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Dishing on Downton – Season 4, Episode 2

Whoah. This was a great episode, but I’m sick about Anna. Sick. WHHHHHYYYY?! What did you all think?

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3 comments
  1. Jen

    January 14, 2014 at 11:30 pm

    SO upset by this episode. I feel like I now need to see spoilers before watching. This one felt over the top, gratuitous violence AND it’s Anna!!!! Gah

  2. J.Mill

    January 15, 2014 at 12:31 pm

    I was super upset about Anna too. I thought that it was well produced, as you girls did, with the juxtaposition between the opera singer and the screams. I have an oddly impressionable memory when it comes to violence against women and that scene will probably never leave me.

    But something that I wondered about was the approach to sexual violence during this episode. I mean, Tom took some whiskey from Edna and told to go to bed. We are lead to believe that she may have taken advantage of him. I think that this, too, is possibly rape. If he can’t say no because he’s intoxicated, that’s still wrong.

    I don’t know if we’re supposed to take away from this that men are an assumed “yes” and women are blamed if they are a victim. Is this indicative of the time period? Of the class-ism? I don’t know. I just noticed the tandem events.

  3. GreenInOC

    January 15, 2014 at 8:08 pm

    I got the impression that Mrs. Patmore faked her injury so Alfred could cook and wants to become a chef or something. When they are seated next to each other at the opera performance, they have this exchange:

    Alfred: I hope I didn’t let you down
    Mrs. P: I’m sure you didn’t; Mr. Carson said they gobbled it up like garnets/gannits/giants (like something that starts with a g!)
    Alfred: It’s what I want to do Mrs. Patmore
    Mrs. P: One step at a time…

    The storyline with Anna is distressing but I thought that it was shot beautifully (“shot” as in the way it was filmed, produced, edited, written). The fact that it wasn’t gratuitous nor focused visually but so haunting juxtaposed with the light, glittery, opera upstairs with the haunting, dark and screaming downstairs. It was so much more impactful than if it had been done with the more modern all-visual-all-the-time style of current visual entertainment.

    Of course Joanne Froggatt’s performance in the office with Mrs. Hughes was stunning. She conveyed such deep, desperate, and conflicting emotions in that scene it was incredible.