S01.E04: Part Four

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

Simon is intimate with Mrs. Humphrey in 1859; Jamie confesses his love in 1843

[LilWharveyGal]

I hate to say anything negative about this show because I find the story absolutely riveting, but...does Anna Paquin seem, shall we say, miscast to anyone else?

[Solace247]

11 hours ago, LilWharveyGal said:

I hate to say anything negative about this show because I find the story absolutely riveting, but...does Anna Paquin seem, shall we say, miscast to anyone else?

Yes. I try to give actors the benefit of the doubt because I feel there's more than one way an actor can play a character without it being deemed 'awful acting' (which IMO is lobbied about too often). In this case though, I agree with you about miscasting. I'm sure there's something that is supposed to be off about Nancy, but a few of the exchanges seem reaaallly off, as in bizarrely portrayed.

[PinkRibbons]

I think one of the issues is that at this point, Grace's memories are becoming much more suspect. Like, the closer we come to the murders, the less trusting we can be of her. In this episode we're already seeing flashes of her as told by McDermott, and they are pretty opposite to the way Grace remembers herself. So any inconsistency in Nancy is kind of understandable because of what filter we're seeing her through.

That being said, I think Anna Paquin is so far the worst of the cast when it comes to the period dialog. She just can't make it sound natural the way Sarah Gadon can, or even the actor playing Dr. Jordan. And that is really jarring.

Anyone else notice the description of this episode didn't match the episode? We didn't see anything about Dr. Jordan and Mrs. Humphrey.

[Solace247]

A lot of the dialogue is spoken quickly as well. I'm usually fine with various accents, but a couple of times I've had to rewind to grab a few of Grace's, Nancy's, or that stable boy character's words because of the rapidity of their delivery. The doctor's delivery is almost sloth-like in comparison, so no trouble there, heh. 

[LilWharveyGal]

Good points, and I'm glad I'm not alone!

31 minutes ago, PinkRibbons said:

That being said, I think Anna Paquin is so far the worst of the cast when it comes to the period dialog. She just can't make it sound natural the way Sarah Gadon can, or even the actor playing Dr. Jordan. And that is really jarring.

I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about Zachary Levi's performance that also strikes me as too modern.  But I agree that AP is the worst so far, and also that some of her acting choices have seemed bizarre.

[Dels]

I assumed Nancy's awkwardness came from her trying to act the part of 'lady of the house'.  It was deliberately unnatural because she had been a servant doing drudge work up until recently.  It does make sense too that Grace's memories of her are a bit dubious as well.

[LittleIggy]

I would have run off with Jeremiah. What a hottie!

[Anothermi]

Quote

Simon is intimate with Mrs. Humphrey in 1859;

 

On 2017-10-18 at 8:11 AM, PinkRibbons said:

Anyone else notice the description of this episode didn't match the episode? We didn't see anything about Dr. Jordan and Mrs. Humphrey.

I can't place which episode it was in, but it was either this one, or spread between this one and last one.

Mrs. Humphrey is his landlady, I believe.  She brought him breakfast and woke him from a dream about Grace where he was enveloping Grace with his coat and wrapping his arms around her with her seeming to melt into his embrace.

In that scene, Mrs. Humphrey fainted while putting his tray of food on the table and he learned that her husband has left and there is no more food in the house other than that which she just gave him.  She, herself, had not eaten for quite some time.  He went out and got breakfast for them both and promised to advance her a couple of months lodging fees to give her time to figure out what to do. (this may have been last episode)

So, if that was last episode, this episode had a very brief scene where Dr. Jordan is shown preparing a meal and Mrs. Humphrey is sitting watching and telling him he is more caring of her than her husband. He stopped for a moment (and I heard "Duh, duh, DUH!" in my head) and then he continued preparing the food. 

It's a bit if a stretch, but I think the "intimate" in the description was ambiguous, but could be used to describe him caring enough for her that he became HER care-giver.  Intimacy doesn't always mean making love, but sometimes meaningful/poignant interaction.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Anothermi
spelling

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I agree that as we get closer to the circumstances leading to the murders, Grace will become a less reliable narrator. I think that she has been mostly honest with Simon about her childhood and her life at the first house where she worked. And even in this episode, I think she was still mostly being honest (she admitted that after she found out that Nancy was sleeping with Mr. Kinnear, she lost respect for her and we saw her talking back to Nancy).

As bad as I felt for Grace when Mary died, I felt even worse for her in this episode when she realized that if she left this job, she would end up with the same lifetime of drudgery at a different house. I also felt terrible for her when Kinnear, Nancy, and McDermott all felt the need to be nosy and creepy about her sitting in the orchard with Jamie on her birthday. What they did was no different than all the times they sat on the porch, yet everyone had to make it sound like she was running through the orchard naked. She described it perfectly when she said she felt like they had all taken turns peeking in through the keyhole in her bedroom door.

McDermott in particular has a shitty attitude about, well, I was going to say women but then I realized that he has a shitty attitude about EVERYTHING. All he does is bitch and whine and then call everyone names. For fuck's sake, dude. What a miserable person.

I wish she had left with Jeremiah or married Jamie. At least those two gave a shit about and didn't treat her like garbage.

[tennisgurl]

I really have no idea who to believe now. I agree that I think Grace has been mostly honest about her life with her family and her time with the first house, but I have no clue who to believe now. It really is hard to get a read on Grace. I feel bad for all the awful things that have happened to her and her clear despair at her lack of options, but there is something rather...off about her. Even without knowing she killed somebody. 

I did hope that she would run off with Jeremiah or tell Jaimie she would marry him when he got older. I knew she wouldn't, and neither of those situations were ideal, but at least either would be better than her current situation with the house full of creeps. At least they're both nice to her and would give her some options beyond scrubbing floors for rich people for the rest of her life. Or put in jail. 

[Zima]

Hm. I was kind of iffy on the son of the last household being the person that had gotten Mary pregnant, and suspected maybe it was Jeremiah instead.  The events in this episode have me thinking this might indeed be the case after all. 

[PinkRibbons]

If I have any complaint about the casting, it's probably George Parkinson. He just gave off too skeevy a vibe for me to really believe Mary would fall for him and his lies. The little we see of him before her death seemed flippantly flirty, and Mary was so sure about her beliefs when it came to men, I find it hard to see this George completely hoodwinking her.

Fun fact though, when I first saw the scene after the women come in to see Mary dead, I thought it seemed strange for Grace to tell Mrs. Parkinson that Mary had said that she (Mrs. Parkinson) wouldn't like it at all if she knew who the man was, since we didn't actually see Mary say that to Grace (only that she couldn't say who it was. I didn't know why it was bothering me because of course Mary could have said it off-screen to Grace and we weren't shown. Then I reread (well, re-listened) to the book and in fact, in the book while telling her story Grace outright tells Dr. Jordan that she lied to Mrs. Parkinson about what Mary had said because Grace had her own suspicions about the baby-daddy.

The fun part is watching the show knowing this, because in the flashback scenes Grace delivers that line perfectly earnestly. But in the show, she doesn't tell Dr. Jordon she lied, so here is one place you might be truly able to see the flashback as being false, even if just from the delivery of one line. Or maybe Grace was a really good liar in the flashback and what were shown is exactly what it looked like. GAH THE ENIGMA AND THE SUBTLETY.

Edited November 29, 2017 by PinkRibbons

[Paloma]

On 11/28/2017 at 11:29 PM, PinkRibbons said:

If I have any complaint about the casting, it's probably George Parkinson. He just gave off too skeevy a vibe for me to really believe Mary would fall for him and his lies. The little we see of him before her death seemed flippantly flirty, and Mary was so sure about her beliefs when it came to men, I find it hard to see this George completely hoodwinking her.

Yeah, I found it hard to believe that she would be attracted to George and not see how he was as duplicitous as other men. OTOH, maybe she really wanted to believe that this was true love and that he would marry her and take her out of the servant life. Certainly there are plenty of women IRL who fall for men who everyone else can see are cads.

[Anothermi]

Given that Grace can only be an unreliable narrator for us, perhaps what Grace presented as Mary's lessons on not trusting men were actually opinions Grace formed after seeing what happened to Mary.  It's arguable that Mary could still be perceived as the genesis of those opinions (so not a lie as far as Grace was concerned) but not have formed them for herself. She embodied the one(s) Grace formed. Most of us don't "bookmark" the exact time or way we came to form an opinion.