Would you watch a Downton Abbey spinoff?
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Edith got married! Anna and Bates had a baby! Mr. Barrow, the show’s recovering Cruella de Vil, got to return to his Downton family AND become the new butler.
Megan Vick (TV Guide): “Happy endings are rare in a drama landscape that exalts antiheroes and political scheming”.
Downton Abbey’s series finale aired Sunday night, sending off the Crawley family and those who worked at their estate by tying up all the loose ends, romantic and otherwise.
Before Sunday’s finale, the biggest questions loom: Will Lady Edith get a happy ending? I have loved watching it for the costumes and the setting and the dish, but I’ve more deeply enjoyed considering the manners and mores of an earlier age.
The only stumbling block is his mother, who holds high standards of morality. Bertie’s mom declares Edith to be “damaged goods” and implores her son not to marry her, but true love prevails. After six seasons, we can no longer catch new episodes on PBS.
“What do you think makes the English the way we are?”
Before her engagement party, Edith told her moralistic future mother-in-law that little Marigold is her (born-out-of-wedlock) daughter and Bertie’s mom somehow found the strength to accept that – and ended up admiring Edith for telling her the truth.
Edith dubbed Mary “a paradox”, though that has always been the case – a character that could be loving and imperious, callous and caring, sometimes all at once. Way to go, Mary.
Perennially always-a-bridesmaid, Edith got her grand and glorious wedding day.
Lord Merton is diagnosed with Pernicious anemia, which was a fatal illness at the time.
Downton Abbey dinner done to perfection To mark the final season of the hit television show “Downton Abbey” members of the New Jersey chapter of Confreie de la Chaine des Rotisseurs, a global gastronomic organization, arrived in period dress and sat down to a full six-course meal of Downton-era gourmet foods at a 150-year old chateau.
Admitting he couldn’t live without her, he proposed again and she accepted. Baxter and Molesley, and Mrs. Patmore and Mr. Mason appear to have coupled up as well. When Robert suggests Mrs. Pelham could lose her relationship with Bertie over this, she comes around. Much of the criticism centered around stories involving maid Anna and her husband, valet John Bates, including Anna being sexually assaulted by another servant. Please, will you give my best wishes to Lady Edith?
As for the stately butler, he’s developed “the palsy”, an inherited trait passed down from generations, which forces him to resign his post. Barrow finally finds a new job and thanks them for saving his life.
Thomas’ story in Downton Abbey’s final season became a focus for its overarching theme: times are changing.
Lord Grantham had to do a big mea culpa himself, coming to terms with Cora’s job at the hospital. Having witnessed the ruins of her own parents’ marriage, she didn’t want to see another.
Do Branson and Miss Edmonds/Molesley and Baxter/Mrs. Patmore and Mr. Mason end up together?
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Other couplings on the “Downton” finale included Isobel Crawley and Lord Merton, who Isobel rescued from the clutches of Lord Merton’s son Larry and daughter-in-law Amelia – with help from the Dowager Countess, Lady Violet. “It makes me smile, the way every year, we drink to the future whatever it may bring”. All of the cast is very sought after now, as they deserve to be, so we would be assembling them while everyone else wants them. We have no season-long binge sessions to look forward to in order to catch up on past events before a new episode. A rueful Violet mused, “If only we had the choice”.
