Downton Abbey Part THREE: Shoehorns and Spanish Fly

[NorfolkNChance]

Soooooooooooooo I still reckon Cora to kick the bucket, shuffle of this mortal coil, sing with the choir eternal etc etc

I bet Jane is handy with a shorehorn for Lord 6, he's been out of action for a while so may need some help.

Never mind the peach bedpread, Cora's actually-not-quite-deathbed pillowcases are the same as mine (john lewis, natch)

Also, Matthew didn't just look like a vampire, he looked like a small boy on hallowe'en whose mum did his facepainting (not very well) as a vampire. And forgot the teeth.

Juggling, Ethel used to be a maid at Downton (this seires) and she slept with one of the soldiers that was recuperating there and fell pregant :)

Coming late to the party, but I couldn't work out why, if there was 'deadly Spanish Flu' in the house, why did people keep visiting and everyone crowding around the sick person. Did they not have any idea how it was spread, or of keeping people in quarantine (genuine question)?

Yeh, I was worried Charlie might catch it. Perhaps he will ? Or the grumpy old Grandpa ?

Thanks YorkshireTea

oh yes i was soooo proud of Ethel for keeping li'l Charlie. God i would sooner commit murder than give my DS away

LOL @ Sybil in her nurse's uniform - I thought that was funny too. At one point I thought Lord G had changed back into his wartime uniform as well, but it was just his maid-snogging tweeds. BTW, that was another story that sort of came out of leftfield and then zoomed off stage right, wasn't it? Hello I'm the new maid, hello, yes, I love you with every fibre of my being, I've handed in my notice and I'm almost packed. I was left thinking perhaps I'd imagined the whole thing.

Quite bonkers but we loved it!
Particularly enjoyed Sybil getting her nurse costume back out,and slow speed not very far car chase. Why does she even like Branston, as far as can see he's mainly been unpleasant in the garage?
Matthews make up, all v gothic

Special - nice linen, was particularly admiring Cora's pillow case.

Thought it was v odd that considering all the dreadfull lines he's had Lord G didn't say 'but I'm married' while considering maid ravishing. He appeared to completely forget his wife and randomly fall in love with a woman he had spoken to once with no guilt at all.

Did not at all enjoy naked misterbates

What was Mary's top thing at the end? V distracting. Considering what good dinners they have the women are all v v thin.

Did think Anna's face at the end was v good acting.

And bets on misterbates swinging in the Christmas special. That would be like Eastenders with hats.

Here's my theory: the first Mrs Bates took the rat poison intending to send Bates down for attempted murder. But she got the dose wrong. Think he'll get off at the last minute.

Reckon the Matthew and Mary thing will drag on for most of series 3.

Sir R will offer Thomas the position of butler at the new house.

I assume the thing between Lord G & Jane was to give him some "understanding" of Tom & Sybil.

Near the end though, when Mary accepted Sir Rs offer to walk he back, it seemed as if she had just decided against Matthew & for Sir R.

Perhaps the Christmas wedding will be Sybil & Tom?

I had thought that they might look at getting him a job with Sir R.

No I think Tom will be A Project and they will try to get him into Parliament, though he may have to become a Tory first. I don't forsee a problem with this; in Downton Land it is very easy to have a complete character change in just a few minutes.

Oh surely we'll have a Mary and Richard wedding though, because otherwise we can't have Mary and Matthew unable to resist their cursed attraction to each other, despite Mry's wedding vows, or Richard becoming a complete tyrant. They are definitely building him up to be a complete monster once he marries her - much too dramatically juicy to discard him before they even wed?

scatter thanks, I'd watched for it last night but then couldn't work out why!

Do you know what really annoyed me? The fact that Lord G was fannying about with the maid, yet he had the ordasity to tell Sybil that she was forbidden (etc etc) from being with Tom!! That really irritated me. The fact that he is married AND she is a maid. Ok, so he didn't go the whole hog and he stopped it etc, but he let her kiss him a goodun' before she left. Most annoying. That kind of thing really pees me off! Bloody unfaithful man. And I liked him. Hurumph.

Blue-I posted this on 24th Oct-

"Why would Sir R have to kill Mrs B when any number of people could go to the papers
(OK, most of the people I mentioned aren´t likely to)

I wondered if she had taken some arsenic so that she could accuse Bates of trying to poison her but took too much."

Be interesting to see if we´re right.

Didn´t Sir R(?) say that she wasn´t interested in "bringing down" that Granthams, just wanted to get at Bates?

How far post war are we up to? If Sybill had asked once more if her father would come to the wedding in IRELAND, (that's IRELAND where there's about to be 1920s civil unrest) I would have considered (but not actually, obviously) turning the flipping programme off!

Right, I've been giving this far too much some thought, and I think the only way to rescue this farrago of implausibilities is to take a wild leap sideways into magic realism. They need to make Matthew an actual vampire, bitten in the trenches by Mitchell from Being Human. Suddenly his miraculous recovery and Lavinia's mysterious death become much more understandable, and we no longer have to worry about the fact that the cast have not aged at all in ten years. And William can rise from the grave to make whatshername His For Evah, with hilarious consequences.

I was impressed that on being told Cora was possibly on her deathbed and would be lucky to make it through the night they all still found the time and the will to get dressed and go to dinner while poor Cora was possibly spending her last tortured moments with her maid. Now I know how we won two world wars and forged an empire, stiff upper lip and the show must go on and all that jazz.

I suppose in those days the Lord of the manor, esp, those types as rich as Lord 6, must have bonked trillions of housemaids/keepers/cooks. Often had separate bedrooms to the Mrs, once all the children were birthed etc.
Anyhoo that's all over with Lord 6 as Cora apologised for neglecting the old git.

Wish OBrien had admitted the truth, re; soap. It's def. going to come out or JF wouldn't have reminded us.

Xmas special, for me will be
that rich old farmer coming back for Edith, they have a christmas wedding
or Lord 6 invites Sybil and Pickle to come too and have a christmas double wedding
Mary will have alreayd married Sir R by the time we revisit the abbey at christmas, Sir R will start beating her or something, and Thomas will see and help to rescue her from the situation, then matthew will leap to her aid and Sir R will demand a divorce and scurry back to London, leaving M&M to dither about again, all cursed and shit.

Bates will go to prison until amazing new evidence unearthed showing he didnt do it. then Anna and him will have their goddamn boring boarding house

Accd to wiki: s flu killed mostly the young and fit. their immune systems over-reacted. Also: aspirin made it worse. Didn't Crackpot Clarkson prescribe some for Lav with milk and cinnamon?

in series 3
we have Freddie to appear on the doorstep, demanding he be dragged into the family thanks to Lord 6 paying for his education

sybil and pickle will have a baby

M&M will marry or just go away together

then it'll be the depression, they'll all lose the house to Sir R?

God, can you see Crackpot Clarkson delivering a baby? Better to call out the vet, I reckon.