Episode 4
Season 1
Episode 4
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
****
Photo: Sean Gleason/Mammoth Screen/Masterpiece
Okay, well, here we have it. All you “already familiar with The Forsyte Saga” people knew it was coming, and yet I maintained my love of Soames. And now who has egg on my face? ‘Tis I. I am the egg face.
Jol, looking slightly more period-appropriate than usual, goes riding with Frances and June. Maybe I’m just getting used to his twenty-first-century hair and beard. But he does have a tie on, thank God. I’m done with this man and his hatred of ties. You run a stock brokerage, for God’s sake! Or he will soon. I’m still unclear on who’s running what and when, as my main focus is drama. We learn that Jol has provided a settlement for his children when they reach maturity, but has otherwise cut ties with them. Yeah, we all believe that, Jol. Stop breathlessly showing up at your ex’s house; she doesn’t want to see you.
At work, Jol’s tie is now gone?? What’s your game, Jol! You can wear a tie to impress your horse, but not to be appropriate at work? Okay, wait, I might respect that. But only the horse part. Bill from True Blood wants to guide Jol in his chairmanship, which will be easier while Soames is away on his honeymoon. A man shows up and wants to throw money at the morally bankrupt goldmine venture. Jol tries to dissuade him, but James is like, Jol, this is in fact our business. I do hate to side with James / evil in general, but once again, running a brokerage seems like a bad fit for Jol. If he doesn’t want to help people profit from the misery of others, he should not work in finance. Jol takes down all the drawings of Venice in his office because I guess he’s deciding to try to make being a businessman work. It will not. His soul yearns for the manbun life.
Meanwhile, Soames is making out with Irene on a balcony in Paris. The Eiffel Tower is being built! It’s the 1880s! French artists will hate it, but they are wrong because it’s cool as fuck. Irene tells Soames she saw the sunrise that morning, and Soames is like, “You did something without me? Oh nooooooooo.” He tells Irene that they’re married, so they should want to do everything together. She tells Soames she’ll wake him next time. Noooooooo, it’s so bad. People who are married, please do some things not together! I like seeing your husband on our friend dates sometimes, but I definitely do not want to see him every time.
Guess who’s back? Yes, correct, it’s Mrs. Ellen Parker Barrington, who previously spoke at the Fabian Society. Now she’s at Louisa’s shop, and we discover she was Louisa’s financial backer. Later, on a walk with Frances, Mrs Barrington mentions her fundraiser for the reclamation of fallen women. I’m gonna say that’s a brutal name for a charity. Mrs. Barrington asked Louisa to speak at this fundraising event as an example of What a Fallen Woman Can Do. Damnit, rich people.
Louisa shares her story at the fundraiser and admits she was an unwed mother, and everyone still loves her. So now Frances sees Louisa again and is upset. Someone give Frances something to do other than be upset! She’s upset about Jol, June, and Louisa. Remember when she was promising vengeance or something last week? That was nice. More vengeance!
The time has come to talk about Poor Boy and his stupid hat. Do you know how many websites I visited trying to find out if coonskin hats were a “thing” in 1880s England? Or if they were ever truly a thing outside America in the 1950s? You might say, well, what about Benjamin Franklin? Marten! Franklin’s hat was made of marten! If you wrote this episode, please contact me and tell me why Poor Boy (known as “Scruffy” in my notes) has donned a raccoon hat and is promenading around London in it. And the answer better not be something like “non-conformity” because he looks extremely stupid in it, and I hope that the real answer is he crossed a witch and she put a curse on him to have to wear a dumb-looking hat outside for one hour a day.
Okay, so Scruffy meets June in a park wearing his curse hat, and he gives June a volume of Keats. This checks out, and I have no issue with it. She asks him to read one out loud, and he picks “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which is a pretty horny poem. But I guess that’s true of most of Keats. June is now very into Scruffy, but Frances is set on her marrying Carteret. The older Forsytes want all their children to marry Carterets. The children don’t give a single shit about the Carterets. June is forced to chat with the boy one (Horatio, I think?), and it turns out he’s very into moths. June acts like Horatio’s moth knowledge isn’t fascinating, even though it is. It’s only boring for a person not to have an intense interest, June. A moth obsession is a solid foundation on which to build a marriage. One moth fact at a time.
June gets invited to Frampton Park, the Carteret family seat, which means she is definitely getting a proposal from Moth Man. She hates this and runs to Scruffy’s garret. I thought they were going to definitely bang, but instead she’s like, “Haha, wouldn’t it be so funny if we got married? Okay, but for real, we could.” When Scruffy says he has debts and no reputation, June says none of that matters if they love each other. She says this because she is eighteen. So now they’re engaged, and she soon tells her family. Jol decides to meet Scruffy and invites him to his club. Scruffy immediately declares that he is a radical who doesn’t bow to convention (boooooooooooo), and when Jol isn’t a dick to him, Scruffy seems taken aback. Jol says he consents to the engagement, but they can’t get married until Scruffy has completed his first commission as an architect. Okay, well, that seems reasonable. Jol later tells Frances that by the time Scruffy achieves this, he and June will likely not be into each other anymore. This is likely. They have a family-only Engagement Party of Shame, and Scruffy brings his stupid hat. Bring back Moth Man!
The only good part of this party is that we learn that Bill from True Blood and his brother James were both in love with the same girl in their youth. Bill says he sometimes wonders where she disappeared to, and they name her, which, in soap opera rules, means Alexandra the Formerly Beloved is definitely showing up. Soap operas love having characters be like, “Remember Dmitri? Wow, was I sad when he died. Well, at least it cleared the way for our marriage, and now there are no messy complications.” One week later, bang! Dmitri is back from the dead. I absolutely want Alexandra to show up, and for it to ruin the well-being of Bill and James.
If you think I’m mostly avoiding Irene and Soames to focus on fun things like the stupid hat, you are correct. Soames loves Irene’s free nature, but he hates seeing it in relation to anyone who is not him. They meet up with some of Irene’s friends, and when Soames tries to order champagne, they insist on absinthe. Soames hates it. Later, they attend the ballet, and Soames sees how exposed the dancers are and is displeased. He envisions Irene onstage being held by bare-chested men in tights, and you can almost see her dreams of dancing ripped to shreds, as there is no way in hell he’s going to be on board anymore. Afterwards, Irene is clearly so excited to talk about dance and so happy for him to see her onstage someday, but Soames interrupts and says they have to go back to England so he can talk to his father face-to-face about his plans for a Paris office. Sooooooames. As soon as he gets her back in England, Irene is going to be trapped and it’s all terrible. Damnit, Soames.
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