Critic Reviews
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Thanks to the fire of actress Yerin Ha, this fourth chapter in the saga of love among the haves and have nots can still thrill us with the pleasures of the unexpected.
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Part 1 of “Bridgerton’s” conventional fourth season, which consists of four episodes (now streaming on Netflix) that entertain but fail to make much of an impression beyond that.
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It’s all utterly bananas. But crucially, it is sincere about it – and its commitment is admirable.
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Despite some great performances and stellar subplots, the latest episodes of the hit show don’t pack as much of a punch as previous iterations.
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It is the closest a human could come to creating an AI slop Regency romance: distilling plotlines from classic novels and fairy tales, generating consistently perfect facial bone structure, rendering everything in lurid, over-saturated colour. And yet, Bridgerton remains perfectly enjoyable.
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The first four episodes sew with the same pattern, and while that’s comforting, the seams are starting to fray.
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As charming as she is, Ha cannot make up for scripts that struggle to create narrative stakes, import or feeling. It's as if everyone involved in the juggernaut Netflix show is twiddling their thumbs, waiting for a more interesting Bridgerton sibling to take over the main story.
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We get an extremely familiar story that, while packed with endearing performances and never less than bingeable, plays it disappointingly safe.
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When “Bridgerton” follows Sophie home, it stops being a third-string version of itself and turns fascinating, despite the beyond-cliché nature of her eventual storyline.
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All these aspects of the main couple’s relationship are quite promising—chemistry! Cross-class love! A heroine who can take us places we haven’t gone! The problem is, everything related to Benedict and Sophie is padded out by A, B, C, and D plots ad infinitum.
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The “colour-conscious” casting is still a striking feature of the show, but overall Bridgerton feels tired. This first batch of episodes (the second drops on February 26) ends on a cliffhanger so rubbish that the writers must be running out of steam.
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