Wordy Old Men on Downton Abbey: Season Five, Episode Three

[This week's delay was the direct result of Comcast blowing goats and the abysmal internet connectivity at OMD's parents' home. Wordy Ginters took the reins this week, thankfully, and the delay, while painful, should not repeat itself this season.]

Lady Mary works on her post-coital glow, Spratt drops a dime on her sex filled romp in Liverpool to the Dowager, Bates looks to get measured for pinstripes, again, Edith wears out her welcome with the Drewes, Baxter gets an ultimatum, Thomas is lying about something, Cora considers the art consultation business, Bunting shits in the punch bowl, Daisy does her maths.

Wordy Ginters: I've never been to England, but I imagine it doesn't get more romantic than Liverpool. Did you see the abs on Gillingham? I'm guessing those abs aren't historically correct. Regardless of his marbled midsection and impossibly full-bodied hair, he's already coming on a little needy, with the creepy "I notice everything you do" shtick and the unannounced arrival at the Russian Tea Party. I don't blame Mary for having second thoughts, but the self-absorbed "who will she end up with?" cliffhanger BS left me cold the first time around, as will its redux.

Screw these dinks.

Old Man Duggan: One of the worst days of my life had Liverpool as its lowlight. Travel nightmare on the day they arrested the terrorists in London who had been planning hijackings leading to heading deaf, dumb, and blind to Liverpool in the hopes of catching a ferry to Dublin to be able to eventually catch our flight from Ireland back to the States. Screw Liverpool and all its 'pudlians who couldn't tell me where the goddamn ferry line was.

As for good ol' Gill's abs, put your goddamn shirt on, you're making me randy with your abs and your lats, Tony Hunkingham. The Ham's got a 21st Century bod in the Roaring 20s. Good on him. You'd think with that package he'd be a little less desperate for the cavalier and anemic Mary Crowley. I'm not looking forward to getting to suffer through Lady Mary's hemming and hawing betwixt two suitors who frankly lack the charisma and draw of Matthew.

WG: I don't know what was more humorous: the idea that Carson could be wheedled into allowing a soldier shot for cowardice to have his name on the Downton War Memorial, or how PUT OUT he was when Thomas asked to use the demon telephone?

OMD: The incredulity in his eyes at Thomas possibly needing to use that infernal contraption when writing a letter would surely have done the glacially paced trick was a look of which only Jim Carter may be capable. His look upon having his office door shut behind him was priceless.

Just Falking around

WG: I thoroughly enjoyed the Dowager's stone cold lady balls when she effortlessly deflated Spratt's potentially embarrassing news with an extemporaneous cover story. It's those grace under pressure moments that make her coming undone at memories of Prince Kuragin more meaningful. The only thing that seems to rattle her is naughty sexy dirty blood sugar sex magik. And hey, I just watched Maggie Smith as a younger women in Neil Simon's barely watchable Murder by Death a few weeks ago, she was a total dish. Speaking of movies, isn't the dude who plays Prince Kuragin the same guy who rented Cruise his costume in Eyes Wide Shut? Those scenes at the costume shop were fantastically creepy.

OMD: Yes, Rade Serbedzija, who was also in Snatch. As for the young Miss Smith, I've seen none of her earlier work, much to my own chagrin. There's not a good reason for not having seen The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The old dame was quick on the draw with the fabricated reason for Mary's having been seen red-assed and sexually exhausted on the curb in Liverpool with her illicit lover. Spratt's inability to spew out his gossip in a way other than stilted was tiresome. Is he supposed to be affecting a Liverpudlian accent?

WG: I always dig it when Fellowes takes the production off Downton and films in London or other locales. Bricker humping Cora's leg up and down the museum corridors and the twilight sidewalks of London was visually striking. Despite the hash, rehashing, and re-purposing of many plot threads, the visuals have always been top notch on Downton Abbey.

OMD: The show is definitely at its best when mixing up the locations and showing that they're not just beneficiaries of preying on a flagging real-life manor. I simply cannot divorce Richard E. Grant from his role in Hudson Hawk. It makes it really hard to watch his neutered faux courtship of the married Cora Crowley. Grant was born in Mbabane, Swaziland.

WG: Spotted dick reference? Fellowes throwing a bone to the millions of middle school Downton devotees. The tragedy is that it's a damn fine dessert.

OMD: Good old Jules. Never above dipping his pen in the gutter inkwell and dropping a cheeky lewd reference.

WG: Sympathy butters no parsnips.

OMD: Nor is it reserved solely for the holy. But Carson could stop being a dick and just put dear cowardly Archie's name on the memorial.

WG: As much as I'm not looking forward to the Battle Royale among Lady Mary's suitors, I'm even more not looking forward to the idea that Bates is going to end up back on the hook. It's like peeling off a scab. I know you have a hard-on for shot framing, did you notice as he walked forlornly down the hallway after speaking with Anna about their predicament towards episode's end that he was tightly framed in by woodwork and windows with lattices and such? I get the jailhouse blues just remembering on it.

OMD: If Bates ends up back in the clink, that may be the nail in the show's coffin. Good catch on the filmic representation of Bates's looming imprisonment.

WG: What jumped out at you?

OMD: Cora's fitting with Molyneux was with Edward Molyneux, whose last name was apparently pronounced much more similarly to Rance Mulliniks, not in the fashion that Cora employed while namedropping her hoity-toity French pronunciation. Despite blindness in one eye on account of a war wound, he ran the go-to fashion salon in Paris and later Monte Carlo, Cannes, and London for the upper crust women who wanted to look unpredictably fashionable, at least according to the internet and historian Caroline Milbank.

WG: Thank your for conjuring visions of Rance Mulliniks and fine French fashion in the same paragraph. Have they ever been in such proximity before? Doubtful.

OMD: I like that free will as applicable to the boudoir escapades of the rich, famous, and gentrified is nonexistent in the eyes of the Dowager Countess. No, Mary, you were seduced. There is no other explanation. Of course Violet doesn't know that her granddaughter is the possessor of a mercilessly bloodthirsty anus, a fact that would certainly color her beliefs on aristocractic sexual determinism.

WG: For being relatively pragmatic, the old old old fashioned views on sex from the Dowager are a tad surprising. The only way to know about the fatal anus is to cross the rubicon. To experience it is to perish. Gillingham used up 8 of his 9 lives and half a spit curl surviving that weekend. Little known fact: locking pliers, AKA "vice grips," were invented in 1924. This is obviously related to Mary's anus, I just don't know how to connect the dots properly.

OMD: You are definitely onto something here. Is Tony Gillingham the man to invent them? Guessing so.

Mrs. Drewe's freak out was dumb. Of course Edith got the old heave-ho. It didn't take long for the helicoptering fairy godmother to get the heave-ho.

WG: Speaking of fashion, I kind of dig Mr. Drewe's threads. The man knows his vests. What he doesn't have is any idea how to execute a plan to get Edith reunited with her daughter. Whatever "plan" he had going, which was essentially visit us into submission, gives half-baked a bad name.

OMD: Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man. Hell, I'm crazy about him. But mastermind schemer? That's not Mr. Drewe.

I really loved Tom and Mary's fireside confidante scene. "Are we talking about your so-called sketching trip? Because I never believed in that for a moment." It was nice that the two of them could speak freely with one another. Perhaps Branson's lower breeding makes for easier to cut to the chase rather than dance around whilst employing tedious high society conversational conventions that endlessly skirt saying what is actually happening.

WG: If history has taught us anything, it's that Irish firebrands know all about fucking.

OMD: That cannot be argued. It is historical fact.

How is it that dipshit Miss Bunting can never bite her tongue and always ends up offending company? Let these Russian dopes mourn their dear dead Tsar without bringing up the policies of the forcibly and violently dethroned.

WG: Fellowes portrays Bunting like a hysterically right-wing over-the-top version of Hillary Clinton.\

OMD: I was driven by her residence just yesterday.

Baxter's bad influence was Mr. Coyle. I wonder what this says about Brendan Coyle's relationship with Julian Fellowes. I'm assuming this is a tongue-in-cheek nod to back-scenes shenanigans. Brendan Coyle, ever the bad influence on set, mucking up the works with his pranks and smoking of cigarettes.

WG: Excellent catch. No doubt a reference to the seductive ornery manliness of the powerhouse behind Bates.

Wordy Old Men on Downton Abbey: Season Five, Episode Two

Lord Grantham and Carson differ on where to place the war memorial. Violet and Isobel visit Lord Merton. Molesley is given details on Baxter's past. Mary makes Anna take a trip to the prophylactic dispensary. Edith becomes her bastard child's godmother. Murder police come to the Abbey.

Old Man Duggan: I'll be honest. Jimmy's farewell to Thomas got me a little choked up. You have to give Fellowes due credit for being able to gain audience sympathy for a character who should by all means be entirely unlikable. Of course it takes five minutes for him to turn heel again and poison Molesley's relationship with Baxter--at least temporarily.

Wordy Ginters: Fellowes is adroit with the emotional manipulation, making it easy to flip-flop from disgust to delight on characters. He's done that before with Thomas. I remember thinking he was almost human for a few scant seconds when he was slinking around the battlefields during WWI. In fact, Fellowes has complicated most of the cast. It's what makes Downton worthwhile. That scene revealed some pro acting chops from Rob James-Collier.

OMD: This whole war memorial subplot is thoroughly uninteresting this week. Shall we skip the nonsense?

WG: Death to the Cricket pitch.

OMD: Molesley is all the footmen.

WG: When Carson wants to bust balls, best keep your head down. Poor Molesley just asks for it time and again. Walking around with his dunce hat, his hair dye, and his heart on his sleeve. Footmens beats the shit out of asphalt tamper.

OMD: Back to uninteresting subplots, Robert's bristling at the concept of having a radio in the house despite Rose's protestations was pretty dull. The only good part of the whole sequence was Robert's assertion that the hadn't previously ruled on the matter. I suppose the reflexivity of people sitting around a box getting dumber is amusing, too.

WG: Fear and disdain for new technology is a go to knee-slapper for Downton Abbey. Carson confronting a toaster for the first time a few seasons back reminded me of the "dawn of man" scene from 2001.

OMD: Anna fetching the contraception for Lady Mary was awkward. Obviously, it serves a greater purpose--not unlike the wireless subplot which was helping to show the days of great change--as why should anyone get to judge another for what they do in their private sexy lives. That old bat in the apothecary--or wherever she went--can shove her abstinence up her prude ass.

WG: If abstinence is the answer, I don't want to know the question. And yes, fuck that nonsense. The old bat surely sees a river of dripping, oozing, pus-filled, and morally obtuse maladies every day. No sense in getting all churchy about contraception. Jesus Christ, she wasn't working at a pharma in Ireland.

OMD: Miss Bunting won't go away, will she? I suppose it's best to have Tom rediscover the revolutionary within, but Bunting is a bit tedious.

WG: Fellowes can't help himself, can he? The "progressives" have to be irritating shits in some way. At least she has the social skills to steer clear of Rose's ham-fisted dinner invite. Kind of looking forward to Tom and Grantham crossing swords. Sure seems like they're setting up a politically based fall-out.

OMD: Simon Bricker seemed inordinately interested in Cora. Will this be a mini-trial on their union, much like Robert's with the war widow maid, Jane? More importantly, how will Bricker's possible affection toward Cora affect his attempt to piece together da Vinci's machine making alchemy possible and his plan for world domination. But in the meantime, I guess he needs to stop flirting with Isis. What a dunce Robert is.

WG: Bricker is definitely running game on Cora. And why not? You remember Elizabeth McGovern from the Penn/Cage WWII nostalgia piece Racing With The Moon? She is still wholesome and fine. Robert is a dunce. His comfortable fat ass deserves a kick. Everyone got all horny about James Gandolfini parlaying his girth into a character trait for Tony Soprano; same props to Hugh Bonneville for his aristocratic flab.

OMD: I've not seen Racing With The Moon. I'm ashamed of myself. Hugh's aristoflab is spot on.

Baxter refusing to give anyone the whole story regarding her history in thievery is getting a bit ridiculous. Spill, woman.

WG: Care to speculate? I'll go first: she needed the jewels to pay for labiaplasty.

OMD: Maybe vaginal enlargement surgery? Too tight. Or she needed the dough for contact lenses that gave her cat eyes.

Fellowes does deserve credit for generating two suitors for Mary who seem genuinely interesting. Blake is an able foil for Mary, which she probably needs.

WG: That stuck me as presumptuous on Mary's part. I wish Blake would have shut her down. What happens if Gillingham perishes from F2FA? Best to keep a second teamer warmed up on the sidelines.

OMD: Anyone who watches the show must know that the chances of Gillingham dying after a few rounds of premarital sodomy are alarmingly high.

And in comes Sergeant Willis. The death of Mr. Green won't go away, and now there's a witness. I guess this plot line will never be over.

WG: I don't know if I want to go back there either. Two episodes in and the Bateses are apparently getting the Job treatment again.