Any other Downton Abbey fans?

[angus]

Anybody else?

I watched that show regularly for a long time.  I don't usually get into soap operas, but it's actually fairly interesting.  The characters are well-developed.  I stumbled onto it one night, musta been early in the show's development.  Some really stuffy folks were sitting around and moping over the bad news that some relatives had been killed on the Titanic.  I had assumed it was yet another Titanic documentary, but with vignettes, so I watched.  Turned out it was a soap opera.  Of course, I had to tune in next week, same Bat time, same Bat Channel.  You know how those things are.  I guess I watched all that season and the next.  I even rushed back to the hotel one Sunday evening when I was in Boston on a work-related trip just to see an episode, lest I miss something important.  That was the episode when Willy got killed trying to stick himself between Matthew and some exploding German ordinance.  I'd assumed that they were going to kill Matthew off, but instead they just made him a paraplegic for a couple of episodes.  Now, he's got his hard-on back.  I guess everyone wants to know if he's going to bag his cousin.  My US sensibilities are torn between being grossed out by the incest common among English snobs and just wanting him to go ahead and do it.  After all, the sexual tension that the directors have been building up for a couple of years shouldn't be wasted.  

Now they're advertising another season.  Comes on at a weird time here.  Used to be on Sundays at 9ish in Iowa.  Here it's like Saturday at midnight or something.  Don't know if I'll watch it as often.  

[angus]

I've always found it interesting that British television seems to be a lot more political than American television (I'm thinking of this show, which while essentially a soap opera, is still one that very clearly raises political issues that no American soap opera ever would, as well as other British series, like Our Friends in the North or even comedies like Yes Minister or In the Thick of It). We don't really have anything comparable in the United States, with maybe the exception of Mad Men. And then in the Oughts we had The West Wing of course, but that's about it.

Jeezus.  Who in the hell would want that?  I'm not familiar with the shows you name--well, I've heard of West Wing and Yes Minister, but can't say I've set through an entire episode of either, and I don't know anything of the other shows you mention.  All I can say is that the LAST thing I want to see when I sit down to a fiction is politics.  Thankfully, there's precious little of it in Downton Abbey.  Sure, there's that Irish driver and his Lady, both of whom were fairly political--of course he snatched the Lady from her papa, but the snatching has more to do with the sort of interpersonal relationships you find in any pulp fiction than it has to do with politics--but the bulk of it doesn't seem much like politics.  Policy, maybe, and some careful conniving.  That old bitch Violet, who turns out to be the most likable character of the lot, understands how to move people around.  This isn't abject politics.  It's just about alpha mammals getting the better of the lesser members of their species, and in that sense it's no different than a Discovery Channel special about the chimps of Gombe.  These English apes may dress better, but the way the beta members of the tribe comb and bow to the alpha members isn't any different than the African apes.  I think you're reading far, far too much into the show.  That, or you're watching that blonde bimbo introduce it.  Man, she pisses off.  She made me miss one episode one night.  I tuned in at my regular time, only to find this bimbo who was in a couple of episodes of Frasier talking about women's rights and such.  I thought, "Oh, hell, they're doing some special tonight instead of my usual soap opera" so I turned the channel.  After a while I turned back and found that it was playing.  Apparently PBS had hired her to "introduce" each episode.  After that I made it a point to tune in about five minutes late, so I wouldn't have to hear her blathering on about it and overanalyzing it.  You gotta stop listening to that dribble.  It's nonsense.

[angus]

All of that's gone now (alas), but work produced during this 'classic' period defines what most people regard as good telly, which means that it continues to have an influence of sorts over current output. In particular it means that writers are almost expected to address social themes and relevant political issues.

Actually, there was always plenty of political stuff on US television.  I had to sit through all that stuff growing up, since my parents were into that sort of stuff and since 40 years ago there weren't as many televisions and not as many channels.  For example, there were five of us:  Mama, Daddy, and three children, but only 2 televisions.  And those two televisions received between 4 and 12 channels, depending upon circumstances.  Now, there are only three of us, myself, my wife, and my son, and we have 4 televisions, and each of those televisions receives over 200 channels.  Anyway, my brother usually commanded one of the televisions, and he was into The Rifleman and Gunsmoke and such, which held little appeal, so the only other option was to watch with Mama and Daddy.  They were into deeply political television.  I had to sit through M*A*S*H, Barney Miller, All in the Family, Saturday Night Live, etc.  Plenty of political stuff on US television, despite Leif's inability to find or recognize it.  Once I became a grown-up with my own TV, I no longer have to watch any of the political stuff, and I don't. 

Of course, the best way to deal with sensitive issues is with morality plays, not with politics.  Star Trek, the original series, and to some extent The Next Generation were groundbreaking in this regard.  The decline of religious observance in society, homosexuality, interracial coupling, medical malpractice, the debate over the existence of the soul, and physician-assisted suicide were all dealt with in those programs, in subtle and clever ways. 

My suspicion is that in the US (and probably the UK), folks nowadays want shallower fare.  The world is scary enough as it is, without putting all that profound analysis on display.  For those who enjoy serious examinations of sensitive social issues, whether through the lens of politics or through morality plays, you have to seek out movies, as prime-time dramas and sitcoms are simply shallow.  I'm no expert on this as I rarely watch the prime-time garbage, but based on what I have seen, and from comments by posters here, this seems to be the case in the US and at least to some extent in the UK.  As it turns out, though, it isn't really necessary that prime-time television directors produce such programs.  At the push of a button on my remote, my addressable converter goes into address mode.  I can select from tens of thousands of titles.  I can watch sports, westerns, Chinese movies, French movies, any genre I want.  We're not so dependent upon the television studio executives any more to present morality plays or political studies.

I think the program in question has some of the morality element, and some politics, but not so much that it's distracting.  It does not seem to want to make judgments.  It merely presents a fiction, in a sometimes dramatic, sometimes amusing way.  And the character development is really amazing.  (Not as amazing as King of the Hill, but then that's a cartoon, and you can do more with cartoons.  Also, KOTH has been running for more seasons.)  Still, I find great metamorphoses occurring.  There have been great surprises.  Characters I once found vulgar and now endearing.  Characters I once found stuffy are now charming.  And some that I found likable are now wretched.  Character development is a big thing with me.  As for the costumes, I'm no expert.  I don't know whether they're well done or not.  I'll take others' word for it.  I have no idea how authentic they are, and I don't really care.  You could put Carson in Captain Picard's uniform and I'd be okay with that, so long as you don't alter his stern yet endearing avuncular character. 

[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." 

[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. 

[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.  

[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. 

[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.

[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.  

[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.

[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...

[angus]

Sybil's death was really tragic.

good choice of words.  It was exactly tragic in the sense of the greek plays of antiquity.  There was a moment when Robert, out of stupidity, arrogance, or both, sealed her fate.  He was reduced to a mumbling fool, "How can this be?  She's only 24.  This cannot be."  I suppose you're right about his character being genuinely caring, at least as caring as an Englishman can be, and the actor does a fine job portraying it, but he's a dinosaur of a man.  An elitist holdover from the middle ages.  He's incompetent, foolish, and a poor manager who survives on the charity of others.  We also found out that he's a bigot, but then I don't think that his attitude was particularly uncommon among the those of his caste and place and time.  Although that fact mitigates his attitudes somewhat, I do find it very hard to like him.  I do like the show, however.  And my favorite character, Carson, seems to like him very much.  Almost the way a child admires a father or a pre-Classic mesoAmerican field worker admires the gods who bring them rain.

Thomas crying was sort of weird for me.  I don't know what to make of him.  He's too shrewd and opportunistic, but they show him having a soul from time to time.  He seems to have the hots for the new footman.  I'd like to see him get laid, because I think he'll be much less uptight if that happens, but I don't think the affection is mutual.  The footman strikes me as a ladies' man.

[angus]

I have learned that eclampsia occurs in about 1 out of every 3,000 pregnancies. The following increase a woman's chance for experiencing eclampsia:

    Being 35 or older

    Being of African descent

    History of diabetes, high blood pressure, or kidney disease

    Multiple pregnancies (twins, triplets, etc.)

    Teenage pregnancy

As far as I can tell, none of those conditions apply to Sybil. 

It seems a very unlikely conceit for the writers to have employed.  Moreover, I've been reading that even a hundred years ago, some treatment for seizures would have been utilized for such a patient.  Magnesium sulfate has been around since 1906 and has since been proven to be a superior medication.  It is cheap, cost-effective, relatively easy to administer, and something that almost any physician in 1920 would like have had on hand or could have delivered on short order.  Both of her physicians stood by, presumably powerless, while the many members of Sybil's family cried desperately for help.  By that point even the arrogant London physician understood the problem but all he said was something to effect of not being able to control nature.  It's quite a stretch.

That actress must have really pissed off some producer. 

[angus]

...don't want the whole reason ruined as a result...

...I was nearly in tears when it occurred...

... I can barely stand to wait another week!

Dude, it's a TV show.  One that we like, but still just a show.  Get some perspective.  And a life.

[angus]

...don't want the whole reason ruined as a result...

...I was nearly in tears when it occurred...

... I can barely stand to wait another week!

Dude, it's a TV show.  One that we like, but still just a show.  Get some perspective.  And a life.

I think that was sarcasm.

ahahaha.  Yeah, I was sort of thinking that as well, and I was giving Tmthforu94 a chance to say something about being called black by a pot, or whatever.  Stategery. 

It was also a concise recap of the whole thread, tongue-in-cheek.  Excellent of him to post it. 

[angus]

Does anyone here think Ethel is going to last long as a maid in Isobel Crawley's house?  

Isobel is very strange in that setting.  In modern times she would be "normal."  In 21st century USA terms, she's the stereotypical compulsive interfering Jewish mother.  Not afraid to say the word prostitute among polite company, and even hire one.  And definitely not afraid to let her boy know when he's being a wanker.  I didn't like her much at first, but she's grown on me.  I suppose such a character would have existed in any generation, but in a time and place when the world was meant to have been divided into servants and masters, a third way alternative, blissfully willful and unconcerned with the oppressive decorum that kept so many people in their places, seems a bit out of place.  Still, she livens things up a bit.

I don't know whether Ethel will last, but I'm sort of hoping Isobel does.

[angus]

Season finale tonight, boys and girls.  Two hours.  Rumor is that Mrs. Patmore is going to get laid.

[angus]

Matthew is the only one who can convince Robert to take his head out of his ass, so I doubt he'll die any time soon.  In the last episode, they introduced this insufferable bimbo from London who really gets on my nerves.  I'm hoping they kill her off soon.  Or get her pregnant and send her away.

Here, they're doing 4 hours starting at 7PM Eastern.  7-9 is last week's episode, then 9-11 is the new episode.  I'm tempted to watch last week's episode again, but if I do I'll be saturated by the time the new one comes on and may not be able to stand watching it.  There's only so much English accent I can take for one day.  Maybe I'll just wait till 9 to start watching.

I miss John Bates being in jail.  Well, I like the character and am pleased that he has been exonerated, but he's such a macho dude--besides Tom Branson, he's pretty much the only man on the show--and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him threaten other inmates with his shank.  

[angus]

I've also heard rumors that Matthew Crawley is supposed to get killed in a car accident.  

Wow, you were serious.  That became obvious at the very end of the episode.  It was all going along swimmingly then at the very end they show Matthew in a car.  At that point I thought about your post.  It was at the very end.  It was weird and cheesy, though, with none of the action we got the first time Matthew was killed.  One minute he's cruising along and the next he's in a ditch with blood streaming down his face.  And this time William wasn't there to throw himself in the way.  Why would they want to kill off Matthew?  Maybe it's their meme.  Every time a baby is born a grown-up must die.  Or maybe Matthew has simply served his purpose so his time is up.  Like a male black widow spider, life for him was focused and short.  His mother will be devastated.  Maybe she'll take up with the good doctor after all.

Well, at least Robert did finally get his head out of his ass, thanks to Matthew.  There was a moment when you could actually hear it--POP, like the plastic stopper coming out of cheap Catalonian bubbly--his head comes flying out of his ass, surprisingly clean, and he could see light and feel warmth all around him.  Cora was pleased, as she should be given that she hasn't any more funds with which to bail him out of debt.  

I looks as if the blonde bimbo cousin is here to stay.  I don't know whether she was more sympathetically portrayed than last time, or if I was just getting used to her, but she wasn't nearly as irksome as last time.  Actually, by comparison to her mother, she was very well adjusted, and as I recall from the previous episode, she was dancing lewdly to some very American music from an orchestra called The Louisiana Boys in the previous episode in a place that Matthew likened to Dante's "outer circle of inferno."  So maybe she's not all bad.

I was a little disappointed with Mrs. Patmore's affair.  Apparently all that bastard wanted was a hausfrau to cook for him and change his diapers.  

Oh, and Mister Thomas Barrow took a beating for Jimmy.  Wasn't that sweet?  He is starting to have a soul.  "I'm not foul Mr. Carson.  I'm not the same as you, but I'm not foul."  Apparently not.

Overall, there was lots of good character development in that episode, so I don't think it's over now.  Also, I did some googling and found that they are producing a fourth season of episodes.  Any new season must start with grief over Matthew's death, I'd guess, but the writers are sometimes cheeky so they may just skip all that and put us in the middle of something political.  The 20s were crazy times, and they could have fun with it.

[angus]

The people on the interwebs bitching about Matthew's death/killing are quite stupid.

Are they bitching about it?  I'd have been totally surprised if I hadn't read frodo's post.  Actually, I was still surprised because I had assumed that he was mocking us.  Then when I saw Matthew tooling along in his roadster I thought, sonofabitch, frodo was serious.  I guess I had not read that he wanted to leave the show.  I hadn't read anything about any of these actors.  To be honest, I'd not heard of any of them till this show, although I gather that many of them are quite popular in the UK.  Nevertheless, if the actor quits you have to write his character out.  Killing is a good way to do it, in my opinion, since it leaves no lingering doubts among the fans about any reappearance.  

I have to admit to bitching about killing off Sybil.  Especially the way they did it.  It would have been easy enough to let her rot in a Dublin prison, or get kidnapped by the IRA, or even just have her stay on in Dublin because maybe she was too far along in her pregnancy to travel.  In Matthew's case, you really don't have any convenient way to write him out, especially since they went to such great lengths to write him in.  I think killing him off was appropriate.  

[angus]

Oh, my.  You're right about the bitching.  I've learned that the actor's name is Dan Stevens and he has generated quite a bit of animus from some fans.  A quick search turned up all sorts of blogs and rants and bitches about this show.  Here's a great quote from one:

"I felt so invested in Matthew but to a certain extent I hope Dan Stevens career crashes and burns for doing this to us I'm not bitter."

Okay, right.

here's another:

"Fellowes will have to bring back Matthew's character from some rare coma ( as rare as paraplegia/walking) if he has any hope of saving the series.  I'm even willing to suspend disbelief (yet again) and accept Matthew's return with a new actor. I dont care.  Have the car explode, scar the new actor's face a bit..."

and one more:

"To broadcast this outcome on a Christmas-day ... is a bad joke. There were months ahead while they knew about Dan Stevens´ diminishing affection to join the cast and they chose the most preposterous "solution".  A shame."


Apparently some people do take their soap operas very seriously.

[angus]

new episode tonight at 9 EST on PBS