TV Blog: Bridgerton

Happy new year friends! It is officially 2021 and I am back with a new TV blog.

I was hungover in bed this weekend after celebrating the new year and decided that the best way to nurse off my hangover, after the forced hydration and the faustian bargains, was to lay under my weighted blanket and watch something on Netflix.

And after some internal debate that I took to insta, I settled on Bridgerton.

I think that Bridgerton was released on Christmas or something but I didn't hear about it until a few days later when people on the internet were kind if chatting about it. So I walked in to the show and had no idea what the premise, or tone, or idea of the show was at all. All I knew is that it was a period piece on Netflix and that Shonda Rhimes made the show.

I want to digress and give y'all some background. I was not necessary a Rhimes fan prior to this. I was too young to be in to Grey's Anatomy. There was too much adultery for me to get in to Scandal. And I was in law school when How To Get Away With Murder was released, and at the time I could not watch shows about law school.

So this was kind of like a roll of the dice for me. I had no idea what to expect and honestly thought I would probably dislike it.

I'm gonna go in to spoilers now. So dip here if you want to preserve the show's secrets.....

You guys I have lost my absolute mind over this show

Have you ever felt like your brain was melting, but like in a euphoric way? Just like a completely euphoric fever dream? That's what this show did to me.

It was like if the visuals of Emma (2020) mixed with some of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette as well as the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice and had the absolutely bonkers plot lines of an ABC prime time drama-dy in the aughts (think Ugly Betty or Desperate Housewives), and then turn it all the way up to 10.

To give you an idea: There was an extended and gratuitous love scene that was set to a violin cover of Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift and the scene lasted for ageeessssssssssss.

I LOST MY ABSOLUTE GOURD OVER THIS SHOW

I was consumed. I spent the entire day just captivated by this show, binge watching because I had to know what the hell was going to happen to these landed gentry families.

The premise of the show is that it takes place in Regency Era England (I had to look that up, thanks Wikipedia). For historical context, this is when King George III went mad and his son, the Prince of Wales had to be king regent for him, because of the whole crazy party, and thus we are in regency.

I even wikipedia'd the Regency Era and it looks like guys actually had hair and probably mutton chops like on the show.

Anyway, our setting is London, at the beginning of the season where all of the landed gentry daughters of age have to come out into society in order to land a husband or risk being a spinster forever, which is the like the worst fate that could befall these girls. The main goal is to land a husband your first season, otherwise you have you keep getting recycled to the next season. The families have to be strategic about preparing their daughters, how many they should make available, and who they should match up with. There's true love matches, and scandal, and tons of drama.

Rather than giving y'all my takes of the entirety of the season, I'm just going to give y'all the play by play of my takes for each character because the characters in this show are sooooo rich.

Ok so first of all, the show is called Bridgerton (because it's based on a book series probably called Bridgerton), but also because it is the name of our protagonist family, the Bridgerton family.

The Bridgerton family is headed up by Mama Bridgerton. Her husband, the former Viscount and Papa Bridgerton, passed away several years ago, and she's actually deeply saddened by it because she genuinely was in love with her husband <3 Mama Bridgerton is just trying to look out for her kids and manages to get shit done through pure chismosa. Mama Bridgerton cares. I rate this character a 7/10 for being fun and supportive, even though she absolutely fails at explaining for her daughters where babies come from. This is the family patriarch/matriarch that Abraham Quintanilla wishes he was.

The 3 oldest Bridgerton brothers. I honestly cannot tell them apart. One of them is now the Viscount. They are all himbos. They all have separate and distinct plotlines, but I'm just gonna rate them all together. I guess a 5/10 like they were ok I guess, kinda meh.

Daphne: our main protagonist this season. Daphne is the eldest Bridgerton daughter and this is her first season of being in the husband hunt. The Queen officially declares her the baddest girl of the season, and she has a ton of hype to live up to. Daphne is that girl. And yet at the beginning of the season, she only has one crusty suitor... So she takes matters into her own hands and starts a secret shomance with the Duke of Hastings, aka the most sought after man in the husband hunt, so that she doesn't have to marry the crusty dude. Daphne is not afraid to throw hands. Daphne has the agency to actually move plots forward. It's dope. I love it. I love her. I just want her to be happy. There's a plotline where she makes a prince fall in love with her, a plotline where she has to intuit how the pull out method works, and another where she heals her husband's long held emotional trauma. She is precious. I want her to have it all. I am obsessed with her bangs and her eyebrows. Kinda sad she didn't become a princess though. 8/10

Eloise: the younger sister of Daphne and on the precipice of starting her own husband hunt next season. Eloise does not want a husband, she just wants to vibe, and I 100% get that. Eloise, girl same! Eloise is also obsessed with discovering the identity of Lady Whistledown, the Regency Era gossip girl who writes the regular gossip rag that everyone, even the Queen, obsesses over. I love Eloise for her blunt bangs, her earnest desire to be a solid friend for her homie Penelope and her sister Daphne, and her commitment to conspiracy theories. If Eloise was alive in 2020, she would be a Kaylor truther. 10/10

Baby Bridgertons: honestly I forgot that Francesca existed until the last episode. These are just the younger Bridgertons who aren't old enough to have their own plotlines yet.

Lady Whistledown: this is just the regency era gossip girl. Lady Whistledown is the nom de plume of an unknown London society person who writes a regular gossip rag that EVERYONE obsesses over. Lady Whistledown breaks all of the London society scandals and lives for drama. She wields a lot of power and the Queen and Eloise are obsessed with finding out her true identity. 8/10

The Queen: Married to King George III. I think she actually loves him because she looks sad when he's acting crazy :/ The Queen is bored and just lives for drama. It seems like the Bridgerton Recency society is accepting of POC members of the aristocracy because she married the King, but the show doesn't get super into it. I love that she lives for drama and I love that she loves conspiracy theories like Eloise. 7/10

The Featherington family: across the street neighbors of the Bridgertons. One would assume that they were once alike in dignity, but Papa Featherington gambled away all of their money and the girls have trouble landing husbands. They do tooooons of shady stuff throughout the show and are generally kind of awful. The only saving grace of the Featherington family is Penelope, who is precious and an angel and must be protected. She is best friends with Eloise, in love with Collin Bridgerton, and the only one who is kind of nice to Marina, their pregnant ward. Penelope: 8/10, Rest of the family: 7/10 for being diabolical and messy.

The Duke of Hastings: So hot but so so troubled. The Duke comes back to London at the beginning of the season to settle his dead father's affairs. The Duke hates his dad because his dad sucked. Everyone wants to marry their daughter to the Duke and he is adamant to not marry. So he has a shomance with Daphne so that she can get a not-crusty suitor and so that people will leave him alone about getting married. Then he actually falls in love with Daphne. you guys <3 I was so happy. 

The Duke's big struggle is that in order to spite his father on his deathbed, he swore to never have children so as not to add to the Hastings lineage. Because he does not want kids, he does not want a wife. He wants the Hastings title to die with him.

So look, I get hating your dad. Like my dad sucks too. But Simon is giving this dude way too much power over his life. Your dad is dead Simon! You won doll!

Simon's bigger issue is just that he has a lot of childhood trauma and doesn't believe himself worthy of love or happiness. He tries to chase it away throughout the series. He tries to convince himself that he isn't in love with Daphne, even though he obviously is. He causes a scandal (kisses her in a garden), and thus has the perfect reason to marry her and he just won't. Tries to have this dumb duel with her brother where Daphne ends up forcing him into marriage. Then has the opportunity to be perfectly happy with his wife, who desperately wants children, and is just like "I'm not gonna knock you up". Like bro, come on, just be happy you dummy. Finally he gets over his emotional trauma enough to seemingly be happy with his wife, but it doesn't happen until the second to last scene of the season. And after his wife cries a lot and he keeps threatening to divorce her. So much of the heartache that happens between the Duke and Daphne is just because they don't communicate their honest feelings with each other. So stressful. But I shipped them so much. I haven't shipped anyone this much since me and my own boyfriend. 7/10

LOOK AT HOW CUTE THEY ARE EVEN WHEN THEY AREN'T ACTING ANYMORE <3 <3 <3

I just want them to be in love you guys.

Lady Danbury: The Duke's surrogate mom. All around good person. Ships Daphne and the Duke. 7/10

The Prince of Prussia: vanilla but safe. Also a prince. He is in love with Daphne and she could have been perfectly happy with this guy and their life would have been so simple---and these are thoughts I kept revisiting when Daphne and the Duke finally got married but kept fighting and threatening to live apart and stuff. 6/10

Marina: Marina was that girl. Even though the Queen declared Daphne the baddest girl of the season, Marina was actually the hottest shit that ever came to London apparently. Marina is some random girl who gets dumped off on the Featherington family and they have to take her in and tell everyone that she's their distant cousin. Everyone loses their gourd over Marina at the beginning of the season, then we find out that she's actually pregnant and the father is some dude in a war in Spain (this was a legit regency war per wikipedia). Mama Featherington does a bunch of diabolical stuff like fake letters from the baby daddy, set Marina up with crusty dudes, and then help her engineer a plan to trap Collin Bridgerton into a marriage by scandal. Marina and her pregnancy get exposed by Lady Whistledown and she ends up marrying the brother of her baby daddy because her baby daddy is dead. 5/10.

I could go on. There are so many more characters: Will the boxer guy, the dress maker lady, that opera singer who is in love with Antony and keeps letting him treat her like garbage. But this blog is not a book and you should just watch this lovely lovely series.

Overall show rating, on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is hot garbage and 5 is perfection. This is a 5.5. I'm not even kidding. I didn't want to do that because I respect the rating system here at the Bella Life 2, but this show is sublime. It melted my brain. It captivated me for an entire day of hungover Netflix binging.

I NEED SEASON 2 MS. RHIMES!