Reconnecting with Downton Abbey

It was rather nice to drift back into viewing a few episodes of  'Downton Abbey' from its now completed final season. I've been saving the shows in my DVR to give me something to watch when New York's teams further frustrate me. Say what you will about 'Downton,' the characters do keep their clothes on.

I started writing the above in April 2016 and took a very long break from watching any more shows. They're still on the DVR and I just watched one where everyone seems to be happy and doing their thing--Mary and Tom are planning things on the estate and watching race cars; Mr. Mason has just moved into his new farmhouse; Spratt has saved Denker's ass from getting fired for being wholly impertinent to Dr. Clarkson on a village street; Lady Edith is making a career for herself publishing a magazine in London; the downstairs staff is handling their travails, and Thomas is offering to teach Andrew to read so he can be a pig farmer; Baxter turns out not to be needed as a witness at a trial involving a former associate accused of stealing.

Mrs. Hughes and Carson are trying to adjust to one another after getting married. It seems she's been away from the kitchen for so long she's not good at cooking. She needs Care packages from Mrs. Patmore to get her going, and even then she is screwing it up. There are no TV dinners in Downton Abbey.

Cousin Isobel, Countess Violet and Lady Granthan are having a MAJOR policy disagreement on how health care should be delivered to the people in the village. The disagreement obviously predates any debate that might occur in the U.S. by decades, but it does show you the durability of the topic.

All this good-natured bliss and banter is stunningly interrupted when Robert, Lord Granthan, becomes Linda Blair in 'The 'Exorcist' and coughs up an incredible amount of blood from a ruptured stomach ulcer, spraying nearly everyone at the dinner table, and collapsing in a bloody heap. There is drama in Downton.

The scene is so bloody that you have to hope they didn't need to do many takes. It wouldn't have been fun for the cast to have to repeatedly watch Hugh Bonneville go through all that a few times, just to "get it right."

The dinner is with none other than the Health Minister Neville Chamberlain, who will later of course become the prime minister and famously think he's got Hitler's assurances that he will be a good boy. We know how that one turned out.

After some frightfully long moments of not knowing how the Lordship will be, it is revealed the surgery went well, a gastrectomy, and that Lord Granthan is resting in the hospital.

As for Health Minister Chamberlain, the eruption of blood saved him from having to weigh in on the dispute regarding the village health care. He tells Tom an amusing anecdote about a prank he was involved in as a youth that diverted traffic at a busy intersection in London, creating chaos. and then departs. Lady Violet, of course knowing Neville since he was in diapers, knows all about the prank and was trying to use it as a bit of blackmail to get the minister on her side. Didn't work.

The plan is to finish watching the few remaining episodes on the DVR and then go with Verizon's Quantum service that provides a much bigger DVR, and the ability to do more things with regard to recording and watching at the same time.

It is hard to believe that Julian Fellowes will have success in translating Downton to the U.S. market and set a storyline in New York City around the time Edith Wharton's 'Age of Innocence' takes place. In fact, Martin Scorsese's 1993 'Age of Innocence' was just on, and looks way too boring to be a weekly series.

Americans acting British doesn't seem to hold appeal.

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