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JONATHAN BAILEY AND SIMONE ASHLEY being cute during Bridgerton dance rehearsals

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JONATHAN BAILEY and SIMONE ASHLEY Inside the Scene: Kate and Anthony at the Hearts and Flowers Ball

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Subtle Backgrounds but make it Kathony

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So today on things we learn about ✨ how fucked up a show Bridgerton is✨ simone was asked to read lines for Kate's backstory that was later cut from the show which orginally made her accept the role. Not only that they cut out a bonding scene in the library for Kathony and when Simone asked for the desk scene from the book she was refused. And lets not forget the way she was sidelined in promo. So anyone saying Simone wasn't sidelined in HER OWN SEASON CAN GO TO HELL.

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Everyone wants to talk about how Edwina is nothing but a “plot device”.

But here’s the truth: Kate, Anthony, and Edwina are ALL PLOT DEVICES.

You read that right! The plot was paramount this season. And every single character had to twist and contort themselves into bizarre positions in order for it to happen. Even Anthony! I know everyone loves to talk about his “arc”. But despite the fact that the show spent a considerable amount of time on his backstory, his motivations are nonsensical.  

And even if his motivations had made more sense, Anthony’s journey was cut off at the knees in the final three episodes anyway. Not allowing him to truly reckon with the damage he’s inflicted and take responsibility for his actions shut down any opportunity for self-reflection and growth. At the end of the day, these were not inconsequential character beats; they were the only things that could tied could have this story together.

nothing anthony did in his courtship of edwina made any damn sense. he swore that he didn’t want love in his marriage but still pursued a debutante who he knew wanted a love match. why did he court someone knowing that he couldn’t give them anything they wanted/needed to be happy or even content in a marriage. it was selfish but it also made little sense. he didn’t want to cause pain to someone who loved him if he died, so he pursued a girl who made it very obvious she had a crush on him. a girl he went out of his way to woo so that she would like him. why didn’t he go after someone who’s outlook on marriage was similar to his?

(all i want is some kind of consistent character motivation.)

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I Am Not a Robot - Marina and the Diamonds

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The fact that Bridgerton is trending again on Tumblr purely because of a clip of Anthony and Kate being loved up shows how much we all a. wanted to see that so much more than we got and b. that showing a couple in love is not boring at all (hint hint showrunners).

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Anthony&Kate || The way they look at each other [20/?]

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It’s so fucking frustrating because the show set up Kate as so interesting and then just didn’t follow through. The parentification; being a third wheel/outsider in her own family & feeling like she needs to justify her presence; losing 2! parents…

But instead they just made her a female Anthony basically. She was his love interest and vehicle to self-actualization and not a person in her own right.

I mean, are we really surprised at this point? Bridgerton's track record of forgiving the Bridgerton siblings regardless of what they do to their love interests is becoming a pattern, and I hate it. And the fact that Kate didn't have a single storyline that didn't involve a man makes my skin crawl.

The thing is, Kate and Anthony had almost the exact same amount of screen time as Simon and Daphne (about 15 mins less, but S2 was 15 min longer as a whole) but they severely mishandled Kate's screen time by having it revolve around Anthony or Edwina.

If we had just gotten one (1) episode like Simon and Anthony did about her trauma and her childhood, then I think we could've seen a big difference in how people reacted to the season as a whole. Or even if she'd gotten her own Emmy-bait monologue in response to Edwina's.

Kate never really got a chance to develop as a character and giving her the same screentime as Simon and Daphne doesn't work because she and Anthony are both extremely complex characters who can't be unpacked in one season alone.

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“Bridgerton s2 is messy, often bordering on incoherent, and the supposed romance has so little focus placed on character development or emotional connection that I can physically feel my heart break when I think of it. We’ll never get it back; it will never be better. Every time I watch, it will be the same patchy, uneven, tightrope-walking disaster.” - @wall-e-nelson

Thank you! This was cathartic to read. I had been toying with idea of doing a complete S2 breakdown, but that would have required me to actually watch S2 in its entirety again...You’ve spared me the torture! Not to mention you’ve done it about 1000x better than I ever could have. The show’s not really something I care to revisit any time soon. 

As you’ve demonstrated here, there is not a single aspect of this story that can stand up to even the *slightest* scrutiny. It’s so fundamentally dysfunctional that it just falls apart on its own accord.

I was utterly shell-shocked when I finished watching the season. It was so thoughtless, confusing, and messy, I couldn’t believe it had gone so, so wrong. The plot, the pace, the tone, the character motivations, EVERYTHING. From start to finish, It was all such an incoherent, jumbled, shocking failure! I was prepared to overlook so much and was willing to forgive a lot, but for the life of me I genuinely could not understand what was going on. It was just contradiction upon contradiction and miscalculation upon miscalculation. Over and over.

The wasted potential of it all makes it all the more heartbreaking.

hi i wrote a thing. mostly it’s for those of us who did not enjoy bridgerton s2, no matter how much we wanted to. it’s also for me, to process the whys and wherefores of why i didn’t like it, even tho i wanted to. so badly. so much.

this is for those of us who spent March 25 staring at netflix in increasing horror as the minutes wound down and it only got worse by the second. for those of you who loved it, damn you’re a lucky sunofabitch, and im endlessly jealous of you. god bless and godspeed.

for those of you like me, i wrote down hella words about my storytelling and narrative gripes with bridgerton s2. i Hope it helps you to read as much as it helped me to write. this is for us:

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Bridgerton Predictions Gone Wrong

Look at these tags from a post I had saved in my drafts!! LMAO

Oh you sweet summer child! You had *no idea* what was coming 🤡🤡🤡

(These tags were in response to this interview, if anyone’s curious 😂)

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Perhaps I needed someone to steady me. Make sure I was alright. Perhaps you were the first person I found.

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I love this idea so much! This would have given me exactly what I wanted from this story -- Anthony and Kate spending actual time together and getting to know each other, and not indirectly or in shorthand.

This would allow for a more gradual progression of their relationship and still keep a fair amount of tension and angst. The audience would learn about them as they grow to understand and learn about each other. Their walls are so high, it would be so satisfying to see them slowly let each other in (in fits and starts!). The way this season is structured we don’t get this at all. I want to see them really be there for each other. Imagine the library scene and the bee sting incident happening after they’re married 🥺

Brainstorming about an alternate Bridgerton Season 2 main storyline where the writers had still decided they were going to drastically change the source material and that they wanted to stay away from the “scandalous forced marriage half way through the season” to help casual show viewers separate it from season 1.

Rather than going for the forbidden romance angle (save that for Benedict’s season), imagine if they had just gone full marriage of convenience. Like, very early on Anthony proposes a contract to Kate, complete with the no love conversation. She agrees, because obviously there would be something in it for her family which she is putting ahead of herself. Maybe the dowry situation comes to a head much earlier, and Anthony offers to dower Edwina (as he does in the books) if they marry. Maybe disgrace in which Mary left England is too much and they need the Bridgerton connections to truly re-enter society and give Edwina a chance to find a husband.

I can’t decide if it should be incredibly early (like…end of episode one) before they really know anything about each other, and then they only find out how much they aggravate/challenge each other after the wedding, or if it would be better for them to get to know each other first for a few episodes before it happens. In case 2 you could have the whole “awful grandparents at dinner” thing which causes Anthony to propose the contract to spite them.

If anyone has any ideas about how the route could have played out, definitely let me know I would love to hear your imaginings~

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Thanks! You’ve covered pretty much every issue I had with this season and now I have it all in one convenient list!

I will also add, that it was completely inexcusable that Anthony never takes responsibility for his actions or really offers any sort of serious apology or explanation to either Kate or Edwina. An inadvertent consequence of this is that the narrative emphasizes Kate’s mistakes ONLY, leaving her overly accountable for what has happened, while giving Anthony a free pass. They also probably should have had Edwina and Anthony have some sort of conversation to wrap up their storyline. This is such an obvious thing to include, but the show seems intent on not having Anthony pay for any of his choices, so...

I’ve been thinking a lot about why the GIFs for this show are so incredible. Obviously, it has a lot to do with the fact they are so stripped of context you don’t have to think about the nonsensical plot (or you can imagine an entirely different one) and you can focus exclusively on the chemistry and wonderful performances of the actors.

But I also do think it actually has a lot do with the fact that Kate and Anthony don’t actually have that many true “scenes” together. They just have ~moments~. Scenes should actually move the characters forward in some way or provide new insight or add depth (either for the audience or for the characters themselves). But K and A scenes, for the most part, don’t. Kate and Anthony are almost always in the same place at the end of one of their “scenes” as they were at the beginning. This is what GIFs are really good at -- highlighting and capturing specific moments, a subset of a scene. But with Kate and Anthony, the moment *is* the entire scene; there’s nothing more substantive there.

Am I overthinking this? Absolutely, lol. Anyway...

why i absolutely hated season 2

even with all the spoilers and critic reviews, i just had a lot of hopes that this season could at least capture the essence of k&a. but i don't even have a few good things to say about this, i no longer have time to waste. so this is the last post that I will talk about this in. here are all the reasons i absolutely hate season 2:

all the stupid side plots, in season 1 i remember sitting through most of them, because of the sheer fascination of this new story, and it acted as good filler between things. but i was almost skipping every sub-plot this season. not the featheringtons, not benedict, not eloise and pen, not even colin and pen could keep my attention, everything felt like stale filler kept in just to fill time and skipping through all this made me realise how much screen-time anthony and kate don't even have

season 1 had the added advantage of the magic of the regency period, showing you all these new characters and this new world. and i feel like the show really falls flat this season despite throwing things in

I don't feel the essence of any of the characters. not even the main characters (i will expand on this below)

i will not pretend the book is a perfect representation of anthony and kate's entire story arc, but it did fundamentally set each character in stone. while the book avoided the love triangle super early on, the show seemed to somehow want to simply do it, only for the drama.

i don't blame the writers for what they've chosen to do with edwina. the books don't explore her in depth too much, but what i loved about her so much is her sheer love for kate, her kindness, and how she knew exactly what she wanted in the book

the book states several times that she wanted a scholar and someone who reads, but the show alters this and runs with edwina's infatuation head first. they could've at least cut it short after a bit but I do not understand how they kept it going for that much.

i hate that anthony kept the wedding going as long as he did. it just feels insane how long this bit went on

the way edwina had to call off the wedding, that anthony would've willingly married edwina, even if he had been staring at kate's face through the ceremony, what does that say about him??

absolutely hate that they cut out kate's fear of storms, or anthony comforting her. and anthony revealing why he is so hesitatant to love to kate, are all integral parts of the characters

we're never introduced to the fact that anthony has a fear of dying at the exact age of his father. they merely convert it into a fear of making someone go through what his mother did

the absolute lack of any substance between kate and anthony beyond the yearning. why is it that we never got true conversations between them. even a few, as friends, because the book clearly made them good friends for a period of time.

I would've forgived this, if they had actually given anthony and kate an extended epilogue. but one half naked scene and pall-mall where they can't stop kissing doesn't convince me of their love.

they were delaying that first kiss purely for fucking theatrics. even the first time. everything felt withdrawn simply for the "yearning"

I hated the half baked representation of the sharmas, while I'm thrilled to see an Indian woman as the leading lady, it felt even more disappointing as an indian woman to hear random words thrown around to sound authentic. throwing around 'amma' 'appa' (which might I add is not even fucking accurate) does not make any show authentic

while they definitely take back anthony's toxic masculinity from season 1, they fundamentally just made this character so frustrating. book anthony was dead set on not marrying for love, but he was already changing his mind before the bee sting, he was rather okay with the wedding happening even as long as he kept rules for himself. but the show made him go through with things for the wrong reasons

so angry that even before any drama that kate, mary, and edwina never shared any cute family bonding, or moments. like i want to see them AS A FAMILY

still so angry i couldn't even see anthony and kate as a couple, or even the wedding, NOTHING. idk it feels so odd to go from an ily to them making out in the garden. i don't know what to say

the kanthony bits were satisfying, okay, but it did not have so much of the substance it needed to have for it to be really believable.

for a show about kate and anthony, it didn't feel like it. they werent even there half the time

also wtf, i forgot what they made kate's real name, but kathani?? wtf. do they pick names out of a random generator

why does my beloved kate, one of the MAIN CHARACTERS of this season, not get anything? a wedding? a haldi? a proper proposal? her trauma explored? her culture? flashbacks?? NOTHING. we learn nothing more about kate as a human than obscure facts and that she hates english tea. brilliant.

GOODBYE AND I'M DONE

I've read a thousand other good fanfictions and even the book isn't as bad as this

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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but sacrificing logical plot and  character progression for the shock value of ~doing the unexpected~  in order to ~surprise the audience~ isn’t the flex people think it is.

It’s frequently just bad storytelling, plain and simple.

Just because your audience can anticipate what might happen doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t follow through on logical causes and effects.

If your characters have to do things that don’t make sense in order to make your plot work, then you need to rethink your plot!

Predictable doesn’t equal BAD and subversion for the sake of subversion doesn’t automatically equal GOOD.

I thought we learned this lesson after the GoT fiasco, but I guess not...

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Me @ CVD

At this point I feel like someone just needs to tell CVD to keep his mouth shut?? Or, in lieu of that, maybe just take and hide his phone and refuse any and all interview requests?