Any other Downton Abbey fans?

[angus]

Ha!  I saw Downton Abbey calendars at the Dollar Tree today!  Well, okay, it was more of a daily planner.  One of those spiral bound affairs with this picture on the front.  It was sealed in cellphane so I couldn't tell what the pages look like, but it seemed pretty well made.  I didn't buy it.  I was in the market for a calendar, but all they had for real wall calendars were Angry Birds, Beaches, Mother Nature's Treasures, Harley Davidson, and Puppies.  I was looking for some well-known artist.  Last year we got a nice Salvador Dali calendar.  May is Sleep.  July is the metamorphosis of Narcissus.  Very nice.  One year I got a nice M. C. Escher calendar.  I was hoping they'd have van Gogh or at least some cheesy Monet calendar.  I guess I'm gonna have to cough up more than a dollar for a decent calendar.  I'd probably have gone in for the Downton Abbey if it were a real wall calendar instead of the spiral-bound daily planner.

[angus]

Last night it came on at 9PM, to my surprise.  It was a long episode.  Two hours.  I'd seen it before but I was glad I watched because I'd forgotten some things.  Matthew and Richard got into a fistfight.  Mary broke up with Richard.  Mary was going to live with her maternal grandmother in New York to escape the dead Turk scandal but then Matthew asked her to stay.  And marry him!  (That creepy incest just keeps rearing its ugly head.)  John got sentenced to hang, but later Robert wrote a nice letter to the The Most Serene Lord High Executioner or whatever and got it reduced to life imprisonment.  I developed a theory about who killed his old lady, and why, but I'll keep it to myself till I see some more.  Thomas is scheming to get John's position.  He seems to have gained Robert's trust, but not Carson's.  I think Carson is my favorite character.  I've also come to like Violet more and more.

Interesting tidbit related to another thread:  when it was over they did a "making of Downton Abbey" thing.  I got up to turn it off because I'm really not much interested in its making, but in the few seconds it was on I heard the announcer say something about "July of two thousand and eleven."  Just like that:  "Two thousand and eleven."  In American English that would be gramatically incorrect, if you wanted to say 2011 you'd say "two thousand eleven" and not "two thousand and eleven."  This announcer had a thick English accent, more than the characters on the show even, so maybe that's the way they say the years in England.  For all I know that may be correct in English English to say "two thousand and eleven."  Anyway, as obvious in the other thread yankees generally say "twenty eleven" in any event. 

I think that might have been the last episode of the previous season.  Not sure though.  They're advertising a new series of episodes called "Season Three." 

[Simfan34]

That was the Christmas special. Damn. Didn't know it was going to be on.

And stop calling him John. I only know him by "Mr. Bates". Also, I think you're wrong about you're theory. I'd tell you more, but then I'd give it away. PM your theory.

[angus]

"Mr. Bates"

Mister Bates.  That name was was probably made up to make you giggle.  You like it don't you?  I'll stick with John.  That's what Anna and I call him. 

I'd imagine that you can watch any of the later episodes entirely on pbs.org.  I haven't looked, but that's where I go when I miss the NewsHour, and every time I visit the pbs website there's an annoyingly huge banner for Downton Abbey advertising everything from a "sneak preview" of the new episode to interviews to some contest you can enter to win a trip to the place where they make the show.  Poke around in there and you'll probably be able to link to the episode. 

I'm going to hang on to my theory a bit, in case it's way off base.  Anyway, they're advertising a new episode in less than a week, so we'll learn more soon enough. 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

All in the Family

A remake of a vastly superior British sitcom.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What? Al likes something I like?

The socialist opera or one of the TV progammes mentioned?

[angus]

All in the Family

A remake of a vastly superior British sitcom.

I had read that.  Well, not the "vastly superior" part, but a re-tooled re-make.  Can't think of the name of the show now.  Actually, I read it all as a child in my Weekly Reader from elementary school.  I've never seen the show on which All in the Family was based, but since All in the Family is a re-make of it, I have no doubt that the original was probably better.  It's always like that.  Especially with movies.  There was a perfectly good Batman, then they come along and soil my memory of it with some new age trash.  Doctor Zhivago?  A well-done mid-1960s movie redone in 2002 as a shallow, annoying mini which doesn't allow us to connect with anyone.  King Kong?  Faye Ray was outstanding, but that bimbo they found on some streetcorner in the seedy pre-Giuliani Manhattan was such a vampire.  (To add insult to injury, it was redone yet again, although I never watched the most recent one.)  Same with some perfectly legitimate 60s sitcoms like Get Smart and The Beverly Hillbillies.  I don't know why Hollywood feels the need to recycle everything.  And don't get me started on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  The eccentric and creepy Gene Wilder did a fine job portraying that pederast Willie Wonka, and Veruca Salt was everyone's fifth-grade enemy, but then some film studio executive comes along and decides to cast that ultra-effeminate Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. He's better suited to portraying a blade-fingered hair dresser.  Leave it alone.  

[Simfan34]

"Mr. Bates"

Mister Bates.  That name was was probably made up to make you giggle.  You like it don't you?  I'll stick with John.  That's what Anna and I call him. 

What? Al likes something I like?

The socialist opera or one of the TV progammes mentioned?

The works of the composer of the opera.

[Simfan34]

What did we think?

[memphis]

I liked episode 1. Two hours is too long to make me sit, especially with no commercial breaks for bathroom or fridge grazing,  but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Bringing in the British vs. American thing is pretty darn fun, though it is rather exaggerated. Not like Americans were so interested in embracing change either. It was the age of the return to normalcy, the KKK, and isolationism.

[tmthforu94]

I thoroughly enjoyed it - still disappointed they call him Mister Bates instead of Master Bates, though.

[angus]

I was a bit disappointed.  Probably it wasn't poorly done, but there was so much hype.  Until about a week ago I didn't know that anyone besides me even watched the show.  All of a sudden, there's a thread here, and I start to notice Downton Abbey calendars at the Dollar Tree, and on Sunday morning the Lancaster Intelligencer--I've been receiving a copy of the sunday paper for about four months now.  Not sure why.  I never asked for it and no one asks for any money, but ever sunday there's a thick wad of paper in a bag--the paper devoted at least nine pages to the show.  And not just in the TV section.  In the Alive section there were all these stories about it, and interviews with actors and directors and even watchers, along with some sort of contest in which you could win travel to the mansion where the show is filmed.  They said Shirley McClain's character would be bawdy and brash and the center of attention.  She's probably the biggest name they have ever had on that show, and she has given stunning performances alongside Clint Eastwood, Jack Lemmon, Fred McMurray, and the like.  But last night she was like a piece of toast.  Even stuffy old Violet was a more colorful character than the woman McClain played.  And Robert acted as if someone had his balls in a vice.  Sure, I can understand the fear of poverty among the leisure class.  We constantly listen to opebo bitch and whine and moan about it here, but he didn't even have the guts to stand up for anyone.  He made two apologies--count 'em, two--in as many hours.  Last season's Robert wouldn't have acted like such a weenie.

On the other hand, there was character development.  Lots of it.  Maybe that's what they were trying to do with this episode.  Sometimes serials feel the need to do this, and it's important.  There was certainly tension, and lots of it.  The most obvious was that between Mary and Matthew.  (Those two were portrayed very stereotypically, to no disappointment.  Matthew the boy scout, a sort of Hank Hill character who'd run fifty miles to return a shilling if someone gave him too much change.  Mary the ever-efficient, calculating, strong-willed princess determined to outlive the very gods who created her.  That tension was good and wholesome, and, although expected, superbly done.)  Also, I think we got to see a side of John Bates which had been hidden.  The jarring moment in which he clutched his cellmate's neck in his bare hands gave me pause to doubt his innocence.  Prior to that, I was as convinced as his fellow servants and masters of his wrongful conviction.  I sort of like the new sinister John Bates.  He was always so secretive about so many things.  Maybe more of his colorful past will come to light in the coming episodes.

Thomas was in fine form.  Vile, handsome, and conniving, and best of all, he finally got a little taste of his own medicine.  Be honest, you know you liked it when he was the object of trickery.

I'm not entirely sold on Edith's betrothal.  I know she is getting on in years, and has a face like a gibbon, and can be a bit clingy, but I still say a rich girl like her could do better than a handicapped sextegenarian.  I wonder if the producers are really going to marry her off to that codger.

Maybe Mrs. Hughes is quitting the show.  She seems to be cancerous, although we don't know for sure.  It's an easy way to kill her off quietly.  Usually that sort of thing happens when an actor gives notice of resignation.  I'm glad Mrs. Patmore isn't the one with cancer.  She's one of my favorites. 

Overall, I'd judge it to be a set-up piece.  Lots of moments of character-building tension, and not without humor.  Perhaps next week they'll settle in a bit. 

[memphis]

Angus, keep in mind how many men were six feet under after the war. All things considered, I think Edith has done pretty well for herself. My biggest wtf moment was learning that Robert had invested almost all his money in one thing. You'd think somebody who devoted his entire life to ensuring the continuity of Downton would not have made such a juvenile mistake.

[angus]

Angus, keep in mind how many men were six feet under after the war.

She did mention that specifically.  Sure, Anthony is a decent fellow.  Kind, honest, dutiful, socially aware, financially secure, and all that.  It's just that he'll probably die when she's still young enough and horny enough to have lots of babies.  Do you remember how Robert set him up in the first season?  (Hint:  "Anthony Strallan is at least my age and as dull as paint.  I doubt she'd want to sit next to him at dinner, let alone marry him."  To be fair, he was referring to Mary when he said this.  Anthony had been invited over in 1914 not long after Mr. Pamuk died in Mary's bed and Mary's mother wanted to marry her off before before any scandal arose from that sordid bit of history.)

You'd think somebody who devoted his entire life to ensuring the continuity of Downton would not have made such a juvenile mistake.

yes, that was a moment of suspension of disbelief for me as well.  I suspect that this, like Bates' outburst, was a character-development ploy.  We may be learning of the frailties and follies of men just as we are learning how strong the women around them really are.  At that time, great changes were about.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Was the wedding the end of the episode on British TV?  If it didn't, I think it should have. It seemed like the end of a chapter, but then it immediately picked up again a month later. 

[angus]

It seemed like the end of a chapter, but then it immediately picked up again a month later.  

Actually, the wedding was toward the end of a chapter.  Last night's two-hour episode comes in seven chapters, and the scene featuring the wedding was in chapter 4, called "The Big Day in Question."  The wedding itself occupied the last two or three minutes of a 21-minute chapter.  The "month later" part to which you refer must be the segment wherein Matthew and Mary show up in their green roadster after their honeymoon.  That is actually the beginning of chapter 5, "The Art of Persuasion."  

Speaking of the wedding, that was one of the very foreign parts.  At least the procession through the streets seemed so.  Mostly English films don't seem so foreign.  Certainly not in the way Chinese movies and Italian movies seem foreign.  Sure the English people talk funny, but not any weirder than they do in Louisiana or the upper peninsula of Michigan.  Just another dialect of English, but English nevertheless.  But the procession leading up to the wedding was one (of several moments) that I found distinctly foreign.  Not as foreign as a Chinese wedding, but foreign still, both temporally and spatially.  Very medieval.  Peons and villagers waving the pendants of their estate masters, wishing them well.  It's the sort of thing you'd expect in pre-Terror France or Jagiellon Poland, I suppose, but more than a little jarring to see it in Flapper-era England, especially as it involves characters that I've come to know as well as I know Boomhauer and Dale and Bill, but I suppose they did their research.  

[memphis]

I like Lord Grantham less every day. You'd think a man who had to marry a rich girl just to keep his estate from going broke would know the value of a dollar pound. And yet, he doesn't. He invested most of his fortune in one thing, the worst of all financial moves. It's bad enough that he's completely unwilling to adapt to the times. Now we've learned that he's not managing the estate well either.  Hire a financial manager if necessary.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

What's that little thing Bates' roommate hid under his bed?

[angus]

What's that little thing Bates' roommate hid under his bed?

It was a razor or some other pointy implement.

It's dawned upon me what an interminably dull show this is. A glorified soap opera, and it's correspondingly bad. All the men seem simultaneously prepossessed with their "honor" and "dignity" as we see with Matthew refusing to take the money, or Robert's subsequent refusal to just sell the rotting old house to him. Then we have Mary trying to take that money to prop themselves up, the dowager being a batty old hag... are all these characters designed to be completely loathsome? They're incredibly flat and irritating and just stacked on top of each other to make the show look complex. I have no idea how I bore this show for so long.

A shank wrapped in a cloth.  

Not complex, they're shallow people.  That's the appeal.  I don't think they're loathesome, though.  They're like Truman in the Truman show.  They have relatively few choices in life and someone is always watching them and planning things for them.  I think if you're very rich or very poor you have a set of pre-defined duties.  It's hard for modern, middle-class folks to relate to that.  

The servants are more complex and have generally had more interesting tales to tell.  We also relate to them more.  At least I do.  These folks have had choices in life, and they often reflect on the ones that they have made.  Carson and Mrs. Hughes have both had reflections, and one servant was impregnated by a soldier and later became a prostitute, choosing at first not to relinquish the child to its paternal grandparents but later choosing to do so.  Also, one maid decided to quit the life of a maid and to become a typist or secretary.  Without any focus on the servant class (which would evolve into a growing middle class in subsequent decades), it might be a flat show.  

I still like Violet, the batty old hag.  I suppose she's the only one of the aristocratic characters that I really like.  She doesn't hold back.  Also, she's a beggar.  A rich one, but still a beggar.  It is in her character that we get a glimpse into the horror of a people who have not ever been taught any marketable skills when they are faced with possible financial disruption.  She will live forever.

[memphis]

Sybil has made an interesting choice in her life too. Being a nurse in the Great War wasn't an easy thing for her to do. And running away with the chaffeur was incredibly gutsy. Cora strikes me as the flattest character of all, but she has a small backstory already, as the nouveau riche American bride to the British aristocrat. Her personality could be fleshed out pretty easily should the writers choose to do so.  The show is a soap opera, but I can live with that. The historic setting, beautiful cinematography, and snarky writing make it well worth my time. I'm sincerely interested to know what's to come of these people. British posters, thanks very much for not spoiling it for us Americans. I know it's all old news already for you guys. Anybody know why they've chosen to delay it for us?

[angus]

Anybody know why they've chosen to delay it for us?

copyright laws, probably.  Same as when the 1978 season of Johnny Carson would play in 1979 in England, etc.  PBS buys the show from ITV but with the agreement of airing one episode per week beginning at a certain date.  If you go to PBS.org you can only watch episodes that have already run on PBS.  You can watch the first 3 episodes of season 3, for example, but you cannot watch episodes 4 through 7.  You can, however, watch a preview of episode 4.  It's nice that they have the episodes on-line.  I wasn't able to watch the second episode until a week after it aired, so I ended up watching episodes 2 and 3 back-to-back.  It's only for a limited time, though, so if you miss an episode don't wait to long to watch it on line.  The second season episodes have all been removed.  That may also be part of the agreement between PBS and ITV.

[angus]

Shocking last night.  It is weird that the only one of the three sisters who isn't either bossy or vindictive is the one they killed.  Maybe she got a better deal somewhere else.  Weird, though, it would have been easy enough to write her out.  Let her move to Ireland.  Or if Tom still wanted to be in the show, let Sybil be incarcerated in a prison in Ireland or something, that way the character can remain, in spirit, but the actress can go off and do her own thing.  Killing her off was quite a surprise, although they built it up well.  Not that killing characters off is unusual.  NYPD Blue did it all the time.  Folks came and went.  And being a cop show you'd think they would take the obvious and easy method to kill them off, but the writers were pretty clever about it.  Simone's body rejected a transplanted heart, for example.  Maybe the actress who played Sybil really pissed somebody off.  Or, maybe this was all intentional and written from the beginning, in which case they should dredge up the Ouija board that the maids play with sometimes.  That'd be a clever twist to keep her in the show. 

memphis, you mentioned that Sybil's mother was the flattest character.  I didn't agree at the time, and I certainly don't now.  She was hardly flat in last night's episode, although she seems to have gone a bit frigid.  I don't think she'll be allowing the Earl any favors anytime soon.

Speaking of The Earl, he was predictably ineffectual.  I never liked him much to begin with, and I'm liking him less and less in each episode.  I still like the characters of the working class folks better than the leisure class folks.  I did the first time I watched it, and still do.  I don't know whether that was intentional, but their characters display a broad range of emotions and circumstances and they're just more likeable than their masters, and in the current season this is even more true.  Anna and John Bates' story remains the most interesting twist.  Also, my original theory about who killed Very and why seems to be gaining credibility.  At the time I thought she'd killed herself as revenge.  Sort of like, "if I can't have him, then no one else will."  Also, when she last talked to the newspaper editor she made grave threats against the family.  That was about the only threat she could really make good on, given that she was legally bound not to sell the Mr. Pamuk story to anyone else.  If you recall, it was John's admission to a theft that Vera committed that got him into prison in the first place.  It seems that his love for her was, at one time, real, although in the end it was destroyed.  She later told a judge a lie in order to get their divorce annulled.  Or whatever you call it when a divorce is made void.  I still think she probably killed herself for spite, pity, or vengeance.  We'll see...

[Hash]

Sybil's death was really tragic. I kind of had a bad feeling about it throughout the episode, because there's extensive signposting in every show about what is about to happen and it became obvious pretty quickly that something was wrong with her. Then you had a brief glimmer of hope when she delivered well, but then they signposted her fate with her last conversation with Cora. Still, tragic. She was by far the most likable of the three sisters, though I like the two others more than in the first season.

Lord Grantham is an interesting character, it's hard not to like him because he's a genuinely good and caring man; but at the same time he's clearly a reactionary and retains a bit of a stuck-up aristocratic style which he showed by being a dick to Clarkson and choosing the aristocratic stuck-up doctor who was full of sh**t. So, I don't hate him as a villain like others seem to, though I don't love him.

(ftr, I've seen the entire third season and the 2012 xmas special, but I won't spill the beans except to say that it stays good until the end)

[Simfan34]

That wasn't expected. What a shame.

[memphis]

The people who create this show clearly enjoy killing nice people. First William, then Livonia, now Sybil. Meanwhile,  Thomas and Violet will live forever. I'm interested to see where the subplot with Mrs. Crawley and Ethel is going.