'Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt I love.'

i. Introduction

I haven’t ranted  blogged in a while, and I was inspired last month when I watched Ophelia for the first time. I say “first,” because I watched it again after reading Hamlet again, ‘natch. And I say “again” because I’ve been a big fan of ol’ Willy Shakes since I was a kiddo, watching that old HBO series Shakespeare: The Animated Tales. So I’ve read Hamlet probably a dozen times over the course of my life, not including when I read it in high school.

Anyway, I was expecting Ophelia to be an absolute dumpster fire of a movie, but instead, I… loved it? I mean, I wouldn’t have watched it a second time if I hadn’t enjoyed it, right? But I don’t want to get to ahead of myself, here.

ii. Plot Summary

You’re probably thinking, “But lo, why wouldst I require a sumnation when the basest of bacon-fed is privy to the tragedie of Lord Hamlet!”

To which I’d reply, “Fie! Thou dost underestimate the power of artistic liberty!”

Anyway, so yeah, the plot of Ophelia does differ from Hamlet enough that a brief rundown is necessary, IMO, otherwise when I say “when suchansuch happenes," you’ll get confused, since it didn’t happen in the play. I’ll just list the important differences to make it quick, since the important beats of the original play are, for the most part, in there. Thusly,

-Ophelia is one of Gertrude’s ladies in waiting (after being mistaken for a boy as a kid).
-There’s a woman in the woods that ends up being the source of every tonic and poison throughout. She has a deep connection to the royal family (I’ll save that for later).
-Ophelia is the one who figures out Claudius killed the king and tells Hamlet.
-Hamlet and Ophelia have a secret marriage in the countryside and spend their days dressed as peasants together.
-Ophelia drinks a potion that “mimics death, but mocks it” in order to feign drowning in the river. Horatio digs her up and she goes back to the palace to try to get Hamlet to run away, but he insists on doing the swordfight first, promising he’ll “follow” her. (We know what happens to him once he goes into the room with Laertes, so….)
-Ophelia escapes to a convent in the north and raises her (and presumably Hamlet’s) daughter in peace.

I.i. As Film

Any adaptation of a pre-existing story, whether it be from the typically central character’s perspective or not, is going to have bits and reveals that are to be expected, or at least that come about in a sort of, “Oh, so that’s how they’re doing it here,” way. Ophelia is chock-full of the latter. And I can’t separate my love of Shakespeare from my feelings for this movie, no, but here’s the thing: I’ve always loved the play Hamlet, but up until recently, I found Ophelia the character exhausting, not to mention patriarchally boring. What I mean is, she has absolutely zero agency and is entirely at the mercy of the men surrounding her the whole time, and then she dies, and Hamlet is sad, and Laertes is sad, and…. She was fridge stuffed way before Gail Simone coined the term, is what I’m saying.

I started warming to her a few years ago when I saw the National Theatre Live rendition of Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch in a movie theater. The actress that played Ophelia, Sian Brook, totally broke my heart during the scene where she gives everyone flowers and sings for the loss of her father and Hamlet’s affection (IV.v). Her performance helped me grow up a little and see Ophelia more as a victim of her circumstances than just a lazily/stereotypically-written character. The tragedy of the original version of Ophelia is that because she was born a woman, she really couldn’t do anything for herself.

Obviously, Ophelia flips that. Here, she’s an active participant in her story- her story, not Hamlet’s, nor that of any of the other men around her. And Daisy Ridley is utterly breathtaking in the depth and wit she demonstrates. There are subtle flickers of her eyes, turns of one corner of her mouth that say so much more than Shakespeare ever let Ophelia say.

This is during her "madness" scene; the way she looks
at Gertrude, what she says- I do think she genuinely
cares for her; when she says, "...daisies, the day's eye. All-seeing.
Someone sees you," I think she earnestly means she, Ophelia,
sess how Gertrude is hurting.

Naomi Watts as Gertrude (and another character- we’ll get there) and George MacKay as Hamlet also were wonderful. George exuded a passion and longing for Daisey that felt like it belonged in Outlander, and Watts is never not impressive in anything. I even adored Devon Terell as Horatio, the steadfast and utterly Good friend to Hamlet- he has a gentleness about him that screams compassion and intelligence. Clive Owen plays Claudius, and I’ll get to what I liked about that in a while, too.

They did an excellent job of giving the castle its own personality. In the primary source material, Hamlet knows everyone is watching him and, when portrayed well, his sense of claustrophobia seeps out into the theater. There was a similar feeling here- every time our girl and Hamlet steal a kiss, it feels like someone is going to walk up to them and catch them at any moment. When things start to go downhill, you can really feel how unsafe the castle is for our heroine, Hamlet, and Horatio.

The score is also wonderful and perfectly fits with the mood and tone they were going for. In the first few seconds of the movie, when Ridley starts the introductory voiceover and right as the title card pops up, a woman starts softly chanting these lines from Hamlet:

Doubt thou the stars are fire
Doubt that the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love

                                    -II.ii. 

It’s the first part of the love letter from Hamlet to Ophelia that Polonius reads aloud everybody when they’re trying to figure out what Hamlet’s deal is. This refrain, this haunting chanting, permeates the soundtrack and echoes in the background constantly throughout the movie, and it’s a beautiful, loving touch. I’ll get to the fact that it’s a woman/women chanting it later, but suffice to say, when I first realized what it was, I literally gasped and put my hand over my heart like some Victorian socialite. Below is the score from the big climax of the movie, and it demonstrates perfectly the intensity and emotion.

 

All this- my predisposition towards anything Shakespeare-adjacent, the old-story-through-a-woman’s-eyes, the superb acting, the setting, and the score- all this meant I cared. I cared so much for these characters. Maybe moreso because I knew what was going to happen, I can admit that. But man, was I invested in the melodrama taking place on the screen, and have cried both times I’ve watched this movie.

I.ii. As Shakespeare Adaptation

Of course, this isn’t anything close to a true adaptation. But I think a lot of the haters online (and if you look for them, you’ll find them) aren’t giving the creatives behind it (Lisa Klein, the original book’s author; Semi Chellas, the screenplay writer; and Claire McCarthy, the director) enough credit for how they so skillfully wove pieces of the original into this movie, nor for how their original dialogue was just as smart and clever as Willy Shakes’s, without being so high-brow you’d need a “No-Fear-Ophelia” to help you understand.

Take, for example, how in II.ii., Hamlet says to Polonius (after the latter asks if he recognizes him, since Hamlet has been acting weird lately), “Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.” (Meaning, “Sure! You sell fish!”) Then chew on this dialogue the first time Ophelia and Hamlet speak as adults; Ophelia is swimming in a quiet portion of the river when Hamlet and Horatio approach, ready to go fishing:

HAMLET: [upon seeing OPHELIA] A wondrous fish indeed inhabits the grove!
OPHELIA: [ducked so just the tops of her shoulders and head are visible] The fish would like to come ashore!
HAMLET: Oh, the fish is very welcome!
OPHELIA: No fish comes willingly to the fisherman.
HORATIO: My Lord, it’s one of the queen’s ladies in waiting.
HAMLET: Well then she will not mind waiting ‘til I catch a fish.
OPHELIA: Of all of the ladies, I’m least fond of waiting.
[OPHELIA moves a little closer, as if to come out of the water, but stops]
OPHELIA: There are two sides struggling in you. One is baser, one better.
HAMLET: She tells my fortune, Horatio!
OPHELIA: My Lord, it is your misfortune.
[the two men kind of wrestle and end up falling in the water; while they’re distracted, OPHELIA runs away]
HAMLET: ‘Tis a quick fish, Horatio!

It’s an absolutely delightful scene that sets up not only the “fishmonger” thing later, but becomes sort of a running line between the two- Hamlet tells her “a fish needs water” when offering her wine at a dance, shouts, “Nymph! where is your water!” when he realizes she’s in the room with him later still, and they finally tie in an overt “fishmonger” reference during the “play” scene when he says Polonius has “come to sell me some fish” and comments about Ophelia, “And what a lovely fish it is.”

There is also a lot of dialogue that is utterly poetic and beautiful, and could fit in well with Willy Shakes’s work. For example, when Hamlet sees Ophelia alive, after thinking she was dead, he says to her as he caresses her face, “You’re like a dream I had… when I woke, it was true…” (literally tearing up thinking about it, kids).

And there are tons of examples where the original dialogue directly influences that of the movie. For example, in I.ii., when everyone is giving Hamlet a hard time for still wearing mourning colors for his father:

CLAUDIUS: ‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet
To give these mourning duties to your father:
But, you must know, your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his; and the survivor bound,
In filial obligation, for some term
To do so obsequious sorrow: but to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; ‘tis unmanly grief…

And in the film:

CLAUDIUS: His father lost a father once, who was my father also. We were ever men about it 

The writers took the insincerely saccharine dialogue and characterization in the primary source material and turned Claudius into a dark, bruting menace, while still allowing his speech to be a bit poetic.

Or how they trimmed down both Laertes’s long speech in I.iii., warning Ophelia about Hamlet’s advances, and (right after) Polonius’s to Laertes as he advises his son on how to behave before leaving to study in France. Both are a lot of dialogue, so I won’t recount them here, but suffice to say, they took around one hundred lines on the page and turned it into about ten while still absolutely remaining true to the spirit of the original lines.

There are all sorts of other examples, a few of which I’ll get to later.

One last thing: I’m sure you noticed the “secret wedding” and “potion that fakes death” parts of my summary. Well, yeah, they did those things, no doubt taking inspiration from the other play every high schooler has to read, Romeo and Juliet. They leaned into the “star-crossed lovers” aspect here, moreso than is present in Hamlet. While sure, Gertrude is less than thrilled to talk to Ophelia after she loses her mind (IV.v.), she does say when they’re burying the girl that she had hoped Hamlet would have married her (V.i.); although the sincerity of the latter can be called into question, of course, since people do tend to be more generous to others in death than while they’re still alive. But anyway, the encouragement for them to be apart in the play seemingly stems just from Hamlet’s erratic behavior throughout the course of the play’s events, not as a categorical state. In Ophelia, however, there’s one brief moment where Polonius is excited about the courtship, since it would elevate their family, but the rest of it is basically everyone else in the castle (except, of course, Horatio) actively trying to keep them apart- including Polonius himself later when he insists Ophelia get married off post-haste.

So the team making this movie fostered an environment more actively against the pairing of our girl and Hamlet, and used that conflict to draw parallels with Romeo and Juliet whenever possible. As such, their sneaking around makes all the more sense here, since they (and Horatio!) were the only ones actually invested in their happiness. 

I.iii. As Art Adaptation

The opening scene from the movie is an overt and direct homage to one of the most famous paintings of the titular character, that of Ophelia by John Everett Millais. Here’s the painting:

 

(1851-52)

And here’s the opening shot:

See it?

And that’s not the only painting referenced. I find it very, very hard to believe that the 1910 painting by John Williams Waterhouse wasn’t an additional influence in the imagery. The color scheme of her the majority of her clothes evokes the third Waterhouse painting with its deep teal blue, but the red on the sleeves in the painting is alluded to with her cloak, and the gold on the shoulders is represented in her dress during a ball scene:

 

He actually made three
but this is the one I think
they looked at the most

This is her dress at the dance- notice the gold 
brocade, not unlike the JWH painting

The dress underneath is the main one she wears, and the red
cloak there speaks to that same painting

And if you just Google Image search “Ophelia paintings,” you’ll see that she’s frequently painted with red hair, despite no mention of her hair color in the primary source; and of course, they put Daisy in a (kind of crappy, ngl) red wig for this movie. Her hair could have been any other color, but I think the red was to signify the whole “fiery personality” thing with her, how she refused to be a pawn or to walk any path forced on her. And in that image above where she’s dressed up for the ball, just look at how frizzy that wig is- it’s also a lot like the John William Waterhouse painting.

You’ll also notice how in so many of those paintings that she’s depicted with flowers in her hair. Her connection to flowers comes from her final (living) scene (IV.v.) when she gives flowers to Claudius, Gertrude, and Laertes after losing her mind, and then when Gertrude describes how she died (IV.vii.), saying Ophelia had made floral wreaths and was trying to hang one on a branch when she fell in the water, but didn’t try to save herself and let her gowns cause her to sink. She’s never described in the play as wearing any (although in truth, Shakespeare’s plays had very little actual stage directions in them), and a lot of productions don’t even give her flowers to hand out during her madness scene- the imaginary gifting is meant to emphasize how she has lost her mind.

The first time we see Ophelia as an adult, she has flowers in her hair, though. And she demonstrates some herbal knowledge during a scene with Hamlet the first time he’s home from school (that we see- presumably he comes home every year, but this is the first time he sees her As a Woman, so…), where she describes belladonna as “the most deadly nightshade” to him, and then later when she describes what each flower is for as she hands them out (which yes, she did this latter thing in the play, too). But something I adored here was those flowers in her hair, she stops wearing them soon after we first see them- she overhears the other ladies in waiting gossiping about her, how she wears flowers instead of jewels because her father is common and can’t afford to give her fancy adornments; she takes them out of her hair as she brings in water for Gertrude’s bath. When Gertrude sees them and assumes they’re for her bath, Ophelia’s main antagonist among the other ladies of course jumps in and acts like it was her idea.

But! Ophelia then puts a long red ribbon in her hair instead of flowers, and during that same scene where she tells Hamlet about belladonna, he snatches it as she gets up and walks away, and it becomes his token, something we figure out later he’s carried with him every day since, even after going back to school. And another way they rework the source material is instead of “staring” at her in her own chamber (II.i.), he follows her into Gertrude’s chamber- he had intervened when she was dealing with some unruly/horny guards, and when she tells him she was not “in need of saving,” he tries to apologize for making her feel used the previous summer when he was home from school. She doesn’t really accept said apology, so he storms into the room in front of Gertrude and the other ladies in waiting and throws the ribbon at Ophelia’s feet. And this is what causes her to forgive him- seeing that he kept it with him for nigh a year: she picks it up when the other ladies aren’t looking and clutches it to her chest.

This is the belladonna scene; also LOOK AT 
HOW ADORINGLY HE'S STARING AT HER

So either way, what is in her hair matters to the story, while also referencing other depictions of Ophelia, and I loved it.

II.i. Feminism in a Patriarchal World

This movie definitely strives to bring feminist themes and ideas into a story that’s usually patriarchal. There’s dialogue that is overtly feminist, to boot. For example, in the beginning, when Gertrude meets her for the first time, after having mistaken Ophelia for a boy and everyone says “alas” about her presentation:

OPHELIA: I may be a lass, but there’s no need for such alassing. I would not want to be a lad.

(This is also another example of the pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue, amirite???)

 Much later, during the scene where they officially “get together,” so to speak, the following happens:

HAMLET: Fickle… My mother is like all women. Fickle, frail.
OPHELIA: My Lord, you are most unjust. Frailty in love is not a habit of my sex. Perhaps it runs in families.

Both are small bits of dialogue, but they are direct statements about how women are more than their stereotypes, and the women in this movie, at least the three main ones, definitely prove themselves as such.

And Ophelia’s own madness (IV.v.) is in fact Ophelia acting the part in order to get away from Claudius. Earlier in the film, she had told Horatio never to dig her up for an anatomy lesson, but very pointedly insists he do so “while her body is still warm” in this scene. (Shout out to Devon Terell for the look on his face here.) In other words, what in the primary source material was a “poor girl” driven mad by the men around her, Ophelia in Ophelia actually pretends to go mad so she can take charge of her situation. There’s even a brief moment before she enters the room with everyone where she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, as if to prepare herself, much the same way a performer about to go onstage would.

We also have that chanting in the background- sure, in the original, they’re Hamlet’s words (and read aloud by another man, Polonius), but here, they’re repeated sometimes by one woman, others by a chorus of women. Not only does it somewhat evoke a Greek chorus, but it sort of claims those ideas and sentiments as Ophelia’s. Since the movie is from her perspective, it stands to reason the music is, too. Sure, I knew what the words were from the start, but that’s why it was such a surprise to me- what an absolutely brilliant way to weave direct lines from the play into the movie while holding to the feminist perspective.

One of the biggest changes is the addition of the woman in the woods. Arguably, her story is just as important as Ophelia’s, since without it, Claudius would have had no poison and Ophelia wouldn’t have been able to fake her death. Even the moment we find out she exists is feminist. The queen tells Ophelia to find this woman’s hut to retrieve more of her “tonic” (that she’s clearly addicted to), and this string of dialogue absolutely delighted me:

GERTRUDE: In the wood, there is a woman. Go to her tomorrow and get more of what I need. Make sure you are not followed. No one must know. And whatever you do, do not look upon her face.
OPHELIA: [excited] Because she is a witch?
GERTRUDE: [sighs exasperatedly, rolls her eyes, pulls Ophelia closer to her and looks her square in the eye; says firmly] She is a healer.

The very moment she says, "She's a healer."

Shall we unpack that a little? I don’t think I need to go into the history of how any woman who put one toe outside the lines of normality could be accused of being a witch back in ye olde times. So I absolutely loved how Gertrude refused to let Ophelia spout that same garbage. Her protectiveness also, no doubt, stems from how the healer is her own sister, too- YUP. And as if to emphasize this, later, the woman herself, Mechtild, warns Ophelia when she sees how in love the girl is:

MECHTILD: You pretend to have a broken heart. That you are innocent and wounded. But you cannot hide your true self under ladies’ clothes. You are wild and full of desire. They will strip you, they will judge you, and they will find you wanting death. They will cast you to the fire. Do you know why they called me a witch?

She then goes on to tell Ophelia how she had been in love and became pregnant, and that the town, upon finding out she miscarried out of wedlock, accused her of bringing the devil. She knew they were going to try to burn her at the stake, so she drank the venom/poison we hear about constantly in the movie in order to pretend she was dead- and they bought it, declaring the “devil vanquished” and leaving her in the middle of nowhere. So she took an antidote and fled. Importantly, she emphasizes how she survived, but she lost her baby boy. So clearly she had wanted to keep the baby, despite the community around her.

Mechtild doesn't want what happened to her
to happen to Ophelia, clearly- women helping
women, another feminist idea!

Ophelia, being our smart girl, puts all of the pieces together and ends up realizing that not only did Claudius kill the king, since she saw him leaving Mechtild’s house the day King Hamlet died, but then finds a vial of that poison in his cloak; she also figures out Claudius was the father of Mechtild’s child and that he was the one who cried witchcraft when she miscarried.

This is important later, because when she confronts Claudius about it, only then does he see her as a genuine threat and plot to get her out of the way- he goes so far as to declare she committed treason and throws her in a cell (she gets out, of course, because she’s a badass). Later, when Horatio digs Ophelia up after her “death,” she has no antidote, so she goes to Mechtild’s hut. They talk, and Ophelia tells her everything she’s figured out about Claudius, which naturally pisses Mechtild off (she swears Claudius “shall burn”); the healer takes Ophelia to rest and sets out to find the Norwegians hiding in the woods. The next morning, Gertrude is in her sister’s hut and, upon seeing her, at first thinks Ophelia is a ghost. After they talk and Ophelia once again tells Naomi Watts (oh yeah, she plays both of them, since they’re twins) how Claudius killed the king and betrayed her sister, Gertrude begs Ophelia to forgive her for not standing up for her better and for being blind to Claudius’s wickedness. It’s a really great scene, and I appreciate how it in itself absolves Gertrude of any willful duplicity- there’s all sorts of scholarly debate over whether she was involved in the murder of her first husband with regards to the primary source, but here, during this conversation, it’s made clear she didn’t know Claudius had murder on the mind.

This interaction also demonstrates how Gertrude isn’t stupid. While they discuss how Hamlet is about to duel with Laertes, it’s obvious she realizes this is what Claudius wants and that he must be plotting something. And she points out that if Ophelia comes back to the castle, Claudius will just have her killed. And then she gets this great look in her eye, a sort of, “Aha!” and we see that she helps Ophelia disguise herself as a man in order to infiltrate the castle and convince Hamlet to escape.

So then, in the final castle scene, after she’s done screaming over the body of her dead son, Gertrude has Had Enough. In the play, Hamlet stabs Claudius after he figures out Laertes’s blade was poisoned; in Ophelia, Gertrude grabs Hamlet’s sword and runs Claudius through- literally, the sword comes out the back of the throne. Naomi Watts is impeccable in this scene, of course, flawless acting, and as she stares right into Claudius’s eyes with rage and hate, her look changes to shock as she finds the vial of poison in his robes and she understands even more.  

Also, the art department and cinematographers
did an EXCELLENT job with this scene,
since the colors really are that contrasting. It's a blink-and-you'll-
miss-it effect, but the gif really shows how most of the shot is in greys
and whites, but the blood is RED

And then who bursts in but her sister with the Norwegians! And as the soldiers begin slaughtering everyone in the room, Gertrude drinks the poison and dies in her sister’s arms.

I know that felt like a lot of unnecessary summary, but the point is to say that Ophelia takes the events in the play, events that were entirely beholden to men, and makes them the direct result of the actions of women. Instead of the Norwegians coming into the castle on a diplomatic visit in the final moments, they storm the throne room with the help of Mechtild- a woman seeking vengeance for how the man she had loved betrayed her and would have let her die. And instead of Claudius getting avenged by Hamlet for his father’s death, he’s killed by Gertrude as vengeance for her sister’s exile and the deaths of both her former husband and son; and her death, instead of the result of her being kind of an idiot (she just really wanted some wine), is the result of an active choice when drinks the poison on purpose. And all of this comes about because Ophelia is the one that pieces everything together.

And this is why Ophelia is a feminist retelling. Remember how I said earlier that Ophelia is the one that tells Hamlet his father was murdered by Claudius? That’s another example- it wasn’t a dead man’s ghost that told Hamlet what happened, it was a woman, a woman whose character in the primary source didn’t serve any purpose except to act as a foil for the leading man and a character for the others to yank around. The whole thing with Hamlet feigning madness/acting weird happens in Ophelia because she told him his uncle killed his father.

(As an aside, the scene where this happens, which in the original is III.i., the insistence she “get to the nunnery” changes from Hamlet being cruel to her to Hamlet trying to protect her- he realizes how dangerous the castle is and wants her to escape, and knowing Claudius and Polonius are spying, tells her to act afraid of him in order to help her look innocent. It’s touching, because it removes any lingering suspicion that Hamlet was legitimately losing it, but also demonstrates his intelligence and ability to think straight in the middle of a hot moment.)

And so this is also another way the film is a lovingly Shakespearean adaptation of a Shakespeare play- there’s some dramatic irony in that if Ophelia hadn’t figured it out, if she hadn’t told Hamlet, maybe things could have ended differently. But even so, as I said, Ophelia, Mechtild, and Gertrude all rise above their stereotypes. Ophelia proves an active participant in her story at every step of the way; Mechtild isn’t just a “witch” but a powerful herbalist whose smarts lead to the overthrow of a kingdom; and Gertrude isn’t just the vapid, vain woman she seems, but a fierce protector who kills for the sake of those she has loved. And the ball really starts rolling when the women stop being at odds with each other and instead realize the real enemy is Claudius. All the while, the overtones and drama involved are in themselves Shakespearean.

III.i. Disclaimer and Conclusion

No, it isn’t perfect. I do find it pretty inconsistent that Ophelia is ready to jump off the parapets when she thinks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had killed Hamlet (Horatio gets her to come down, bless that sweet man), then willingly walks away when he’s about to duel with Laertes. Also, considering Laertes is her brother, the smarter way to prevent that fight would have been to talk to him.

Also, I understand why the book would include the forced marriage subplot (it’s a book, it would just need more), but in the movie, it felt like it was only there for the purpose of setting up that opening shot where she’s in the water in a whiteish dress. Along those lines, the fact that the dude she was supposed to marry was kind of… well, didn’t respect consent, was unnecessary, too. There’s enough melodrama already, the threat of sexual violence against the women in the castle was superfluous.

I’m also a bit disappointed we didn’t get to see more of the relationship with Laertes. He isn’t in the play all that much to begin with, and he’s in Ophelia even less, and that made me sad. Especially given how much Hamlet genuinely cares for him in the original, and how he is well-known and liked enough to amass a mob and threaten to overthrow the castle after his father dies. A movie from Ophelia’s perspective is also a chance to get more of what made Laertes such a stand-up guy, or at least show how close they supposedly were. It doesn’t happen here, alas.

But. I still adore it. I’d put it on the shelf right next to Ever After and Clueless. I didn’t talk about some other themes, like familial loyalty, motherly love, and what giving one’s word truly means (H: I swore vengeance. O: You swore to love me and be mine. - for example!). But I’ve rambled enough here, and I hope that, if you haven’t watched it yet, you will; or that if you have and felt meh about it, you’ve decided maybe it wasn’t as bad as you thought.

 

[Exeunt]