But Call Me Betsy

He looks a bit puffy, I might add.  Luke is watching this with us and I predict he will give up in like five minutes. We see Marmie in her bed with a jar of marmalade. Maybe she's about to come down with cholera. Mary asks Tom what he really wants. She wears a sharp brown suit and a hat with a tiny feather. They aren't flirting. Mary sees him as her brother. Dan goes, Is that really her brother? I did not respond. A police man has arrived to question Mrs. Baxter, who sends the nosy cook on her way. Someone has been accused of theft and I believe they suspect she has helped him. The jewelry has never been found. Perhaps she's hiding a stash under her mattress. She is being asked to testify against this handsome scoundrel who convinced her to misbehave. It is reminding me of Dangerous Liaisons . Luke has gone to bed. Anna may be preggers. Mary's going to take her to London to have her uterus stitched so she can carry to term. There is a sub plot about the...

The experience of blogging while watching Downton Abbey versus doing the same for The Bachelor is somewhat similar, as I can never remember the names of the characters/contestants. There are fewer make out sessions and fewer bikinis in DA, but no shortage of tears, though often withheld because of the stiff British upper lip. One thing that is not at all the same is that the scenes change more rapidly. We move from the kitchen to the dining room, to putting on shawls, to peeling off gloves for bedtime. It's hard to keep up. I believe that Mr. Barrow, the homosexual butler, may have a crush on the new whatever that younger guy is (footman? I thought they only really existed in Cinderella). The debate continues about where the Carson wedding will be held. Lady Simper asks what the severe looking woman (Miss Hughes) wants. Miss Hughes says that she wants to have her own breakfast reception and then a bit of hooey. Mary wants to know why Carson doesn't want to celebrate where...

Why is there a countdown to Downton Abbey ? Will a ball be dropping, preferably on Marmie or whatever Elizabeth McGovern's name is? Here are my predictions for this season, in the remaining four minutes before we launch. The chauffeur will return from America with a new wife-to-be, but no one will like her. Mary must end up with him. Someone important will die (see my preference again above, though it will likely be Dad instead. I just hope it's not Maggie Smith). Edith will grow her hair out and find an ordinary looking man who looks past her stiffness and sees her for the gem (and feminist) she is. Daisy will leave for a better job as a secretary. Anna and the murderer will be reunited and neither will end up in jail. A few new amazing electronic devices will be introduced to the household. War will break out? I'm not sure what year we're in. One thing I am sure of is that lovely, lovely clothes will be worn by all of the women. And I hope they have gotten a new d...

Last week, if you will recall, we learned that Mary has taken a room at a very fancy hotel in order to shag with her would be lover. We open up with the two of them in bed together, she wearing a very lovely white slip of a nightgown that I envy, he watching her in a way that could be stalker-ish. Will he turn out to be a cad? He says, "Have you ever considered breast implants, my darling?" Dan said that. Cut to a scene with Edie and the Crawley's having breakfast in front of a giant painting. Next, Barrows interrupts Mr. Carson to use the telly-phone to place an ad-vert-is-ment (pronounced exactly like that). Mary is giving no clue as to whether or not she enjoyed her time with Todd or Tad or Tony (can't recall his name). Did he make her nether regions go a-quiver? We have no clue. He kisses her politely on the street outside of the hotel by their good bye is espied by a fat man I don't recognize The Irish interloped is having tea with the plain schooltea...

By a stroke of luck, I happened to see in the paper today that the première of season 5 of DA is on tonight. I have little to no recollection of how we ended the last season. Was that when Matthew died? Are we going to be forced to see Shirley McClain again? Have they killed off the wife yet, so we don't have to watch the bad acting of Elizabeth McGovern? I believe where we left off was that Anna suspects her husband of murdering the man's maid who raped her. I missed the first five minutes, but here we are, with Edith visiting the poor farmers who have her illegitimate baby girl, now age two. She leaves crying and wheeling her bike. Maggie Smith has made friends with dead Matthew's mom (it's going to take me a while to remember their names, perhaps all season). That blond cousin will not leave Downton and she will likely continue to slut up the place. I can't keep the alliances straight. I really should've done a refresher course in the characters. Lord G...

Only two episodes worth, according to my mother. But it feels as though we have just begun! That's what happens when you wait for an entire year for a show that only goes for eight total episodes. I guess that's how the Brits do things. Dan has predicted that Mr. Bates will be killed or become a paraplegic and be left out in the garden in the rain. I predict that he will come up with a foolproof way to kill the rapist, but that Anna will leave him because of it. My prediction that Tom and Lady Mary will end up together seems to have come to naught, as she was flirting recklessly and throwing pig feces at that other guy last week. We begin with the pigs and Mr. Drew, not to be confused with the rapist, Mr. Green, which I have. Tom is there with Mary and Lady Edith is checking to see how the piglets nurse to get ready for her upcoming baby. Mrs. Crawley visits the Dowager who is especially bitchy because she's been ill and hasn't been out of house in ages. Mr. Mosle...

We are tearing our eyes off the Beatles tribute to watch this show, so it better deliver. Okay, Lady Grantham demands that her husband go to America to perform a scene with Shirley McClaine, perhaps a reenactment of a scene from Steel Magnolias. Bates has refused to go as Mr. Grantham's valet (pronounced vall-et). Everyone now seems to know about Anna's rapist or as Lady Mary refers to him, "That ruffian." Mr. Barrow gets to go instead. I hope he hooks up with a sailor. Maggie Smith will be taking ill this episode, but let's hope she doesn't keel over because she's signed up to do a movie with Russel Crowe, like Sybil did. Some dudes are hanging around the house, I guess to court Lady Mary. Don't know who this chap is, though he looks a bit like the blond guy from Wings. Can't identify this other identical looking man either. They all wear tweed hats and have Aryan blue eyes. Tom drives Lady Crawley home as he has to go to see the Pig Ma...

We just switched over from the Superbowl to an entirely different world altogether. I have this crazy superstition, shared by thousands of drunk men right now, that the Seahawks can only really win if I continue to watch them. We shall soldier on. If there is a turn around in this landslide of a game, I take full responsibility. The ginger male cook (Alfred?) is depressed because he failed at souffle school. That blond visitor (Rose?) who is still around wants to plan a surprise for someone; I didn't catch who. Maggie Smith worries that young Peg (?) is stealing her hair pins; perhaps this is the beginning of her dementia. We watch Lady Mary and Lord Tom walking through a stable, though not making out yet (Dan and Tom have the same hat--we bought Dan's from the Army Navy store this December). It's hard to write about this show when I can never remember anyone's name. I can only give you their names if someone says, That's her ladyship, Lady Graham Cracker. Okay,...

I don't have much time here, people, because DA--the show for people who like antique pocket watches and leather valises, and fat white labs running across green lawns, and lovely dresses with delicate collars and beadwork, and candlesticks, and dastardely footmen vying against holier than thou butlers--shall be on in 16 minutes. However, I don't like an entire week to go by without at least geting something written in the blog, lest you stop checking it. Have been reading lots of drafts of short stories in both the class I teach and the class I take, and the levels of skill are astonishing--ranging from people who seem to have a good command of the story, to those who have had very little practice writing short stories. Just this afternoon, I read a piece for the class I'm taking that was heavy with images that were unintentionally funny; comparisons being made between chest hair and ants, just as an example (something like: "his hair was stiff and short like ants...

You can catch all kinds of not terrible programming on PBS, as I'm sure you know, and you can sometimes catch shows that you wish you liked more. For example, Dan and I tried to watch Masterpiece Mystery last Sunday night, hoping that it would be an episode of Zen , but instead, we got Lewis and Hathaway. Maybe we were both just tired, but it was a hard show to follow, mainly because we couldn't understand the accents (here's where Padhraig would say, "Racist") or the colloquialisms. I swear at one point, one of the coppers said, "Put a badger on the grill and smack off the what z-it." Not sure if this was an insult or a misunderstanding, but most of the rest of the show was like that--we were in need of subtitles. Later, Dan made me fall sideways laughing because he saw fat Emma Carol stretched out on the bed and said, in a British accent, "Look at you, you sack of potatoes, you like your crunchy food?" On Saturday, we watched the first hour...