<p>I have a really hard time understanding the dialogue in the prison scenes. I don’t know if it’s the accents or the whispering or maybe everyone is just mumbling, but it’s very hard to follow. All I know is that Bates’ cellmate is in cahoots with one of the guards and they’re trying to screw him over. I’m not really sure why.</p>
<p>TOTALLY AGREE, PATSMOM! I find myself looking around thinking, “Am I the only one who needs subtitles?”</p>
<p>Definitely part of the problem for me!</p>
<p>I felt last night’s episode fell a little flat. The episode with Edith’s wedding is my favorite of this season so far, and I think the others haven’t measured up.</p>
<p>I, too, was confused by the prison scenes. It appeared someone has it in for Bates (a guard, his cellmate, both?) and there is another prisoner who inexplicably is looking out for Bates. How likely is it that, if he was truly out of favor, the prison would helpfully hold his accumulated mail from Anna to give him at an undetermined later date in the event he returned to favor?</p>
<p>Gee, patsmom, I could clearly tell that the prison dialogue was:</p>
<p>Mervil bluff garg out.
Flibbguf hub dangerous prisoner.
What?
Watch for what else they do.
Cluv hlub mmff.
Hey you two, no talking!</p>
<p>^LOL! Do you also speak “teen”? </p>
<p>Does anyone else feel claustrophobic when they start the “getting ready for dinner” scenes? I mean, it must take them at least 2 hours to get ready, then there’s drinks by the fire, then sitting at the highly polished table, waiting for the first course. And they did this every night? I think it was a way to kill time, be social, and provide a series of ritualized tasks for the servants. But after the thousandth time, wouldn’t you want to just stay in your room in your pj’s and eat Marmite from a jar?</p>
<p>Oh good, glad I’m not the only one who had trouble with understanding the prison scenes. How sad is it that we need sub titles for our own language?!</p>
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<p>LOVE IT!! I just went back and rewatched the prison episodes (some of them over and over - that’s the beauty of the DVR!) and this is what it looks like: Bates’s cellmate, Craig, is in cahoots with the guard named Doren. They have some kind of dealing “on the outside,” and when Bates hit Craig, he fell on their bad side, and they tried to set him up for trouble by identifying him as a “dangerous prisoner,” (see dialogue above -haha!). However, the other prisoner who is sympathetic to Bates (haven’t caught a name on him) hates Craig, and so he’s helping Bates make sense of things. Together, they set up Craig by planting the “package” in his bunk and informing a different guard, whom Bates described as “straight.” When Craig got in trouble, Bates was back in favor with the guards, except for Doren, whom he was advised to watch out for. Better?</p>
<p>I have no idea what Anna said when she brought tea up to Matthew and Mary some morning. H and I rewound 4 times and still couldn’t figure it out.</p>
<p>I do not understand why they do not each weigh 300 lbs? They just change clothes for meals. I do not think the ladies of the house ever sweated at anything, not like they went to the gym.</p>
<p>@Opera that’s quite a good summary of it. “Straight” means law abiding (I get the impression you’re not sure), the atonym of which would be “bent” (corrupt). </p>
<p>Of course, if they were all actually speaking in a full Yorkshire accent (as you would expect of the servants and villagers) then they would be coming up with things like “ey up” (hello), “tintintin” (it isn’t in the tin) and “anyroad” (anyway) which would be unintelligible to anyone who wasn’t born within 15 miles of Ripon. </p>
<p>Probably the best way to get around the confusion though is to turn the subtitles / closed captioning on ;)</p>
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<p>You’re taking a very modernistic “middle-class” and even somewhat an “American” way of viewing Lord Grantham’s actions. </p>
<p>Lord Grantham’s unwillingness to discuss “vulgar matters” such as finances or management of an estate is actually keeping with a mentality prevalent among aristocrats in Britain and to some extent, elsewhere. </p>
<p>One real life illustration of this was young Winston Churchill as a junior officer in a high status Hussar unit who needed his parents to supplement his annual Army pay with the equivalent of $50-75K per year so he could maintain the lifestyle his unit expected of someone of his rank and social status. </p>
<p>Moreover, while his unit was stationed in India, he left all household management and even the handling of all his cash to the hands of his Indian head servant. Something most of us “moderns” would find unthinkable, but turned out to have been quite common among British aristocrats in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Churchill probably had no idea what the items cost as all purchases and money handling was handled by the servants while he concentrated on living the life of an aristocrat junior officer in a poshy unit with others who were almost exclusively aristocrats or wealthy upper-class commoners who were considered “socially acceptable” by the regiment’s commander for entry as junior officers. </p>
<p>This very mentality was one reason why many aristocrats struggled financially while maintaining their “superior” social standing while wealthier commoner families were not only condescended to, but also sometimes still excluded from the former’s exclusive social circles and access to political power. This series referenced this social tension to some extent by having Lord Grantham marry a wealthy American heiress to keep Downton from going under decades ago and when the Dowanger Countess and Lady Mary tried to get Lady Grantham(Cora)'s mother to “invest” in Downton. </p>
<p>This factor, in fact, was one reason why a commoner son from a family with seemingly unlimited funds may have still been excluded from joining Churchill’s unit or others like it. The “socially acceptable” criteria must be checked as determined by family background/social status, schools attended(British public schools), preferred hobbies/sports(nothing denoting “middle class” or "common), being too concerned with money or “notions of merit”*(a.k.a. not exercising the type of conspicuous consumption acceptable in that social class enough/at all), etc. </p>
<ul>
<li>Much more prevalent before 1870’s, but some of that mentality continued well into the 20 century among many in the aristocratic classes and their hanger-ons. A similar mentality once existed here in the US…a reason why a strong preference for mostly athletes/upper-class scions and legacy admissions on steroids as practiced by Ivy league colleges and their private peers, especially in the NE was commonplace until sometime in the mid-late 60’s.</li>
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<p>I lost interest in the series after being intrigued by it during the first season. This certainly is a fascinating CC thread to read, though.</p>
<p>Good lord, after hearing “Quartet” referenced on this thread, I rented it. Well, yes it’s called Quartet and Maggie Smith is in it but it was made in 1981!! She played a unfortunate woman but was absolutely radiant!</p>
<p>This thread is funny. I have never had much trouble understanding the dialogue, just the reasoning behind it.</p>
<p>boomting,</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your input, and also thanks for not giving things away.</p>
<p>If you want to “talk” football, PM me.</p>
<p>When will Bates/Anna/Vera story be over…sigh?</p>
<p>Thanks, boomting. It would be interesting just to hear the full Yorkshire accent, even if we couldn’t understand. Good idea on the closed captions - I never thought of it! (But I did understand “straight” in this context - quite a different meaning if applied in Thomas’s case, or not) ; )</p>
<p>And cobrat - very interesting discussion of class and social standing! Are you in the UK? Do you feel that much of this division still exists today? In what aspects of life? Just curious - I’ve never been there. Maybe boomting will chime in?</p>
<p>If you want to see an amazing piece of acting by Maggie Smith, look on YouTube for “Bed Among the Lentils”, written by Alan Bennett. It’s in a few parts, and is brilliant.</p>
<p>I have not yet seen “Quartet” but it is a new movie, directed by Dustin Hoffman, possibly his first effort at directing. Both Maggie Smith and Tom Courtenay are in the film along with Michael Gambon.
I thought last night’s episode was good, but I agree that the switching to Bates in prison scenes do seem to slow everything down and are not as interesting as the whole arrest/trial storyline.
Does anyone think they will send Branson & Sybil to America to be with Shirley MacLaine? Apparently he cannot go back to Ireland…</p>
<p>When I saved Quartet to my Netflix queue for later this year, I noticed there were two films by that name, both starring Maggie Smith.</p>