Thoughts on Malory Towers - 3 - The Trick
More thoughts because it brings me much happiness during stressful times.
The scene with all the original girls not trusting Alicia or her candy is perfect. Especially Irene and her outrage about tasting soap for a month. And I think everyone knew what was going to happen the second Matron entered that dorm room...
That bed is impressively strong, there's like five kids on there plus three leaning on the bed. Do you think Katherine is lying in her bed thinking, "Why do none of these kids ever sleep? Why did I agree to be head of form".
The whole hand print on the door is so silly, especially because Mary Lou is so scared and no-one else is even vaguely taking it seriously, "What do you think she wants?" "Maybe, to wash her hands?".
Mary Lou you are such an adorable nerd, I love how excited she is about the fact that maids and servants washed and hung clothes in the grounds of Malory Towers and then how downhearted she is when Katherine basically says, "No, that's not interesting at all".
I think this episode showcases where Alicia has lost out in terms of her character. Almost every other character gets more attention, is broadly true to their character and/ore gets development (Katherine's is possibly the least of the remaining girls but it is still there) but Alicia has lost a lot of her sharpness (odd considering they have no qualms about keeping physical violence in) and even her pranks have been diverted to other people in favour of her having this ongoing thing of the ghost of Lady Jane Malory. Her character has lost out a lot because of it I think.
Haha, Matron you greedy fool. The overblown longing is perfect for her character though, the way she shuffles around and gazes up at the sweets before taking one.
Does Miss Potts take them for everything except for French? There was an art teacher in the books...and a history teacher... And how are these classes split exactly? Sometimes there are other students, sometimes there aren't. I remember being very confused in the books as it seemed to change whether they were in classes as their own tower only, with one other tower (which was usually West Tower to make sure Betty was there) or with all four towers. But since Blyton just made shit up regarding such minor things as - you know - continuity depending on what she needed at the time, I don't know that there was a definitive answer. Still, these classes don't make sense at all. There's definitely not 40 kids in that art class. Or 20 for that matter.
It is funny that these kids claim not to believe in the ghost but when Sally goes sneaking out of the dorm and hears someone, her first fear is that it is the ghost. I think Irene's oddities have been fairly well translated from Book!Version to BBC!Version, she's not the same character exactly but the fact that until this episode, Irene supposedly saw nothing weird enough about finding jam in her hair to mention it to anyone is something you could imagine her 12 year old book version doing.
In this scene, I think Alicia's comment about how they could have caused trouble and blamed it on Irene's sleepwalking if Darrell hadn't suggested she go to Matron was meant to be an example of Alicia's callousness but it falls a bit flat really. Even the following scenes where Alicia fails to stick up for Darrell when she really can't hear are a bit flat when they're meant to be more examples of how Alicia isn't always the greatest person. They happen too quickly and aren't given the weight that would lead the viewers to recognise their importance.
Matron's butchering of French is hilarious. Sadly I know people who pronounce French like this. JJ isn't quite this bad but her pronunciation of pain au chocolat is just painful it's so bad.
Now this bit is more obvious, Alicia literally drops Darrell the second she sees Betty, though (vague future episode thoughts) with the exclusion of the Open Day episode, a bit more of her ditching Darrell and hanging out with Betty would have developed the tension in their friendship more I think.
[Possible-spoiler reference to Episode 7 - The Push below cut]
The Miss Potts speech gets a bit watered down here (the whole turning point of Darrell's character in the first book and how she needs to put all her effort into etc. etc.) but the point mostly gets across. Of course, there is the secondary strand of Darrell's academic struggles that required this speech to be altered to fit with BBC canon. And on that note, what is up with Darrell's writing?
There are a lot of examples of Darrell's writing shown during the series as it is a plot point and this is the only time she is show as having those odd gaps starting her sentence in the middle of the page in the second paragraph (zooming it it does look like a continuation of a sentence from what I can read). I've worked with lots and lots of kids and young people who have literature related disabilities or difficulty with literature and I've not seen an instance where someone who drifted away from the margin did it that significantly in just one piece of writing. I am of course definitely over-analysing a kid's show and a scene where we were definitely not meant to pause and screen grab a piece of paper but it does seem like they read a list of traits somewhere and shoe-horned a bunch in haphazardly. Okay, over-analysis (of this at least) over.
Moving on.
Why was Mamzelle Rougier in Matron's bedroom? I know that that's where they store the confiscated goods but it's a bit odd if they store them all in Matron's bedroom right? Also, was all that shelf confiscated belongings? If so, why would Matron confiscate a toy boat?!
Miss Grayling saying they're waiting for a few more makes me wonder what sort of staff meeting this is meant to be because really there has to be at least a staff member for each form of each tower plus Mamzelle Rougier who apparently does all the French for the whole school. So if it's a whole school staff meeting there should be 24 more staff they're waiting for (27 if we count the Matrons in the other towers - what sort of meeting would the Matrons and teachers be at), which is more than a few. If it's just North Tower then there should be another 6 which....is a few but is also not really a few when there's only 3 of you currently there... Again, almost certainly a budgetary issue and that leading to a lack of numbers, possibly also not wanting too many characters to confuse matters, but it comes back to the scaling problem that persists throughout the series.
Sally, don't summon ghosts, you end up with much worse things when you do that. Like incompetent Matrons who keep you all awake and fail to notice multiple children out of bed! Also, since Matron orders them to bed, I think Sally ends up taking her toothbrush to bed with her. But their scared acting is very sweet:
The scene with all the original girls not trusting Alicia or her candy is perfect. Especially Irene and her outrage about tasting soap for a month. And I think everyone knew what was going to happen the second Matron entered that dorm room...
That bed is impressively strong, there's like five kids on there plus three leaning on the bed. Do you think Katherine is lying in her bed thinking, "Why do none of these kids ever sleep? Why did I agree to be head of form".
The whole hand print on the door is so silly, especially because Mary Lou is so scared and no-one else is even vaguely taking it seriously, "What do you think she wants?" "Maybe, to wash her hands?".
Mary Lou you are such an adorable nerd, I love how excited she is about the fact that maids and servants washed and hung clothes in the grounds of Malory Towers and then how downhearted she is when Katherine basically says, "No, that's not interesting at all".
I think this episode showcases where Alicia has lost out in terms of her character. Almost every other character gets more attention, is broadly true to their character and/ore gets development (Katherine's is possibly the least of the remaining girls but it is still there) but Alicia has lost a lot of her sharpness (odd considering they have no qualms about keeping physical violence in) and even her pranks have been diverted to other people in favour of her having this ongoing thing of the ghost of Lady Jane Malory. Her character has lost out a lot because of it I think.
Haha, Matron you greedy fool. The overblown longing is perfect for her character though, the way she shuffles around and gazes up at the sweets before taking one.
Does Miss Potts take them for everything except for French? There was an art teacher in the books...and a history teacher... And how are these classes split exactly? Sometimes there are other students, sometimes there aren't. I remember being very confused in the books as it seemed to change whether they were in classes as their own tower only, with one other tower (which was usually West Tower to make sure Betty was there) or with all four towers. But since Blyton just made shit up regarding such minor things as - you know - continuity depending on what she needed at the time, I don't know that there was a definitive answer. Still, these classes don't make sense at all. There's definitely not 40 kids in that art class. Or 20 for that matter.
It is funny that these kids claim not to believe in the ghost but when Sally goes sneaking out of the dorm and hears someone, her first fear is that it is the ghost. I think Irene's oddities have been fairly well translated from Book!Version to BBC!Version, she's not the same character exactly but the fact that until this episode, Irene supposedly saw nothing weird enough about finding jam in her hair to mention it to anyone is something you could imagine her 12 year old book version doing.
In this scene, I think Alicia's comment about how they could have caused trouble and blamed it on Irene's sleepwalking if Darrell hadn't suggested she go to Matron was meant to be an example of Alicia's callousness but it falls a bit flat really. Even the following scenes where Alicia fails to stick up for Darrell when she really can't hear are a bit flat when they're meant to be more examples of how Alicia isn't always the greatest person. They happen too quickly and aren't given the weight that would lead the viewers to recognise their importance.
Matron's butchering of French is hilarious. Sadly I know people who pronounce French like this. JJ isn't quite this bad but her pronunciation of pain au chocolat is just painful it's so bad.
Now this bit is more obvious, Alicia literally drops Darrell the second she sees Betty, though (vague future episode thoughts) with the exclusion of the Open Day episode, a bit more of her ditching Darrell and hanging out with Betty would have developed the tension in their friendship more I think.
[Possible-spoiler reference to Episode 7 - The Push below cut]
The Miss Potts speech gets a bit watered down here (the whole turning point of Darrell's character in the first book and how she needs to put all her effort into etc. etc.) but the point mostly gets across. Of course, there is the secondary strand of Darrell's academic struggles that required this speech to be altered to fit with BBC canon. And on that note, what is up with Darrell's writing?
There are a lot of examples of Darrell's writing shown during the series as it is a plot point and this is the only time she is show as having those odd gaps starting her sentence in the middle of the page in the second paragraph (zooming it it does look like a continuation of a sentence from what I can read). I've worked with lots and lots of kids and young people who have literature related disabilities or difficulty with literature and I've not seen an instance where someone who drifted away from the margin did it that significantly in just one piece of writing. I am of course definitely over-analysing a kid's show and a scene where we were definitely not meant to pause and screen grab a piece of paper but it does seem like they read a list of traits somewhere and shoe-horned a bunch in haphazardly. Okay, over-analysis (of this at least) over.
Moving on.
Why was Mamzelle Rougier in Matron's bedroom? I know that that's where they store the confiscated goods but it's a bit odd if they store them all in Matron's bedroom right? Also, was all that shelf confiscated belongings? If so, why would Matron confiscate a toy boat?!
Miss Grayling saying they're waiting for a few more makes me wonder what sort of staff meeting this is meant to be because really there has to be at least a staff member for each form of each tower plus Mamzelle Rougier who apparently does all the French for the whole school. So if it's a whole school staff meeting there should be 24 more staff they're waiting for (27 if we count the Matrons in the other towers - what sort of meeting would the Matrons and teachers be at), which is more than a few. If it's just North Tower then there should be another 6 which....is a few but is also not really a few when there's only 3 of you currently there... Again, almost certainly a budgetary issue and that leading to a lack of numbers, possibly also not wanting too many characters to confuse matters, but it comes back to the scaling problem that persists throughout the series.
Sally, don't summon ghosts, you end up with much worse things when you do that. Like incompetent Matrons who keep you all awake and fail to notice multiple children out of bed! Also, since Matron orders them to bed, I think Sally ends up taking her toothbrush to bed with her. But their scared acting is very sweet: