The White Queen: The Bad Queen, Review
The Bad Queen meets The White Queen and takes away her doll.
Ah guilt, it knocks over wash basins and makes you mean to your mum. The White Queen Elizabeth (Rebecca Ferguson) learns that you have to be careful what you wish for because it never actually turns out the way you expect. Even if you get it there’s always a catch. In this case it was the kid lost in the storm. The White Queen’s mum, Lady Rivers (Janet McTeer) is a pragmatist in a shit happens kind of way.
The White Queen is dank and depressing, but it’s not actually dark. If you’re going to call yourself a witch, be a witch. When you’re accused of sorcery make satanic sauce, don’t suck off fifteen-year-old sympathy from a queen, no matter how bad she is. And that voodoo doll? The two figures made of lead bound in devilish union, shit, I bought one of those at the Pink Pussycat boutique.
The disconnect between the actors is a distance of more than manners that’s routinely interrupted with an “off with his head” look that each royal character throws at an underling at least once. Watch for it, it’s always there. There’s a lot of pompous, “I have stood over the bodies of dying men” but no humor. At all. None. There wasn’t even a failed attempt at a witty line tonight. I can’t emphasize enough how much this bugs me.
All the battles in The White Queen seem to happen on the way to the wedding chapel. Battlefields and wedding consummations are perfunctory at best. We learn that King Edward (Max Irons) is now the man who used to be king after we missed all the action that cost him his job. But we get to see crazy Henry all propped up and bobbing. All these reluctant brides are pieces in a larger picture, and here I thought they were pieces on a game of thrones.
Warwick (James Frain) is turning out to be some kind of pill. I was all for him a week ago, playing at being the king maker, but he really can’t make a deal and here he is disturbing the man who won’t be king George (David Oakes) when he’s trying to get his nut off with a local whore, who Warwick sends away without paying. Fucking royal scum. I’m rooting for the white queen now because she’s a witch and, hey, I always root for the witch. Otherwise they turn you into a toad, which isn’t as much fun as it seem.
Margaret Beaufort (Amanda Hale) has her son taken away from her, which now gives her a reason to be the crazy lady who sees visions from god. But she has a point, there is power in his name. Henry Tudor (Michael Marcus) trains with swords but wins fights by name-dropping. Maggie is on the verge of justifying her madness when she blurts out that it’s all about sin. She is devout and really a little too into her son, but she’s afraid she’s taken on the sins of her father, who hung himself, as if she didn’t have enough keeping her up at night. She reminds me of Juliet Landau’s Drusilla from Buffy.
Warwick is outmaneuvered again. It’s no wonder they’re all going to be beaten by an eight year old. Warwick backed the wrong horse so he auctions off his daughters to the highest bidder offering the lowest return. If only to split her up from her sister Lady Isabel Neville (Eleanor Tomlinson), Warwick arranges a marriage with his family’s nemesis Margaret d’Anjou, the Bad Queen. The once and future kingmaker cheerily informs his daughter Lady Anne Neville (Juliet Aubrey) that she going to marry Prince Edward, the Bad Son of the Bad Queen. He doesn’t tell her that The Bad Queen was going to put the evil eye on the newlyweds while they were making bouncy bouncy, but that, too was a sad affair. The sex was joyless and angry, with a little off with his head thrown in. And even then, too short.
I knew when I saw Elizabeth in the beginning of the episode obviously pregnant, her stomach getting bigger with each step she took down those stone spirals that she was going to give birth by the end. Didn’t she see it coming? Wouldn’t she be more prepared? Why would someone so pregnant wear such a complicated dress? I understand there were no maternity clothes back then but the birth was easier than the buttons.
Den of Geek Rating: 3 Out of 5 Stars
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Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. He is the TV Editor at Entertainment…