# Downton Abbey, Series 2 (PBS) \[Please, no unaired spoilers\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 13, 2012, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368 "2012-01-13T04:06:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/421 "2012-02-15T23:15:40Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I’ve been young too but I’ve never done something so vindictive. Oh, right, like if you saw your mother and your sister and the maid dragging a dead Turk down the hallway, you wouldn’t be Tweeting about it _immediately?_ ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/422 "2012-02-15T23:16:21Z")
I think an American Downton Abbey would work. You could set it in Newport around the same time as this one, a bit after the Golden Age of Robber Barons but when there were still ungodly fortunes. Few were snobbier than the second and third generations of those families (usually the grandchildren of some barely literate scoundrel who founded the fortune), and the American contemporary of Violet would probably be an old dame who remembered him well and was still embarrassed by said memory. There were actually cases of their servants in American great-houses having better pedigrees than their employers, and stealing servants from Europe and from each other was a popular past time. Carson would have made the equivalent of well under 500 per year plus board (in 1912 of course) while any number of Vanderbilt or Gould or Astor women might gleefully quadruple that just to be able to say “Oh Carson, yes, he’s quite good… I hesitate to admit it, but I stole him from the Earl of Grantham”. Plus it’s a very volatile era of history with LOTS of class friction and Marxist groups forming (almost understandably) and ridiculous gulfs between their own 1% and even the 2%. Also an era of transition from farm to city and more forerunners of the civil rights movement than you might think as well as women’s suffrage, and all rarely dealt with honestly or any depth in U.S. films. Unfortunately HBO is the only network that would probably even consider such a show and they’ve already done _Boardwalk Empire_ which starts in 1919. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/423 "2012-02-15T23:20:02Z")
> [@Eve](#): > > Oh, right, like if you saw your mother and your sister and the maid dragging a dead Turk down the hallway, you wouldn’t be Tweeting about it _immediately?_ I wonder what the 1910s nobleman’s equivalent of shooting your daughter’s laptop on YouTube would be. Perhaps Grantham would bring over D.W. Griffith and film himself skeet shooting Lady Edith’s writing desk. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/424 "2012-02-15T23:27:42Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I wonder what the 1910s nobleman’s equivalent of shooting your daughter’s laptop on YouTube would be. Perhaps Grantham would bring over D.W. Griffith and film himself skeet shooting Lady Edith’s writing desk. Wouldn’t he just use good old-fashioned [Victorian television-making techniques](http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/clips/p00mp2bt/the_bleak_old_shop_of_stuff_the_making_of_a_victorian_television_programme_the_actors/)? ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/425 "2012-02-16T00:51:02Z")
OMG I’m too excited: I just ordered the [original, uncut first season on Blu-ray](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004IIFWDA/ref=ox_ya_os_product)! 🙂 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Morelin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Morelin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morelin)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/426 "2012-02-16T00:59:16Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I think an American Downton Abbey would work. You could set it in Newport around the same time as this one, a bit after the Golden Age of Robber Barons but when there were still ungodly fortunes. Few were snobbier than the second and third generations of those families (usually the grandchildren of some barely literate scoundrel who founded the fortune), and the American contemporary of Violet would probably be an old dame who remembered him well and was still embarrassed by said memory. > > [SNIP] > > Unfortunately HBO is the only network that would probably even consider such a show and they’ve already done _Boardwalk Empire_ which starts in 1919. A new period piece called Gilded Lillys starring Blythe Danner is in production now. It’s supposed to be an American Downton Abbey. [http://www.deadline.com/2012/02/blythe-danner-sarah-bolger-madeline-zima-cast-in-abc-pilot-gilded-lilys/](http://www.deadline.com/2012/02/blythe-danner-sarah-bolger-madeline-zima-cast-in-abc-pilot-gilded-lilys/) ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/427 "2012-02-16T01:38:35Z")
> [@Morelin](#): > > A new period piece called Gilded Lillys starring Blythe Danner is in production now. It’s supposed to be an American Downton Abbey. > > [http://www.deadline.com/2012/02/blythe-danner-sarah-bolger-madeline-zima-cast-in-abc-pilot-gilded-lilys/](http://www.deadline.com/2012/02/blythe-danner-sarah-bolger-madeline-zima-cast-in-abc-pilot-gilded-lilys/) Thanks. From that link: > [@](#): > > Set in 1895 New York City, Gilded Lilys is described as an epic love story that follows the opening of the first luxury hotel in the city and the intermingling of love, treachery and disdain between the classes. It centers on the rich Lily clan that owns the hotel. Bolger will play the rebellious Violet Lily. Danner will play Violet’s grandmother Caroline Lily, the family’s wickedly funny matriarch widow. Zima will play Violet’s personal maid. I can see a couple of ways it _might_ could work, but it also sounds like it would be really easy to spread too thin by concentrating both on a hotel (hotels are cholera for TV show settings- for every one that makes it 5 die in infancy) and the rich family (who might own it but it’s doubtfult they’d really take much interest.\* Plus 1895 London is going to be expensive to replicate; Downton rarely does anything more than the little village. OTOH, a show about _just_ the hotel might work. Though _better_ than a hotel would be a show about the building of an 1890s theatre might could work. It would also be in character: the Metropolitan Opera and other great theatres and theatrical companies were founded by the robber baron heirs. That would also give an excellent excuse to work in some of the great actors and acts of the day: Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry (inspiration for one of my [favorite portraits](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Ellen_Terry_as_Lady_Macbeth.jpg/170px-Ellen_Terry_as_Lady_Macbeth.jpg)), a very young Enrico Caruso, or even novelty acts like Mrs. Tom Thumb [widow of the ‘General’] and her all Little People acting troupe [really existed] or individual lecturers like Mrs. George Armstrong Custer. The gestation of motion pictures would work as well, plus non actors like the May-December/obese-thin President & Mrs. Cleveland. (That’s for 1895: a little later and you can add in the young Houdini or earlier and you can work in the not-quite-dead-yet Edwin “Mention My Brother and Die” Booth or P.T. Barnum on his last lecture tour.) That could work quite well, then with a fictional robber baron family giving the main endowment. Sorry- hijack over, I’ll go quietly. \*William Waldorf Astor built the Waldorf just to piss off his aunt Caroline who lived a short walk from it; about the only hands-on running of it he did was to instruct the restaurant to offer relatively cheap lunch specials so that the working classes could afford them occasionally, not as a matter of caring for the blue collar crowd of course but to further piss off his Aunt Caroline who would now have plumbers and accountants and secretaries and their wives traipsing by her house at lunchtime. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/428 "2012-02-16T01:56:24Z")
> [@Toucanna](#): > > Ah, yes. _Qui bono?_ and all that. > Sir Richard Carlisle: because with Vera dead, only he can blackmail Lady Mary. > Bates: he gets all her stuff and is free to remarry. > Anna: she can marry Bates, share in his $ and possesions, and leave service to go into business with Bates. > Lord G: gets to keep Bates as his valet. > Mrs. Hughes: gets to keep Anna, who is a good worker, and protects the name of the bouse of Grantham, thus protecting her job. > Lady Mary: keeps Vera from blabbing and keeps Anna as her maid. > Lady G: protects Mary’s reputation, thus allowing the wedding to happen, and keeps Anna. > Lady Edith: protects the family’s name, thus protecting her marriageability. > Thomas Barrows: to get back at/sabotage Bates. > O’Brien: to sabotage Bates and Anna. > Lady Sybil: No! Not Lady Sybil!!! > > Anyone else have a motive? I think she did kill herself. I think she had multiple irons in the fire, that the money she got from Bates wasn’t really THAT much, that the money she got from Sir Richard was finished in a flash (we may discover addiction issues or that she was in debt to nasty people), and she might as well set up Bates with her death. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/429 "2012-02-16T02:13:15Z")
> [@Toucanna](#): > > Anyone else have a motive? Daisy. Having the brain of a duck, she needed no motive. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/430 "2012-02-16T03:27:19Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > **AK84** , what is your problem? I did not click on your spoiler, so I have no idea if it’s big or small, or even real, but why would you come into a thread that says “no unaired spoilers” and \*purposefully \*write something that you know hasn’t aired? To paraphrase Downton Abbey, my problem is you and your apparent complete lack of humour or understanding. And although I accept the mod decision, it seems to have gone to the mod staff as well. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/431 "2012-02-16T03:37:29Z")
Speaking for myself, I have no sense of humor about spoilers. It’s like they say, don’t joke about terrorism in an airport. Same with spoilers, so far as I am concerned. I don’t care if it turns out not to be a real spoiler. For the amount of time that I believe it might be a real spoiler, I’m pissed. And after that, I’m pissed because I was unnecessarily agitated. ---
**Author:** ![Toucanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Toucanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toucanna)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/432 "2012-02-16T04:04:22Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] {snip}…I’m guessing that the fact Anna is now legally Mrs. Bates will be important… [/quote] IIRC, it was important to Anna because as Bates’ next-of-kin, she had the right to visit him in jail and have access to information about the status of his legal case. > [@Sampiro](#): > > Violet: Because she has to kill a commoner once ever 14 years by the terms of the entail and this one seemed like she’d be fun to kill. 😃 [QUOTE=Misnomer] True, but [Sybil] _did_ say that she’d given her heart to Branson. (I just watched the episode last night.) [/QUOTE] Yup, which is why I was under the impression Sybil has used the L word. [QUOTE=John Bredin] {snip} Has either Sir Richard or Lady Mary used the L word, ever, in context of their relationship? [/quote] Mary did comment something about wanting to know that love played some part in Sir Richard’s proposal. I’d have to watch that episode again, and right now, I’m not really up to it. [QUOTE=stargazer] They showed O’Brien overhearing one of Anna & Bates’ conversations, right when Bates was getting off the phone - I don’t remember what the conversation was about (a little help, anyone?)… [/QUOTE] When I watch that episode again, I’ll make a transcript of the scene and post it here. [QUOTE=Misnomer] OMG I’m too excited: I just ordered the original, uncut first season on Blu-ray! 🙂 🙂 [/QUOTE] [O’Brien]So, you’re so much better than the rest of us who were content with watching the version aired in the USA?[/O’Brien] [QUOTE=Sampiro] OTOH, a show about _just_ the hotel might work… Sorry- hijack over, I’ll go quietly. [/quote] No need to apologize! I like your idea and am glad you shared it. [QUOTE=TreacherousCretin] Daisy [killed Vera Bates]. Having the brain of a duck, she needed no motive. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. [/QUOTE] 😃 I was hoping someone would suggest a motive for Daisy! If she’s she’d have a great excuse not to have to hang out with her father-in-law. ---
**Author:** ![Toucanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Toucanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toucanna)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/433 "2012-02-16T04:11:40Z")
Missed the edit window. Last sentence should read: “If she’s arrested, she’d have a great excuse not to have to hang out with her father-in-law.” ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/434 "2012-02-16T04:36:11Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Speaking for myself, I have no sense of humor about spoilers\*\*. It’s like they say, don’t joke about terrorism in an airport. Same with spoilers, so far as I am concerned. I don’t care if it turns out not to be a real spoiler. \*\*For the amount of time that I believe it might be a real spoiler, I’m pissed. And after that, I’m pissed because I was unnecessarily agitated. I really really hope that was a woosh. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/435 "2012-02-16T04:42:48Z")
For those of you who are not humourless harpies or automatons posing as mods, here was the [PREVIEW](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2068407/Downton-Abbey-Will-Lady-Mary-Matthew-Crawley-finally-See-guess-happens-Downton-Abbeys-Christmas-special-.html) of the Christmas Special which as the date shows was published BEFORE the air date in the UK and thus is should not be blasphemy…sorry…a spoiler. Don’t read the comment though if they appear, as they might contain spoilers. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/436 "2012-02-16T04:44:34Z")
> [@Toucanna](#): > > Missed the edit window. Last sentence should read: > “If she’s arrested, she’d have a great excuse not to have to hang out with her father-in-law.” Spoiler! In relation to William, Daisy says, “I’ll get anged” In Season 1 Episode 1 ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/437 "2012-02-16T05:49:17Z")
Here’s something I just realized; remember how Bates’s divorce fell through? IIRC in 1919 England only husbands could sue for divorce based on simple adultery; a wife had to proven either “aggrevated adultery” (ie her husband has sex with a close female relative of hers, was living his mistress, or exposed her to VD), or cruelty. Bates even told Anna this after he found out Vera was cheating on him. Remember Vera was suing him for divorce so he must’ve decided to do the “gentlemenly thing” and pretend to give her grounds for divorce so she could save face. :smack: So what grounds did he admit to to get the divorce? Did Bates allow his wife to sue based on cruelty, and admit to that cruelty? That’s going to look very, very bad even if Vera did to judge and tell him Bates payed her to lie and it was all a setup. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/438 "2012-02-16T06:14:08Z")
**AK84** , I have no idea why you’re trying so hard to be a dick. Can’t you just let us enjoy the show? ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/439 "2012-02-16T07:24:24Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Here’s something I just realized; remember how Bates’s divorce fell through? IIRC in 1919 England only husbands could sue for divorce based on simple adultery; a wife had to proven either “aggrevated adultery” (ie her husband has sex with a close female relative of hers, was living his mistress, or exposed her to VD), or cruelty. Bates even told Anna this after he found out Vera was cheating on him. Remember Vera was suing him for divorce so he must’ve decided to do the “gentlemenly thing” and pretend to give her grounds for divorce so she could save face. :smack: So what grounds did he admit to to get the divorce? Did Bates allow his wife to sue based on cruelty, and admit to that cruelty? That’s going to look very, very bad even if Vera did to judge and tell him Bates payed her to lie and it was all a setup. The whole divorce saga was spread over several years & we never got the full story; every episode, we saw Bates giving an update & Anna saying “now, nothing can stand in the way of our happiness!” I know Vera’s threat to expose the Dead Turk Story (which everybody in Great Britain must know by now) was one reason for delay–but Anna should have told him to shit or get off the pot long ago. (Not in so many words, of course.) The divorce laws & need for reform were hot topics back in those days. But I’m not sure that Lord Fellowes is working from the same history we are… ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368/440 "2012-02-16T08:15:23Z")
Actually, what was Vera’s evidence of the Dead Turk in the Night to begin with? She’d heard the rumor but, as mentioned, so had many other people, and presumably what she heard was true (we don’t know _exactly_ what she told Sir Richard) but the only evidence I can think of that existed anywhere was Lady Edith’s letter and she certainly wouldn’t have had that, so it’s just a tale told by a low class woman of bad character who by her own admission heard it years after it happened from somebody who had herself heard it second hand. I thought that England had harder libel laws than the U.S.\*. If she can get money for that then why not go all out and claim Cora once had a fling with the Kaiser or that Lady Sibyl was a Bolshevik agent? \*Oscar Wilde’s absolute horror of a lover (and downfall) Alfred Douglas made a small fortune by suing newspapers for libel, then went to jail 6 months in the in the early 1920s for libeling Churchill and lost a [not small] fortune in other libel judgements and defense fees. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/downton-abbey-series-2-pbs-please-no-unaired-spoilers/609368.md?page=23)