Let's talk about Reynolds.
He's so good at keeping secrets. He would have known about King George's fits since he started working as his valet. Perhaps he's known since the fits started. Reynolds is a fictional character, but the book written about the show says that Reynolds and George were playmates as children. They grew up together. Reynolds was raised to be the King's valet.
Before Charlotte joined their court, Reynolds and Brimsley became a couple. These two were already together, already comfortable with each other, yet Reynolds never gossiped about George.
Reynolds has been sworn to secrecy. He knows the reality of the King's madness. He sees it on a daily basis and more up-close than even the doctors or Augusta see it. He hides the truth, even from Brimsley, even when Brimsley finds out some details (like seeing Munro in the cellar), even when he gets angry that Brimsley told the Queen what he saw. Reynolds never breathes a word to Brimsley about the King's madness, until the King's fit in the garden and you see how devastated he is that Charlotte knows. He failed.
Reynolds' devotion and hopelessness come out strongly in 1x05. He's hiding Munro's torture, refusing to discuss anything with Brimsley even though Brimsley now knows the King is mad. Brimsley snaps at him, is visibly displeased with his passivity and reticence, and yet Reynolds still says nothing. Brimsley tries. He paints over the wall and offers to screen off the garden, and Reynolds mocks him for it. And yet. And yet when Reynolds returns to Kew after seeing Brimsley's effort, that's when he forces his way into Munro's torture chamber to try and save his King. Brimsley's hope inspires him, and that ends with Reynolds again seeing the futility of his actions, this time slumped against a wall with his ears ringing from the force of the blow and his King's screams.
When Charlotte goes to Kew and demands to see the King, even with Munro insisting that the Queen cannot see the King, Reynolds tells her where George is. Reynolds, as a servant, basically isn't allowed to have emotions, and Freddie Dennis plays all his devastation and inner conflict so subtly. Just the expression in his eyes and bit around his mouth betray how much he cares. It comes out in his conversations with the King, but in public, there's barely anything there.
Charlotte throws out Munro and takes over. Charlotte tells him the King is well. George insists he's well now. Reynolds should know better than to hope, but he allows himself to be talked into hoping that, if Charlotte and George can be together, then he and Brimsley can be together. He says the most effusive line he's got in the entire show:
And then George utterly fails to address Parliament. He can't even get out of the carriage. Charlotte wonders what happened, because he was fine when he left. And Reynolds loses his composure. "He was not fine!" he snaps at her. Reynolds has a lifetime of learning George's tells, and George was not fine. "That was merely hope." Such a damning thing to say about hope. It's no better than delusion.
Reynolds has a unique emotional arc in this show. He knows -- all the way through the show he knows the King is mad and that it won't get better, and yet he's surrounded by so much hope in the persons of Charlotte, and George, and even Brimsley, that he allows himself a few moments of hope, despite the King's madness, despite all he knows about how hope is a trick and a delusion. Reynolds hopes.
And then he disappears.
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Bridgerton - Like You Haven’t Seen It Before!
I created this edit using the sound effects in Bridgerton. They are timed to the music which creates a whole new viewing experience. I promise this is a type of edit you have never seen before.
I posted this a day before the trailer came out, but I wanted to wait a bit for the hype to die down. Please give a like/comment if you like it. The YouTube algorithm buried this one.
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