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Awesome / The Crown (2016)

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Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.


Season 1

  • The scene where Philip, no experience and without using the rifle in his hand, manages to distract an elephant that was approaching Elizabeth with no harm to any human in the vicinity or the elephant.
  • Queen Mary's advice to Elizabeth on how the Crown must come first, reminding her that she (Mary) lived through the fall of three major European monarchies (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia) and of how fragile the monarchy can become if personal matters are allowed to intrude. And she did it all despite a respirator and the devastation about outliving her son.
  • Speaking of Queen Mary, following her son's death she performs a pitch-perfect curtsey in front of the new Queen. Which might not sound that impressive until you consider that she does so at eighty-five years of age while being incredibly frail and not in the best of health herself.
  • Churchill's "God Save The Queen" speech.
  • The Coronation ceremony of Elizabeth. The grand spectacles, the ritual, and that it is televised. The kicker also that her Uncle David, after making rude jokes about her, got to be reminded about what he gave up.
  • In "Scientia Potentia Est" Elizabeth, after learning that they'd kept the truth about Churchill's poor health from her, takes her tutor's advice and summons Winston Churchill and Lord Salisbury and gives them both a quiet but firm dressing down about how disappointed she is that they misled her. She reminds them that despite her age and gender she is the Queen and deserves the respect afforded to that title.
  • Elizabeth at the end of "Pride & Joy" when she is told that she needs to skip Gibraltar because of death threats. She refuses due to her duty to her subjects on the Rock, and delivers the following cathartic speech after watching so many people second guess her as Queen.
    I am aware that I am surrounded by people who feel they could do the job better. Strong people with powerful characters, more natural leaders, perhaps better-suited to leading from the front, making a mark. But, for better or worse, the Crown has landed on my head. And I say we go.

Season 2

  • Eileen Parker telling her Monarch the Queen and Tommy Lascelles off for telling her to stay in an Awful Wedded Life with Mike and for not recognizing how all the duties they require for the crown really hurts families and marriages. And it was all to THEIR FACES.
  • Margeret's friends discover that Billy Wallace has been cheating on her before they've even announced their engagement. They drag him, sobbing and begging for his life, out onto the field of honor, shove a flintlock pistol into his hands and tell him to take Ten Paces and Turn.
  • Margaret confronts Billy Wallace after he shows himself to be a philandering coward despite earlier proposing to her. She glowers into his eyes and lets him have it with both barrels.
    Margaret: You pathetic, weak, contemptible fool. I never even wanted to marry you. You were only ever an act of charity. Or desperation. And now you insult me? You? People like you don't get to insult people like me. You get to be eternally grateful. You've quite the way with women. Take a look at this face. A picture of disappointment and disgust. This is the look that every woman you ever know will come to share. This is what the next forty years of your life will look like.
  • Elizabeth tells her uncle off for worming his way into her good graces and for having been involved with the Nazis during WWII, even at the point where he would be sabotaging his own brother and country. She gives a delicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her uncle after he insults her intelligence and insinuates she, the family, and the staff are inhumane.
    We all closed our eyes, our ears to what was being said about you. We all dismissed it as fabrications, as cruel chatter, in light of your decision to give up the throne. But when the truth finally came out...The truth! It makes a mockery of even the central tenets of Christianity. There is no possibility of my forgiving you. The question is: how on earth can you forgive yourself?
  • Elizabeth's "The Reason You Suck" Speech in the finale to Philip: giving him hell for possibly cheating on her, and not supporting her even though she is dealing with far more drama than a woman in her condition (pregnant and needs to put her feet up) should have to deal with.

Series 3

  • In the opening episode the Queen learns that her Master of Paintings has been a KGB mole for more than 15 years. As she gives a speech about early modern paintings being sometimes painted over to give the subject a better face, effectively giving the painting two faces, she looks him right in the eye and wonders which face is real and how anyone could trust either. Philip then pulls the mole aside and promises to have them thrown in jail if they ever set a foot wrong.
  • Margaret convincing President Lyndon B Johnson to give the United Kingdom a bail-out by insulting JFK who is Johnson's predecessor, challenging him to a drinking contest and making up dirty limericks. In other words, she manages to save her country's economic situation just by being herself despite her sister begging her to be the exact opposite.
  • Elizabeth learns that Philip's uncle, Lord Mountbatten, is planning a coup to oust Prime Minister Harold Wilson and instantly takes on a steely Death Glare as she marches back home, where she chews him out on how they have to uphold the Constitution and leave it up to the people to vote the Prime Minister out if they truly want to.
  • Charles's speech in his Investiture as the Crown Prince of Wales was in fluent Welsh after spending a term at the local university, and he inserts a Calling the Old Man Out moment against the history of the English rule suppressing Welsh cultural and national identity and calls for his position to support Welsh interests. Better yet is, as Charles notes, because his parents don't understand a word of Welsh, they had no idea what he was doing while the crowd loved it.
  • Princess Anne unashamedly admitting to her entire family that she's having a purely physical affair and is loving every minute of it.

Series 4

  • Anne starts the season getting back into dressage "after a year on my backside" and finishes sixth place.
  • Diana immediately endears herself to the entire family when she not only spots a prize buck far in the distance but is even instrumental in helping Philip nab it by correcting his reading of the wind.
  • Despite waking up to a potentially dangerous intruder, Elizabeth manages to keep her cool after panicking in the beginning and even has a polite conversation with him.
  • Just how Michael Fagan was able to sneak into the Palace twice: hops the tall fence, sneaking, climbing the high walls and climbing through an open window (breaks one in his second attempt).
  • In the same season where Margaret Thatcher is upbraided by Princess Margaret for sitting on Queen Victoria's throne (without that prior knowledge), Michael Fagan sees the two sets of gilded thrones in the palace and promptly sits on one of them.
  • Charles bluntly laying out how irrelevant Andrew is, on his own wedding day nonetheless. Given Andrew's jerkassery and the events he will one day be involved in, it's pretty cathartic.
  • Diana tells off Adeane for wanting to separate William from her and Charles for two weeks in Australia, pointing out her son isn't just a title but a beautiful, living, breathing baby who needs nurturing to become fully human and saying that her role as Princess of Wales, wife of Charles isn't to be a meek little wife but to be a caring mother to a future sovereign.
  • Charles and Diana's ballroom dance where they dazzle the photographers and attendees set to a cover of Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Of Off You" is this and a Awesome Music.
  • Elizabeth going down hard against Margaret Thatcher for her lack of compassion for the Black citizens of South Africa, even the media noted that she went from a woman most comfortable talking about dogs and horses to someone who is a force to be reckoned with.
  • Diana's surprise dance with dancer Wayne Sleep to "Uptown Girl" is perfection and a Awesome Music moment, clearly all those dance lessons have been paying off.
  • At the end of the season, Elizabeth finally calls out Charles for his failure to put in any effort to fix his and Diana's marriage, laying out how enormously privileged he and Diana are, how no one has any sympathy for him, and how his behavior is the furthest thing from a king.

Series 5

  • Anne telling off her mother for expecting her to wait to marry her paramour Timothy Laurence because of duty. She tells Elizabeth that she bent herself to shape for this family and duty and she needs a bit of her for her own life. She promptly kisses him outside the palace.
  • Phillip telling the Queen Mother to finally shush and let Elizabeth give the speech she wants to give, saying she has served the Crown and God immaculately for 40 years and deserves to express her grief. Elizabeth then adds to her mother's condescending response that Phillip has been supportive of her from day one and tells her mother they are due soon, imperiously shushing her up and earning an approving smile from her husband.

Series 6

  • Catherine looks through a rack of clothes at the St Andrews charity fashion show, pulls out a garment and smiles. Next, we see her strutting down the runway to Moloko's club classic "The Time is Now" looking radiantly empowered in a daringly see-through dress as she locks eyes with Prince William before turning on her heel, high-fiving a fellow model, and exiting the runway, having made quite the impression on the young prince.

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