Victoria season 2 episode 1 review: A Soldier’s Daughter / The Green-Eyed Monster

The second season premiere of Victoria is hampered by the decision to air two episodes at once, since it makes some of the show’s issues very apparent.

Surprisingly enough, the premiere of the second season of Victoria doesn’t open on the title character — although she’s quick to show up, apparently bored out of her skull as she gets pushed in a very fancy wheelchair. Instead, we briefly see frostbitten soldiers in Afghanistan, which is Albert’s problem to handle … until Victoria gets bored and walks in on the meeting.

But before she can actually go outside, she has to be churched, which she finds absolutely ridiculous. In fact, she seems to find her daughter also absolutely ridiculous, especially when the baby’s arrival gets between her and Albert getting back together.

Not even Albert is spared from her annoyance, though. He’s been handling the business of the crown in the form of the boxes and doesn’t want her to tire herself out. Basically, being a queen doesn’t spare the queen from patriarchy — not confinement, not having the men in her life thinking she needs protection or meddling in choices about her ladies. This is a pretty common point for the show overall, and it’s come back with a vengeance. Granted, Victoria does have some pretty sharp moments of her own where she flat-out talks about “my soldiers.”

However, she does something quite mature — she seeks out her own information about what’s going on in what would eventually become the first Anglo-Afghan War. And it leads to her throwing something at Albert because she is explicitly mad.

Now, Albert says something about her needing to “[recover] her reason,” but she does have a point, too. Thankfully, Albert’s brother, Ernest, is there for the christening and acts as a sounding board.

Does it necessarily fix everything? Well, no. At one point, Albert flat-out says that she’s acting “stupid” because of her choices to go appear at the commissioning of a new ship right after a defeat. Yet he shows up in the middle of her speech, and it comes with a swelling rendition of the theme music and the approval of the people there to see it. Finally, even Albert claps, and then they’re back in bed that night after talking about letting their baby girl marry as she pleases.

Unfortunately, the “domestic bliss” lasts approximately 30 seconds, because part 2 of this episode involves pretty much everyone wanting Victoria to have more children, except Victoria. It doesn’t hurt that Albert also meets Ada Lovelace and then gushes about her.

One presumes that it’s part of the reason Lord Melbourne makes his comeback as well at the “cultural evening.” And it’s Melbourne who seems to spark suspicion in the queen about Albert and Ada. The show also seems to say part of the reason is that Victoria is out of her depth with math — to the point where she doesn’t know what pi is. This isn’t to say that Victoria should know everything, but it seems pretty manufactured to cause more conflict between the royal couple about their relationships and what exactly their roles are.

It gets worse when Victoria summons her husband back since he’s gone to have dinner with a math society, and he doesn’t return. So her payback is to go see Melbourne and his flowers at Brocket Hall. It’s honestly quite petty, and I can respect that, even if her purpose is to try and get some advice about how to balance everything in her life. Melbourne is perfectly understanding of her reasons and able to gently reassure her that she can do her job.

Her issues are compounded when Melbourne doesn’t visit London, but his advice is all about patching things up with Albert — since they’ve fought yet again about Victoria’s hiding her pregnancy from him. So it’s the queen who goes to learn more about math and the analytical engine … only to find that they have something in common about finding womanhood occasionally difficult.

And so, yet again, everything’s patched up by the end of the episode, with the two sharing a tender moment where they get all their feelings out, apologize, and gaze tenderly at each other.

Brief thoughts:

• Victoria and Harriet’s moment when they discuss liking their babies and whether or not that has to happen right away is soft and touching.
• Diana Rigg’s Duchess of Buccleuch is exactly as ridiculous as you suspect she is, if only because she has nothing even remotely resembling a filter — though this leads to her being upset about a black man playing Othello.
• Belowstairs, the replacement chef pulls a knife on a kitchen maid, which does not actually end up getting him fired or anything. It’s soup that gets him fired.
• The scene acted out after the dancers at the party is from Othello — specifically coming after Othello kills Desdemona and is caught.
• The belowstairs plot of a thief in the palace is mostly there to give all of those characters something to do.

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What did you think of the Victoria season 2 premiere?