Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Still Star-Crossed Episode 2

• Literally just from the first scene between Escalus and his father discussing Rosaline I can tell you right off the bat that I care 100x more about this politically fraught disaster of a relationship than whatever tense affair they’re trying to arrange with Rosaline/Benvolio.  Like, give me a relationship between two people who genuinely love each other but are trying to deny it and betraying each other because it’s the Right Thing To Do and doing massive amounts of damage to each other in the process, and I will immediately and unhesitatingly shove it into my awful maw with no regard for what canon tells me.

• Rosaline being forced to live in the room of her best friend who died for love while being forced into a marriage by the man Rosaline loves who also loves her is kind of great to me?  What if I wrote a bunch of miscellaneous bullshit about Rosaline being haunted by Juliet?

• I do not care that much about Benvolio.  Like, he’s had a Rough Life™ and he Drinks And Sleeps Around and like…yeah, poor dude.  Even though his carefully calculated descent into artistic nerdhood endeared me to him for a hot second.  Still don’t care.  Maybe shove some backstory in there, throw in some flashbacks, hit me with that gay Mercutio/Benvolio shit, ANYTHING to give him a personality beyond ‘angry rich boy.’ Anyway.  Moving right along.

• “You make it sound like our noble lords are a pack of dogs in the street.” …um, Escalus honey, they kind of are.  There was a riot literally under thirty-six hours ago.  

• I’m getting a lot of satisfaction out of Isabella pulling the strings behind the scenes for selfish reasons—getting Rosaline back as a friend, keeping her brother in power, retaining as much power as she can for herself—as well as Protecting Her Home. Also all of her clothes are real good.

• Medical history aside: hey, look, boiling oil.  A+ historical accuracy, Paré’s replacement for boiling oil only barely predated this and it’s entirely possible for Livia to have learned that from her solider father.  I’d also like to point out that this was not standard procedure for sword wounds, as it was used to combat the supposed ‘poison’ of gunpowder, so like?  Yeah, the nurse being horrified is also totally feasible.

• ….I’m so pleased with Escalus for stabbing someone’s hand, atta boy, but on the other hand I was really hoping for another knock-down drag-out brawl at a serious formal occasion.  Like, why else am I even here.

• The way Rosaline spits Your Grace like her tongue is made of steel and her words are made of poison is my life’s blood.  Also please have this become Escalus and Benvolio and Rosaline (and Isabella) all having horribly tense meetings where they scramble to come up with a plan that keeps Verona at peace without forcing anyone to get married.  I just need a scene of all of them at each other’s throats as they struggle to find a détente, with Rosaline throwing ice cold cutting remarks left and right as Escalus fights to keep an even keel and Benvolio is just generally an asshole (and Isabella cutting through the chaos like a finely drawn blade with a plan that is terrible and awful and perfect).

• ESCALUS, COMMIT TO SOMETHING.  MAKE A DECISION ESCALUS.  Something besides this sort of dangerously totalitarian ‘death for a death’ rule because, MY DUDE, you gotta at least give them a trial.

• Why am I still liveblogging this terrible show?  Why do I still love it so much?  It’s so bad and I’m enjoying the literal hell out of it, guys, I don’t even know anymore.

SOME THOUGHTS ON STILL STAR-CROSSED

• Obligate note that everyone is hot and I am having A Rough Time.  Especially Romeo and Rosaline.  Damn.  Relatedly, I’d die for Rosaline.  DAMN. Lovin’ that character interpretation and her friendship with Juliet.  I couldn’t give less of a damn about Benvolio/Rosaline, but give me all of Escalus cutting out his own heart to save Verona and Rosaline hating herself for not being able to hate him.  The scene of them in the church was some good shit.

• This was EXACTLY the overwrought historically inaccurate Shakespeare nonsense I hoped it would be, frankly.  Sweeping beautiful visuals, sudden closeups for theatrical one-liners, slightly confused plotline timing, and The Drama™.  Good stuff.

• I don’t generally care for versions of Romeo and Juliet where the love story is played straight (Shakespeare wrote it as a tongue-in-cheek tragedy, a lot of the narrative makes more sense with that perspective, and the love-at-first-sight angle is kind of desperately overplayed and therefore I Do Not Care) but I’m willing to roll with it because I knew what I was getting into.  And like they do a decent job with it, it’s very tragic, Juliet is good, I like her, Romeo’s death is nicely done.  Kinda annoyed that Juliet poisons herself rather than stabbing herself because I like the tragedy of “I will kiss thy lips//Haply some poison yet doth hang on them.”

• That being said, I think it was a narratively good move to add some additional weight to the Montague/Capulet feud.  Like, on the one hand, yes, folks are being murdered in your streets, that is Not Good, but also let’s…have a solid reason for the Prince to care, seeing as that’s the whole plot of this show.  And it being Italy in the 16^th century, concerns about a power grab by the winning family are pretty legit.  (I’ve watched a lot of Borgias lately.)

• ANTHONY.  STEWART. HEAD.  AS LORD CAPULET.  Aw man y’all the part of me that really enjoyed the first two and a half seasons or so of Merlin (another show I have Opinions on) as a terrible romp through somewhat bastardized Arthuriana is real excited right now.

• Glad to see Paris is a dick.  Very pleased.

• The all out riotous brawl at the funeral was honestly the top thing on my wish list for this show and I feel intensely gratified to have gotten it.

• The line “Escalus, Verona is burning” was my fucking shit to be honest.  Like, damn, son, Isabella is Athena, the clear-eyed goddess of wisdom and war, and I feel like the world deserves to see her with a sword in her hand.

• Here is my #1 Complaint: they seem to have accidentally switched Benvolio and Mercutio’s personalities.  This is not to say that Benvolio is necessarily the voice of reason in the play (it’s a play of Bad Choices), but Mercutio is 100% the “I am drunk at 10 AM,” Do It For The Vine friend.  I got to the scene where Mercutio dies before I realized that the other guy wasn’t Mercutio, and I was solely tipped off by the fact that I knew Mercutio died.  I get it that they clearly wanted some sort of bad boy thing to be happening here, but I’m so salty about this.  Like, why WOULDN’T you want Benvolio to be loyal and honest and grief-stricken and desperate to do right by his best friends’ deaths for this thoughtless crusade?  Romeo, the hopeless romantic, and Mercutio, the laughing rogue, both dead from this hopeless feud, and Benvolio, true and dependable as good steel, the last one left alive, who will see it mended if it kills him but who can’t quite forget his friends’ voices enough to marry a woman he doesn’t love.  Like, what part of that DOESN’T sound like good shit.

• ….I mean…personal headcanon that he’s drowning himself in alcohol and misery because Mercutio doesn’t love him, and that he doesn’t care what happens to him afterward because Mercutio is dead.  Like, that’s the only way I can reconcile the dude in the show and the play character. But whatever that’s just me.

Ultimate conclusion: 10/10 on The Drama™, but it ain’t exactly Sense8 for structure or narrative cohesion.  Will I show my Shakespeare nerd parents?  Jury’s out.  Will I continue watching it?  HELL YES.