<p>Thanks churchmusicmom for those quotes… she’s the main reason I watch DA.
Hilarious!</p>
<p>Patsmom: Where’s this week’s Facebook page??!</p>
<p>According to this article, they will be replacing Matthew with a potential love interest for Mary and the season will open 6 months later from the incident.</p>
<p>[SPOILER:</a> Dan Stevens? Downton replacement revealed - Downton Soilers (Glamour.com UK)](<a href=“http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/celebrity/celebrity-news/2013/02/19/dan-stevens-downton-replacement-revealed]SPOILER:”>http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/celebrity/celebrity-news/2013/02/19/dan-stevens-downton-replacement-revealed)</p>
<p>I like Mary. I think Bates is a good man. </p>
<p>What can I say: I’m a sap. I also cry at the extended version of this year’s Clydesdale commercial. :D</p>
<p>The blood made Matthew look injured. The thing that made him look dead was the blank, far-away looking stare in his half-opened eyes.</p>
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<p>I wonder who inherits if that all fails? No doubt some remote cousin even more distantly related than Matthew was, and no doubt he’ll be written as a ne’er-do-well if it comes to that.</p>
<p>I thought the question with O’Brien is: what story can we do with her? They’ve had her kill off the Lady’s chance at another child and scheme against Thomas, etc. Now she appears to be competing to go to India, as noted. But why introduce that possibility if she’s staying? How can that be a story?</p>
<p>Consolation–I’m pretty sappy, too. but I think that’s where my reservations about Mary come from–she does seem to be willing and able to hurt people. That almost literally makes me wince.</p>
<p>but I agree I think Bates is a good man–if they undermine that and hurt Anna, they’re gonna hear from me!</p>
<p>Saw a FB-shared cartoon of “The Most Effective PBS Pledge Appeal Ever”: </p>
<p>“Send us money or another Downton character dies.”</p>
<p>Any truth to the rumor that Gwyneth Paltrow will be in Season 4?</p>
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<p>Unless that’s something that has happened in the past week or two, no, it isn’t true.</p>
<p>@Garland… unless it’s Obrien… who do I make that check payable to?? :)</p>
<p>How about the friendship between Jimmy and Barrow??! That was unexpected.
Fellowes does know how to surprise me.</p>
<p>If they don’t have O’Brien go to India or at least be offered and think seriously about it, then what was the whole purpose of the O’Brien-Wilcox (? was that her name) mini-feud in Scotland. The portent was in O’Brien’s saying she feels no sense of loyalty to Wilcox after Wilcox spiked the drink. And O’Brien said she’d love to travel, have a change of scene. </p>
<p>Writer’s don’t put scenes in for no reason. As they say, if you show a gun in the first scene, it better go off before the ending. Remember all the references to Matthew’s spiffy new car and Mary saying she’d be forgiven if she got a scratch on the car, etc. etc. </p>
<p>How long do we have to wait until Season 4? Next January?</p>
<p>My d’s and I all thought that there was going to be some kind of lesbian relationship/seduction between O’Brien and Lady Susan’s maid, Winton or whatever… </p>
<p>I hope that Bates is a good man too… but unless Anna gets pregant, I can’t think of any other storylines for them. </p>
<p>By the way I remember the move Jagged Edge as being really terrifying.</p>
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veryhappy, it’s not up yet - I’ve been checking! But somehow I don’t think it’s going to be very funny after what happened to poor Matthew… :(</p>
<p>I’ve been pondering what they can do with Bates without making him abusive. Perhaps he won’t get a lot of attention for a while since he got a lot of attention over the Vera incident. Or perhaps Anna could know a lot of what Mary is up to and Lord G. could be trying to get Bates to tell him anything Anna may have told him about Mary’s private life.</p>
<p>I hope that Bates fades into the wood work now. I find Bates and Anna’s relationship to be SOOOO boring. They had a lot of chemistry in the first season but I’m not feeling it any more. Time to shift the focus to other characters. There’s still a lot of mystery surrounding him – unanswered questions abt how things got so bad with Vera and how he ended up with her in the first place – but I am just not interested in the answers. </p>
<p>So, when are Carson and Mrs. Hughes going to get together? That is the big unresolved romance now. Mrs. Hughes is more and more becoming my favorite character.</p>
<p>Lady Rose will seduce Branson. The two unattached young people in a lonely country house. Just watch. Mary will be too grief stricken and too snobbish to take up with Branson. Edith is in love with Gregson. That leaves Lady Rose. And we know she is not shy about throwing herself at men.</p>
<p>^That thought crossed my mind too, but don’t you think she’d find him too serious/boring? I can see Rose starting a flirtation with the young, new, attractive footman. I think that would make for an interesting plot line.</p>
<p>Well, I was thinking about the entire season, and I think Shirley was a bust.</p>
<p>It is my understanding that Siobhan Finneran (O’Brien) also did not renew her contract. This may explain her absence in Season 4 (going away to India.)</p>