Victoria season 2 finale review: Comfort & Joy

An extra-long episode of Victoria, meant to serve as the Christmas special, drags on a bit too much with its developments and plays things a bit obviously.

Victoria season 2 technically ended with last week’s episode, so this is more of a bonus than anything else. It’s an hour and a half long, and in that hour and a half, a lot of things happen. It’s been quite common for episodes of Victoria to start somewhere else this season, and “Comfort and Joy” is no exception, opening in Dahomey on a young girl being given as a gift to another ruler. As this show is literally about another ruler, we know where the girl will end up. As if to make it more obvious, playing “The Holly and the Ivy” ties the girl and Victoria together.

After all, it’s Christmastime, and Albert is rather enthusiastic about setting things up. It turns out that he loves Christmas, and he really wants his children to enjoy the trees, the carols and so on. He even picks trees personally, because he wants to recreate the few happy memories he has from growing up. Tom Hughes puts a sense of almost desperation into this. This is something that Albert can do for his children to definitely make him happy.

It leads to a shattered illusion for Albert, where Ernest reminds him that those happy memories aren’t really that happy after all. While the episode has some trouble with Victoria’s childhood coming into the present, this scene here is deeply sad without being melodramatic until the very last line that Ernest spits at his brother.

Meanwhile, diplomacy means that Victoria receives gifts from all around the world. That includes the girl, now named Sarah, and a parrot from Victoria’s mother. It turns out that Sarah is a princess, her family killed, and she only lives because she is a gift.

The episode works a little too hard in scenes with Sarah and Victoria to draw parallels between them. It starts with the carol and continues throughout scenes where Victoria discusses her own childhood and how she doesn’t want to see Sarah suffer in the same way. But it ends up paying off when Sarah finds Victoria distraught after a quarrel with Albert, since the two get to bond. Ultimately, though, Sarah returns to the Forbes family with Victoria’s permission.

All is fixed between our royal couple when Victoria helps Albert after he falls through the ice. It is absolutely ridiculous and needlessly dramatic, and mostly just serves to try and fix the Ernest and Albert relationship, too.

Meanwhile, some relationships take turns of their own. The friendship, if not relationship, between Wilhelmina and a mourning Paget ends up developing some at a servants’ ball, and he offers to marry her! “There is more than one kind of love,” he says gently, and it’s a delicate, beautiful moment.

The ball is also juxtaposed with Ernest and Harriet almost but not quite hooking up. Instead, Ernest lies and breaks her heart just to save her from exposure to his syphilis. She learns the truth, and they share a deeply sad moment. Ernest gets all of the good scenes in this episode, frankly.

Belowstairs, Skerrett and Francatelli keep exchanging kisses while she insists that she can’t marry him. They have dreams — or at least he has dreams — of opening their own hotel, and that money could come from a sudden inheritance on Skerrett’s part.  Unfortunately, the money would come from the sale of slaves, and so she chooses to set them free. He still proposes to her, and she still accepts.

That first decision leads to a scene that does more to humanize Penge in about two minutes than anything other than the servants’ ball, since he and Skerrett talk about losing money.

To end everything, the children — Sarah at home with the Forbeses included — finally get to see their Christmas surprise on Christmas Eve. The set decorators outdid themselves there, because the palace scene is, as Victoria says to Albert, “magical.” She even finds it within her heart to let the King of Hanover join the festivities. When everyone else is gone, the royal couple exchanges some kisses, and that’s how it ends.

Is it too long? Almost certainly. It tries to include both main characters wrestling with their childhoods, multiple romances and also family intrigue. But still, it’s hard not to enjoy how lovely the episode is in terms of its beauty.

Quick thoughts:

• The shots of shirtless (and diseased) Ernest and shirtless Paget don’t really do much.
• The opera attended by most of the noble characters is Cinderella, which, again, is a bit on the mark.
• The Duchess of Buccleuch’s first name is Matilda! It’s somehow perfectly fitting.
• The diamond necklace subplot with the King of Hanover feels horribly out of place here.
• No one else can make ice skating look quite so angry.
• Sarah Forbes was a real person.

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So, what’s in store for season 3 of Victoria? Will you still be watching whenever the show returns?