Garrow's Law S2 E1 review
I cheered to see that my hold for the second season of Garrow's Law had come through at the library, and they wasted no time breaking apart the marriage between Sir Arthur (Rupert Graves) and Lady Sarah.
This episode was a tricky and thought-provoking one. I'm not quite resolved about a few aspects of Graves' characterization, and I don't know how much of it is me, how much is his acting, and how much a culture gap.
The case is a horrifying one about an insurance company and a slave trade ship. Garrow calls a freedman to testify. We see the freedman's back, in the tradition of revelation of whipping scars, but I was relieved that this was only during a private moment. They gave the man his (considerable) dignity in court and did not have him do the scar-testimony there.
The hellishness of the slave trade is juxtaposed deliberately with the surface prettiness of Lady Sarah's life and how economically vulnerable she is. Here is a brilliant, radical, fearless woman...and she's about to be ruined. Sir Arthur, obsessed with the belief that she has had an affair with Garrow and that baby Samuel is Garrow's and not his own, files for separation and not divorce because separation will destroy Lady Sarah. It means he won't ever be able to remarry -- but neither will she, meaning that she will not recover from the disgraced social position of being cast out by a husband and will have no decent way to support herself.
Where my understanding catches a bit is that I didn't feel like I saw the change in Sir Arthur that would take him from someone who wishes his wife would reciprocate his feelings to someone who would choose the most spiteful path. It's there in the script, Sir Arthur wishing he could believe Lady Sarah so he could break free of "the spell" of obsessing over her supposed infidelity with Garrow, but the emotion I get off Rupert Graves' performance isn't quite that. I see so much humanity in his performance -- which I think is intentional -- and some weakness, also intentional and true to the script -- but I'm not sure I see the twist of viciousness that would spur a character to this degree of spite. The script has Sir Arthur as a patriarch who considers his own good name to be an entity worth protecting in its own right...but do I not see that in Graves' performance because he's doing it subtly, giving Sir Arthur the unconscious assurance of a man who doesn't realize that his feelings even are a stance rather than natural law? Or is it that Graves was doing his usual empathizing and complicating of characters rather than condemning them, and for me as a viewer, this strategy overshot? I don't see the hurt. I don't see the obsessive look, a look we know Graves can portray perfectly well (as in Intervention).
I very much liked the conflict between husband and wife about what Lady Sarah terms Arthur's "delusion" that she and Garrow were lovers. What Sir Arthur suspects is absolutely true in an important sense: it is the emotional component that makes the charge true, although Lady Sarah remained faithful to her marriage in deed. And then there is the issue that, looking past all this cruelty and jealousy and ugly suspicion of an infant, Sir Arthur and Lady Sarah are not suited. He loves her? Can he? She is less than he by gender but more than he by nature. She is suited to the brilliant Garrow. Sir Arthur finds himself always on the hegemonic, faint-hearted side opposite Garrow's arguments. I'm quite avid to find out what happens in the third season. Does he become a crusading enemy of Garrow's, or does he realize that Garrow's reforms are necessary, true, not to be denied?
I'd love to hear what others thought of Graves' acting decisions about Sir Arthur in this episode.
This episode was a tricky and thought-provoking one. I'm not quite resolved about a few aspects of Graves' characterization, and I don't know how much of it is me, how much is his acting, and how much a culture gap.
The case is a horrifying one about an insurance company and a slave trade ship. Garrow calls a freedman to testify. We see the freedman's back, in the tradition of revelation of whipping scars, but I was relieved that this was only during a private moment. They gave the man his (considerable) dignity in court and did not have him do the scar-testimony there.
The hellishness of the slave trade is juxtaposed deliberately with the surface prettiness of Lady Sarah's life and how economically vulnerable she is. Here is a brilliant, radical, fearless woman...and she's about to be ruined. Sir Arthur, obsessed with the belief that she has had an affair with Garrow and that baby Samuel is Garrow's and not his own, files for separation and not divorce because separation will destroy Lady Sarah. It means he won't ever be able to remarry -- but neither will she, meaning that she will not recover from the disgraced social position of being cast out by a husband and will have no decent way to support herself.
Where my understanding catches a bit is that I didn't feel like I saw the change in Sir Arthur that would take him from someone who wishes his wife would reciprocate his feelings to someone who would choose the most spiteful path. It's there in the script, Sir Arthur wishing he could believe Lady Sarah so he could break free of "the spell" of obsessing over her supposed infidelity with Garrow, but the emotion I get off Rupert Graves' performance isn't quite that. I see so much humanity in his performance -- which I think is intentional -- and some weakness, also intentional and true to the script -- but I'm not sure I see the twist of viciousness that would spur a character to this degree of spite. The script has Sir Arthur as a patriarch who considers his own good name to be an entity worth protecting in its own right...but do I not see that in Graves' performance because he's doing it subtly, giving Sir Arthur the unconscious assurance of a man who doesn't realize that his feelings even are a stance rather than natural law? Or is it that Graves was doing his usual empathizing and complicating of characters rather than condemning them, and for me as a viewer, this strategy overshot? I don't see the hurt. I don't see the obsessive look, a look we know Graves can portray perfectly well (as in Intervention).
I very much liked the conflict between husband and wife about what Lady Sarah terms Arthur's "delusion" that she and Garrow were lovers. What Sir Arthur suspects is absolutely true in an important sense: it is the emotional component that makes the charge true, although Lady Sarah remained faithful to her marriage in deed. And then there is the issue that, looking past all this cruelty and jealousy and ugly suspicion of an infant, Sir Arthur and Lady Sarah are not suited. He loves her? Can he? She is less than he by gender but more than he by nature. She is suited to the brilliant Garrow. Sir Arthur finds himself always on the hegemonic, faint-hearted side opposite Garrow's arguments. I'm quite avid to find out what happens in the third season. Does he become a crusading enemy of Garrow's, or does he realize that Garrow's reforms are necessary, true, not to be denied?
I'd love to hear what others thought of Graves' acting decisions about Sir Arthur in this episode.