Why is this show so good? I have only one episode left, and what am I going to do then?
I really like that Valentine and Mark get on so well. You know, this whole story is pretty much a cautionary tale about having sex with strange women in railway carriages and not using protection (which, btw, I realize needed to be there to get the story going but strikes me as rather out of character for our think-everything-through-eight-times protagonist). I mean, if Christopher was single when he met Valentine, he would have had a very happy marriage where, in addition to them being in love/compatible/whatever, she would have gotten along well with his family, given him kids that were definitely his own, and enjoyed living in Yorkshire. Plus, despite being dirt-poor, she is the right class/religion so nobody would have raised any eyebrows. Condoms, look it up!!!
This is not related to anything in PE, but I just realized that BC would make a perfect Lord Peter Wimsey - he's got the whole blonde, upper-class, high-strung, intellectual, WW1 shellshock thing going already. Though talk about being typecast :) Joking aside, they really should make a good adaptation of one of the Sayers books - they are so good and so underrated.
That was such a nightmarish scene, with the soldier coming in with half his head blown off, and then Christopher washing off his hands that are shaking so badly he can barely stick them in the bowl, and one of the soldiers cleaning his boots and babbling how the dead guy wouldn't have wanted the captain's boots dirty and Christopher having yet another thing help break him because the dead guy asked for leave and he didn't give it, and if he gave it, the man would still be alive. I am getting the feeling he is going to be utterly screwed up by the end of this story.
There isn't much shipping in this episode because one half of my OTP is in England and the other half in Flanders, but this scene! He's shaking partly from cold and party from horror and all he is thinking of his her face, as a comfort in this nightmare. Ohhhh :(
Christopher bets that he compose a sonnet in a set time and his fellow officer bets he can translate it into Latin in the same amount of time. This was surreal enough to be out of Jaroslav Hasek - they are both very educated and rational but the war is not the place for that and they are desperately trying to assert some control over themselves and surroundings, to remind themselves of sanity and what they are, really.
He thinks Valentine came to visit him, and takes off running. Which is really sad, because it's Sylvia.
I just like the uniform.
He comes to visit his wife and sees her with the man she ran off with years ago (actually in the same hotel). And his face!
This scene, where they almost make love but ultimately don't - I think it's the last nail in the coffin. Because (a) he's about a millimeter from having a nervous breakdown (b) he thinks he may die any moment, being at war and all (c) he's been celibate for 5 years - if that is what it takes for a guy to consider sleeping with you, and even then it ultimately doesn't happen, that relationship is deader-than-a-doornail dead. Though - once again - it's Sylvia's desire to play games that causes things to capsize. If she also didn't invite her ex as some sort of a weird lesson, they wouldn't have been interrupted, giving Christopher time to think and snap out of it, and she might have gotten her sexy times then.
He is being transferred to the trenches due to Sylvia's stuff but also his own - he is someone who believes in absolutes in a grey world and that makes people uncomfortable - he is someone who genuinely believes things people pretend to believe but don't really because that would make for very uncomfortable life. I actually loved this scene, where the general talks about Sylvia (the general finally found out she is...not a saint) because you can see Christopher try to explain his position (about not divorcing etc) and you can see the General look at him with pity - and in a pragmatic way, the General is right - if your wife runs off with another man, you either divorce her or you take her back properly and pretend nothing happened. (Though I must point out, Sylvia never apologized - who knows how things would have went if she did. I think not much better - I think some things relationships don't get over, especially since he never loved her to start with - he found her desirable and exciting but he never loved her). Of course, it occurred to me that his hatred of divorce isn't just due to his values - he is protecting himself too - he is an intensely private person (you can see how he hates talking about this even the little bit he does to the general) and divorce would break it all open.
