Downton Abbey Season 4 Premiere

The good news is that it was an exciting, entertaining, pretty awesome episode. The bad news is that pretty much every scenario presented could be completely taken apart if thought about for more than 6 seconds. Also, Kdawggy and I had at LEAST three legitimate collective gasps, and yet less than an hour later, I can't remember all of them. Wtf?

A few random thoughts:

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--> 10 years into the show, and they all look the same. Even Bates who looked 100 years in 1912, and Daisy who looked 12. Maybe they could really make Downton the robust business venture they hope for by packaging whatever the hell is in the water there and selling it.

- Has Robert been right about a single thing since the show started? His daughter dies because he insists on listening to a doctor based on his graduating first in his med class in Snootiness & Airs. He almost invested Downton Abbey away, saved only by Matthew for some reason winning the son-in-law Powerball. He almost threw away his marriage for a maid who's not half as hot as his wife. And on and on and on. These people's policy should be to ask his opinion, and then do the total opposite. I've always liked him for his benevolence, but it's official: he's the George Steinbrenner of Lords, a "Titanic in search of an iceberg."

- Does anyone know why on Earth O'Brien felt the need to scamper away in the night to her new job?

- Are we really to believe Mary paid that much attention to whatever Matthew was saying about the estate, all his "ideas"? Was she filling up notebooks, "slow down honey, tell me more of your thoughts as a lawyer on rotating crops!" Really? I don't know much about married couple, but I do know they listen to each other about as closely as a teenager with his headphones on getting high to Slow Ride as his mother's reminding him to "cut the goddam grass before your father gets home already."

- Carson.  Calm the fuck down already, you're just handing over food to rich people.  Hardly worth almost having a heart attack every goddam episode. Take a lesson from Moseley and have a goddam Granthamtini every once in a while.  Country and family may be worth dying for; ensuring the shrimp fork is 3.25 inches from the plate is not.

- Thanks to Kdawggy bringing it up, now I can think about nothing other than my being The Manny of Downton Abbey. I have three years as a Manny under my belt, and I've almost never once called a kid a racial epithet that I was watching at the time to his face.

- I've long written that the writers for some reason absolutely hate Edith, so with the whole "her man becoming a German citizen so he can marry her" thing, I'm putting the odds of them finding a way to single-handedly blame her for World War II at 100%. Book it.

- I can't believe it, but the Dowager is STILL funny.  I haven't seen anybody squeeze so much life out of a one-note act since Ava Devine in ASIAN BOFFO CREAMPIES, IV