<p>Check out [Highclere</a> Castle, Earl and Countess of Carnarvon, Downton Abbey](<a href=“http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/index.html]Highclere”>http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/index.html) </p>
<p>Note to self: do not let offspring see that it’s possible to rent the pile for weddings. ;)</p>
<p>My main disappointment with the most recent episode is not enough of the Dowager Countess. Maggie Smith gets the best lines and steals every scene she’s in. More more more! I especially love her scenes with Cousin Isabel and hope the latter will get bored with refugees in distant lands and stay in the village to annoy the doctor. And has he ever correctly diagnosed anything or cured anyone? Sybil seems to already have surpassed his medical knowledge!</p>
<p>My DVR only taped one hour!!! argh!!!</p>
<p>SJTH, just go here and you can watch what you missed: [Downton</a> Abbey, Season 2: Ep. 6 | PBS Video](<a href=“http://video.pbs.org/video/2194847633]Downton”>http://video.pbs.org/video/2194847633)</p>
<p>re: Bates & Anna together in bed – did anyone feel like we didn’t need to see that?</p>
<p>I have felt like the last 3 episodes have been totally “out of character” from season 1, but I still am watching and loving it. How about Lavinia saying, as she was walking out of the room with Isobel, something to the effect of “What bride wouldn’t want to suck up to her new mother-in-law”! Don’t imagine that that was a much-used aristocratic phrase back then!</p>
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<p>It will be the new plot device employed to keep Mary and Matthew apart. First it was Mary’s guilt and self-punishment over her fling with Pamuk and his subsequent death. Now it will be Matthew’s guilt and self-punishment over his disloyalty to Lavinia and her subsequent death. I suppose next season there will be a third reason.</p>
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<p>Yeah, that struck me as an anachronism too. It made me wonder whether the term “suck up” was actually much older and more prevalent than I imagined it to be.</p>
<p>I’m just sayin’
[“Downton</a> Abbey”: Tracking the Anachronisms : Word Routes : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus](<a href=“http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/3133/]"Downton”>"Downton Abbey": Tracking the Anachronisms : Word Routes : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus)
Haven’t seen the latest episode, but it sounds like by the time Shirley Maclaine makes the scene, D.A. will be a regular Peyton Place!</p>
<p>Looking forward to the Christmas special!</p>
<p>Several of my favorite show are British & the format is more like a mini series with just a few episodes. :(</p>
<p>Still waiting for Doc Martin to start up again.</p>
<p>The use of “suck up to” sounded strange to me too. But, prompted by the discussion here, I just looked it up in my unabridged OED (the 2-volume one with the magnifying glass that one used to be able to get for signing up for Book of the Month Club). The OED (under "suck, v, entry 25e) shows “to suck up to”, meaning “to curry favor with; to toady to” to date back to at least 1860, at which time it appeared in Hotten’s Slang Dictionary, edition 2.</p>
<p>You really do (or can) learn something new every day!</p>
<p>I wouldn’t use “suck up” when speaking to my MIL, even today. So even if that term came to be in 1860, but I don’t think it was a polite phrase.</p>
<p>Anna & Bates in bed? What was the point of that scene? And why was Anna wearing only black after that scene? Was it to emphasize the gloom she felt because the police were arresting Bates? I prefer a more subtle touch: Anna dressed in her regular garb.</p>
<p>Wasn’t Anna dressed in black because they had just returned from Lavinia’s funeral?</p>
<p>Well today the verb “suck” has the vulgar connotation associated with genitalia. That does not appear to have been the case 100+ years ago. “Suck up to” was slang, but apparently not vulgar. Usage, especially slang, changes. </p>
<p>Likewise with the adjective “gay” - it was used all the time in songs (and speech of course) 50, 60, 70 years ago (and probably way before that) meaning happy, joyful. Remember the theme song of “The Flintstones” – “they’ll have a gay old time”? I heard somewhere that one of the networks (Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon, perhaps) that aired The Flintstones within the past decade or so edited out that line in some way. Ridiculous.</p>
<p>Anna’s afternoon-evening uniform is black with a white pinafore over it. I think that black dress was her uniform dress. </p>
<p>I didn’t much care for the in-bed scene with Anna and Bates, either. I liked that actor in Lark Rise to Candleford so much, but he has gained weight and looks a little puffy, like he’s been down to the pub too many nights. Just a passionate kiss in the bedroom and Anna taking down her hair would have been enough for me.</p>
<p>Re Lavinia and the “suck up to her new mother-in-law” comment: That was a silly usage on the part of the writer. Even if in was possible to use at that time in that context, Lavinia was quite a polite young lady, anxious to please and not to appear incorrect. She would have said “cultivate her new mother-in-law” or something more on the polite page.</p>
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<p>Then what was the origin of the line in those days? I can’t imagine it meaning anything else but that.</p>
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<p>You’re absolutely right, bookiemom. The writer should have been aware how it would sound to the viewers – inappropriate – a jolt of modern day lingo in that carefully cultivated world.</p>
<p>What’s up with the big giant baby that never gets older? I am so fascinated by that baby’s size and its big head I can’t concentrate on the dialogue. I feel so bad for Ethel having to cart him around. </p>
<p>I have slowly lost interest in this show this season, whereas last season I couldn’t get enough. I was wondering if the writers had a bet on how ridiculous they could make this season while still being considered a “Masterpiece Classic”.</p>
<p>'What’s up with the big giant baby that never gets older?'I am so fascinated by that baby’s size and its big head" (you and me both)</p>
<p>so funny… LOL</p>
<p>^and what’s that big wooden thing it keeps putting in its mouth?</p>
<p>Big head, big binky I guess…</p>
<p>Was I the only one that noticed in one scene, Bates suddenly had nearly a full head of brown hair on top rather than his comb-over? (I really find him sort of creepy, his scenes with Anna leave me cold.) </p>
<p>I’ll keep watching but it really has become All My Children, Edwardian style. Violet = Phoebe, Isobel = Ruth Martin etc.</p>
<p>Yah, classof2015, what is it with the giant wooden mushroom?</p>