User blog:Eikakou/Anne (CBC series) season 2, episode 8 - Struggling Against the Perception of Facts review

There was a long weekend here (because of Remembrance Day on Sunday) and I overslept. What a week it was.

So there's only a few episodes left in the season - but there's season 3 to look forward to!

As you will perceive, SPOILERS may be chanced upon below.

---

Struggling Against the Perception of Facts is actually a very good title for the episode. There's issues with Marilla's eyesight, as it was introduced last episode, but also the perception of others. Bigotry is present here, along with a heavy dose of the effects of racism and homophobia.

So, we have a group of our favourite people going to Charlottetown. Marilla is going to get her eyes checked by an oculist, with Rachel keeping her company. It looks like she'll need glasses and a follow-up in a few months. But she also sees some of the family heirlooms (her amethyst brooch and Matthew's pocket watch) in the pawnshop window. She and Rachel get them back, though apparently with a lot of effort off-screen. It ends well enough - Marilla bequeaths the brooch to Anne and returns the watch to Matthew, who reveals that he had originally sold it to get the fare to get to Charlottetown when they rashly sent Anne back to the orphanage.

Bash and Gilbert are also going to Charlottetown for a number of reasons. Bash, after some non-professional at home dentistry, finds that the white shopkeepers won't sell him anything (he's trying to put together a home treatment for his gum infection) in Avonlea and the shopkeeper tells him he should be going to the Bog where "his kind" are. Bash becomes rather invested in seeing the Bog and finding help there. He isn't happy that Gilbert didn't tell him about it; Gilbert tells him it's a slum community in Charlottetown where a population of black people reside and he didn't want his friend to be a place full of poverty. They compromise that they will see a doctor that Gilbert knows in Charlottetown and then Bash can go see the Bog. The train ride is interesting. The conductor refuses to allow Bash to board as a passenger because he's black, but he can travel with the cargo if he really wants to go. The situation is unfair, but how is everyone perceiving it? Gilbert argues over and over that the car is not stated as segregated and legally they can't stop them. The fireman (the guy who adds coals to get the engine going) is a black man who thinks that Bash is trying to act better than he is. Marilla winds up stepping in, saying that Gilbert and Bash are part of her party, and gets them on board. But it's clear that other passengers are not so welcoming towards sharing a car with a black man. Rachel, on the other hand, apologizes for assuming Bash was "the help" back during the Christmas pantomine and while she struggles with trying to find the right words, Bash accepts the sincerity of what she's trying to convey.

Dr. Ward, Gilbert's doctor, turns out to be a fair and welcoming man who treats Bash just as he would any other patient (Bash decides that Dr. Ward is his best bet after hearing that his plan to go to the Bog for treatment would be rusty tongs). Gilbert, who wants to be a doctor, drops like a sack of potatoes upon seeing a needle. I did not see that coming. Wow. Ward does agree to accept Gilbert as an apprentice for his medical studies though. Bash finds good and bad in the Bog. On the one hand, he can see that it is as what others said - it's a slum and it's full of black people like him. The fireman from the train appears and they confront each other - the fireman calls Bash out on trying to act like he's a social equal to a white man (from the train incident) and doesn't think that Bash is as free as he says he is. They might not be slaves, but how is Bash's life working on a steamship any different from the fireman's job on the train. The fisticuffs do end with Bash being directed to a laundry, where he meets Mary, a cynical laundress who is not at all impressed with his attempt to flirt with her. But she is gracious enough to let Bash and Gilbert rent her spare room overnight.

Meanwhile, in Avonlea, we finally see that nobody likes Mr. Phillips at all. We've seen that he has no interest in teaching or his students at all. He's not even that nice to Prissy - he was completely full of himself and snapping her after making her help him during the Christmas pantomine rehearsals. But now that he's gotten a job offer from a relative to work in Toronto at the stock exchange, he presents a proposal of marriage to Mr. Andrews to marry his daughter. Prissy is delighted at first, and the idea of a wedding seems to get everyone excited. The girls talk about their trousseaux - Josie tries to put Anne down by saying that birth mothers start compiling them when a girl is born, but Ruby adds that hers was burned up along with her house and that they'll all help Anne with hers. But Anne is disappointed that a trousseau is meant to be filled with things as wife will need ("pretty things" like embroidered linens and undergarments) instead of books or aspirations of a girl's future.

Mr. Phillips continues to bully Cole (and so does Billy Andrews) until Cole is just sick of Billy never taking responsibility for his cruelty and Mr. Phillips taking out his frustrations on Cole. He walks out instead of taking a punishment he doesn't deserve, because whatever he thinks of Cole, it is his perception of him, not a fact.. He later reveals to Anne that he suspects it's because Mr. Phillips that part of himself that he hates in Cole and mistreats Cole because he can't do the same for himself. It's incredibly touching to see how when Cole reveals that "he's like Josephine Barry" ("except with boys" Anne adds) that Anne is understanding and moved that he trusts her with the truth of who he is. Anne and Cole decide that if they don't find romantic partners one day, they can marry each other as a marriage of equals and friendship, instead of one of romantic love.

Apprehensions begin to appear now that Prissy and Mr. Phillips are engaged. She's unhappy with the idea that he's demanding that she give up all her educational aspirations to devote herself fully to being his wife, and that she can't go back to school. (And Anne and Cole quietly now suspect that he's in a rush to get married before he leaves because he needs a wife to conceal that he's not romantically interested in women.) And Mrs. Andrews is sad that Prissy is going to give up college, when she had hoped for Prissy to become the first in a generation of educated wives. If anyone recalls, Mrs. Andrews was in charge of the progressive mothers' group (she invited Marilla and kicked her out when Anne unknowingly spread rumours of indiscretions between Prissy and Mr. Phillips), so it does cast her reaction to the Prissy/Mr. Phillips rumours into a slightly different light. Maybe it wasn't just her daughter's reputation was ruined, but that it would mean that any chance of Prissy marrying better than Mr. Phillips (if the rumours didn't go away, she and Mr. Phillips might have needed to get married to make them go away) wouldn't happen. But on Prissy's wedding day, after hearing Anne's rambling words about a marriage of equals, the idea that maybe if they don't love each other, she might still be able to pursue her own dreams one days, is enough that Prissy runs away at the altar and has a snowball fight with her schoolfriends. She's free!

Some small things - good for Anne for being honest right away. While caught up in the idea of a marriage of true equals, Anne accidentally tears a wedding veil that Marilla hid away with an untouched trousseau. There's a nice amount of character growth here, showing that Anne realizes how much Marilla values honesty, that she accepts the consequences of her actions, and that she can trust that Marilla will be fair with her. Marilla doesn't get angry, thanks Anne for her honesty instead of making up a story or trying to hide it, and gives her trousseau and the brooch to Anne - the brooch is a nice touch, because it's a reminder of how Marilla once didn't believe Anne when she was being completely honest and how Anne felt that she needed to lie in order to be believed. Also, Rachel and Thomas Lynde at the wedding, wow, they are the friskiest couple. Relationship goals, right there.

As I mentioned, perception was a running theme throughout the episode. And there's subtle ways that the episode manages to revisit things where only one perspective was presented. Now, it's not that every view is equally valid, because context is extremely important. Context can shape perception quite heavily. The fireman and Bash, Gilbert and Bash arguing with the train conductor, Rachel realizing she made assumptions about Bash, Bash calling the laundry a great place because it's warm but Mary and the other laundry workers are unhappy because it's a place of toil. The characters' views on marriage, Cole realizing that Mr. Phillips hates him because he can't take deal with his own self-hatred. I could go on for ages because there's so many points in this episode where perception is important. And maybe rather obviously, Marilla getting glasses so she can see clearly.

Next week - CBC is doing a double-header with both episodes 9 and 10 as part of the finale. I will probably break the review up. I did hear that it looks like they crammed all the bad stuff into episode 9, and so that episode 10 will end the season on a happy note. I told my brother this and he joked that it was because CBC knew that everyone will be so upset with episode 9 that they needed to show episode 10 right away to make the audience not angst for an entire week.

Eikakou (talk) 02:26, November 14, 2018 (UTC)