‘The Crown’ Recap Season 3 Episode 5: “Coup”

Get ready! The country is going to hell and the Queen is going to look at some horses. Let’s get the trade deficit-eque boring bits out of the way, shall we?

Wilson is trouble, having apparently already spent all that lovely dirty limerick money, and despite gallant attempts to blame it on the last administration, he’s obviously holding the bag. Things are in such a pickle, in fact, even the Daily Mirror (eternally a Labour newspaper) has turned on him. It’s a little funny that “Enough Is Enough” is their strongest wording, but it certainly has Wilson running a bit scared.

Thinking frantically of a bone to toss to the wolves/republicans, Wilson casts his eye around and decides to fire our old pal, Lord of Thirstiness Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten, who has been blocking his defense cuts and is generally just a bit of a douche. I am happy to report that Charles Dance is a perfect Dickie, which surprises me not at all: Dance is a superb actor, and also he’s coming from being Tywin Lannister, who has a lot in common with Dickie. Namely, that each of them drastically misjudged their own intelligence and competence.

As a Canadian, Dickie is my sworn ancestral enemy, having killed 907 of us and gotten 1946 of us captured by the Germans in the course of his absolutely inept Dieppe raid in WWII, which was like a dress rehearsal for D-Day except he used Canadians as toy soldiers and sent them out to die in waves. It’s sweet that Mountbatten’s people attempted to spin it to Canadians as their sacrifice having made D-Day possible, but, unsurprisingly, the sheer incompetence of the raid makes that a rather hollow statement. We do not like him and we have a long memory.

Anyway, the man is out.

He does not like it. He does not like his cake.

When his men sing him out of the building with “Auld Lang Syne,” he looks exactly like Ebenezer Scrooge when the Muppet mice attempt to perform Christmas carols for him. (Note: Charles Dance would be a superb Scrooge, although remaking a film as perfect as The Muppet Christmas Carol is a terrible idea.)

At any rate, Dickie is now bored and angry, despite having this gorgeous dog and massive tub and crystal decanter of his preferred tipple.

And now, the Queen. The Queen is doing the only thing she really likes, which is hanging out with horses and her dear, dear friend Porchie, who I absolutely adore. Porchie is so reliable and bland that I didn’t even notice the recasting. The Royal stables have not been doing well as late, the guy she has in charge is roughly a million years old, and Porchie, bless him, successfully convinces Elizabeth to ditch her responsibilities/hand them off to the Queen Mum and go tour France and American stables to see what the really progressive and successful trainers and breeders are up to. Her little (genuine) smile at the prospect is one of the really very few moments of unmixed pleasure we’ve had so far this season, so it’s hard to begrudge her.

The timing, however, is extremely bad, as Wilson has taken the step of devaluing the pound, which is a rather massive event, utterly unprecedented in a G10 country.

Wilson makes it sound like such a good idea I don’t know why we don’t all devalue our currencies! Oh, right. Short term gain, long term nightmare.

I should say, at this point, I am again here to recap a TELEVISION PROGRAM, I think we do not in fact believe that Mountbatten ever seriously considered being part of a military coup against the elected government of the nation. He might have taken a meeting, but it’s such a batshit idea that even when we see him addressing a group of his peers just going FULL MOUNTBATTEN ENGLISH COLD SHOWERS MILITARY MEN WHAT OF THIS NEW GENERATION OUR POUND IS SACRED, it’s hard to buy that he would take steps beyond whingeing about it at his lunch club, you know?

The Daily Mirror (again, a Labour paper, which I find confusing, since this is clearly such a conservative proposed coup) crew, at any rate, decides Dickie is the man to kick off their movement. To his credit, Dickie runs the numbers and realizes this is a pretttttty shitty idea, unless they can get (dream on, honey) the Queen’s backing.

She would never! That’s bananas! Also, she is extremely busy speaking French and looking at horses around the globe. Talkin’ strategy, talkin’ yearlings, talkin’ bloodlines. Happy as a damn clam. Vaguely aware of the devaluation of the pound. Look at this woman. Free as a bird.

The problem, of course (apart from the national financial crisis), is that she’s acutely aware that her present happiness is borrowed time. Hearing her open up to Porchie about the reality of her life, and the bittersweet experience of spending a very precious month doing what she really wants to do and is good at doing, as opposed to the thing she is, you know, anointed to do.

I do not think she has ever allowed herself to think these thoughts, let alone say them to Porchie (or Philip!) before, but she gets about…forty seconds to dwell on them, as Wilson calls having gotten wind of the coup, and the Queen is immediately both “motherFUCK can I get a MINUTE” and also “handled”:

There’s clearly a bit of a watershed here for Liz, realizing she’s never, ever going to get what she truly wants, but also recognizing she’s needed. Looking back on that fabulous episode where she read her Uncle David for filth, we remember how hard it was for her younger incarnation to screw herself up to do it. Here? Here we have Elizabeth eating Dickie for supper like it’s nothing, and yet skillfully giving him a dignified out by reminding him that he has numerous family responsibilities (including trying to shape Charles into a king). I like this Elizabeth.

Imagine my face at this moment:

Dickie recovers from this (difficult, no doubt, poor baby) encounter by going to see his sister Princess Alice, which is apparently what one does in moments of turmoil. I would happily share a cigarette with Princess Alice in a moment of turmoil. She does have a way of putting things into perspective, after all:

Philip’s genuine and obvious delight at seeing his wife back again (a week which turned into a month) is prefaced with a bit of Porchie-related jealousy, which spurs him into a really good kiss, which eventually leads to a bit of the old in-out-in-out, which, I am confident, she really needed after the day she’s had.

Nicole Cliffe used to run The Toast, a niche site for queer archivists which Hillary Clinton at least pretended to like, but is now mostly just dicking around on Twitter and, more importantly, writing a twice-weekly parenting advice column for Slate.

Stream The Crown Season 3 Episode 5 ("Coup") on Netflix