As 'Belgravia: The Next Chapter' Continues, Clara Makes Some Ill Advised Choices

Anyone who's still watching Belgravia: The Next Chapter probably has to be asking the same question at this point in the series: What on earth are we doing here? Five episodes into its run, it really shouldn't be this hard to identify the series' primary thesis, or to figure out what kind of story it's trying to tell. Instead, five episodes on, the show seems to do little besides grow increasingly bloated, adding on subplots with abandon and repeatedly forgetting that in order to care about what happens to these people we at least have to like some of them.

The trouble in the Trenchards' marriage keeps worsening, for reasons that are, honestly, ridiculous at this point. Clara keeps trying to get Frederick to open up to her, but he won't talk about his estrangement from James, his dead parents, or why he's so obsessed with his increasing business dealings when they're already both titled and rich. Even his one attempt at an apology ends up coming out like he's more concerned about whether the Rochesters will think he and Clara are fighting than he is about understanding what's making his wife so unhappy.

Clara, for her part, is making her own fun, repeatedly dragging poor Davison along to the apartment of Dr. Ellerby and his Bohemian friends. They're beneath her socially and Davison is constantly on edge that someone is going to notice that her ladyship is slumming it, but at this point, Clara doesn't really seem to care. She's all in on poetry readings and artist talk and secretly seems to love it when Ellerby's roommate Richard keeps asking for a chance to paint her. On some level, it's hard to blame her. She's young and lonely and doesn't have any friends that weren't Frederick's friends first. And while she could probably hang out more with her own family, her sister is also the insufferable Emily, so maybe the wannabe Moulin Rouge crew is actually the better choice.