So yeah,
that stuff about tragedy in Thomas Hardy works is still holding steady. I’m beginning to understand why I’ve not had
his books recommended to me to the extent that literary friends pushed me
toward – as I mentioned last time – Austen, Dickens, or the Brontës before I
started reading them. Great acting,
lovely scenery, and all, but egad, is it bleak.
The miniseries has one part remaining; we’ll see if there’s any hope of
Tess being happy for more than five seconds.
In this
installment, Tess gets a fleeting glimpse of that very happiness, only to have
it torn out from under her. I won’t go
too far into the details for the sake of spoilers, but suffice it to say that
Angel shows some rather unimpressive colors, Tess finds some truly dismal work
in a new place, and a character from Tess’s past shows up with little
understanding of what effect he’s had on her life.
At first,
I thought Jodie Whittaker’s part in this episode would be very minimal, a quick
appearance at the beginning with the other milkmaids and then exiting stage
right as Tess begins the next chapter of her life. And to be sure, Tess’s circumstances are very
different than what they are in episode 2, and it’s perhaps a bit contrived
that she winds up coming back into the sphere of Izzy (and fellow milkmaid Mariam)
in a new (but superficially-similar) setting.
Either way, I don’t mind it too much, since I’m in this for Whittaker,
so more Izzy on my screen is fine by me.
But
actually, this episode gives Izzy her most significant scene away from
Tess. She has an interesting one-on-one
with Angel that both shows where his headspace is and gives a little more
perspective on Izzy herself. That
flighty/practical duality I mentioned in the previous episode shows up again,
the way that she’ll thoroughly give herself over to a fantasy of love while
simultaneously keeping her feet on the ground about what’s really going
on. More than that, she demonstrates
just what a good friend she is to Tess.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a story involving two-plus women in
love with the same man in which the secondary woman, despite the
head-over-heels nature of her love, is ultimately in her friend’s corner no
matter what. That’s nice to see in
general, but it’s especially welcoming to have at least one exclusively-lovely
bit in this largely-depressing story (yikes, please tell me nothing horrible
will happen to Izzy!)
There
wasn’t a whole lot to say about Whittaker’s performance in the previous episode
– she’s silly, sweet, expository, and the voice of reason as the plot requires,
and she acquits herself well enough in a fairly small role – but she really
does get a small moment to shine here. I
really like her in her scene with Angel.
In a very short span, he takes her on a bit of a roller coaster, and
Whittaker does a nice job capturing the mixture of Izzy’s foolish hopes
combined with her bittersweet pragmatism, all complicated by her loyalty to
Tess.
There’s
another familiar face in this miniseries that I didn’t mention earlier: Emily Beecham, a.k.a. the Widow from Into the Badlands, as Tess’s third
milkmaid friend. I can’t believe I
didn’t recognize her – I knew I knew
her face but couldn’t place her!
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