RECAP/RANKING
Spoilers For: The Bridgerton Season 2 moments that shivered my petticoat timbers.
Dear Reader,
Do you savor saturated silks revealing ample bosom?
Salacious gossip about the ton?
The simmering forbidden passion of . . . mutual self-discovery?
Then season two of Shonda Rhimes' impressive Regency soap-operatic romp is for you. And while it may not be as overtly carnal as the Duke of Hastings and his library-loving Duchess in season one, installment two had my bonnet aflutter all the same. Let's just say I needed a long glass of lemonade in the shade after the finale.
See John Oliver's delightful roundup of talk show hosts contrasting season two and season one's sensual delights:
Gentle reader, for this author, less can be more. And in Bridgerton season two less sex was even more sexy. (Before you call me a prude, finish this article. Wink.)
As Viscount Anthony Bridgerton and Miss Kathani Sharma fight their urges, we love to watch them lose and fall. They can't deny their love. We don't want Anthony to marry Miss Sharma's younger sister--the lovely and unjustly unloved Edwina. I thereby offer that WE FUCKING LOVE REPRESSING OUR FEELINGS. I offer that the yearning ache of not having, not holding, not banging makes season two of Bridgerton an erotically visceral and absolutely ridiculous ride.
You are cordially invited to...
The 13 Horniest Moments of Bridgerton Season Two:
Eight Hot-and-Bothered Kathony Interludes
(The Viscount Who Loved Kate, In Eight. One moment for every Bridgerton sibling.)
1. The First Ride in the Park
There's nothing quite like a lady who can ride. The lady in question for this morning ride? None other than the spitfire Kathalin Sharma. She rides with willful abandon alone in the woods of Lady Danbury's estate. Anthony, so used to the mewing helpless lamb ladies of his pampered elite, assumes she is in need of assistance and pursues her with a chivalry Kate doesn't require. It turns, with gleeful surprise for both participants, into a sudden race around the park. Kate leaps away from him past a high barrier Anthony's horse can't handle, securing her victory. And then she reveals her goddess face. One glance, one nod, one simmer, and it was all over for me and my panties this season.
2. Kate's First Tongue Lashing
These two have a Darcy-Elizabeth reckoning for the ages when Kate eavesdrops on Anthony at the first ball of the season. He shoots the shit with some other noble lords, bemoaning the shortcomings of the ladies who so avidly pursue his marriageable hand. Kate hears every disparaging remark, and when she attempts to scuttle away, is found out by Anthony with the cheekiest damn grin. That smile though! He's excited to reunite with his horse-racing companion. Their banter ignites into a caustic tussle of words, culminating in Kate telling Anthony:
Your character is as deficient as your horsemanship.
Kate's charge? Ride better. ;) But mostly, be better. Kate preps Anthony to be the hero of his own romantic comedy.
We soon learn thereafter that Lord Bridgerton seeks to pursue none of other than the most coveted diamond of the season--Kate's baby sister Edwina. With a simmering foundation already laid for #Kathony, Edwina didn't stand a chance.
3. The Bee's Weak-at-the-Knees
When Kate, her mother, and Edwina are all invited to the Bridgerton manor in the country to build upon Anthony and Edwina's intimacy, instead the #Kathony simmer becomes a boil.
Their big country house thrums with the memory of the former Viscount, the beloved Bridgerton father felled suddenly and tragically by a bee sting ten years earlier. Sadly, Anthony watched his father pass. Thus haunted and frustrated, Anthony is in the process of apologizing Kate for not proposing to her sister the night before. Kate razzes him at her vexing best. While stinging him with her words, Kate is suddenly stung by a bee. Anthony, deep in the trauma weeds, freaks out hard, asking her repetitively if she is all right. Kate's irritation melts into care, as she insists all is well. She places his hand on her chest so he can hear her beating heart. I mean, come on! Much heavy breathing and mutual heaving bosom holding happens. They ache to kiss but do not. All in the name of health, I'm sure. It's a very very hot piece of trauma.
4. Proper Gun-Holding Technique
Of course, Kate learned to be an impeccable shot in India. She challenges Anthony to allow her into her hunting party, and the two are, of course, separated from the larger group. They rage and smolder at one another as they each accuse the other of making the bee thing erotic. Anthony castigates her technique and holds her in his arms to show her his, er, preferred hold. While he holds her, the camera slows, sound focuses on their mutual breath, and it's as if the lens can see and feel them smelling each other, soaking each other in.
It's the rampant competitive fusing of their libidos in a single moment. It's almost too much. Almost.
5. "The Bane of My Existence"
After a series of wildly tantalizing dance moments together, Kate gives Anthony her blessing for Edwina's hand and he proposes. Edwina accepts. Huzzah! Except naw. We're backing the wrong horse in this race, and the edgy, spicy, ardent fire between Kate and Anthony only grows post-sisterly-proposal. They take to meeting in the library when the need rises too high, and during the hottest scene of the entire series (come at me season one people), he tells her:
You are the bane of my existence, and the object of all my desires.
They both refer to their situation as impossible, untenable, and feel "plagued by these desires." They share breath, mold faces, and Anthony bemoans to her "the things I can teach you." He grabs a stray curl and my head is gone. I'm in ecstasy and these fools don't even kiss. It is in the realm of the almost having that I live and die and live again.
6. Kiss at the Altar
Because it must--it all blows up. Edwina figures out the betrayal mere moments before saying "I do", and after the wedding from hell has cleared the church empty, Kate and Anthony find one another at the altar to say "goodbye." Kate runs at him, and the two have an incredibly natural and correct first kiss. For me, yes, it's the corny camera twirl that sells the romcom realness, but it's mainly the way Anthony's hand holds effortlessly onto her back, holding and supporting her. It's so damn blasphemously good. Worth rewinding, horny reader.
7. A Romp in the Garden
As the two families attempt to repair their post-broken-engagement image, they continue to cavort in diplomacy. Such an encounter finds Anthony and Kate alone in the garden, where the charged air implores Anthony to ask Kate to leave. She, as always, shirks his orders, and the two romp something fierce. Shonda gives us the relaxing line of consent as Anthony insists "I will stop" and Kate beseeches, "Do not stop." Oh shit, nobody need stop this time, as lavender silk knickers come to play. Anthony and Kate are lost in one another's arms, and I am lost for the sensible world. Premarital sex for the win!
Not pictured: #Kathony in ecstacy.
8. Wedded Bliss
We get some much needed marital bedtime (yeah, skip the ceremony, we want the afterglow!) between Kate and Anthony. Definitely tame compared to season one exploits, but a nip slip or two and the very honest and earnest love attached to the sex is something that rings very satisfyingly clear in the final moments of this season. Kate and Anthony have passion, respect, and caustic, compatible comedy as they prepare to slog through the mud of aristocratic life together. I couldn't believe in them more.
Five More Feathering/Bridgerton Fanny Flutters
(Five more sexy scandals this season.)
9. The Phoenix-like reinvention of Mrs. Featherington.
The extent to which the Lady Portia Featherington crosses and double-crosses and triple-crosses to protect her daughters, even in denial of her own desires, had me crushing on her hard. The way she bests the leech of an heir that would have had her dignity gives me even more excitement to watch her arc in season three. What a sexy bad bitch of a warrior mother.
10. Benedict at Art School
Such a loose and relaxed fancy boy, the id of the Bridgertons run rampant about the ton. He gets what he wants and makes it harder for himself by second-guessing his achievements at every turn. Sexy sex with the art student/model at his school is a favorite sexy moment of the season. I love a little lost boy (on tv only), and I can't wait until we get the Benedict-centric season of this show.
11. Eloise Expressing Her Feminist Ideals
Eloise brings her impudent best in season two, undercutting the goals others have for her in pursuit of her truest self--an idea-loving intellectual. I was deeply into the way she traded books with her new sexy guy friend in literary and journalistic circles, but I was even more into the way she stood up for herself. Yas.
12. Every time Penny says "Colin"
Penny Featherington (our beloved Lady Whistledown and the every woman of Shonda's plot) aches with her whole being for Colin Bridgerton, the third Bridgerton son but the only man for her. Their intellectual and conversational compatibility is clear, but Colin sees her as a friend, and the thought of their love story is only a joke to him. Ouch. Every single freaking time that Penny says the name "Colin" I pine along with her, lost in memories of all the people I crushed on who didn't see me that way. The yearning of unrequited anguish. Relatable horny content for days.
13. That shirt scene . . . I mean.
Did you really think I was gonna miss this? It's a throwaway scene in episode five, and in great restraint, the camera does not show a shot of Anthony standing up fully. Alas. When Anthony falls in the water, an homage to the great Colin Firth scene in BBC's OG Pride and Prejudice, my heart lives for the period erotic intoxication of it all. A treat for all!
"I am a gentleman."
Anthony insists again and again, and yet, the greatest moments of heat, fervor, and discord in season two come when he sets his gentlemanly obligations aside and lives, hornily, fully, boldly for himself. Bridgerton would have us do the same. Who I am to fight it?
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