Misty Krueger

Well well well. Where to begin? Oh, how about the mirror scene? Nah, I’m gonna tease y’all and say a few other things first.

Let me start by saying: SPOILERS for eps 4-8. That’s right. I have watched the last four episodes of Bridgerton, and I’m gonna refer to them. So, tread with caution, dear reader. If you haven’t watched all four eps, do that, save this post, and then read it.

Why watch the entire part 2 eps before blogging about each ep individually, or at least by two eps? I wanted to see where those episodes went before I blogged about eps 5 and 6. I have big feelings about how this latter half of season 3 handled Polin (Penelope + Colin), Cressida, and the rest of the couplings (there are two in development in eps 5 and 6) and the throupling (you know who I’m talking about). I wanted to see how Colin handles Lady Whistleldown. I wanted to see how the Queen handles Lady Whistledown. Clearly, there was so much more to see.

This season’s pacing was wacky. The first four eps (1-4) and the last four eps (5-8) were drastically different IMO because of the pacing and the way the writers smashed so much together in the latter half. I mean, my head was practically spinning with all of the stuff happening in each episode. So, part 1 was building to the carriage scene, which in previous seasons would have been much later in the season. But this season had different plans. Pen’s ultimate happy ending was not simply getting married to Colin, as was Daphne’s to the Duke and Kate to her Lord (see what I did there–I described the men by their titles only to show how the world sees them, not how I do).

Pen’s character arc for the entirety of season 3 was really split into two identities. There was Pen the wallflower who became the rose with a few thorns (and rightly so). Then there was Pen aka Lady Whistledown who became Penelope Bridgerton, authoress no longer incognito. Jekyll and Hyde? or Charlotte Brontë and Currer Bell? For most of episodes 7 and 8 I think Colin would say Lady W is Pen’s Hyde. And he wants to do away with that in part because of all the horrible things Lady W said about the Bridgertons and Colin and in part because dude is learning how to use his own pen (not a euphemism, but hey) and can’t share that with a woman it seems.

Yeah, Colin wants to be a published writer. Too bad too sad Pen has been publishing and earning money off of her writing, while Colin has been sulking because no one gave a shit he went away to screw his way across Europe. No, just kidding. He was doing that, but what he was really doing was trying his hand at becoming a travel writer. See, Colin has been reading too. He’s been enjoying a long tradition of male travel writers doing their thing and then writing about it and then feeling self-important. Can you tell Colin gets on my last nerve? 😀

But back to Pen. This season showed her coming out, so to speak, visually as someone to notice. The first part changed her attire, hair, and attitude. You remember: she decided she had to marry. No one told her to do that. Her mom was all Lady Bertram-like saying, hey Fanny you can take care of me forever. Nope. Pen was gonna take care of herself. She was gonna find a husband other than Colin-the-jerk-who-talked-shit-about-her-in-public. She was gonna do right by herself. And she almost did get engaged to that other guy who would have never been at home (perfect husband, no?). But no. Pen had that burning passion for Colin, and her newfound transformation gave her the courage to ask (make?) Colin to kiss her. And then whoa baby Colin had a change of heart. Suddenly Pen was all he could think about, and then in that carriage scene he became what my friend Vanessa calls Lord Fingerton. 😀

Let us not forget, Colin only thought Pen was that Penolope waiting for him forever as her namesake did for Odysseus. But she was still Lady W. Oh, the tension! Pen had two warring personalities. Who would win? or would both lose?

You see, as soon as part 2 of season 3 began, I had this awful feeling about what the writers were doing to Pen. Yes, the writers were feminizing her in a way that make all young women characters of her class, race, and nationality look like innocent pupils who need a man to show them the ways of the world–well at least in sex education because surely all white, cis, het, noble girls know nothing about sex. Remember? We learned that from Violet Bridgerton in season 1, and then Phoebe, but not Kate. (No comment on Kate.)

So when I watched episode 5, I was annoyed to find that Pen was no longer acting like Lady W but instead like a little girl in her doll clothes waiting to be undressed and deflowered. GET READY TO HATE ME. I’m about to say some things contrary to what most viewers on the internet have said about the Pen loses her maidenhead scene.

This scene. Y’all. I was not happy. This scene was so dominated by the male gaze. I think Colin enjoyed too much standing behind Pen as they were looking in the mirror and guiding her to have coitus with him. Colin was like this older man teaching a young girl how to become his woman. Aren’t they practically the same age? But I know so many people saw it as a friend helping a friend, as a lover loving his love. An article in Entertainment Weekly notes:

That sense of play was essential to nailing the scene. [Showrunner Jess] Brownell wanted this sex scene to be a bit more awkward and real than some of the steamier moments on the show, opting to include more explicit conversations about consent, acknowledgement of potential pain with it being Penelope’s first time, and more.

Here’s what Brownell had to say:

“In a Friends-to-Lovers season, I wanted the sex scene to feel grounded in a certain reality. We are in TV time and things are happening much more quickly than they would happen in real life. But in terms of including that first moment of pain, in terms of talking about consent a lot in the scene and in terms of there being a lot of laughter in the scene, I hope that it is a representation of a different kind of intimacy scene on television.”

I get it. From a feminist perspective, I just didn’t like what I was seeing. Allow me to say more.

In the mirror scene, Pen, who already had received some sexy time with Colin but not penetration by his penis, was so passive. Not passionate but passive. And Colin undresses her so that she can sit on the settee and watch him undress himself. There’s this hilarious moment where she is clearly looking at his off camera penis and her eyes get big! 😀 But no, she doesn’t get to touch it or anything. She is left holding her breasts with her hands. She is then laid on the settee, her torso and breasts laid bare, and Colin is inserting himself into her.

Quick note: we got to see Colin’s chest and bare bum, so at least there was that. But while he’s having sex with Pen, he gets to wear a blanket? Nope. Don’t do that. Don’t tell me that was for Pen’s (or Nicola Coughlan’s) discretion. It was for worldly Colin’s (or Luke Newton’s) discretion. And I get that for the actors. Totally OK with that. But if I suspend the disbelief and only see them as Polin, I’m disappointed.

And if time on the show’s clock is to be believed, this is an incredibly short sexual encounter. It was one of those, is there more? moments for Pen. For real. Colin was like, yeah. Pen was like, will there be more? Colin was like, yeah. Give me five minutes. So then we don’t get to see more. WHAT? That would have satisfied me (forgive the sexual language). To see Pen getting her chance to be active, not an object but a subject. We didn’t get that, and that’s what I wanted.

Apparently there were many more sex scenes for Polin that were cut from the second part of season 3. I’m glad there were more. I’m disappointed, as are many people, that they were cut–there’s even a petition to air those scenes. We needed to see Pen being sexually active, IMO, to know her better as a woman who has found her sexual private self but still gets to retain the good girl who will marry a Bridgerton public self. We also needed to know that Pen was, for a short time, having her dreams come true. She was Penelope-soon-to-be-a-Bridgerton and Lady Whistledown, and she was having sex with her hottie boy. Getting all that she wanted. But the show had too many damn things to try to include, and the sex scenes were cut for the sake of cramming all of the subplots into each ep.

So the writers wronged Pen. Shame on them! And of course, much of the latter part of this season was about shame. Penelope Whistledown being shamed by Colin. And then Colin treating her like shit before and after they married. Hell, even the costume designers shamed Pen.

I HATED Pen’s wedding dress. Wth was that? As I watched the ep, I was thinking why did the costumer give her such amazing gowns only to put her in this bland, vanilla nightgown, I mean, wedding dress? Then after the ep closed I had what might be an aha! moment or maybe just an I’m a little too high moment. I saw the wedding dress as a blank slate, like a blank page upon which Pen could write her own (new?) story. My friend (I think it was Caitlin) said it was like she was now a wife so had no story of her own. It was like all of her pages were deleted. She was wife. Stop there. I was wondering if the costumers were seeing her as having to give up all the frills and thrills. What did you think? Nicola is so beautiful, and that dress was so sad. God, how sad it was!

TBH, I’ve never been a fan of Polin because Colin has always been a doofus. But I respect that Pen always loved him. I still hate that she was shamed for much of the season for being Lady W. She was being forced by Colin and everyone else to make a choice: be a wife, or be a writer. Cuz, as Eloise tells her, you can’t be both.

Really? That’s reality. Bridgerton is not reality. It’s romance and fantasy. So, the fact that Pen ultimately gets to be both a wife and a writer is cool. Yet she has to expose herself as Lady Whisteldown to do that, and she has to kill her nom de plume in order to reveal herself as Penelope Bridgerton (cuz yeah she got married, by the way). It’s kind of cool that she keeps writing her column, but it doesn’t make any sense that it would be the same as Lady Whistledown’s because the clincher there was that it was anonymous. Anonymity gave her power. How much power will Pen Bridgerton–the named writer–have? No longer a fly on the wall, people will have their guard up around her. And when she dissed people they would know who did it. As my friends said when we watched the eps, people in the ton would treat her like shit. However, this is a fantasy, so she gets to have it all.

And so does Colin. Penelope “helps” him write his travelogue. How much help did he need? Did she edit, revise, rewrite? Was she a ghostwriter or an unnamed co-writer? But whatever the case, the readers liked his book. Hmm. I wonder why. So, Colin gets all the credit (well, he thanks her in the company of fam and friends) while Pen gets to keep writing at all. FFS, the patriarchy is alive and well.

So, tell me in the comments what you thought about Polin from start to finish. Feel free to disagree with me. We are all entitled to our opinions about Polin. What did you like about Penelope in episodes 5-8? What did you like about Colin? I’ll handle the other characters in another post, so let’s just sit with Polin and think about how well (or not) the season portrayed their story.

Were you satisfied with this ending? I was thinking that this might have to be an ending for them in large part because the previous two lovelines have barely existed in subsequent seasons. While Daphne got to appear in a few eps here and there, her husband never did. That’s because the actor refused to be typecast as the Duke. Good for him. Anthony had some presence in season 3, but the narrative sends him away to India.

So, if precedent holds, Colin and Pen will also show up every now and then in season 4, but they will be secondary to the next loveline–which might be Benedict’s, or maybe Eloise’s. Will Pen keep writing about the ton? What will the Queen do without her favorite rival? I do wonder if Lady Whistledown, who is officially done, will be resurrected in the form of Penelope Bridigerton with her snarky papers. Or, maybe this is it. Maybe we will never get to hear Julie Andrews’s voice again. Maybe it’s the end of an era. 😦

Hate to end on a sour note, so here’s one more thing to say about Polin. I particularly enjoyed Colin’s backpedaling, though I didn’t believe a word of it. As he praised Pen for her letter writing and then her Whistledown writing, talked about how awesome she is as a person, and eventually proclaimed to fam and friends that she is the glue that holds him together I laughed and laughed.

Thanks, writers, for that. 😀