First, 1994’s Middlemarch is the second best BBC miniseries of the 1990s. George Eliot’s story is a complicated portrait of a society struggling with change.
Unfortunately, the series also has one of the worst payoffs for its central romance.
Below, an edited version of deranged texts I sent my friend after 11 PM following my most recent watch.
I finished Middlemarch and the ending is so unsatisfying
Like, Rufus Sewell spends all his appearances across 6 episodes vibrating with suppressed sexual attraction to Dorothea who, I will be honest, may be a little asexual. She’s interested in people who do things and care about things. Also she’s married to his old cousin who doesn’t understand women and is suspicious of all Dorothea’s opinions. Then he dies and in his will is like, should my wife marry my hot young cousin she gets nothing. So the whole neighborhood is gossiping and Dorothea is kind of realizing that maybe all her talking about how the hot young cousin should have more financial support and could visit more may have sounded a little off. And also, maybe she does have…lots of friendship feelings for Rufus Sewell. But like, that’s normal. He’s a very passionate man. Everyone likes passionate men in a normal friendship way.
Anyway, Rufus Sewell hangs out channeling his horniness into writing passionate speeches about social reform and managing a newspaper and a political campaign. And he’s mad all of Dorothea’s relatives are keeping him away from her but he thinks that’s just because he’s middle class and has bohemian friends and likes academics and is therefore bad news. And Dorothea doesn’t invite him over because she doesn’t want to get him into more trouble because she knows his reputation is now in the dirt because everyone thinks he’s passionately in love with her. (Only because she made her husband jealous, not because people have eyes, obviously)
This goes on for a while and Rufus Sewell is finally like, fuck it. I’ll leave. But I’ll visit one last time to see if she gives me any indication at all that she might be open to me jumping her. This first “goodbye forever” is my favorite because he’s all like, I am hinting as hard and vigorously as I can without overstepping with a recent widow. My eyes are saying please take advantage of me. But he also tells her he’s going to go to London and study law and work really hard and try to implement some societal reforms. This makes Dorothea hot for him for the first time. Like I think she liked him before, and wondered if she might have a crush, but the moment he starts talking about throwing himself into work for the next 4-6 years she’s like, yeah, ooooh, yes, you do that. You would be amazing at that. And he’s so hurt that she won’t say she’ll miss him and ask him to stay, but she’s so into the idea of doing shit in London she finally almost breaks and says she’d like to go too. But, oh no! They are interrupted and he has to leave without knowing what she was finally saying about wanting things. Realizing he might have been getting somewhere, Rufus Sewell abandons his plans to leave and just sexily haunts the neighborhood.
Of course, then someone finally tells him about the will and he manages to get some alone time with Dorothea and goes, I lied before about leaving, but I’m not lying now. I thought I could go away for a little while, make something of myself, give you time to grieve, and come back and kiss us both senseless, but I get that that is impossible now. Just so you know, I’m offended people are saying I was horny for money. It was never money I was horny for. And Dorthea’s like, please don’t be mad at me, I’m very confused what you are getting at with your smoldering eyes. But I’m suddenly very sad at the idea that you’ll forget about me. At which point Rufus Sewell nearly combusts in sexual frustration and is like, the only danger is me forgetting this is a BBC adaptation of a 19th century novel and fucking you on the table. Or, “the only danger is me forgetting everything else.” Then he flees the room.
Anyway, later, he comes back because he’s insane for her and stays with the actual main character, the doctor and the doctor’s flirty annoying wife. Dorothea is visiting the wife to tell her to stop being a bitch to her husband, in nicer words, and runs into what looks like the flirty wife and Rufus Sewell making out on the couch. She flees. Rufus Sewell looks like he’s in danger of downing the doctor’s opium supply. And Dorothea has a good cry in her garden and like, fuck, I wondered if the tingly feeling from the last few times we hung out was love but this is definitely heartbreak. Never felt like this about my husband even when he disappointed me. Wish I could go back to not knowing what being in love is.
In order to be a good friend to the doctor, she goes back to the flirty wife and is like, look, I know he has beautiful curls and inspires a lot of feelings that husbands cannot compete with, and if you think about it too much you kind of want to destroy your life to be with him, but it only makes your husband upset and your life gets worse. And then your husband dies but nothing changes and life is misery forever. So better not fall in love with Rufus Sewell and fix your marriage. And poor flirty wife is like, yeah, so I was definitely angling for him to fuck me on the couch. But it wasn’t working out because he’s very very obsessed with you in a way that is making him frankly crazy. So…at least this unresolved tension between the two of you is not my fault. I refuse to ever be associated with unresolved sexual tension. As always my goal in life is resolved sexual tension.
Flirty wife then writes to Rufus Sewell and is like, Good news buddy! She does want you to fuck her after all. I thought she was cold but she’s just a little different. Anyway, I spelled things out so you might as well go see her.
At which point, you would really expect these two people who are very good at words and have been talking around this issue since they hung out in Rome around all the naked to statutes to have a conversation. Or if not a conversation, have an epic make out session. Like, I would take the scene from the 2005 Pride and Prejudice when they make out outside at dawn. That would work here. Rufus Sewell could pull that off because he’s been barely controlled horniness for six episodes. But no, they sort of tentatively kiss and you find out from conversations with other people that she has agreed to give up all her money to be with him. And I feel ROBBED.
