WiC Watches: The Crown season 3

Photo: Olivia Colman and Tobia Menzies in The Crown: Season 3.. Image Courtesy Sophie Mutevelian/Netflix

Episode 304: “Bubbikins”

Director Benjamin Caron turns in another stellar episode that holds up a funhouse mirror to the Royal Family. In this installment, we watch a documentary television crew watch the Royal Family watch TV at Buckingham Palace, and the family dysfunction is on full Technicolor display. Prince Philip has engineered this BBC documentary in an ill-conceived effort to justify a Royal pay raise. It doesn’t go well.

“Bubbikins” also introduces us to Prince Philip’s mother. Princess Alice is the elderly chain-smoking nun meme I didn’t know I needed in my life until now. Queen Elizabeth extracts Alice from Greece against her husband’s wishes due to political upheaval there, and her offbeat humility and candor provides a refreshing counterbalance to Philip’s misguided efforts to make the Royal Family more relatable.

Despite Philip’s efforts to keep his mother hidden from view, Princess Anne (now a steely teenager played by Erin Doherty) successfully wrangles Princess Alice into an interview with a hostile reporter at The Guardian. The Smoking Nun wins over one of the Royal Family’s fiercest critics, and a humbled Prince Philip has a gracefully played reconciliation scene with his estranged mother.

The running theme this season of the strain of wearing a mask for the public continues with a deft scene between Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Harold Wilson. When the Queen expresses frustration about the critical response to the documentary, Wilson acknowledges that the public doesn’t want the Royal Family to be normal. In fact, the public doesn’t really know what they want from the House of Windsor at all. It’s as though Elizabeth is constantly trying to feed a monster with little assurance that the beast won’t one day turn and swallow her whole.