The moment I heard the orchestrated version of “bad idea right?” by Olivia Rodrigo start playing with only five minutes remaining of episode four, I knew something was about to go down.
The Netflix TV show “Bridgerton” follows noble and powerful family the Bridgertons, focusing each season on one of the children’s love stories in 19th century Regency-era London. Season four followed the second son, Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson), as he falls in love with a maid, Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha), and the forbidden romance created between the two of them because of their class divisions. By far, season four was one of my personal favorite seasons. Besides the wonderful costumes, set and soundtrack, the love interests in this season received well-deserved screentime, there were Emmy-worthy performances and the side stories were all very meaningful towards the show as a whole.
Bridgerton’s costumes and sets have always been something to mention, winning an Emmy for their costume design for season three, but this season’s costumes were so insanely magical. The Masquerade Ball, let alone, was enchanting, and every tiny detail from Sophie’s silver gloves to each costume and mask was breathtaking. John Glaser and his costuming team took the Cinderella theme and put their own Regency twist into it, and I loved it. This season also had one of the best soundtracks, featuring orchestrated covers of popular songs such as “The Night We Met,” “Enchanted” and “Birds of a Feather.” Each song perfectly captured the scene, not acting as just background noise but blending into and adding to the scenes.
Although I certainly had my doubts about how well the Cinderella story adaptation would be presented within the show, I think the execution was done fairly well. Besides taking inspiration from Sophie’s silver dress and the masquerade ball, the rest of the story was so distinct that no one would label it a copy of the Disney story. I was too focused on the chemistry between co-stars Thompson and Ha, which was truly remarkable. They played the forbidden love trope very well, and throughout the season, you could see the tension within their relationship and the self-discovery that both Benedict and Sophie’s characters went through as they shared with the audience the rarity of finding your own true love. Thompson’s portrayal of Benedict, and his internal strife to ultimately choose between his and his family’s honor or Sophie’s, was just as gut-wrenching to watch as it was for him to go through. His character’s growth from first shutting out Sophie to realizing his feelings and going through moral conflict to come out of all of this, not only becoming a better partner for his soulmate but the best version of himself. Sophie’s dilemmas were also very relatable for the audience to sympathize with. Ha portrayed Sophie as not a vanilla female main character but one who had depth within herself and who wouldn’t settle for degrading her own value.
Director Tom Verica portrayed the class differences between the two characters on an artistic level as well. Throughout the entirety of part one of Season Four, Sophie and Bridgerton are constantly shown going up and down stairwells, and Sophie is always carefully placed below Benedict to show the hierarchy between the two of them. Specifically, at the end of episode four, when the two of them admit their feelings for one another, Sophie is shown climbing up the staircase while Benedict is climbing down, showing them meeting in the middle to be with one another. These little details added in by the creative team really added to the representation of their relationship.
Personally, I was annoyed when it came to Benedict’s dumbfoundedness in trying to identify the lady in the silver gown, specifically in part one. I have never read the books that the show is based on, so I was just rewatching the episodes and trying to figure out if I had missed something or if Benedict was genuinely that stupid. I found out that the reason Benedict was struggling to identify the lady in the silver gown is that in the book “An Offer From A Gentleman” by Julia Quinn, there is a two-year gap between the ball and Sophie and Benedict’s encounter at Cavender House, explaining why he couldn’t identify her and adding to the tension within their relationship. I wish the show had more thoroughly identified the time gaps and explained why, but the build to Benedict’s realization when he realized Sophie had the same necklace as the lady in silver was worth it.
Thompson and Ha’s performances were, however, not the only outstanding character portrayals within this season. Hannah Dodd’s performance as Francesca was just as extremely impressive. Throughout the season, Francesca underwent a lot of change, from dealing with newly married life to later in the season dealing with heavier emotions and the challenges of not having children in a time period where the only purpose women served within marriage was to bring children into the world. Dodd’s portrayal of Francesca’s growth and struggle throughout the season brought a new light and surface to her character. She so accurately portrayed both the stifled emptiness and rage that people undergo when grieving a loss of a loved one, which genuinely moved me and made me empathize and understand Francesca’s character so much more than I ever had before. After the ending of the previous season and part one of season four, I was a little disappointed in how quickly Francesca and Michaela’s romantic relationship was starting to form and how poorly Francesca and John’s relationship was shown, while in the books, Francesca and John had been madly in love, and Francesca had no feelings towards Michaela. However, I think part two clearly corrected the misconception that Francescca and Michaela were already developing feelings, as it showed the genuine tension and rigidness within the characters’ relationship, which was not coming from a place of growing romance but one of envy and dislike for one another. Dodd’s portrayal of Francesca’s emotion throughout the second half of the season clearly showed the immense amount of love and care that Francesca had for John despite their lack of physical chemistry.
All of the side plots within this season were very essential to the plot and very enjoyable to watch as a super-fan of the show. The Mondriches storyline was finally interesting this season, with Lady Danbury forcing Mrs. Mondrich to replace her in the Queen’s court. I think we need to continue exploring the wife’s storyline, because Will Mondrich’s storyline in season one was nothing but disappointing. Speaking of Lady Danbury, the Queen and Lady Danbury’s relationship in this season kept giving me flashbacks to the “Queen Charlotte” spinoff series because of how we saw the soft spot of the Queen through her relationship with Lady Danbury. We see how the Queen went beyond her needs and wants when she allowed Lady Danbury to visit her hometown, which really shows that even though the Queen is the Queen and has people constantly surrounding her, she’s just as fearful of being alone, but she is willing to put that aside and be selfless which was such a beautiful character arc. Their friendship is so true and everlasting, and I love it so much. Seeing Penelope and Colin’s relationship post-season three was also heart-warming, as they didn’t have that much screen time in season three even though it was their season. Penelope’s Lady Whistledown plot line was probably my favorite because of how wholesome it was to see Penelope continue to write and to embark on new journeys of self-discovery, even though she decided to retire Whistledown. I also really liked the new side of the queen that we saw throughout this season.
“Bridgerton” season four was my favorite season of the series. It wasn’t underwhelming; it had a good focus on the main love story, the actors showed immense growth in their portrayals of the characters, and the storyline was fitting and meaningful. I hope that the producers take this publicity and hype that has now been created and carry it over to the future seasons to come.
