Featherhat

But it wasn't with the explicit understanding that she would be close to and see the child. That might have been her understanding, but as you say she didn't plan that out with Mr and Mrs Drewe and she probably wasn't being honest with herself that that was what she would want to do. She isn't paying them to be a glorified nanny service to her daughter, she asked Mr Drewe to raise her as his own and keep her secret from his wife, and those facts are causing Mrs Drewe distress. If she wanted to go play Mamma or special "aunty" Edith every day she should have asked them to take her in as a ward that she would pay for or found a couple that were not literally on Downton's doorstep to do the same where she could visit and be emotionally involved every week. But taking the child away from Switzerland only to ask another couple in the village to raise her as their own and then expect to visit for hours on end to bounce her on her (Edith's) lap is the worst of both worlds for everyone at the moment and is starting to seriously disrupt the Drewe family, who don't deserve that.

Yeah it might be one thing if it was understood by both Drewes that they were raising the baby *for* Edith being paid by her for the service until such time as she can claim her or something, but as far as Mrs Drewe knows, she took in a foundling that she started to care for as her own, and raising her with their own resources and suddenly there is (getting crazier) Lady Edith around all hours of the day and night. If Edith wanted to be a mother figure to her at least a better bet might have been to pay a respectable older couple or older spinster to take care of her "ward" that she visited a few times a year, although that would have been much harder to hide. Having her so close at the farm but not able to actually be with her is the torture that Rosamund warned her it would be. Even if they send her to boarding school somehere I wouldn't put it passed Edith to show up renting a cottage in that town at the rate she's going.

Daisy made me really annoyed with her “she’s being driven out of the village and she’s perfect and loves you!” tirade. I’m really glad Daisy is getting some education, but its not like Daisy herself isn’t on her what 4th offer of bettering herself, this is just the one time she’s taken it. And Tom has shown absolutely *no* romantic affection for Bunting at any point. Even without the fact that she’s incredibly rude and abrasive Tom doesn’t owe her any ILY just because they have some of the same ideals. I did like the speech Tom gave about how it could never work between them because of how much she can’t stand the family to which me and his daughter belong. She’d be an absolutely horrible step mother to a granddaughter of an Earl and cousin of the heir, especially if Sybbie wants any kind of close contact with them when she’s growing up even if they don’t live at Downton. I really don’t like Robert much at all, but I’ve been on his side with the Bunting thing, if someone who clearly couldn’t stand me was constantly accepting invitations to my home in order to be rude to me I’d want her thrown out never to return as well. Things are not exactly easy for illegitimate children in general, even if they’re connected with the aristocracy. Marigold would find a lot of doors closed to her. Sybbie with her parents scandalous marriage and working class origin father would be better off in societies eyes (and not just upper class society. Of course there are exceptions such as Lady Almira of Highclere but that was with her very rich and powerful father’s full support not as Lady Edith’s (who’s never had much standing) mistake. It would be better for her to stay as the daughter of the Drew’s and have Lady Edith’s patronage to get on in life. If Edith had insisted on keeping her she should either have “adopted” her as a ward (she’d have to tell her family the truth in that case) and everyone would know it was a polite fiction but it gives everyone some cover. Or else yes she should have gone to granny in America and pretended to be a widow. But at this point I think its pretty terrible for her to rip the child from a 2nd family, one who’s come seems happy and who clearly love her.

Yeah, I've been to quite a few ballets and the "and now there's a wedding/party" 3rd act is basically nothing to do with the story. Regardless, the concept of fairytales mixing up isn't new, although I think OUAT is the first time such mixing up has been done using the Disney versions with Disney's support.

This episode has made me question if I knew my mother was pregnant with the last sib (when I was 5) and I remember "Mummy's having a baby" (slightly) and putting a hand on her stomach (can't remember how big it was) and then holding the new baby. But if a new baby hadn't appeared and turned into my sister, there's a great chance I wouldn't have remembered anything. And I do believe memory is selective and subjective when when we *know* what we remember. 16 witness statements = 16 different versions. I think Lexie was originally planned as a "name Grey" even though she had nothing to do with Elis. Trouble they went in such an opposite direction from her fleeting moments in S3 where she's a potential sophisticated another "girl from the bar" to a 14 year old in a 24 year old body and never recovered and I don't think CL could have carried it. I don't think Maggie's actress can either and whilst the "Year of Meredith" is a bit suspicious I can't think they'd bother with a "new lead Grey" at this late stage, even if EP left before the end. The Hospital is now GSM after all. And I think it was a lot more likely that EP and PD would want to potentially leave before the end in S4 than it is in S11 when they've signed several extensions. Unless GA somehow lumbers on to challenge ERs seasons, which is possible at this point I guess.

Yeah I always got the impression that Ellis and Meredith were generally East Coast based until the Alzheimer's issue (or Mayo for Ellis) regardless of why they first went there. There are plenty of places that apparently loved to have Ellis Grey working with them why would she return to the "best teaching hospital west of Harvard"? (from her POV). Partly IIRC this was supposed to be an in story reason for EPs strong accent slipping through (not that it did too much). The Molly Issue. I know its been 7 years since she was on the show. I know she's living the life of a military wife and Meredith only saw her for a short time but I really hate that the show has forgotten her. I hated it after Lexie's death that she never showed up. I mean Maggie is definitely a reused plotline if those S5 sides were anything to go by (and since the diaries were such a massive thing that went nowhere I think it definitely was meant to lead to a sibling.) If she got reused why can't they even acknowledge Molly? Richard was already ruined when he refused to take any responsibility what so ever for his *drinking and cutting* and blamed the guy who was doing his utmost to be loyal. He's been all over the map re Ellis and Adele, the writers treat his emotions plotline by plotline so I guess he's stuck in a permanent adolescence regarding these two.

I think a lot of people fall into intense fandom as a way of distracting themselves from the often serious woes of the offline world. Some people are living vicariously for some a particular show or ship just hits an emotional spot that makes them feel invested in them. It's not all teenagers either. Notoriously some of the most intense fans in the Twilight are/were middle aged women. Harry Potter had males and females aged 10-80 participating online. I think a lot of fandoms have a wider age range than you might think. For me personally I've always had a few books or TV shows that I become heavily invested in (not all), ever since I started learning to read or watching TV, not matter what was going on in my life good and bad. I was so relieved when I found online fandom when I was about 11/12 I could finally discuss a topic to death with loads of people instead of just a couple of friends who were the same. Even though fandom has become so much more mainstream I know a lot of people who think its strange to have indepth conversations about TV (even though some of them have studied literature and should know better). I've shipped and not in various fandoms with different enthusiasm (no horse in OUAT apart from Snowing) but I get some of the intensity, even though its always been way to easy for people to loose any sense of perspective, even before you could interact with producers and actors in real time, which has just made a volatile part of fandom even crazier and more prone to explosions than before.

Yeah that's why I've been in and out of OUAT since 2B, can't stand the writers take on Regina (most other things I can take). For me fandom (In general) is at its worst when serious real life issues (LGBT rights/rape/race etc) get bought in purely to try and win ship wars and not due to the depictions of such on the actual show, especially when creators/actors get involved or people trying to bait the actors. It's not always easy to draw a line between legitimate discussion and shipping as the two do get tangled up with the best of intentions though. But yeah people bitching to JMO about the order of her hashtags have clearly shown what is actually important to them.

And her mother warned her that one day she might come to regret those words. And she isn't like Rosamund who lives in London on her own without kids and can have a "merry widow" social life, she probably couldn't even if she left George with a Nanny and lived away from Downton. I don't think she actually wants to be away from Downton and doesn't really have the temperament be a Rosamund or a de facto Dowager trying to be a power player on behalf of her never-Earl husband and infant son at her age, which is probably looking like that for at least another half of her life at only 30-ish. I think the fact that she doesn't need to marry again and might not want to is definitely something that's been ignored and I definitely think they could have been moving for her to take a larger role in the estate this season (again) or being less "let the games begin" and more "can you offer me something I don't/haven't already had that isn't a pale imitation?" It's all awkward because the attract between all of them is lukewarm, Mary doesn't really have a need and these young men don't need to be hanging around for a 30 something in Yorkshire who won't make them owner of a massive gothic pile to make up her mind over them. I do agree with Andorra that she wants a place in society still, even if it isn't on the terms it once might have been and that either means waiting and becoming pseudo regent for her son (or Chatelain in her own right from her father with the understanding that it will go down to the next Earl eventually when the entail law is ended) or marrying well. But again the interactions are so lukewarm its difficult to know why everyone is going through the motions. The "test drive" story was strange, I took that as the opportunity to show that Mary was a 30 something widow who can do this discreetly without too much censure, this was the 20s not 1912, to show through her conversation with Violet that this wasn't a weekend of "couldn't help ourselves" but "trying to get there" and it didn't work. Thing is though, Edith isn't offering Marigold or her other siblings an education or a dowry or a good placement when they need it in exchange for an awkward tea 4 times a year, she's there all the time apparently, so I can believe a woman in the 20s would think that, especially compared to the more anachronistic stuff. It's like those old novels where a relative agrees to pay for *one* child to live with them or be educated and how that ripped families apart. Now, yes it should be completely obvious that Edith is the mother and if I were Mrs Drewe I'd think my husband was trying to hide a child of an affair with Lady Edith with me.

Bridget Regan seems to be sticking around for few more weeks as Luisa's lawyer, probably soon to be currently fling. I don't think we can tell if her wife was sleeping with a man, it could go either way on that. The other wife Petra was pretty much every "evil bitch" cliché you can cram into one side character in 42 minutes but I think Yael Grobglas will have fun with it and hopefully she'll be a more nuanced bitch in upcoming episodes.

I'm willing to give the central premise of any show some slack for how it came about, provided *how* it moves on from it and how it got there was any good. The world's most unprofessional and incompetent doctor together with the world's most naïve, tired twentysomething was a perfect storm of never-should-have happened that worked much better than I was expecting. Sure she could have halted Jane in the middle of getting dressed and rushed off to get Plan B and made sure she took it, but I can go with the fact that she was so freaked out that she couldn't think of what to do before it was too late and the only thing was that she could fake it to Petra. But she also could have pulled herself together long enough to stop crying into her patient's vagina and run through the procedure and not just take a hum hum for the green light to inseminate someone.

Yup, Rose is the young, attractive, sparkly daughter of a Marquise (can't remember her financial situation). Mary's certainly not old but she's coming up to her mid 30s and her son is already the heir to Downton even when the entails get broken. I really don't believe her ice princess personality is so attractive to all men that they wouldn't say "sod this" and move on rather than stay in this holding pattern. Not just because the upper classes say so. There have apparently been a few very hushed up baby episodes that produced great shame for my family several decades later, and my family weren’t upper class and they weren’t in service/kicked out of service either. It’s better today in general, but a well off family who’s daughter becomes a teen mother and who’s family support will often be seen differently from the “Shameless” style “single mother on benefits who got pregnant for a flat tm Daily Mail”. It’s not just an issue with the class system. OTOH in poorer classes who couldn’t afford “middle class morality” women just had the babies and lived in common law marriages whilst a middle class/upper class girl has ruined her chances of a “good match” and is sent abroad until the gossip dies down, not allowed to see her baby again. The thing with Edith having a bastard might not be such a big deal in different situations, but its not a question of “oh she can marry a lower class man who won’t care”. There aren’t very many lower class/middle class men left either and she doesn’t get a chance to meet many of them either, and even less so if she becomes gossip central of the community. Nor doesn’t she have a large pile or big dowry or a personality to make people “forget” her indiscretion. In fact people would probably be gossiping that Sir Anthony found out she was pregnant and that’s why he bolted. If she moved to London full time (or New York) she would able to find a literary crowd who doesn’t care in the slightest and become an older “bright young thing” but currently stuck in the Downton Triangle and with her perception as “no advantages Lady Edith”, it’s a bigger deal.

I only gave it a chance because it was championed so unexpectedly by so many critics and I’m glad I did, it was cute and Gina Rodriguez is a real find. It was deliberately OTT in a lot of places That crushed flower petal falling off at the beginning cracked me up and really set the tone. The actress playing the wife had a rather thankless role in "Reign" last season, though she has more crazy to work with here.

Yes I was thinking a slightly less holier-than-thou "gentleman's daughter" Isobel, but still concerned about social causes etc or a less aristocratic Rose would be good ideas for him. And there's a lot of layers between the start of the "posh girls" and the Earl of Grantham in English society at this time, who's family would be more than happy to see her living at Downton or in a house on the estate as "Auntie" to the heir to Downton, even if it meant a slightly awkward situation as they all got used to Tom "moving on" but still being a member of the family. He's young, he's healthy with no injuries, good looking and charming, he has a good job and better connections...I can see even girls who would have previosuly expected to marry extremely well being interested in him when many of the other men who *were* left were so much worse off. Bunting might have worked if she wasn't so abrasive and just as reverse snobbish as Lord Grantham is. She might undergo a transformation but I kind of doubt it. I really do think he might be for Rose longterm. He fits in with her erstwhile "rebellion persona" and is still part of the family now so she's not "really" rebelling like Sybil did and I'm really not looking forward to that happening, it seems way too pat.

And like a lot of bloody revolutions before and since the Russian Revolution didn't actually put a system in place that actually helped the people it said it was trying to, it just replaced the types of people that took advantage of them. I think technically Serfdom had been abolished a few decades before, but the vast majority were still at peasant level, and what benefits it actually had "for the serf in the field" are arguable. I seriously don't require a show featuring an aristocratic family from (at this point 90 years ago) to be always showcasing the more moderate or even liberal attitudes of today, nor necessarily that Lord Grantham should be a forward looking type than a stuffed Tory shirt, and he is often presented as "behind the times" or just plain wrong (prostitute Ethel situation etc). The Crawleys generally treat their servants fairly well and they do take advantage of them without always even realising they're going it and the system gradually collapsed as servants left to have better lives. It's definitely not the same but I've had bosses in the past who assumed I was on call for them almost 24/7 (and this wasn't the type of job where I was supposed to be) and could drop everything at short notice and do their bidding on days off. Again I have a million more legal protections in place etc but Violet's quip tonight about realising their staff is human (only on their days off) made me think of this boss and I said "not even then". There are always going to be those in charge who take advantage.

Maybe it was the 18-34 demo? That often shifts thing around a bit from the 18-49 usually reported demo.

The Anna/diaphragm subplot was the most painful one to me and so ludicrous and blatant that they want Bates to find it as assume his wife is secretly using contraception or having an affair as a way to give him more martyred manpain. Mary could have locked it in her jewellery box or safe or hidden it away in a discreet case at the back of a cupboard. Anna is the main maid that goes through Mary's belongings and she already knows about it. It's already shocked her Grandmother and they both survived, it would shock her mother but then so did Pamuck when Mary was an 18 year old virgin and they just about survived that, and a discreet liaison as a 30 something widow is not the end of the world, even if it is embarrassing to have everyone find out about and Cora's not likely to be going through Mary's private things. I do wonder if things are being set up for Mrs Drewe to think that Marigold is Edith's and her husband's. Edith's just being so blatant that she has an emotional connection to the baby that her husband suddenly told her that they were adopting a few months ago.

Mary's not wrong that it's terrible that someone can demand the death of a rival in exchange for not starving the court and Catherine isn't wrong about the political math and the fact that the rule with the consent of the nobles, something that gets Mary into trouble several times in her life. Francis annoyed me a bit. He's right to be upset that Lola and Mary kept the truth from him but he expressed all the reasons Lola didn't tell him and then turned into the living nightmare of why she didn't. Everyone is trying to avert a Henri/Catherine/Diane situation but at least Diane was getting something out of it. Lola's in the worst position. She will have no life beyond being the mother of the king's bastard and no future beyond that that she can see yet, but she has none of the power that Diane had through an actual relationship with Francis and none of the love either. By far the best thing in this shitty situation would have been to have someone discreetly raise the baby away from court either with or without Lola. And Leith can take his "nice guy" routine and go away. It seems inevitable that the triangle will start up again though after his daughter's death.

I'd seen most of the main cast in something before OUAT. I remember being really pleased that Robert Carlyle had gotten an interesting gig in Vancouver after moving his family out there for the disappointing SGU and the JMO had a lead role after House and her terrible (IMO) run on HIMYM. Since I've watched a lot of sci fi and Syfy I also recognise a lot of random Canadian day players so I'm always happy to see them again going "hey it's that guy from BSG and that other one did Arrow and Sanctuary!"

That wasn't really meant to be my point. Despite the fact that a lot of people love his books there is also a call for him to hurry up and just finish the damn things already. Thus people are asking his editors to set a deadline and hurry his creative process in the same way that TV fans occasionally beg someone to step in against whatever storyline a showrunner is doing on a popular programme. Therefore fandom (in general) cannot claim to be "doing it better" for creativity if they are aware that the commercial part of the products they love should be delivered on time and at the expected standard, something that fanfic and fanart doesn't have to worry about.

4B right after the Frozen one, to try and hang to any gained momentum.

Interesting post. I felt like it was a too abrupt shift from writing Kenna+Henri (plus Diane and Catherine)=True Love to seeing only the mercenary aspects of their relationship and mistressdom in general, that it felt like a deliberate changing course and not a character finally growing up. She did get a massive shock to her world after being attacked and belated really realising she would only ever come 3rd if lucky (but she was initially offered position as junior mistress in one ep and went to thinking she would be as good as monogamous the next was a little strange in the first place, and I think had everything to do with loosing the Diane actress). I can definitely get behind the idea of character growth though, especially if she never has to play the sexy ingénue who was incredibly dumb again, which was much more annoying. Kenna and Bash growing closer was actually much better than I had imagined, but it really lacked emotion for me which is one of the reasons I thought her jarring in the 2nd half.

I haven't seen this episode yet but I've felt like this on more than one occasion. You can see the desire and intention but also the points where it inevitably goes wrong and all comes crashing down, and the points where she is just helpless against other forces.

Oh, that's a really good definition and not something I'd explicitly put my finger on before. It's true for me a probably a lot of others here that I joined TWOP to intensely discuss canon both the good and the bad. Other areas are more focused on using canon as a starting off point for their own ideas but it is all most certainly to enhance the experience that we don't get from only watching the show/reading the book etc and making a few remarks to the non fandom people who we know who watch it. Regarding "doing it better" well, that's easy to say when your only critics are fellow fans who most likely fall into the same subset of fandom that you do. You don't have moive/network execs/publishers breathing down your neck. You can discuss how it affects art but it is a reality if you want to make what you love into your job. Self published novels and low, low budget fan movies are rarely great and in theory should be unencumbered by someone with commercial interest, but that also means fewer people to go "hang on, this needs some work." And it cuts both ways. In early seasons on a popular TV show the creators are revered as geniuses and the network handing down notes to make sure a certain storyline is controlled the way they want it are the bad guys. When a show inevitably has a drop in quality the fandom cries out "oh why can't the network keep a closer eye on what the writers are doing?!" "It's so successful that they're letting the showrunner call the shots when they should have someone telling them No, that's terrible!" (That was me and others at TWOP a few years ago in the Greys fandom). Similarly GRRM is revered for ASOIAF but that doesn't mean people aren't hoping his business minded agent/publisher/editor aren't trying to help him speed up the process as much as possible.

Yes, my post was also trying to make the point that a lot of the nastiest attacks involving many fandoms had little to do with perceived racism/sexism/homophobia (although fandom in general does discuss and sometimes struggles to discuss these issues in relation to something they love in or in some cases love to hate) but about using these issues as ways to "win" the argument. Yeah even a few years ago when livejournal and fan created sites and message boards were in full swing and you could instantly discuss the episode, there wasn't the perception that the writers and actors were a click away. Some people involved with shows came on to message boards dedicated to their job and it often became contentious (see Aaron Sorkin vs his own writer on TWOP which became Aaron Sorkin vs TWOP) or love ins (Joss Whedon on Whedonesque) but those were the exceptions. Now any witty tweet can get retweeted by someone involved with the show and hey, that barrier crossed and soon, why shouldn't others bombard an actor for a positive response? It really doesn't help that the perception (not necessarily the truth) is that twitter and fan campaigns helped get various "crack" ships together on their shows. If I was still in the worst of my immature young teen crack phase (very tame only Buffy/Faith which Whedon acknowledged was deliberate) I might have more than a few tweets I regret now.