Movie/TV Show Reviews:

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  The second season of Young Royals has been a bit of a wait, but this Swedish youth drama - about the heartaches of a Scandinavian prince (these are always Scandinavian princes with torn hearts...) does not disappoint. On the contrary - it shows that you can play well known patterns - but you have to be very consistent in it. This post contains moderate spoilers. While the first season followed the classic path of a forbidden or impossible romance (not only because of its queerness, but more classiness), the second season puts more emphasis on other, non-romantic obligations that rest on the characters. Interestingly, the series itself indicates several times that referring to tradition or responsibility is in fact an easy hack that allows a person to do many nasty things, but find justification for them. The fact that we are dealing with teenage romance (and not just one) and teenage emotions, juxtaposed with the right to inherit the crown, makes everything more dramatic on the one hand, and on the other - reveals how close the hysterical behavior of a teenager is to the hysterical behavior of the royal court . When Simon, the beloved of William, the heir to the throne, goes on a date with another, he furiously announces to his mother that he is giving up the crown. This is one of those scenes where you can't help but think about how absolutely archaic monarchy is in the 21st century. At the same time, the series does not lose sight of its class reflections. Because they, although not necessarily in the foreground, are important. Wilhelm's friend from school, tries several times to explain to him that the problem is not having a boyfriend, but having a boyfriend from a bad social class. It's definitely easier when you find someone in the right circles who can behave, and who will not have any idiotic illusions about the way the world works. While Wilhelm is theoretically rebelling against his family, he goes along with their way of thinking several times in the season, which Simon reproaches him for. Simon himself would probably be much happier dating a boy who works in the stables. For him, such a relationship, within the same class, also seems devoid of generic weight. But what if, as in a real melodrama, the heart says one thing and the mind says another. Our teenagers may be snoozing in the bushes, but their dilemmas are almost one-to-one carried over from nineteenth-century novels. The class theme is even clearer in the case of Sara, Simon's sister, who is admitted to a boarding school for aristocratic children this season. Her friendship with Felice, a wealthy heiress, seems pure and classless. Until the sale of a horse that Felice no longer needs and Sara loves. This is a plot written out into several episodes, seemingly secondary, but well showing how these class and wealth differences are not to be ignored and become flashpoints. After all, even if everyone is very nice to Sara, it's the little things - like sharing a gift, buying chocolates in the school cafeteria, or knowing how to behave in front of the aristocracy - that all distinguishes her from a girl from a poor home. With the rest, I have the impression that Sara and August are one of the best written characters in the entire series. Sara is the perfect portrayal of an autistic character for me. In many productions, such characters are shown as having no emotions. Sara feels the emotions the most and you can say - she feels them in a pure state. Which means that when she is in love, she is completely in love, trusting, full of hope that the boy she chooses will change. I liked it very much, because I have the impression that it is this purity of experienced emotions that is more characteristic of people on the autism spectrum than not feeling them. August, on the other hand, is a perfect example of how to write a rather nasty character, towards whom you have a lot, if not sympathy, then understanding. He is an ambitious boy who would love to be everything Wilhelm doesn't want to be. He cares about the position, how he is perceived and one more, last degree of social advancement. This is a well-created character in that he theoretically plots like an adult, but from all this comes some emotional clumsiness of a teenager.

  12/5/2022