{"id":1452,"date":"2013-01-26T17:19:26","date_gmt":"2013-01-26T21:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/?p=1452"},"modified":"2013-01-26T17:45:52","modified_gmt":"2013-01-26T21:45:52","slug":"grand-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/grand-disappointment\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alright, you Downton Abbey <\/em>fans…you might want to stop reading right now.\u00a0 I’m not going to provide “spoilers,” but I am going to talk about my grand disappointment in the conclusion of season 3 of the show.<\/p>\n

I’ll wait while the\u00a0die hard\u00a0fans close their browsers…<\/p>\n

Jim and I don’t have cable now, and never have; we get our television from rabbit ears and an older t.v.\u00a0 So we are big watchers and supporters of WGBH, since the best free t.v. comes from ‘GBH – and if we’re not paying for cable, then I’m very happy to donate money to ‘GBH.\u00a0 My most recent donation yielded the complete three disc set of season 3 of Downton Abbey<\/em>, meaning that I’ve been able to view the episodes at my leisure, and ahead of the general public in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Last night I watched all of disc three (Jim had a gig).\u00a0 Three hours of Downton, Downton, and more Downton.\u00a0 And, frankly, I’m angry, annoyed, and disappointed.\u00a0 I’m not disappointed in what<\/em> happened at the end of the season, since anyone familiar with entertainment gossip should have been able to figure that out on their own, but rather I’m disappointed in how <\/em>it happened.\u00a0 There are creative and interesting ways to bring a plot to a certain resolution, and then there ways that are predictable and maudlin and absolute cop-outs.\u00a0 Season 3 of Downton\u00a0<\/em>ends in\u00a0just about the worst plot cop-out I have ever seen.<\/p>\n

Without giving too much away (although a quick Google search for any character’s name will provide all plot spoilers, since season 3 has already aired in England), I will tell you this:\u00a0 the whole final three hours of the show are filled with ridiculous dialogue between two of the main characters that is the most obvious foreshadowing I have ever witnessed.\u00a0 Blech.\u00a0 And I was able to predict the exact plot trajectory with total accuracy a good two hours before it occurred on screen.\u00a0 As the final scene unfolded, I thought to myself, “They’re really going to do it that way?\u00a0 Seriously?\u00a0 How totally stupid and predictable.\u00a0 Yup, ok, here it comes – they seriously did that, didn’t they.\u00a0 How absolutely disappointing.”\u00a0 And [spoiler here], though I should have been sad and weepy at that last scene, my eyes were completely dry.\u00a0 Not a drop of mascara ran.\u00a0 Not a speck of tissue needed.<\/p>\n

And I don’t think I’ll bother watching season 4 when it comes out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alright, you Downton Abbey fans…you might want to stop reading right now.\u00a0 I’m not going to provide “spoilers,” but I am going to talk about my grand disappointment in the conclusion of season 3 of the show. I’ll wait while the\u00a0die hard\u00a0fans close their browsers… Jim and I don’t have cable now, and never have; … Continue reading Grand disappointment<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","category-spare-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1452"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1460,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452\/revisions\/1460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abbykingsbury.org\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}