I am now joined by. Amanda dobbins our resident expert. Amanda thanks for joining me again. My pleasure your pleasure to watch these middle. Three episodes of the crown season four absolutely crushing. It this stuff. Is this really good. We're talking today about favorites fagin and taryn knowle's ands basically. It's the episode with all the kids. The episode with the guy breaks into the palace and the episode. Where charles and diana go to australia. And i have to say that i think four. I've seen a few people dating for here and there for some reason. Maybe because it's too too well kind of put too much of a bow on it. I think it's fucking extraordinary. Like if i i thought that favorites was a really like startling achievement in dramatic writing and just in terms of the amount of stuff that they burn through in the way that they bring all these characters. What did you. What did you think of that episode. I agree with you. And i have not seen any criticisms because i don't really consume social media anymore but anyone who thinks it's too neat or they put a bow on it. I guess find another show This is peter. Marin is a playwright. There is a lot of construction and intentional cinematic and exposition all dialogue and set pieces built into this. It's not. it's not that it's obvious but all of it is very crafted. So i agree with you that i thought episode four was tremendous in terms of the amount of like and setup that they managed to convey to you in a very effective way. Because we don't really know anything about two of the four children barely met any of them and has been kind of a side character and so there are four children who get their own scenes and moments and so you have to develop those characters. You have to develop the queen's relationship to all of them. You also have the margaret thatcher thematic connection of the of the children. And you're drying out a little bit about margaret thatcher's relationship to women as well which is an important larger thematic episode. And also you've got the falklands war. I mean it's and they do it definitely and i thought about something you say a lot. Which is the crown doesn't like doesn't waste a moment. They just pick the scenes they pick the lines. And you know everything you need to know. That is so hard and they nail it. I mean they do a lot of stuff that i think other shows would probably shy away from because it would feel too like they were showing you too many of their cards so i kept thinking about the scene between elizabeth and an you know they go riding out. This is the thing that they sort of both share this love of horses even though and is obviously phillips favorite. And that's like in the way that that gets conveyed in the beginning and their conversations heartbreaking you know like their conversation is legitimately breaking and i think you could look at what an says. She's like. I used to enjoy being the difficult on and scaring people and now i don't feel like have any control over that anymore and you could be like well like you might go your entire life and never have that level of self awareness. You know you may have to go through thirty years of therapy to find that out about yourself and this young woman just like sort of pops out off when confronted by her mother on iran day. But it's beautiful writing. It's just it's just like amazing writing. And i thought the performances specifically in that scene mostly because the three sons come off as absolute troll lords in this episode mean. Yeah but the scene in particular was was quite lovely thought. Listen i think that there are levels of emotional breakthrough and clarity in this. Show that it's never happened in real life and certainly have never happened in the uk and to anyone who is absolutely senior no country just a lot of time talking about salads in england too early because they get a lot of salad industry and how to their salads or just blue cheese and bacon their emotional relationships are blue cheese and bacon. Do they are not. They're not doing the the smart greens. Now i mean it's it's a tv show and we are projecting emotions and trying to figure out how these people felt about the facts that we know are true. That's what we think is so interesting about episode for which made me reflect a little bit of on the queen character in this season and an interesting thing is happening. We talked a little bit about this on the last episode. Where libya coleman is kind of popping out a little bit and coleman is one of the great actresses of time and also i find her personally hilarious so i think that that's great but i see moments where it nothing is on the page and it's just olivia colman giving it that sense of humor giving it that timing Or maybe even the character is being a little bit written to her strengths and that is also a little bit because the queen is not. i mean. she's not a side character but the way they're telling the story is about all of the other people and events who are kind of crowding into that character's life and how she's bouncing all of it but episode four is just it's about the queen and all of their writing it's character development that is in line with the past three seasons that we've seen and it's pretty extraordinary and i think libya coleman also does like a great job with the actual written script and the character and the reacting to like the horror show of her children. I mean they all are. Do you have a favorite of the four. Who is your favorite on the shore in real life. No on the show. I don't really i. It's shifted i think blassie's and it would have been charles and yeah and this season it's probably end. Although let me get to the end of it. I mean it's obviously not editor andrew. So yeah. I wanted to just quickly before we get into edward andrew charles. A little bit ask you you start this episode up. Did you expect the wedding. No if only because number one. I read some spoilers about how they don't show the wedding but i do also think in their when charles and diana yes yes. The most watched royal wedding. I think of all time. I i don't. I should have gotten this statistics. It was close to a billion people. Watch it. I mean that was everywhere and people taped it and watched it over and over again rate including me who. Dvr it when bbc america riera it before the wedding harry and meghan and it was part of their like twelve hour block of programming. I watched all of it i. It's pretty boring. They didn't really have their production values in one thousand nine hundred one that we expect from royal wedding now anyway but no. There was sort of finality to episode three and there was something intentional about the way they showed their rehearsal and kind of the real behind the scenes emotions where i was like. Okay this is an interesting choice and like this is what we're going to get and also i've seen it before was do because like they wouldn't be a lot of opportunity for people to be talking during that so unless there would be some fagin like wrinkle history that they wanted to explore not really sure what they would do their right. I mean it happened at such a scale that even it would defy the crown's siegi budget. I will say. I was surprised that diana disappeared for new episodes. We'll get episode five. But she is very briefly shown and she is heavily pregnant when she shown episode four. And she just won't come out of the room and in one way. That's really all you need to know. About how their marriage is going and how everything is you know how everything is is shaken out but on the other hand i was like uh this is a choice. Diana pretty popular. Yeah yeah no. I thought that the dow is interesting. Also the suggestion. That charles is starting to become under the influence of these gurus and like self help nutritionist. Which i didn't. I didn't know that about him. Oh yeah the the lawrence vander past reference. I only know about this from the tina brown book. But apparently he brought those books on their honeymoon and then tried to get diana who was twenty at the time of their wedding to read the books and discuss them over for dinner on their honeymoon. So that's how that went