"Shonda basically solves the race problem [in Georgian Britain] by individualizing it as a love story."

This is related, I think, to the show's rape controversy—which arises bc of the way an oppressive social structure is refracted through a love story. https://tressiemcphd.medium.com/the-black-ton-from-bridgerton-to-love-hip-hop-15a7d27b8de7

Refracted, but *not* solved—because the radically dystopian (exploitive and authoritarian) nature of marriage is part of the ground rules of Regency romance. It's a rule that can be bent and defied, but I don't think it can be erased for the genre to remain recognizable.

As a Regency romance produced in the 21st century, Bridgerton asks viewers to inhabit two or more incompatible understandings of sex simultaneously, but it doesn't—and probably can't—ask us to visit a world *free* of coercive sexual relationships and expectations.

The trouble is, the main plot of Bridgerton dives straight into the conflict between these incompatible moral worlds rather than setting it aside. The result is, as they say, deeply "problematic."

In the show's unstable dual moral universe, the key act in question may be an act of assault, an act of *resistance* to ongoing assault, or both at the same time, depending on where you decide to place your moral feet.

(Apologies—this is mostly tangential to the excellent Medium essay linked above. Apparently this is something that's been bothering me!)

One more thought: The relationships in Bridgerton (season one) that come *closest* to egalitarian freedom? Lady Bridgerton and her dead husband, and the queen and the king. In both cases, the men have been conveniently neutralized for the slippage between moral worlds to work.

(Actually, Alice and Will Mondrich even more so—which is part of why I wanted them centered more in season one.)

(Alice and Will are the only living couple I can think of who seem to have a legitimately healthy relationship by my standards, but even in their case, it's used mainly as character development for Will and Simon.)

(The jury's still out for me on certain nonmarital relationships, like Mme. Delacroix's storyline and Henry Granville's, but the suggestion is that they're problematic in their own moral setting.)