The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 10 (2014)

 

Here we are:  season finale of The Musketeers and last Capaldi Fall installment until Netflix finally sends me Smilla’s Sense of Snow.  I can’t say too much about the plot, because there are lots of important developments.  We see the culmination of incidents and conflicts introduced in previous episodes, we’ve got tricky, multi-pronged plans, and there are big reveals to be had. 

 

Overall, it’s a good ending to the season.  The show isn’t high art, but it’s fun and engaging, and I like the characters and plots well enough that I’ll probably watch the second season next year, PC-less though it may be.  The main cast is pretty darn solid, and they all have excellent chemistry with one another.

 

Quite a bit of Richelieu in this episode.  As I predicted, some of his underhanded chickens come home to roost, and it’s good to see the cardinal on the ropes.  Also, there’s one confrontation that really surprised me – in it, he outlines his motives for the regicide attempt he orchestrated last episode, and I was reminded that even at his most ruthless, pragmatism is still a driving force for his behavior. 

 

And now…

 

Accent Watch

 

Besides the RP, there’s something extra going on with his voice on this show.  It reminds me a little of his Charles I voice on The Devil’s Whore.  I think it makes him sound posher and more snake-like, or maybe it’s just his 17^th-century accent?

 

Recommend?

 

In General – I think so.  Good, light entertainment with a very watchable cast and some amusing fight scenes.  Nice for a romp.

 

PC-wise – Quite possibly.  PC gives a good performance in a role that was probably a blast to play.  If you just want a taste, episodes 6 and 7 were my favorite as far as PC was concerned.

 

Warnings

 

Nothing further.

 

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Thanks for coming along on Capaldi Fall!  Check in tomorrow to find out where the blog is going next!

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 9 – “Knight Takes Queen” (2014)

 

Say what you will about Richelieu; when he’s of a mind to, he will go to extraordinary lengths to keep his employer satisfied.  So the king is infatuated with a good-natured German woman with a large dowry and a fondness for shooting?  And because he’s a whiny little snot, he flails around complaining that his queen is ruining his happiness by continuing to have a pulse?  No problem, sire – Richelieu is on it.

 

Needlessly to say, despicable Richelieu is in full force today.  He’s sneaky, cold-blooded, and more than a little reckless (his less cardinal-like actions are in danger of being found out,) but he’s still eminently pragmatic.  When his main stratagem appears to falter, he doesn’t waste a second.  He thinks on his feet throughout, course-correcting and working out contingency plans.  It seems his character is being set up for big developments in next episode’s season finale.

 

Since cardinals apparently can’t make omelets without having a few queens assassinated, the musketeers have their work cut out for them.  They’ve accompanied her majesty on a retreat, and what began as a glorified babysitting gig quickly becomes a life-or-death mission – funny how often that seems to happen to them.  They divide and conquer, with D’Artagnan and Porthos running out to find reinforcements (and attempt to discover who the mysterious would-be assassins are) while Athos and Aramis desperately try to protect the queen.

 

I should point out that I don’t currently have access to the season finale, as it hasn’t aired yet.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to see it by Monday, so look for my review then.  I’ll cook up something to post in the interim.

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 8 – “The Challenge” (2014)

 

The A-plot today is a D’Artagnan story, and as such, it’s a “D’Artagnan is out to prove himself!” story.  The king and the cardinal have a wager going, that age-old question – who would win in a fight between…?  In this case, it’s one of the king’s musketeers and one of Richelieu’s Red Guard (in my opinion, not nearly as exciting as the Thor vs. Hulk showdown we got in The Avengers.)  A champion from each group will be chosen, and everyone will enjoy a little 17^th-century grudge match.

 

D’Artagnan is bound and determined that the musketeer champion should be him, for a number of reasons.  He could do with the generous prize money if he wins, he wants to display his skills before the king and the musketeers’ captain, and most of all, he wants to show that he’s ready to fight with the big boys.  As his friends point out, he’s currently a musketeer “in all but name,” and winning the competition could finally earn him a commission.

 

In the process, we learn a little more about D’Artagnan, both his strengths and weaknesses.  He’s far from my favorite character in the show, so luckily for me, we have some nice material from all the musketeers today.  Athos helps D’Artagnan train, and he reveals just how well he’s come to know his new friend, along with the traits the two men share.  Meanwhile, Aramis and Porthos are on the lookout for “patronesses” to supply them with their own admission fees for the competition, and Porthos has a rather lovely side plot with the kind widow he pursues.

 

And Richelieu?  After some important developments for his character in episode 7, he doesn’t seem to have taken much of anything to heart.  He’s chiefly focused on the bet, and he makes a few unsporting (and awfully foolhardy) decisions in the hopes of ensuring his victory.  Not his best hour.

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 7 – “A Rebellious Woman” (2014)

 

We continue to take turns highlighting the younger main cast members who cut more dashing figures (Athos is back on top today,) but we also get huge swathes of Richelieu in this episode.  I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a third of PC’s screentime for the entire season can be found here.

 

Richelieu has his hands full dealing with an aristocratic woman who’s committed the grave crime of championing women’s education.  Going far beyond embroidery and needlework for the upper classes, she teaches equality, the sciences, and social justice, to name a few.  She even – gasp! – believes women shouldn’t be treated like broodmares sold to foster “good matches.”  Clearly, a person like that can’t be allowed walking around.

 

Initially, Richelieu’s chief interest is financial; the country is in need of a new lady, and the fortune of a disgraced aristocrat could furnish it nicely.  He prepares for a little underhanded mudslinging to unseat his new foe, but the arrival of an emissary from the pope requires him to up his game.  As it happens, Richelieu could use some extra brownie points with his Holiness, and making an example of a woman-educating “heretic” is just the thing.  The time for discrediting clearly has passed:  it’s a full-fledged witch hunt now.

 

It’s always interesting to see how period pieces handle social issues, and “the woman question” is a good one.  I have a soft spot for watching intelligent female characters do battle in worlds where all the power is in other hands, so that aspect of this episode appeals to me a lot.  However, I’m not sure how realistic it is that all the musketeers are so respectful of the intellects and beliefs of the other sex.  It’s a tricky conundrum – is it even possible to keep period characters likeable while maintaining historically-typical attitudes?  Something tells me the past didn’t have nearly as many open-minded people as film and television would have me believe.  (Of course, they were probably much dirtier and had far worse teeth as well.) 

 

On the one hand, that feels disingenuous, but on the other, I don’t want to root for characters with horrendously outdated prejudices.  It’s why I ultimately didn’t mind how Downton Abbey handled things with Thomas in series 3.  In the back of my head, I was going, “No way would this have happened,” but in my heart, I didn’t want to hear these characters saying vile things about him.  It was bad to enough to hear Carson’s “sympathetic” reaction that it wasn’t Thomas’s fault nature had made him into something foul and twisted; I don’t know if I could’ve handled more outright hate and continued to like anyone on that show.

 

And yes, I realize this may seem at odds with what I said earlier about my appreciation for The Musketeers’ efforts at diversity.  While the show makes nods to racial issues, especially with Porthos, I’ll admit that it’s fairly unrealistic on that front too.  I’m not sure why it doesn’t stand out to me as much as the gender stuff does here.  Maybe it’s because racial inequality has only been dealt with sparingly, as opposed to this episode’s very intentional exploration of gender inequality, and so the musketeers’ enlightened attitudes are more evident?   Maybe it’s a white privilege thing, and I need to make a more conscious effort to recognize it?  Maybe it’s because the good of more open casting trumps the bad of sanitizing historical prejudice?  I don’t know.  I’ll try and keep my eyes open on this subject.

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 6 – “The Exiles” (2014)

 

Ole Richelieu is in pretty fine form today.  He’s running a handful of delicate stratagems with lives in the balance, he’s playing players, and he’s pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness.  I think the Richelieu seen here and in episode 4 is probably my favorite.  He’s someone wearing a black hat for the sake of France, keeping his sights set firmly on the end that justifies his means (in his eyes, anyway.)  It’s not as colorful a characterization as his more outright wickedness in the pilot, but I think it’s a bit more engaging.

 

Plus, I think if I had to manage King Louis, I might be a little evil too.  The things that man puts up with.  “The Exiles” really hammers home the fact that the king is not just weak-willed and basically useless – he’s also exceedingly petulant.  In this episode, Richelieu points out that he may want to refrain from going out hunting when there’s an active assassination threat in the area, and he literally throws a tantrum and goes to sulk in his room.  The king of France, everybody.

 

The main cast is split between two storylines here.  The king’s mother, exiled due to her earlier attempt to seize the throne, has returned to court and is begging for asylum.  There are enemies at her heels, and Athos and Porthos deal with this threat (along with the ensuing family drama/king petulance among the royals) while D’Artagnan and Aramis are sent elsewhere.  Richelieu has dispatched them for reasons unknown to retrieve a peasant woman and her infant son.  Naturally, the baby is kidnapped the second they arrive, and much is done to recover him, and to discover the cardinal’s interest in him.

 

The baby’s mother is played by Amy Nuttall, Ethel from Downton Abbey.  I don’t know if it’s just her thing to play women in period pieces whose infant sons are the cause of all their troubles, but she seems to be carving out a niche for herself.  I will say, though, that I enjoy her more here than I ever did as Ethel.

 

Oh, and one little bit of business.  There is a moment in this episode in which Aramis shoots a man in the head while the man is holding a knife to the throat of a struggling woman and Aramis is in mid-leap.  Even leaving aside the complete ridiculousness of his success, who does that?  Who says, “I definitely should not wait until both my feet are the ground before I deliver this precision kill-shot without blowing this nice struggling woman’s head off”?  I mean, come on!

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 5 – “The Homecoming” (2014)

 

Musketeer-wise, Porthos got some extra attention in episode 3, but “The Homecoming” definitely puts him center stage.  I’m reminded of the first season of Torchwood, where each of the supporting cast had one story more squarely focused on them in the midst of the Gwen-centric episodes and the ensemble offerings (“Greeks Bearing Gifts” for Tosh, “Ghost Machine” for Owen, and “Cyberwoman” for Ianto, in case anyone’s eager for a few seconds of Torchwood geekery.)

 

So, episode 5 finds Porthos in a spot of bother.  He’s been accused of a drunken manslaughter, and while his fellow musketeers try to prove that the dead man fell by someone else’s hand, Porthos is brought back to his old haunt.  The Court of Miracles, which I mainly know from the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre, is the thieves’ den the orphaned Porthos sprung from.  At the Court, he’s reacquainted with friends from his hungrier, less honorable days.  Essentially, it’s the old “you can never go home again (especially if you pulled yourself out of the gutter)” story, but with more sword fighting.

 

Very little Richelieu today.  A bit of scheming, a bit of advising, a bit of treacherous activity, a lot of barely-concealed disdain for the king.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Now that PC is the Doctor, there’s a fairly good chance he won’t be too available for the show’s second season.  Having some PC in your show is always a good thing, but given how scantly they’ve used him so far, it might not be any great loss.

 

On a side note, I like the way that the series doesn’t insist on an all-white cast.  Two of the musketeers, as well as incidental one-shot characters, have been played by people of color, and I appreciate it.  It’s depressingly easy for movies or TV to homogenize in the name of alleged historical accuracy, and it’s nice to see a show incorporating PoCs without making a big deal of it.

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 4 – “The Good Soldier” (2014)

 

I think the show has stepped up its game the last couple of episodes.  The drama has been more compelling, and the humor has struck a more successful balance between fun and hokey.  We’re getting to know the individual musketeers a little more beyond their larger archetypal identities of the initial episodes.

 

Yesterday, we got backstory on Athos, and Porthos had some heavy investment in the story at hand.  It’s Aramis’s turn in the spotlight today, and D’Artagnan seems a bit more integrated into the group.  Anyway, what begins as a simple but dull assignment – standing at attention while the Duke of Savoy and his wife (the king’s sister) pay a courtly visit – immediately goes haywire.  An assassination attempt is made on the duke, and that’s just the jumping-off point for revelations of conspiracy, betrayal, and international espionage.  The musketeers’ faith in the system to which they’ve devoted themselves is shaken.

 

At first, I was concerned that Richelieu wasn’t going to deliver on his early promise of entertaining villainy.  It seems like he’s been progressively less shady with every passing episode, but today’s outing takes a step back towards his original nefarious direction.  Basically, the good cardinal is up to his eyeballs in intrigue, and while he’s not outright despicable, his scenes have a little more weight behind them.

 

In particular, he has an excellent scene in which he goes head-to-head with the duke.  The king of France is an overgrown teenager, who makes shows of defiance but generally toes the line.  The duke of Savoy, however, is a grown man who’s been to a few rodeos, and he’s not so eager to be managed.  The two have words, and Richelieu proves he’s not a man to be trifled with.

 

Sharp-eyed Whovians will recognized Adrian Schiller, who played Uncle in “The Doctor’s Wife.”  And I can’t end this review without mentioning the fabulous JJ Field, appearing in this episode as a former musketeer.  I first saw him as a tremendous Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey a handful of years ago (my introduction to the wonderful world of cinematic Austen,) and he was also in the Sally Lockhart Mystery films with Billie Piper and Matt Smith (post- and pre-Who, respectively.)  He’s a great actor, and I always enjoy seeing him.

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 3 – “Commodities” (2014)

 

Some heavy stuff going down in this episode.  For today’s main plot, our heroes are enlisted to protect Bonnaire, a full-of-himself privateer, on his way to Paris.  Bonnaire has just recently returned from an expedition abroad and has been greeted by a number of enemies.  Over the course of their involvement, the musketeers discover exactly how Bonnaire acquired himself so many foes, and the discovery isn’t pretty.

 

There’s also a bit of headway made on one of the ongoing series arcs – backstory on the connection between musketeer Athos and Milady, 17^th-century femme fatale and Richelieu’s own personal weapon.  We saw from the start that there’s a past between the two, but we get more details in this episode, far beyond the hints received until now.

 

I’m not sure what I think about Milady.  She’s tough, intelligent, and deadly, that’s for sure.  However, I get a little tired of the whole female-antagonist-as-seductress trope.  It’d be nice to see a female villain – especially an attractive one like Milady – who didn’t use sex and her “feminine wiles” to trip up/manipulate/lure men into her trap.  I’m not against it as a narrative device in principle, but it just gets boring.  I’d love to see female baddies with more varied tricks up their sleeves.  Granted, this story is set in an era when women had far fewer educational opportunities and legal rights, which reduced the number of tools at their disposal.  Still, a little more creativity would be great.

 

Not too much Richelieu today.  Aside from a little opportunistic grasping, he chiefly advises the king.  You can tell he basically feels contempt for his monarch and gets annoyed whenever the king gets ideas in his head that Richelieu didn’t put there. 

 

Bonnaire, I should tell you, is played by James Callis, better known as Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica.  I’m ambivalent on the performance, though.  Baltar was excellent, but he uses such a strange, affected voice as Bonnaire that it throws me.

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 2 – “Sleight of Hand” (2014)

 

Well, D’Artagnan has officially joined the folds of the musketeers now.  His first major task involves getting himself imprisoned – talk about hazing the new guy.  No, he’s actually undercover, investigating a possible assassination plot against the king and queen.  While the musketeers take bodyguard duty, D’Artagnan tries to gather intel and pass it on to his new friends/associates.

 

The musketeers are proving themselves to be cocky but capable.  They’re a very swashbuckling trio (now quartet, of course, but D’Artagnan has a pretty different temperament.)  They enjoy a bit of action – in both the violent and amorous senses – and they don’t have much problem flouting authority, but they’re definitely loyal to the crown, and when it comes to getting the job done, they deliver.

 

Richelieu is a little less dastardly in this episode.  He liaises with the musketeers about the assassination plot, and you get the sense that he really considers his ultimate goal to be for the best of France – it just so happens that France is “best off” when he is in a position of power as the king’s puppet master.  Funny how things work out like that.

 

In a way, he’s like Malcolm, who is unscrupulously devoted to his party and feels it can only stay on top if he’s running the show.  Richelieu isn’t as entertaining or awesome as Malcolm, but the parallels are there.  We’ll see how much his ambitions actually benefit France, and how much he just uses France to justify his pursuit of power.

The Musketeers: Series 1, Episode 1 – “Friends and Enemies” (2014)

 

The snow outside my apartment and the below-freezing temperatures will laugh at this, but we are now technically out of winter.  That’s right:  it’s Capaldi Spring.  Not that we’ll make it through another season.  This is one of the last PC projects I have access to, so new that it’s still airing in the U.K.  The season’s almost finished, though, and I have a decent head start, so I should almost be able to make it to the end without any breaks.

 

This show is of course exactly what you expect, D’Artagnan and his all-for-one pals.  I’ve not read The Three Musketeers, so I don’t know if the series follows the novel or if it just puts the characters in new plots.  Seems like it’ll be fairly serialized; several wheels are clearly set in motion in the pilot.  Additionally, all the characters are introduced, and D’Artagnan, earnest and newly fatherless, is brought into the musketeers’ sphere through a case of mistaken identity.

 

PC is a regular in this series, playing the shady Cardinal Richelieu.  Despite his position, Richelieu is quite fond of his vices.  He’s dangerously possessive of his preferred mistress, and he has very few scruples when it comes to retaining the ear of the king.

 

So far, he seems like a black-hat-wearing baddie through and through.  He also has a talent for self-justification and is impervious to any disparaging remarks made by those appalled at his actions.  Nothing especially complex yet, but it’s early days.  While I don’t imagine anything revelatory, it may prove to be a pretty enjoyable role.

 

D’Artagnan is played by Luke Pasqualino, who was Freddie on Skins.  On the musketeer side, we have Santiago Cabrera (Isaac, the painter/prophet from Heroes) and Tom Burke, who I remember best as the lad who did all the transcriptions in State of Play.  This episode also features David Verrey from the unfortunate Slitheen two-parter on the first series of Who.

 

First impressions:

 

Accent Watch

 

A decent RP.

 

Recommend?

 

In General – Possibly.  It strikes me so far as mindlessly enjoyable entertainment – not great television, but amusing enough.

 

PC-wise – Maybe.  He obviously has a prominent role.  We’ll see how Richelieu is used in the coming episodes.

 

Warnings

 

Sexual content (including references to prostitution,) drinking, and lots of 17^th-century violence, mostly swordfights.