Diksha Sundriyal
In Showtime’s ‘Patrick Melrose,’ Benedict Cumberbatch plays the titular character who flows through life mostly high and completely out of his mind. On the surface, he looks like a spoiled brat who doesn’t care about anything, including his own life, but as the layers start to peel off and Patrick is forced to take stock of his situation, it turns out that his past is the one chaining him to the pain and grief that he tries to alleviate with drugs and alcohol. But it’s one thing to do all that you have no one to answer to and another entirely when your children are in the picture.
When Patrick becomes a family man and has his own kids, he realizes that he might be stuck in a toxic pattern that has been passed down through generations of his family. Unwittingly, he is conforming to the same thing and passing it on to his children. To stop that from happening, he must address the darkness within himself and separate himself from his parents, lest he turn into them in one way or another.
Patrick Finally Breaks His Parents’ Pattern
“Sometimes those who deserve the most blame also deserve the most compassion.” Patrick hears these words from Annette, the woman who now called their summer home in Provence her home after it was given away by his mother, Eleanor, to the Foundation, led by a man named Seamus, whom Patrick abhorred. This is over a call where she tells him that Nick Pratt, his godfather and his father’s close friend, has passed away after having a heart attack at Eleanor’s wake. With Nick gone, it marks the end of an era as Patrick realizes he was the last of his father’s circle to pass away. He had been at every funeral and wake that Patrick had attended in the past few years, starting with his father’s funeral. Every time, there would be someone who would tell Patrick how great a man his father, David, was. They would go on and on about his greatness, never knowing what David had done to Patrick. But in Nick’s case, and even in Eleanor’s, things were a bit different.
Patrick was not the only kid that David had abused all those years ago. At one point, Eleanor tells Mary about a girl who had once visited their Provence home with her family and later wrote letters to her about how David had abused her. The girl forgave Eleanor for not intervening or being entirely clueless about what was going on in her home. Even then, Eleanor refuses to accept what she, on some level, knew was the truth. This is why, when Patrick eventually tells her that he was raped by David, she is not shocked or outraged. Her reaction is disappointingly resigned, as she says, “Me too.”
It is horrible for Patrick to discover that his mother probably knew what was going on, and she never did anything to protect him. Rather, she frequently left him alone with David and found ways to get herself out of the situation by throwing her son to the wolf. But she wasn’t the only one. For someone to have known David his entire life, it would make sense that Nick, too, on some level, knew what was going on. The way he looks at Patrick when he visits Provence with Bridget shows that he has some idea of David’s cruelty. Maybe he didn’t outright know about the sexual abuse, but he did know that there was some sort of abuse going on. And he did nothing to stop it. Worse, he continued to sing songs of David’s greatness long after the man was dead and never admitted his own complicity in the crime.
With Nick gone, it seems that the last person who knew about the abuse and let it happen is gone. All the questions that haunt Patrick about these people and why they did nothing to help him, especially his mother, now become somewhat meaningless because there is no one left to direct his rage toward. What he is left with is a complex sense of grief, love, pain, and relief of finally being done with all those people and being constantly reminded of the consequences of their inaction. And in some ways, it feels like a clean slate.
Patrick had tried to get clean, get his life together, and be the father to his children that he never had, but because he hadn’t yet fully processed his own trauma, he still struggled with all of that. Due to this, his marriage broke down, and he couldn’t fully connect with his children the way he wished to. In the end, however, he comes to a fork in the road where he has to decide whether he should continue with the life he has been living for so long or should he finally take a stand for himself, break the pattern and choose his family.
According to his previous pattern, at the wake, Patrick sets his eyes on a waitress and gets her number. Once home, he plans to call her, but by then, the thing with Nick happens. When he reaches home, he gets a call from Annette, and she tells him about blame and compassion. More than for his mother, Nick, and even his father, these words resonate with Patrick himself, which is when he decides not to call the waitress and instead takes up the offer for dinner proposed by Mary and his kids. Does this mean that he will get back together with Mary? Probably not.
Too much has happened between them, and it will take a lot of time for Mary to trust that Patrick will not fall back into his patterns, something she has seen repeatedly. She wouldn’t want to jeopardize the stability she has found for her children. But that doesn’t mean she is not willing to give Patrick a chance. Even when he had single-handedly ruined their marriage, she held compassion for him, something that he probably never had for himself, and was there for him every step of the way, encouraging him to walk out of the toxicity that he had been pushed into by his parents and the people around him. So, yes, Patrick will have the chance to be a good father to his children and be part of a family he should have had as a kid. He and Mary don’t necessarily need to get back together for it.
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