Downton Abbey

So I've bought into the whole Downton Abbey fad uber-late (till a little bit ago, I thought it was Downtown Abbey). Mostly, sure, the plot devises are so ridiculous it's like a soap opera: the first man Mary ever sleeps with dies in her bed; Bates' wife fakes her own suicide and frames him in order to prevent his happiness; O'Brien leaves a little soap on the floor and Cora slips and miscarries the longed-for heir; another cousin presumed dead on the Titanic may or may not reappear with his face badly burned so it's next to impossible to tell whether he is who he says he is or not. And the list goes on.


Hands down, my favorite part of the show is the the Dowager Countess. Honestly, she makes the show worth watching. She is a character straight out of Oscar Wilde. Her humor only works in an aristocratic society: she is the upholder of strict societal rules, but she also points to how arbitrary those societal rules are. And the fact is, silly rules are present in every society--by bringing the reader's attention to and exaggerating the silliness of hers, there's an implicit critique of ours. Also, a really old woman delightfully gets away with saying absurd things--it's easier to get away with absurd comments if you look a little clueless when you're saying them, and she always does. And, it must be remembered: she is hard-core aristocracy, but she also knows that tradition needs to be flexible in order to maintain it: she's the one who is best able to deal with Sybil marrying the chauffeur. She's one clever lady.

Some of my favorite Dowager Countess zingers:

On swivel chairs, which she objects to because they're modern:
Matthew: "Not very modern.They [swivel chairs] were invented by Thomas Jefferson."
Dowager Countess: "Why does every day involve a fight with an American?"

DC, on a Turkish man dying at Downton Abbey: "No Englishman would dream of dying in someone else's house, especially someone they didn't even know!"

DC: "The truth is neither here nor there, it's the look of the thing that matters."

DC: "You'll just have to take her abroad. In these moments, you can normally find an Italian who isn't too picky."

Mary: "You cannot be so contrary."
DC: "I'm a woman, Mary; I can be as contrary as I choose."

DC: "I couldn't have electricity in the house. I wouldn't sleep a wink--all those vapors seeping about."

On the telephone: "Is this a modern means of communication or an instrument of torture?"

DC: "What is a weekend?"

DC: "I never knew such reformings."
Cousin Isabel: "I take that as a compliment."
DC: "I must have said it wrong."

Cora: "She's such a martyr."
DC: "Then we must tempt her with a more enticing scaffold."

DC: "Don't be defeatest, dear. It's very middle class."

DC: "I hope I'm interrupting something."

DC: "This sort of thing is all very well in novels, but in reality, it can prove very uncomfortable."