‘Bridgerton’ Season 4: I Object to This Union (And Season Break)

Dearest gentle Netflix: Please, for the love of God, stop shoehorning midseason breaks into shows, especially the long-awaited ones with decreasing incentives for audiences to return for the remaining handful of episodes. You got away with it last season thanks to Nicola Coughlin’s ludicrously charming onscreen presence and one rather memorable bout of foreplay on a coach, but swapping out the storylines and one hasty bit of nooky (only in a stairwell, this time) doesn’t feel like much of a departure. Actually, when it comes to season four thus far, I can’t escape the feeling that we’ve seen this before and better.

While hitting all of the well-known Bridgerton beats such as soirées and promenading, the season also calls upon one of the world’s most overdone fairy tales, Cinderella (this is also the framework of the third novel from Julia Qunn’s Bridgerton book series). Surprisingly, the fairy tale aspect could be the most interesting part of the season thanks to Yerin Ha as Sophie, half of this season’s romantic pairing, and wicked stepmother Araminta Gun, played with a measured steeliness by Katie Leung. When Sophie decides to don a gown and a few borrowed accessories to sneak into the Bridgerton masquerade ball, it sets off a series of events which includes a look into Sophie’s tragic past and how she came to be a maid for a person with such inexplicable disdain for her.

However, the majority of time is spent establishing her flowering romance with Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson), who catches one look at her at the ball and falls for her, fulfilling the series’ premise in which each season focuses on one of the Bridgerton clan falling in love. Unfortunately, the most annoying male Bridgerton is at bat this time around.

Since the series premiered, Benedict has been established as the passionate artist committed to a life of debauchery, all underscored by a raging case of middle child syndrome (which seems silly when you’re one of eight siblings). But his half-hearted pursuit of identity, which also comes off a bit like “Bridgerton writers throwing characterization spaghetti at the wall,” doesn’t give off ‘free spirit’ as much as ‘aimless.’

So his instant fixation on Sophie feels typical for him, not altogether different from his infatuation with Lady Tilley (Hannah New) last season. The chemistry between him and Sophie starts to come to life after the two temporarily shack up at Benedict’s “cottage,” the reveal of which is intended for laughs and to underscore Benedict and Sophie’s vastly different social stations, but this depiction of his obliviousness only succeeds in lending him the keen intellectual sharpness of a spoon.

His surprise when it comes to learning how much damage his desire for Sophie can inflict on her reputation does nothing to disabuse me of this notion—surely between the strict societal rules and the many wanton nights carousing with other rich jerks would’ve demonstrated that a lady can’t so much as breathe wrong lest she be shunned. While Ha sells Sophie’s growing feelings for Benedict, especially during the lake swimming scene (a rip off of Anthony’s dunk in season 2, which is itself an homage to 1995’s Pride & Prejudice), I’m stuck on the fact that despite her station, Sophie’s way too good for him.

The nail in the coffin of this romance for me happens in episode four, after he gets down with Sophie in the stairwell despite Mrs. Crabtree’s (Susan Brown) elementary breakdown of how ruinous it would be for Sophie, and asks her to be his mistress, a title more precarious than that of a maid (I imagine) and beneath Sophie’s bearing. This doesn’t even take into account that Benedict still intends on wooing the dazzling Lady in Silver (another surprise considering the endless number of close ups on Sophie’s lips; just use your eyeballs, Benedict!), which forces me to ask why in the hell should anyone root for this couple?

Of course the show’s gonna whip out the ‘Sophie’s actually of noble blood’ card at the eleventh hour, thus ridding them of this conundrum. There may even be some miraculous story pivot that suddenly grants Benedict the gift of not being an absolute walnut, but thanks to Netflix, we have to wait three weeks to find out. As I said earlier, they got lucky with the previous season, but more recent examples strongly suggest that midseason breaks are the equivalent of speed bumps installed on an interstate; it kills the momentum and flow, two things you don’t want for one of the remaining tentpoles on your streaming service, and with a romance this ill-advised, the last thing you want is for audiences to have time to think about all the reasons they want to object to this union.

The second half of Bridgerton season four will premiere on Netflix on February 26th.

Kaleena Rivera is the TV Editor for Pajiba.