I'm a bit late to the musketeer crowd but you're the only musketeer blog I follow so I really need to vent my feeling after finishing it. I mean WHAT THE FUCK IS IT WITH TV AND THEIR OBSCENE OBSESSION WITH LEATHER IN SHOWS SET IN THE 17th CENTURY!!! And why must everything be so dark and edgy?!! Where did Richelieu's red disappear? And what the fuck is Grimaud wearing? Why the fuck does he want to kill the king of France? Why does every morivation ever devolve into MANPAINNNNN??!!
Again, these are great asks and donât apologise for venting. Sometimes, like with shit like this, venting is the only way to cope.
(Everybody else, STOP READING unless youâre up for a shit ton of negativity and swearing. I mean it. Do something happy instead).
âRussian rouletteâ is a good way to put it. I mean, thereâs plot holes in the first season, but back then the writers didnât have to commit character-assassination of basically every single character on the show on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE to make the plot go the way they wanted to. In s3 every character is like a shittier, even stupider version of themselves, and it hurts to watch. It really, really hurts.
You are right, they are not the garrison. They arenât even a papier mâchĂŠ model of the garrison held together by spit and their own runny shit.
By the end of the show, the characters no longer acted and reacted to a plot, but were bent and broken to fit the plot of the week.
Iâve never seen a single show turn so very man immensely likeable characters into such revolting scum within the span of only a few episodes.
Iâve written much on how atrocious the world-building of this show is, but, you know, coherent world-building takes effort, but this isnât even about world building. This is about simple continuity, but s3 canât even keep simple continuity straight. Characters will outright contradict themselves between two episodes. And donât look for continuity with s1 or s2. Itâs not there. Itâs like the writers of s3 never even rewatched any of s1 or s2 and didnât care to at least have and editor check their scripts for that.
And Iâm afraid I canât help you with Grimaud. What is Grimaud even? Certainly not a character. A character, by my definition should have some form of motivation, or at least possess a semblance of personality, but this thing? I mean, say what you will about Rochefort, but at least he was a character (if a wasted character).
I canât even hate him or anything, because thereâs nothing there. I hate Aramis with a passion, but at least he has a character to hate.
One of the writers admitted that when Athos appears like heâs looking at Grimaud like he recognises him he doesnât actually recognise him, but heâs looking at a metaphor for war or some shit.
This show even at its best is very terrible when itâs trying to be deep, but Grimaud really is an insult to his namesake in Dumasâ novels. They were going to give him more of a discernable motivation by having him tell Athos that the people who raped his mom were musketeers. Itâs a small blessing they left that out, because, as Iâve said before, if they had kept it,you can bet our HEROESÂ would have spent half that episode being horrified about the old, dishonourable musketeersâ war crimes before reassuring themselves that they would never commit a war crime themselves and pat themselves on the back for being so true to their pure, noble hearts, right before they go and break another frightened, tied-up manâs face until heâs bleeding out of every orifice, for not thanking them politely enough for having been expertly tortured by them.
And even that wouldnât have added actual character to Grimaud. And his mother would still have been nothing more than a tool for more man-pain, like so many of the other women on the show. (Donât even mention Sylvieâs whipping to me. I will claw someoneâs eyes out. Preferably the eyes of the person who wrote that script.)
Even the way Grimaud is killed is infuriating, because it undercuts any last-minute redemption arc Athos may have gone through to atone for his many crimes. I used to like Athos. At the end of S3 I just wanted to beat him to death with a metal pipe.
Itâs pretty vomit-inducing in general how the heroes are put above the law this series, and unlike the shady stuff that happened between Richelieu and Treville in the previous series, itâs never adressed as something bad. Athos and his friends torture people, but a couple of minutes later Porthos has the gall to go off at Marcheaux for lightly pushing a high-ranked prisoner of war.
Athos and his friends get to play judge, jury and excecutioner a lot in s3 and nobody even blinks an eye.
I throw up a little in my mouth every time I remember the s3 writers explicitly said that their version of the four musketeers end the show as heroes people in our time can still look up to.
The first series wasnât exactly daring when it came to portraying moral nuances, but it didnât need to. It used to be a light-hearted show that didnât pretend to portray shining examples of humanity.
The hacks that took over for s3 threw all of that out of the window, sadly.
Torture? SO FUNNY when the heroes do it.
Murdering someone and making sure itâs painful and slow without any need? RIGHTEOUS AND CATHARTIC when the heroes do it.
The English queen who needed her jewels back because she needed money to protect her family? FRIVOLOUS! Better if Porthos steals one of those to throw away than to let her do something so selfish as saving her family⌠meanwhile the HEROIC QUEEN OF FRANCE Saint Anne Queen of ALL QUEENS can sit on her ass all day, decked out like a christmas tree, with a new dress each episode, whining about how sad it is that her people are so poor and starving, why wonât anyone do anything about it (not herself though, sheâs such a poor helpless lonely snowflake).
And donât get me started on Anne and Aramis trying to sell out the entire country, but itâs easily forgiven, because they had good reasons (*sob sob*) and the King doesnât even get mad about it, because heâs conveniently distractly by a dastardly villainâs plan to slander poor Annikins with, uh, the truth??? Because we canât actually have anybody think about what it would have meant if Anne had just made that treaty on her own, completely ruined her husbandâs standing in the eyes of their enemies AND allies, and very likely exposed a large chunk of the poor people she loves so much to displacement and violent religious persecution they never faced before by turning their homeland over to Spain.
I really regret watching the final episode, because it was that bad. I have never felt so insulted, repulsed and disgusted by a TV show before.
Athosâ closing monologue makes me physically recoil. He wants us to believe theyâre fighting for loyalty and love and justice and honour? These guys? After weâve seen them murder and torture and betray the people who trusted them without consequences and without remorse? Donât make me laugh.
By the end of that episode I was rooting for Grimaud to blow all of these unlikeable asses to hell like he planned to (and himself with it, please and thank you, because, again heâs so unnecessary). Itâs the greatest tragedy in contemporary tv history that he failed.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
The one thing I appreciate about 3x09 (the only thing XD) is that by the end of s3 there is absolutely no doubt left that Porthos is the person Treville values and trusts the most.
And I canât tell you how relieved I am that at least Porthos isnât made to join the other main characers in betraying Treville during the sequence of events that lead to his death.
And Porthos even disapproves of Aramisâ angst in the beginning of the episode in question, giving me the slight hope that he would have also disapproved of how Athos and the rest threw Treville to the wolves without consideration.
In short: Porthos & Trevilleâs relationship. â¤
The saddest thing about 3x09 IMO is that Treville dies knowing he made a mistake in having faith in the Musketeers. They failed in fulfilling the one task that they were founded for - keeping the king safe. At this most crucial time, the one time it counted more than ever, they couldnât keep the king hidden. And to make things worse for him itâs his fault, because he was the one who entrusted the little king to them.
He didnât train them well enough. He didnât do his job right. He dies believing he has failed both as a politician and as a commander.
Itâs his fault that it didnât enter his head that he might be wrong to trust the kingâs guard regiment to guard the king.
Maybe heâs thinking about how he should have replaced Athos as Captain long ago. How he shouldnât have let Aramis get away with his treason in the previous episode.
When he dies, he doesnât know why the musketeers failed. He doesnât know about the things people did behind his back. He doesnnât know that the musketeers betrayed him. He didnât account for people ignoring his orders and outright calling them wrong (but never in a moment where he could have responded). He didnât imagine they would be talking about the place the king was hidden loudly and openly enough to be overheard without taking precautions.
It doesnât occur to him, that yes, he made a mistake in trusting the musketeers, but not because of the reasons he thinks that it was a miskate.
He doesnât know when he dies that they didnât fail because they werenât skilled enough. He doesnât know that it was because they betrayed him. He doesnât know that the situation devolved because he didnât trust the kingâs whereabouts to two highly emotional people who had been in the process of selling out the entire country shortly before.
All he can think of with what knowldege he has of what happened as he dies is that he didnât train the musketeers well enough not to make a hash of things when he put his life and that of the little king into their hands.
Dying, he knows that he ultimately failed. The king may be safe, but he failed in training and inspiring a body of men to be loyal and trustworthy. He dies knowing that believing in them was a mistake.
But at least, at the very least, what he doesnât realise is how they betrayed him. How they dismissed everything he had said and done. Which might have hurt even worse.
