We’ve all been doing New Year’s Eve wrong. New Year’s Eve shouldn’t be celebrated with champers and silly glasses and watching a ball fall several dozen feet on live television. No, it should be a night celebrated with maximum drama. I’m talking fist fights, food fights, crying in bathtubs, demanding divorces, divulging hard truths about yourself on roof tops, and definitely being very sad in a carnival-type setting. Now, The Buccaneers does New Year’s Eve right.
Any party following the big reveal that the Duke of Tintagel is marrying a woman of illegitimate birth would be a whopper, but having this party wind up on New Year’s Eve gives it some extra oomph, doesn’t it? It’s been one week since that wild Christmas Day lunch and yet every single person in England knows all about Nan and her mom and about Theo’s romantic declaration that he does not care about any of it and would still very much like to marry her. Remember, kids, this is the 1870s! There’s no group chat to spread the hot gossip! Can you even imagine the amount of telegrams and hand-delivered letters flying around the English countryside following that lunch? Exhausting! Nan’s right to be worried that she and Theo will be the main entree on which the English aristocrats attending Lord and Lady Brightlingsea’s NYE party will want to feast on, and not in the good way that Theo’s become accustomed to. They are all anyone wants to talk about, or, rather, not talk about. When Nan and Theo enter the main room it goes completely silent, which, like be cooler about it, folks. Most people can’t believe Nan’s showing her face or that Theo still wants to marry her. It must be love, one person notes. Or witchcraft. It could definitely be witchcraft. Or, hey, maybe an unplanned pregnancy to bring the whole situation full circle. Nan can’t stand it and she runs off.
You have to feel a little for Theo here. He clearly is sincere in his feelings for Nan, but has a talent for putting his foot in his mouth in the exact wrong moments. Of course he doesn’t mean that Nan is a burden when he tries to explain to her that he wants to carry her burden with her — he means that he wants to support her as she deals with the judging eyes of high society. At the moment, however, Nan is beside herself over the negative attention, not to mention still reeling from her own sister’s betrayal and for sure trying to stuff down that nagging suspicion she has that she might not be marrying the guy she actually loves. It’s a lot. It’s no wonder she spits some tried-and-true American sarcasm Theo’s way and then runs off to cry in the bathroom. People have cried in bathrooms during parties for much less (you know who you are).
Things really only spiral from here. After some cheering up from her friends, Nan returns to the party to give her parents — surprise guests who wind up pretty surprised themselves to learn their marriage is a popular topic of conversation — a hug, get in a few good jabs at Jinny for being a real dick, and then almost immediately runs off with Guy. He is her escape now and forever, it seems. They wind up alone on a rooftop as they so often do and engage in some heated pinky-finger touching until Guy tells Nan not to let any of this change who she is, which is very dreamy. No wonder all sorts of alarms are going off in Theo’s head when he catches the two returning, flushed from the cool night air and their very obvious feelings for one another.
Theo’s had enough. He’s tried pretending like he has no idea Guy is in love with Nan, he’s tried humiliating him into going away, he’s even tried pawning him off onto another woman, and yet, nothing sticks. Guy and Nan always find their way to one another. And so, the good Duke decides to confront his friend just moments before the clock strikes midnight. Theo pulls Guy aside and gives him a stern talking-to about staying away from his fiancée, in which he reveals he is the one who read the letter. Eventually, Theo flings some food at his best friend and the two gentlemen enter into a ridiculous fistfight with some real shades of Colin Firth and Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s spectacular and punctuated with the two men spilling through the front door as the clock strikes midnight, interrupting what was supposed to be Seadown’s big moment of doing the honor of the First Footing tradition. Truly, no notes.
Nan has some thoughts, though! The moment she demands these two explain themselves, the truth comes out: Theo read the telegram and kept that information to himself all this time. Theo then forces Guy to recite the letter for Nan, which, in hindsight, he’s really going to regret. The letter is full of gorgeous sentiments like how he thinks a part of him “has always belonged to†Nan and that “because of [his] own cowardice, [he] shall forever be incomplete.†He goes on to apologize for what happened at Runnymede: “I am weak and I am confused, but Nan, my love for you is neither.†I’m sorry, I know this man is currently bankrupt, which is a fate worse than death to these people, but how is he not snatched up? Nan! Go to him! Go to this man!
To be honest, it seems like Nan wants to go to him — she tries to hide those corners of her smile creeping up as Guy just spits love poetry at her — but one even more inconvenient truth is outed from this live reading of Guy’s drunk text. Guy explicitly references Nan’s illegitimacy and it does not take Nan long to realize that this means Theo knew about it the entire time. Oh, she is livid.
Outside, among the New Year’s fireworks display, Nan reams Theo out. “I have been terrified of you finding out, consumed by it,†she tells him. He tries to argue that he was paying her a kindness — that it was her secret to keep or tell, and he didn’t care either way, which is also a fair point. Still, the entire situation really highlights how much these two are keeping from one another, which is not a great way to kick off a very public marriage. When Theo finally asks point blank if Nan is in love with Guy because he does not want to keep fighting for someone who doesn’t feel about him the way he feels about her, Nan can’t answer. She tells Theo that this isn’t about Guy or him; it’s about her. “Isn’t everything?†he asks. Oh, baby, I love when these hot dummies start to get petty with each other.
Nan’s follow-up conversation with Guy isn’t great, either. He finds her on the carousel, as sad as can be and tells her that yes, he meant every word he wrote but that she chose Theo. “You and I need to free each other of this now,†he tells her, informing her that he’s asked Jean to marry him. Just as Nan is allowing herself to be honest about being in love with Guy, he is metaphorically and physically walking away from her. This poor woman is left heartbroken and confused on the side of a carousel. Hasn’t she been through enough?
And what about that third little line in this wildly messy love triangle? Best buddies Guy and Theo need to talk things out, too. They share a warm moment on the stairs as Theo nurses his wounds. Guy apologizes for sending that letter and says his good-bye in such a way that it feels very, very permanent. How else can it be, really? Guy couldn’t bear standing on the sidelines as Theo and Nan get married and so, their life-long friendship must become collateral damage. The two men hug it out one last time. And so, Nan leaves the party with Theo even if things remain icy between the two of them, and Guy is left staring out into the distance once more. He looks quite sad, but we do know it’s his favorite pastime, so he can’t be too mad about it. While it all seems permanent and sorted out to those involved, we’ve got one episode left and one big wedding to go — I don’t think this love triangle is finished triangulating yet, if you know what I mean.
Theirs is not the only truth revealed in this episode, though. We get some major movement on Richard’s past and the depths of horribleness to which his parents descend. You thought they couldn’t get any lower, and yet!
Honoria, this show’s secret MVP, let’s be honest (Mia Threapleton is great, no?), has been subtly changing before our eyes thanks to her time with Mabel. Could you even imagine the Honoria we first met having the conversation she does with Richard in this episode? She is now brave enough to find a tactful way to tell her brother that she knows Mrs. Testvalley was sexually abusing him in their youth, that it was not okay, and that Richard shouldn’t carry that shame around with him. He deserves to be free of it. There’s no hugging or crying — they don’t even look at each other in the face — because as influenced as they are by the Americans they love, they are still English, you know, and yet it feels like a real step toward an actual relationship for these siblings.
Thanks to Honoria, Richard is finally brave enough to broach the Testvalley subject with his mother, who as it turns out, knew exactly what was going on and handled it by asking Mrs. Testvalley to leave and then pretending like nothing ever happened. She certainly never talked to Richard about it, leaving him alone in the silence of the secret for his entire life. I gasped at the pure heartlessness in this conversation. Gasped! Richard, too, is shocked by it, and when he tries to express how damaged he is by the whole thing, her response is to tell him to stop being a baby about it. “You’re a man. Act like one.†This woman is a witch, and I hope she accidentally falls out of a window or something.
At the very least, now that Richard can’t deny how monstrous his parents really are, he is finally ready to give it all up to be with Conchita. She finds him teary-eyed on a rooftop, as is English tradition apparently, and while he doesn’t tell her everything, he does apologize for ever bringing her to live with his family. “They suffocate you with their silence,†he says. Conchita holds him close and reminds him that she’s his family now. Let’s cross our fingers that this man can actually get away from these people (and maybe take Honoria with him), but my hopes remain low.
The Society Pages
• Oh yes, babes! Patti St. George is reminded that she’ll soon be the mother of a duchess and have as much power and respect as she needs, and she doesn’t have to put up with her husband’s shit anymore. Even in a party full of people talking about his scandalous affair, Tracy is hitting on younger women. Patty tells her husband that as soon as Nan is married and they’re back in New York, she’ll be divorcing his ass.
• Jinny is unraveling. She doesn’t want to be the monster Seadown is making her be, but she’s also terrified of what he’ll do to her. She tries to make an escape during the party, but chickens out in the end. Her situation is even more complicated than we thought: She’s secretly pregnant.
• How satisfying was it to learn that Conchita persuaded the party organizers to throw this lavish, gaudy circus-themed party knowing it would piss off her in-laws?
• Speaking of Honoria being an MVP, she also delivers possibly the most tragic line of the series to Mabel, with whom she’s still angry over Mabel’s surprise engagement of convenience to Miles: “I hate you for making me feel like I could be loved.†That! One! Stings! (This episode was written by Roanne Bardsley.)