Special Investigation: Pride and Prejudice transcript
Listen to this episode at
VMIpod.com/prideandprejudice
JOY: Well, it's the moment you've all been waiting for.
HZ: You just didn't know you were waiting for it.
JOY: Yeah. Ever since Jackie, Wallace, Duncan, and Veronica had to gather at a suite in the Neptune Grand to watch the 1995 BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, based on Jane Austen's novel of 1813, you have been waiting for us to talk about it. At length.
HZ: Yeah, although not as much length as the BBC 1995 miniseries, which is pushing six hours.
JOY: Not six hours’ worth of chat, but we have some stuff to say.
HZ: Yeah, well, it's very much in our wheelhouse because there's a rude rich boy who's in love with a girl with a tiny jacket. Easy.
JOY: A tale as old as time, Helen. This is archetypal romance. I had no idea that the rich roots of Veronica Mars dug back through the soil of history.
HZ: So we decided, by which I mean I decided, that we should all watch it together, because Jenny had never been exposed to Pride and Prejudice in any form.
JOY: Yeah, I don't know how I managed to never have to read this in school, or see the Keira Knightley adaptation at the very least.
HZ: Did you know anything about it?
JOY: No, no, no, and what's particularly delightful to me was I've followed the SparkNotes Twitter—I heartily recommend—but like 25 percent of their content is about Jane Austen properties. So I was missing 25 percent of the jokes, and then I got to go back through their feed and get all the jokes. Hell yeah.
HZ: So much delayed gratification, just like in the book. So I thought it was time for Jenny to submit herself to this, and a bunch of you also joined us to watch together and tweet along, which was a lot of fun, I thought.
JOY: So fun, it was so much more fun than I thought it was going to be. I was like, I'll do it for Helen because I love Helen, but this is really not my first choice of activity. And yet, rather than feeling like a rolled-up newspaper smacked across my snout, I found the whole experience of watching this pretty darn enjoyable.
HZ: That's a relief.
JOY: In spite of, you know, many things that seem like they would make me not like it.
HZ: No vampires in it.
JOY: No vampires.
HZ: In fact, a lot of high collars to prevent vampires even if they were there.
JOY: But, you know, a lot of similar wardrobe to Interview With The Vampire.
HZ: Very good point. A lot of frock coats.
JOY: Lot of frock coats.
HZ: And wigs.
JOY: Lots of tailcoats, waistcoats, wigs, cravats. Mainly I'm here for the cravats.
HZ: For the cravat fan, it's a very rich viewing experience.
JOY: Also, if you like bonnets—you fuck with bonnets, Helen?
HZ: I'm alright for bonnets, but I did appreciate that some people wore bonnets to watch this along with us.
JOY: That is so thoughtful. And also, I'm alarmed by people having bonnets, I guess. I thought they were all wiped out when the meteor hit.
HZ: Well, they're very structurally strong against meteors. We will come back to Veronica Mars next week, but for today's episode:
JOY: For 40 percent of my grade, I am going to attempt to tell you what happened in Pride and Prejudice.
HZ: I'm so excited to finally learn what happens in Pride and Prejudice.
JOY: Well, I mean...
HZ: Through the prism of Jenny Owen Youngs's mind.
JOY: You've never seen Pride and Prejudice quite like this. And content note, this episode of Veronica Mars Investigations contains heavy themes and bonnets.
HZ: The heavy theme is bonnets. And awkward boners, but we don't even talk about them because nor did they. But it's very much the subtext of the piece. Boners and bonnets. What a genre.
JOY: Yes.
HZ: Both uncomfortable probably.
JOY: Are you ready to PRIDE?
HZ: Are you ready to... PREJUDICE?
JOY: Yes. Yes, I'm gonna fucking prejudice so hard, all over this episode.
A LONG TIME AGO ON PRIDE & PREJUDICE EPISODE 1:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
MR BINGLEY: “Darcy, she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld. And look, her sister’s very pretty, too.”
MR DARCY: “She is tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me”MRS BENNET: “Mr Bingley favoured Jane above every other girl.”
KITTY: “That’s my bonnet!”
LYDIA: “No, that’s MY bonnet.”LYDIA: “Soldiers! Hot!!”
MR DARCY: “I rarely dance”
LIZZIE: “I may safely promise you never to dance with Mr Darcy.”
MR DARCY: “I would be very happy if you would do me the honour of dancing with me, Miss Bennet.”
LIZZIE: “Thank you, but excuse me, I am not inclined to dance.”MRS BENNET: “Eurghhghhuuuhhh MY NERVES!! Jane! You must walk to My Bingley’s house and catch a cold so he falls in love with you!”
JANE: [sneezes]CAROLINE BINGLEY: “Darcy, how tall is your sister?”
MR DARCY: “She is now about Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s height. That is how I measure stuff now.”
JOY: OK, so what happens in episode one? We meet all these sisters. They have a lot of bonnets. Their mom is truly wretched.
HZ: Terrible. Unbearable.
JOY: Their mom kind of like stands for everything, or the majority of things, that I would think would make me not want to watch this, or not be able to enjoy it.
HZ: She's like the whine of a mosquito made human.
JOY: Oh, yes, yes.
HZ: Plus the irritation of bites.
JOY: Irritation of bites, plus sort of like if a mosquito was deeply saturated in the patriarchy. It's really extreme, what she has going on in terms of her daughters, and the importance that they marry.
HZ: There's not much breaking out of the patriarchy in this whole thing, and in this era. That's the problem, isn't it? You have all these female characters, and it basically matters shit what they want. They have so few options.
JOY: Right. So few options with regard to the shape of their lives - but so many options in the department of bonnets.
HZ: And some ribbons.
JOY: And a lot of ribbons. Yes, OK. So, Mr and Mrs Bennet have a lot of daughters they need to unload.
HZ: And a very toxic marriage.
JOY: You know what is demented? For the first half of the first episode, I was trying to figure out what their relationship to each other was, because they kept calling each other "Mr Bennet" and "Mrs Bennet", and I was like, is she the mother and he's the butler? No. Are they brother and sister? So formal for brother and sister.
HZ: They may well be first cousins, based on the rest of the thing.
JOY: They're probably first cousins, but let's get to cousinwatch in a sec.
HZ: I can imagine that modes of address were more formal then, and they would have only gone with first names in private; but maybe it's also like spouses calling each other "daddy".
JOY: No, because that is hot, and there is nothing hot about -
HZ: Is it?
JOY: Well, you know, to each their own. At least has the potential to be hot. And maybe if the couple was different, Mr Bennet and Mrs Bennet would have the potential to be hot. But in this situation - whoa, we didn't even run down the five daughters that the Bennets need to unload. There's Jane: she's the oldest one. She's very beautiful and dreamy. She has large, luminous eyes and blonde hair. She's the only blonde daughter, which, shorthand, that means that she's the most marriable one.
HZ: Yeah. She's the meal ticket.
JOY: She's the meal ticket. Then under her, we've got Lizzie. She's too smart for her own good. She's too smart for this systemic nonsense. And she's also a beautiful young woman, but, in the context of this world, we're supposed to think that she is not that beautiful? So it's a whole thing. And there are three more sisters, Helen. Are you ready?
HZ: Oh yes.
JOY: There's Mary, who is definitely the Aquarius of the group, marching to the beat of her own drum, playing piano, reciting Bible verses. She has terrible glasses.
HZ: I admire Mary because she's like, "Fuck the patriarchy, we're all victims of it, I don't want to participate."
JOY: She's like, "Actually, fuck everything." She has the strongest "you're all idiots" vibe.
HZ: Yeah. She's the punk sister.
JOY: Right, she's the punk sister.
HZ: Relatively.
JOY: Then I was lost for who was younger, Kitty or Lydia.
HZ: Kitty's the fourth one, and Lydia's the youngest.
JOY: OK, so Kitty is the one who definitely has got this like "I'm overlooked" syndrome. “Why doesn't anyone pay attention to me? What about me? What about me, Kitty?”
HZ: And that question's never answered.
JOY: Then there's Lydia. She starts out making me think this girl rocks. But then by the end, she becomes very obnoxious and full of herself and doesn't care about anybody.
HZ: When thirst traps get married. And also when 15-year-olds are very horny. And then they marry people a lot older than them in a terrible way. You know?
JOY: It's not great.
HZ: The problem is they've got five daughters and they didn't manage to produce a male heir, which means when Mr Bennet dies, they'll lose their house. And it seems like Mr Bennet, he likes Jane and he likes Lizzie, and then the three youngest, he's just always calling them stupid fucks. Not in those words, but I was wondering whether he's doing that because he was like, "Well, we only had you in case you were a boy." But also I just thought, well, you're their father, and you're the only one in this house with the power to make decisions; so if you think they're a bit shit, you have some dominion over that.
JOY: Yes. Correct. Mr Bennet seems like a very hands-off kind of dad.
HZ: Familiar with those.
JOY: Some might say Mrs Bennet is way too many hands on. Like, lose some of those hands. Maybe? Maybe she could do something nice for herself, to let off a little steam, you know? Those are the five daughters. Because of the rules of property, if Mr Bennet dies before one of them is married, the property will pass to like a nephew or a cousin, some dude, because women can't own stuff. Isn't that cool? Because, Helen, the age old question: how could property own property? It just doesn't make sense.
HZ: But luckily, rich bachelors have arrived in town!
JOY: Hurray! And they're handsome. OK. Colin Firth, I didn't know that Colin Firth was hot at some point, but now I get it. Mr Darcy, who shows up at a party to brood and glower in the background, he gets out of a horse-drawn carriage, he's all like — well, you people can't hear me, but on Facetime I'm crossing my arms at Helen and leaning back darkly.
HZ: You've got very forbidding body language, Jenny, right now.
JOY: Yeah. He doesn't seem to approve of very much. He reminds me a lot of David Boreanaz playing Angel. They have very similar DNA.
HZ: Interesting. And then Bingley, what did you make of Bingley? He's like a Labrador retriever of a person.
JOY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's -
HZ: Rich.
JOY: Sweet, little -
HZ: Rich.
JOY: - guy. Love him. Love when men are rich. The only thing I didn't like about Bingley is his tolerance of his sister, but I guess that's how things go. I think the most important thing that happens in the first instalment of the miniseries, Helen, we meet all these people, obviously we meet Darcy and Bingley and Bingley's vile sister Caroline, but the most important thing that happens is that there is a scene where Colin Firth is in a copper bathtub, and a butler of some kind comes in with a huge copper pitcher and pours water over his head. That's the peak of the episode.
HZ: I had not remembered that at all. Everyone remembers a soggy Darcy moment from later, but there's actually three soggy Darcy moments that I counted.
JOY: I can't wait to find out what the one that isn't the jumping in the lake one, because I don't remember - is he very sweaty?
HZ: I think maybe he just like dips his head in water or something because he's warm. I can't remember. Something like that.
JOY: I see, I see, I see.
HZ: Or it rains. I just was like, "Oh, there are actually three soggy Darcys. But only one can win."
JOY: So basically, Bingley and Jane, they're making some eyes at each other. And then Darcy declines to ask Lizzie to dance because she is, and I quote: not handsome enough to tempt him. How dare he?
HZ: Negging. The original neg.
JOY: Does anything else important happened in episode one? A lot of setup.
HZ: Jane walked to visit the Bingleys in their rented house - which apparently was a sign that the Bingleys were new money, that they were renting rather than having an estate that had been passed down for a thousand years or some shit. Anyway, she walks to the Bingleys and it rains and therefore she gets very ill, so she gets to stay at the Bingleys and Lizzie gets to go and look after her, and this is all some shit.
JOY: Yeah, there's a lot of talking about balls. Lizzie also swears to her mother that she'll never dance with Mr Darcy, and, spoiler alert: yes she will.
HZ: Yeah. It doesn't even take that long.
JOY: Yeah. Yeah.
HZ: A question I have for you, Jenny, is: how clear is the whole situation to you? Because although we're told that the Bennets are poor, relative to these other characters, what you're looking at is people who live in a big, beautiful house and have servants.
JOY: In an enormous house.
HZ: And don't work.
JOY: Well, I guess everything is relative, Helen. When you're in a boat, and the level of the water that the boat is in goes up, you're still like, "Well, I'm just on the surface of the water." You know? But they're paying a lot of attention to people who are way richer than them, but not very much attention to anybody less rich than them, if that makes sense?
HZ: How did that read to you, therefore? Because so much of this is about financial ranking and social hierarchies.
JOY: Yeah. Well, I had a lot of moments of being like, "Wait, they keep saying they're poor, but look at this house." But then also, once you start to see - what's Darcy's property, Pemberley? Pemberton? Pembronaton? Pembertron!
HZ: Pembertron! Once you enter the Pembertron...
A LONG TIME AGO ON PRIDE & PREJUDICE EPISODE 2:
“Mmm, hot soldier Mr Wickham.”
LIZZIE: “Urgh, not-hot cousin Mr Collins.”
MR COLLINS: “My patron and neighbour Lady Catherine de Bourgh has such grand stairs.”
MRS BENNET: “Girls, could one of you marry Mr Collins so when your dad dies and he inherits our estate, we can carry on living in it?”
MR COLLINS: “Yessss! Marry me, cousin Elizabeth?”
LIZZIE: “NOOOOOOOOOO”
LIZZIE: “But maybe if hot Wickham were to ask me sometime…”
SISTERS: “A ball! A ball!”
WICKHAM: “Mr Darcy was mean to me, Lizzie!”
MR DARCY: “Elizabeth, I know you said in episode one that you promised never to dance with me, Mr Darcy, but would you care to dance with me, Mr Darcy?”
LIZZIE: “Ugh, fine.”
JOY: Here is an odious weasel with horrifying hair, and he's a clergyman - no offence to clergyman, but the clergyman look, not doing anything for this guy. He's got like a real Friar Tuck kind of vibe going on.
HZ: He looks like a cartoon crow that's been trapped in an oil slick.
JOY: Yes. Yes, exactly. And he is their cousin and he's trying to marry one of them. He goes for Jane. But Jane is you know, Jane and Bingley are romancing, so...
HZ: The Bennets will benefit if he does marry a Bennet sister, because he's the person who will inherit where the Bennets live when Mr Bennet dies. He's the next man in line. So if they can marry off one of the sister Bennets to their cousin, then the property is secure. What a lovely situation.
JOY: Question: is everyone in England up cousins? Is this the only option, or... just wondering. Just wondering.
HZ: I think there was a lot of strategic marriage for the purposes of property. I don't think marriage was for love at this point, really. I think at the time as well it was considered rude to marry off any younger daughters if the oldest was unmarried. But Mr Collins and Mary would be a pretty good match, I think, because Mary is religious and Mr Collins is also religious, and they probably wouldn't have to talk to each other. She could just play piano and he could go around being an oily sycophant, which is what he does anyway.
JOY: Oh god, oh god. He has a benefactress, a patroness.
HZ: Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
JOY: What is that?
HZ: I assume she is basically funding him. He lives in the house next door to her massive house. The job situation, I don't know a lot about it, I think for these people it's basically like there are working class servant jobs, and then there's posh person jobs, like the military and the clergy. But I think you paid to have a decent position in either of those organizations.
JOY: Jesus.
HZ: So maybe Lady Catherine de Bourgh is funding Mr Collins's clergy spot? He's amazing, because his small talk is just talking about his neighbour's house. Can you imagine meeting someone at a party and he's just like, "My neighbour's staircase is amaaaazing"?
JOY: It's really, really wretched. I hate everything about him from start to finish.
HZ: I admire his resilient self-esteem. He gets knocked down and he gets up again. Never gonna keep Mr Collins down.
JOY: No, no no no. Good news, less disgusting news: Mr Darcy comes in to smoulder from atop a horse, which is very thoughtful of him, for us. Then everybody goes to a party, including, for some reason, Mrs Bennet, who does not belong at parties. Lydia running around, living it up. I don't think it's at this party when she goes running across the room with a sword that she like took off one of the military men, but that happens at some point, and it's delightful.
HZ: There's so many parties. I can't remember what happens at each party.
JOY: Do they do anything besides go to parties at which they try to marry off their daughters? It seems like that's kind of their prime activity.
HZ: I guess when that was such an important activity...
JOY: You put everything into it.
HZ: Those were the opportunities to date. And also there was no television, so what else are they going to do for fun?
JOY: True. True.
HZ: They just walk around the living room. They have dinner and then they go for walks around the living room.
JOY: Well, when you're this rich, and your living room is big enough to do a lap around, that's nice.
HZ: But they're not doing parkour with the furniture, which would be entertaining.
JOY: I would like that better than what they get up to. Some things that happen in this episode: Lizzie hears that Mr Darcy has like a woman that he's supposed to marry. Spoiler alert: also his cousin. And she, even though her mouth is like, "Good," the look on her face tells us that she doesn't like that Mr Darcy has a wife lined up.
HZ: But also that person is Lady Catherine de Bourgh's daughter.
JOY: Right, right, right, right.
HZ: She also meets a hot person.
JOY: Oh, is it Wickham? So many redcoats. So many parties.
HZ: So many parties, so many white men with sideburns, Jenny.
JOY: Yeah, major chops in this universe.
HZ: So Lizzie feels stirrings for Wickham. Basically, in Jane Austen, there's always someone who's very charming that one of the major female characters has the instant hots for who turns out to be secretly engaged, or otherwise a lying prick.
JOY: Ha! Well, spoiler alert for all my future Austen reading. Darcy asks Lizzie to dance in this episode, Helen, so quickly this turns around. Also, Lizzie says "prejudice". Drink! You gotta drink. We get to see more of Caroline Bingley being wretched.
HZ: Yes, that's her M.O., this whole thing. She's someone who's rich, and presumably she's on a husband hunt, because it's kind of implied she wants to marry Darcy; but you know some people’s sense of humour is just being mean and they haven't realised that that's not the secret to being funny? But she's not come to that realisation yet.
JOY: Yeah. That's definitely her deal. Doesn't have to be like this, Caroline. Who hurt you?
HZ: Good question. Prequel!
JOY: Then, Helen, get a trash can, get a bucket of some kind, because Mr Collins is ready to propose to Lizzie. And he repeatedly addresses her as ‘cousin’ while he's doing so. Why, God? Why? Lizzie's like, "No, thank you," and Mrs Bennet goes into histrionics. She is losing it. She's flipping out. And she's like, "If you don't marry him, I'll never speak to you again."
HZ: What a blessing.
JOY: Yeah, Lizzie's like, "Sounds pretty good." Mrs Bennet drags Lizzie in to talk to her father and he's like, "Oh, that's the situation? Your mother won't speak to you if you marry Mr Collins? Well, I'll never speak to you again if you do." Because he's a cool dad.
HZ: “Which parent do you love the most?” But also, Mrs Bennet, throughout this, is like marriage, weddings, much more important than the humans involved. And there are still people around like that.
JOY: Hurray.
A LONG TIME AGO ON PRIDE & PREJUDICE EPISODE 3:
JANE: “Hi, it’s Jane Bennet here, I’m in London staying with my aunt and uncle, I heard Mr Bingley was in town too, is he home? ...Oh, never mind, I’ll try again later.”
MR COLLINS: “Cousin Elizabeth! You’ve come to stay with me and my new wife Charlotte, your best friend, who I proposed to right after you rejected me, and now she gets to live here with me next door to Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her AMAZING STAIRCASE. I say ‘staircase’, but she has several staircases.”
JANE: “Hi again, it’s Jane, again, I’m still in London, is Mr Bingley around? ...Oh, well could you tell him I called? Thank you.”
MR COLLINS: “SO MANY STAIRCASES.”
JANE: “Hi, it’s Jane again, Jane Bennet? J-A-N-E B-E-N-N-E-T. Is Mr Bingley there? B-I-N-G-L-E-Y? No, it’s Jane Bennet. JANE. BENNET? Yes I’ll hold.”
MR COLLINS: “Cousin Elizabeth, we’re going to dinner with Lady Catherine de Bourgh and all her staircase! Oh gosh, that’s not a staircase, it’s her nephew Mr Darcy!”
JANE: “Sorry, I think we got cut off earlier, it’s Jane Bennet - hello?”
DARCY: “Miss Elizabeth, yes it is I, Darcy. In vain I have struggled. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. Whilst I also tell you that your family is embarrassing and sucks and I sabotaged Jane’s romance with Bingley, nonetheless I have come to feel for you a passionate admiration and regard, which, despite all my struggles, has overcome every rational objection, and I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife.”
LIZZIE: “Wait - you ruined my sister’s romance with Bingley?”
MR DARCY: “Don’t concentrate on that bit, that’s just a parenthesis in my proposal - observe the main point: even though I think your family stink worse than an Egg McMuffin in a hot car, will you marry me?”
LIZZIE: “Mr Darcy! You’re the last man in the world whom I could ever marry.”
JOY: As we're outlining what happens in each episode, I'm really struck by how little happens in fucking six hours of television.
HZ: Oh yeah. Partly because it takes so long to get anywhere because the roads are slow.
JOY: Right. More beautiful wallpaper, more hand-carved sofas with beautiful upholstery, more cravats, more waistcoats and tailcoats, more chops. I think this is the first time, in this episode, is when Mr Collins starts really going on about the fireplace that cost £800, which he mentions, I don't know, ten more times. Lady Catherine's fireplace.
HZ: Maybe it's a euphemism for something.
JOY: So you're saying that Lady Catherine has a big fireplace.
HZ: But it's weird to think that Mr Collins is the first person in this that gets married off.
JOY: Just goes to show you there's no accounting for taste, or what people are willing to do. Well, you know what - Charlotte Lucas's priorities are she wants a home. I don't think we saw this in the show, or maybe I missed it because everyone is speaking very fast with English accents, but Charlotte Lucas is 27, six years older than Lizzie.
HZ: It's a disaster. She's basically dead.
JOY: Yeah, oh my god, why even bother.
HZ: And also, she has no ringlets.
JOY: No ringlets = no prospects.
HZ: That's to signify that she's not considered attractive. But again, it's slightly hard to read the cues that this is dishing out. Like the houses that are supposed to belong to the poor people, Charlotte is meant to be plain and undesirable, and you're like, "That's a pleasant-looking person, just with an unflattering centre parting and scraped back hair."
JOY: Yes. We find out in this episode that Mrs Bennet is into redcoats. Hell, yeahhh. She's about it.
HZ: It's interesting that this kink runs in the family, travels down the mother side, because Kitty and Lydia are both full into redcoats, too.
JOY: They look great. They're great uniforms. Very good. Very sharp. We find out that Wickham is marrying a girl whose name I think is Mary King.
HZ: Mary Ugly-Because-Of-Freckles King.
JOY: Yeah, beautiful girl. What is wrong with everyone? And also, she just received a £10,000 inheritance, so that's why Wickham's marrying her. Wickham does this whole thing where he tells Lizzie, when he's like kicking it to her, he's like, "Oh, yeah, Mr Darcy, he did me wrong. His father loved me. His father promised to sponsor me as a priest or whatever, and then after he died, Mr Darcy told me to go fuck myself." Lies, lies, lies! And it seems like Wickham and Lizzie have some chemistry, but now he's marrying this girl who has money that he can use. Men love a dowry or whatever, I guess.
HZ: For a book that's considered romantic, a lot of it is really quite pragmatic to the point of grimness.
JOY: Helen, you buckle your safety belt, because out of fucking nowhere after two and a half episodes of staring at each other with barely masked disdain slash lust, Darcy rolls up to Lizzie and is like, "I ardently admire you." And she's like, "You're disgusting. You are so appalling to me. GTFO."
HZ: He's not used to hearing that, as the hot rich guy in most rooms.
JOY: But also, what does he hear, ever? Because he doesn't seem to want to talk to anyone.
HZ: Well because the people he has to hang out with are so boring, like the Bingley sisters, Catherine de Bourgh; just terrible snobs. The chat is bad.
JOY: Not even boring, but wretched.
HZ: Yeah, exactly. That's probably why he doesn't enjoy socializing. He's an introvert, and they're not making extroversion seem appealing.
JOY: Oh, one detail that we haven't touched on is that every episode of this miniseries ends with a freeze frame before the credits. It feels very mid-1990s, it feels very BBC, but it really struck me.
HZ: We haven't even talked about the credits at the beginning, with just the camera going over something satin.
JOY: <sings> “Have you ever heard of a fabric called LACE?” There's some bows, some satin, some floral prints.
A LONG TIME AGO ON PRIDE & PREJUDICE EPISODE 4:
DARCY: “Miss Bennet. Don’t worry, I am not writing this letter to you to propose again, but because I must urgently tell you that Wickham is a fuckboi. He gambled away my father’s money, and when he wasn’t allowed more, tried to get my 15-year-old sister to elope with him. She is about the same height as you, as mentioned in episode one. Excuse the ink smudges, I’m just so damned hot writing this letter to you.”
LYDIA: “Daddy, daddy, we’re bored, can we go to Brighton? The soldiers are all in Brighton, can we go, can we can we can we?”
MR BENNET: “No.”
LYDIA: “But dad!!”
MRS BENNET: “Oh Mr Bennet! My nerves!”
LYDIA: “Tough shit dad, I’m going to Brighton to fuck soldiers!”
MR BENNET: “OK Lydia, just please don’t fuck any soldiers, you’re only 15.”
LYDIA: <laughs>AUNT GARDINER: “Lizzie, won’t you come with us, your least embarrassing aunt and uncle, for a tour of Derbyshire?”
LIZZIE: “Sure, except I’m not going to Pemberley.”
AUNT GARDINER: “But Lizzie, it’s soooo bigggg. And Darcy’s not even at home.”
LIZZIE: “Oh, OK. Whoa - Pemberley is SOOOO BIGGGG.”<splash>
DARCY: “Oh, er, Miss Bennet, I was just, er, on my way home when my shirt got all wet.”
LIZZIE: “Nice nipples - I mean, house, a lovely big wet house, er, I mean - I must go!”DARCY: “Wait! Please, come to visit! I’d like you to meet my sister! You’re the same height!”
LIZZIE: “Whoa, his house is soooo bigggg…”
HZ: So after she rebuffs his proposal, he sends this very big letter that is written in a fit of passion, talking about how Wickham is actually a shit.
JOY: Right. Because one of the reasons she says that she doesn't like him is this supposed shitty thing he did to Wickham, and Mr Darcy wants to set the record straight.
HZ: Yeah. Wickham's the shit.
JOY: This is another reason that Lizzie is pissed at Darcy: something has gone on with Jane and Bingley where it looked like they were gonna get hot and heavy, but then, apparently, when Bingley and Jane are in the same area, he keeps this information from Bingley, and Darcy was like, "I don't believe Jane is truly into you."
HZ: It's because she's not the most expressive character, let's be honest.
JOY: Well, she's very dreamy and romantic, but it's very internal, and she's also reserved, and... I don't know. I thought this was a bit of an overstep on Darcy's part, and it sucks. OK, so the main point of episode four is Mr Darcy enters a wet blouse contest. Lizzie is going on a -
HZ: Roaaad triiiip!
JOY: Yeah, road trip with her aunt and uncle. They go by Pemberley, and everybody thinks that Mr Darcy is out of town.
HZ: Yeah, because Lizzie is so embarrassed at the prospect of being a tourist at Mr Darcy's house.
JOY: Right. And for some reason, I don't really know how they get in, if her aunt and uncle know some of the staff or whatever, but they basically just end up getting a tour.
HZ: I assume that this is a thing that people could do, because the locals in the village near Pemberley seem familiar with the idea of going to have a look at the big house.
JOY: I see, I see, I see. They go to look at the big house. But lo, Helen! Mr Darcy has ridden home a day ahead of everyone else, and he's had a fencing lesson and he's worked himself up into a great sweat and he just wants to be refreshed, and there's one thing I know that is refreshing, it's going into a lake with all my clothes on. Mmm, yes!
HZ: The initial plan was that he would be naked. But then because it was BBC, and I think it was pre-watershed, they were like, "He can't be naked. He could go in in his underpants?" And then they were like, "People didn't wear underpants in this era." So then they were like, "OK, he can just go in in the shirt."
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: Except he couldn't actually go in the lake because they were worried about the rat-borne disease Weil’s Disease. So a stunt man jumps in and then it cuts to Colin Firth swimming in a tank in a film studio. Sorry to demystify.
JOY: Oh my god.
HZ: But then people were so worked up about this scene when it came out, and for years after people were like [panting noises], which would suggest how hard up people were at the time. Because it's a man in a huge shirt that is barely even translucent.
JOY: Oh, good people of 1995: let me time travel back to you and foretell of the wonders that await you on pornhub.com. You'll see everything you want to see, and like a million things that you never wanted to see.
HZ: Oh golly.
JOY: It's so crazy to think about how just, you know, what, 25 years ago people were like, "Wow, this guy's in a wet shirt!"
HZ: Right.
JOY: OK, so because, of course, this is how it has to be, Lizzie accidentally bumps into a wet Mr Darcy and she's like, "Oh! Oh! Mmm!" And he's all like, "Uhh." And he's come down, it seems, with a sudden case of manners, because he runs and gets dressed, and then comes down and he's very polite to her aunt and uncle, and to her as well, and she's like, "I don't even know what to think."
HZ: So he invites them round.
JOY: He invites them round for dinner or something.
HZ: As friends, not tourists. Lydia has been allowed to go to Brighton while all this is going on. Which is where I am now, so I can tell you what a sordid place it is, full of licentious deeds.
JOY: Oh, yeah.
HZ: Actually I think it was a very cool place to be at that time, and George, the Prince Regent, built this incredible kind of Taj Mahal-influenced palace that he could go and fuck his mistress in.
JOY: Nice.
HZ: So Brighton was a bawdy sort of place, yeah.
JOY: Yeah. Brighton rocks. I've never done anything untoward there, but seems like a good place to do untoward stuff.
A LONG TIME AGO ON PRIDE & PREJUDICE EPISODE 5:
JANE: “Oh no! Untoward stuff has happened in Brighton!”
LIZZIE: “Can it wait? We’re all having such a nice time at Pemberley with Mr Darcy, who’s cool now, and Mr Bingley, and Mr Darcy’s sister - who is my height!”
JANE: “No, it can’t wait! Lydia has run off with Mr Wickham!”DARCY: “Miss Bennet, leave it with me, I have previous experience in dealing with that fuckboi Wickham.”
MRS BENNET: “MISTER BENNET! My nerves!!! My poor Lydia! Oh Mr Wickham, what a fuckboi! Lydia must marry him!”
HZ: So the dinner plan, unfortunately, is foiled by terrible news from home.
JOY: Lydia has run off with Wickham, right? Two of the worst characters — ugh.
HZ: They're sexpeople, so they're drawn together by that.
JOY: Sure, sure. But maybe they're just drawn together by being self-interested assholes. Also a possibility, I'm not ruling it out.
HZ: I guess Lydia is excited because she gets to act like an adult, she gets to act on her sexual desires, and I guess Wickham, he's like, "Here's a busty sexperson." But I feel like when you see them after this has happened, the running away has happened - which was very controversial for the time, like being unmarried and in bed together - he already seems like, "Oh, I've made a terrible mistake."
JOY: She seems like a bit of a handful, doesn't she?
HZ: He's like, "I've got to stop fucking 15-year-olds."
JOY: Yeah. It's almost as if fucking 15-year-olds is not a good idea for a grown man. Something that was very important to me that happens in episode five is that there's kind of a long scene where Darcy is walking down one of his estate's halls, carrying a tall candle, and flanked by hounds. I loved this. I would have taken like another 30 minutes of that. It was awesome. Give me a tour of the whole place, Darcy.
HZ: And all the hounds. This could have been a houndier piece, couldn't it?
JOY: There are definitely a lot of majestic hounds, but they're spread out, you know? Well selected, but I could've taken some more of them. Something that really struck me is that Caroline Bingley would routinely say the shittiest thing she could think of, and then when somebody else would be shitty back to her, the look of absolute disbelief and horror on her face made me think that she doesn't actually know she's saying shitty things. It was that dramatic.
HZ: I don't know whether these people have learned appropriate social behaviour, but maybe she never has, especially being rich and female. They weren't going to school.
JOY: OK, true. They're not getting socialized. You know, I have a puppy right now and it's very important for him to be socialised, and this is why: you don't want him to end up like Caroline Bingley at a party, you know?
HZ: Ornamental, but so mean.
JOY: Exactly.
HZ: That's the thing, though; when you breed these women just to be ornamental and marriageable, and don't think of the personalities, they've still got the personalities.
JOY: If you can call it that. Something that happens in this episode is Liz is just hanging out in her room at her vanity or whatever, and then Darcy appears in the mirror.
HZ: Shit.
JOY: And says something. He's like, "I must leave you at once," or something. She's like remembering it, and he's appearing in the mirror to say it. It's very Dark Shadows or something, like it just felt goofy.
HZ: Because he's off to fix the Wickham situation. Like a boss.
JOY: But she thinks that he just wants to have nothing to do with her, because if one girl in a family does something that's considered unacceptable...
HZ: The whole batch is ruined.
JOY: Exactly.
HZ: They're like, "Oh god, Lydia's eloped with Mr Wickham, that's a problem." But then an even worse problem is that she's run off with Mr Wickham and they have no intention to marry.
JOY: Yeah. Yeah. You've gotta put a ring on it, I guess? In order to prevent disgrace.
HZ: So Darcy's like, "I'm going to fix this by making them get married." But what I also wondered was whether Darcy is like, "Hah, now I finally get revenge on Wickham for fucking over my sister."
JOY: Oh, true.
HZ: Lydia and Wickham are in what looks like a room above a pub and they seem bored, but she just wants to have sex, and he is a bit sick already of being with her, so neither is satisfied.
JOY: Yeah. This is not a great situation. No winners in this situation.
HZ: And then she's like, "Ha ha ha, I see Mr Darcy coming, ha ha ha." And at home, Mrs Bennet is like -
JOY: Wailing into the abyss.
HZ: "He's such a prick. We must make them marry.".
JOY: "He is the worst. He must marry my daughter.".
HZ: "And I'm not even there to take her to the best wedding ribbon shops." So the priorities, like him sucking seems pretty low down vs the wedding fabric buying.
JOY: This is some real helter skelter-ass shit. Also, Helen, as I'm glancing through our our Twitter thread, I'm seeing at the end of episode five, you were doing so many great polls the whole time, and your last poll before episode six started was: pride, or prejudice? And pride won with 77.5 percent of the vote.
HZ: Resounding victory for pride. I also did a poll as to which you would rather be pandemic-ly isolating with: Mrs Bennet or Mr Collins?
JOY: No.
HZ: That's a satanic choice to have to make.
JOY: That's horrific. Please. How dare you.
A LONG TIME AGO ON PRIDE & PREJUDICE EPISODE 6:
LYDIA: “Ha ha, I’m married now, walk behind me, single bitches! And guess who sorted out all my stupid gross shit? Mr Darcy!”
MR DARCY: “I’m sorry for interfering in your relationship with Jane. Go forth and marry.”
MR BINGLEY: “Brilliant, thanks! Jane, I’ve been obsessed with you ever since episode 1, will you marry me? Great!”MRS BENNET: “High fives, Mr Bennet! Bingley is fucking rich!”
LADY CATHERINE: “Lady Catherine de Bourgh here. I see your house only has a paltry number of staircases. Miss Elizabeth Bennet, walk with me in your shitty garden so I can tell you not to marry my nephew Mr Darcy. He is to marry my daughter, his cousin who never speaks, and is not the same height as his sister!”
LIZZIE: “Or IS he? Because the script says we’ve got a double wedding before the credits.”
LADY CATHERINE: “I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. I am most seriously displeased.”DARCY: “Miss Bennet. Sorry for being proud. And prejudiced. [Drink!] Everyone’s been waiting for nearly six hours now, will you marry me?”
LIZZIE: “Yes! (His house is soooo big...)”
JOY: Everything's coming up Bennet. Bingley returns. And he's fucking in love with Jane, and it was all a big misunderstanding and they can go and have beautiful blonde little babies.
HZ: Very docile babies.
JOY: Yeah.
HZ: How did you feel about that? Because I thought it's a bit weird, where you're supposed to care again when you're like, "Oh, I'd just sort of forgotten this was happening, because we haven't seen Bingley for like three episodes."
JOY: I was into it. I like Bingley. He really was like a leaf on the wind, but a charming leaf.
HZ: He's nice. No side to him.
JOY: I like Jane a lot, and I wanted her to be happy, and she seemed to be very stoked about this, so it all seems good. And plus, I think Caroline Bingley probably hates it. That's another great thing about it.
HZ: But then Jane will have to live in a house with Caroline Bingley, which is a shame for her. And the other Bingley sister, who...
JOY: ...has no name and no personality.
HZ: But she does bash out a great rendition of Turkish Rondo by Mozart at a party.
JOY: Oh, shit. That's true.
HZ: That's a party banger.
JOY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like when you really need to get shit started, when you need people like on the floor, that's your go-to.
HZ: “Dance, you fuckers!”
JOY: Yeah, and it's like four on the floor, doo doo doo doo.
HZ: I grew up near this museum of pianos, and we'd occasionally get school trips there, and the guy who was the proprietor would play Turkish Rondo on the piano that it was supposed to be played on, and it was like a special effects keyboard from like the 18th century.
JOY: Woah.
HZ: And it had all these keys that made crashing sounds and stuff, which was pretty cool. It was sort of like the joke synths of its day.
JOY: Wow, I love that.
HZ: Anyway, I digress. Bingley and Jane.
JOY: Bingley and Jane.
HZ: At last, it's on!
JOY: They're in love, Bingley and Jane. And now, are you fucking ready? Like there's all this build up to how do we get Darcy and Lizzie fucking on a walk together so they can have another conversation, another go at this conversation where Darcy is like, "My feelings have not changed, they remain the same." And Lizzie's like, "My feelings are totally different." And then they're like, "Let's get married." And then, in a turn I could not have predicted to save my life, two of the richest people in the story are having a group wedding.
HZ: Yeah. That to me is a bit too much cheese.
JOY: I like it in that it feels like a not-a-rich-person thing to do.
HZ: True. True. Would you want a group wedding?
JOY: No. No, I would not.
HZ: And who do you think insisted upon it? Do you reckon it was Jane and Bingley's idea, and the others didn't want to be mean to them because they're so sweet and puppyish?
JOY: Maybe. Or maybe Lizzie and Jane, because they seem like the closest of all the sisters, you know? Maybe they were just genuinely excited to take this step out of their familial life into their new separate lives together.
HZ: How did you feel when Darcy and Lizzie at last got together?
JOY: I was happy about it, and also like, "Wow, I feel like that could have happened in a 45-minute little tale."
HZ: There's also this theme where he's like, "God, the Bennet family, like you and Jane are OK, but the other ones suck." And the solution is to just get her to move to Pemberley.
JOY: Wouldn't you want to get out of that house and into Pemberley? I feel like they don't know anything about each other. You ever think about that?
HZ: Well, I just think that was marriage of the time. And at the end, you get this sort of montage around the church of these different couples that are already married, and it's like, "OK, you can have this kind of marriage," where it's Wickham and Lydia, that's clearly just a disaster before it's even started but they're morally obligated to do it. You've got the aunt and uncle who do get on. You've got Mr and Mrs Bennet where it is like, "Oh, maybe they thought this is a good idea, but because you have to get married when you don't know someone, it turns out that was a shit idea." But I just think at the time you didn't have much choice. I don't think you had much choice to spend a lot of time with your spouse beforehand until really, really recently. Unless they were your cousin. If they were your blood relative, then maybe you would have known them better. Maybe that's an argument in favour of all these blood relative marriages.
JOY: No, no.
HZ: I'm not in favour of them. Just saying, it's either a stranger or your cousin, Jenny; what’ll it be? But do you think this shit's romantic? Like, does it do it for you, or is it all so cis, het, white, that you're like meh? Or are the cravats carrying it?
JOY: I guess the cravats carry it more than I expected them to. I just feel like I would have been a lot more compelled by, you know, two people having an actual relationship, relating to one another - interacting, you know?
HZ: But Jane Austen never did get married, so you could interpret it as the book just being a critique of marriage.
JOY: No, it's making a lot of sense.
HZ: So what do you score the BBC 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice overall, Jenny?
JOY: I had a blast, especially I had a blast watching it with you and all of the people who joined us on Twitter.
HZ: Especially you legends in Australia, who got up in the middle of the night to join in.
JOY: Incredible. So powerful.
HZ: And the bonnet wearers. A lot of homemade bonnets. Can't just buy them in the shops now, Jenny. It's good pandemic-watching because it's soothing, and because it's so slow. Not too much happens.
JOY: Right, right.
HZ: You know, for you that's a bad thing, but for anyone who wants to livetweet something for six hours, it's a good thing.
JOY: I've liked it so much more than I thought I would. And thus I will happily yield unto the BBC adaptation miniseries of Pride and Prejudice four and a half out of five very-unflattering-in-the-front gentleman's high-waisted pants.
HZ: Oh my god, those bib-front pants.
JOY: Brutal.
HZ: You sort of get quite a lot of dressing to the side at the same time as them making your front look like a butt.
JOY: Yeah. Yeah, they are, they have strong front-butt vibes.
HZ: That's the BBC 1995 miniseries of Pride and Prejudice investigated.
JOY: Hell yeah.
HZ: Bonnets closed.
HZ: That was Veronica Mars Investigations: Bonnets edition.
JOY: We’ll be back with more tiny jackets and rich white boys next week, with season 2 episode 6 of Veronica Mars.
HZ: The website, where the show lives - have you SEEN the fireplaces? - is VMIpod.com
JOY: Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at @VMIpod. And hey, why don't you let us know what other shows and/or films you want us to watch and tweet along with us?
HZ: Yes!
JOY: In the meantime, Jenny Owen Youngs. I make music. You can hear some of it at jennyowenyoungs.com. I also talk about another petite blonde protagonist on my other podcast, Buffering the Vampire Slayer.
HZ: I'm Helen Zaltzman and you can find my other podcasts, The Allusionist at theallusionist.org, and Answer Me This at answermethis.com. I expect we're going to get offered a lot of voice acting jobs after this, Jenny, if there's any justice in this world.
JOY: This episode was edited and mixed by Helen Zaltzman. Bless her heart.
HZ: The music is by harpsichord maestro Jenny Owen Youngs.
JOY: The sheriff of this village is Hrishikesh Hirway.
HZ: His house is soooo biiiig. The show is distributed by PRX.
JOY: Until next time, who's your daddy?
HZ: He's also my cousin.
JOY: Oh, I thought a fun game we could play, Helen, is to try to come up with some Pride and Prejudice-themed English condom brand names. What do you think?
HZ: Rubber Bonnet.
JOY: Dude. What about...
HZ: Pride and Prejudicks?
JOY: Pride and Prejudicks.
HZ: Pride and Prophylactics?
JOY: Yes, beautiful. Yes, of course. How about: So Glad You're Not My Cousin, But Even If You Were...
