'Bridgerton' Season 3 Is Fun, But I Can't Get Over This Plot Hole

Despite how much pleasure The Bridgerton Chronicles that is to say, it has always been a show played a little quickly and with minor details. Remember those weirdly bloodless hand-to-hand combat scenes in Season 1? Well, Season 3 took the theme of “Don’t worry too much about logistics” and continued to follow it.

Borderline plot hole this time? Lady Whistledown. Or, more precisely, whether or not it's possible for Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) to become her secret gossip columnist alter ego. Could she really get a complete issue of Lady Whistledown printed overnight? Could it be possible?

Mashable dug into Season 3, Part 1 and spoke with Jim Hamilton, vice president of the board of trustees at the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, Massachusetts, to find out.

What happens with Lady Whistledown in season 3?

Throughout Season 3, Penelope often appears to produce an issue of Lady Whistledown's society journal overnight. The pamphlets she writes in Episodes 1 and 2 appear to have been hastily scribbled in her room, after the ball, but we don't get full confirmation that they will be released the next day until Episode 5.

This episode begins with Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) driving Penelope into his house after the final dance to announce their engagement.

“Surprise is said to be both secret and quick,” Lady Whistledown’s narration explains. “And last night an announcement came very quickly. However it happened, it's surely a wonderful moment for the happy couple.”

The next shot is sunrise, and we see the same issue of Lady Whistledown being handed out, which Penelope's family can then be seen reading at breakfast while she listens to their reaction from the hallway.

Takeaway meals? Penelope had to go home that evening after Colin's proposal, write the entire issue, then sneak out of her house and smuggle it to the printer. They should then have created the brochure in time for its dawn distribution.

So the question is: would this have been possible?

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Could Penelope actually print an overnight issue of Lady Whistledown?

The Bridgerton Chronicles takes place in the early 19th century, Regency period in England. This means, according to Jim Henson of the Museum of Printing, that the printing press used to create an issue of Lady Whistledown would be a manual flat iron press.

“In some senses, yes, it could be done, but in other senses, it definitely can't,” Henson says. “It seems possible that the document could have been printed overnight, but that would be quite expensive, given that it would require the printer and staff to work through the night.”

Henson goes on to explain that each side of the sheet would be printed separately and would need time to dry before cutting or folding. Things like size, number of pages, and whether both sides of a page are printed would be important.

“These factors all play a role in how long the job takes. Suppose an operator and assistant could print a sheet every minute and the single sided sheet was the entire document, then they could produce several hundred copies overnight. next day. Assuming the person who dialed worked quickly enough.

The process becomes more credible, Henson says, if the document is just a single sided sheet. But we know, thanks to the many shots of Lady Whistledown read in the series, that it's bigger than that. In episode 5, for example, the problem appears to be made of a large piece of paper that is double-folded and written on both sides.

So, is Penelope's secret life really possible?

From my discussions with Henson, it seems that a short pamphlet could, with great effort, still be printed overnight, in the days when The Bridgerton ChroniclesIt's ready. But what makes this all harder to swallow, especially in Episode 5, is the timeline.

When Penelope arrives at the Bridgerton house, it is already dark, and has been for a while. She then spends time talking to Colin's family, and it's not until she's finally back home that she can even to start write the number. If she writes the whole thing in an hour – which seems like an exaggeration – then she has to sneak downstairs, get in a carriage and drive to the printing works on the other side of the Ton.

Are we really supposed to believe that the people working in the store would then have had time to produce all those copies of a double-sided issue and distribute it in time for breakfast the next day?

Dear reader, we just aren't sure.

How to watch: The Bridgerton Chronicles Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.