Thoughts on 6.1 (spoilers ahead, obviously)
I’ve seen a lot of comments on the Siegfried and Audrey relationship on here and so I’m going to add to them because why not?
Siegfried Farnon is a man who cannot deal with emotions. We know that. He’s also a man who has a default response to push people away in order to protect himself.
Presumably at first he was fine with Audrey going away. He told her she deserved everything she had got with her family, and he clearly meant it. He wants her to be happy… he just hadn’t realised that would be a permanent relocation away from them. And this is the ‘40s. They can’t just FaceTime. They presumably haven’t seen each other for a long time by the time she returns.
He’s discombobulated to see her, that much is clear, but it immediately snaps him out of the funk he got himself into (which had presumably started once he realised her move was likely to be permanent) and he’s happy to have her back. But he still doesn’t want her to think she HAS to feel obligated to stay. Hence his (stupid in hindsight) comment about how her absence allowed them all to take care of themselves and discover what they could do.
She is hurt by that (understandably) and let’s slip about James and Tristan, and that is the moment it all falls apart.
Siegfried is happy that she has come back to visit. That she had some time and thought ‘I’d like to see my Skeldale family again’. Then suddenly he’s told that actually she’s only there to ‘sort him out’ because he’s become a ‘problem’ to the others. That hurts him deeply. She didn’t want to come and see him. She felt obligated to come and see him.
And so he immediately regresses. His default position to push away anybody who could hurt him comes to the fore. You can tell, as he leaves the word game, that he wants to go back and talk to her, but he doesn’t. She’ll leave again, so why add to his hurt by talking to her more?
Next morning he again doesn’t want to be reminded of what her presence means. He doesn’t want to be reminded of her kindness and care. And to try and soften him up Audrey teases him. Ordinarily he’d be fine with that, but after the previous night it feels just like she is emphasising that he’s a problem for her and others to solve. And so he snaps. In his head she’s kicking him while he’s down. Especially as she’s doing that with his lady friend. They’re teaming up against him, in his head anyway.
Their inability to communicate, to know how to handle each other, and to be kind to each other, is a sign of how important this relationship is to them, but also how much they both struggle with their emotions. He doesn’t know how to risk his heart, after losing Evelyn all those years ago and now losing Audrey for the last year or two. She doesn’t know how to be brave enough to take on somebody with a temper (which isn’t ordinarily directed at her) after her marriage to Robert.
And so they part ways. Both trying to protect themselves. It’s only two people talking to Siegfried, James harshly, and the farmer more gently and generically, that helps Siegfried to realise what he’s done and what he wants to do. And getting home to find Audrey gone hammers it home. Asking her to stay could lead to him being hurt, but he’s already hurting so he needs to be brave.
And Audrey… she loves him, whether she realises it or not. She’s the one person who has ever really understood him and been patient and gentle with him. She leaves because she thinks he wants her to. She stays because he confirms that he wants her there.
And so in conclusion… they’re both damaged broken people, and they belong together. They are each others most important partner, not yet romantically but in future I expect them to be. They cannot be apart. She didn’t want to leave and he didn’t want her to go. They are better together, and finally Siegfried has been brave enough to tell her that. Nobody is her. Nobody else belongs in his life as much as she does.
Sam and Anna are likely to break me completely with their performances by the end of the series, if episode 1 is anything to go by, and I cannot wait.
