Parade's End - last episode
I am done with Parade's End, and while it was wonderful from beginning to end, I am now bereft - nothing else appeals much because nothing else compares.
The surreal scene on the train with Christopher, the sonnet-obsessed guy, and Sylvia's ex. Sometimes it all felt like a black, absurdist comedy.
Valentine telling her mother she loves Christopher. The adaptation totally incorporated the notion running through the books that both Christopher and Valentine regard love as a conversation.
All these brilliant, almost hallucinogenic sequences, when Christopher hangs on to his memories of Valentine as a way to hang on to his sanity, broke my heart - and as it goes on, it becomes more and more vivid and the edges between reality and memory blur - at one point, he imagines a new recruit as her.
With the CO, who snapped. In a way, I could have watched a whole series just about the war, but the fact that the bulk of the story is not about the war makes the war sequences more powerful - because we see Christopher's past and the peace and hopes and fears he left behind, he is not just defined by the war and so it makes me want him out of there all the more.
Like I said...
This whole sequence was nightmarish, but I was pretty blown away (no pun intended) by BC's acting. I give up, I give up, I am going to become one of his fangirls, after all.
Sylvia, after chopping down the tree. And that is the last straw for him and he says goodbye for good (her impulsiveness is her biggest problem - if she held off, it might have taken him longer to sever all ties).
Mrs. Wannop, trying to convince Valentine not to throw herself away on a married man (Christopher has been invalided out, and the war is over as well), and it kills me that Valentine tells her mother "I'd ruin myself gladly to make him happy for an hour." Because she is just as selfless as he is and it will be wonderful for those two good, selfless loving people to have someone who treasures them as much as they treasure the person they love.
Ohhhh. He is kinda messed up but oh, the way they devour each other with their eyes and she tells him she doesn't care about the divorce thing and totally asks her to be his and ghjdfhgkddjksdghjdhcjgjfjdb!!!
The final confrontation with Sylvia - I love that in this interaction, he is finally free of her, and she realizes that and leaves for good.
And I know I posted this before, but I love happy endings, so it bears repeating:
He left Sylvia forever but he won't divorce her. And Valentine says she doesn't care and moves in anyway. This is probably the first time I've cheered for adultery!!!! (Though there is a hint Sylvia will divorce him to marry a more socially desirable parti). And there is pretty much no furniture or anything else but they are about to host a party for his war comrades and she will be his hostess...And I about died when she was making his bed (which I think is a soldier's cot?) and just leaned in to smell his pillow. I used to do it when I first moved in with Mr. Mousie!!!! And there is his asking her to dance! And they look so ridiculously happy! And there is more (kdramas need to have some massive makeouts too).
My heart. This was pretty much a perfect series from beginning to end.