Season 2 Discussion

[whatsatool]

I think being a rector is hard enough. Let him marry who he chooses. Concept of rector's wife seems not important. Congregations will do what they will.

On 5/6/2016 at 3:55 PM, dcalley said:

Ugh, it still pisses me off so much that he didn't.

Oh now this is the single worst thing Sidney has done. I guess they are more laissez faire in England, but he should lose his job for this.

[Sonja]

On 7.5.2016 at 2:32 AM, DD51 said:

I think it hits hard on our American ears,,,,I can hear my Mom in my head saying "no please or thank you? Then nothing for you"!  But we pride ourselves on being equal to each other, everyone has the same value, of course that isn't total reality by any stretch, but most of us like to think it is.  

I'm not American, but not only was I brought up to say please and thank you whenever it was required, I was even still taught how to curtesy correctly in primary school. That was very antiquated even then and no one does it anymore, but that's why Laszlo, who would have been born around the same time as my curteseying grandmother in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian empire (by 1954 of course non-existant) not saying 'Could you please pass me my stick' or thanking Sidney when he did irked me a lot as that was definitely the custom around these parts.

On 7.5.2016 at 2:23 PM, nara said:

Agreed, he was incredibly immature for not apologizing. I got the impression that he was ashamed and in denial, and apologizing would have meant acknowledging that his drinking was excessive.  

That's an interesting take on the scene. Considering how much Sidney beat himself up about his night with Gloria, he glossed over this way too quickly. It will be interesting to see how or if they address his excessive use of alcohol or if they just blame Gary's execution for Sidney going completely off the rails. Norton must have gotten fed up with all the tea or whatever they use as whiskey he had to down this series.

BTW, I love how whenever he says 'I will remember you in my prayers' it sounds like a threat or the CoE version of '**** off'.

[nara]

18 minutes ago, Sonja said:

BTW, I love how whenever he says 'I will remember you in my prayers' it sounds like a threat or the CoE version of '**** off'.

LOL.  That reminds me of the end of Sister Act when she says "bless you " and it sounds more like FU

[caligirl50]

It’s either tea or apple juice.  On Downton, it’s apple juice/fruit juices.  But they sip, not guzzle.

[DD51]

17 hours ago, nara said:

LOL.  That reminds me of the end of Sister Act when she says "bless you " and it sounds more like FU

In the south it's well bless your heart, many meanings, many ways of delivery, some good and some not so much so.

[Sonja]

23 hours ago, nara said:

LOL.  That reminds me of the end of Sister Act when she says "bless you " and it sounds more like FU

Hehe, true. I had forgotten about that. With Maggie Smith being preemptively scandalised in the background IIRC.

14 hours ago, caligirl50 said:

It’s either tea or apple juice.  On Downton, it’s apple juice/fruit juices.  But they sip, not guzzle.

I don't think they'd use apple juice with a diabetic considering the amount of 'whiskey' they drink in this show. Even if they don't do a lot of takes, that has to add up during a day of shooting.

[applecrisp]

5 hours ago, Sonja said:

Hehe, true. I had forgotten about that. With Maggie Smith being preemptively scandalised in the background IIRC.

I don't think they'd use apple juice with a diabetic considering the amount of 'whiskey' they drink in this show. Even if they don't do a lot of takes, that has to add up during a day of shooting.

Is James Norton diabetic?

[jadecorleone]

According to IMDB he has diabetes mellitus type 1

[caligirl50]

That is why I mentioned tea as well. Plain tea would be fine.  But on the dvd’s behind the scenes, he’s eating two ice cream cones...  

[Sonja]

You can eat ice cream and everything else you want to as a diabetic, you just have to manage your insulin - which can also mean needing something sweet as hypoglycemia is a risk as well. Especially type I diabetics usually know exactly what and when to eat, drink or not though.

Fruit juices (apple juice in particular) can have more sugar  than ice cream or other sweets and add up quickly though. Also, if you melt down two ice creams, you're probably at about two takes of a scene where Sidney has a tipple ;-)

PS: If someone collapses, is shaking and smells as if they were drunk, check if they are diabetic. It might be a hpyo that gets mistaken for intoxication (seizures and involuntary violence due to flailing limbs might occur) until it's too late and they fall into a diabetic coma. End of public service announcement ;-)

[Pogojoco]

I have no idea how I got "Snowden" and "Townsend" got mixed up, but I did. Yeah. Anyway, Church of England kiboshed the whole thing because Townsend was divorced. And even within my lifetime (ie well past the 50s), divorce was no small thing. 

I was raised Anglican and "High" Anglican is a lot closer to Catholic than Protestant. A vicar in the 50s in England, he'd just have to leave the Church. And Sidney not a vicar is just not the point. 

Edited May 13, 2016 by Pogojoco

[MissLucas]

51 minutes ago, caligirl50 said:

 

Is the show moving further and further away from the books? 

Yes, they are - in fact so much that I wonder how Runcie must feel about it.

[MissLucas]

1 hour ago, caligirl50 said:

Did you read the books? Does Amanda leave Guy while pregnant with his child?

Book Spoiler (obviously)

Spoiler

No, book Amanda is not married to Guy (or any other erm.. guy) and not pregnant.

More about differences between the books and the show here.

Edited May 13, 2016 by MissLucas

[caligirl50]

Thank you!

[zoey1996]

On 4/20/2016 at 6:22 PM, dcalley said:

Red letter Easter egg

I'm familiar with the concept of "easter eggs" in videos, but what is a red letter Easter egg?

[caligirl50]

On April 25, 2016 at 5:36 AM, Sonja said:

 

On April 24, 2016 at 6:24 AM, Kohola3 said:

Didn't Amanda show up with a black eye in one of the episodes?  She's a pill but there is no excuse for him beating her.  Punching Sidney is a different thing but  not his wife.

As Broderbits said, that was a different woman. But Guy did get worryingly handsy with her at Jennifer's party and I didn't like Amanda's look when he put her in the car and wandered off with Sidney to punch him. She didn't doubt Geordie for a second when he told her about it and there's also something she says in the last ep of the season that leads me to believe Guy is one to easily fly off the handle in general. I hope he never really hit her though.

 

He might.  The actress was interviewed on the PBS site and talked about his character.  She said that he married her, put her in that house and just kind of abandoned her.  She said he cheats while on those many work trips.  As a sidebar, what is up with that gross beard?

[kassygreene]

In the credits to Masterpiece's Mystery programs, there will be red letters as they scroll by.  If you have the quickness (and the screen resolution) and perhaps the ability to pause usefully, you can write them down in order and you get the Red Letter Easter Egg.  I seem to recall in the Inspector Morse series they often spelled Lonsdale, a fictional college at Oxford (I may be imagining all that...).

[dcalley]

The Easter eggs are frequently about art or literature that relates to the story and thus can be educational. I like that they're unique to the PBS version, too, and that it's someone's job to find something relevant that works with the letters available.

[zoey1996]

On 6/3/2016 at 2:00 AM, dcalley said:

The Easter eggs are frequently about art or literature that relates to the story and thus can be educational. I like that they're unique to the PBS version, too, and that it's someone's job to find something relevant that works with the letters available.

Thanks, dcalley, but I still don't quite understand.  Why Red Letter?  What do you mean, with the letters available?  What letters?

[dubbel zout]

The appropriate letters in the closing credits are literally red in color.

[zoey1996]

Ah, thanks!  I get it now. I'd never really noticed that before!

And sorry, Kassy, you tried to explain, and I appreciate that!

Edited June 7, 2016 by zoey1996

[lucindabelle]

 I'm one of the outliers likes Amanda! From first episode. I like her voice and it was clear they had a rapport.so, I loved the ending....

i wonder what will happen to the teenager now. The way she ws abandoned reminded me of the plsy "The Blackbird," and the church hiding the scandal sounds a bit too real.

[storyskip]

So I just had the pleasure, over the past couple of days, of watching Grantchester all the way through from Season One to Season Two.

I loved Season One for most of the reasons already discussed.  Season Two was a puzzle though.  I was thrown by how completely they went from the balance of murder sleuthing with just the right touch of "horrors of the war" personal struggles, to the very dark end of the character spectrum in Season Two.  Then as I was thinking about it, I can't help wondering if maybe the writers went a little overboard on the theme of the effect of Society morals on the nature of "crime" and was a crime for the right reason ever allowable; themes raised briefly in Season One.

For instance.  Almost all our main characters suffer due to desires/passions/wants that are beyond what Society deems appropriate.

1) Leonard - A very obvious case, being a homosexual not only in the church but at a time in history where he would be prosecuted if caught.  The writers could have continued along the path of Leonard as the perpetual bachelor and best friend to Sidney but they made the choice to give him a "romance" and then dash it apart.

2) Sidney/Amanda - I am NOT a fan of the pairing either for the record but they do make a wicked good commentary on Society vs emotions.  It was obvious from the beginning that Sidney loved Amanda and visa versa but the pressures of Society made it impossible.  Amanda was expected to be a dutiful daughter, marry at or above her station and be a dutiful high society wife.  I think it's easy to look back from 2016 and judge her as being a shallow person but she was raised to be obedient to her father and raised to pass that same obedience on to a suitable husband.  NOTE: I'm not suggesting this next bit is a "good" thing.  In her circumstances, her position, her expectations, most people would have said she did very well.  She landed a man who was handsome, wealthy, inattentive but not unfaithful from the outset and while Guy has been violent towards Sidney, he never struck Amanda.  Thinking back to Season One Episode Six, that 'high society' wife who was covered in bruises from her husband.

Sidney was never suitable (in the eyes of Society) for Amanda, a fact they both seemed to recognize from the beginning, even as their hearts took turns for the romantic. Now their story is as much a tangle of "what Society wouldn't tolerate!" as it is about any sort of true love.

3) Gary Bell / Abigail - Society had no tolerance for young girls who got in the family way and I think the episode showed that she tried to look for help from legitimate avenues but when they got blocked, she became desperate.  Also Gary Bell, no there really was no reason for his tragic end, except as commentary on the fact that circumstances like his were all too common a reality under the laws of Society in that period.  Did the story tellers HAVE to take the darkest endings for these characters?  No.  But they obviously made a deliberate choice to do so, thus punching up the narrative around "look what happened when Society was inflexible."

4) Margaret - Even Margaret's story.  As we were shown, she obviously has a gift for detective work but due to Society at the time, she would never achieve anything above secretary and her's "best opportunity" was to pursue marriage to a vicar.

Given how everybody ended up on the dark end of the stick, so to speak, I can't help feeling that this was a deliberate creative choice in Season Two.

[rove4]

On ‎5‎/‎3‎/‎2016 at 5:33 PM, nara said:

I am definitely pro Sidney/Amanda  (please don't throw things at me!) So I'm happy to see them together. However, I thought the build up to that moment was strange because Guy was relatively nice I  this episode.  On the other hand, perhaps that means she made her decision with a level head,  rather than in the heat of the moment. It's ironic that she is giving up more now than if she had just gotten together with Sidney in the first place. We'll see if it lasts between them. At least, this should be the end of Sidney's excessive drinking and inappropriate behavior with young women.

I've never minded Amanda either. She's stuck in the narrow life allotted to women and wives in the 50s. I also don't mind her and Sydney as a romance if for no other reason that I hate to see love thwarted just because someone's stupid rules or societal norms say two people can't be together.  Someone always has to be first to blaze a new trail otherwise things would never change.  Trailblazers are historically accurate too.  ;-)

That said, if Hildegarde ever comes back into the narrative I hope they recast the role. I thought the original actress was flat as board in her delivery and I saw no chemistry of any kind between her and Norton.  Bland, bland, bland.

[wanderingstar]

Started binge watching this show and I've just come to the end of season 2. Leonard is the best!

[Calvada]

I have just started watching this show and have come to the end of season 2.  I think I will get through it quickly with so few episodes per season and less than an hour per episode.  

I'm not sure how child custody was determined in the 1950s, but wouldn't Amanda possibly lose custody of the child?  She has no means of support and no "real" reason (in 1950s terms) for leaving her husband.  I wonder if this is the end story with Amanda, that she returns to her husband in order to keep her child.  

What a repulsive person Sam is, aided and abetted by the archdeacon, also a repulsive person.  Sam seemed familiar to me, so I checked the actor's credits on IMDB.  The only things that I would have seen him in are one episode of Midsomer Murders  and one episode of Inspector Lewis and I don't remember him from either of those.  It was driving me nuts until I read this thread and a couple people mentioned how the actress playing Margaret could play Jackie Kennedy and it suddenly hit me that the guy playing Sam looks a lot like Lee Harvey Oswald.