jrlr

I must have missed it, but who is interested in Edith?

It's funny that from a contemporary view, Edith is in the catbird seat: she has a flat in London, a publishing house to run and a child she adores PLUS the money to take care of Marigold while she is at work. It's just that damned pesky illegitimacy problem which could be explained away with a polite fiction (some dead cousin's child or something) that would keep her in the aristocracy social sphere and probably be politely accepted (though probably not believed) by said aristocracy. I think JF's plotting is extremely weak this season, and unfortunately, extremely dull. End: Anna will get pregnant, get a stitch and finally have a child. She and Bates will open up a small inn directly across the street from the Carson-Hughes inn and a heated rivalry will start up. Mary will marry somebody who appreciates her underwear and likes pigs. Edith will marry somebody who is understanding about Marigold and will learn how to smile. Lord and Lady Grantham will close most of Downton and spend most of their time in London. Violet will start giving paid tours of the Dowager house with Mrs. Crawley cheering her on. Daisy will become a full time rabble-rouser and eventually stand for parliament. Thomas will become a Kabuki performer and eventually write a book called Downton Abbey: The Real Story.

I don't think it has anything to do with being romantic or prudish. Edith saw it as a perfect way to seriously stick it to Mary (and possibly ruin her life) since the two sisters already despised each other and Mary always seemed to have the upper hand.

Edith wrote articles that were published by the paper (and even that was kind of scandalous for the family), so while she obviously doesn't know how to run the business end of publishing, I doubt that her ideas are goofy.

Despite the fact that Marigold is being raised in an upper-class home, I still consider her the only real victim here. At least the Drewe children have a loving father as a parent. Marigold really has nobody: her mother can't/won't acknowledge her so she's basically nowhere in society and always will be. I wish Edith had more spine and would take Marigold to London (even if Edith lied and told Marigold she was adopted by Edith, at least the child would have someone to call mother) and then hire an editor who isn't hostile and could help her learn the publishing business. Edith has enough money to have a maid, a cook and a nanny in London, and she could hang around with the like-minded Bloomsbury group, many of whom came from upper-class families but rejected their upbringings (except the money part) and lived very bohemian lives. Mary, jeeesh! Even as preoccupied as she is with herself and the estate, I'm sorry, I don't buy for ONE MINUTE that she wouldn't have figured out that Marigold is Edith's child. You'd have to be blind and thick as a brick to not figure it out! I'm drooling over her clothes, however.

I may very well be mis-remembering, but I thought that O'Brien did try to tell Cora that she had done something terrible, but Cora - who was very ill and feverish - said she didn't want to know what O'Brien was talking about. Please, can someone tell me if Mary knows that Marigold is Edith's child? Can't remember for the life of me.

I always bought the strength of Noah and Helen's relationship, but tonight was the first time I've seen the serious chemistry between them, and it was VERY convincing! I also thought the twist of having both of Noah's women equally culpable for Scotty's death was a nice ironic touch and also (darkly) funny. So I guess I will be tuning in next season, which I hadn't planned on until tonight.

I hope we get another season, but that sure seemed like an ending to me - and I can't believe how sad that ending made me feel.

I think that Noah's "office" being in the bathroom is completely a figment of his imagination, even though I can't think of a more symbolically perfect place for his crappy writing to take place. I have absolutely no idea what Alison is doing or why, and at this point I don''t even really care. I liked this episode, but there was so much stupidity going on that I gave up trying to make sense of it, I just kept thinking, "Oh wow, they have gone full bore into soap opera now, and it's actually more entertaining than the show has been for weeks." Oh well, if it continues to be so stupidly entertaining I'll (maybe) tune in next season to see if J.R. is really dead or Fallon comes back from the grave.

I can't see Noah wanting an open relationship because I think his overwrought excitement about other women comes - at least partially - from knowing that he's doing something wrong and thinking he's getting away with it.

So Noah believes he has the greatness potential (nope, Noah, you don't). What a jackass. First of all, his first novel failed and even he is referring to his huge hit, Descent, dismissively (he said to the therapist something like "well I can do something more important than "that" book") and his third sounds like a yawn. Besides, neither Picasso nor Hemingway were "great men" - one was a great (not in my opinion) writer and the other was a great painter, but in their personal lives they were both assholes. So I guess when Noah says he's torn between being a good man and a great man, that's a flawed theory but it fits perfectly with his stunted idea of what great actually means. And it's still utter Noah-as-the-center-of-the universe crap. Alison needs some major character work at this point; in the first season I found her flawed but still sympathetic. Now she seems to have no substance at all except in relation to other characters when she's forced to react, and she's no longer sympathetic, either. I don't think I can slog through another season of this - I don't care about the murder and I don't care about the characters. What was in season 1 a complex and fascinating multifaceted examination of human nature and the consequences of actions has turned into a turgid, boring who dunnit. Since I couldn't care less if any of these characters other than Helen wind up in prison, there's not much left to watch. One thing I actually do like about this season is the irony of Helen clearly being ready to move on, even though she never even considered the idea before Noah left; and Noah clearly NOT being so ready (not showing Alison the divorce papers? Really, asshole?) to move on, after all.

I can't see how the series could keep going after the bombs are dropped. Much as I wish it could continue, it would have to move into completely different territory with political alliances changing in the world and a lot of spy and red-baiting stuff, and with the research (presumably) over.

I suspect that my lack of empathy and compassion stems from having been married for many years to an alcoholic/substance abuser who always got weepy and self-pitying when he was high. It wears very thin after awhile, and it never brought about any serious self-reflection or insight on his part afterwards. I know Noah is not the same person (character?) as my ex, but walking through that particular kind of narcissistic, semi-sociopathic, destructive fire (no offense, Cole) leaves its scars. Or at least it did for me, but I guess we all see the story through personal prisms.

I agree, except I take it even further: I don't believe that Noah's weepy breakdown was a sea-change moment for him at all - at least it didn't convince me. All I saw was a pot-and-coke-loaded, drunk on his ass (I lost track of the number of shots he and Eden downed) shmuck who has just been shocked by almost coming on to his own daughter. Noah then runs off, gets stuck in the mud, has a half-hearted moment of moral insight, gets weepy and then, mainly, just feels sorry for himself. As usual. I might have bought it if he'd been in a dark group-grope room (ugh) and had done something overtly sexual (like grabbing a thigh or breast) and then discovered that he'd groped his own daughter. That might make even Noah so freaked out and disgusted with himself that it could produce an epiphany. But I'm not even sure if that would work because aside from the fact that Noah is a weak, faithless fame whore, he was too out of it to have a real epiphany: those moments of "self-realization" that occur when someone is as loaded as Noah was usually vanish like smoke in the wind once said asshole has gotten sober.

I've been waiting for the Norman Mailer comparison since the moment Noah was called a literary bad boy. I'm not sure there is such a thing any more (the last one I remember was Brett Easton Elllis - puke - and that was in the 80's where the party belonged). And if there is still such a thing, it wouldn't be Noah - he's too old. Also, to compare that crappy writing and even the topic of Descent to Mailer's early, highly politically charged, insightful and NOT erotic/porny work is ridiculous.

Was a reason ever given for the Lockhart curse to skip an entire generation? I'm trying to make sense of this: Gramps (presumably Cherry's father-in-law) becomes a child killer which makes the Lockharts cursed to die out, but his son (Cherry's husband and Cole and Scotty's father) son manages to avoid the curse and father four sons upon whom said curse is now, what, activated? I know it's a picky point but it keeps bugging me even when I'm laughing out loud about the infamous curse.

I didn't think about the "family" as being literal, but maybe it is - that would be another twist! I find that whole subplot really interesting since at the time the U.S. and the Russians were fighting on the same side. In RL the woman soldier is Mamie Gummer who is Meryl Streep's daughter, and i can't look at her without seeing Streep. ETA: i feel SO bad for Fritz, who is by far the nicest character here - although not for long, apparently.

Of course she knows that Helen and Max hooked up. She's a teenager who sees everything that goes on in the home when she's not staring into a mirror. And since she already wrongly suspected Helen and Max of having had an affair while Helen and Noah were still married, it wouldn't be a big leap to assumed that since they have now gone out together, they also slept with each other. That sneer was "oh, puh-leeze, you aren't fooling anyone!".

One thing that seems odd to me is that after all this time with Noah, Alison still doesn't seem to know or understand anything about the world of publishing or p.r. I would think she would have made a little effort to keep up with his career, pregnancy notwithstanding. The scene of them skyping when she shows him the nursery and is almost giddy about it just struck me a scene between two people who know almost nothing about each other and are definitely going in different directions. Maura Tierney is just terrific! I'm glad she got to really show off her acting chops in this last episode and she was hysterical in her reactions to Noah when they were in the bar. But. . . I also keep finding it a little difficult to believe that she is so at peace with Noah since it hasn't been very long since he dumped her for Alison and got famous. But I also can't think of any reason that she would be faking being caring and nice to him since she also seems to be trying very hard to get him off the hook for Scotty's death. And even though I could shrug off the CSI silliness of swiping the pacifier, I can't get past the idea that we are supposed to believe that Helen could sit there with Noah and his new baby without any problem. That whole scene felt incredibly emotionally dishonest to me, but maybe that's just the way I read it. And for anyone who thinks that Cole might have killed Scotty, wasn't it the night of Cole's wedding that the death ocurred? I don't see how Cole could possibly be missing from his own wedding or on his wedding night for long enough to run his brother down without anyone noticing.

I think Whitney knows about Helen and Max because when Helen asked her why she wanted Helen to stop calling him "Uncle" Max, Whitney gave her an "As if" look that indicated that she was well aware that Helen and Max had been together. And in the first season when Helen and Noah went to therapy with Whitney, she said (correctly) that it was obvious that Noah was miserable, and that she thought (incorrectly) it was because Helen and Max were having an affair. So even before the Alison-Noah affair became open knowledge, the sharp tongued Whitney had already picked up on the vibes between Max and Helen (or coming from Max at any rate).

Of course, an abortion (me smacking my forehead). I don't mind Helen getting the DNA sample because if Noah learns he isn't the father it will shake his allegiance - such as it is - to Alison. If it isn't his baby, then there would be no reason for him to take the rap for her, although Gottlief's "explanation" of how that could have happened was trashy-romance fanciful and not exactly convincing. With so much emphasis on the paternity of the child, I now fully expect the father to turn out to be Noah. So Helen has had this incredible character arc while Noah's character isn't making an arc so much as veering from Jekyll to Hyde, even in his own point of view. And that leaves Alison. At yoga camp she seemed like she had made a lot of progress in understanding herself and making peace with the past, but now she seems like a woman who can't deal with the reality of her situation, so purposely ignores all the warning signs (and Noah is a red flag, a tornado warning and a disaster siren all rolled up into one) that would create upheaval in her situation. Loved Helen this week, felt sorry for Alison, and - as usual - despised Noah. Whitney was hysterical! I don't know who she is, but she's a very good young actress.

Last week I was ready to sign off on this show, but I this ep pulled me all the way back into it. And it was nice to be able to laugh for a change - Maura Tierney was fabulous, and I loved that scene in the bar although I don't have a clue what the 25 yr. old argument Helen and Noah talked about was about. . Cardigirl, if you don't mind sharing, I'm curious why you didn't like stealing the pacifer to get the baby's DNA because I burst out laughing when she handed it over to Gottlief. Did I miss (which is entirely likely) something incriminating? Okay, Noah's turn. Helen's POV made me grudgingly think that he might have a core of decency buried deep down inside, but not so much. I've always thought that Allison was not his first affair, and he is in that same stud mode that he was when he was screwing every younger woman that walked in his direction. I thought the scene with Eden was just weird - seems to me that she purposely waited a very long intimate time before she told him this wasn't going to happen. I LOVE that Helen told Noah he was just like her father. Too bad he can't understand that, because angrily denying it made him - for the moment - a bigger asshole than Bruce Butler.

My recording cut off at the same place as yours - and boy, was I pissed! - but I managed to find the show in its last fifteen minutes on a different Showtime. Darrow took the flag down to half-staff, then I think it was just seeing the reaction on people's faces as the announcement of FDR's death came over the p.a. system.

I'm no expert, but the period between FDR's death and the bombing of Hiroshima was only 5 months, so I would think that Truman was simply continuing the plan as conceived by FDR. Also loved this episode, but I'm getting really annoyed by the direction Abby's character is going in. Compared to Liza who is actually doing something useful under much more adverse personal circumstances, Abby's eavesdropping at the switchboard and scurrying off to tattle on co-workers makes me want to use a flyswatter on her. Abby and Charlie have both become extremely unlikable, sneaky and backstabbing this season (and I don't buy Abby's newly-found bible-toting piety, either). Both characters could do with a little more nuance. I feel like I'm being hammered with the message that Frank and Liza are good while Abby and Charlie are neither good nor trustworthy. LOVED Frank's speech (rant) to the scientists. Did anyone notice if Charlie ever walked out with the others to insist on being included on the bombing decision?

He wanted kids because at some point when he and Helen were battling it out she said something like she would have been perfectly happy to stop at two kids, but that Noah wanted more to make up for his own "wasteland of a childhood."