Final Thoughts on The Gray House
It needed more Colin and less of... everything else.
Now, admittedly, that's my consensus on almost everything Colin's ever been in. Even when he's the lead character in something, I still leave it thinking, "They could've made a little more screen time for him if they'd cut this other guy/scene/plotline out..." I'll own that.
But this time I kinda... actually mean it?
I'll say this. I think the four main female leads all did a great job. They were very watchable and entertaining. And the two Colins did great. And Shooter McGavin was a surprise delight. I actually quite enjoyed his badass Scottish baker guy. Oh, and the guy who played Jericho was quite good, as well.
But everyone else... Look, at one point, there were three or four scruffy dirty white guys with dark hair running about in period clothes and I literally could not tell them apart or follow what they were doing. One was the spy guy they hanged. One was John Wilkes Booth. One was the Van Lew brother. One was the guy who was always with the hooker, except when he wasn't. One was a governor or something? And I think there was another one that I still don't know who he was or why he was anywhere. Problem was, I couldn't tell which one was which half the time. They all looked the same to me.
Then there was the Sheriff and... the other guy (I confess, I really don't know who or what he was or why he was there, other than to annoy me). Those characters that are in there just for the sole purpose to make you hate them so you enjoy watching them die at the end. And sure enough, I enjoyed watching them die at the end. But I'm getting old and cranky and I just don't have time for these characters and plots and scenes that exist just to angry up the blood, because my blood is angry enough every time a young neighborhood kid steps on my lawn. I don't really need characters and stories in my entertainment that just exist to piss me off. Oh, and the fucking sister-in-law, and why the fuck was she allowed to live at all, let alone with Elizabeth's charity. Bitch should've gotten on a ship to somewhere, just so she could go down with it.
And why did they never do ANYTHING with the whole "Hampton writes Elizabeth a letter and the sister-in-law takes it and never gives it to Elizabeth" plotline?? Like, NOTHING came of that AT ALL.
They could've cut that whole scene out and showed us more of Colin with his shirt off. Or riding a horse. Or dying a few more times.
Which brings me back to my overall assessment of, "This needed more Colin and less of everything else" and how this time I actually mean it.
The little romance between Captain Lounsbury and Elizabeth was really one of the best parts of the entire mini-series. Too much of the rest just felt... unbalanced. The drama felt a bit heavy-handed in something trying to teach me history, and the history lessons seemed a bit heavy-handed in something trying to entertain me. But the scenes with Daisy Head and Colin worked and made the show feel like it was actually straddling that line between "history" and "drama" successfully. They made me feel more invested in the intrigue and cloak and dagger danger, because now there was a romance involved and you could feel that it added an extra layer of excitement and danger to the whole shebang.
But even that... They just put him in and took him out of the story whenever was convenient. Then they'd act like, "Oh, here he is again. Don't ask questions about where he's been since you last saw him" OR "Here he is again. This time, nobody knows where he's been and they thought he was dead, and for some reason, we expect that to make sense to you, even though every other damn time he's been gone for the same amount of time, we just didn't explain it and expected you to just... accept it." AND NEVER ANYTHING IN BETWEEN.
And then there's his friend Paul Revere (no, not THAT Paul Revere) and that whole plot line where he wants to kill the guy (who's actually helping the North) who he thinks killed Lounsbury but actually released him, and then kills the guy, and then runs into Lounsbury and there's, like, literally only two seconds of pay off in the darkness where he goes, "Captain Lounsbury?!?" and that's... it. Like, that's the whole reason for the subplot's existence and they could've totally left that out to make more room for Colin's chest hair. Or another tasteful sex scene.
I do appreciate that, in a show that had some very strangely in-your-face nudity and sexual acts, Colin's sex scene was quite tasteful and nicely done. Like, I could've done without the Sheriff's random rapeyness with the sister-in-law and the preteen-looking naked hooker... but Colin's scenes were all super tasteful and pleasant, and I'm grateful for that. Again, we could've used more of that and less of... anything and everything that wasn't that.
So, in short: Keep the four female leads. Keep Scottish Shooter McGavin. Keep the Colins. Keep Jericho. Lose, like, everybody else. Up the romance. Name Colin's character something else. Drop the totally fictional hanging at the end. Never happened.
Oh, and maybe don't kill Clara. They made her up anyway, so they could've given at least ONE couple a happy ending.
And fix the postscripts. You made up Clara; she wasn't "lost to history". Your pictures are mostly not of the people you're telling us about. You're claiming an urban legend as fact. Just because you got God himself Morgan Freeman saying this stuff doesn't make it all true.
TLDR: Colin did great. Many others did great. The great performances here deserved to be in a better balanced end product.
