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Starz is finally emerging from the dense Philippa Gregory woods full of historical nonsense and giving us some solid period dramas. Between Mary & George and The Serpent Queen, I am quite pleased with them. This show is a delight. I thought it was just going to be Stuartian sexcapades, and it’s not not that, but the writing is sharp and funny and Veep-like without being too jarring. (I love it.)
I will say right now that there is a large trigger warning for attempted suicide in both this show and the recap. It happens multiple times in the show and is made light of by Julianne Moore’s character both times, so if that does not work for you, be warned.
We begin in 1592! Mary Villiers (Moore) gives birth, and the servant immediately drops the baby. Mary tells baby George that he is a second son and, therefore, will inherit nothing of any human value. She also refuses to let them cut the cord, so he’s just literally attached to her for who knows how long. Foreshadowing!
We flash to 1612, and George is nineteen. He has hanged himself in the forest, and Mary comes up to him, cuts him down, and says, “Good morning, George.” This appears to be a regular situation that she takes in stride. George has a lot of feelings, and Mary has a lot of ambition, and she will make her feelings-ridden son go places. Places that aren’t banging the maid because that’s mainly what he’s doing right now. He and Jenny, the maid, are in LOVE, he says, and he will be with her. Mary tells him, “That’s not how it works; that’s not how a single thing fucking works.” (I love it so much.)
Having George for a son is what I imagine having a Romantic-era poet for a son must have been like. The fact that Mary can make him do anything except lie in a field of daisies is astonishing. George is very upset because he has to go to France to learn to be a gentleman, and Jenny is not in France. In the midst of this argument, Mary says, “If I were a man and I looked like you, I’d rule the fucking planet,” and I believe her. Should this whole recap just be Mary quotes? Maybe. Also, thank God they’re still casting Julianne Moore in things. Remember when Bette Davis put out an ad right after Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? looking for work? She was 54 when that movie came out. Moore is currently 63. Fantastic.
George’s father dies, and no one is sad because he was terrible. He was angry that he “elevated” Mary from her position as a servant, and then she gave him a firstborn son with an intellectual disability. That son, John, is lovely and really likes giraffes. Again, no one is sad about this man dying. To really cap off his awfulness, he left Mary and his children with nothing, and even left their house to a cousin in order to insulate it from his debt. So her only option is to remarry. The 1600s, am I right? But also pretty recently? So Mary is out on the prowl two weeks later, wearing an amazing hat with pheasant feathers and donkey ears. She’s at a Jacobean party! Everyone is wearing animal-related outfits. I have no idea why Mary is combining a pheasant and a donkey, but I’m not complaining. (It is perfect.) She introduces herself to Sir Thomas Compton as his next wife. A bold move, and it works.
Now that Mary has money, George is off to France! In France, he meets Jean, who I thought was “John” after I did some research, but IMDB says “Jean,” so we’re going with that. Jean is that character who’s like, let me teach you the ways of the world, innocent one, and that’s what happens. George also learns to fence and dance and bang dudes. In the course of all this, we get a scene with extensive full frontal from a very random man! I don’t know if he’ll be showing up again, but I suspect not. Good for him, he does a great job casually standing there with it all hangin’ out. This is a good move forward for George, too, as before this, he was just sitting in stairwells, playing the recorder.
While George is learning the ways of French orgies, Mary is trying to get an in for him at the court of James I. James comes to stay with Sir Thomas and Mary, and when Sir Thomas asks her if she thinks she can seduce the king like she did him, he says, “I fear you’ve got one too few penises and two too many tits.” Pure poetry, right there. Mary is eager to see the king in person, but his favorite, the Earl of Somerset, keeps saying that James is indisposed or does not want to be around people. Mary finally wanders the halls at night and moseys on over near the king’s room, where she runs into a shirtless Somerset, and then, finally, the king. He’s Vincent Van Gogh from that Doctor Who episode! He and Somerset make out in front of Mary. And look. People disagree about whether James I was gay/bisexual/queer/straight, but if you’re watching this show, you’ve gotta just lean into him being into men. Also, I’m so sorry, but if there were so many rumors in the early seventeenth century that it’s still very much discussed today, coupled with what he wrote in letters, I’m going to say, yeah, it’s probably true. My wife did not know this and finds it very funny that this is the same King James of the King James Bible fame.
Mary finds an ally in James’s entourage who will give George an opportunity to be seen by James. Everyone around George is very confident in his handsomeness. He returns from France, very self-assured for a moment, but then he’s handed the chance to serve the king at dinner, and when a fellow server trips him, George punches the guy in the face many times. Somerset tries to chop off George’s hand for fighting in front of the king (yeah, okay, sure), but James intervenes. Also: George, you just went to France to learn how to be a gentleman, and when you come home, you immediately jump on a guy? I mean, yeah, it was embarrassing that you fell and spilled food everywhere, and yeah, Somerset and his wife laughed at you, but nevertheless. Maybe he used to channel all his emotions into his recorder, but now he has no way to vent.
At Mary’s house, George sneaks into her room and takes a knife from her drawer. I’m assuming there are knives in the kitchen, but he probably wants Mary to know he has taken it. She goes out and finds George sitting against a tree, threatening to cut his wrist. She shows him a better way of doing it. AGAIN, BE AWARE OF ALL THIS. When George tells her what happened and how he feels like he disgraced the family, Mary tells him that they face the world together, and she had plans for him since she first held him.
I wonder how long before she had them cut the cord. Also, that cord is only so long, so it’s going to get annoying. Anyway, she tells George that James saw him, and he stopped Somerset because he’s interested. So now they have to find a way to get George in front of James again. Will it succeed? Yes, it will, because it did in history. But what a presumably fun journey we’ll have along the way!
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By Alice Burton , 2024-04-06 04:00:16
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