TV Blog: The Crown

My S.O. is from England, and he's always told me that for some reason, American people are much more captivated by the English Queen and her family than actual English people are. It's some sort of American obsession, like we threw off this oppressive monarchy, only to nostalgically wax on about it.

Which is actually pretty true. The first time he took me to England, I was cheesily star struck at Buckingham Palace. And I was like the only person who actually wanted to watch the Queen's Christmas Address.

All to say that Netflix recently released it's fourth season of The Crown, and people I know in real life, and also strangers on twitter lost their minds over it. I've watched all of the prior seasons, and I don't remember people losing their absolute minds over the show like they have this season.

The latest season takes place is the 70s/80s, and focuses on the Queen of course, but also her kids, notably Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and his wife PRINCESS DI.

I think I've always kind of been obsessed with Princess Di, because as a child born in the 90s, I was raised by a mom who is a Princess Di stan.

Also because I have been a longtime admirer of her sweater collection that for some reason featured wooly critters on them.

Let me be clear: The Crown, much like the royal family itself, is just sophisticated looking trash. I know this. You should know this. This show is a telenovela, a soap opera. It just happens to have actors with posh accents, and posh settings. But I do like to delude myself into believing that somehow this is educational TV.

I mean, I learned about how the Queen's art curator was a secret Soviet spy, and how there was that awful landslide in Wales that hit the grade school, and how Prince Philip's mom was an exiled princess turned nun, or how Lord Mountbatten's boat was exploded by the IRA, or how tragic young Princess Margaret was ( :( ).

I think the difference with this season is that most of the audience knows the story about how bad Di's marriage to Charles was, and how he was having an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles, and how toxic it was in that family (so toxic that some people think that Prince Philip had Di assassinated by MI5), and how miserable everyone was.

The Crown leads up to it nicely. Last season we got Prince Charles being madly in love with Camila Parker Bowles, but thwarted in marrying her because his family didn't like her. They even had a scene where the Prince Charles actor cries over it. I actually felt bad for the dude!!! And people not being allowed to marry who they actually want to marry is kind of a theme throughout the show.

So anyway, here are some thoughts I had while watching the show, spoilers ahead I guess. The show is literally historically based though, so....

Ok, first off, there was a part on The Crown where some paparazzi were like "Prince Charles, the heartthrob prince" or called him handsome or something and this has haunted me ever since....

You're telling me that there was actually a time when women.... thought that this man.... was a heartthrob??????

IT HAS HAUNTED ME

Like ladies what are we doing? Do we have no standards anymore? Is every future king a heartthrob? I read somewhere that we accept the love we think we deserve---so why don't we love ourselves???

If you're curious, these are the best looking photos I could find of him on google photo search

I mean, maybe?????

The show has also had real life repercussions. I saw in the news that after the show, Charles and Camilla had to disable comments on their social media accounts because they were getting so much hate based on how they were portrayed in the show.

I don't want to say that anyone ever deserves to get cyber bullied, but I did have to do a spit take during that episode where Camilla took Di out to lunch and was all like "I don't mind sharing". Like girl WTF!

Full disclosure: I only got through the episode where Charles and Di are in Australia and they reconcile briefly. I had to stop watching because it made me too sad. I knew they wouldn't stay reconciled forever. I know where it's gonna go, and I know that it's gonna hurt :(

I don't know if I'll ever be in the right emotional state to finish this season. It's much more easier to forget the very true life tragedy of Princess Di for other, somewhat less painful ones:

But for real, why do bad things happen to people with nice hair?????

WHAT WAS THE REASON?????

In summation: rest in peace Lady Di. I wonder what would have happened, if in the 80s, someone told you that an internet streaming program would someday develop a tv series that would put your in-laws on blast and lead to the cyberbullying of your ex-husband and his mistress.