‘The Crown’ Season 5 Episode 9 Recap: When Harry Divorced Sally

It’s my personal opinion that this episode of The Crown, officially titled “Couple 31,” is by far the strongest of the season. It might be the only episode thus far where I actually cared for this season’s characters because up until now, everyone has been playing an archetype: Angry Charles, Vengeful and Lonely Diana, Aging Elizabeth. In this episode, everyone got to play a nuanced, interesting version of themselves and it paid off.

One more reason I enjoyed this episode: it was not lost on me that Prince Charles, a man who is father to two princes, suggested that his girlfriend Camilla hire a spin doctor to help her with her image. I’m not sure anyone who makes The Crown intended on that being an Easter Egg, but don’t worry everyone, I STILL FOUND IT.

In England, divorces require couples to submit an application for divorce, followed by a “reflection period” that often includes counseling, and then a “decree nisi” which allows the couple to legally finalize he dissolution of the marriage. This episode featured several “regular” couples as they await their own divorces, much like Charles and Diana, as they undergo the counseling process. In every case, it’s an emotional but final realization for them that their differences are irreconcilable. But also, as these interviews punctuate the episode, it’s impossible not to think that Nora Ephron is watching The Crown in heaven and wondering if she can get a co-write, because it’s totally When Harry Met Sally but with divorce. (I bet if we searched Philip’s carriage driving storage shed, we’d even find a wagon wheel coffee table.)

In the aftermath of Diana’s Panorama interview, the queen has realized that keeping Diana in the family is causing more harm than good. She agrees to allow the divorce to proceed, and pens a letter to them both to finalize it. Speaking of the Panorama interview, the immediate aftermath of it was pretty good for Diana, but as she discusses in a therapy session, over time “the winds changed.” Several people from her team, including her press secretary and her personal secretary, quit on her, and her boyfriend Dr. Hasnat Khan (at this point in real life he had been her boyfriend of two years, not quite the casual fling the show might have you believe), broke up with her, leaving her lonelier than ever.

Despite the fact that the queen is now allowing for the one thing that Charles and Diana have so desperately wanted for so long, they’re both sad about the failure of their marriage. Okay, Charles is more angry (as always). He whines (whinges) to Camilla on the phone about Diana’s huge financial request in their divorce settlement, to the tune of 35 million pounds. “God, that’s punchy,” Camilla says. Camilla is, for the record, taking this call while hiding in her bedroom, crouched on the floor. Now that her relationship with Charles is truly public knowledge, she’s getting a taste of life as a target of the paparazzi. Her treatment by the press and the constant intrusion – something Diana has already endured for nearly 20 years – is an outrage to Charles, who literally never seemed to give it a thought when it was happening to his actual wife. “I’m literally under siege,” she says. Literally, Camilla? “Literally.“

Charles suggests to Camilla that, in an effort to combat bad press, she meet with a PR guy he’s heard about. “A spin doctor?” she asks. Just go ahead now, Camilla! When she meets with him, she explains, “People forget, loving the Prince of Wales has cost me everything.” He encourages her to fully embrace her love for Charles, and push for marriage. It’s what she wants, after all this time, right? To legitimize her love for him and not be the butt of the joke anymore.

“The biggest single overnight improvement the Prince of Wales could make to his public image would be to resolve the divorce as swiftly ans as amicably as possible,” he says, while he and Camilla watch as the local police attempt to put a boot on her illegally parked car. Camilla is like, Diana’s car would never get towed. And her spin doctor is like, well, why not show your face to the police, show them that you, Camilla Parker-Bowles, the most famous other woman in the country, is the one who parked that car, maybe it’ll help! It’s then that Camilla regales him with all of the insults and cruelties she’s heard about herself since she became a household name. It’s true that no one should have to endure the kind of cruelty she faced, but again, this is what the press does, and it’s something Diana endured for decades, Camilla is just newer to it. Her spin doctor resolves to help her fix all of it.

The queen, realizing that Charles and Diana’s divorce settlement is becoming more acrimonious by the day, does something that feels wholly inappropriate of her to do, she asks the prime Minister, John Major, to mediate the divorce settlement, on account of him managing to achieve success in Northern Ireland and bring an end to the Troubles there. The real John Major has spoken out against, if not outright denounced, this season of The Crown for being “damaging and malicious fiction,” and there’s no evidence that Major did actually act as “umpire” to this divorce. However, the show, not having given him much else to do this season, makes him an excellent go between for the unhappy couple (despite the fact that his own marriage appears to be unhappy and unstable, but we barely spend time on that, we’re simply informed that his wife, Norma, is angry that he’s so busy and has no time for her). He appeals to both of them to come to agreeable terms. While Diana wants a hefty sum of money, Charles wants a promise of discretion and, basically, for Diana to just go quietly into the night. Heeding the advice of both Major and the spin doctor, Charles puts his anger aside and resolves the issue as quickly as possible. Because, if I may quote Harry Burns, since it only seems appropriate, “when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible,” and signing those divorce papers means he can start anew with Camilla ASAP.

When all is said and done, the queen of all people reminds Charles that nothing about this process was probably very easy for Diana. This brings us to what is likely to be the first and only real, human scene we’ve ever gotten between Charles and Diana on this show, one that I’m sure never happened in real life but it was an incredible roller coaster ride of emotion.

Charles arrives, unannounced, to Diana’s apartment at Kensington. “Honestly, I’m not quite sure why I’m here,” he tells her. “If I’d have known I would have put on a ‘revenge dress,'” she joked, acknowledging the ways the press spins her every move, her every outfit, into a jab at Charles. This opens the door for friendly banter. “Divorce clearly suits you,” Charles tells Diana as he munches on some very old nuts on a bowl by her door. Realizing that deez nuts are not actually meant for consumption, she offers to make him some food. They settle on eggs.

Now, this was the 1990s, well before we knew everything we know now about Teflon, so to watch Diana scrape a metal spatula across a nonstick frying pan is true to the era but I still couldn’t help but wince. She piles their plates with food and Charles gleefully gobbles it up, exclaiming, “Why doesn’t one eat scrambled eggs all the time!?” (Another fiction of the episode! Furious Googling led me to countless articles that claim that Charles much prefers soft-boiled eggs to any other kind.) “And why did we never eat in the kitchen before? Such fun!” he adds. Give me more of this Charles, jolly, and open to new egg-based experiences!

And then he ruins it all by asking Diana to give him a review, or rather, an autopsy, of their marriage, “no judgments, no arguments.” Diana explains that Charles never wanted to spend time alone with her, which he immediately judges and argues with. They both apologize for the way they behaved within the marriage, and you get the sense that these two crazy kids might just be able to be friends. And then Diana makes an off-the-cuff joke about how young she was, but that Charles was “never young, not even when you were young.” She instantly backtracks, realizing she was cruel, and Charles is riled by the criticism and brings up Diana’s Panorama interview, forcing her to explain what she meant when she said he was unfit to be king. “I only meant that being king would stop you from doing other things. Things that might actually make you happy. That you might be naturally more suited to,” They both know this is true, but he’s still defensive, saying, “I’m not naturally suited to being king? The thing I was born to do?! I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more quietly eviscerating.” She accuses him of twisting her words, and from there they cut each other down with the cruelest things they can think to say. Diana is left literally shaking as Charles declares, “I leave here liberated, and more certain than ever that only with you out of my life and out of this family can anyone find the happiness and the stability stability that has eluded us for sixteen years.”

As the (fictionalized) divorce proceedings conclude the episode, actual footage of Charles and Diana’s royal wedding is shown. The celebration, the hope it represented, were meant to be the dawn of a new era for Britain. The reality is that there was never a happily ever after, and no matter how hard anyone tried, not even a savvy PR machine could spin it otherwise.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.