Harlots season 2 review: Episode 4

The Wells women push boundaries in all directions, as Harlots explores the messy intersections of sex, money and power.

One of the best things about Harlots is that the period drama treats its female leads as though they are every bit as complicated and conflicted as if they were male. These are characters who make mistakes, behave selfishly, act irrationally and take ill-advised risks. The women of this series constantly push boundaries in ways that feel extraordinary precisely because they are women.

Season 2’s fourth episode is the first instance this season in which we’ve spent any significant amount of time with Lucy this year. As a result, she feels a bit like a stranger. It’s hard to reconcile this hard-eyed, closed-off apparent adrenaline junkie with the reluctant harlot we knew back in Season 1. Being an accessory to murder changes a person, apparently.

Yet, on paper, Lucy has it pretty good. She’s officially a kept woman now, ridiculously well paid and under the control of a man who orders his servants to treat her as his wife. Lord Fallon is a monster, a deviant and a murderer, yes. He’s already planning to use her as a hostage to keep her mother in check, should she make any further moves against Lydia or the Deviant Creeper Cabal. But Lucy doesn’t know most of that – and what she does know? Turns her on.

Lucy not only revels in Lord Fallon’s wealth and social position, she loves that he encourages her worst and most aggressive tendencies. Surely, years as Margaret Wells’ prim and perfect younger daughter has left Lucy with a lot of rebellion to get out. But she throws herself into the sudden permissibility of Fallon’s protection with gusto, violently shoving strange men at parties and engaging in increasingly vicious fencing that reads – and basically is – foreplay with her new keeper. Are we meant to believe that this is Lucy’s true self coming to the foreground at last, or just a way to let off some steam after everything she’s been through? Harlots leaves the answer predictably murky, and deliciously complicated.

This episode is particularly interested in the messy intersections between sex, money, and power. The women of Harlots – as well as the series itself – are unapologetic that the act of sex is a job to them. It’s how they survive. And that work doesn’t stop just because the men who have money are uninteresting, uncouth or the brother of a woman you’re trying to befriend.

Whoring is their access – to money, to influence, to whatever degree of independence they can achieve. And since Harlots doesn’t apologize for their profession, it manages to avoid making a moral judgment on what they’re doing. Sure, there are the handful of religious-minded folk who occasionally pop up to threaten the girls with Hell. But the true religion of Harlots is survival, and every one of these women knows that.

This is also what makes Charlotte’s uncomfortable relationship with Lady Isabella’s brother such compelling television. She doesn’t particularly like him, and would rather not complicate her budding friendship with Lady Fitz. But money is money and Charlotte’s no fool. Yet, she still values her freedom enough to reject his offer to become her keeper. (A position that, by the way, few of these women will ever find themselves in. Charlotte is lucky in that she has the popularity and accumulated wealth to choose for herself.)

However, even Charlotte’s popularity can’t save her from the fact that Harcourt is a violent – possibly abusive – man. Whew. Yes, Harlots does seem to love the idea that even if it looks like these women may be winning – they aren’t. Even Lady Isabella, who has plenty of money and status, has no freedom or power. She can only gamble away the money her brother allows her to spend, and engage in petty revenge plots against a woman that wronged her. Isabella’s secret reveals itself this week, and like most things, it involves Lydia Quigley somehow. It turns out that Isabella has a secret bastard child, and somehow Lydia apparently helped her hide it from the rest of the world. Or at least knows who did. (Sidebar: Are we supposed to think there’s a less than zero chance this baby was Isabella’s brother’s? Because that’s where I’m at right now.)

Elsewhere, Margaret finally convinces Emily Lacey to speak to the justice against Lydia. There’s something almost gallant about her insistence that someone in the bawdy section of London will eventually come forward and help bring down her old enemy. Well, if you overlook the fact that Margaret herself is no angel. Then it becomes a bit more hypocritical. Harlots doesn’t lean too hard into the whole “Margaret is a murderer who came within five feet of feeding an innocent girl to a creep herself,” but since she’s basically lost both her daughters, her husband most of her original girls, you could say she’s still being punished regardless.

Perhaps her real punishment is that no matter what she does, Lydia seems to slip away regardless. Even though Margaret manages to get her highly-coveted arrest warrant against Lydia, thanks to Emily Lacey once again promises to publically testify against her. (Hands up if you think that would ever actually happen?). But Quigley manages to be a fortuitous step ahead once more. The fact that uber-prim Justice Hinds walks in to serve his warrant on a Lydia that is literally in the middle of sex with the Lord High Justice is chef’s kiss perfect. You come at the king, you best not miss, ladies.

So, we seem to shift back to the status quo, a bit worse for wear if you’re Emily Lacey, whose betrayal is now exposed for all the world (read: Lydia) to see. Perhaps things are a bit better if you’re Lucy Wells, suddenly rich with a man who’ll apparently let her do almost anything.

But what about people like Margaret, whose plans for revenge are seemingly thwarted yet again, even as she assembles a group of women to take a shot at Lydia. This time, she says, they’ll use Charlotte. But despite all her rough talk this week about making Quigley pay, Charlotte has still yet to do anything even vaguely rude to her new mistress. Where will they go from here?

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