The episode opens with Anthony and his father hunting a deer in the woods. This is a flashback to Anthony when he was younger, and they aim to kill the deer. At first they fail to shoot it, but then they come out from hiding behind the rock and out in the open they see the deer. They finally kill it. They come back home and are talking, and Anthony’s dad sees a bee, and he swats the bee away but it stings him and he ends up getting an allergic reaction to the sting. Anthony tries to save him but his dad ends up dying. It is also really sad, too, because Violet, his mom, is pregnant and she has to see her husband die unexpectedly right before her eyes. Anthony immediately has to take his dad’s position as the new viscount and he is totally unprepared for this. She falls into a deep depression and his death takes a psychological toll on her. She goes into labor and the doctors tell Anthony that he has to decide for her whether the unborn baby gets to live or whether Violet gets to live. It is a scary decision, but Anthony tells the doctor to go with whatever Violet decided. Violet is deeply in pain during this time, and Anthony doesn’t know what to do so he leaves the room. Then in another flashback, he finds his mom sitting depressed on the couch and Anthony asks her if she could come to dinner with him and everyone else. Violet tells him she doesn’t have the energy to sit with everyone and is still grieving her husband’s death, and tells Anthony to give her some grace because she is truly trying her best to keep going in spite of everything going on.
When Anthony visits his father’s grave, he recalls these flashbacks and it affects how he moves on in life. But his mom sees him visiting his dad’s grave and she talks with him, that yes it is painful that he passed away but he still needs to become happy and find someone he is in love with. Anthony is torn because he is matched up with Edwina Sharma, but secretly he has mad passion for her sister, Kate. Edwina is unsuspecting of Anthony and Kate’s sexual tension, but she thinks that Anthony is a trusting guy who has Edwina’s good intentions in mind. But Kate is an excellent bullshit detector and she warns Edwina that Anthony doesn’t really have her good intentions in mind, and to steer clear of him. Earlier in one of the episodes, Anthony has high expectations for the woman he wants to marry, and he goes on dates and evaluates the women based on his own standards, and ends up crossing a lot of ladies off on the list because they don’t suit him. However, when he is riding his horse outside, he finds someone wearing a blue cloak riding too, and he runs to catch up. Kate takes her hood off and when Anthony sees her, he is absolutely smitten. But Kate disses him one night at a ball after hearing him talk to other men about how undesirable he finds most of the women he meets.
However, in this episode, Anthony is playing a competitive game of pall mall (a version of croquet) with his siblings and the Sharma sisters, and Edwina thinks it’s a fun game, but Kate and Anthony compete with one another to win, and Kate challenges Anthony by hitting the balls each time. Their balls end up being hit really far away, and so they both have to go into the woods to fetch them. Kate isn’t worried about getting her dress messed up, so she goes into the mud to retrieve the balls, but Anthony goes in, too, and they end up getting muddy together. Anthony realizes then that he isn’t in love with Edwina much at all, but instead is in love with Kate. He realizes this again when they are in the garden and they are talking about Anthony being committed to proposing to Edwina, but then he sees a bee land on Kate’s neck and that triggers a panic attack in him because his father died of a bee sting and he doesn’t want Kate to die of the bee sting, either, so he hyperventilates and Kate is trying to calm him down. The bee goes away, but Anthony and Kate realize they are in love with each other and try to kiss, but are interrupted by footsteps.
Eloise, in the meanwhile, is sick of everyone telling her to find someone. She is trying to find who Lady Whistledown is, and she approaches Madame Delacroix, but Madame Delacroix tells her to mind her own business. Penelope, Eloise’s friend, still will not tell Eloise that she is actually Lady Whistledown. Penelope is helping Madame Delacroix find clients for her dressmaking business, and she approaches Madame because she herself is a businesswoman as Lady Whistledown, and needs help. Penelope’s family, in the meanwhile, is dealing with the killing of their father and the financial hardships that have come with it. The new Lord Featherington isn’t helpful to them either, but Portia (Lady Featherington) hatches a plan for one of her daughters, Prudence, to win the approval of Lord Featherington and marry him. At first Prudence and Penelope are uncomfortable because Lord Featherington is their cousin, but Portia needs to get them out of this financial predicament, so she has Madame Delacroix make a dress that shows off Prudence’s bosom and has Prudence fan her face so that she can appear attractive to Lord Featherington, but he isn’t interested and instead continues to read his newspaper. It turns out that Lord Featherington is interested in Cressida Cowper, who, with her mom, is basically the Regina George of the show (if you haven’t seen the movie Mean Girls, Regina George is a mean girl who gossips about everyone at the school and gets a new girl named Cady to join her clique, the Plastics.) Prudence tries to win the Lord’s approval but Portia feels embarrassed and disappointed that Prudence can’t win his approval and tells her to let it go.
Benedict Bridgerton is an artist and is trying to go to art school, but is nervous about winning acceptance to a school he really wants to go to. His brother, Colin, gives him a substance to put in his tea to alleviate nerves around the school decision. It is kind of like their version of weed brownies in a way, because I just remember that scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower where Charlie, who is socially awkward, is given weed brownies and is so high during the rest of the party. Benedict puts a bunch of the substance in his tea and ends up totally strung out at dinner, but he finds out he got accepted into the school and he, Eloise and Colin celebrate, but Eloise and Colin are also worried because he is so high.
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