Sanditon is so bad

[chocolatepot]

Taking a brief break from writing (27k! final chapter!) to rant about how bad Sanditon s2 was.

In NO particular order:

- Esther is distraught about not having conceived a child in the first year of her marriage. Her response is to physically distance herself from her husband for months while continuing to fret about not being pregnant. ???

- The ending to the Esther-Clara plotline is just as fucked from a gender perspective as it was in the first season, Clara just "isn't meant to be a mother" and goes off on her own while leaving her baby son with Esther because that's better for him and all she wants is a baby. I mean, putting it like that makes it seem okay, but she's going off to a totally uncertain future as punishment for not wanting to live with her baby in a remote cottage while Esther gets rewarded for being a perfect little victim again.

- THE BONNETS ARE SO SHITTY. The hair is so shitty. The costumes are shitty but in a more boring way than S1.

- Charlotte's sister is named Alison. Alison!

- They shamelessly ripped off the Wickham-Darcy plotline for Charlotte and the George/Amelia/Dobbin love triangle from Vanity Fair for Alison.

- Charlotte is employed as a governess for a gentleman's daughter and niece ... yet she still lives with the Parkers and attends all the local social functions and nobody has any issue with this.

- I really thought Arthur Parker was going to have a love affair with the artist. Arthur had better have a gay romance next season.

- Georgiana falls in love with someone who turns out to have secret intentions and nearly runs away with him? Groundbreaking.

Second seasons are typically meh, so it's not a big surprise to me that it's not even crazy like the first season but "crappy Regency romance" bad, but it certainly was a hatewatch and I can't wait to hatewatch the next season.

Comments

[danabren]

I've never even heard of this, and it sounds like a must-miss.

[chocolatepot]

Oh, you're lucky! I think it's a joint British and PBS production, based only in the slightest of ways on Jane Austen's fragment novel. The first season was "Andrew Davies trying to be shocking but not quite hitting it and not getting the camp vibe that would require", the second is "oh shit we have to compete with Bridgerton now and we've lost our two male leads for some reason".

[mala_14]

lol I actually thought that this season was better, just because it wasn't crazy like the first season. But yes, still bad.

I could NOT get over the fact that her name was ALISON! WTF?! I thought that her love triangle storyline was a rip-off from Cyrano de Bergerac. Vanity Fair makes more sense, though.

Arthur is, without a doubt, the very best thing in Sanditon.

[chocolatepot]

It is better in that sense! But tbh if something's not going to be A Good Show, I'd rather have it be kind of nutso and camp. The first season almost hit that goal for me (feel like it kept pulling back from going all-in).

Alison is the stupidest name for a Regency character, like you have to be actually trying to use a modern name to pick that! It's definitely a lot like the one in Cyrano, you're right. I bet they were taking from both.

#TeamArthur