“The quiet mind… tell me a single soul who has ever found it.” – Lord Surrey
This was the episode for me that I had been anticipating for a while, and not in a terribly good way. It’s the one in which I imagine Michael Hirst and the writers penciling in the episode in The Tudors’ final season where ditzy, horribly immature Catherine Howard (Tamzin Merchant) lets her web of lies and adultery slip and we accelerate toward yet another The Week in Off With Your Head. It’s not the writers’ fault, per se: we’re watching the life of a king that offed a whole bunch of wives in his day. But as King Henry VIII (Jonathan Ryhs Meyers) once told Wife #2, Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer), there were other wives who were your betters.
So even though we know that Catherine is hurtling toward certain demise (I mean, let’s face it, Henry’s already killed off wives and other nobles for far, far less), I don’t really feel all that engaged with the story. She’s a silly girl married foolishly by Henry (“my own sweet little fool,” as fool in love/lust himself Culpepper, played by Torrance Coombs, would say), destined for a headless end. Juxtapose that with Breaking Bad, where the Cousins are relentlessly coming after Walt and Hank, and we know there’s going to be some kind of shocking and violent conflict ahead, and it’s utterly riveting television to behold.
But back to 16th Century England: Henry and his entourage arrive at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, where he’s planning on formally forgiving the northerners for rebelling. “I harbor no relics of indignation against you,” says the king. Mary Tudor (Sarah Bolger) is in tow, much beloved by the north. Her Latin and ties to the Catholic Church goes over well up there. Meanwhile, Catherine oversleeps the formal reception after a night with Culpepper. I kept waiting for a foreshadow alert to light up the lower third of the screen. Culpepper and Catherine continue to play their dangerous game, Catherine going so far as to say “later” to her little friend right outside the king’s study.
And to complicate Catherine’s love life (and mortal life), Francis Dereham shows up and threatens his way into a job as Catherine’s secretary. It seems he used to know her. Oh, I’m sorry, he really knows her, if you know what he means. And he spends several interminable scenes getting drunk and blabbing to anyone who would listen about the depths of said knowledge. I found his scenes as well as ones involving the grumbling and haughty Earl of Surrey (David O’Hara) to be long and meandering and not all that interesting.
Speaking of Surrey, he continues his treasonous talk about how the king is appointing less than nobles to high appointments. “It will mean the destruction of this realm,” he says. Wouldn’t be surprised if he gets got, to paraphrase from The Wire, fairly soon. In other news, little Price Edward gets a fever, causing Henry to race to his castle to oversee his eventual recovery. And Henry’s also planning to rain down a 3-to-1 retaliation on the uppity Scots in the north.
But the most important plot development involved Charles Brandon (Henry Cavill) noticing an errant eye between Catherine and Culpepper, and a letter that arrives on the king’s royal chair at the close of the hour.
Get your popcorn ready kids, there’s gonna be a beheading.
More thoughts on this week’s Tudors:
* The royal horses get dressed up in some pretty gallant garb. Again, the costumes this season have been outstanding.
* Makeup too: Jonathan Ryhs Meyers looks far older than his years here.
* The young Price Edward is very cute, though my admittedly fuzzy take on that period of English history is that his reign doesn’t go all that well. That gives way eventually to the Elizabethan Age.
* Charles spends some time talking to a ghost, which doesn’t seem all that necessary.
* “You don’t think you’re the only one, do you? I have a store of other lovers beside you.” – Catherine to Culpepper
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.