If you don’t have the awesome theme by Wings in your head right now then I don’t know what to do with you.
Whether you are dining with Elijah or celebrating Jesus asking, “What did I miss the last couple of days?”, hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend.
Wait! I forgot the Pagans who are lovin’ the Springtime. And the many children who don’t understand or care why they are hunting for Paas-colored eggs.
Special shout-out to Cadbury Eggs and Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.
Side note: I’m giving them a shout-out but I haven’t been able to indulge in them since I’m experimenting with an extreme elimination diet where you cut out all potential food allergens. So that means no dairy, eggs, wheat, corn, soy, caffeine, sugar and everything else that I eat on a regular basis. (I also cut out red meat but I’ve already done that a while ago…with the exception of some bacon every few months because BLTs are a gift from the gods.) You may ask. “What are you eating?” Good question. Rice, quinoa, lentils, nuts, veggies and lots of fruit because of my sweet tooth. They say that limits prompt creativity. This is true in this case. But here, creativity = me cooking. This is not forever since the program dictates that you do this for three weeks and then add back one potential allergen in for two days and record the results. This is the end of Week Two for me and I have a Pizza/Board Game Night tonight. So there will be no Week Three unless I forgo the Pizza and instead eat the Board Games.
Amenities of Room 823: Empty mini-bar, Game of Life and Easter Quinoa Hunt.
Hello! Here are the last two F!F&Fs. Enjoy Fighting Werewolfs!
This last episode has Downton Abbey wishing you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and a Very Enjoyable Summoning Spirits With a Ouija Board.
Yes, the staff find a Ouija Board and decide to give it a whirl…with the help of some servants that I’ve never seen before. Was it just me or did DA’s Christmas Special have a bigger budget for servant extras? Anyway, Thomas and O’Brien play around with it and then Mrs. Patmore “receives” a message from William in order to convince Daisy to visit his father which she does (I was sort of close when I predicted that William would “return”). So Julian Fellowes is done with the spooky-spookies, right? Wrong! Near the end of the episode, Daisy and Anna receive a message that says, “let them be happy with my love.” Cut to: Mary and Matthew. I know! I guess Lavinia found a way to be selfless once again and give her blessing. To sum up, the moral of the Downton Abbey story is that nobility is the most important thing and even Death won’t stop it.
Even Edith couldn’t escape Nobility’s grip this week. She is reconnected with Sir Strallan who has lost the use of his right hand in the war. Edith tries to get their thing going again but is nobility-blocked by Strallan who says he is too old and injured and to forget him! Poor thing has no luck in love: the married farmer, the burned former amnesiac and now old, bad-hand guy. At least she got screen time because Sybil got pregnant off screen and she and Branson never appeared!
Also not getting a lot of screen time? Isis the dog. Thomas hides her so that he can rescue her and get back into Lord Grantham’s good graces. See, he’s keen on getting Bates’ valet job since Bates is in jail. The plan doesn’t quite go off without a hitch but he’s still getting his chance at dressing LG. Not quite believing that LG would replace Bates? Well, a guilty verdict tends to make you rethink things. A man can’t dress himself, after all.
Mrs. Hughes, O’Brien and Lord Grantham are all called to testify at Bates’ trial. And they all have to say something damning to his case because they are under oath. Bates, of course, forgives them and tells Anna to do so as well. They were just telling the truth. Later he tells Anna to make friends and have fun while he rots. Even in jail, folks, Bates never fails to be Bates.
Anna’s reaction was quite heartbreaking at the verdict. Even more so when the judge gave the Death By Hanging sentence. Matthew and the lawyer try to console her with a “no big deal, they have to say that”. Eventually, they get the sentence reduced to Life Imprisonment. This deters Anna from accompanying Mary to America to stay with her grandmother, who we now know is Shirley MacLaine. Let us all take a moment to imagine the Marathon of Quipping that will take place between Shirley, Isobel and the Dowager Countess in Season Three.
Why America? To escape the impending scandal-rama that CREEPY Sir Richard will unleash due to Mary breaking up with him. Her fiancé is getting on her nerves and everyone is noticing his impatience and his general, all around dickish-ness. He, on the other hand, has been noticing how much time she spends with Matthew. So much so that now Isobel is telling Matthew that Mary is still in love with him. It’s too late, he says. At one point, she cuts him off with a “please don’t invoke the name of that sweet, dead girl again.” Amen.
Before Mary’s break up, Lord Grantham is perplexed as to why she is with CREEPY. There has to be some reason that I don’t know about it, he wonders to his wife. “Well, yes…” says Lady Grantham. Pamuk strikes again! LG is disappointed but with the Bates’ scandal and Sybil having a chauffeur baby, he tells Mary, “Find a cowboy in the Middle West and bring him back here to shake things up a bit.” I love that LG is like, “Whatever! We’re the Scandal-filled Family.”
Mary then tells Matthew the Pamuk Brouhaha and then begs for his forgiveness. He says something noble like, “You don’t need my forgiveness. You’ve lived your life and I’ve lived mine and something something something.” And apparently, Matthew does not think Mary is damaged goods because he proposes to her at the end and she accepts! After Lavinia’s beyond-the-grave consent!
CREEPY leaves Downton Abbey, and Mary, quite maturely, sees him off. I, for one, wish it was Maggie Smith sending him off. She took him down a few times this episode, much to my delight. During the Crawley Christmas Charades game, CREEPY Sir Richard says he would never play a game that would make him look ridiculous. Maggie replies, “Life is a game where the player must appear ridiculous.” When it is his turn, she says, “How soon your maxim will be tested.” Prophetic considering that he and Matthew get into a vase-breaking scrap which ends with him declaring that he will be leaving. He says to Maggie, “I doubt we will meet again.” To which she replies, “Do you promise?”
The Dowager Countess also takes down Lord Hepworth who is pursuing her daughter, Lady Rosamund. Seems she knows that Hepworth is broke but Rosamund knows this as well and doesn’t care. However, she does care when Hepworth is canoodling with her maid, Miss Shore. They are quickly dismissed which is good because Miss Shore made some snarky comment about Bates and I WON’T HAVE THAT.
What else did I learn from the Christmas Special? That I’m sad it’s over and I have to wait another year for Season Three.
Thoughts? Predictions? Will Edith find a man in a coma to love?
OH MY GOD, WHERE DO I BEGIN!?!?!
This week’s episode hit all the soap opera highlights: forbidden kisses, a wedding, an arrest and a funeral. I half expected Mr. Pamuk to burst through the doors, claiming to have been “cured” through a revolutionary surgery in Istanbul. I believe I said variations of “WHAT?!?” a few times during the two hours.
Let’s begin by addressing the biggest “What?!” in the room: Matthew leaping out of his wheelchair when Lavinia trips. He had mere tingles before but just needed his intended to hit a bad patch of rug for his legs to get back into the game. Everyone came running to see Matthew standing. I was really hoping to see Mary mouth, “Yes!” and fist bump the air but she remained dignified. It’s a good thing, too, because Matthew and Lavinia’s wedding is back on. Kind of as a reward for sticking by him, explains Matthew in not so many words. So Downton Abbey is abuzz with wedding stuff. Decorations, cake made out of plaster (more on that later) and then a lovely wave of the Spanish Flu. Yes, one night as all was gathering for dinner, people started swooning and sweating. First was Lady Grantham and then Carson. When Lavinia uttered the “I’m not feeling well either” line, I said out loud, “You’re dead, honey.” Because really, out of Cora, Carson and Lavinia, who’s going to kick it? And kick it, she did. Cora was on death’s door the whole time with O’Brien dutifully attending her and on the brink of confessing the Season One Soap Incident but Lavinia was just slightly sweaty and telling Matthew how she saw he and Mary kissing by the gramophone. She tells him how great they look together (all viewers agree) and that she doesn’t want to stand in the way of his happiness or some such stuff that’s only been uttered by the likes of Bill Pullman in Sleepless In Seattle. But then she takes a sudden turn for the worst and dies. How? they ask the doctor. He explains vaguely that this kind of flu does that sort of thing. (This was not Doctor Clarkson best time: when Matthew miraculously recovered, Doc said, “Oh, well, it was Spinal Shock and not a Severed Spine like I so admittedly told everyone it was. My bad.”)
So you think Lavinia’s blessing is all that Matthew and Mary need to be together, eh? Then you don’t know Downton Abbey! Matthew says, “We’re cursed! We killed Lavinia! She died of a broken heart!” And Mary says, “Yep” and leaves with CREEPY Sir Richard, formerly known as Game Of Thrones guy.
Mary was back to cold, selfish mode this episode. She turned on Carson when he declined to be her butler even though it was because CREEPY Sir Richard offered to pay Anna to spy on her. Mary was kind of bad ass, however, when she assembled a rescue team to go get Runaway Sybil and Branson. Mary was team leader, Anna was dutiful sidekick and Edith was the Speed Demon Roadster Queen. I expect some good Operation Detach Chauffeur fan fiction soon.
Yes, Sybil finally gave in to Branson and said to him, “I’m ready to travel and you are my ticket.” This was after a scene where she comes to him and says, “Hi.” And he says, “Did you decide?” “Not yet.” “OK, I’ll be here.” After getting stopped by her sisters from eloping, they return to DA to announce to the family. Lord Grantham, of course, is outraged. He even threatens to cut her off. But Sybil’s like, he has a new job, I got mad nurse skills. LG finally relents at the end and gives his consent. Which leads to my favorite Maggie Smith moment: she says to her son something like, “So you’ve consented, well I’ve already been figuring out how to spin it. We can make it work…” And that is why she is all that I aspire to be.
Other great Maggie moments:
- Recounting the Paris cholera, “Half the guests were dead before they left the ballroom.”
- To Edith, “Don’t be defeatist, dear. It’s very middle-class.”
- Regarding The Bryants wanting to talk to those who knew their son, the Major,”That lets me out, thank Heaven.”
Did I miss any quotes? Let me know. And I’ll see you next week for the two hour finale!
