Thoughts on Malory Towers - 2 - The New Girls
Some more thoughts, this time about Episode 2...if I can remember why I wrote them in the first place...
Poor exhausted Emily. She gets a much cooler storyline and character than the books, so I suppose it's a reasonable trade-off that Violet was written out of existence. That's going to be the sad thing if they stick to the books and do renew for the second book, we'd lose Emily and Katherine (Or did Emily appear for like...a sentence and then disappear to wherever Violet went to...I'll have to check. Definitely lost Katherine though).
Oh dear Gwen, being an underhand and sneaky little brat has not paid off for you.
Sally's moodiness and her denial of a baby sister is introduced much earlier here. Looking back, for the BBC!Versions of the characters, I think it works well that it’s introduced early on and reappears, leaving Darrell and the others quite confused where they stand with her.
Poor Darrell, Gwen trying to make her life difficult. The starting of Gwen’s nastiness here fits with childishness. The reappearance of sexism, “It doesn’t matter unless you’re a boy” is also a good continuation of time attitudes and Gwen really would have been the character to uphold them the most.
Darrell falling apart under the stress of the exam is very different to Book!Darrell who started out the term doing quite well, here it's apparent that her academic difficulties are not just because she's playing the fool with Alicia.
The scene where Pamela makes Darrell first reserve doesn’t make...a whole lot of sense? Off of a catch, not with a stick, and why don’t they have a reserve already? I feel like this was meant to be a bigger scene or at least take place when they were outside playing and they cut it down a lot. The girl playing Pamela is very believable as a Sixth Former.
Miss Potts again with the facial expressions has me laughing.
Gwen is seriously that petty and hates Darrell so much (within like a week of knowing her) that she runs to the village to try and call her cousin to find out what happened at St Hilda's. I mean, I get that it hurt your feelings that she didn't invite you to the Midnight Feast and that you wanted to be the girl she wrote to her parents about (that one's on you though love for reading her mail) but this really is taking maliciousness to a new level. There is a good reason the girls hate you.
Matron’s singing and dancing is so ridiculously camp and OTT, it does not make up for her being an abusive staff member who makes the lives of 12 years olds miserable though. Speaking of 12 year olds, it's really light outside for 12 year olds to be being sent to bed. Though, I suppose staff at boarding schools calculated that they probably actually went to sleep about an hour after they were expected to be asleep.
[Brief vague referencing to future episodes] I can honestly say, having watched all the episodes, that I have no idea what Ron’s purpose is other than to have a boy character to be established for some kind of future story-line in a follow-up series. After this whole bike scene, nothing that he is involved in couldn’t really have either been written out or have been replaced with another character because nothing else he is involved in wasn't already accomplish in an alternative way in the books.
The scene with them all tricking Matron, Jean blabbering on about Rita Hayworth is just so silly, I love it. Per the musing in the previous episode, in this one we get a brief glimpse of Sally’s bedside table during the bed-hopping scene and it doesn’t appear to have a photograph on it. Hidden family photograph!
In the scene where Darrell catches up to Gwen at the phone box, the writers/directors probably should have had Darrell jump off of the bike, or be a bit more hurried...the two scenes don’t really jive together, she seems quite calm when she puts the bike down and then frantic banging on the door.
“We’re never going to get back are we? We’re going to die of exposure!”, plus Gwen grabbing Darrell and then immediately letting go in horror. I think they do a better job of making the relationships between kids complicated in this.
Oh, Irene, “It’s them, it’s them! Or is it? It might just be a fox”
There are past shenanigans and they are shameful! Darrell did not have a dark and mysterious past in the books, though I did often think that there was plenty of head-canon opportunity for there to be some given the extent of her temper and her impulsiveness. When you add in how ashamed she is of her temper in the books, it did make you wonder if she'd done something bad before she arrived at Malory Towers.
Poor exhausted Emily. She gets a much cooler storyline and character than the books, so I suppose it's a reasonable trade-off that Violet was written out of existence. That's going to be the sad thing if they stick to the books and do renew for the second book, we'd lose Emily and Katherine (Or did Emily appear for like...a sentence and then disappear to wherever Violet went to...I'll have to check. Definitely lost Katherine though).
Oh dear Gwen, being an underhand and sneaky little brat has not paid off for you.
Sally's moodiness and her denial of a baby sister is introduced much earlier here. Looking back, for the BBC!Versions of the characters, I think it works well that it’s introduced early on and reappears, leaving Darrell and the others quite confused where they stand with her.
Poor Darrell, Gwen trying to make her life difficult. The starting of Gwen’s nastiness here fits with childishness. The reappearance of sexism, “It doesn’t matter unless you’re a boy” is also a good continuation of time attitudes and Gwen really would have been the character to uphold them the most.
Darrell falling apart under the stress of the exam is very different to Book!Darrell who started out the term doing quite well, here it's apparent that her academic difficulties are not just because she's playing the fool with Alicia.
The scene where Pamela makes Darrell first reserve doesn’t make...a whole lot of sense? Off of a catch, not with a stick, and why don’t they have a reserve already? I feel like this was meant to be a bigger scene or at least take place when they were outside playing and they cut it down a lot. The girl playing Pamela is very believable as a Sixth Former.
Miss Potts again with the facial expressions has me laughing.
Gwen is seriously that petty and hates Darrell so much (within like a week of knowing her) that she runs to the village to try and call her cousin to find out what happened at St Hilda's. I mean, I get that it hurt your feelings that she didn't invite you to the Midnight Feast and that you wanted to be the girl she wrote to her parents about (that one's on you though love for reading her mail) but this really is taking maliciousness to a new level. There is a good reason the girls hate you.
Matron’s singing and dancing is so ridiculously camp and OTT, it does not make up for her being an abusive staff member who makes the lives of 12 years olds miserable though. Speaking of 12 year olds, it's really light outside for 12 year olds to be being sent to bed. Though, I suppose staff at boarding schools calculated that they probably actually went to sleep about an hour after they were expected to be asleep.
[Brief vague referencing to future episodes] I can honestly say, having watched all the episodes, that I have no idea what Ron’s purpose is other than to have a boy character to be established for some kind of future story-line in a follow-up series. After this whole bike scene, nothing that he is involved in couldn’t really have either been written out or have been replaced with another character because nothing else he is involved in wasn't already accomplish in an alternative way in the books.
The scene with them all tricking Matron, Jean blabbering on about Rita Hayworth is just so silly, I love it. Per the musing in the previous episode, in this one we get a brief glimpse of Sally’s bedside table during the bed-hopping scene and it doesn’t appear to have a photograph on it. Hidden family photograph!
In the scene where Darrell catches up to Gwen at the phone box, the writers/directors probably should have had Darrell jump off of the bike, or be a bit more hurried...the two scenes don’t really jive together, she seems quite calm when she puts the bike down and then frantic banging on the door.
“We’re never going to get back are we? We’re going to die of exposure!”, plus Gwen grabbing Darrell and then immediately letting go in horror. I think they do a better job of making the relationships between kids complicated in this.
Oh, Irene, “It’s them, it’s them! Or is it? It might just be a fox”
There are past shenanigans and they are shameful! Darrell did not have a dark and mysterious past in the books, though I did often think that there was plenty of head-canon opportunity for there to be some given the extent of her temper and her impulsiveness. When you add in how ashamed she is of her temper in the books, it did make you wonder if she'd done something bad before she arrived at Malory Towers.