Ken Levine expresses my feelings exactly about the latest episode of Downton Abbey: http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2013/01/i-still-cant-get-over-what-happened.html
NOTE: Do not read it, or the rest of this post, if you are following the show but have not yet seen the episode broadcast last night in the US I will add some spoiler space here, though it will likely be difficult for anyone who follows anything related to television or popular culture online to avoid some mention of this today. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am a middle-aged man (pushing the upper limit of the definition of that term I suppose) who has a long and embarrasing history of heterosexuality, yet I found myself actually weeping near the end of Downton Abbey last night. It was embarrasing. The last time I did that was when they killed Mrs. Landingham. But it was not really that embarrasing - I am not an Earl, and my house, while in every bit as financially precarious as Grantham's, is much more modest, but I do have three children, two of them young women, one the same age as Sybil. My younger daughter walked in just as the episode ended (she watched season 3 online through some I'm sure illegal means when it was shown in the UK) to see how I was doing, and I got up and gave her a big hug. It is easy and accurate and often necessary to make fun of the crap that comes into our homes via the television, but it is also true that a certain percent - a percent at least as high as any other entertainment media with artistic pretensions - has the capapcity to capture and provoke and explore genuine human emotion and conflict and limitation, and that is not a bad thing. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
