**Spoilers**
If you have not yet seen this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.
"And you should take it into further consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you."
What a charmer...
David Bamber is the quintessential Mr. Collins. Nobody before him so perfectly managed to capture the mix of arrogance and self-abasement that this character ascribes to and now that he has played the role, nobody else can even compete.
In this episode, Mr. Bennet's cousin (the aforementioned Mr. Collins) arrives for a visit. He is the man guilty of the truly heinous crime of being the relative to which the estate of Longbourn is entailed, and so he has decided to make amends by marrying one of the Bennet girls. He's not particular as to which one. After finding out that Jane is already taken, he just continues on down the line and latches on Lizzie. Lucky girl...
Mr. Collins is really the highlight of this episode, particularly in the way that Bamber plays off of all the other actors. He gives us a toadying, bumbling, self-centered, patronizing clergyman who is utterly obsessed with his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh and who has almost no original thought outside of what she has told him. I would not want to sit under his sermons, let me tell you!
There is competition for the affections of Elizabeth Bennet, though, as no sooner does Mr. Collins arrive on the scene then a dashing young officer named George Wickham also comes to town. Wickham is a charming cad, a romantic rogue, a simpering, smirking, handsome, conniving man who wastes no time in weaseling his way into Lizzie's affections by detecting and exploiting her willful feud with Mr. Darcy. In these early episodes (particularly if you haven't seen/read the story before) Wickham seems the very picture of wronged goodness. He seems like the everyman hero who is put down and crushed by life and yet pulls himself up by the bootstraps every time. Mr. Collins is utterly blown out of the water. He cannot compete with Wickham in Lizzie's eyes, though he certainly tries.
Really the climax of the episode comes with the Netherfield ball where Darcy finally gives in to his feelings and asks Elizabeth to dance in quite possibly the best scene of the entire miniseries.
Then the day after the ball, Mr. Collins (doubtlessly feeling the pressure from both Wickham and Darcy) proposes to her in a scene that is as uncomfortable and infuriating as it is hilarious. He manages to insult pretty much everything about her and then has the audacity to let her know that he is proposing, not because he loves her, but because Lady Catherine de Bourgh feels that he should find a wife. Then, when Lizzie turns him down, he smirks at her and assumes that she is merely playing coy and hard to get in order to further inflame his 'love' for her. Pardon me while I gag.
The episode ends with Lizzie's father staunchly refusing to make her marry Mr. Collins and Charlotte Lucas (Lizzie's best friend) swooping in to save the day by inviting the spurned lover to dine with her family.
5/5
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