The Musketeers: "Knight Takes Queen"
The best episode yet! (With some caveats).
I loved the premise of this episode, as I love all stories that involve our heroes pitted against impossible odds but with unexpected allies. There’s really no better setup than this: the Musketeers accompany Queen Anne on a pilgrimage to “take the waters” (this was in fact a genuine remedy for infertility as well as other illnesses) and find themselves under attack by mysterious assassins. They split up, two to get reinforcements, and two to hold up in a nearby convent with the Queen and try to repel the attackers as best they can.
That’s genius! How can you go wrong with that?
Past episodes have more or less centred on a particular character, exploring their background and personalities; now they’re sufficiently established that the storylines can start exploring not the Musketeers as individuals, but the nuances of the relationships that exist between them. This is the first time we’ve seen Athos and Aramis interacting without the others close by, and so really get a sense of their rapport. And whilst Aramis/Porthos have the buddy-cop thing going for them, and Athos/D’artagnan have a mentor/student relationship, Aramis/Athos is very much the bond that is most equal in regards to skill, intelligence and experience.
They’re the two that have had their heart broken, the two that most easily take the role of leader, the two that are most aware of each other’s foibles as foibles and not just endearing quirks. In a way, I feel that they’re the grown-ups of the show. So unlike other shows, which might well have portrayed them as butting heads or squabbling with each other (I direct your attention to Peter and Caspian in the most recent Narnia films), these guys know each other well enough to simply get on with the task at hand. From a writing POV it’s hard to know what came first in terms of storytelling: the decision to pair up Athos/Aramis or the decision to consummate the Aramis/Anne attraction, but in many ways their affinity with each other was the only one that could have properly dealt with the aftermath of Aramis/Anne sleeping together. Athos’s reaction to seeing them was by far the most important response, for he was the only one able to point out the irresponsibility of it, but also hurriedly get over it in order to focus on more immediate complications. D’artagnan and/or Porthos would have either been too distracted, too judgmental, or too confused to operate properly.
Basically, Athos was the only one who had the dramatic weight to call Aramis out on what he’d done, but also know that Aramis is to women what Athos is to drink, and not keep dangling it over his head when there were more important matters.
In short, this far into the series we know enough about the Musketeers to start understanding the particulars of their friendship.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for everyone else. Right from the start, I’ve been fascinated by the nature of the relationship that exists between Louis/Anne, and their odd sort of sibling-esque vibe. They may not be even remotely attracted to one another, but you at least got the sense that they trusted and understood each other on some level. In many scenes, I liked the sense that Anne had a weary tolerance for Louis, and that Louis in turn relied more on Anne than even he consciously realized. That the reason Anne has conceived is simply because the two aren’t having sex, and that absolutely nothing can motivate them into hopping into bed together - not even the desperate need for an heir. They just can’t get their bodies to respond to someone that their minds consider a brother or sister. There’s no animosity, just disinterest.
But we still haven’t had a single scene of the two of them interacting alone together that really gave us the understanding of what the marriage is like. Louis very much played the petulant child this time around: complaining about Anne and inadvertently inspiring the Cardinal to have her executed, only to revert into terror and grief when he realizes that she’s in legitimate danger. He’s like a kid that gets sick of a toy and mistreats it out of habit, only to panic when he thinks that it’s lost forever. I don’t think he really meant it when he said he wished Anne was dead (the wine glass in his hand indicated he was drunk), and his hesitant little “one-step forward, rein himself in because of protocol” moment when facing Anne at the very end was adorable, but his complaint that she “recoils away from my every touch” puts a slightly different spin on the nature of their relationship.
Obviously I knew that they’d have had to of consummated the marriage at some point, but it indicated that Louis is in fact frustrated that Anne isn’t being a wife, instead of placidly accepting of the fact that the girl he considers his trustworthy sister just happens to be wearing his wedding ring.
This naturally led into the other big event of the episode: that Aramis and Anne sleep together. Heck, I thought that D’artagnan/Constance happened quickly, but in their case at least we could assume that they were spending a lot of time together at the boarding house. Aramis and Anne’s interactions are composed of one rescue attempt and a few polite conversations. Like a lot of other things, this could have been more of a slow-burn, yet the way it played out in the episode indicated that it wasn’t the culmination of a long-simmering attraction, but rather two people making the most of what could be their last night on earth and seeking comfort in each other. It’s for that reason I can’t really buy them as “true love”, or even “star-crossed lovers”. They’re two attractive people who acted on said attraction, and tried to sort out their own baggage while doing so (for Aramis it was the death of his past love, for Anne it was her own miscarriage and loveless marriage - hardly the most romantic lead-in to a love scene).
Which brings me to Sister Helene; probably the weakest part component of the episode. If I have things straight, this is the woman that Aramis mentioned to Agnes way back in The Exiles - the woman who he impregnated and was meant to marry, only for her to miscarry and her father to whisk her into a convent. She (according to Aramis) was the great love of his life, the one that kick-started his romantic/philandering ways, the woman who haunts his memories, the inevitable “one that got away.” Yet he hasn’t seen her in so long that he didn’t even recognise her until she identified herself, and she therefore needed SO MUCH MORE build-up and backstory than what we got. Because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what their dynamic was or how I was meant to respond to it.
I guess it was meant to demonstrate that Aramis had put this woman on a pedestal, and yet when he met her again after so long he not only didn’t recognise her, but had to listen to her talk about how all his dreams of them raising a family together and living in simplicity were not in fact what he really wanted and they’re both happier off where they are now? And then she died, which pretty much deprives him of the ability to get closure and walk away from her on his own terms? Yeah, that kinda sucked. And surely sleeping with another woman (the queen no less) in a convent, when the woman you THOUGHT was The One for so many years is lying dead in a chapel somewhere else in the building is... well, a little strange?
That entire subplot just felt wonky. Let Aramis deal with either Anne or Helene, but not both in the same episode.
Also, the villain was about as boring as the premiere’s Starter Villain, only with less of an excuse since you could tell there was a half-hearted attempt to give him some layers. But after establishing that he’s such a good shot that he can take out a barn full of rats, why have him completely fail to hit the significantly larger Musketeers? And why have him demonstrate his ruthlessness by having him shoot one of his own men instead of, you know, Athos standing right in front of him? It not only deprives him of one of his own number, not only wastes a bullet, not only risks making the others desert him, but is otherwise a completely pointless exercise. If you want to kill the Queen, take the opportunity to kill the man protecting her, not the guy who’s helping you do it. THAT’S how you prove how dissociated you are.
And finally, we got some good stuff from the Cardinal and Milady. For the first time we see Cardinal overstep the mark and struggle to do damage-control, whilst Milady is visibly afraid for the first time that she’s stuffed up and can’t put things right. It’s a nice follow-on from their interactions in the previous episode, and you can tell the net is closing on both of then - not only in D’artagnan smelling her perfume, but in Athos’s thinly-veiled threat to the Cardinal. They got away by the skin of their teeth, but I think things have been put in place for the finale.
Miscellaneous
I was impressed that even though the episode opens with a young woman bathing in water, she’s not ogled by either the camera or the nearby male characters (there was no sign of the Musketeers leering at all, but practicing swordplay). Neither were there any scenes of Anne wandering around in a wet dress, and even the much-discussed shirtless Aramis had a good reason for shedding his clothing. I’ve seen too many shows where people are wandering around in a state of undress for the stupidest of reasons that it’s worth commending the shows that refuse to do it.
Nice continuity with D’artagnan’s new uniform and Treville’s arm in a sling.
What the heck happened to the rest of the Queen’s ladies? One was obviously shot, but there were two more in the tent with her. Yet the Musketeers simply grab Anne and leave the others to fend for themselves. That was a pretty glaring problem, especially when they could have easily been used as decoys (the assassins presumably having no idea what the real Queen actually looks like).
Okay, that scene where the Musketeers attempt to eat Anne’s cooking. Usually I roll my eyes at this trope, since a) it’s such a cliché by this point, and b) it’s a pretty lame cliché as well, in which the joke rests on the fact that a woman - usually a tomboy - can’t do basic cooking. Even poor Eowyn got stuck with his gag in the Extended Edition of The Two Towers. Yet I’m giving it a pass here considering the joke was based not on a woman’s inability to cook, but a Queen’s (natural) inability to cook, and the sheer hilarity of the boy’s faces as they try to choke it down. D’artagnan trying to look happy, Porthos concentrating wholly on his chewing, Athos treating it as another inevitable betrayal in the sad life of Athos, and Aramis enjoying it like a pro. Thing is, I like Santiago Cabrera, but I never would have called him a great actor. Good, sure. But great, no. Yet that moment when he’s “enjoying” the fish... there’s this trope called Bad Bad Acting in which an actor has to play a character pretending to act (and doing it badly, usually for laughs). And yet what Santiago pulled off was what could only be called Good Acting Acting - he’s playing Aramis pretending to enjoy a badly-cooked meal... and pulling it off. Yet at the same time, you can just tell that he thinks it tastes like crap. It would have to be my favourite scene thus far.
The nuns were fantastic! Throwing homemade Molotov cocktails! Bee hives! Reloading weapons! Awesome stuff.
Glancing around, no one yet seems to have mentioned that Helene was played by Alice Patten, a.k.a. Queen Ygraine. Which brings in some pretty bizarre Role Association when you compare this to Merlin: essentially we have Lancelot pining for Arthur’s mum, only to end up sleeping with the Druid girl whose execution led directly to Arthur’s death. Weird.
And man, I would have killed to get this type of episode on Merlin. One of my biggest regrets was that there was never an episode that focused solely on Guinevere and/or the Knights, and this would have been a fantastic way to bring them to the forefront: someone hires an assassin to kill Gwen, and she and the knights fight them off in some sort of ruined castle. Could have been great.
“Knight takes Queen.” Heh. I get it.