Season Two of Bridgerton Is Pretty Good If You Don’t Think Too Much About It

Very uncharacteristically, I got sick this past week, which meant I spent a lot of time on the couch cross-stitching and watching the second season of Bridgerton. Last season was a trifle rapey for my tastes, and also I just wasn’t that compelled by the central couple, who didn’t seem that into each other, and also whenever they had sex it looked extremely boring and/or uncomfortable. Which, if you’re making a high-budget adaptation of a bodice-ripper, an endeavor that has my whole-hearted support, I feel that it’s the least you can do to make the sex look fun.

Anyway! Season 2 of Bridgerton is a Slow Burn(tm), which means that there’s only one sex scene but many, many, many scenes of Kate and Anthony touching each other’s fingers while eye-fucking intensely, or putting their mouths very close to each other and then being interrupted before they can kiss by loud noises, friends-and-relations, or the stirrings of their own conscience.

This works great for me because I love a slow burn, and because when they finally do have sex, Anthony goes down on Kate, which puts him one up on the remarkably-PIV-focused-for-a-dude-who’s-really-determined-to-never-be-a-father¹ hero of season one.

The premise of this season is that Anthony Bridgerton, who always does his duty by his family, has decided it is time to take a wife. It was news to me that Anthony Bridgerton always does his duty by his family considering he was banging opera singers all through season one, making him late for important engagements, but, fine.² I also never detected a reason why he has to take a wife at this moment, but maybe he just decided it’s time. He has very high standards for women, on account of he doesn’t want to get married. His mother sometimes scolds him for not wanting love, but he is unreceptive to her pleas, for reasons we will discover. After much faffing about, he decides he will attempt to marry this season’s pronounced diamond, Miss Edwina Sharma, who resembles and dresses like an adorable cartoon rabbit on a mission to discover the true meaning of spring.

Kate Sharma is Edwina’s older sister. She looks so good in jewel tones it’s unreasonable. She always does her duty by her family, too. Her secret is that her sister’s jerk grandparents have agreed to settle money on Edwina and their mother, if Edwina marries well. Marrying Anthony would be marrying very well indeed, but Kate doesn’t like him because she is annoyed about being attracted to him. Also, she overheard him being Darcyish to his bros, and she’s annoyed about that too. But mainly she’s mad she wants to bone him. Simone Ashley came here to chew bubble gum and deliver searingly smoldering eye contact unto Lord Anthony Bridgerton; and she’s all out of bubble gum.

Some other stuff is also happening, like there is a new Lord Featherington, i.e., a blatant attempt to get me to remember plot points about the Featheringtons from last season, which I flatly refuse to do. There are fake rubies and a struggling new business venture that stressed me out mightily and a lot of machinations about who the new Lord Featherington should marry and why. At one point the new Lord Featherington talks about moving all the Featheringtons to America to live in “the Southern states,” and that was really weird because a lot of the actors in this are people of color, so it’s like, well, wait, is there still slavery in America in this alterna-Regency England where Queen Charlotte lifted people of color to titled positions? Do the residents of alterna-Regency England have any feelings about that? I have answered these questions and more in the following footnote.³ Eloise is still Not Like Other Girls, but she doesn’t want anyone to notice or say so. Benedict still wants to do art. You’ll still want to punch Colin smartly in the jaw. Like, often. You will often want this. Petition for Colin to get punched smartly in the jaw in season three.

Kate and Anthony have a genuinely delightful meet-cute on horseback, which brings me back to the main reason I enjoyed this season of Bridgerton and watched all of it in spite of it not making a ton of sense: These two have really good chemistry, and it makes up for a lot of the flaws in plotting and writing.⁴ For instance: Kate overhears Anthony talking shit about women at balls but inexplicably does not rush home to gossip to Edwina about how the Viscount Bridgerton is a giant pill. This is not truth in television! Any time I hear of anyone being a pill, I tell all my sisters immediately. I do this even though my sisters are not currently on the marriage market, but if they were currently on the marriage market I’d tell them even faster and oftener. Why would Kate not tell Edwina exactly what she overheard instead of paraphrasing by saying his standards are too high? Which is only going to be flattering to Edwina when Anthony starts courting her?⁵

Kate doesn’t tell Edwina this, and she continues not to tell Edwina the thing about the grandparents just in case it would sway Edwina’s marriage decision.⁶ Anthony makes it very clear his sights are set on Edwina for matrimony. Here commenceth a four-episode stretch of Kate and Anthony winding up alone together once per episode and putting their mouths very close together like they might kiss. This is variously occasioned by:

• Kate getting stung by a bee and Anthony having a panic attack because his father died of a beesting
• Anthony showing Kate how to shoot a British gun, which obviously necessitates him putting his arms fully all the way around her
• Anthony telling Kate how his father died, thus giving sexily tragic context to his earlier panic attack
• a fight they are having about Kate maybe going back to India
• Kate trying on her sister’s engagement ring (yes, of course it gets stuck on her finger, why do you ask?)
• Anthony being just really mad that he’s so horny for Kate

They repeatedly don’t kiss, a misfortune variously occasioned by:

• a horse going “neigh” and reminding them they are out in the open like omg guys, conduct your forbidden romance in a closet or something, just BE SMART about it
• the unparalleled cockblocking Bridgerton brothers!
• just like, thunder
• the unparalleled cockblocking eldest Bridgerton sister!
• Mama Sharma and Cartoon Bunny Rabbit Edwina Sharma
• Anthony remembering he’s engaged to Kate’s sister, like, COME ON GUYS

The biggest problem with S2 of Bridgerton, actually, is not that there are too many plotlines, although there are, and it’s not that none of it makes sense if you think too much about it, although it doesn’t, but rather that Anthony and Kate are really being such assholes that it makes it hard for me to enjoy their scorching, scorching chemistry. Like, here’s Edwina. An adorable angel. Light of Kate’s life. Definitely going to succeed in finding the true meaning of spring or whatever her sweet, adorable, bunny rabbit goals are. By the time Anthony proposes to her, she’s legitimately starry-eyed about him and keeps saying she’s in love with him. Yet Anthony and Kate still keep putting their mouths right by each other’s mouths all the time. They aren’t even being discreet about it! See above for all the times they were nearly caught nearly-kissing by their loved ones! It would be one thing if Edwina were marrying out of obligation or whatever, but you can’t look at Charithra Chandran’s bunny rabbit face without feeling that Kate and Anthony are just being awful, awful, cartoon-bunny-rabbit-home-wrecking people. With their mouths and their eyes and their fingers! Where anyone could catch them! I would suggest you not think about it too hard, and honestly, I didn’t!, but the show kinda makes you think about it. It’s a bummer. I was so relieved when Edwina told them both to fuck off and canceled the wedding so I could finally root for them to make out, which they do, like, immediately, and it’s great.

It’s brill to see a dark-skinned Indian woman as the primary love interest, which is still vanishingly rare, but overall the colorblind casting choices were really giving me problems this season. Penelope causes problems for the modiste, who is Black, and the new Lord Featherington is a total dillweed to the Black boxer from last season who was friends with Simon and is now trying to make his small business work, and it was pretty much impossible not to notice the racial dynamics, even while the show insists there are none. It’s supposed to be “shaking up the season” for the Queen to name Edwina as the season’s diamond, for reasons never stated, but it’s also notable that Lady Whistledown, and therefore the ton, decides to reject the concept of diamond-hood exactly when it’s bestowed upon a woman of color. And as my friend Aarti pointed out, Kate has this whole plan to go back to India after Edwina gets married, which is a clearly disfavored outcome even though Kate says she loves and misses India and it seems like India is where she spent the bulk of her life? IT JUST FEELS WEIRD. Alyssa Cole Netflix series when?⁷

But I mean, everyone’s dresses are really pretty. Nicola Coughlan is a gem, despite being off in her own little plotline on the side. I tend to think the season made the right decision about how much sex to portray. And Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley are acting their little hearts out with the pining and the eye-fucking, and bravo to them. It’s not like I was gonna not watch this season. Despite its flaws, I enjoyed it a lot.