What I’m Watching: The Crown

The Crown: Season 3, Episode 7 “Moondust” (B+)

I can see why Tobias Menzies is considered a lead in this season since he’s now had multiple episodes overwhelmingly featuring him, while Helena Bonham Carter and Josh O’Connor were both excellent in specific installments and barely seen the rest of the time. Philip’s obsession with the astronauts was fascinating, and it was interesting to see Elizabeth watch him and understand how he felt about what they were doing. She was proud of the message that she had sent to them and knew that he would be infinitely more excited than she was to have the astronauts come visit the palace. After angrily expressing that fifteen minutes alone wouldn’t possibly be enough time to spend with these amazing men, he was quickly disappointed by the fact that they had colds and seemed more interested in protocol and procedure than having original or extraordinary thoughts. “They delivered as astronauts and disappointed as human beings” was a biting line of criticism, one that says much more about how he would act had he been allowed to live his own life and gone in the same direction. It wasn’t much of a surprise that he ended up opening up to the priests at the retreat center after chewing them out for being lazy underachievers earlier in the hour, coming clean about what he was going through and confessing that he was more afraid to come talk to them than he would have been to land on the moon. That’s undeniably powerful, and this was a truly mesmerizing transformation to watch for this man most concerned with presenting a strong front.