"The Great," Year Two

Spoilers for the first season ahead.

I was worried at the end of the first season of "The Great" that it wouldn't be able to keep the momentum up for any future seasons.  After all, the coup that put Catherine the Great in power had happened, and we were set to lose several important members of the show, right?  Well, the show is subtitled "An Occasionally True Story," and they meant it.

So, we're back in Russia with the newly elevated Empress Catherine II, who opts not to kill the captured Peter, but to place him under house arrest in a room of the palace while she tries to drag her country into the modern era.  She also doesn't kill Marial, who betrayed her last season, or Archie, who was not on her side.  I was worried that this would lead to stagnation of the various ongoing storylines, but the show is pretty good about maintaining momentum and juggling a lot of little fun subplots.  Catherine is heavily pregnant for most of the season, and Peter, now madly in love with her, is trying to be a better husband and father.  Also, there are some new players in the mix, including Catherin's doctor, Vinodel (Julian Barratt), scheming courtiers Arkady (Bayo Gbadamosi) and Tatyana (Florence Keith-Roach) and guest appearances by Catherine's mother Johanna (Gillian Anderson), and Peter's dead father, Peter the Great (Jason Isaacs). 

I'm glad that they didn't kill off Peter, because the show's backbone remains the ongoing battle of wills between Catherine and Peter as both characters struggle to adjust to the new status quo.  This time around, Peter's major weapon is love.  While his friends plot against his wife, he plots to win her heart.  And because Catherine's reign is constantly in turmoil, her idealism is forever being tested, and pregnancy hormones have her eating dirt and really horny, Peter gets a lot farther than you'd think.  In fact, this is a much hornier season of "The Great" than last year, with nearly everyone enjoying a healthy sex life and being wonderfully frank about it.  The highly vulgar dialogue is as good as ever, and the level of absurdity remains at a delightful high.  Of course there are all these insane Russian ideas about pregnancy, and the father-to-be is supposed to spend the birth digging graves in case things go badly.  Of course Peter's highest priority when fleeing the palace is securing his gourmet chef for the trip.    

At the same time, events also take a more sentimental turn as the season goes on.  There's less emphasis on how backward the Russians are, and more on getting to know the various characters better as their circumstances change.  Grigory is a lot more sympathetic when we get to see the extent of his loyalties to Peter, and he shacks up with a much nicer partner.  Velementov is still very one-dimensional, but he has an awful lot of history with the royals that comes in handy.  Then there's Elizabeth, who comes out as one of Catherine's strongest supporters, even if she's still trying to get her and Peter back together.  Catherine herself often proves to be her own worst enemy, refusing to compromise and showing poor judgement at some critical junctures.  She's a lot more human this year, and it's good to see.  All this character building allows the show to occasionally have little serious moments, and display some genuine emotion.

"The Great" remains one of the best looking shows currently in production.  Even though it's wildly anachronistic, Catherine's court looks fabulous.  Catherine has the most spectacular maternity wear I've ever seen in any medium, and Elle Fanning always looks amazing, even when she's enormous.  Johanna, a deliciously manipulative snob, is put in comically wide dresses that require her to turn sideways to maneuver around obstacles.  The palace is practically a character itself, its grandeur and stateliness always providing the perfect amount of contrast to the chaos unfolding within.                  

Considering how far the show has diverged from actual history, there's clearly no reason why "The Great" shouldn't go on for as long as it wants.  My only reservation is that Fanning and Hoult are so good, it seems a shame not to see them move on to bigger and better projects.  Then again, how often do roles this good come along?

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