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"The Crown": MVPs

 My favorite episode from the Middle Phase of THE CROWN was "Margaretology." In that one, Princess Margaret traveled to America; on her trip, she met with LBJ, and she persuaded LBJ to give funding to England for one event or another.


(In THE CROWN, England is always in danger of suffering a major blow, and there is always just one unorthodox person who can change history with a few well-timed gestures. Maybe it's Margaret, joking with LBJ. Maybe it's Di, hugging children in Australia. Maybe it's Elizabeth herself, expressing public faux-sadness after Di's death. We'll need to wait for Season Six, for that.)


In "Margaretology," everyone wants Margaret to be formal and polite with LBJ, but Margaret understands the person she is dealing with. So she insults the memory of Kennedy. Then she becomes involved in a dirty limerick contest, and she delights LBJ:


There was a young lady from Dallas

Who used dynamite instead of a phallus.

They found her vagina

In South Carolina.

Her arsehole? In Buckingham Palace.


I think "The Crown" is at its best when it focuses on small gestures: the dirty limerick, the image of LBJ in a men's room, waving his organ at a disgusted associate. In the most recent season, we could sense Peter Morgan's smile whenever Thatcher made her ludicrously exaggerated curtsy to Elizabeth, or whenever Di insisted on calling the Queen "Mama." (We learn things from these gestures. Thatcher's monarchist feelings seem to have an element of self-loathing. Di can see the Royal Family only as a distant planet orbiting her own star; though E II may have *said* .... "Call me Mama" ..... it's clear that E II didn't *mean* what she'd said.)


I love the gestures. I can't wait for Season Five.






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