Midweek Update: The Hollow Crown

The 5th season of Peter Morgan's Netflix drama continually mistakes farce for tragedy.

November 23, 2022

Spoilers ahead for the first five seasons of The Crown.

Before I met my wife, I was largely indifferent to the machinations of the Royal Family. Eight years later, and I have now not only watched all of The Crown, but also listened to podcasts about the marriage and divorce of Prince Charles and Princess Diana as well as watched various documentaries about the couple. I would say I’m fairly confident about the difference between fact and fiction in The Crown, but I don’t think The Crown’s primary goal is about 100% reality. It is not a docudrama; rather, what seems to fascinate creator and showrunner Peter Morgan is the inherent conflicts represented by the British monarchy over the course of Elizabeth II’s reign. For Morgan, The Crown is not necessarily a show about who did what, but the larger forces governing this particular institution.

I say all this because when I judge The Crown, it’s not about how accurate it is to what happened as much as how well the show meets its own dramatic goals.

There are three central tensions that govern The Crown: personal desire vs. impersonal duty; tradition vs. modernity; and public vs. private. The show is about a symbol—and how much it costs one particular family to uphold a symbol that continues to lose currency as the decades progress. What looms over the early seasons is the viewer’s knowledge that no matter what Elizabeth does to uphold the Crown, no matter what sacrifices she asks others to make for it, it will come crashing down in the public crucible represented by Charles and Diana’s unhappy marriage.

Season 5 is where we finally arrive at this downfall—and yet, The Crown only seems to offer ambivalence.

Earlier seasons of the show work because Morgan leaves the important question to the viewer: is this worth it? We have this powerful institution, and even though Elizabeth didn’t desire to be Queen, she had to take the throne—earlier than she wanted to because of her father’s death when she was only 25. Her early marriage to Prince Philip was tumultuous as he struggled to assert his masculinity despite literally being a subject to his wife (he also cheated on her a bunch and she had to inform him to knock it off). She came into nix her sister Margaret’s romance with Peter Townsend because he was divorced and their marriage would invite scandal. Charles clearly loved Camilla Parker Bowles, but she was already married—and so Charles wed Diana.

All of this exists in the shadow of Edward VIII’s abdication from the throne to marry Wallis Simpson. The message—at least from Elizabeth’s point of view—is that choices based on emotion and personal happiness have the potential to ruin a centuries-long institution that is vital to the national character.

In seasons 1-4, Morgan set about asking us if this view is correct—and, if so, is it worth the human wreckage cast along the way?

But in Season 5, he ultimately ditches that question to shrug at everything he has built. In place of any firm view on this decades-long saga, Morgan has only ambivalence. Nowhere does that fall apart more clearly than in the character of Prince Charles, played by Dominic West. Whereas Charles in Seasons 3 and 4, with his nervous energy and scrawny physique was perfectly played by Josh O’Connor, West has too much swagger and self-confidence. It’s not simply that he’s a better-looking guy than the real Charles (a Hollywood glow-up is typical for period pieces), it’s that he carries himself with a sort of modernity and heroism that makes no sense in light of his well-documented selfish blunders.

The episode that breaks the illusion is season 5’s fifth episode, “The Way Ahead.” In this episode, the famous leaked transcript of a racy phone call between Charles and Camilla goes public. After taking us through a slow (and unintentionally hilarious) montage of Charles’ entire family reading his phone sex transcript, the real problem emerges: namely, that the show wants so badly to paint him as a flawed but ultimately misunderstood hero. The Crown takes pains to show Charles as the voice of modernity, connecting with people in a way his mother never could. It begs us to believe that his transgressions are simply part of a humanity that previous royals have suppressed. The episode ends with a doting view of him (I swear to God) breakdancing with disadvantaged youth.

Part of what makes The Crown work so well is that no one ever gets what they really want. They’re all serving this system and trying to find a way to survive inside of it, and at best they have to settle for what they can get rather than what they need. The problem here is that what Charles needs more than anything is recognition and adulation, and the episode bestows it on him unthinkingly. It is deeply funny when his entire family reads about his phone sex in the paper, but the show thinks it’s a tragic violation of Charles’ privacy. In a later scene, Princess Anne tries to comfort Charles by noting that it’s not like he’s the only guy who ever had phone sex, but that completely misses the point. Charles’ central fault is that he wants the power of being king but also wants the freedom to be with his mistress. He’s essentially an overgrown child who feels entitled to rule but his sense of duty is completely without sacrifice. You can’t then turn around and give him an “attaboy” at the end of the episode as if he’s some kind of genius who’s been unfairly maligned.

Season 5 ends by noting how many things are ending. The Queen’s favorite yacht is being decommissioned (again, the show misreads farce for tragedy in thinking that any person would be bummed that the Queen has been denied a yacht); Hong Kong is going back to China; Charles and Diana are no longer married. And yet all of these changes lack any kind of payoff or catharsis. The show simply notes how the world continues to change and that arguably diminishes the role of an institution that perhaps we don’t even really need anyway.

For all of its intense melodrama, expensive production values, and historical grandstanding, The Crown has never felt emptier.

What I’m Watching

Since I’m writing this on Tuesday, I haven’t seen the season finale of Andor yet. However, once I do, you can expect me to go long on the show because I have far too many thoughts about it.

I caught The Fabelmans earlier this week and thought it was pretty great, although not what I was expecting. Although the trailers are working to sell it like it’s about the magic of cinema, instead it’s really a coming-of-age story about how you grow up too fast when you learn your parents are people with incredibly human flaws.

The performances are terrific (Michelle Williams is rightly earning a lot of praise, but I was particularly taken with Paul Dano, who brings both sadness and quiet dignity to his role), the film is gorgeous, and it remains remarkable how Steven Spielberg simply has not lost a step as he’s gotten older. For a guy who has been written off as a manipulative populist, he’s making movies today that are just exciting and enriching as ones he made forty years ago.

I’ll have a lot more to say on Fabelmans and Spielberg in a future Substack, but for the time being, go seek it out at a theater near you.

White Noise is the first Noah Baumbach movie in a while that hasn’t really worked for me. After being pretty cold on his stuff for the first part of his career, I turned around on him starting with Frances Ha and have really enjoyed his movies all the way through Marriage Story. But White Noise feels like a bad pairing of director and material. Baumbach’s tendency towards naturalism and real human emotions is at odds with the surreal and absurd aspects of Don DeLillo’s book. While the film is keyed into the book’s existential themes and the alienation we feel in modern life (it’s also very much a pandemic movie with the book’s Toxic Airborne Event providing a strong parallel to COVID), Baumbach’s direction never goes far enough to make that absurdity click into place.

What I’m Reading

Underexposed was fine, but it pales in comparison to the books of David Hughes. Too much of Underexposed is providing background on its players rather than getting into the meat of why a particular project fell apart. You’ll get better narratives and more insight from something like Tales from Development Hell.

I’ve now moved on to The Maid by Nita Prose. My pal Dustin over at Pajiba recommended it, and since I very much enjoyed his previous recommendation (The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz), I gave this one a shot, and am already fully on board. The story follows a neurodivergent maid at a fancy hotel who comes across the body of a wealthy guest while cleaning his room. She then gets sucked into a web of intrigue, and the story is told from her perspective. I needed a light, cozy mystery after some of the heavier books I’ve read this year, and this is perfect. I hope to finish it over the Thanksgiving break.

If you’re looking for quicker reads, I recommend these articles (particularly the first three if you’re interested in seeing The Fabelmans):

Substack Recommendation

This week I’m recommending Marya E. Gates’ Cool People Have Feelings Too. I was already a fan of Marya’s writing, and then I had the pleasure of working with her this summer as she filled in for a co-worker who was on maternity leave. Her writing is sharp, insightful, and consistently shines a light on filmmakers, especially women, who deserve more attention.

What I’m Hearing

Perhaps it’s because of Andor, but I simply cannot get enough of composer Nicolas Britell right now. His Spotify playlist currently carries me through many a writing session.

What I’m Playing

I decided to put God of War: Ragnarok on pause because movies have been eating up a lot of my time (it’s awards season) and because I don’t want to play it in fits and spurts. But I am going to pick it up next week, and in the meantime I continue my addiction to Marvel Snap as well as toying around with my new Analogue Pocket.

That’s it! Come back on Sunday when I will go long on Andor and how it has completely changed the way I think about Star Wars.