Wordy Old Men on Downton Abbey: Season Six, Episode One

As Downton Abbey kicks off its final season, the first episode finds Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes fretting over their approaching nuptials with Mrs. Patmore as their go-between while Lady Mary faces a ghost from her sexual past. The family Bates awaits their fate regarding the untimely but deserved demise of the odious Mr. Green. The fate of the noble class appears to be endangered as a neighboring estate is being sold to a moneyed commoner and its belongings are auctioned. 

Old Man Duggan: It's 1925, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. We open on a fox hunt, and in a sly nod to the past Lady Mary gets all muddied up whilst jumping the brook, no doubt an Interwar euphemism of some sort. Where first it both shrewdly and lewdly portended an escapade of the anal variety with the Kemal Pamuk, the circle is closed with her forays into the arena of premarital sex coming back to potentially bite her in that murderous ass. Of course, now Lady Mary can not only ride her horse astride--the sexual undertones not lost on this dirty mind--but she can vote and perform the job previously reserved for a man. While the riding astride query from Lord Grantham serves as the quick feminism status check for the show, true to form it doesn't take Robert long to move beyond his regressive inclinations and embrace the fact that his daughter is not entirely encumbered on account of her inward-oriented genitalia.

Can we presume that George begging to lick the bowl is a harbinger of what's to come for the moneyed nobility? The next generation of gentryfolk will be reduced to begging for uncooked table scraps before mistaking the devious underbutler for a horse. Of course this all occurs while the old proles slave away, still chained to the ten-square-foot patch of tiled floor in the bowels of a building from whence they're allowed to leave only long enough to get them enough vitamin D to ward off the rickets.

Wordy Ginters: I'm more comfortable with Li'l Georgie's bowl licking foreshadowing a crumbling class structure than I am in reading into what his incessant horsey back riding on Thomas might mean in Fellowes's ghoulish hands.

OMD: There's little chance Thomas isn't implicated in something untoward with those children. It's not like Fellowes hasn't taken a mostly Old World route in making the only gay character in the principle cast the underhanded villain. Fellowes surely sets head to pillow every night and with the last pre-slumber, quasi-subconscious thought slipping through being, "But Thomas is a gay. I can't let him be too human."

Where Lady Mary's concerns are turned to sex of the premarital variety, Mrs. Hughes's are turned to the marital. So late to get on the horse that she entrusts Mrs. Patmore to serve as her sexual consigliere in a sitdown with Mr. Carson. My first thought was that there may not be a person less suited for such a task amongst the servants, but the pickings are so slim as to have only Anna as a more desirable prenuptial dotter of 'i's and crosser of 't's than Patmore, and she's got her B-story plate full with the still quite dead Mr. Green and the prospect of an uncooperative womb. Clearly the poor dolt Daisy cannot be trusted to handle any situation that doesn't arise within the confines of a kitchen. That leaves Baxter, who is simply too busy planning the next time in which her foot will furtively brush against Molesley's under the table. Patmore it is.

WG: If Patmore is the right answer, what the fuck is the question?

OMD: Who best to fashion a dildo from a gourd?

WG: Both Carson and Hughes are so sexually cloistered, you know regressive kink is on the horizon once they become the least bit comfortable with the missionary position. How many episodes until Hughes is asking Patmore to ask Carson if he wants to wear a diaper and a bonnet and to drink from a bottle? I was glad Carson committed to a full red-blooded marriage and all of the carnal goodness that implies. On the same hand, exploring the sexual tension of two repressed 60-year-olds did strike me as perfect fodder for the PBS crowd.

OMD: The tote holders clutch their Mr. Selfridge bags close to their chest, upper lips trembling and dowsed with sweat.

I, for one, am shocked that Patmore's first conversation with Carson wasn't completely disastrous. Sure, it was as awkward a conversation--what the hell does "Do you expect to share your way of life?" even mean?--but there were so many different ways in which this conversation could have been singly responsible for the fall of the British Empire, that it was a relief to have come out on the other side without shrapnel embedded in every person from Ripon to Thirsk. Patmore downs Carson's proffered port and retreats with no one maimed.

WG: The idea of Patmore and Carson talking sex was so batshit crazy it made for a strangely tense scene. It wasn't Christoph Waltz turning the crank in a Tarantino movie, but I quivered like a bunny just the same. It was sweet release when the convoluted three-cushion bank shot that Patmore set up finally hit the pocket, and that flicker of understanding dawned across Carson's face.

OMD: The sheer prospect of having been indelicate would surely result in soiled drawers for our dear Mr. Carson.

"I'm completely whacked. Don't tell your mother." Can this mean Robert is unwell, or is this just an existential malaise set upon all of the marginal Lords of the Interwar Period?

WG: I think it means he's just finished masturbating.

OMD: Is Rita Bevan the most Fellowesian of all of the wretched rogues who have slithered through the halls of Downton? He barging through the halls with little concern for manners makes me long for a different time. The time I'm wishing for, of course, would have seen Bevan's head on a pike.

WG: Reminded me of a shittier Sarah Bunting. I kind of admired her ballsy contempt for normal boundaries.

OMD: That was the single quality of Miss Bevan's that was anything less than loathsome. And Mary still told her that just because the worker bees would have their day, didn't mean that she would.

With news of the killer of The Rapey Mister Green coming forward, Officer Krupke--er, Sergeant Willis stated that "she saw(r) him standing there," which hilariously repainted Tiffany's gender-reversed Beatles cover "I Saw Him Standing There" in my head. I thought of young Tiffany pushing rapists into oncoming traffic and a smile swept across my face. Of course, that led me down the path to tracking down the song, listening to something that I had remembered rather differently, vomiting, reading the lyrics to find that the link between Willis's description and the Tiffany tune ended at its title, and regretting that the connection was ever made. Then I came back to a time-traveling Tiffany shoving rapists under the wheels of trolleys and lorries across Interwar Britain and reconciled the conflicting emotions with a smile. I will not listen to that song again, though. Never again.

WG: Christ. That sounds like some kind of hellish Lakota vision quest. Or maybe the time Erlich went off to the desert with a bag of mushrooms trying to come up with a better name than Pied Piper on Silicon Valley. What other gender-reversed song covers would you like to see? How about Joanna Newsom covering the Rupert Holmes classic "Him," or more precisely "Her" for our purposes?

OMD: Maybe Linda Ronstadt doing Nick Cave's incarnation of "Stagger Lee."

While I'd be more than happy to see Hughes and Carson marry, a big part of me wants him to only call her Mrs. Hughes while engaging in sexagenarian humping. It'd be a shame for him to lose his grip on tradition while in the throes of passion.

WG: Mrs. Hughes, beg your pardon, I'm going to cum.

OMD: Carson and Patmore's second conversation was sweet. While Carson's love for Elsie--start swishing it around in your mouth for taste, Carson--was touching, the real person to feel for here was Patmore, whose closest brush with love was with that boorish milkman (or whatever the fuck he was) who was groping everyone in sight at the fair when Mrs. Patmore's attentions were turned elsewhere. To be closing in on present-day retirement age without being able to say you've loved another while giving your life to the service of a family who knows little about you past your surname and your dead nephew Archie is really quite sad.

WG: I had the same feeling. Patmore recognizing the loneliness inside herself, perhaps highlighted and revealed by Carson's earnest love for Hughes, made for a sweet and sour scene.

OMD: Since it happened, we probably have to talk about Denker's shit-stirring amongst the servant-class at Grantham House and Downton Abbey, but this should not take precedent over the fact that I just learned that Joel Murray long-lost once-identical cousin Mr. Spratt possesses the most excellent first name of all time: Septimus. Septimus Spratt. Holy shit. Judging by his name, he'd be just as likely to be a stodgy, British Transformer hellbent on invading Hogwarts to dispatch of Slytherin House.

WG: The new Defence against the Dark Arts professor is Freddy Rumsen.

OMD: As for Denker, while I expect the show's final scene to be something with Bates and Anna finally finding happiness after more than a dozen years of false hope and interminable misery because Julian Fellowes is a sadist, I'd be just as happy if it was the Dowager Countess hitting Denker over the head with a fucking shovel and gesturing to Spratt--positively beaming with a shit-eating grin--to tend to the mess. Violet turning the table on the conniving Denker was delightful. That Denker is so foul as to make one root for Spratt in every situation speaks to the malodorous air left in her wake in each scene.

WG: Denker and Spratt perfectly represent the dark side of the Dowager's remorselessly privileged soul. Spratt's lips should have their own show. I'd watch 30 minutes of him purring and saying words and phrases like "plum" and "plume" and "droll poltroon."

OMD: If the Bateses cannot, in fact, conceive, there have to be even odds that one of the Crawley girls' predilection toward sexual impropriety will yield another child, right? If not that, then surely Anna will stumble across a child in a basket floating down the very brook through which Lady Mary's sexual dalliances come to bear in a cyclical fashion. Then after raising the child as their own for years, John and Anna Bates will be charged with kidnapping, and their lives will be torn apart once more by a crime that they didn't commit because Fellowes hates when the proles get even a morsel of happiness.

WG: The celebratory champagne flowed. As soon as the needle dropped on that gramophone (admit it, just like me, you were expecting to hear "Close your Eyes (and Count to Fuck)" by Run the Jewels come blasting out of that tin ear horn), I knew that Bates and Anna would be back in the shit soon enough.

OMD: I think everyone assumed it was going to be that.

Lady Edith seems likely to butt heads with William Randolph Hearst, right? He buys a castle in the UK in 1925. I'm guessing she makes an enemy of him and eventually hires Orson Welles to take him down a peg only to have him blow up his own career and never again have final cut.

WG: If it means we see Gerald McRaney on Downton this season, I'm all for it.

OMD: Playing son to his previous father. Let's hope.

Robert's handling of the churlish Miss Bevan was nice. Handed her ass to her without dirtying his hands much.

WG: Yosting. I didn't think he had the skills to pull a move like that. And I'm a little skeptical that little bulldog Bevan would be satisfied with a paltry 50 pounds.

OMD: That or jail time? She'd never be able to handle the rigors of the laps 'round the courtyard.

With the demise of Mallerton Hall and the impending doom about to descend upon the United Kingdom on the whole, the future of Downton Abbey would certainly seem to be less than bright. Can we expect Carson to be wandering the halls in tatters, wits left a decade in the past, muttering to himself about servants long since kicked to the curb to fend for themselves as typists and sock-darners on High Street? The future sure seems like it's writ large across this episode.

WG: Fucking Nazis.

Prick Tunes: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "We No Who U R"

The first song available to listen to from the forthcoming Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, Push the Sky Away--less than two months away, bitches--is up. As someone who already has tickets for the nearest show that the tour-hating Bad Seeds are playing to Austin (until of course they announce three fucking SXSW shows that no normal person will be able to go to), I'm excited for this record. This song does nothing to quell my excitement. Despite its title, the song is great. The effects on the organ are fantastic.

Color me pumped.

Prick Tunes: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "The Weeping Song"

I feel like hell. What better way to celebrate that fact than with the Cave with Seeds classic, "The Weeping Song?"

Wordy Old Men on Downton Abbey: Series One, Episode Seven

At this point, you should know the drill. We're using the UK versions. They are readily available online. Series One is available on Netflix Instant, Blu-ray, and DVD (I have no fucking idea how to get rid of that goddamn white box). 

This week's installment finds the fabled "Season" having just come to an end. The Family Crawley, sans Lady Mary, has returned from London and the balls of high society. It is July of 1914. Franz Ferdinand has just been assassinated. Those with a cursory knowledge of world history knows what that means. Matthew's proposal hangs in the air, while Mary hangs back in London with her idiot aunt, Rosamund. Via Evelyn Napier, Mary discovers the source of the scurrilous (though true) rumors was in fact her awful sister, Edith. Cora finds out that she is with child, much to Robert's surprise. O'Brien gets news of the exact nature of the crimes of which Bates had been convicted--the theft of regimental silver--and she and supreme shitbird Thomas set upon scheming to take down Bates, a common theme. Anna and Mrs. Patmore go to London to have Patmore's cataracts removed on Lord Grantham's dime. Molesley sees Thomas rooting around in Mr. Carson's wallet. Carson and Lord Grantham decide that Thomas must be shit-canned as soon as the upcoming garden party is over. Mary, upon finding out that Matthew may not inherit the title of Lord Grantham, sees the footing upon which a fruitful union can be built losing stability and begins to hem and haw. Matthew takes her hesitation as a sign that she does not love him, eventually deciding he needs to leave Downton for his own good. Anna finds out the true nature of Bates's crime, marrying poorly; it was his wife who nicked the sterling. O'Brien, sensing a sacking on the way, resents what she perceives as a slight from Cora and leaves a half-bar of wet soap at the foot of the bath. She has second thoughts but is not fast enough. Cora slips, falls, and miscarries in the bathroom. It was a boy. Lord Grantham weeps for his unborn son but finds solace in the fact that Bates need not go anywhere. A garden party is had. In the most Downton way possible, Bates declares his love for Anna to Molesley. War is declared.

Wordy Ginters: Another great episode. I like the rollicking pace, plot pay-offs coming as hard and fast as the historical markers in the back drop.

Josh "Old Man" Duggan: The pace was fucking breakneck here. It's almost hard to catch your breath. This episode was about fifteen minutes longer than the rest of the episodes of the season, yet the action seemed to unfurl itself with such ferocity that it made the episode seem shorter than the rest.

WG: What know you of the "season" phenomena? The swells gather to marry off children and mingle? Lick the silver spoon, drink from the golden cup, and smoke the finest weed? Shout out to my man Everlast, a big Downton Abbey fan who lurks here often.

OMD: According to TSLF, all the aristocratic families from the countryside flock to the city (London) and attend balls. It's basically the debutante scene. Families throw galas. Daughters "come out." Usually a family would just introduce one daughter a season, meaning that the Bennett daughters all coming out at the same time in Pride and Prejudice was gauche. This was obviously Lady Sybil's first season. It being Mary's fourth season while remaining unattached is the subject of much consternation on her parents' part, especially since Mary seems to be her own worst enemy.

WG: I was digging the gear his lord and lady were sporting when they opened the episode rolling into Downton via car. I don't know about you, when I go on a road trip, I'm rocking the casual gear. A matching velour top and bottom track suit, slip on shoes. Maybe I shouldn't bring up footwear. Evidently back in the day, you had to dress up like the Wright brothers to drive.

OMD: You best believe that I'm sporting my driving gloves, (No glove? No love.) and I've always made sure to get my riding scarf in position snugly 'round my neck. You'll not see me wearing driving goggles, however, as I'm already bespectacled. Otherwise, just my standard attire of boxers, blazer, and baseball cleats. Nothing more. Nothing less. To be fair, were I alive in 1914, I'd surely have dressed like the Wright brothers, but not just for driving in the country.

WG: Lady Grantham is pregnant! Hard to imagine a sex life for those two. Don't get me wrong, I've always found Cora to be attractive. It just seems that his lordship would find the act of humping as too undignified. I think it speaks well of their relationship that they still knock it out every now and again.

OMD: His Lordship seems to be most concerned by doing what's best for the masses. That includes but is not limited to getting his hump on, dignity be damned. That they sleep together--rather unusual for the time--speaks volumes to his affinity for keeping warm at night via the good old-fashioned means of body heat. Perhaps Cora was raised by eskimos, who taught her both how to keep warm at night and how to properly catch whales, the latter being the means by which she amassed her fortune.

Lord Grantham's desire to hear nothing of womanly matters from Dr. Clarkson was hilarious. Your earlier mention of boot-knocking being too lacking in dignity for his Lordship certainly applies here. I also really loved the scene where Robert is about to head into the library when Sybil jumps in and tells him that he cannot go in there because Gwen is getting interviewed for the secretary position with the phone company. His reaction at having been overruled by one of his daughters reminded me of how often Coach Taylor, a stately chap blessed with an innate sense of command and responsibility in his own right, was summarily put into his place by his wife or daughter on Friday Night Lights.

WG: Alas, I have not cracked the Friday Night Lights serial. Buzz Bissinger and Peter Berg together again? I've heard good things. What never goes out of style is men acting like paternal stick up the arses. Good for Sybil. No one else gets over on his Lordship like Lady Sybil.

OMD: Berg brought it to the small screen, but handed the reigns over to show-runner Jason Katims almost immediately. Cousin Bissinger is actually not involved with the show at all. The show, as I've mentioned many, many times in this forum is awesome. The best programming that network television has had to offer in ages, if not ever. As for Sybil, the youngest certainly owns his Lordship. I think he wilts at her determination. Brava, Sybil. Brava.

WG: Did you catch the quote Mary had when Napier dropped a dime on Edith? I believe she directly mentioned "face to face" in her conversation, which is a fairly obvious endorsement of the F2FA theory as the cause of Pamuk's ultimate demise.

OMD: With as coy as Fellowes & Co. get with their cheeky dialogue, one cannot help but assume that they are getting to the heart of the matter: F2FA. It never leaves Mary's mind. Forbidden Turkish fruit has its way of doing that to a fancy lass.

WG: As we've mentioned before, the show challenges viewers to follow some unspoken plot advancement and twists, which is refreshing. The cinematography is sometimes brilliant as well. The scene including his Lordship and Matthew discussing Mary's ruminatin' on the marriage vows was stunning.

OMD: Refreshing indeed. As for the photography, it is beautiful. Tasteful, restrained British opulence or the verdant grounds of Downton in every frame. First, it looks as though they're on a stroll at Augusta, then they've got the beautiful Jacobethan styling of Highclere Castle as the backdrop in the next frame.

WG: For the first time, Bates' body language looked defeated. When Carson came in to share the contents of the "gotcha" note that had been procured by O'Brien, he looked frail and small. First time I'd noticed that in the series.

OMD: I am still not quite sure why this note should have been so damning coming so hot on the heels of Bates's confession to the very misdeeds cited in the note. Bates, while wearing defeat like a leaden cloak, is ultimately a scrapper. Somehow it seems as though no matter what shit gets thrown at him, he's going to end up persevering--a modern-day telling of the Job story, I hope.

WG: Liked the Bates line, "astonished at your kindness" in response to Carson's on-going deliberations throughout the episode. I know you linked the Nick Cave tune last week, since I've been going thru a Cave phase lately, it reminded me of mebbe my fave Cave song: "Stranger Than Kindness" from Your Funeral... My Trial. First proper Cave album I owned. I think I found him via a sampler, Neil Young covers--a benefit album/fund raiser for some org called "The Bridge." He covered "Helpless." Loved it, went to the local record store and scored YFMT. Loved it. Still do. Might be my fave Cave album.

OMD: Great line for sure. The first Nick Cave album I had was Let Love In. If memory serves me correctly, my introduction to the band was through The X-Files--that Songs in the Key of X pseudo soundtrack. I wish I was cool enough to say that I was into The Birthday Party and followed Cave over. I suppose I'd have been a really cool kindergartener if I'd been able to say that I'd been into The Birthday Party since I was born and that I was still unsure as to how I'd feel about Cave with his Bad Seeds. Personally, I go to Murder Ballads first, and then jump up to The Lyre of Orpheus / Abattoir Blues double LP.

WG: Both excellent choices. No More Shall We Part is a fave around these parts. Have you dug backwards beyond that stuff? I LOVE the Birthday Party stuff, it appeals to an angry noise aesthetic that I've got a soft spot for. I found it late as well, only after immersing myself in Cave. Your Funeral... My Trial, Kicking Against the Pricks, Henry's Dream, and The Good Son are all great records. Repeated listening is richly rewarded.

OMD: On the Cave front, I have everything but From Her to Eternity, Kicking Against the Pricks, and Tender Prey. Don't ask me why I don't have them. There's no rationale. Simply a lack of time. I'm definitely keener on their later sound. As for The Birthday Party, it's definitely noisier than I'm typically into, which is why I've never really gone whole-hog on them.

WG: O'Brien. An excellent antagonist. Loathsome. She hits all the wrong notes in this episode. Fellowes rounds the corners a bit by having O'Brien stare into the mirror and attempt to convince herself that the conniving double-dealing harpy isn't who she really is. It's easy to hate O'Brien, but you have to feel a little pull there. I'm wondering if she's going to go The Godfather route and split her wrists in a warm tub so she doesn't embarrass her old school brother from Sicily.

OMD: It's a great scene. One word comes to mine. That word is phonetically contained within the words "country singer." A fate that you describe would be letting her off too easily. I want pain. I want blood. I want a torturous demise. I love the twist of the knife that comes later when she discovers that the advertised position was to replace the Dowager Countess's maid. I hope this eats away at her and eventually drives her over the cliff into a state of madness from which she cannot come back.

How great was Bates telling Molesley in only the way that Fellowes would have it done that he loves Anna? In the third person: "He's very keen. Very keen indeed."

WG: That was maybe the highlight of the episode filled with highlights. I loved it. Also, was that Bates in make up playing his own mother? The resemblance was striking. Too lazy to look at the DVD materials, but I'm wondering if it was a blood relative.

OMD You'll love this. It was actually Jane Wenham who played Bates's mum. Jane Wenham was in a bunch of British shit I've never heard of. She was also married to Albert Finney, having popped out a son, Simon, who works as a camera operator.

A single from The Prodigy succintly describes what should happen to her

OMD: I'd love to smack the hell out of Lady Rosamund right about now...

WG: If I were the Dowager, I would say something half corny, half biting, but I ain't got it in me. Oh, wait... The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

OMD: How great was William pounding on Thomas? Thomas has always been a shit, and despite the fact that the hammer is moments away from being brought down on the snaky footman, it's nice to see mild-mannered William give Thomas a once-over. William should make Thomas fluff his pillow (non-sexually) every night until Thomas is out of the house.

WG: The pay-off wasn't as brutal as I was hoping for. I thought Bates might come in to bat clean up. It was cleansing to see someone finally put a fist in Thomas's smart mouth. His unraveling throughout the show was a pleasure to watch. That he appears to be a step ahead regardless is a little galling, but at least he got mussed up a bit. Dude wears some sweet vests. He's got the Gordon Gekko horizontal herringbone thing going on. I like it. I wish they had those sweet vests at Target, I'd be wearing one to the pool this summer.

OMD We should start up a vest shoppe. We'll call it The Vestibule. Vests for all shapes and sizes. It'll catch on like wildfire.

OMD: I loved Cora's response to Lady Edith's sad plea for maternal approval after Cora congratulates Sybil on a season well done. "Don't I? You're very helpful, dear." If Edith weren't such a--what was the word I alluded to earlier?--country singer, you could almost start feel bad for her. That "slut" line draws any last opening for sympathy emphatically shut. Now we get to sit back and take perverse pleasure in every slight that comes her way.

WG: Mary may be named after the Mother of Christ, but she can bring the revenge like a little devil. Revenge is a dish best served cold. At a garden party. With iced cakes and war declarations.

OMD: The father/daughter dynamic between Carson and Lady Mary was here in full-force again. First with Carson's assumption that Lady Mary would never turn Matthew's proffered engagement down, assuming the best in his daughter by proxy. Mrs. Hughes's response--"Mr. Carson, Lady Mary Crawley does not deserve you"--was priceless. I love how differently the two heads of house see everything as pertains to Mary. Later, of course, he, not Lord Grantham, is there to console his near-daughter as she is beside herself at the prospect of having to live without Matthew around, having squandered her best chance at happiness in marriage.

WG: I'm man enough to admit that the dynamic between Carson and Mary is sweet. Like two fluffy kittens struggling to escape a wicker laundry basket. It makes me feel warm inside.

OMD: Speaking of Carson, how great was his phone practicing? I'd love to watch that for an hour.

WG: I'm right there with you. The sense of dignity and duty he brings to the most mundane tasks is inspirational. I would imagine his bowel movements involve a certain decorum and order that would seem otherworldly in today's bathroom culture. Which is in rapid decline. I'm working on a position paper entitled "The Shame of Public Shitting," which attacks both the shoddy and generally unclean state of public restrooms in the City of Lincoln Nebraska, and also the complex psychological issues that crop up in a restroom.

OMD: A friend of mine wanted to write a book detailing the best bathrooms in the land. My personal favorite is the bathroom in the Marfa Bookstore. Not overly glamorous, but classy. Simple. It's bi-fold focus lies equally on utility and cleanliness.

As for this episode, it was such a great close to the first series. It brings a semblance of closure to the necessary arcs while setting the pieces in place for a [spoiler alert] great second series. War is upon us. Batten down the goddamn hatches.

And so ends Series One. We pick right up again next week with Series Two (here on Blu-ray and DVD and also stream-able on Netflix Instant). 

Prick Tunes: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds "Red Right Hand"

This song was my gateway into the dark twisted world of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It was featured on the Songs in the Key of X compilation--an anthology of songs tied to The X-Files either in theme or actually having been featured on the show. Chris Carter actually stated that "Red Right Hand" had been the inspiration for putting the collection together in the liner notes for the collection. While not a huge single at the time of Let Love In's release in 1994, even in Australia or the UK, its mark has been much more significant than its charting would imply, as it's been featured in all of the first three Scream movies (in one way, shape, or form), Dumb and Dumber, and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. That last credit makes it only the second weirdest gateway to the modern youth demographic with that dance in the tent scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1, taking the cake for most unexpected place to find Nick Cave.

The phrase "red right hand" is from John Milton's Paradise Lost and is a reference to the vengeful hand of god, according to Wikipedia.