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arcadianambivalence · 7 months

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World on Fire - Season 2, Episode 2

It’s the second episode, and I’m already behind. Prepare yourselves for a long one, readers!

The Egyptian Storyline

Cue title card: Sahara Desert, Egypt

(that narrows it down)

Harry arrives at the front and reunites with Stan and Joe from his old crew. He meets Rajib and Singh, who were introduced in the last episode, and new recruit George. Very quickly, it becomes apparent that Harry is again out of his element. Italian planes fly low overhead, and Harry immediately ducks (the standard reaction during the retreat) while Stan keeps walking.

Stan introduces Rajib with begrudging respect (“a bit full of himself, but then, I’d be full of myself if I single handedly blew a hole in a mountain so the Scottsguard could get through and chase the enemy.”) Aww, Stan’s becoming slightly less of a jerk this season…

Harry gets along with Rajib, which is nice. Rajib has the decisiveness Harry lacked for much of last season, so maybe that’ll set an example…

Their ensuing conversation reveals that Rajib had fought in Ethiopia. (I’ve tried to pin down which battle this would have been, but I’m not entirely sure yet.) What I am sure of is that they are trying to get to Bardia in Libya as part of Operation Compass, the British push into Libya that winter. Bardia would have its own battle in January, so that’s something to look out for next episode.

Rajib says something along the lines of: “It’s amazing what you can get the lower classes to do for three square meals and money home.” That’s an understatement. I get the sense that Rajib is holding back his actual opinions to avoid potential repercussions.

Rajib’s time in Northern and Eastern Africa would have run almost parallel to Harry’s evacuation from Dunkirk and journey home. He would have grown up under control of the British Empire in Asia, and is now fighting for that empire to stop the control of Italy’s expanding colonial powers in Africa. With those similarities in mind…is there much of a difference between one side or the other?

(The show obviously can’t go into a comparison of centuries of colonialism, empire-building, invasions, etc. in depth, but the past two episodes have done a good job of planting this question in the viewer’s mind, at least for me.)

In a later battle with Italian forces as they approach the Egyptian-Liberian border the two units discover a cave where some of the soldiers kept their supplies cool and clean from the sand and the heat. In the confusion of gunfire, Harry opens an old leg wound. Nothing that requires immediate surgery or amputation, but enough to be at risk of infection from sand. And judging from the way Harry seems to want to avoid the topic.

(Dude, Stan had this problem during Dunkirk. Don’t jeopardize your unit because you’re afraid to admit you have an injury that needs supervision!)

Also, I may be reading too much into this, but is the battle supposed to be Nibeiwa? December 9th, 1940? Or Sidi Barrani the next day? The episode ends on Christmas Day, and each episode covers roughly a month of time. Or is this not a battle but one of the many little skirmishes along the way? Or simply a made-up location to get away with some potential inaccuracies?

That night, Joe talks to the new guy George about life in the army and back home. Joe knows the ropes, so as long as George sticks with him, he should be fine. Cue Joe going off on his own for a late night bathroom break in the middle of a sandstorm. The next morning, Harry makes a grisly discovery. The sand buried Joe alive.

It’s the wrong location, but the way Harry pulls up the rope makes me expect to hear “What have I done?” a la Alec Gusiness in Bridge on the River Kwai.

Also, kudos to the director Barney Cokeliss and cinemetographer Bastian Schiøtt. The journey through the desert looks horrifying.

What do you do when you’re fighting one war against enemy forces…and another war against nature (and nature is winning)?

Context

October 1935 - May 1936 - Italy invades and Ethiopia, one of the few remaining independent states, to expand their colonial power in Africa November 1936 - German and Italian alliance (the “Rome-Berlin Axis”) is announced June 10th, 1940 - Italy declares war on Britain and France and later invades southern France September 13th, 1940 - Italian forces start to invade Egypt (which occupied by the British for at least another decade) from Libya (then an Italian colony) December 1940 - January 1941 - Allied troops push Italian forces back into Libya

The British Storyline

The implications of the British plots are pretty dense this episode, and I have a lot of thoughts, so I’m going to break it up for clarity’s sake.

David

In the face of losing friend after friend, acquaintance after acquaintance, coworker after coworker, David can only respond with a joke. When his superior officer confronts him about his reactions, David pointedly responds, “If you can’t laugh about half the world hating you, what can you laugh about?”

Later, he meets up with Grzegorz at the club. (Boys’ night!)

Then it turns out precious Grzegorz has sneakily tried to set up David with Lois.

(He's so proud of himself, too!)

To be fair, I thought the two would make a nice couple the moment he was introduced. He reminds me of season 1 Lois, giving glib and clever responses to any pushback, maintaining an armor of humor to hide other emotions.

Lois is not up for a blind date, though, and tries to scare him off with a list of her losses, including Harry as “the love of my life.” So, no, she’s not doing well. He tries to salvage the situation and is promptly shot down in perhaps my favorite exchange of the episode:

“I’m bad luck.” “Maybe I’m the good luck you’ve been waiting for.” “Nah.” (shotguns a glass to David’s intimidation and arousal, but mostly intimidation)

But it’s not a total loss. He meets Connie. They have a cute moment wearing night goggles at her flat…as Lois snores from the other side of the room. David asks if Lois has always been like this. Connie (taking the fact that the man sleeping next to her is more interested in talking about her roommate than her extremely well) acknowledges that Lois’s behavior has gotten more risky lately. David shares that he was raised by his grandparents instead of his birth parents, so maybe there’s hope for Vera after all if Lois does go off on her own.

Once again, David loses another pilot.

At the end of the episode, he watches Stephen (the pilot who had been making some antisemitic comments earlier) burn to death as his plane catches fire before he can bail out. The dog fight scenes can get a little repetitive, especially since green screen and post-production effects can only add so much variety, but kudos to Gregg Sulkin for selling the fear, adrenaline, and grief with just his eyes and eyebrows visible.

I’ll come back to the context of this dog fight later.

Lois

Covered in bricks last episode? Eh, we’ll give her a bandage and a scrape on the forehead. She’s fine. She’s traumatized and wants to get out of Manchester and away from anyone left who knows her, but she’s totally fiiiiiinnnne.

So Kasia takes one look at her and gets it. Lois takes great pains to say that she isn’t grieving her father, that she’d rather not have Vera than have her, that she doesn’t feel anything at all. Kasia points out that this isn’t true, or Lois wouldn’t try to say it often enough to make herself believe it.

(Harry, who? These two women need more conversations together!)

The two have a mature conversation about the alienating nature of grief. Kasia reframes the situation for Lois and neither supports nor rejects the idea of getting away (even from Vera). She sees in this the choice she made in the very first episode with Jan.

But someone else is most certainly not on board with this decision, and it’s Tom (back for another single-scene appearance!). Tom and Lois bury Douglas’s remaining belongings at their mother’s grave. He jokes that it’s second billing, as Douglas would have always wanted. Then, because no one in this family can handle honest sentiment for long, quips:

“There Dad. Happy now? ‘Pacifist proves his point by getting killed by Hitler.’”

Lois admits to Tom that she had wanted the bomb to kill her. By the end of the episode, she’s sought several ways to get permission to get out. At the bottom of a glass. Pushing away friends and acquaintances. A poster for the ATS that just so happens to be for a posting in Cairo.

Oh yeah, she’s totally fine. Totally over Harry. Totally going in a new direction in life. (Just when you think she’s out, the idea of Harry pulls her back in. Baby girl, no one will measure up to the person you thought Harry was because you won’t let them close enough to know them. He’s the love of your life? No, he’s the only love you’ll let hang onto your life, when it never did you any good. Move on with your life–not to the same country as him.)

But I digress.

Sir James

I don’t know what to think of Sir James, and frankly I think that’s the point. Right off the bat, we’re introduced to his charm, humor, and wealth. He has the influence to get a bouquet of fresh white flowers for Robina. He is Sir James, already Robina’s social superior. He knows more about Robina than Robina does about him. He’s constantly throwing Robina off her guard for the rest of the episode, and while it’s fun to see her navigate situations where she’s on her back foot, this says something about his character in that every conversation is a surprise.

Is he being serious? Is he joking? Is he flirting? (Is he trying to get her to give him information?) It’s not clear what exactly he wants with Robina and the Tomaszeski siblings, but he certainly has something up his sleeve. In a single episode, he has:

Arrived several days early and without notice

Already known that Robina has a Polish refugee child living with her

Used his influence to resolve Kasia’s civil suit

Gotten Jan and Robina to trust him

Stolen a Christmas tree* from a churchyard

Just kidding, it was from the office

Sent out secret radio messages in the night

*A yuletide tradition originally from Germany

But what really grinds my gears about him is how he is all for Lois giving Vera over to Robina…who he suggests should give the baby to Kasia. Kasia’s a woman, so surely she’ll be fine looking after the child her husband fathered after cheating on her while she was mourning the murders of her mother and father, the thought of never seeing her brothers again, and her homeland being invaded. But women are interchangeable to babies, right?

(I know all babies are plot devices in shows, but it's like every single character is playing hot potato with the baby. At this rate, it’ll be Jan taking care of Vera before the end of the season!)

Though that could be a ruse to throw Kasia off his tail. Sir James has a line about guile that Kasia repeats at the end of the episode, impressing him (or arousing his suspicions!). Between Jan’s memory and Kasia’s finesse, they’d make a fine team. If Sir James is working for the Allies, that is…

Oooooooh, are we going to bring the storylines together with the Long Range Desert Group intel for the North African campaign?

Their motto (at least according to Wikipedia, so take this with a big grain of salt): Non Vi Sed Arte (Not by Strength, but by Guile)

Okay, so Sir James says something along the lines of “not by deceit, but by guile” instead. Which means this storyline may converge with one of the others. After all, he has a radio transmitter and receiver in his suitcase…and a German passport. Either he’s some Lord Haw Haw insert who is at Robina’s due to her past sympathies, or he is Allied and in touch with a resistance cell on the continent…and working with him will be Kasia’s next storyline. Maybe it will involve getting someone out of Occupied Paris…or someone into Berlin.

The German Storyline

I’m just now realizing that Marga’s story arc is shaping up to contrast with Lois’s relationship to motherhood.

While Lois decided to go through with the pregnancy in season one, even with the prospect of ever having any romantic relationship with Harry dimming, she now regrets becoming a mother, or at least no longer feels as if she can be an effective mother, and wants to give up her baby to Robina’s care, at least for awhile. (Though the slow-mo and dramatic music makes it seem like forever…) When the time comes for Marga to give birth and give up a baby, how will that affect her? Will she change her mind and have the baby forcibly taken from her?

But as for now, Marga is happy to have a child with a stranger and give the baby up for adoption as soon as the pregnancy is over. To her, this is an act of patriotism (as ghastly and violating as the idea is to us as a modern audience). As she can’t take part in combat like her brother, and career choices were limited for young women then, Marga must think this is her best chance at doing something patriotic.

This is Nazi Germany’s version of women “doing their bit.”

Ugh.

Marga’s ambition doesn’t come out of nowhere. Nazi Germany placed a high premium on having children. In fact, there was an award for mothers of large families (which meant more rations and social privileges) introduced in 1939. Concepts of beauty and womanhood pointed to marriage and motherhood, as that was (and still is) generally expected for women after a certain age, but doubly so in a country with a government obsessed with eugenics.

(I could write a long meta on the role of gender in the past two episodes alone.)

Having grown up being exposed to Nazi propaganda and strict gender expectations, it’s not unbelievable that a sixteen year old (who would not know much about the physical dangers of pregnancy and childbirth–especially for a young person) would think of this in vague terms of “honor” and “duty” instead of the way Gertha feels but can’t put into words–that this is a life-changing and invasive situation that she is too young to handle or see clearly. It’s a horrible irony that perhaps the first big choice Marga makes for her life is to get out from her parents’ control…and under the government’s.

Gertha and her teacher, Herr Trutz, are more worried for Marga than she herself is, and both are betrayed to the Gestapo. Marga turns Gertha in for treasonous activity, and Gertha is intimidated into giving up her teacher’s name to spare her parents. This is unfortunately not an overexaggeration of how many children were taught to put their country above their friends and family, even if it meant turning in those closest to them to avoid the taint of association with anti-Nazi sentiment. But while Marga does not see what happens to Gertha, Gertha once again gets a clearer picture of the sinister reality. She tearfully apologizes to Herr Trutz as he is dragged, bloody and hardly able to walk, through the prison. Her teacher responds with understanding, even in agony.

“We’re all going through hell, Gertha. We do what we must to survive.”

But there's a line between compromising yourself for survival and for benefit.

The French Storyline

We finally learn what happened to Henriette and Albert! And it’s…not great. They’re still alive, at least. Henriette is now a major part of the resistance cell in the American hospital in Paris, even as the Germans crack down on anyone with suspicious or missing identification papers (which, since Henriette admitted last season she was working under a false surname, is going to be a problem for her).

To complicate matters further, her little brother Luc shows up in the hospital and begs her to help him escape. Like a typical big sister, she berates him but agrees to help.

We quickly learn that Henriette has gotten much deeper into the resistance since we last saw her. Now she has a gun concealed in a supply closet and does not hesitate to point it at the locked door when Germans try to enter the room. When the coast is clear, she points Luc to a secret exit through the cellar. They embrace and she says that they’ll be together again soon. But Luc is captured anyway.

He is taken to a local prison camp, the same one where Albert is, and the same one where Henriette drops off Red Cross packages for the prisoners. Albert recognizes her and agrees to help her get Luc out on the condition that she leave and not return. It’s the same thing he wanted for Webster last season. Hurt them to save them.

She gives him a package with a small vial and a note that says simply, “Drink me.”

Closing Thoughts

So there’s one thing I’ve been holding off on mentioning thus far, as I don’t want to turn this into a rant instead of a review, but…they skipped the Christmas Blitz. It’s set in Manchester, and they skipped the Christmas Blitz…

The closest we get is David joking about how the Germans chose to attack on Hannukah after other pilots complain about it being almost Christmas, then the standard dog fight sequence, and Lois packing her things as the furniture trembles from distant bombs landing.

So………….if you haven’t seen my past posts and fanfic, this is a special interest topic for me. And I expected the show to cover it, seeing as the two night raids over Manchester with massive loads of firebombs and explosives destroyed so many significant cultural and industrial landmarks. The event was important enough to get a name, after all.

And yet. Nope.

It would have been very easy to move Lois’s injury from October to December. In fact, it would have given us more time to see what being an ambulance driver means to Lois and Connie while still tying this plot point into the bigger history of Manchester.

We could have seen how the Chase household (not being in Manchester proper) reacted and came together. Heck, we could have seen Robina and Sir James crammed together in an air raid shelter. Surely falling bombs would bring back Kasia’s memories of the invasion of Warsaw? No? What about Jan? Anyone?

I don’t understand this decision, and I don't like it.

But that’s my big complaint with this episode. And anyway, what else is fanfiction is for? More importantly, there are several books out there that touch on this long overlooked subject if you’re interested.

To Learn More:

Blitz Britain: Manchester and Salford by Graham Pthythian

Manchester at War by Graham Pthythian

Imperial War Museums

The History Press

The BBC

General Sources:

1939 by Frederick Taylor covers the months leading up to WW2 and the beginning of the war, with details about the cultural and political landscape of Europe that I’d never read before.

Brittanica article on the North Africa Campaign

Wikipedia article on Operation Compass

#world on fire #world on fire spoilers #world on fire pbs

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