Some observations on TFMK, in no particular order:
Brian Clemens is a right git.
It’s really offensive that at the very end they turned Mother into some kind of procurer for Steed, and make out that Steed thinks he can have partners made to order sent up to his flat like pieces of meat. This is so out of character I don’t even know where to start.
I don’t think Emma’s anti-clockwise tea-stirring comment is a throwaway line. One of the things that clues Steed in to the fact that Emma’s memory has been erased is that she can’t remember how he likes his tea made. It’s an intimate detail, and an important one for both of them in this episode. So when Emma says that to Tara on the stairs, she’s not blithely passing the torch. She’s asserting her own intimacy with Steed and, although Tara can’t possibly know this, suggesting that noone will ever know Steed as well as she did. It’s a barbed comment, Emma’s way of making one last claim to that intimacy, and doing it right in Tara’s face. I’m not sure whether it rises to the level of a fuck-you, but it is pretty damn catty all the same.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around how Steed can go from being very personally affronted by Tara’s behavior towards him when they first meet (and quite right, too, the little vixen) to becoming not only work partners but romantic partners with her. Unless that’s some kind of fuck-you to Emma or something? Or sheer desperation? Whatever is at the root of that, it does suggest a certain abandonment of self-respect on Steed’s part.
Patrick Macnee seems to be really struggling with his performance in this one. There’s a spark that’s missing. Not a surprise, really: Diana Rigg’s departure hit him hard, and he didn’t want to work with Linda Thorson. Wouldn’t be surprised if he loathed the script, too.
How long before Emma announces Peter’s arrival had she known he was in the country? He can’t have just gotten off the plane that morning and said “honey, I’m home.” Surely the embassy/consulate in wherever he fetched up in South America would have contacted her, or he would have done. He was a test pilot, which is the kind of job that’s usually connected to the military in some way. There would have to have been debriefings and medical checks and all kinds of things before they even flew him back to London, especially if he were flying some kind of prototype when he crashed. Emma didn’t find out that Peter was back that very morning by reading the paper. She can’t have done.
And corollary to the above: why did she wait so long to tell Steed?
Did I mention that Brian Clemens is a git?
Steed’s not ordering his partners to his flat like pieces of meat. He’s trying to keep it together because his partner and girlfriend of two plus years is walking out on him. Hence the apparent flippancy totally belied by his expression.
I think he gets involved with Tara because he’s in pain and she needs him and he wants to be needed.
Still don’t like the bullshit tea-stirring line. She’s acting like he’s a goddamn dog she can’t take care of any more.
I actually think that they’d discussed to all beforehand and that was why Steed looked so dejected from the start of the scene. He knows she’s going. The newspaper headline just solidifies it. I’m going to presume that Peter insisted on coming to Steed’s flat, because I don’t think Emma would be that cruel.
Yeah, most of that makes sense.
Couldn’t the tea-stirring thing be Emma’s analogue to Steed’s “you know what I like,” though? If he’s being flip and nasty because he’s in pain, maybe she’s doing the same. (I still blame Brian Clemens for Steed’s line there, though. Yeah, Steed can be sharp-tongued, but that seems a bridge too far even for him.)
He’s not being sharp-tongued - he’s getting through the moment as quickly as he can and trying to show that he’s not currently falling apart. Which he is. I’m not sure why you’d think he’s just suddenly turned into a dude ordering a call girl.
I don’t think that, which is what I was trying to say. I can’t accept that Steed would say something like that, even if he were as pissed off as he is there. This is one instance where I’m willing to step outside the boundaries of the Avengers universe and lay the blame squarely on Brian Clemens. Who is a git.
But he does. So either there needs to be an in-world explanation for it, or he’s just transformed into a very different man. And then transforms magically back, as he says goodbye to Emma.
I can see Steed saying ANYTHING to get Mother off his back at that moment. He’s being left, again, by a woman he loves. And remember who he’s talking to: a man who spends his life having a woman silently serving him. He’s getting off the phone as fast as he can, and he’s doing it angrily and flippantly in order to show how incredibly nonplussed he is by the whole thing. That’s how Steed deals with pain, 3/4s of the time.
I guess so.
<mutters inaudibly> … Brian Clemens … <mutters> … git … <mutters more>
Well, what else is there? Is that Steed just bein’ Steed, getting his new girl as his old one walks out the door, because they’re all interchangeable anyway? His behavior with Emma a few seconds certainly doesn’t bear that out.
I also don’t think that Steed goes right into a sexual relationship with Tara as soon as Emma shuts the door. He even seems surprised to see her when she appears - as apparently she’s what Mother imagines he needs in a partner. Her dependence on him and need for him, combined with his total floundering about, makes him look at her differently. He gets involved with her as an attempt to salve his own pain, and to care for someone that might actually stay with him. He can’t do it, because it’s never gong to last, and he knows it.
Further: this reinforces pretty clearly that Peter Peel is a jackass, either unaware of his wife’s involvement with Steed, or doesn’t give a shit about it as long as it doesn’t interfere with his needs, now that he’s home.
Though I still don’t get why Emma’s line about tea gets a pass, but Steed’s line about “what he likes” doesn’t.
Correct me if I’m wrong, because I haven’t watched this episode in a long time (I don’t like TFMK) and don’t remember all the details.
In my humble opinion Emma’s tea-stirring line was an advice for Tara not to fuck up the whole situation and adding a new bundle of sadness, pain, discomfort, etc. to Steed’s emotional construct by doing all the things wrong or not the way he likes. Emma knows, that Steed is already devasted by her leave and she doesn’t want to make him feel even worse by “sending“ Tara to his flat, not knowing anything so his first thought would like: *sigh* She can’t even make tea...
I think, Emma talked to Steed about Peter’s return before it was in the newpapers (as @celluloidbroomcloset said). He looks at the newspaper, just like he already knows the whole story and it’s not new to him. And the way Emma enters his flat and saying “You’ve seen the newspapers.“. It’s like, “Look what they wrote about it in the newspapers.“. I don’t think Emma would be that cruel and don’t tell Steed, that Peter was found and returned to London. Steed also would have reacted differently to the actircle, if he didn’t know it, I guess.
