Joan
By the end of Game of Thrones I was suffering from whatever the equivalent of superhero fatigue is in Westeros. I watched eight seasons of a show that, looking back on, I only enjoyed the first season of. So I hope I can be forgiven if I forget that most of the cast of that show can act. Because by the end, I think they were just phoning it is as they dragged themselves to the lackluster finale. Have you seen the pictures from the final table read? They weren't any happier than their audience was at the end. So Joan was a revelation because while I was turning in for the eighties glamour I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded what a good actor Sophie Turner is. In fact I think I might have only seen her in The Thirteenth Tale prior to this and I have to say, after the first few minutes of thinking of Joan as Sansa Stark I believed she was Joan Hannington. The hair, the clothes, the look, but most importantly that accent and the way she carried herself, she became Joan for me. She was a scheming and conniving woman who not only wanted it all, wanted it all with sparkles. She loved gems, she loved the con, she knew what she wanted and went for it. Of course this series focused more on how all of this was to facilitate the return of her daughter whom she had placed into care when she was at her lowest. It's all about Kelly. But the problem I had with this supposed love of her daughter is that she didn't know her daughter at all. She treated her daughter like a possession, like a diamond that she must have. When Kelly's foster mom invites Joan to a birthday party for Kelly, Joan brings her this elaborate jewelry box. You can she that Kelly isn't interested in it at all. Because this is the present that Joan would have wanted as a kid, not what Kelly would want. And this angers Joan. The foster mother got Kelly a present she actually wanted and Joan repays this kind woman by plotting to kidnap Kelly. Of course this doesn't go to plan and her lover ends up dead and she ends up in prison. Which is all well and good except that this didn't happen. This is billed as the life of Joan Hannington and while in an interview the real life Joan is still alive and well and highly approving of this adaptation saying that it felt like her life, it wasn't really her life. She never got "Kelly" back and, maybe I'm projecting here, but I felt like that aspect, which is central to the show, was more important to Sophie Turner due to what was going on with the disillusion of her marriage. The actors' not the subjects' life informing the art. And that isn't even the craziest thing they changed. While yes, Joan did make her fortune swallowing diamonds, the love of her life, Boise, he didn't die dramtically in a job gone wrong. He died in a fire he set himself for the insurance money years later. So while I enjoyed this show and this look into the seedy underbelly of eighties London and the glamour these people strived for, I felt the series as a whole was disingenuous. And I can suspend disbelief but I'm not going to be a stooge.
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