SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from all of Season 5 of “The Crown,” now streaming on Netflix.
As handsome as the sharp-jawed British actors bringing it to life, “The Crown” has been nothing short of dazzling, luring curious viewers like me into Peter Morgan’s reimagining of the impossibly tangled web that is the British monarchy. Five seasons in, the Netflix drama’s ability to shock and awe with its immense budget, top- tier acting, and nigh impeccable production design is a well-worn fact — and also a lifesaver, given how blunt it’s now become.
In the six years and 21 Emmy wins since its debut, the show’s managed to distract millions from the fact that each season has been less subtle than the last. Season 5, which dropped on Nov. 9, is far from the first “Crown” installment to lean too heavily on metaphors to sell its themes. (Remember Season 1’s “Act of God,” in which a deadly fog represented Winston Churchill’s indecision paralysis, or something?) This new season is, however, an especially egregious offender, with Morgan’s scripts hammering their most obvious themes home with clattering thuds, pushing allegory after allegory with vanishingly little nuance.
Season 5, hinging on Queen Elizabeth (now Imelda Staunton) feeling more like an outdated relic and the contentious divorce between Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Prince Charles (Dominic West, doing his best despite being wildly miscast), features shaggy scripts that never met a metaphor they didn’t want to catapult straight into viewers’ faces. As typically good as actors like Debicki, Lesley Manville (Princess Margaret) and Olivia Williams (Camilla Parker-Bowles) are at adjusting to their inherited roles, it’s almost as if Morgan doesn’t quite trust them (and/or the audience) to understand exactly what’s going on at all times. In telling the stories of some of the most repressed, private people on the planet, “The Crown” constantly makes them spell everything out. Subtext is dead; long live tortured metaphors.
Need convincing? Here are the new season’s five most jarring metaphors and allegories, ranked from least to most ridiculous.
