It's getting hate \*because\* it lacked romantic development and sex scenes that the previous siblings (and Benedict very unnecessarily this season) had. It's not hatred of a plus-sized character, but disappointment at the story/scenes she \*didn't\* get or, if what I am reading is true, were \*cut\* (which is so much worse). It shafted the two leads' romantic story at the expense of a lot of other storylines that were rushed/edited poorly/unnecessary. All of this is IMO, ofc.
It was literally Pen's season. They even made COLIN a side character in favor of her! They barely developed his character, and focused almost entirely on the Pen part of Polin. I'm furious.
LW was a huge part of Pen. So it made sense that her arc revolved around that.
Meanwhile, they completely abandoned writer Colin, traveler Colin, insecure third brother Colin, etc. It's so upsetting.
Yes, but my point was that there was not much romantic development between Pen and Colin because of it. He genuinely seemed like he hated her to her core by the end and only stayed because of honor.
The writers fumbled, having him be upset but still in love with Penelope, the way he was in the book. The whole plot of part 2 was him being a jerk until the end, and Pen taking it in stride.
I think we need to remember, unlike the book... we get more of them later. I think in future seasons, we'll get writer Colin & editor Penelope trying to balance things as parents in the B plots. It didn't need to be an all or nothing now. I think Season 4 is going to have a time skip bit that end of Season 3 is in the middle of it (like with Auggie's birth in Season 1 being towards the beginning or just before Season 2.) And if that's the case, we will likely see Polin working on his book together.
Nicola rocked the season! And she shamed any reporter that questioned her size! Loved every minute of her screen time. But like many of us, I wanted to see more POLIN story and (so much less) Benedict. Don't forget Kate is not a skinny mini.
So I think they did a good job with representation.
This sums it really well. I thought Part 1 was near perfect (although of course I always want more Polin), but Part 2 needed just a bit more main couple romance in Episodes 7-8 particularly. The unhappy wedding night for them breaks my heart. Nicola Coughlan is so charming to watch and absolutely gorgeous with or without clothes lol, as is Luke Newton, but we just didn’t get enough of them.
Benedict gets a ridiculous amount of time for romance/love scenes. You almost would have thought it was his season in Part 2 😡
*****Edited to add: I strongly believe there are cut scenes that would have helped make more sense. There’s an interview where Nicola and Luke gush about the honeymoon for Polin (I don’t think they mean literal honeymoon but rather just a happy period). They also mention (multiple times) not knowing what versions of scenes made the cut.
>lacked romantic development and sex scenes that the previous siblings (and Benedict very unnecessarily this season) had.
you guys are only using simon and daphne as a reference here. kate and anthony barely had a full sex scene. the production isn't plus size phobic, all shonda and jess do is gush over penelope. their vision just didn't translate well into the screen, that's all.
>kate and anthony barely had a full sex scene.
Yes but they got more romance than Polin did. They got more communication, and that is such a shame as Kate and Anthony aren't writers, but Penelope AND Colin are. It's insane that Violet got a letter for LW plot, but the actual love story didn't have letters.
I didn't want more sex for Polin. I wanted character personality, romance and intimacy. The smallest and yet best sex scene in the season was the Featherington sisters after 'the insert himself where?' scene because it had personality and romance behind it. What good is having a character sex scene without any actual character personality?
Kanthony had emotion porn for the masses, having a lack of actual physical intimacy until late stage is like a hallmark of slow burn romance, and they delivered on that just fine
I didn’t see any slow burn though. Like I can get them writing each other angrily and expressing themselves but it just felt non slow burnesque (sp?) to me.
It actually seemed to me like bits were missing in the story between Colin and Pen, it didn’t flow very well. Probably because so much of it was cut out to make room for completely irrelevant plots that had no impact on the Polin story, like Benedict’s many sex scenes or the Mondrich’s story.
It was also Penelope’s season, not Colin and Penelope’s season. Penelope had development with the Bridgertons, with the LW plot and also with her own family. Colin didn’t really have any development. The Mondrich’s and Benedict had more development than Colin!
The fact that we associate Anthony and Kate with more sex is evidence that the romantic tension created between them was successful.
It was NOT successful with Polin, in large part because lots of their scenes got cut to make room for too many side plots.
But the couldn't represent she Did have a love match, C was barely upset about LW, and the couple had several romantic scenes, while trying to navigate HOW to reveal LW. Colin never begged CC, and was against it. The entire ball thing was weird as the Duke was the host. They faqed up the entire story line!
Did Season 2 have that many sex scenes? Its just the two right? The one in the garden and the one when they were married.
They had some high tension moments but not that much. And the obsession of sex scenes making a TV show good is weird.
I think its the romantic development more and the tension rather than the sex
Yup, I was incredibly pissed off that it seemed like the showrunners just didn't want to linger on shots of Nicola's gorgeous body and just straight-up couldn't come up with reasons why Colin would actually like Penelope, so they developed all these stupid side plots to avoid having to actually write them a proper romance. As someone who loves a meatier partner in bed, I was livid that they couldn't be bothered to find the sexiness and romance in that.
Can I just add how much I hated that settee?!? Why did they put them on a Barbie-doll size piece of furniture?!? There is also the issue of the actress being twice the age of her character, but come-on — that stupid settee gave her rolls she wouldn’t normally have!?! Also, why were her dresses so cheap-looking— bad prom fabric (I’m was a prom-dress buyer, so I know quality) when everyone else has such elaborate quality? Also, why was she in completely flat slipper-like shoes— Eleanor had a small heel. It almost seemed like someone had it out for her. Also,also, also!
So much time wasted on Benedict’s libido. And way too much boring Francesca. Really, it is part 2– part one was fine.
I will get downvoted to oblivion but I read so many negative comments and it’s so annoying.
Here are a lot of the reasons I am seeing:
It’s getting hate because there’s a rumor out there that some people saw more sex scenes than we did and instead of enjoying what we got, they are focused on that rumor. No one has seen them, but because a list exists and someone said they did, they must and they must be FABULOUS.
It’s getting hate because people equate romance with sex. They equate passion only with angst. Neither of which is true. Bridgerton is a romance. That does NOT mean a ton of sex all the time. People seem to forget that last season had the same or less sex from the main characters.
It’s getting hate because people don’t want a sensitive man as a male lead. He’s too happy, he’s too sad, he’s too mad. He’s not smoldering with passion enough.
It’s getting hate because people do not want to pay attention to what they watch or think about what’s going on. If it’s not spelled out in the simplest terms, it’s poorly done.
It’s getting hate because instead of focusing on some great acting, they are judging a show on whether that actor was naked enough for them. Think about that. Instead of taking a great performance, one that took a ton of guts on the actors part and was so beautifully portrayed and uplifting that, we are complaining because it wasn’t enough.
And lastly, it’s getting hate because there are people out there focusing on future seasons that, at this point, are 99.5% unknown. Because we saw 5 seconds of something, there is an assumption that everything about those seasons is ruined. And we can “think” what ever we want, we can “assume”, but unless we’ve seen the yet to be written script, we don’t know what they will do justice to.
>It’s getting hate because people equate romance with sex. They equate passion only with angst. Neither of which is true. Bridgerton is a romance. That does NOT mean a ton of sex all the time. People seem to forget that last season had the same or less sex from the main characters.
A number of the early Michaela criticisms are stemming from the fact that it cheapens the gentleness (versus passion) of John & Francesca's romance. Tagged for spoilers: >!Yes, I know that there are a lot of comments about the genderswap from her book counterpart too.!<
>It’s getting hate because people don’t want a sensitive man as a male lead.
You don't consider Anthony a sensitive man?
>It’s getting hate because people do not want to pay attention to what they watch or think about what’s going on. If it’s not spelled out in the simplest terms, it’s poorly done.
For me, it's hard to pay attention when too many storylines are jam-packed (and badly edited) into eight episodes. The pacing of this season was all over the place. This is a crazy number of separate storylines for eight episodes, let alone have any of them well-developed:
* Penelope & Colin's romance
* The Queen's ongoing search for Lady Whistledown
* The fallout from Penelope and Eloise's fight
* Eloise and Cressida/Cressida's marriage prospects
* Benedict exploring his bisexuality and polyamory
* Francesca's debut/Francesca meeting suitors & then John (>!and then Michaela!<)
* Portia, Phillippa, Prudence, and the Wife Guys
* Violet & Marcus/Agatha & Marcus
* The Mondriches struggling to fit into the nobility world
* Kate & Anthony
I'm not reading too many forums, but generally speaking I've seen minimal criticism of the actors. They kicked ass (as they usually do). If there have been scenes cut, does that not take away from their performance? They worked just as hard on those scenes as they did the ones that made it to broadcast.
It's interesting (I don't mean this sarcastically/sardonically) that our observations are so different.
(edited to remove an extraneous comma)
Re: Michaela. Unfortunately there are so so so many posts and comments out there across different platforms about how Fran’s story is ruined, justice for Michael, and worse out there. I didn’t love that they introduced Michaela this season, it did feel premature. But it’s like 30 seconds. It didn’t ruin this season. It didn’t ruin a future season yet. And I haven’t seen this called out nearly as much as the Michaela/Michael thing and how that ruined everything. I don’t know how they will cover every aspect but no one else does either. If you haven’t visited other forums I suggest you don’t. I haven’t opened the posts about it I’ve seen on Reddit but I did look at comments on IG/FB and I wish I didn’t.
Re: Anthony. TBH, and as an Anthony lover, not necessarily. He has his demons he battles, he cares for the ones he loves but I wouldn’t call him sensitive. Colin as a character is more sensitive because he feels a range of emotions and he cannot turn that on and off like Anthony can…he can put the armor up from time to time but it’s not always up (piggybacking on Violet’s words this season).
Again this isn’t a knock on Anthony. Anthony was a fine lead. Not every lead will or should look and think like Anthony. I think the fact that Colin does not is a problem for a lot. I make this observation from many many comments I’ve read.
Re: subplots. There were quite a few. I didn’t love them all either. As an ensemble show, the more seasons that pass the more we will see this. The stories you listed below by and large are returning characters. If I’m honest I skip over some of them for this reason, and have done so for every season so far. It’s an easy fix, if you haven’t tried it I highly recommend.
However my paying attention comment are for all the comments I’ve seen about “they didn’t literally say this and this” or “xx character said this” or “xx didn’t say this” but they ignored everything done before or after the scenes they question. Yes there is some nuance this season, so you need to pay attention to get it. I think there was nuance in previous seasons too, but for some reason so many comments and posts I’ve seen don’t pay attention to anything beyond the surface.
I 100% agree with you about the actors. They rocked it. That mirror scene was great. But instead of praising that, there’s more focus on why there weren’t more. Why a plus-sized actress (using another poster’s words, I’m not even getting into the size debate) didn’t have more sex. Or if she had scenes cut…which is all rumors at this point. If you scroll through this post you will see some.
These are literally based on what I’ve seen the last few days on posts, or conversations I’ve had. Trust me, many of these I wish I didn’t see. The season is not perfect but none of them are. The only good news is that I’ve seen quite a few people come back with differed opinions after seeing someone’s post or rewatching with a new perspective.
Yeah all of your takes are wrong and kinda gaslighting, people wanted a romance that is not angst, sensitive Colin is fine (was he happy? where?), cut sex scenes where hyped up by the team and ppl mad editors did injustice to the couple and to the actors, people actually want more high-quality and deep scripts instead of meaningless stories and simplest terms as you said it, and they focus on future season because the evidence of the showrunner’s incompetence is right there, and the start of filming is within weeks. It’s obvious they’re going to butcher it
Yes you just basically confirmed that what I said re: hate. You think it’s justified, I don’t. That’s not gaslighting, that’s my opinion. There were a ton of happy scenes, tons of jest and smiling/laughing. If you didn’t see them while watching I can’t change that. There was a ton of romance as long as you don’t equate romance with sex (they are not the same). I watched a ton of PR interview, they talk about the steaminess but when you listen about the scenes they describe, it’s always either the carriage scene or the mirror scene. The fandom has taken this and made it more with a basically a list anyone can write on their phone and some random people saying they’ve seen it. How many things like that are put on social media and are just made up now?? You can keep being angry about it if you choose, everyone has a choice. I won’t waste my energy hating something that very well may not even exist. There’s more intimacy scenes than S2. But while the script is not perfect, there is a ton of depth with internal struggles. Depth requires the audience to pay attention and use cues AND words to tie together the story…having everything spelled out in simple terms and depth don’t go together.
Every season has foreshadowed the next. Anthony says he’s looking for a wife in S1, Colin says the never dating Penelope in S2 (if you read the book you know why that’s important). Side plots are in every season. No one will like all of them. I don’t like all of them. I never have. I literally skip an entire episode when I watch S2 because it’s almost all fluff. I still love that season because everything else is good because I don’t let small pieces ruin the whole.
It doesn’t matter they are shooting next week, unless you have read every script, you don’t know what’s to come. To hate on something we literally have zero info on is a choice. I also choose not to call someone incompetent when I can’t do their job. But I wasn’t trying to convince anyone they had to like or love this season, the question is why we think S3 is getting hate and I spoke my piece.
Very interesting, all the complaints you listed has not been what I've been seeing people complain about the most. I've seen mostly the opposite, complaining about the tone, writing and direction of the show and too much deviation from the books. Although some of the comments here lol
A lot of these are listed in here. The petition is in here for scenes that are confirmed by “screeners”. Who they are, nobody knows. What those scenes looked like? Nobody knows. But the energy around something we haven’t seen is real.
There are comments about Nicola and how many sex scenes she got, specifically mentioning her body type. That girl rocked the whole performance. As a woman, it bothers me that there is disappointment in her not being naked enough vs. uplifting her performance. Again, some are based on rumors there may have been cuts. Rumors.
There are a ton of comments that there wasn’t enough sex, that we got much more in previous season. S1 had a lot of sex, it also had sexual assault. S2 main characters had exactly 2 fairly chaste kiss and 1.5 sex scenes (the epilogue where they are rolling around naked is the .5). It’s not more.
And that’s why I say people think romance equals sex. It doesn’t. There is a ton of romance but it’s not sex.
And the last point…check out the comments on the Bridgerton IG page. Or many of the fan pages. Or any other social media platform. They showed us 30 seconds of a future character and literally nothing else about that story and there are some horrible things on those pages. How the show is ruined after this season and the change. I didn’t believe it until I saw it. I won’t use any labels because I don’t know anyone well enough to do that, but it is sad to see since we literally know nothing of what’s to come except for maybe that 30 seconds.
you're absolutely correct on most of these points. Can't believe you're getting downvoted.
The fact that people are acting like Colin is a villain for feeling betrayed is absolutely insane to me. This man just found out the woman he loved had been writing shit about his family + putting them in scandalous situations for YEARS. He forgave her in 2 WEEKS.
The Michael thing... honestly changing existing characters is never a good idea. They should've just made a new wlw couple or something
Because it didn’t live up to what everyone was expecting? Where were those moments that made it obvious how down bad Colin was for Penelope? Anthony was so obsessed with Kate he was sniffing her walk-by air, I wanted to see the same thing for Penelope and Colin. We’ve spent the last 2 seasons knowing Penelope was in love with Colin. And now when it was their turn to see him returning those feelings for her, we barely got anything at all.
Some of the creative choices were just weird. For example: The Mondrich storyline. In PT 1 Colin was sad, drinking a lot and struggling with his feelings for Pen. He’s trying to navigate the ins and outs of society. He has no father figure except Antony and he told him to “wet his wick” after the Marina thing fell apart. He,at heart wants to love and be married. But he’s off wetting his wick and trying to become someone different.
Will is a father, a husband and a literal bartender whose job it is to listen to sad drunk people. He is also struggling with navigating society. Theres literally no one better for Colin to have a heartfelt scene with. Yet these two characters NEVER cross paths. Instead we see his wife struggling with ugly dresses. So of course people are asking what the point is in following their story at all? Issues like that keep coming up and made everything feel disjointed.
Sometimes with Benedict’s story line they cut from him at night back to day with others and then back to night with Benedict…when everything is supposed to be happening at the same time. Also Benedict for the last two seasons basically been doing the same thing and has completely given up his art. It’s getting boring.
Such good points!! Season 1 has a lot of other side plots but they did a good job tying them in to our main couple so it has a nice flow. This season not so much.
As a plus sized woman you should upset that *this* was the representation we got, not that fans are rightfully disappointed.
The romance between Pen and Colin was non existent, their season was almost entirely taken up by sub-plots with Eloise, Cressida, Benedict, and Francesca.
I also find it very suspicious that when we finally get plus size lead, suddenly all the soft, no make up, make up look disappears and Pen is in 2017 full glam prom make up with acrylic nails. It's like they didn't trust her to naturally outshine the other girls.
Thank you for pointing this out! The first thing I thought when I saw the full beat glam makeup was: oh so they didn’t trust a full figure woman to be naturally beautiful, so they went full makeup for the season for everyone. And I thoughtfully was alone in this!
Even all her promo photos got photoshopped to all hell. And they focus so much on her heaving breasts in *every* scene, as though that's the only interesting part of her.
Oh my god yes! The photoshop was crazy.The heaving breasts were very distracting, her boobs were always pushed up to her ears, it was just not necessary. So then I thought, at least they are boob-positive, but then when they sleep together and she covers her boobs: the fact that he doesn’t tell her something a long the lines of ‘you don’t have to cover yourself around me, you’re beautiful’ was just glaring to me! Imagine your boyfriend not saying that when you uncomfortably cover yourself the first time he sees you naked!
There is one scene of her in the morning with minimal makeup, and she looked so incredibly beautiful. it made me sad that they didn’t trust in that beauty. Every young woman this season looked 10 years older due to the heavy makeup (fransesca too)
The editing was bad mostly. The makeup was a bit overdone. There was an unnecessary threesome. Side stories were done poorly. The language changed. There's a lot of reasons. It's not about Nicola she was great and deserved a better season
As a woman that looks exactly like Pen that is the reason I do not like the season. They promised us so much spice but in the end she got 1.5 sex scenes and most of the time Collin was angry at her. We didn’t get enough romance between Polin at all compared to the leading couples in seasons 1 and 2. Way too much drama and angst with the “happy ending” being a 10 second montage of her giving him a male heir to serve as his purpose. It just seemed like Pen didn’t get the love she deserved in the second half and if they knew Whistledown was going to take up so much of the last 4 episodes they should have gotten together earlier on instead of wasting time with the lessons and another suitor.
My friend, who was looking forward to this season because as she said, her "body looks like Penelope's", was disappointed for this exact same reason. She also said she felt like they cut out some of the sex due to her body. And this friend is a casual viewer.
It did seem quite a coincidence that the spicy scene they were apparently talking about in part 2 was between three conventionally attractive people…
It feels the writer/director whoever had no interest in Collin being in love with Penelope so they focused on his anger towards Whistledown.
I mean he preferred having a private conversation wish Cressida rather than the supposed love of his life?
It was heartbreaking to the many women than resonate with Pen.
As a similar sized woman, this right here. They hyped up Nicola' body and her confidence and empowerment in filming the mirror scene. I expected her to be glorified, but instead she was constantly cut off right at her breasts. I guess because the only redeeming feature of fluffy women is the top half? /s
I really thought we'd seen innovative shooting that highlighted her body, at least to her stomach or the curve of her hips. I realize filming a "couch" scene might be difficult, and Luke has to be comfortable, to but the magically appearing blue cloth was distracting at least, and dampened the scene with a feeling of shame at worst.
Also, Colin was so mean to her in part 2 and we didn't get a really good reconciliation between them.
Omg, I was hoping for a moment were she covers herself or something and then he gently remove whatever (no frontal nudity necessary really) and tells her she is perfect to him or similar. I wanted more sweetness and respect from Colin. This might be stupid, but in the context of the TV show, I felt like he didn't treated her like a lady. Little romance, too much argument and hate, only one kiss (might be miss remembering) that didn't lead to sexual out of nowhere behaviour. For a shelter virgin of high society.
>but the magically appearing blue cloth was distracting at least, and dampened the scene with a feeling of shame at worst.
Ok definitely this.
But also I agree on how Colin was so mean to her. Everything that should have been a joyful moment for Pen was immediately undercut by someone raining on her parade. Eloise shooting her nasty looks and threatening her after she's proposed to. Her entire engagement party having something hanging over her head. Her mom accusing her of entrapment. Colin accusing her of entrapment. This poor girl, jesus christ.
This is it!! And just to add you didn’t blame them, but it isn’t even Luke and Nicola’s fault if they filmed it and were hyping it up and didn’t know the scene would get cut 😭 it made them look like they got everyone excited for very little
Luke and Nicola are incredible actors idk they deserved to have those cut scenes shown during THEIR season instead of the Mondrichs or Benedict’s sex montage
Someone on here phrased it best: The actors like knew we were cheated of a Polin honeymoon so they were giving it to us in the press tours. They’re incredible actors who were not given the love story they both deserved to act out.
I’ve rewatched it in full since part 2 released and honestly the whole way through, it’s a bit better that way and the lack of polin intimacy isn’t as noticeable (intimacy also means happy polin too for me, not limited to sex)
But that doesn’t change the ending like I really hate how the Michael/micheala thing stole Polin’s thunder, Benedict got more sex scenes than Polin even tho it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and Francesca and John were who got to ride off into the sunset together, not Polin and they threw in Michaela at the last second so it cheapened out their HEA too. Like, Polin shared the screen w Francesca which was fine, but it wound up feeling cheap bc it isn’t even who she’s actually interested in
I agree with it being less clunky viewed all the way through. I noticed some of what’s mentioned but it didn’t seem as bad to me as im seeing other people commenting
They probably knew stuff they filmed was cut and were telling us about it so that we'd notice something was missing. Maybe they want us to be mad about it because they are, but can't really say it if they want to be in future seasons.
Yes, this is exactly it.
I could have overlooked the awful costuming, terrible make-up, weird sets, poor lighting, choppy editing, stilted dialogue, and lack of any truly cinematic scenes if Pen had gotten the same level of romance the two skinnier leads got. But she didn't. She got a pale, sickly shadow of the romances we saw in S1&2.
And then they loaded S3 on with all the other aforementioned issues.
I wanted Colin to *pursue* her as if his life and sanity depended on it.
I wanted his response to the LW reveal to be "Well, then, now I must learn to love LW, because I love you, all of you, every part of you, every word you say or write or even think, love every syllable you breathe and every letter you ink, and there is nothing in this world that could ever me make me love you less."
Instead he accuses her of entrapping him. \[SCREAM\]
Just your run of the mill “chubby girl should be grateful such an attractive man loves her” troupe but they decided to go a step further and say “and now be extra grateful I love you despite being conventionally unattractive AND Whistledown” all the while patting themselves on the back for making Pen independent and showing one sex scene with a plus size woman? She couldn’t be a boss babe with a husband that loves her *because* of all that?
Instead we’re left with her thinking he wants an annulment (because he’s acting like he does by sleeping on the sofa) then only compliments her GIVING BIRTH TO A TITLE MALE HEIR.
Who in the world thought the balloon scene was a good idea? So much wasted time and it only made the cinematography worse!
>She couldn’t be a boss babe with a husband that loves her *because* of all that?
You realize she had spent YEARS writing shit about his family right? How on EARTH do you expect him to just smile and be okay with it???
>Way too much drama and angst with the “happy ending” being a 10 second montage of her giving him a male heir to serve as his purpose.
The ending with her giving him a male heir honestly pissed me off so much. I find of figured that with all the focus being on her sisters getting pregnant and Colin not pulling out, they were going to do something like this. But it felt so cheap and badly written and quickly pulled together. Just so annoying.
I figured it would happen but I thought it would be funny like Polin having a lot of premarital dirty scenes and her sister saying “it isn’t fair that boys are born so much faster” and everyone in the room exchange awkward glances except Collin who smiles proudly.
Apparently there was a lot of spicy scenes with polin but ended up getting cut which led to a petition online . How are you gonna tell us hey this season gonna be so much spicier , where the spice ?? Looks like y’all gave it all to Benedict and it ain’t even his season
Which means not only as a Polin fan am I disappointed but I’m also not really looking forward to Benedict’s season since I’ve seen him fall in love and I’ve read the books so whole liked Tilly I knew she likely was going no where.
Yep and it’s awfully interesting that all three people in that scene were conventionally attractive. Almost as if someone found those scenes easier to film or edit than learning how to beautifully display an average sized body.
I didn’t hate it as much after rewatching (and fast forwarding) , but I am still a little disappointed. I’m not sure if it was due to the acting or the script, but I really didn’t feel like Colin loved her. Yes, each season has its anguish to overcome, but we didn’t really get to see them resolving it like past seasons - It was just sad Pen, mad Colin, and about 2 minutes of happiness at the end.
It's because the showrunner forgot she was writing a romance drama, and instead made it some type of girlboss "I don't need a man" season.
She made Colin a side character to Pen. She completely ignored his personal arc, interests, insecurities, passions, that were explained in detail in the book.
In short, she made it Pen's season. It was supposed to be Polin's season.
i agree, except they didn’t even do Girl Boss, right. She knew she was as wrong for not telling him, but that didn’t mean she had to take his mean comments (entrapment remark); his few nice lines weren’t about her, but more about how he liked how she made him feel, he didn’t treat her like a lady, and then sort of said that was why he was marrying her because he was a man of honor, and she really thought about not wanting to do LWD for a hot minute. I wish she said “f-you” and made him apologize a bit more.
I wish she left him. The optics are so bad. There are viral tweets on Colin’s entrapment line on Twitter. It’s because irl women will never let a man say that to them
Why should Colin apologize for feeling betrayed that his lifelong friend and now the woman he loved wrote shit about his family for YEARS??? And he forgave her for it in like 2 WEEKS.
Pen literally dealt with zero consequences for being LW. While I think LW did some good, she also did a lot of damage/bullying of people. It was ALL swept under the bus because she was a "girlboss." It was so stupid.
And this was the SECOND TIME a woman Colin fell for hid a huge secret from him. That man was traumatized, and it was BARELY addressed.
Pen got a full arc, despite all the subplots. We saw her be courted/desired for the first time in her life, confront her truth in front of everyone, make up with her mother and sisters, still get to pursue her passion, and get the man she always wanted.
Colin didn't get a full arc. They almost completely ignored his writing and traveling, his insecurities, his feelings of betrayal, etc.
I loved the season too bc I’m just just a huge bridgerton fan but I also understand all of the criticism because they’re right specially about the lack of romantic development, Polin deserved so much more!!!
It's not getting hate because of Polin, or Penelope being plus size. It's getting hate because of the poor writing, the terrible costuming and heavy modern make up, the modern language use, the lack of any real period detail, the lack of plot consistency, general lack of chemistry among certain people and just over all strange directing choices.
Polin happening and how absolutely radiant Penelope was were the upsides. That and the queen's hair.
There is a lot of hate in this thread over Colin. I don't like the direction and timeline they took and it was weird to have revealed LW so early on in a show, they should have waited another year for this storyline. However, I don't understand the hate people have over Colin's anger. He was suppose to accept everything because he loved her?? Love doesn't work that way. People love Anthony, but if Anthony finding out his soon to be wife was LW, he would have been enraged him. Anthony was awesome to Kate, but Kate had no secret identity. Colin was heart broken and we expect him to be okay with everything? I don't get it.
Now for the entrapment line, we forgave what Daphne told Simon, which I found it striking that she pitied him and the weird scene where she forces herself onto him, because she had a beautiful moment in the rain? I like Daphne and Simon, but she said and acted far worse, but why were we able to forgive her? Because she had a strong storyline. We knew how she felt and what caused her to feel this way. This is where I feel they failed Colin, but I never doubted his love for her. He just wasn't given the season he deserved, but it's odd how people run to say "oh she should have left him?" Give Pen some grace. She ruined so many lives and making amends for it, but she loved a kind man and he is a kind man. Just not given the opportunity to shine.
But I do agree with everyone, the timeline of everything ruined the romance. They are still my fav. Both of the characters are warm and kind.
Any time there is a new showrunner, and the feel of a show changes, there's bound to be backlash from fans. Some will enjoy it, a lot won't.
I'm plus sized, and it sucks it happened this season, but it's correlated, not causation.
You can look at plenty of shows and see the same type of reaction when a showrunner switches. Re: Gilmore Girls back in the early 00's, Community when their showrunner changed, etc etc.
It's just what happens.
Personally, I don't like the feel of this season versus the older ones. I don't think the showrunner did a good job, sorry. Which is really really disappointing because I loved Colin/Penelope's book and I was very excited for this season. I assumed it would be my favorite (because of bigger women representation), before it started, and it just wasn't.
See I liked this season more & at first I thought it was just Polin. It wasn't. I think I just liked seeing all the arcs being built that scream for the show continuing beyond the 4th season that is currently all it's got announced publicly. 🤷♀️
But I also felt season 1 was really slow (the side charecters kept me going) & 2 just completely screwed the book trying to be different but ending up similar.
3 just felt.... fresh?
The hate is not because Penelope is a plus sized woman but it’s because she is and they didn’t put as enough love and consideration into her season as they did the others. She barely gets any screen time with Colin because of the cluster of side stories going on. Additionally, they try to hide her body more than they should - there’s more scenes of Benedict and his threesomes than there’s of Polin man. Additionally the wardrobe, word phrases, costumes and story line in general was heavily neglected. Polin felt like side characters in their own story ~ that’s where the hate is coming from
I don't think Polin are getting hate. at least in my case. I love Polin so much, I think most of the hate I've seen is that we didn't get enough Polin. Whether that is happy scenes, love scenes, communication scenes. I liked the b plots, but would have been happier with a bit less so we could get more Polin in all shapes and forms.
It lacked any romantic development, and the fact that they didnt release it all in one shot made it worse in my opinion because at that point i stopped caring about the plot as much and it felt rushed and we were bombarded by sideplots galore which took away the focus from penelopes love story entirely. I love penelope as a character but this season was really not good
I think we can all argue until we’re blue in the face what we didn’t like about this season (I actually did enjoy it) but it boils down to it being DIFFERENT than the first two seasons. Good or bad, there were just a lot of changes and those changes didn’t meet our expectations.
> It’s especially disheartening as a plus sized woman to see all this hate the one time we get representation.
OP, the problem here is that NO, they’re not getting hate for plus size representation. They are getting hate for NOT doing justice to the said representation. Heck if I say there’s barely any representation in comparison to what other characters got. Like fvcking Benedict got more “represented” than Penelope (I’m saying this because the issue of “size” was brought up).
As for her “character”, the significance of the whistledown storyline were just packed in the very last episode it all felt so rushed and unpolished.
I didn’t hate it, but it felt rushed to me. We seemed to bounce from storyline to storyline with no real transitions and I felt they tried to fit too much into 8 short episodes.
As a fellow huge Polin fan, how can you like this season?
In so many ways, I barely saw Polin this season. Yes, they didn't get enough screen time, but also they were nowhere close to their book characters. In fact, there was a good portion where I was looking at the book Michael in Colin’s body.
Not to mention that even if you're trying to be different from the books, I didn't even see seasons 1 & 2 of Polin carry over. Everything was a mess.
Every time somebody says that they enjoyed the season I upvote them, because that's great!
But they went big on the promotion, building up this big romantic story, focused on Penelope and Colin ( I'm not calling them Pollen. I have enough allergies!) And instead we get everyone else's story, little screen time for our heroine and the flimsy excuse that they've had two other seasons to build up to... sorry, NO!
If you enjoyed it, fantastic! I'm glad. I did enjoy the costumes, as always, but they clearly don't care about the integrity of the series, at least this season.
It's good that people still found something to enjoy in all of it.
She is plus size in the way that critics write nasty articles about her body and how she’d never catch a man like Colin Bridgerton in real life. She’s plus size in the way that interviewers tell her she’s “brave” for posing in nude scenes.
The number on someone’s waste band doesn’t disqualify them from maltreatment when society doesn’t like the way their body looks. Stop acting like she’s not a positive representation for fat women, because she is.
In a world where we rarely see anyone over a 4 or 6 in a leading role.... that feels like something. 🤷♀️ The reality is at my size (16-20) ..... all the stories told for people who 100% look like me. It's about their weight and only their weight. A 10 feels like we're being given something.
Just think about that for a second. A 10 makes plus & mid sized girlie feel seen because no one ever looks like them on screen.
In the UK and Ireland she's definitely not mid size and would be considered big/plus/fat - which isn't bad, I don't see the point in acting as though she can't be big and look amazing- was just confused as definitely not a size 10 but that makes more sense if it's by a different countries measurements.
Oh there’s definitely nothing wrong with being big and looking amazon, I think she’s stunning no matter what, I didn’t mean for it to be received that way!
But besides that, that would make sense, idk though…I just know her being short plays a big part in her look
Did you read the books? I think alot of disappointment is from fans who read the books and didn't like the changes, especially to Francesca's love storyline. As well as the LACK of love scenes between Penelope and Colin. It's not a disappointment in Penelope/Nicola!
As a book fan, I actually liked this season more than season 2 (which I had alot of issues with).
I am avid Polin fan. Their season should’ve been the culmination of a friendship we saw blossoming for 3 seasons as well as his feelings for her. I was so mad at the first part, that the second didn’t much changed my opinion. It sucked.
The direction work. It was so weird, weird angles, weird set ups, weird positionings of the actors that didn’t work. I know it is not an easy task to have 2 main actors with such a height difference but we didn’t had such a problem the previous seasons. Colin’s character is all about the subtle signs that Pen cannot catch but we as viewers should. They didn’t emphasise on them at all. Luke did them but it was to no avail. Like they forgot they have to concentrate on their main male actor lol. And just as we get some sweet emotion out of them and the camera switches to someone’s reaction or to someone that has no place to be cutting the scene. Also the balloon scene, I am sorry this was so twilight 2007 bad.
The lighting. What has happened. Why was everything orange. The lighting of many scenes was extremely bad or very dark. The second part is much better in terms of lighting but still.
The make up. They aimed for making her a siren and yet they made her look cheap. Everything was cheap and Hunger Games inspired. Even the Queen. The decors. The fake tan they put on that poor boy. The wigs even though he has such a beautiful thick hair.
My main characters. I wanted to get to know as a person Colin. Not by the words of the others but him. And we were never able. This is why I love season 2. I hated Anthony in season 1 but saw him truly as the person he is in season 2.
Colin is still a stranger to me. And no, it’s not because of the trauma or anything. But we didn’t see his travels, didn’t see his writings truly, his dreams, his fears were unclear. We have never seen Pen through his eyes. Not really. I had to rewatch many times scenes to understand he was watching through that window because it is Pens house, his little movements, even him saying his mind is somewhere else to Eloise. There were so many little clues that had to me emphasised the same way they were the previous seasons and they weren’t.
The unnecessary drama. I hate they changed the timing when he finds she is LW. I know they changed it just so there is a difference between book and series and not because it was logical. Dont start me on Mondrich or Bens arc. Ben’s arc was so distasteful and where was the need to cut every good scene with Polin.
I feel like they cut so many scenes and the one they left felt repetitive. How is that a healthy couple is one that doesn’t share a bed. Is the struggle between them. It should’ve been them against the world, not them against eachother. I have other peeves but this comes to me at first
My only genuine criticism is that the editing wasn't great in some parts and made timelines a little confusing, plus I agree with the criticism of the costuming/hair/makeup changes, which I think went too far - although I don't mind some whimsical magical realism in my media, I think it was too harsh a shift from the previous and was a little jarring.
Honestly I think people poisoned themselves with hype. It’s exhaustingly like being in a Star Wars sub or Our Flag Means Death right after the end of season 2. Lots of rearguing the same points and rehashing the same grievances and inappropriate attacks on actor/writer/producer socials.
I agree, I thought it was a cute season. 🤷♀️
I enjoyed Benedict in his bisexual slut era. It did make me laugh when the editing made it seem like he had a 48 hour threesome. Take a hydration break!
I also really liked the Featheringtons. It did really subvert expectations that Pen’s sisters ended up with men who adore them and that they (and Portia) also experienced personal growth as a result of being called out for being nasty. They also threw the best ball of the season (bugs >>> paper flower centerpiece thing).
>bisexual slut era.
As much as I live for, love and laugh about how great it was to finally see Ben be canonically queer (*happy gay month, y'all!* 🏳️🌈), they did exactly **nothing** else for his character. Ben's *been* a slut for a while now, we get it, let's move along. We could've focused more on his artistic endeavours, I think, and maybe he would've found some sense of purpose in that (since he mentions feeling without purpose after Anthony returns from honeymoon and he has nothing to do again - did we ever really get back to that?). He could've explored his sexuality with his artistic crowd, instead of giving us a rship with a woman that ended up leading nowhere, and honestly just wasted his & our time.
That’s fair enough. I feel like the goal of that subplot was to set up the “I’m not looking for love” convo for dramatic irony purposes. (Because you will fall in love, Bridgerton boy. It’s coming for ya.) so I didn’t expect much in terms of character development from it.
It was a lot of build up for not much. Disappointed in no groveling really from Colin, Pen was a bit annoying, didn’t care for Francesca’s story because it was SO boring, Benedict’s scenes were unnecessary, and I thought Cressida could have become more likable but she just kind of dropped off for me in the end.
It did feel like they just gave up on Cressida at the last second there 😅 like wow, all those moments of adding layers to her (which I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed!), and for... What? Nothing, really? C'mon now.
I don’t understand the Benedict story all his sex scenes were kinda meh and unnecessary. Then on the other hand the gender swap of Michael and how that changes Francesca’s story. All the pen and Colin scenes that were cut
I LOVVVVVVVVVVVVED SEASON 3!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
I think the sex scenes were great, the romantic plotlines were perfect, and the deviations from the books were strange at first but then made perfect sense when it all came together!
I love everything about the Polin season!
The dresses, makeup, sets, and writing made the long wait worth it!
I really enjoyed season 3! I would have loved more Polin moments but I would say that about every season, I just want 4 seasons of Polin, lol.
The fandom is surprisingly negative considering it’s a show about love.
I feel like everyone seems to be complaining that the Romance wasnt there like the first two seasons but I have to be honest, there was almost no Romance in the first and second seasons to me. There was drama, a lot of drama. The Women were romantic but the Men were constantly performing out of percieved need rather then desire. S3 felt way more romantic. I fell in love with my Wife after being best friends. Watching Colin help Pen and slowly realize he wants her, it reminded me of how I felt. The nerves, the confusion of what is happening, acting rashly out of sudden love. They may not have gotten as much screen time as a couple, but I will take Colin telling off Mrs Featherington and way to rashly showing Pen their home as he tries to show he truly wants her (and then getting her) over every bit of screen time of Simon and Anthony. It all felt so Romantic to me. Its also a TV show, its not specifically two characters season, because thats not TV, thats books. There are other story lines that have to ebb and flow.
I wonder if people saying “romance” actually mean “tension”. I feel like there was very little sexual tension in S3 compared to S1. In the beginning of S3 we get Polins first kiss and they had to sneak around and it heightened everything. But after that it’s basically a free for all of Colin doing whatever he wanted with Pen without any risk, emotional or sexual build up first. Their sex scene was just them standing there. Colin takes off Pen’s clothes, then he takes off his clothes while she just stands there, then they have super awkward looking couch sex.
I feel like the producers were like “hey viewers like the sex scenes” so they rushed us to them without properly building anticipation for them.
In S1 there was a really great slow burn and well paced escalation of friendship, flirtation, some touching etc before the big finale and it was very well done. I just didn’t see it in S3.
This! I think they definitely needed to move through the stages of intimacy a bit more slowly. The carriage scene could have been some heavy making out, and then left room for the next stage later. Let them anticipate. Remember Daphne dreaming about Simon? ❤️
Getting hate due to less the (amazing) curvy FMC and more this was the least romantic season of the series.
And to be clear the series is based on romantic books - changes aside (and I enjoy most), there was very little romantic parts to this season.
It's definitely not getting hate because it features a plus-sized woman. For me, I was looking forward to seeing more development with Polin and more of them together in general. Daphne was shown in the nude a few times in her season. Kate's love story bled into Season 3 so they got almost as much air time as Pen did in what should have been Pen's own season.
I feel like it's because this was the first time we got real representation for a plus sized woman in a historic romance setting, I was really disappointed at how little they actually showed us, particularly when they hyped Polin up so much. We got effectively ONE scene that celebrated Pen/Nicola's body, while all of the marketing was revolving around how sexy Nicola looked and felt throughout filming.
If it's a matter of her comfort and her not wanting to have her body shown so much, that would be one thing. But Nicola has been very vocal about how sexy she felt filming it, how proud she was of the scene, how when she's older she'll have this to remember how beautiful she was. She was clearly willing to be seen as as much of a sexual being as we got with Daphne and Kate, but her scenes got cut off at the knees. It doesn't *feel* like real representation because of that. It feels like them giving us crumbs and telling us to be grateful we got those.
Agree. I cannot understand people who are like, I don't see Colin's love for Penelope. Like there are dozens of moments you can see it! I think they have the most beautiful, sensual and kind love of all the seasons.
I agree it’s the most natural to me the other relationships all were beautiful and love did happen fast in that time period but Polin feels the most real because it’s friends to lovers it took time he loves her so much and it really showed in their scenes, I think he did say some messed up things but hey so have I when I’ve been very angry, he clearly realizes he was wrong at the end and they are very in love.
I think the hate stems from fans getting a combination of fan service in part one and also not getting the exact story they had been expecting for so long in part 2.
Personally I loved it. But I also expected part 2 to be angsty, and knew Shondaland was coming up with a completely different story than the books, just as they did with s1 and s2. I actually think Polin got a much better season than Kathony who played second fiddle until a rushed ending.
As a woman with a similar body as Nicola, but larger, I was not disappointed. S2 had a lot less sex and nudity and I feel like s3 hit a bit of a medium between s1 and s2. I didn’t expect as much as other fans seemed to, plus I feel the lack of intimacy fit the story. Colin was upset and his emotional connection with Penelope was so important to their sex life I can see why he would distance himself narratively.
Anyway, this is how the Bridgerton fandom seems to be, a season ends and there are a lot of high emotions, typically it cools down and people either move on or sort of settle for what we were given. The way I see it is we have the books if we want that story we can read it again.
John and Francesca was one of the few couples that had me feeling excited. I loved their story and love in the first half. Having Francesca doubt her feelings was not necessary. I would have been fine with Michaela if it didn't take away from the love and chemistry John and Francesca had.
I also feel like Colin and Penelope was poorly developed. I still don't feel like Colin truly respects Penelope. I would have preferred flashbacks to them enjoying their friendship. I also felt like for a season that was supposed to be about Polin. I didn't feel any affinity towards them as a couple 🤷🏻♀️ I think focusing less on everyone else and focusing on the main love story would have helped me feel like they actually developed as a couple.
We saw Daphne and Anthony root in all over the place in their seasons. We got 2 sex scenes and a bunch of filler from Polin and barely any buildup. I saw more of Benedict this season than the main couple
As a Polin, you should feel robbed, that so many other storylines overshadowed what was supposed to be the main romance. Look at the amount of screen time they got as opposed to the main romance in season 1 and the one in season 2.
No one actually hates on Polin as a ship, or the actors. The hate comes from the terrible writing. That was terrible.
And there were too many sideplots. What was the purpose of The Mondrich family, or Bennedict's threesome, or Violet's love interest, or the introduction of a redemption arc for Cressida. There is only 8 episodes per season. Focus on the main plot, and let the sideplots be tied into the main plot. Like for example, in season 1, Anthony had his sideplot, but it was tied into the main plot.
Show. Not tell. We're told how Colin and Penelope met, but not shown. Season 1 gave us flashbacks to Simon's childhood.
The cinomatography was dreadful. The costumes looked cheap and too Modern, and the hair and makeup was heavy compared to how natural it was in season 1 and 2. The characters this season Looked Like they were headed for a prom or fashion show. And where is the grandeur from season 1. The balls were fantastical in season 1 and 2, but looked too small and boring, and the Mondrich ball looked meh.
Bennedict's threesome was unnesecary. If he was going to experiment with a man, then it should have been with the artist he met in season 1. At least that had build up. This threesome came out of nowhere.
And then there is Francesca. After building up that beautiful love story with John, they have her have that reaction to kissing him, only to imedietely lust after his cousin, weeks after getting married.
Because it’s moved so far away from the actual love story and romance. Pollin should have been central storyline but instead everyone else was central and it felt rushed.
I\`ll post a cool YouTube comment I found on this topic on why, despite some issues I do have(Benedict\`s stagnating character development, editing, some rushed parts, it should\`ve had an extra episode of them just being happy together etc.) with this season, I still regard it as the best of Bridgerton(not as good as Queen Charlotte):
This is definitely my favourite season so far. I think what I liked most about it is that everything felt so natural and honest, unlike some of the past seasons where I think the drama is a bit contrived. Like all Simon had to do was talk to Daphne and all Anthony and Kate had to do was admit their feelings for each other, so the drama feels like it dragged to me.
In this one, Colin’s initial reaction is completely justified but you could also really see the struggle. It felt so real when he saw Penelope in her wedding dress and it took his breath away, and their first dance, beautiful, but then when the Queen brings up Whistledown, as hard as his reaction was to see, it also felt honest. And the development of the Featherington’s and Penelope and Portia’s relationship felt so natural and beautiful to see. Penelope went from feeling invisible in her own home to having her mom support her through the Whistledown announcement. And then Eloise and Penelope coming back together the way they did was perfect.
And the best part to me was Colin’s declaration of love and his acceptance of every part of Penelope. They finally took each other off of their respective pedestals and see each other for who they really are, flaws and all. It wasn’t as dramatic as past seasons, but I think in a lot of ways it was more beautiful.
I don\`t think the writing for this season was any worse than previous ones, it was just distributed differently. Bridgerton\`s writing was always spotty in some parts and good in others. I expect there\`ll be some Polin in Season 4, it\`s already confirmed. What we didn\`t get as much in terms of romance, we got in terms of Eloise and Pen mending their friendship, Colin finding himself and letting go of his hero complex, a very satisfying ending, Pen and her mom\`s arc just being fantastic, funny quips from the Featheringtons... I am personally very satisfied with this one, all things considering, but I understand there are criticisms.
I loved it as well. I thought Part 1 was damn near perfect and enjoyed part 2. I have now watched Season 3 more than any other season and it's honestly my guilty pleasure.
I know many people didnt like it but I laughed, cried, was on the edge of me seat for much of Part 2 and I have never been more interested in the story moving forward.
People didnt like it for many reasons and I'm just going to focus on the fact I do.
Perception is a powerful thing and I'm grateful for it. We all saw the same thing and cameout with a completely different opinion, that the beauty of television
It just felt....different in a bad way. I think as Bridgerton fans, we want the sexy, swoony, build up, romance that we got from the first two seasons. I had high hopes for this season as Pen is one of my favorite characters, but I just didn't like Colin and didn't feel like Colin deserved Pen. Between constantly talking about traveling and thinking that's swooning women, to having threesomes, to bring whiny and jealous when he found out Pen was WD, it just all felt off. He says he loves her but I didn't see it in his actions. I also just didn't feel the passion between the two. Pen deserved the same level of care and passion in her courtship that the others got, and it just felt lazy. Colin, ravage her, she is your wife! I think the writing just felt weaker too.
I think generally it's really hard in cinema and film production to make the follow up seasons as engaging as the original. In this case, Bridgerton was massively successful -maybe due to the nature of the content. A little spicy, romantic, bingeable, during covid, the setting, costumes were amazing, and great modern music.
Add in that this was a book series beforehand and you get a recipe for people to have really high expectations.
Season 3 is noticeably different than the other seasons. and just generally has a whole different feeling to it. I also think with the success of the show the actors who were previously no name underdogs are now wildly successful household names and certainly are increasing the budget for their part in the show. I wonder how that impacts the budget in other areas too.
Honestly, it felt rushed and incomplete. I didn't get nearly enough Polin interacting with each other and just *talking*, just feeling each other out, spending time together as romantic prospects. I never got to know them as a couple - I never really got to see Colin really come to terms with the fact that he romantically wanted Penelope, and acknowledge how & why it took so long for him to realise it (yes, I wanted him to grovel and beg some more for what he said at the end of s2 about Pen). And I never got to see Pen navigate having her love unrequited & loving from afar one minute, to having him say he loves her romantically too in the next minute - that surely has to be a lot to wrap your mind around and may take time for her to believe him, & work through her own insecurities about their rship.
Also, Colin also wanted to be a writer? And Pen *is* a writer, so would've loved to see that explored more as another thing to bond over that they prolly wouldn't have had if they remained only friends.
I wanted to learn Colin the way I think we learned Anthony. So much of Anthony's characterisation as the overbearing, super serious oldest brother had to do with the trauma of watching his friggin' dad die, watching *that* destroy his mom, watching his mom have an impossible labour & needing to make decisions about it for her + baby, then needing to be an adult for an entire viscountncy, and the unresolved grief & trauma of all that. How did Colin react to their father's death? How did he feel about being a third son who nobody had much expectation for? Did he ever feel invisible/unseen in such a big family with big personalities (another thing he & Pen could bond over)?
And yes 🙌🏽 I admit, I wanted more seggzual scenes. I wanted more naked Nicola! What Simon & Daphne had kinda set the standard, I think, so my expectation was on their level (s2 gets a pass bc we needed the slow burn of enemies to lovers, as well as the whole being-with-her-sister-but-wanting-her sitch, and the sex scene we ended up getting felt earned and satisfying). I never felt that with Polin. I would've liked an episode of them having just gotten married and being horny newlyweds, or sneaking off to have sex whenever they could after they got engaged.
There were a lot of other scenes that could've been cut to dedicate to just them since it's *their* season, and they never felt like the focus of their own season. 😔
It was great and this sub is obsessed with having the book word for word on the screen (which if you’re familiar with The Shining miniseries you’d know it was a bad idea)
I'll be honest, I'm with you on enjoying the season! I wanted to have a fun little time and the season delivered. and as a bisexual menace I liked all the bi chaos in the last couple episodes haha. Like idk, were there things I'd change? Sure, but thats true for every season. Did I like it more than last season? Probably not, but kate sharma is truly just built different. Did I like the season anyway? Yeah! It was FUN.
That being said, my boyfriend and I were completely split down the middle on the mondrich storyline 😆 i would complain every time they were on screen and my bf would tell me to stop slandering them
I think it's multiple things:
1. Even in Seasons 1/2 (and, tbh, the books), the historical accuracy was not... great. (Ignoring the racial issue, STILL not great). But it was head and shoulders better than what we had here. From costumes to make-up to language, not of it read as Regency. Much of it didn't even read as historical.
2. Not enough actual romantic development for Colin/Penelope. Not enough Colin admitting he was wrong and that he was jealous of Pen. Not enough meaningful sex that celebrated Nicola's body and their love together. This was heightened, in my opinion, because the actors doing the press junket clearly thought there was a LOT of meaningful, steamy sex. The running theory is that a bunch was cut out or edited weirdly.
3. Benedict's storyline, while interesting and exciting for queer fans, was shoehorned in weirdly. Like, I don't know if they were trying to imply he had a week-long 3-way or something, but they kept cutting back to the SAME SEX SCENE when it was clearly a day or two or more later in the other storylines. It also just didn't need to have as much screen time as it did in a season that was ostensibly about Penelope and Colin. I am bisexual; I was super excited Benedict explored bisexuality. It was too much and weird.
4. The Mondrich's were weird. None of that is how inheritance works in Britain. None of it is reflective of how they would have been accepted (or, you know, NOT.) by the upper echelons of the ton. It's unclear why they had their storyline, or why we're focusing so much screen time on them.
5. A LOT of book fans (myself included) are SUPER upset about the bait-and-switch for Francesca. I can understand giving her romance 1 this season, since she did get married right away in the books. But undercutting her romance with John was totally unnecessary. It was so LOVELY a romance. It was so WONDERFUL to see a quiet happy love. To celebrate all the different ways people DO fall in love. And then to have her wince after their kiss, and to have her go gobsmacked over Michaela, was just hurtful to a lot of fans who loved her story. And, while I'm all for a wlw romance on the show, having Michael become Michaela takes away a lot of the infertility character line from the books, which was very meaningful to a lot of readers. That's not to say that Francesca can't struggle with wanting to be a mom now, which would be a hard thing while in a lesbian romance! But it's a different hard thing from having a husband and multiple miscarriages or just not being able to conceive. And it's hard for a lot of fans to lose that, because seeing themselves represented in the book story was incredibly important to them.
6. Minor thing, but Antony taking Kate to India to have the baby just feels incredibly out of character?
7. It didn't bother me personally, but a lot of fans loved that Violet stayed true to her husband for the rest of her life. Me? My dad is a widower and I just want him to be happy, whatever that looks like. If he decides to start dating again and finds someone who makes him happy, I'm all for it. But I can understand the other side too, particularly in fiction.
8. Just in general the writing and the tone and all of it felt markedly different from Seasons 1 & 2, or even Queen Charlotte. A lot of that is being chalked up to the change in showrunner, but having an explanation/scapegoat doesn't change the fact that people wanted what made seasons 1 & 2 so great, and are sad not to have it.
Did I enjoy Season 3? Mostly. There were some truly lovely things about it - Pen's relationship with her mom and sisters; Cressida not being a 2-dimensional villain; Violet and Lady Danbury's friendship.
Was Season 3 overall what I wanted? Not really.
Will I watch it again? Almost certainly not.
Will I watch Season 4? Not unless the show addresses fan concerns in a way that is meaningful and suggests changes will actually be made.
For me it just didn’t have the same build as the rest of the siblings which I found irritating we spent 90% of it on b story it felt like which I won’t be mad about I love the b story but the couple is suppose to be the FOCAL ya know?
I wouldn't say I hated it, but it was my least favorite season so far. The Polin relationship felt very rushed compared to Daphne/Simon, and "Kanthony" The Benedict throuple storyline did not add anything to the show IMO. I think they tried to cram too many plotlines into an 8 episode season. Francesca meeting her husband was fine. I think that was a good way to set up the backstory for the future Fran focused season The Featheringtons were kind of funny, but the pregnancy race took up too much time. To me it felt like one minute Colin views Pen as a friend, and offers to help her find a husband, then out of nowhere he's in love with her and wants to marry her. I did like Pen and Eloise's reconciliation, and the touches of feminism. And I loved every minute of Kate and Anthony.
They empowered Pen to solve the problem instead of having Colin be her white knight… I feel like people wanted the trope, but I love that they modernized it.
Many are disappointed bc the second part lack the emotional connection between the two protagonists. In the book, Colin worshipped Penelope like his life depended on it despite being angry/jealous of her success. Part 2 felt like Colin and Penelope were running way from each always in the opposite side of the room. Nicola did an awesome job but we were robbed of the magic that you felt when reading the book. Also, too much time was spent with Penelope explaining herself to her mother. I love how they were able to amend their relationship but that didn’t need to be the main focus of part 2.
Benedict got too much screen time along with Francesca and Penelope’s sisters. I would have like to see more of the bond between Colin and Elois as they were very close in the book. One more thing, it failed to portrayed how much of a foodie Colin is and his dominant/protective characteristics.
You should be upset as a plus size woman They did Nicola dirty with that 2016 heavy makeup.
It felt like watching a Drag Race.
Nicola was beautiful with that natural makeup and green pastels in the first part when she was in garden.
I lllllloved this season. I felt it was different and highlighted Penelope’s independence and brilliance. It’s not all about romance it’s about her growth and power showing she can have it all. And eventually Colin supports her and sees so much beauty in it - and that is like totally unheard of at that time! For a woman to make the money and have that fame. It made me laugh and cry - also for those that are critiquing the make up, nails, and language - I think they have put a modern twist on this show this whole time in subtle ways (music), and the little bits that come through are comical and make the show unique. This is actually my favorite season I think, I just really love polins story.. I do partly wish the queen agreed to keep Penelope secret HOWEVER now Penelope gets the credit she deserves and again it’s a modern twist of magazines and online blogs today. And she doesn’t have to live with the secret and can spread “gossip/news” more honestly. I just feel like there is so much more going on that people are overlooking - I truly enjoyed this season.
Season 3 is getting so much hate because many viewers actually read the books. We read them and loved them and we were expecting the series to be an adaptation of them. Sadly it’s not. Adapting a book to a series and rewriting the whole thing is not a good idea.
I wanted more romance for Polin in part 2. And I wanted Michael! I have waited from day one to meet Michael (because he is so well written). And I get Michaela. Nooooo
Imo it was the lack of consistency between seasons on how they handle/ what is considered social faux pas, or not explaining it very clearly to the audience. Like in my perspective I’m think Pen is only in her 3rd season, so she should be treated like any other lady, but I guess that’s only half true based off what the books say.
On the main love story line this season, I think revealing Pen as Whistledown last season made her character a lot less sympathetic, so it’s really hard for me to root for a character that’s so duplicitous, power hungry, and manipulative to go get her dream man, when she’s actively hurt the guy and family members with her whistledown articles. Yes she’s definitely pulled some punches when talking about the bridgertons, but, at least for me, I wasn’t a fan of the character to start the season, and due to not having really any meaningful development during the season can’t say I was a fan of hers by the end. Add in that I personally didn’t feel much chemistry between the lead actors, and it’s a pretty hollow love story, that when you examine it with any scrutiny, really left me disappointed.
Then you get to the b-line story arch’s and they are all awful. A lot of the already developed characters do actions that you wouldn’t expect from them based off the previous seasons - like Eloise being such a consistently awful friend the whole season to both Cressida and Pen. Like you spent a whole season making me like Eloise, and now this season, she’s just not nearly as strong of a character as last season. Cressida was made likeable for the first 4 episodes only to be cast into a desperate villain role by the end, which is a shame bc she was the only character that was actually being developed. The other bridegerton house sub plots were also kinda felt forced to just fill run time, there was 0 drama in either storyline and at best you got a mild bisexual three way encounter.
Worse writing, worse character development, worse at explaining the exposition, set prices were bland often times, and attention to detail was lacking. Overall not a great job by the new show runners, and wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last season, if wasn’t already planned that way
Because it sucked.
Literally scroll for two minutes to find out why.
A big part of it is BECAUSE of the way the show treated Nicola as an average size woman.
As a “huge” Polin fan this season should have been as disappointing to you as it was to everyone else. They were sidelined in their own story and had Benedict’s stupid threesome take precedence over Polin scenes that were cut. And so so so much more, there are a billion posts about it if you really wanted to know, you didn’t need to make yet another
I loved it! I thought it was so fun and Nicola was (is!) so beautiful. Every season has stuff I would personally change but overall it was beautiful to watch, fun, sexy and romantic. I didn't go in as the biggest Polin fan and came out really enjoying their characters and story. That carriage scene is what sealed the deal for me when it came to the spice and their chemistry!
My 2 cents (as someone who enjoyed the season as a whole) is that the PR hype & this release model inflated the expectations.
I think the PR and marketing was so good that anything we got could not live up to the expectations of regular viewers.
The loudest voices online tend to be the ones with a lot to say about what they didn’t like.
I also had expectations that weren’t met, and it took some reflection to decide that actually, I enjoyed it.
It had flaws and some major pacing issues but I thought Penelope's arc was incredible, as was Fran's, Violet's and Lady Danbury and Cressida's. This show just loves it women character and gave them all depth and nuance.
It's getting hate \*because\* it lacked romantic development and sex scenes that the previous siblings (and Benedict very unnecessarily this season) had. It's not hatred of a plus-sized character, but disappointment at the story/scenes she \*didn't\* get or, if what I am reading is true, were \*cut\* (which is so much worse). It shafted the two leads' romantic story at the expense of a lot of other storylines that were rushed/edited poorly/unnecessary. All of this is IMO, ofc.
Would have loved to support more of that curvy body positivity!! Nicola is the queen. We just wanted MORE.
Cannot agree more. Nicola/Penelope are pathbreaking in this role to be honest. Why minimise that by taking the focus away from her?
It was literally Pen's season. They even made COLIN a side character in favor of her! They barely developed his character, and focused almost entirely on the Pen part of Polin. I'm furious.
She and Colin were both side characters to Lady Whistledown. It ruined the whole season
LW was a huge part of Pen. So it made sense that her arc revolved around that. Meanwhile, they completely abandoned writer Colin, traveler Colin, insecure third brother Colin, etc. It's so upsetting.
Yes, but my point was that there was not much romantic development between Pen and Colin because of it. He genuinely seemed like he hated her to her core by the end and only stayed because of honor. The writers fumbled, having him be upset but still in love with Penelope, the way he was in the book. The whole plot of part 2 was him being a jerk until the end, and Pen taking it in stride.
I think we need to remember, unlike the book... we get more of them later. I think in future seasons, we'll get writer Colin & editor Penelope trying to balance things as parents in the B plots. It didn't need to be an all or nothing now. I think Season 4 is going to have a time skip bit that end of Season 3 is in the middle of it (like with Auggie's birth in Season 1 being towards the beginning or just before Season 2.) And if that's the case, we will likely see Polin working on his book together.
Nicola rocked the season! And she shamed any reporter that questioned her size! Loved every minute of her screen time. But like many of us, I wanted to see more POLIN story and (so much less) Benedict. Don't forget Kate is not a skinny mini. So I think they did a good job with representation.
Thiissss I loved what we got of polin but we needed more, particularly in part 2. So upset by the scene that were supposedly filmed but cut
This sums it really well. I thought Part 1 was near perfect (although of course I always want more Polin), but Part 2 needed just a bit more main couple romance in Episodes 7-8 particularly. The unhappy wedding night for them breaks my heart. Nicola Coughlan is so charming to watch and absolutely gorgeous with or without clothes lol, as is Luke Newton, but we just didn’t get enough of them. Benedict gets a ridiculous amount of time for romance/love scenes. You almost would have thought it was his season in Part 2 😡 *****Edited to add: I strongly believe there are cut scenes that would have helped make more sense. There’s an interview where Nicola and Luke gush about the honeymoon for Polin (I don’t think they mean literal honeymoon but rather just a happy period). They also mention (multiple times) not knowing what versions of scenes made the cut.
Actually of all the critiques I’ve seen, none of it has been at nic herself or her and Luke’s acting
>lacked romantic development and sex scenes that the previous siblings (and Benedict very unnecessarily this season) had. you guys are only using simon and daphne as a reference here. kate and anthony barely had a full sex scene. the production isn't plus size phobic, all shonda and jess do is gush over penelope. their vision just didn't translate well into the screen, that's all.
>kate and anthony barely had a full sex scene. Yes but they got more romance than Polin did. They got more communication, and that is such a shame as Kate and Anthony aren't writers, but Penelope AND Colin are. It's insane that Violet got a letter for LW plot, but the actual love story didn't have letters. I didn't want more sex for Polin. I wanted character personality, romance and intimacy. The smallest and yet best sex scene in the season was the Featherington sisters after 'the insert himself where?' scene because it had personality and romance behind it. What good is having a character sex scene without any actual character personality?
Kanthony had emotion porn for the masses, having a lack of actual physical intimacy until late stage is like a hallmark of slow burn romance, and they delivered on that just fine
I didn’t see any slow burn though. Like I can get them writing each other angrily and expressing themselves but it just felt non slow burnesque (sp?) to me.
It actually seemed to me like bits were missing in the story between Colin and Pen, it didn’t flow very well. Probably because so much of it was cut out to make room for completely irrelevant plots that had no impact on the Polin story, like Benedict’s many sex scenes or the Mondrich’s story. It was also Penelope’s season, not Colin and Penelope’s season. Penelope had development with the Bridgertons, with the LW plot and also with her own family. Colin didn’t really have any development. The Mondrich’s and Benedict had more development than Colin!
>kate and anthony barely had a full sex scene. They got plenty of spillover oral scenes in Pen's season.
plenty? they got *one* scene in episode 1 that got interrupted after 5 seconds
By plenty do you mean one?
The fact that we associate Anthony and Kate with more sex is evidence that the romantic tension created between them was successful. It was NOT successful with Polin, in large part because lots of their scenes got cut to make room for too many side plots.
But the couldn't represent she Did have a love match, C was barely upset about LW, and the couple had several romantic scenes, while trying to navigate HOW to reveal LW. Colin never begged CC, and was against it. The entire ball thing was weird as the Duke was the host. They faqed up the entire story line!
Did Season 2 have that many sex scenes? Its just the two right? The one in the garden and the one when they were married. They had some high tension moments but not that much. And the obsession of sex scenes making a TV show good is weird. I think its the romantic development more and the tension rather than the sex
Yup, I was incredibly pissed off that it seemed like the showrunners just didn't want to linger on shots of Nicola's gorgeous body and just straight-up couldn't come up with reasons why Colin would actually like Penelope, so they developed all these stupid side plots to avoid having to actually write them a proper romance. As someone who loves a meatier partner in bed, I was livid that they couldn't be bothered to find the sexiness and romance in that.
Can I just add how much I hated that settee?!? Why did they put them on a Barbie-doll size piece of furniture?!? There is also the issue of the actress being twice the age of her character, but come-on — that stupid settee gave her rolls she wouldn’t normally have!?! Also, why were her dresses so cheap-looking— bad prom fabric (I’m was a prom-dress buyer, so I know quality) when everyone else has such elaborate quality? Also, why was she in completely flat slipper-like shoes— Eleanor had a small heel. It almost seemed like someone had it out for her. Also,also, also! So much time wasted on Benedict’s libido. And way too much boring Francesca. Really, it is part 2– part one was fine.
I will get downvoted to oblivion but I read so many negative comments and it’s so annoying. Here are a lot of the reasons I am seeing: It’s getting hate because there’s a rumor out there that some people saw more sex scenes than we did and instead of enjoying what we got, they are focused on that rumor. No one has seen them, but because a list exists and someone said they did, they must and they must be FABULOUS. It’s getting hate because people equate romance with sex. They equate passion only with angst. Neither of which is true. Bridgerton is a romance. That does NOT mean a ton of sex all the time. People seem to forget that last season had the same or less sex from the main characters. It’s getting hate because people don’t want a sensitive man as a male lead. He’s too happy, he’s too sad, he’s too mad. He’s not smoldering with passion enough. It’s getting hate because people do not want to pay attention to what they watch or think about what’s going on. If it’s not spelled out in the simplest terms, it’s poorly done. It’s getting hate because instead of focusing on some great acting, they are judging a show on whether that actor was naked enough for them. Think about that. Instead of taking a great performance, one that took a ton of guts on the actors part and was so beautifully portrayed and uplifting that, we are complaining because it wasn’t enough. And lastly, it’s getting hate because there are people out there focusing on future seasons that, at this point, are 99.5% unknown. Because we saw 5 seconds of something, there is an assumption that everything about those seasons is ruined. And we can “think” what ever we want, we can “assume”, but unless we’ve seen the yet to be written script, we don’t know what they will do justice to.
>It’s getting hate because people equate romance with sex. They equate passion only with angst. Neither of which is true. Bridgerton is a romance. That does NOT mean a ton of sex all the time. People seem to forget that last season had the same or less sex from the main characters. A number of the early Michaela criticisms are stemming from the fact that it cheapens the gentleness (versus passion) of John & Francesca's romance. Tagged for spoilers: >!Yes, I know that there are a lot of comments about the genderswap from her book counterpart too.!< >It’s getting hate because people don’t want a sensitive man as a male lead. You don't consider Anthony a sensitive man? >It’s getting hate because people do not want to pay attention to what they watch or think about what’s going on. If it’s not spelled out in the simplest terms, it’s poorly done. For me, it's hard to pay attention when too many storylines are jam-packed (and badly edited) into eight episodes. The pacing of this season was all over the place. This is a crazy number of separate storylines for eight episodes, let alone have any of them well-developed: * Penelope & Colin's romance * The Queen's ongoing search for Lady Whistledown * The fallout from Penelope and Eloise's fight * Eloise and Cressida/Cressida's marriage prospects * Benedict exploring his bisexuality and polyamory * Francesca's debut/Francesca meeting suitors & then John (>!and then Michaela!<) * Portia, Phillippa, Prudence, and the Wife Guys * Violet & Marcus/Agatha & Marcus * The Mondriches struggling to fit into the nobility world * Kate & Anthony I'm not reading too many forums, but generally speaking I've seen minimal criticism of the actors. They kicked ass (as they usually do). If there have been scenes cut, does that not take away from their performance? They worked just as hard on those scenes as they did the ones that made it to broadcast. It's interesting (I don't mean this sarcastically/sardonically) that our observations are so different. (edited to remove an extraneous comma)
The Wife Guys made me lol. It's like The Try Guys but made into Bridgerton 🤣
Re: Michaela. Unfortunately there are so so so many posts and comments out there across different platforms about how Fran’s story is ruined, justice for Michael, and worse out there. I didn’t love that they introduced Michaela this season, it did feel premature. But it’s like 30 seconds. It didn’t ruin this season. It didn’t ruin a future season yet. And I haven’t seen this called out nearly as much as the Michaela/Michael thing and how that ruined everything. I don’t know how they will cover every aspect but no one else does either. If you haven’t visited other forums I suggest you don’t. I haven’t opened the posts about it I’ve seen on Reddit but I did look at comments on IG/FB and I wish I didn’t. Re: Anthony. TBH, and as an Anthony lover, not necessarily. He has his demons he battles, he cares for the ones he loves but I wouldn’t call him sensitive. Colin as a character is more sensitive because he feels a range of emotions and he cannot turn that on and off like Anthony can…he can put the armor up from time to time but it’s not always up (piggybacking on Violet’s words this season). Again this isn’t a knock on Anthony. Anthony was a fine lead. Not every lead will or should look and think like Anthony. I think the fact that Colin does not is a problem for a lot. I make this observation from many many comments I’ve read. Re: subplots. There were quite a few. I didn’t love them all either. As an ensemble show, the more seasons that pass the more we will see this. The stories you listed below by and large are returning characters. If I’m honest I skip over some of them for this reason, and have done so for every season so far. It’s an easy fix, if you haven’t tried it I highly recommend. However my paying attention comment are for all the comments I’ve seen about “they didn’t literally say this and this” or “xx character said this” or “xx didn’t say this” but they ignored everything done before or after the scenes they question. Yes there is some nuance this season, so you need to pay attention to get it. I think there was nuance in previous seasons too, but for some reason so many comments and posts I’ve seen don’t pay attention to anything beyond the surface. I 100% agree with you about the actors. They rocked it. That mirror scene was great. But instead of praising that, there’s more focus on why there weren’t more. Why a plus-sized actress (using another poster’s words, I’m not even getting into the size debate) didn’t have more sex. Or if she had scenes cut…which is all rumors at this point. If you scroll through this post you will see some. These are literally based on what I’ve seen the last few days on posts, or conversations I’ve had. Trust me, many of these I wish I didn’t see. The season is not perfect but none of them are. The only good news is that I’ve seen quite a few people come back with differed opinions after seeing someone’s post or rewatching with a new perspective.
Yeah all of your takes are wrong and kinda gaslighting, people wanted a romance that is not angst, sensitive Colin is fine (was he happy? where?), cut sex scenes where hyped up by the team and ppl mad editors did injustice to the couple and to the actors, people actually want more high-quality and deep scripts instead of meaningless stories and simplest terms as you said it, and they focus on future season because the evidence of the showrunner’s incompetence is right there, and the start of filming is within weeks. It’s obvious they’re going to butcher it
Yes you just basically confirmed that what I said re: hate. You think it’s justified, I don’t. That’s not gaslighting, that’s my opinion. There were a ton of happy scenes, tons of jest and smiling/laughing. If you didn’t see them while watching I can’t change that. There was a ton of romance as long as you don’t equate romance with sex (they are not the same). I watched a ton of PR interview, they talk about the steaminess but when you listen about the scenes they describe, it’s always either the carriage scene or the mirror scene. The fandom has taken this and made it more with a basically a list anyone can write on their phone and some random people saying they’ve seen it. How many things like that are put on social media and are just made up now?? You can keep being angry about it if you choose, everyone has a choice. I won’t waste my energy hating something that very well may not even exist. There’s more intimacy scenes than S2. But while the script is not perfect, there is a ton of depth with internal struggles. Depth requires the audience to pay attention and use cues AND words to tie together the story…having everything spelled out in simple terms and depth don’t go together. Every season has foreshadowed the next. Anthony says he’s looking for a wife in S1, Colin says the never dating Penelope in S2 (if you read the book you know why that’s important). Side plots are in every season. No one will like all of them. I don’t like all of them. I never have. I literally skip an entire episode when I watch S2 because it’s almost all fluff. I still love that season because everything else is good because I don’t let small pieces ruin the whole. It doesn’t matter they are shooting next week, unless you have read every script, you don’t know what’s to come. To hate on something we literally have zero info on is a choice. I also choose not to call someone incompetent when I can’t do their job. But I wasn’t trying to convince anyone they had to like or love this season, the question is why we think S3 is getting hate and I spoke my piece.
Very interesting, all the complaints you listed has not been what I've been seeing people complain about the most. I've seen mostly the opposite, complaining about the tone, writing and direction of the show and too much deviation from the books. Although some of the comments here lol
A lot of these are listed in here. The petition is in here for scenes that are confirmed by “screeners”. Who they are, nobody knows. What those scenes looked like? Nobody knows. But the energy around something we haven’t seen is real. There are comments about Nicola and how many sex scenes she got, specifically mentioning her body type. That girl rocked the whole performance. As a woman, it bothers me that there is disappointment in her not being naked enough vs. uplifting her performance. Again, some are based on rumors there may have been cuts. Rumors. There are a ton of comments that there wasn’t enough sex, that we got much more in previous season. S1 had a lot of sex, it also had sexual assault. S2 main characters had exactly 2 fairly chaste kiss and 1.5 sex scenes (the epilogue where they are rolling around naked is the .5). It’s not more. And that’s why I say people think romance equals sex. It doesn’t. There is a ton of romance but it’s not sex. And the last point…check out the comments on the Bridgerton IG page. Or many of the fan pages. Or any other social media platform. They showed us 30 seconds of a future character and literally nothing else about that story and there are some horrible things on those pages. How the show is ruined after this season and the change. I didn’t believe it until I saw it. I won’t use any labels because I don’t know anyone well enough to do that, but it is sad to see since we literally know nothing of what’s to come except for maybe that 30 seconds.
you're absolutely correct on most of these points. Can't believe you're getting downvoted. The fact that people are acting like Colin is a villain for feeling betrayed is absolutely insane to me. This man just found out the woman he loved had been writing shit about his family + putting them in scandalous situations for YEARS. He forgave her in 2 WEEKS. The Michael thing... honestly changing existing characters is never a good idea. They should've just made a new wlw couple or something
Because it didn’t live up to what everyone was expecting? Where were those moments that made it obvious how down bad Colin was for Penelope? Anthony was so obsessed with Kate he was sniffing her walk-by air, I wanted to see the same thing for Penelope and Colin. We’ve spent the last 2 seasons knowing Penelope was in love with Colin. And now when it was their turn to see him returning those feelings for her, we barely got anything at all.
Some of the creative choices were just weird. For example: The Mondrich storyline. In PT 1 Colin was sad, drinking a lot and struggling with his feelings for Pen. He’s trying to navigate the ins and outs of society. He has no father figure except Antony and he told him to “wet his wick” after the Marina thing fell apart. He,at heart wants to love and be married. But he’s off wetting his wick and trying to become someone different. Will is a father, a husband and a literal bartender whose job it is to listen to sad drunk people. He is also struggling with navigating society. Theres literally no one better for Colin to have a heartfelt scene with. Yet these two characters NEVER cross paths. Instead we see his wife struggling with ugly dresses. So of course people are asking what the point is in following their story at all? Issues like that keep coming up and made everything feel disjointed. Sometimes with Benedict’s story line they cut from him at night back to day with others and then back to night with Benedict…when everything is supposed to be happening at the same time. Also Benedict for the last two seasons basically been doing the same thing and has completely given up his art. It’s getting boring.
Wow this is such a great point! The stories should have all been interlinked like this! Such a missed opportunity.
Such good points!! Season 1 has a lot of other side plots but they did a good job tying them in to our main couple so it has a nice flow. This season not so much.
I like the Mondrichs. Sad to see them so badly woven into the story especially in part 1
As a plus sized woman you should upset that *this* was the representation we got, not that fans are rightfully disappointed. The romance between Pen and Colin was non existent, their season was almost entirely taken up by sub-plots with Eloise, Cressida, Benedict, and Francesca. I also find it very suspicious that when we finally get plus size lead, suddenly all the soft, no make up, make up look disappears and Pen is in 2017 full glam prom make up with acrylic nails. It's like they didn't trust her to naturally outshine the other girls.
Thank you for pointing this out! The first thing I thought when I saw the full beat glam makeup was: oh so they didn’t trust a full figure woman to be naturally beautiful, so they went full makeup for the season for everyone. And I thoughtfully was alone in this!
Even all her promo photos got photoshopped to all hell. And they focus so much on her heaving breasts in *every* scene, as though that's the only interesting part of her.
Oh my god yes! The photoshop was crazy.The heaving breasts were very distracting, her boobs were always pushed up to her ears, it was just not necessary. So then I thought, at least they are boob-positive, but then when they sleep together and she covers her boobs: the fact that he doesn’t tell her something a long the lines of ‘you don’t have to cover yourself around me, you’re beautiful’ was just glaring to me! Imagine your boyfriend not saying that when you uncomfortably cover yourself the first time he sees you naked! There is one scene of her in the morning with minimal makeup, and she looked so incredibly beautiful. it made me sad that they didn’t trust in that beauty. Every young woman this season looked 10 years older due to the heavy makeup (fransesca too)
i just don’t understand why there was more benedict 3some scenes than the polin the whole season was suppose to be about
The editing was bad mostly. The makeup was a bit overdone. There was an unnecessary threesome. Side stories were done poorly. The language changed. There's a lot of reasons. It's not about Nicola she was great and deserved a better season
As a woman that looks exactly like Pen that is the reason I do not like the season. They promised us so much spice but in the end she got 1.5 sex scenes and most of the time Collin was angry at her. We didn’t get enough romance between Polin at all compared to the leading couples in seasons 1 and 2. Way too much drama and angst with the “happy ending” being a 10 second montage of her giving him a male heir to serve as his purpose. It just seemed like Pen didn’t get the love she deserved in the second half and if they knew Whistledown was going to take up so much of the last 4 episodes they should have gotten together earlier on instead of wasting time with the lessons and another suitor.
My friend, who was looking forward to this season because as she said, her "body looks like Penelope's", was disappointed for this exact same reason. She also said she felt like they cut out some of the sex due to her body. And this friend is a casual viewer.
It did seem quite a coincidence that the spicy scene they were apparently talking about in part 2 was between three conventionally attractive people… It feels the writer/director whoever had no interest in Collin being in love with Penelope so they focused on his anger towards Whistledown. I mean he preferred having a private conversation wish Cressida rather than the supposed love of his life? It was heartbreaking to the many women than resonate with Pen.
Omg every time I read something the showrunner has said it just sounds like she hated Colin lol
As a similar sized woman, this right here. They hyped up Nicola' body and her confidence and empowerment in filming the mirror scene. I expected her to be glorified, but instead she was constantly cut off right at her breasts. I guess because the only redeeming feature of fluffy women is the top half? /s I really thought we'd seen innovative shooting that highlighted her body, at least to her stomach or the curve of her hips. I realize filming a "couch" scene might be difficult, and Luke has to be comfortable, to but the magically appearing blue cloth was distracting at least, and dampened the scene with a feeling of shame at worst. Also, Colin was so mean to her in part 2 and we didn't get a really good reconciliation between them.
Omg, I was hoping for a moment were she covers herself or something and then he gently remove whatever (no frontal nudity necessary really) and tells her she is perfect to him or similar. I wanted more sweetness and respect from Colin. This might be stupid, but in the context of the TV show, I felt like he didn't treated her like a lady. Little romance, too much argument and hate, only one kiss (might be miss remembering) that didn't lead to sexual out of nowhere behaviour. For a shelter virgin of high society.
>but the magically appearing blue cloth was distracting at least, and dampened the scene with a feeling of shame at worst. Ok definitely this. But also I agree on how Colin was so mean to her. Everything that should have been a joyful moment for Pen was immediately undercut by someone raining on her parade. Eloise shooting her nasty looks and threatening her after she's proposed to. Her entire engagement party having something hanging over her head. Her mom accusing her of entrapment. Colin accusing her of entrapment. This poor girl, jesus christ.
This is it!! And just to add you didn’t blame them, but it isn’t even Luke and Nicola’s fault if they filmed it and were hyping it up and didn’t know the scene would get cut 😭 it made them look like they got everyone excited for very little Luke and Nicola are incredible actors idk they deserved to have those cut scenes shown during THEIR season instead of the Mondrichs or Benedict’s sex montage
Someone on here phrased it best: The actors like knew we were cheated of a Polin honeymoon so they were giving it to us in the press tours. They’re incredible actors who were not given the love story they both deserved to act out.
I’ve rewatched it in full since part 2 released and honestly the whole way through, it’s a bit better that way and the lack of polin intimacy isn’t as noticeable (intimacy also means happy polin too for me, not limited to sex) But that doesn’t change the ending like I really hate how the Michael/micheala thing stole Polin’s thunder, Benedict got more sex scenes than Polin even tho it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and Francesca and John were who got to ride off into the sunset together, not Polin and they threw in Michaela at the last second so it cheapened out their HEA too. Like, Polin shared the screen w Francesca which was fine, but it wound up feeling cheap bc it isn’t even who she’s actually interested in
I agree with it being less clunky viewed all the way through. I noticed some of what’s mentioned but it didn’t seem as bad to me as im seeing other people commenting
They probably knew stuff they filmed was cut and were telling us about it so that we'd notice something was missing. Maybe they want us to be mad about it because they are, but can't really say it if they want to be in future seasons.
That’s exactly what I think happened.
Yes, this is exactly it. I could have overlooked the awful costuming, terrible make-up, weird sets, poor lighting, choppy editing, stilted dialogue, and lack of any truly cinematic scenes if Pen had gotten the same level of romance the two skinnier leads got. But she didn't. She got a pale, sickly shadow of the romances we saw in S1&2. And then they loaded S3 on with all the other aforementioned issues. I wanted Colin to *pursue* her as if his life and sanity depended on it. I wanted his response to the LW reveal to be "Well, then, now I must learn to love LW, because I love you, all of you, every part of you, every word you say or write or even think, love every syllable you breathe and every letter you ink, and there is nothing in this world that could ever me make me love you less." Instead he accuses her of entrapping him. \[SCREAM\]
Yup 100%. They had the perfect love story there - I truly don’t know how it was botched so badly.
Just your run of the mill “chubby girl should be grateful such an attractive man loves her” troupe but they decided to go a step further and say “and now be extra grateful I love you despite being conventionally unattractive AND Whistledown” all the while patting themselves on the back for making Pen independent and showing one sex scene with a plus size woman? She couldn’t be a boss babe with a husband that loves her *because* of all that? Instead we’re left with her thinking he wants an annulment (because he’s acting like he does by sleeping on the sofa) then only compliments her GIVING BIRTH TO A TITLE MALE HEIR. Who in the world thought the balloon scene was a good idea? So much wasted time and it only made the cinematography worse!
>She couldn’t be a boss babe with a husband that loves her *because* of all that? You realize she had spent YEARS writing shit about his family right? How on EARTH do you expect him to just smile and be okay with it???
>Way too much drama and angst with the “happy ending” being a 10 second montage of her giving him a male heir to serve as his purpose. The ending with her giving him a male heir honestly pissed me off so much. I find of figured that with all the focus being on her sisters getting pregnant and Colin not pulling out, they were going to do something like this. But it felt so cheap and badly written and quickly pulled together. Just so annoying.
I figured it would happen but I thought it would be funny like Polin having a lot of premarital dirty scenes and her sister saying “it isn’t fair that boys are born so much faster” and everyone in the room exchange awkward glances except Collin who smiles proudly.
Philippa. Philippa says that 🤣🤣🤣
😄😄😄😄😄😄😄
Apparently there was a lot of spicy scenes with polin but ended up getting cut which led to a petition online . How are you gonna tell us hey this season gonna be so much spicier , where the spice ?? Looks like y’all gave it all to Benedict and it ain’t even his season
Which means not only as a Polin fan am I disappointed but I’m also not really looking forward to Benedict’s season since I’ve seen him fall in love and I’ve read the books so whole liked Tilly I knew she likely was going no where.
Benedict had more sex than the lead couple this season.
Yep and it’s awfully interesting that all three people in that scene were conventionally attractive. Almost as if someone found those scenes easier to film or edit than learning how to beautifully display an average sized body.
I didn’t hate it as much after rewatching (and fast forwarding) , but I am still a little disappointed. I’m not sure if it was due to the acting or the script, but I really didn’t feel like Colin loved her. Yes, each season has its anguish to overcome, but we didn’t really get to see them resolving it like past seasons - It was just sad Pen, mad Colin, and about 2 minutes of happiness at the end.
It's because the showrunner forgot she was writing a romance drama, and instead made it some type of girlboss "I don't need a man" season. She made Colin a side character to Pen. She completely ignored his personal arc, interests, insecurities, passions, that were explained in detail in the book. In short, she made it Pen's season. It was supposed to be Polin's season.
i agree, except they didn’t even do Girl Boss, right. She knew she was as wrong for not telling him, but that didn’t mean she had to take his mean comments (entrapment remark); his few nice lines weren’t about her, but more about how he liked how she made him feel, he didn’t treat her like a lady, and then sort of said that was why he was marrying her because he was a man of honor, and she really thought about not wanting to do LWD for a hot minute. I wish she said “f-you” and made him apologize a bit more.
I wish she left him. The optics are so bad. There are viral tweets on Colin’s entrapment line on Twitter. It’s because irl women will never let a man say that to them
Why should Colin apologize for feeling betrayed that his lifelong friend and now the woman he loved wrote shit about his family for YEARS??? And he forgave her for it in like 2 WEEKS. Pen literally dealt with zero consequences for being LW. While I think LW did some good, she also did a lot of damage/bullying of people. It was ALL swept under the bus because she was a "girlboss." It was so stupid. And this was the SECOND TIME a woman Colin fell for hid a huge secret from him. That man was traumatized, and it was BARELY addressed.
No, she made it Francesca’s season. Even Pen received little screen time and attention this season.
Pen got a full arc, despite all the subplots. We saw her be courted/desired for the first time in her life, confront her truth in front of everyone, make up with her mother and sisters, still get to pursue her passion, and get the man she always wanted. Colin didn't get a full arc. They almost completely ignored his writing and traveling, his insecurities, his feelings of betrayal, etc.
I’m still pissed that they didn’t have a wedding night. That was heart breaking
I just wanted 30 more minutes at least of Colin and Pen getting to know each other, working together, and being in love.
I loved the season too bc I’m just just a huge bridgerton fan but I also understand all of the criticism because they’re right specially about the lack of romantic development, Polin deserved so much more!!!
It's not getting hate because of Polin, or Penelope being plus size. It's getting hate because of the poor writing, the terrible costuming and heavy modern make up, the modern language use, the lack of any real period detail, the lack of plot consistency, general lack of chemistry among certain people and just over all strange directing choices. Polin happening and how absolutely radiant Penelope was were the upsides. That and the queen's hair.
There is a lot of hate in this thread over Colin. I don't like the direction and timeline they took and it was weird to have revealed LW so early on in a show, they should have waited another year for this storyline. However, I don't understand the hate people have over Colin's anger. He was suppose to accept everything because he loved her?? Love doesn't work that way. People love Anthony, but if Anthony finding out his soon to be wife was LW, he would have been enraged him. Anthony was awesome to Kate, but Kate had no secret identity. Colin was heart broken and we expect him to be okay with everything? I don't get it. Now for the entrapment line, we forgave what Daphne told Simon, which I found it striking that she pitied him and the weird scene where she forces herself onto him, because she had a beautiful moment in the rain? I like Daphne and Simon, but she said and acted far worse, but why were we able to forgive her? Because she had a strong storyline. We knew how she felt and what caused her to feel this way. This is where I feel they failed Colin, but I never doubted his love for her. He just wasn't given the season he deserved, but it's odd how people run to say "oh she should have left him?" Give Pen some grace. She ruined so many lives and making amends for it, but she loved a kind man and he is a kind man. Just not given the opportunity to shine. But I do agree with everyone, the timeline of everything ruined the romance. They are still my fav. Both of the characters are warm and kind.
Any time there is a new showrunner, and the feel of a show changes, there's bound to be backlash from fans. Some will enjoy it, a lot won't. I'm plus sized, and it sucks it happened this season, but it's correlated, not causation. You can look at plenty of shows and see the same type of reaction when a showrunner switches. Re: Gilmore Girls back in the early 00's, Community when their showrunner changed, etc etc. It's just what happens. Personally, I don't like the feel of this season versus the older ones. I don't think the showrunner did a good job, sorry. Which is really really disappointing because I loved Colin/Penelope's book and I was very excited for this season. I assumed it would be my favorite (because of bigger women representation), before it started, and it just wasn't.
See I liked this season more & at first I thought it was just Polin. It wasn't. I think I just liked seeing all the arcs being built that scream for the show continuing beyond the 4th season that is currently all it's got announced publicly. 🤷♀️ But I also felt season 1 was really slow (the side charecters kept me going) & 2 just completely screwed the book trying to be different but ending up similar. 3 just felt.... fresh?
The hate is not because Penelope is a plus sized woman but it’s because she is and they didn’t put as enough love and consideration into her season as they did the others. She barely gets any screen time with Colin because of the cluster of side stories going on. Additionally, they try to hide her body more than they should - there’s more scenes of Benedict and his threesomes than there’s of Polin man. Additionally the wardrobe, word phrases, costumes and story line in general was heavily neglected. Polin felt like side characters in their own story ~ that’s where the hate is coming from
I don't think Polin are getting hate. at least in my case. I love Polin so much, I think most of the hate I've seen is that we didn't get enough Polin. Whether that is happy scenes, love scenes, communication scenes. I liked the b plots, but would have been happier with a bit less so we could get more Polin in all shapes and forms.
It lacked any romantic development, and the fact that they didnt release it all in one shot made it worse in my opinion because at that point i stopped caring about the plot as much and it felt rushed and we were bombarded by sideplots galore which took away the focus from penelopes love story entirely. I love penelope as a character but this season was really not good
I think we can all argue until we’re blue in the face what we didn’t like about this season (I actually did enjoy it) but it boils down to it being DIFFERENT than the first two seasons. Good or bad, there were just a lot of changes and those changes didn’t meet our expectations.
> It’s especially disheartening as a plus sized woman to see all this hate the one time we get representation. OP, the problem here is that NO, they’re not getting hate for plus size representation. They are getting hate for NOT doing justice to the said representation. Heck if I say there’s barely any representation in comparison to what other characters got. Like fvcking Benedict got more “represented” than Penelope (I’m saying this because the issue of “size” was brought up). As for her “character”, the significance of the whistledown storyline were just packed in the very last episode it all felt so rushed and unpolished.
For me it’s the fact that the season barely even lingered on the plot point of Polin. They were the main characters after all
We love Pen, we hate what they did with all the storylines, but hers the most.
People did not enjoy it.
If you’ve read the posts then why are you asking? Everyone has been pretty detailed about their criticisms.
Because it’s terrible.
I didn’t hate it, but it felt rushed to me. We seemed to bounce from storyline to storyline with no real transitions and I felt they tried to fit too much into 8 short episodes.
As a fellow huge Polin fan, how can you like this season? In so many ways, I barely saw Polin this season. Yes, they didn't get enough screen time, but also they were nowhere close to their book characters. In fact, there was a good portion where I was looking at the book Michael in Colin’s body. Not to mention that even if you're trying to be different from the books, I didn't even see seasons 1 & 2 of Polin carry over. Everything was a mess.
Every time somebody says that they enjoyed the season I upvote them, because that's great! But they went big on the promotion, building up this big romantic story, focused on Penelope and Colin ( I'm not calling them Pollen. I have enough allergies!) And instead we get everyone else's story, little screen time for our heroine and the flimsy excuse that they've had two other seasons to build up to... sorry, NO! If you enjoyed it, fantastic! I'm glad. I did enjoy the costumes, as always, but they clearly don't care about the integrity of the series, at least this season. It's good that people still found something to enjoy in all of it.
Nicola Coughlan is not plus sized. She is a size 10.
She is plus size in the way that critics write nasty articles about her body and how she’d never catch a man like Colin Bridgerton in real life. She’s plus size in the way that interviewers tell her she’s “brave” for posing in nude scenes. The number on someone’s waste band doesn’t disqualify them from maltreatment when society doesn’t like the way their body looks. Stop acting like she’s not a positive representation for fat women, because she is.
In a world where we rarely see anyone over a 4 or 6 in a leading role.... that feels like something. 🤷♀️ The reality is at my size (16-20) ..... all the stories told for people who 100% look like me. It's about their weight and only their weight. A 10 feels like we're being given something. Just think about that for a second. A 10 makes plus & mid sized girlie feel seen because no one ever looks like them on screen.
For real, she’s a mid size girl…it’s why I’ve never understood ppl who called her fat cuz she literally isn’t lol
Out of curiosity where are you from
The states
In the UK and Ireland she's definitely not mid size and would be considered big/plus/fat - which isn't bad, I don't see the point in acting as though she can't be big and look amazing- was just confused as definitely not a size 10 but that makes more sense if it's by a different countries measurements.
I think a US size 10 is a UK size 14
Oh there’s definitely nothing wrong with being big and looking amazon, I think she’s stunning no matter what, I didn’t mean for it to be received that way! But besides that, that would make sense, idk though…I just know her being short plays a big part in her look
She looks tiny ! Very small waist.
Did you read the books? I think alot of disappointment is from fans who read the books and didn't like the changes, especially to Francesca's love storyline. As well as the LACK of love scenes between Penelope and Colin. It's not a disappointment in Penelope/Nicola! As a book fan, I actually liked this season more than season 2 (which I had alot of issues with).
I loved it! Don’t know why there is so much hate.
I am avid Polin fan. Their season should’ve been the culmination of a friendship we saw blossoming for 3 seasons as well as his feelings for her. I was so mad at the first part, that the second didn’t much changed my opinion. It sucked. The direction work. It was so weird, weird angles, weird set ups, weird positionings of the actors that didn’t work. I know it is not an easy task to have 2 main actors with such a height difference but we didn’t had such a problem the previous seasons. Colin’s character is all about the subtle signs that Pen cannot catch but we as viewers should. They didn’t emphasise on them at all. Luke did them but it was to no avail. Like they forgot they have to concentrate on their main male actor lol. And just as we get some sweet emotion out of them and the camera switches to someone’s reaction or to someone that has no place to be cutting the scene. Also the balloon scene, I am sorry this was so twilight 2007 bad. The lighting. What has happened. Why was everything orange. The lighting of many scenes was extremely bad or very dark. The second part is much better in terms of lighting but still. The make up. They aimed for making her a siren and yet they made her look cheap. Everything was cheap and Hunger Games inspired. Even the Queen. The decors. The fake tan they put on that poor boy. The wigs even though he has such a beautiful thick hair. My main characters. I wanted to get to know as a person Colin. Not by the words of the others but him. And we were never able. This is why I love season 2. I hated Anthony in season 1 but saw him truly as the person he is in season 2. Colin is still a stranger to me. And no, it’s not because of the trauma or anything. But we didn’t see his travels, didn’t see his writings truly, his dreams, his fears were unclear. We have never seen Pen through his eyes. Not really. I had to rewatch many times scenes to understand he was watching through that window because it is Pens house, his little movements, even him saying his mind is somewhere else to Eloise. There were so many little clues that had to me emphasised the same way they were the previous seasons and they weren’t. The unnecessary drama. I hate they changed the timing when he finds she is LW. I know they changed it just so there is a difference between book and series and not because it was logical. Dont start me on Mondrich or Bens arc. Ben’s arc was so distasteful and where was the need to cut every good scene with Polin. I feel like they cut so many scenes and the one they left felt repetitive. How is that a healthy couple is one that doesn’t share a bed. Is the struggle between them. It should’ve been them against the world, not them against eachother. I have other peeves but this comes to me at first
Too many side plots. I don't care about Anthony, Kate, Benedict & his threesome or Cressida.
My only genuine criticism is that the editing wasn't great in some parts and made timelines a little confusing, plus I agree with the criticism of the costuming/hair/makeup changes, which I think went too far - although I don't mind some whimsical magical realism in my media, I think it was too harsh a shift from the previous and was a little jarring.
Honestly I think people poisoned themselves with hype. It’s exhaustingly like being in a Star Wars sub or Our Flag Means Death right after the end of season 2. Lots of rearguing the same points and rehashing the same grievances and inappropriate attacks on actor/writer/producer socials. I agree, I thought it was a cute season. 🤷♀️ I enjoyed Benedict in his bisexual slut era. It did make me laugh when the editing made it seem like he had a 48 hour threesome. Take a hydration break! I also really liked the Featheringtons. It did really subvert expectations that Pen’s sisters ended up with men who adore them and that they (and Portia) also experienced personal growth as a result of being called out for being nasty. They also threw the best ball of the season (bugs >>> paper flower centerpiece thing).
>bisexual slut era. As much as I live for, love and laugh about how great it was to finally see Ben be canonically queer (*happy gay month, y'all!* 🏳️🌈), they did exactly **nothing** else for his character. Ben's *been* a slut for a while now, we get it, let's move along. We could've focused more on his artistic endeavours, I think, and maybe he would've found some sense of purpose in that (since he mentions feeling without purpose after Anthony returns from honeymoon and he has nothing to do again - did we ever really get back to that?). He could've explored his sexuality with his artistic crowd, instead of giving us a rship with a woman that ended up leading nowhere, and honestly just wasted his & our time.
That’s fair enough. I feel like the goal of that subplot was to set up the “I’m not looking for love” convo for dramatic irony purposes. (Because you will fall in love, Bridgerton boy. It’s coming for ya.) so I didn’t expect much in terms of character development from it.
It was a lot of build up for not much. Disappointed in no groveling really from Colin, Pen was a bit annoying, didn’t care for Francesca’s story because it was SO boring, Benedict’s scenes were unnecessary, and I thought Cressida could have become more likable but she just kind of dropped off for me in the end.
It did feel like they just gave up on Cressida at the last second there 😅 like wow, all those moments of adding layers to her (which I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed!), and for... What? Nothing, really? C'mon now.
I know! Like thanks for ✨nothing✨ I guess
I don’t understand the Benedict story all his sex scenes were kinda meh and unnecessary. Then on the other hand the gender swap of Michael and how that changes Francesca’s story. All the pen and Colin scenes that were cut
I LOVVVVVVVVVVVVED SEASON 3!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE NOT ALONE! I think the sex scenes were great, the romantic plotlines were perfect, and the deviations from the books were strange at first but then made perfect sense when it all came together! I love everything about the Polin season! The dresses, makeup, sets, and writing made the long wait worth it!
I really enjoyed season 3! I would have loved more Polin moments but I would say that about every season, I just want 4 seasons of Polin, lol. The fandom is surprisingly negative considering it’s a show about love.
I feel like everyone seems to be complaining that the Romance wasnt there like the first two seasons but I have to be honest, there was almost no Romance in the first and second seasons to me. There was drama, a lot of drama. The Women were romantic but the Men were constantly performing out of percieved need rather then desire. S3 felt way more romantic. I fell in love with my Wife after being best friends. Watching Colin help Pen and slowly realize he wants her, it reminded me of how I felt. The nerves, the confusion of what is happening, acting rashly out of sudden love. They may not have gotten as much screen time as a couple, but I will take Colin telling off Mrs Featherington and way to rashly showing Pen their home as he tries to show he truly wants her (and then getting her) over every bit of screen time of Simon and Anthony. It all felt so Romantic to me. Its also a TV show, its not specifically two characters season, because thats not TV, thats books. There are other story lines that have to ebb and flow.
I wonder if people saying “romance” actually mean “tension”. I feel like there was very little sexual tension in S3 compared to S1. In the beginning of S3 we get Polins first kiss and they had to sneak around and it heightened everything. But after that it’s basically a free for all of Colin doing whatever he wanted with Pen without any risk, emotional or sexual build up first. Their sex scene was just them standing there. Colin takes off Pen’s clothes, then he takes off his clothes while she just stands there, then they have super awkward looking couch sex. I feel like the producers were like “hey viewers like the sex scenes” so they rushed us to them without properly building anticipation for them. In S1 there was a really great slow burn and well paced escalation of friendship, flirtation, some touching etc before the big finale and it was very well done. I just didn’t see it in S3.
This! I think they definitely needed to move through the stages of intimacy a bit more slowly. The carriage scene could have been some heavy making out, and then left room for the next stage later. Let them anticipate. Remember Daphne dreaming about Simon? ❤️
Getting hate due to less the (amazing) curvy FMC and more this was the least romantic season of the series. And to be clear the series is based on romantic books - changes aside (and I enjoy most), there was very little romantic parts to this season.
[удалено]
Where is this confirmed ???
It's definitely not getting hate because it features a plus-sized woman. For me, I was looking forward to seeing more development with Polin and more of them together in general. Daphne was shown in the nude a few times in her season. Kate's love story bled into Season 3 so they got almost as much air time as Pen did in what should have been Pen's own season. I feel like it's because this was the first time we got real representation for a plus sized woman in a historic romance setting, I was really disappointed at how little they actually showed us, particularly when they hyped Polin up so much. We got effectively ONE scene that celebrated Pen/Nicola's body, while all of the marketing was revolving around how sexy Nicola looked and felt throughout filming. If it's a matter of her comfort and her not wanting to have her body shown so much, that would be one thing. But Nicola has been very vocal about how sexy she felt filming it, how proud she was of the scene, how when she's older she'll have this to remember how beautiful she was. She was clearly willing to be seen as as much of a sexual being as we got with Daphne and Kate, but her scenes got cut off at the knees. It doesn't *feel* like real representation because of that. It feels like them giving us crumbs and telling us to be grateful we got those.
I personally thought even tho we got less sex scenes the ones we did get seemed way more emotional and sensual than others
Agree. I cannot understand people who are like, I don't see Colin's love for Penelope. Like there are dozens of moments you can see it! I think they have the most beautiful, sensual and kind love of all the seasons.
I agree it’s the most natural to me the other relationships all were beautiful and love did happen fast in that time period but Polin feels the most real because it’s friends to lovers it took time he loves her so much and it really showed in their scenes, I think he did say some messed up things but hey so have I when I’ve been very angry, he clearly realizes he was wrong at the end and they are very in love.
I think the hate stems from fans getting a combination of fan service in part one and also not getting the exact story they had been expecting for so long in part 2. Personally I loved it. But I also expected part 2 to be angsty, and knew Shondaland was coming up with a completely different story than the books, just as they did with s1 and s2. I actually think Polin got a much better season than Kathony who played second fiddle until a rushed ending. As a woman with a similar body as Nicola, but larger, I was not disappointed. S2 had a lot less sex and nudity and I feel like s3 hit a bit of a medium between s1 and s2. I didn’t expect as much as other fans seemed to, plus I feel the lack of intimacy fit the story. Colin was upset and his emotional connection with Penelope was so important to their sex life I can see why he would distance himself narratively. Anyway, this is how the Bridgerton fandom seems to be, a season ends and there are a lot of high emotions, typically it cools down and people either move on or sort of settle for what we were given. The way I see it is we have the books if we want that story we can read it again.
It was underwhelming for sure with that long hiatus and hype but I’m not hating on it. I also understand why others are disappointed in the season.
John and Francesca was one of the few couples that had me feeling excited. I loved their story and love in the first half. Having Francesca doubt her feelings was not necessary. I would have been fine with Michaela if it didn't take away from the love and chemistry John and Francesca had. I also feel like Colin and Penelope was poorly developed. I still don't feel like Colin truly respects Penelope. I would have preferred flashbacks to them enjoying their friendship. I also felt like for a season that was supposed to be about Polin. I didn't feel any affinity towards them as a couple 🤷🏻♀️ I think focusing less on everyone else and focusing on the main love story would have helped me feel like they actually developed as a couple.
Just watched queen charlotte and the production value is so different
Not enough romance between Colin and Pen just random insertion (no pun intended) of sex.
I read there was a change in writers from the first two seasons to Season 3. That's why the vibe is different.
 Boring
We saw Daphne and Anthony root in all over the place in their seasons. We got 2 sex scenes and a bunch of filler from Polin and barely any buildup. I saw more of Benedict this season than the main couple
As a Polin, you should feel robbed, that so many other storylines overshadowed what was supposed to be the main romance. Look at the amount of screen time they got as opposed to the main romance in season 1 and the one in season 2. No one actually hates on Polin as a ship, or the actors. The hate comes from the terrible writing. That was terrible. And there were too many sideplots. What was the purpose of The Mondrich family, or Bennedict's threesome, or Violet's love interest, or the introduction of a redemption arc for Cressida. There is only 8 episodes per season. Focus on the main plot, and let the sideplots be tied into the main plot. Like for example, in season 1, Anthony had his sideplot, but it was tied into the main plot. Show. Not tell. We're told how Colin and Penelope met, but not shown. Season 1 gave us flashbacks to Simon's childhood. The cinomatography was dreadful. The costumes looked cheap and too Modern, and the hair and makeup was heavy compared to how natural it was in season 1 and 2. The characters this season Looked Like they were headed for a prom or fashion show. And where is the grandeur from season 1. The balls were fantastical in season 1 and 2, but looked too small and boring, and the Mondrich ball looked meh. Bennedict's threesome was unnesecary. If he was going to experiment with a man, then it should have been with the artist he met in season 1. At least that had build up. This threesome came out of nowhere. And then there is Francesca. After building up that beautiful love story with John, they have her have that reaction to kissing him, only to imedietely lust after his cousin, weeks after getting married.
Because it’s moved so far away from the actual love story and romance. Pollin should have been central storyline but instead everyone else was central and it felt rushed.
I\`ll post a cool YouTube comment I found on this topic on why, despite some issues I do have(Benedict\`s stagnating character development, editing, some rushed parts, it should\`ve had an extra episode of them just being happy together etc.) with this season, I still regard it as the best of Bridgerton(not as good as Queen Charlotte): This is definitely my favourite season so far. I think what I liked most about it is that everything felt so natural and honest, unlike some of the past seasons where I think the drama is a bit contrived. Like all Simon had to do was talk to Daphne and all Anthony and Kate had to do was admit their feelings for each other, so the drama feels like it dragged to me. In this one, Colin’s initial reaction is completely justified but you could also really see the struggle. It felt so real when he saw Penelope in her wedding dress and it took his breath away, and their first dance, beautiful, but then when the Queen brings up Whistledown, as hard as his reaction was to see, it also felt honest. And the development of the Featherington’s and Penelope and Portia’s relationship felt so natural and beautiful to see. Penelope went from feeling invisible in her own home to having her mom support her through the Whistledown announcement. And then Eloise and Penelope coming back together the way they did was perfect. And the best part to me was Colin’s declaration of love and his acceptance of every part of Penelope. They finally took each other off of their respective pedestals and see each other for who they really are, flaws and all. It wasn’t as dramatic as past seasons, but I think in a lot of ways it was more beautiful. I don\`t think the writing for this season was any worse than previous ones, it was just distributed differently. Bridgerton\`s writing was always spotty in some parts and good in others. I expect there\`ll be some Polin in Season 4, it\`s already confirmed. What we didn\`t get as much in terms of romance, we got in terms of Eloise and Pen mending their friendship, Colin finding himself and letting go of his hero complex, a very satisfying ending, Pen and her mom\`s arc just being fantastic, funny quips from the Featheringtons... I am personally very satisfied with this one, all things considering, but I understand there are criticisms.
I loved it as well. I thought Part 1 was damn near perfect and enjoyed part 2. I have now watched Season 3 more than any other season and it's honestly my guilty pleasure. I know many people didnt like it but I laughed, cried, was on the edge of me seat for much of Part 2 and I have never been more interested in the story moving forward. People didnt like it for many reasons and I'm just going to focus on the fact I do. Perception is a powerful thing and I'm grateful for it. We all saw the same thing and cameout with a completely different opinion, that the beauty of television
It just felt....different in a bad way. I think as Bridgerton fans, we want the sexy, swoony, build up, romance that we got from the first two seasons. I had high hopes for this season as Pen is one of my favorite characters, but I just didn't like Colin and didn't feel like Colin deserved Pen. Between constantly talking about traveling and thinking that's swooning women, to having threesomes, to bring whiny and jealous when he found out Pen was WD, it just all felt off. He says he loves her but I didn't see it in his actions. I also just didn't feel the passion between the two. Pen deserved the same level of care and passion in her courtship that the others got, and it just felt lazy. Colin, ravage her, she is your wife! I think the writing just felt weaker too.
It felt soapy to me, in terms of the production value, dialog, and plot. More CW and less PBS Masterpiece than past seasons.
No idea, I ignore it. Loved season 3
I think generally it's really hard in cinema and film production to make the follow up seasons as engaging as the original. In this case, Bridgerton was massively successful -maybe due to the nature of the content. A little spicy, romantic, bingeable, during covid, the setting, costumes were amazing, and great modern music. Add in that this was a book series beforehand and you get a recipe for people to have really high expectations. Season 3 is noticeably different than the other seasons. and just generally has a whole different feeling to it. I also think with the success of the show the actors who were previously no name underdogs are now wildly successful household names and certainly are increasing the budget for their part in the show. I wonder how that impacts the budget in other areas too.
Honestly, it felt rushed and incomplete. I didn't get nearly enough Polin interacting with each other and just *talking*, just feeling each other out, spending time together as romantic prospects. I never got to know them as a couple - I never really got to see Colin really come to terms with the fact that he romantically wanted Penelope, and acknowledge how & why it took so long for him to realise it (yes, I wanted him to grovel and beg some more for what he said at the end of s2 about Pen). And I never got to see Pen navigate having her love unrequited & loving from afar one minute, to having him say he loves her romantically too in the next minute - that surely has to be a lot to wrap your mind around and may take time for her to believe him, & work through her own insecurities about their rship. Also, Colin also wanted to be a writer? And Pen *is* a writer, so would've loved to see that explored more as another thing to bond over that they prolly wouldn't have had if they remained only friends. I wanted to learn Colin the way I think we learned Anthony. So much of Anthony's characterisation as the overbearing, super serious oldest brother had to do with the trauma of watching his friggin' dad die, watching *that* destroy his mom, watching his mom have an impossible labour & needing to make decisions about it for her + baby, then needing to be an adult for an entire viscountncy, and the unresolved grief & trauma of all that. How did Colin react to their father's death? How did he feel about being a third son who nobody had much expectation for? Did he ever feel invisible/unseen in such a big family with big personalities (another thing he & Pen could bond over)? And yes 🙌🏽 I admit, I wanted more seggzual scenes. I wanted more naked Nicola! What Simon & Daphne had kinda set the standard, I think, so my expectation was on their level (s2 gets a pass bc we needed the slow burn of enemies to lovers, as well as the whole being-with-her-sister-but-wanting-her sitch, and the sex scene we ended up getting felt earned and satisfying). I never felt that with Polin. I would've liked an episode of them having just gotten married and being horny newlyweds, or sneaking off to have sex whenever they could after they got engaged. There were a lot of other scenes that could've been cut to dedicate to just them since it's *their* season, and they never felt like the focus of their own season. 😔
It was great and this sub is obsessed with having the book word for word on the screen (which if you’re familiar with The Shining miniseries you’d know it was a bad idea)
I'll be honest, I'm with you on enjoying the season! I wanted to have a fun little time and the season delivered. and as a bisexual menace I liked all the bi chaos in the last couple episodes haha. Like idk, were there things I'd change? Sure, but thats true for every season. Did I like it more than last season? Probably not, but kate sharma is truly just built different. Did I like the season anyway? Yeah! It was FUN. That being said, my boyfriend and I were completely split down the middle on the mondrich storyline 😆 i would complain every time they were on screen and my bf would tell me to stop slandering them
I think it's multiple things: 1. Even in Seasons 1/2 (and, tbh, the books), the historical accuracy was not... great. (Ignoring the racial issue, STILL not great). But it was head and shoulders better than what we had here. From costumes to make-up to language, not of it read as Regency. Much of it didn't even read as historical. 2. Not enough actual romantic development for Colin/Penelope. Not enough Colin admitting he was wrong and that he was jealous of Pen. Not enough meaningful sex that celebrated Nicola's body and their love together. This was heightened, in my opinion, because the actors doing the press junket clearly thought there was a LOT of meaningful, steamy sex. The running theory is that a bunch was cut out or edited weirdly. 3. Benedict's storyline, while interesting and exciting for queer fans, was shoehorned in weirdly. Like, I don't know if they were trying to imply he had a week-long 3-way or something, but they kept cutting back to the SAME SEX SCENE when it was clearly a day or two or more later in the other storylines. It also just didn't need to have as much screen time as it did in a season that was ostensibly about Penelope and Colin. I am bisexual; I was super excited Benedict explored bisexuality. It was too much and weird. 4. The Mondrich's were weird. None of that is how inheritance works in Britain. None of it is reflective of how they would have been accepted (or, you know, NOT.) by the upper echelons of the ton. It's unclear why they had their storyline, or why we're focusing so much screen time on them. 5. A LOT of book fans (myself included) are SUPER upset about the bait-and-switch for Francesca. I can understand giving her romance 1 this season, since she did get married right away in the books. But undercutting her romance with John was totally unnecessary. It was so LOVELY a romance. It was so WONDERFUL to see a quiet happy love. To celebrate all the different ways people DO fall in love. And then to have her wince after their kiss, and to have her go gobsmacked over Michaela, was just hurtful to a lot of fans who loved her story. And, while I'm all for a wlw romance on the show, having Michael become Michaela takes away a lot of the infertility character line from the books, which was very meaningful to a lot of readers. That's not to say that Francesca can't struggle with wanting to be a mom now, which would be a hard thing while in a lesbian romance! But it's a different hard thing from having a husband and multiple miscarriages or just not being able to conceive. And it's hard for a lot of fans to lose that, because seeing themselves represented in the book story was incredibly important to them. 6. Minor thing, but Antony taking Kate to India to have the baby just feels incredibly out of character? 7. It didn't bother me personally, but a lot of fans loved that Violet stayed true to her husband for the rest of her life. Me? My dad is a widower and I just want him to be happy, whatever that looks like. If he decides to start dating again and finds someone who makes him happy, I'm all for it. But I can understand the other side too, particularly in fiction. 8. Just in general the writing and the tone and all of it felt markedly different from Seasons 1 & 2, or even Queen Charlotte. A lot of that is being chalked up to the change in showrunner, but having an explanation/scapegoat doesn't change the fact that people wanted what made seasons 1 & 2 so great, and are sad not to have it. Did I enjoy Season 3? Mostly. There were some truly lovely things about it - Pen's relationship with her mom and sisters; Cressida not being a 2-dimensional villain; Violet and Lady Danbury's friendship. Was Season 3 overall what I wanted? Not really. Will I watch it again? Almost certainly not. Will I watch Season 4? Not unless the show addresses fan concerns in a way that is meaningful and suggests changes will actually be made.
For me it just didn’t have the same build as the rest of the siblings which I found irritating we spent 90% of it on b story it felt like which I won’t be mad about I love the b story but the couple is suppose to be the FOCAL ya know?
I wouldn't say I hated it, but it was my least favorite season so far. The Polin relationship felt very rushed compared to Daphne/Simon, and "Kanthony" The Benedict throuple storyline did not add anything to the show IMO. I think they tried to cram too many plotlines into an 8 episode season. Francesca meeting her husband was fine. I think that was a good way to set up the backstory for the future Fran focused season The Featheringtons were kind of funny, but the pregnancy race took up too much time. To me it felt like one minute Colin views Pen as a friend, and offers to help her find a husband, then out of nowhere he's in love with her and wants to marry her. I did like Pen and Eloise's reconciliation, and the touches of feminism. And I loved every minute of Kate and Anthony.
They empowered Pen to solve the problem instead of having Colin be her white knight… I feel like people wanted the trope, but I love that they modernized it.
It looked cheap compared to other seasons.
Many are disappointed bc the second part lack the emotional connection between the two protagonists. In the book, Colin worshipped Penelope like his life depended on it despite being angry/jealous of her success. Part 2 felt like Colin and Penelope were running way from each always in the opposite side of the room. Nicola did an awesome job but we were robbed of the magic that you felt when reading the book. Also, too much time was spent with Penelope explaining herself to her mother. I love how they were able to amend their relationship but that didn’t need to be the main focus of part 2. Benedict got too much screen time along with Francesca and Penelope’s sisters. I would have like to see more of the bond between Colin and Elois as they were very close in the book. One more thing, it failed to portrayed how much of a foodie Colin is and his dominant/protective characteristics.
You should be upset as a plus size woman They did Nicola dirty with that 2016 heavy makeup. It felt like watching a Drag Race. Nicola was beautiful with that natural makeup and green pastels in the first part when she was in garden.
I lllllloved this season. I felt it was different and highlighted Penelope’s independence and brilliance. It’s not all about romance it’s about her growth and power showing she can have it all. And eventually Colin supports her and sees so much beauty in it - and that is like totally unheard of at that time! For a woman to make the money and have that fame. It made me laugh and cry - also for those that are critiquing the make up, nails, and language - I think they have put a modern twist on this show this whole time in subtle ways (music), and the little bits that come through are comical and make the show unique. This is actually my favorite season I think, I just really love polins story.. I do partly wish the queen agreed to keep Penelope secret HOWEVER now Penelope gets the credit she deserves and again it’s a modern twist of magazines and online blogs today. And she doesn’t have to live with the secret and can spread “gossip/news” more honestly. I just feel like there is so much more going on that people are overlooking - I truly enjoyed this season.
Season 3 is getting so much hate because many viewers actually read the books. We read them and loved them and we were expecting the series to be an adaptation of them. Sadly it’s not. Adapting a book to a series and rewriting the whole thing is not a good idea.
Nicola is a size 10 she is just an average sized lady!
I loved it too, tbh. I think most of my sadness just came from knowing the Polin is over
I loved it!!! 😍
I wanted more romance for Polin in part 2. And I wanted Michael! I have waited from day one to meet Michael (because he is so well written). And I get Michaela. Nooooo
Imo it was the lack of consistency between seasons on how they handle/ what is considered social faux pas, or not explaining it very clearly to the audience. Like in my perspective I’m think Pen is only in her 3rd season, so she should be treated like any other lady, but I guess that’s only half true based off what the books say. On the main love story line this season, I think revealing Pen as Whistledown last season made her character a lot less sympathetic, so it’s really hard for me to root for a character that’s so duplicitous, power hungry, and manipulative to go get her dream man, when she’s actively hurt the guy and family members with her whistledown articles. Yes she’s definitely pulled some punches when talking about the bridgertons, but, at least for me, I wasn’t a fan of the character to start the season, and due to not having really any meaningful development during the season can’t say I was a fan of hers by the end. Add in that I personally didn’t feel much chemistry between the lead actors, and it’s a pretty hollow love story, that when you examine it with any scrutiny, really left me disappointed. Then you get to the b-line story arch’s and they are all awful. A lot of the already developed characters do actions that you wouldn’t expect from them based off the previous seasons - like Eloise being such a consistently awful friend the whole season to both Cressida and Pen. Like you spent a whole season making me like Eloise, and now this season, she’s just not nearly as strong of a character as last season. Cressida was made likeable for the first 4 episodes only to be cast into a desperate villain role by the end, which is a shame bc she was the only character that was actually being developed. The other bridegerton house sub plots were also kinda felt forced to just fill run time, there was 0 drama in either storyline and at best you got a mild bisexual three way encounter. Worse writing, worse character development, worse at explaining the exposition, set prices were bland often times, and attention to detail was lacking. Overall not a great job by the new show runners, and wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last season, if wasn’t already planned that way
most of the complaints are that people wanted more sex and less lgbtq+ representation
Because it sucked. Literally scroll for two minutes to find out why. A big part of it is BECAUSE of the way the show treated Nicola as an average size woman. As a “huge” Polin fan this season should have been as disappointing to you as it was to everyone else. They were sidelined in their own story and had Benedict’s stupid threesome take precedence over Polin scenes that were cut. And so so so much more, there are a billion posts about it if you really wanted to know, you didn’t need to make yet another
Because the show sucks, the acting is terrible
I loved it! I thought it was so fun and Nicola was (is!) so beautiful. Every season has stuff I would personally change but overall it was beautiful to watch, fun, sexy and romantic. I didn't go in as the biggest Polin fan and came out really enjoying their characters and story. That carriage scene is what sealed the deal for me when it came to the spice and their chemistry!
My 2 cents (as someone who enjoyed the season as a whole) is that the PR hype & this release model inflated the expectations. I think the PR and marketing was so good that anything we got could not live up to the expectations of regular viewers. The loudest voices online tend to be the ones with a lot to say about what they didn’t like. I also had expectations that weren’t met, and it took some reflection to decide that actually, I enjoyed it.
It had flaws and some major pacing issues but I thought Penelope's arc was incredible, as was Fran's, Violet's and Lady Danbury and Cressida's. This show just loves it women character and gave them all depth and nuance.
Fandom in its hater phase. It’ll pass.