor the green light to proceed as he would if George were not king (a celebrity patient), the doctor proceeded to do what he believed was cutting edge treatment for the madness.  The doctor could not have proceeded along those lines if George hadn't explicitly given him the go-ahead, and instructed his staff to not intervene no matter how crazy things got. 

I thought it was odd that at least 30% of the episode was a "clip show", as we used to call them.  That would be fine if this were the good old days of 20-24 episodes in a season.  (And where you'd normally have a "clip show" somewhere mid-season.)  But if there are only 6 episodes, that seems like a waste of precious 20 minutes. 

Last episode I questioned why if George were spending his nights looking at the sky (Venus tracking) he couldn't at least have breakfast or lunch with Charlotte.  This episode explained it all, and I think that was very well done. 

At this point, I've realized I am going to miss this show when it's done.  I am actually liking the core cast and the central story line more than Bridgerton.

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 5/10/2023 at 4:54 PM, ursula said:

Any doubts I had about the Doctor - was he a well-intentioned quack - vanished when he deliberately triggered George's anxiety attack by lowkey threatening Charlotte and dropping the bomb of her pregnancy on him. I really wish Charlotte had had him shot.

Yeah, they seem to be going the Hollywood Mental Illness with George. He seems to be suffering from an uneven combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Maybe I'm too naive, but I didn't see the doctor as deliberately setting out to trigger George's anxiety when I originally watched. I guess now that I think about it, given that we didn't see Charlotte actually asking for treatment by the doc, it's supposed to be the case that doc was lying to George to trigger him. But then maybe she did track him down for help and we're supposed to take the scene as face value. After all, Charlotte's pregnancy is huge news and would be considered an unabashed positive. 

[andromeda331]

Poor George. Poor Charlotte. I wasn't sure what to think of the doctor until the dog. I wanted him dead for what said about the dog and later for his treatments for George. I know they are mostly accurate for the time but it's hard to watch and even harder to imagine how it could actually work.

I wonder if George would be help with a therapist from some of the stuff he talked about his childhood. I understand Augusta giving the doctor a chance nothing else is working. 

I'm glad Charlotte finally knows. She really needs to know.

[tennisgurl]

That was really hard to watch, but I think it was necessary to better understand George and his perspective. When we were following Charlotte his behavior seemed so strange, alienating, and cruel, but when seeing what he was going through and why he was doing things like leaving Charlotte to her own devices during their honeymoon, it all makes a lot more sense. I really feel terribly for him, having a mental illness is hard enough in the best of circumstances, but having this extreme amount of pressure put on him from the day he was born, having to hide his struggles, and living in a time period before people understood mental illness makes it even harder, not even taking into account the horrible tortures that were what were considered treatments back in the day. He really does think that keeping himself away from Charlotte is the best thing for her and feels so ashamed of his illness, like its a moral failing, it really does add so much context as to why he is the way he is. 

I don't generally fault doctors for performing treatments that we would now consider barbaric, they just didn't know everything we know now and were trying to help as best as they could, but George's doctor seems like a real bastard. At first I thought that he might at least be well intentioned even if watching his "treatments" was horrible, but after watching the whole episode I think that the guy is a smug bastard who's more interested in using George as a test subject than as a patient. Not only was he cruel to the poor puppy, it really felt like he was deliberately trying to give George an anxiety attack when he told him to leave the palace, after smugly telling him that he went over his head and that he, his wife, and their unborn child are stuck with him. His treatments were sadly accurate for time, but he seems to be really getting off on getting free reign to try all of his treatments on such an important person. 

I really felt for both Charlotte and George when Charlotte was yelling at the queen about hiding his illness. It must be terrifying to realize that your married to someone with such an intense illness that no one understands that can lead to such erratic behavior seemingly out of nowhere, but it must have been terrible for George to hear how horrified Charlotte sounded when she talked about his illness, something that he is already ashamed of.

I'm not really sure what mental illness George is supposed to have, it seems to be connected with severe anxiety mixed with delusions, but we don't know what the real George had either so I guess its at least close to accurate, even with all of the artistic license the show is taking. 

[janie jones]

On 5/14/2023 at 8:44 PM, chaifan said:

I thought it was odd that at least 30% of the episode was a "clip show", as we used to call them.  That would be fine if this were the good old days of 20-24 episodes in a season.  (And where you'd normally have a "clip show" somewhere mid-season.)  But if there are only 6 episodes, that seems like a waste of precious 20 minutes. 

I didn't see it as a clip show, more of a Rashomon thing. They even showed parts of the "clips" from different angles, if I recall.

45 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

That was really hard to watch, but I think it was necessary to better understand George and his perspective. When we were following Charlotte his behavior seemed so strange, alienating, and cruel, but when seeing what he was going through and why he was doing things like leaving Charlotte to her own devices during their honeymoon, it all makes a lot more sense. 

Not just George, but Reynolds, too. In the episodes before this, I thought he was shady and up to something, but it turned out he was just trying to protect the king.

[DearEvette]

1 hour ago, janie jones said:

On 5/14/2023 at 11:44 PM, chaifan said:

I thought it was odd that at least 30% of the episode was a "clip show", as we used to call them.  That would be fine if this were the good old days of 20-24 episodes in a season.  (And where you'd normally have a "clip show" somewhere mid-season.)  But if there are only 6 episodes, that seems like a waste of precious 20 minutes. 

I didn't see it as a clip show, more of a Rashomon thing. They even showed parts of the "clips" from different angles, if I recall.

Yeah, that it my take on it.  Sort a rewind to show events from George's perspective. They would start from the same clip but then they'd add something to cue that this was different, a different angle, a completely different shot, or  a longer lingering reaction from George,  or it would cut in places to emphasize parts that stood out for him.

I mentioned above that I liked the version of Beyonce's  Deja Vu they used in this.  Really, it rather slaps!  When I went back and did a re-watch of that segment, the immediacy of the music felt really in step with what felt like a manic episode for George. Also the song was Deja Vu, LOL, a play on what the show was doing.  Showing us something we had already seen before.

[chaifan]

3 hours ago, DearEvette said:

Yeah, that it my take on it.  Sort a rewind to show events from George's perspective. They would start from the same clip but then they'd add something to cue that this was different, a different angle, a completely different shot, or  a longer lingering reaction from George,  or it would cut in places to emphasize parts that stood out for him.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the episode, and I loved the concept of getting two very different perspectives between the two episodes.  I just thought the repetitive nature of it was a weird choice for such a limited run series, where truly every minute counts.

 

 

[roseslg]

Something I completely missed (I FF a lot of his scenes with the doc) is when he told the doc his wife had done more for his treatment than he had. It makes the doctors ominous mention of making a poultice for Charlotte more sinister and presents more of a reason why that would set George off to the point where he ran out to the garden. I don't know how I completely missed that.

 

In any case, I liked seeing how he was so clearly smitten with her. A lot of the language he uses to describe her she uses later on when searching for the diamond of the season.

[andromeda331]

On 5/16/2023 at 10:54 AM, janie jones said:

I didn't see it as a clip show, more of a Rashomon thing. They even showed parts of the "clips" from different angles, if I recall.

Not just George, but Reynolds, too. In the episodes before this, I thought he was shady and up to something, but it turned out he was just trying to protect the king.

I was really wondering about Reynolds.  I love that it turned out that he was protecting the King. He was to George what Brimsley was to Charlotte.

[catrice2]

The smile and laugh that he gives after finding out about her deformed bunny comment is just beautiful to see.

[magdalene]

I think the doctor was a particular nasty variety of sadist trying to do the most harm possible and reveling in it.  He made George even more anxious. If I were Charlotte I would have had him imprisoned so he could never harm anybody else again.

[Orcinus orca]

13 minutes ago, magdalene said:

I think the doctor was a particular nasty variety of sadist trying to do the most harm possible and reveling in it.  He made George even more anxious. If I were Charlotte I would have had him imprisoned so he could never harm anybody else again.

Sadly, that type of treatment was actually commonplace in mental institutions back then.  And until medicatons were developed for various conditions, physical "treatments" continued well into the 20th century.