<p>
</p>
<p>Yes! H and I turned to each other and said (quote from the series): “She’s grown up quite plain.”</p>
<p>Could Fellowes toss us a bone for once & have a happy storyline?
[‘Downton</a> Abbey’ Season Finale Recap: ‘I Just Can’t See a Happy Ending’ | Movies News | Rolling Stone](<a href=“http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/downton-abbey-season-finale-recap-i-just-cant-see-a-happy-ending-20130217]'Downton”>'Downton Abbey' Season Finale Recap: 'I Just Can't See a Happy Ending')</p>
<p>Could this be one of those actor decisions he will regret later??</p>
<p>Yes, if his film career doesn’t pan out.</p>
<p>Off to check out Monarch of the Glen Kelowna… sounds good!</p>
<p>If Matthew is brain-damaged, " Mary would have to live the tortured life Edith’s editor lives. Can’t divorce, can’t remarry."</p>
<p>THAT would change everyone’s thinking about Edith’s situation!!</p>
<p>[Julian</a> Fellowes Discusses a Season of Comings and Goings at ‘Downton Abbey’ - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Julian Fellowes Discusses a Season of Comings and Goings at 'Downton Abbey' - The New York Times”>Julian Fellowes Discusses a Season of Comings and Goings at 'Downton Abbey' - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Here’s an interview with Julian Fellowes from today’s NY Times that will answer some questions. Matthew really is dead, and Season 4 will begin 6 months from the baby’s birth/Matthew’s death. A major theme of Season 4 will be Mary rebuilding her life. </p>
<p>Fellowes says in the interview that he likes to see character development that changes your opinion of that character. I have noticed that a lot in Season 3. The characters are multifaceted and that is being brought out more and more.</p>
<p>Monarch of the Glen is a lovely series, especially if you like Scotland. That would be a good one to watch while we wait for Season 4 next year.</p>
<p>Although I agree with a lot of what has been posted, I am not tired of the Anna/Bates story. I thought that Bates’ look as he watched Anna dancing was touching (and an instance of superb acting), as was Anna’s look.</p>
<p>Also, re Shrimpy’s wife Susan (aka Cordelia) from Brideshead Revisted: I am not sure whether the remark that she had not aged well was made tongue-in-cheek or not. However, if you compare the looks of O’Brien (show) with those of Siobhan Finneran (the actress), you can see how much can be done, particularly with a character who is supposed to be unsympathetic. It’s acting + make-up–I have to give the actress playing Susan a lot of credit for being able to keep such unpleasant expressions on her face for such an extended period without bursting into giggles.</p>
<p>So Mary will never be the lady of the house in her own right, correct? And I guess Matthew’s mother will be able to stay on because she is the grandmother of the heir? Or will she marry the doctor after all as a means of keeping her in the show?</p>
<p>I watched the whole Monarch of the Glen series mostly for the scenery. I have to say that it got less and less believable as it went on and the characters more annoying. I was not sad for it to end.</p>
<p>Thank you, bookiemom, for that interesting article. At least now I know that there is no hope of an injured Matthew making a come-back next season 
I was so tense watching him speeding on those winding roads in his cute little convertible . . . Until that point, I never saw that coming. </p>
<p>Like many here, I find Mary annoying. How does she get off having such disdain for Edith’s editor beau? Wasn’t her previous fianc</p>
<p>Re ELY, #1592: Next season, the editor’s wife sets fire to the garret in which she is living. The entire house burns down. The editor is blinded, attempting to rescue his wife from the fire. Afterward, he marries Edith, and continues his work, with Edith reading and writing for him.</p>
<p>^ LOL, Love it!</p>
<p>I could just see Edith putting herself in such a situation. Would be a nice ode to Bronte as well.</p>
<p>Edith can hang on until 1937 when the law was changed to allow divorce when one is mentally ill. </p>
<p>The essence of a soap opera is to create waves with peaks of happiness and troughs of sadness. So no matter what happens, they will knock down whatever good occurs so they can create a new trough.</p>
<p>This is what fundamentally bothers me about the show; it isn’t a story about the house and family but is a series of fake mini dramas within the overall context of a grand house and titles. I think doing it my preferred way would be impossible given that it’s written as it goes. This isn’t a work being fictionalized with story lines emphasized for effect but is a bunch of scripts. The conversation Grantham has with Shrimpy about how modernization saved Downton is a perfect example: it closes a story arc. You can almost see the plotting drawn out on a board in a writers’ room. Of course, the closing moment is partly nonsensical: it’s been about 1 year since they began so modernizing is just underway. The subtext is perhaps that Shrimpy believes it has worked while Grantham knows the estate survives because of a lucky bequest which is allowing work to proceed. Nicely written. They close the story arc of Thomas and Jimmy by having the gay man be the muscular protector with his reward being friendship and unrequited love.</p>
<p>But the point about closing a story arc is that it needs to open a new arc. Can Mary have a baby? By killing off Sybil they place even more importance on that: no more chance for Sybill to have a boy. Those pieces all fit. So now a baby boy is the heir to Earldom. And he’s just the right age to die in WWII, though I doubt the show makes it near then.</p>
<p>So they’ve brought in youth, which allows them to explore social change and introduce a whole bunch of more interesting visitors and modern complications. They have Edith in a relationship that can’t last, except of course they can have a story arc in which the wife recovers sanity or dies. They have Mary struggling to cope in a bunch of ways. She’s now shut in a box again, the mother of the future Earl, but never to be the Countess and now significantly less desirable as a status mate for someone seeking a title or what might be perceived as Grantham money and status. </p>
<p>We have Isobel. Her relationship with Mary becomes important. With Bates and Anna living together, how long before a story arc occurs with her pregnant or wanting to become pregnant and how that can fit into service - or how she affiliates with the family in some other way. And so on.</p>
<p>Is it just too obvious for Mary and Tom to get together? I thought there were a few forshadow-y scenes with Mary holding Sybil and Tom looking over her shoulder. I think I kind of like the idea, but it would take all season to develop, stringing us along, I’m sure. I really like Tom’s character now - he’s a real class act and would make a better aristocrat than some who already are!</p>
<p>I think Mary’s character is WAY too self-important & snobby to consider Tom. He’s not close to being a worthy stepfather to the future lord of the manor. If they wanted to make such a match believeable, Mary would have to do alot of changing over the course of next season. I don’t see it.</p>
<p>Good catch to notice the Susan/Cordelia connection. I was trying to figure out where I had seen her before but couldn’t put my finger on it.</p>
<p>I knew that Dan Stevens was leaving the series sooner of later, so the ending wasn’t a total shock. And I knew he was doomed for sure as soon as they showed him smiling while driving his snappy roadster. Too much happiness and good fortune to allow it to continue.</p>
<p>I liked Matthew, but I agree that his death opens up the series to many more possible plot lines for season four. With Matthew and Mary living happily ever after the show might have been left with little more than the ups and downs of the estate’s finances to drive the main upstairs plot.</p>
<p>Did anyone else think it odd to see Anna dancing at the grand ball in Scotland? The upstairs and downstairs folks appeared to be intermingling and dancing with each other quite freely. Perhaps the normal English social barriers are set aside when in Scotland.</p>
<p>Actors leaving series have bedeviled these sorts of series for a long time. Consider Upstairs Downstairs. Rachel Gurney wanted to leave the series after a couple of years (a move that she later bitterly regretted), so they killed Lady Marjorie off on the Titanic. Nicola Pagett got mad at the show when they did not include her in the cast for planned Upstairs Downstairs movie (that was never made) and abruptly quit the show in a huff. So they packed her Miss Elizabeth character off to marry some guy in America, never to be seen again. Meg Wynn Owen had previously signed to do a play and didn’t want to break her prior contract, so they killed off her character of Hazel Bellamy in the Spanish flu epidemic.</p>
<p>^^Frankly, I could see Tom and Edith before Tom and Mary. Tom and Edith both think about things outside their world; Mary never has.</p>
<p>What do you think will happen with Rose’s arrival at the house next season?</p>
<p>I’m wondering if she & the dashing new footman might be attracted to each other, or perhaps Rose & Tom (but Tom is no doubt too dull & broody for the likes of Rose).</p>