<p>I’m enjoying this season, too, although I find myself agreeing with all of you–both the plusses and minuses. It’s that kind of show.</p>
<p>As for Mary and Matthew, I think it’s clear they are not so well suited after all. How can he put up with her old-fashioned aristocratic values when he, himself, really has mixed feelings about owning a castle and having a legion of servants? And there she is, spending their first months together giving him dagger looks and blaming him for having honor and a backbone (not wanting to use Lavinia’s father’s money to, after all, beef up Lavinia’s rival’s family’s estate)? I had hoped they could be truly happy, but Mary is rather disappointing and ambitious. Hm. Has Matthew (like the rest of us middle class folk) been swept up in the fantasy of joining the aristocrats hob and nob and now, come bumping back to reality?</p>
<p>As for Lady Edith, I agree that her match would have been welcomed by the family–not discouraged! And that it was far likelier to have Sir A die at the altar (if they wanted to keep Edith a spinster), but oh! The look on her face when he in one breath looks at her as she joins him and utters some sweet nothing (“My dear darling girl!”) and in the very next breath says, “No, no, I just cannot do it!” LOL. Her face! The friends/family/servants in the pews! It was worth all the incongruity to watch poor Edith deal with yet another indignity. Of course, I would love to see her vindicated in the end. </p>
<p>Bates has never been one of my favorites, so they can keep him in prison for all that I care. </p>
<p>And I agree, operadivasmom, the dialogue is divine!</p>
<p>“Shows like this are littered with guns that were never fired.”</p>
<p>Your point about series vs. plays is well-taken. That said, there’s a huge range in how obvious and clumsy the unfired guns are. If DA even wants to be mentioned in the same breath with other great TV dramas, which it seems to want, this is a problem. I don’t think the Sopranos, the Wire, Prime Suspect, the West Wing, Upstairs Downstairs, Friday Night Lights, etc. left people saying “What the heck is the deal with that poison powder?” You might argue, actually, that an excess of unfired guns is what ruined Twin Peaks and Lost after very promising beginnings.</p>
<p>Just found you wonderful people. I always enjoy a conversation that includes the gun on Chekov’s wall. But, since we’ve brought Agatha Christie into it, how do we distinguish the guns from the red herrings? And couldn’t O’Brien just had a bit of a tummy ache? (Though now I’m going to go back and look at that, because I can’t even remember what episode that was in.)</p>
<p>Patsmom, thanks for the hilarious link!</p>
<p>Hanna, I’d say Mandy Hampton from the first season of West Wing was pretty much a gun that never went off. But I like your point about Twin Peaks.</p>
<p>If I could have my wish for future plot lines, I’d like to see the arrival of two American cousins, the first a shy earnest girl who desperately wants to fit in and find a British husband but does everything wrong and is who is constantly berated by the snobby Crawley girls as they prepare her for a London season; and the second, a bawdy flapper who couldn’t care less what the Crawleys think of her and who holds tea parties in the Crawley’s drawing room that turn into wild jazz parties. </p>
<p>And Matthew needs to rack up some horrific gambling debts, like all respectable heirs in British fiction.</p>
<p>Re O’Brien asking Mrs. Patmore for baking soda: that is used for stain removal, so she may have needed it for a stain on something of Lady Cora’s.</p>
<p>Maybe they could be joined in the summer by some male cousins along with some fraternity mates, go wild in Downton and all over London, and try their best to commit the ultimate faux pas such as playing dominoes with Stonehenge or if the family is lucky enough to host British royalty, have them place whoopie cushions under the seats of the royal guests and the snobbier members of the Crawley family. :D</p>
<p>I’d like to see a spinster Lady Edith pushing the boundaries in the 20s. She should go to London and start getting laid. She wouldn’t have been the only one.</p>
<p>I’d wonder how Edith and her family would’ve handle the financial and socially conservative backlash which comes as the result of the crash of '29.</p>
<p>Recalled reading somewhere that the greater social and sexual openness which occurred in the 1960’s counterculture would have occurred in the late '20s and '30s if it had not been for the great depression. Since I’m not a specialist in social history, what do you all think?</p>
<p><em>Cobrat</em> I can’t say I was alive then, but I’ve always been under the impression that a significant cause of the sexual revolution of the 1960s was the invention of the Pill, which for the first time gave women the choice to control their own fertility (as opposed to male control of the condom).</p>
<p>People were definitely having sex outside of marriage in every decade of every century - that will never change! And yes, the pill gave women freedom in the 60’s, along with Roe v. Wade in 1973. But in the 20’s, the whole country was in a celebratory mood after the war, and women were enjoying greater freedom than ever before! They could vote, they felt bold enough to cut their hair and shorten their hemlines, and they were speaking their minds. But one of the biggest factors that contributed to their sexual freedom was the automobile! Young people could get away from the adults and the prying eyes of chaperones and escape in the car! Plus jazz clubs and abundant alcohol (despite prohibition) only fueled the fires. I don’t doubt we’ll see some of this culture on DA, and won’t the Lady Dowager have something to say about that!</p>
<p>BTW - if you live in the Philadelphia area, there’s an exhibit at the Constitution Center on just this topic - the 1920’s and Prohibition. I think it’s called the Spirits of America. I haven’t seen it yet, but plan to!</p>
<p>Let’s not forget that Mary had sex with Kemal Pamuk in series 1, and Ethel with the Major in series 2. It’s just that it wasn’t remotely acceptable in those days! </p>
<p>We do, indeed, see some of the influence of the jazz clubs coming in later in series 3…</p>
<p>Kinsey published first book around 1947, then on women in1953. Please, I don’t have time now to pull out my books, but some percentage between 25-33% of couples began marriage pregnant. I will not venture the estimate on infidelity at time the interviews were done, but it was significant.</p>
<p>This is the kind of dancing I’d like to see in the Downton drawing room (perhaps, as I mentioned earlier, introduced by a rogue American cousin. Certainly didn’t mean that the American cousins should engage in anything destructive!):</p>
<p>I’m keeping up via American TV, and haven’t watched any remaining episodes in Season 3. Boomting’s comment is definitely intriguing and whetting my appetite! (But don’t tell us more!)</p>
It’s that kind of show.</p>