For a while I have been hearing many rumblings about the show “Downton Abbey”. I hate, hate, hate period dramas, but I decided to put aside my hatred and start watching “Downton Abbey” on Netflix. I decided this four times. FOUR! The first three times I started the first episode and fell asleep within 15 minutes. I couldn’t do it. Then in January I made another attempt and this time it took, sort of. I am blaming it on a combination of being sick of watching “The Hills” reruns and winter making me slothful. Regardless of the reasons, the fact is that I got just bored enough to not only start watching, but keep watching even though I hated it. I am embarrassed to admit this, but to date I have caught up on all three seasons that have been released in the states. I hate it. I hate the show and I hate myself for watching all of it. It is THE WORST, you guys! I don't know why people like it! Is everyone just as bored as I am, or am I missing something about this show that is good? And can anyone explain to me why Laura Linney introduces the episodes?? I have decided to spare anyone else from wasting 30+ hours of their lives by creating a list of everything you need to know about “Downton Abbey” without actually having to watch it! YOU’RE WELCOME!
****Contains Spoilers…again, YOU’RE WELCOME!****
//The Crawley Family: They are all the worst people ever. They are all dicks who whine all the time, save a few semi-redeeming members:
Robert is the root of why this show is the worst. He is entitled and melodramatic and doesn’t even come close to understanding or accepting real life. He has squandered the family fortune because he is an idiot and almost loses Downton Abbey like 3 times thus far. He is also the king of white problems. He also has a cool wife and he kisses a maid because his life is so hard because he had to open his home up to war victims. Cry me a damn river. He also listens to the crappiest doctor of all time and by doing so, kills some people. Idiot. I hope he dies soon.
Cora is a half redeeming character. She is only gets a half because sometimes she agrees with her douche bag husband, Robert. When she isn’t giving into his stupidity, she is actually pretty cool. She helps Mary carry the sex victim back to his bed, she support Sybil’s fight for true love, and she doesn’t hate Edith even though everyone else clearly does. She also stays strong through all the crap she’s put through because of other’s stupidity. She got knocked up with a boy (finally!) but then lost it because her servant intentionally put soap on the floor so she’d slip and miscarry. She reacts to that with poise and strength, although she didn’t know it was intentional. Then her husband makes a pretty poor judgment call and the result is the death of Sybil and she stands up to him and refuses to let him touch her. Girl power!
Mary sucks because she is a product of her father -- Lazy and entitled. She was supposed to marry her cousin Patrick in the first episode and then they would inherit everything, but he died on the Titanic. Or maybe he didn’t. Some burn victim showed up in season two saying he was that cousin but no one believed him so he went away. So maybe her fiancé-cousin is still alive, or maybe he sank with Leo DiCapprio. I’m sure the burn victim will show up again and threaten Mary’s way of life because she ended up marrying the next heir, her other cousin Matthew. So much incest. But she only married Matthew after breaking his heart because they thought they may have a brother to inherit the fortune, and also after she had sex with a diplomat who was visiting their estate. The sex wasn’t the scandal, he died on top of her and then her Mom and maid had to help her carry the body into the diplomat’s room. Also, that diplomat was pretty rapey so I am not faulting her for that too much. To sum her up: gold-digging, black widow, slut.
Edith borders on being a redeeming character if she wasn’t so damn whiney. She tries pretty hard to not suck, but she also told the diplomat’s parents that her sister sexed him until he died which is a low blow even if your sister sucks as bad as Mary does. Edith can’t find love to save herself. It might be because she has red hair and a beak for a nose, but I am also guessing that her whiney nature doesn’t help. She loved Mary’s fiancé-cousin Patrick, but he drowned or maybe didn’t and got burned in WWI. She also loved a farm hand for a minute when she was driving their tractor during the war, but that died because he was a farm hand or something. Then she stalked an old man into proposing to her. Like really stalked, you guys. She showed up at his house all the time and asked him to take her for drives constantly. He even told her to stay away but she kept showing up until he finally proposed because if you’re going to have a whiney ginger around all the time, you may as well get some from it. Too bad for Edith, the old dude backed out at the altar and just dropped the mic and walked out. Poor Edith has one job, to find a husband, and she just keeps screwing it up.
Sybil is one of the few redeeming characters. She is great for so many reasons. First of all, she has a soul. She isn’t content to just laze about the parlor trying to find a husband, she wants to make the world a better place. She goes to rallies to get the vote for women and when WWI breaks out she becomes a nurse and even gets her family to turn their mansion into a recovery center for the injured vets. She also ends up flipping her aristocratic lifestyle the bird when she elopes with the chauffer. I hate weddings so this was my kind of lady! But guess what, they killed her off during child birth in season 3. 
The Dowager Countess is Robert’s mom, so she is guilty of putting this man on the earth. She has her moments of hilarity and delivers quips like, “Edith, you’re a lady! Not a toad of toad hall”, but in the end she is the matriarch of this awful conclave so she is also the worst. I’m pretty sure she hates Edith more than anyone else, but I don’t actually think she is fond of anyone, really. From what I can tell, her entire purpose on this show is to be an old hag and make everyone feel inferior.
Tom Branson needs to just get over himself. He is some sort of Irish rebel turned chauffer for the family. I don’t quite understand his whole political stance because I can’t bring myself to care enough, but I know the family doesn’t care for whatever it is. At first he’s okay because he is wooing Sybil and making sure she doesn’t get hurt at rallies and stuff, but then he just gets too self-righteous and can’t stop talking about how Ireland needs to be independent or something. Then he marries Sybil, takes her to Dublin and knocks her up. Sounds like he’s okay until you learn that he gets into some sort of trouble for being somewhere that was frowned upon (again, I don’t care) and leaves pregnant Sybil alone in Dublin to hopefully escape the country and get to Downton. What a guy. What a guy.
Matthew gets redeeming character credit only because he is the least annoying man on the show. He is a distant cousin to the Crowleys so when the Earl can’t get his wife knocked up with a boy, Matthew wins! He doesn’t really care to win though. He just wants to be a lawyer and stay cool but instead he is kind of thrust into being an upper-class dick. He ends up marrying his cousin Mary, the oldest and worst of the Crowley daughters. Even though Mary is the worst, he loves her a lot and it is pretty sweet. He loves her enough that he marries her even after finding out she boned a diplomat to death. But then he knocks up his stupid wife who he loves so much and right after she gives birth to a son (finally someone has a boy around here!) he dies in a car accident. Bleeding out the ears, dead. So they kill off the second redeeming character. Good job, writers. Now I hate everyone.
//So many servants, so little I care about: They come and go and I don’t know most of their names, so I will highlight a few.
Anna is cool. She is a pretty young housekeeper turned Mary’s someone who gets her dressed. I think they call it a lady maid or something. Regardless, she exists to put clothes on the worst Crowley sister and somehow manages to still be nice to people. I don’t get it, but she must be okay. She also married this old dude with a limp.
Bates is the old dude with a limp. He was married to some other crazy lady but when she died he married Anna because she’s an angel who can look past his old man limp and potential murderous traits. The first wife killed herself and framed Bates, or maybe he killed her. He was exonerated but I have a feeling he had something to do with something, so I am suspect of him.
O’Brien is the person who killed baby Crowley by intentionally putting soap on the floor so that Cora would slip. She thought she was getting fired (which she wasn’t), so naturally she killed an unborn baby because that is what you do when you think you’re going to be fired. They haven’t found out that she is the baby killer yet so she just keeps getting Cora dressed each day.
The redhead prostitute left an impression on me as you can tell by my inability to remember her name. She worked at the house for a short time while Sybil turned it into a hospital and during that short time she managed to sleep with a soldier and get pregnant. The soldier died from something I also didn’t pay attention to and she had his bastard child and prostituted herself to make money after getting fired from Downton for being a slut…so then she became more of a slut. Her story line is just another stupid, unnecessary subplot, but at least this one involves sex.
Daisy out- whines Edith on her best days. She is also really pale and has big ears. She does stuff in the kitchen and marries a dying servant who got injured in the war even though she doesn’t like him that way. Can’t remember his name either. She also has a crush on a new servant whose name I also can’t remember, but he doesn’t like her because as I mentioned, she is pale and has big ears. He likes her assistant in the kitchen. He should because she is much cuter. But Daisy might get her dead husband’s father’s farm someday, so she may redeem herself by manning up and not just whining all the time about boys not liking her. Get a tan, Daisy.
Thomas is many things. He is gay. He has a weird hand because of the war. He likes to frame people for crimes. He is sketchy as hell. He gets manipulated into kissing another male servant by O’Brien because she convinces him that there is a mutual attraction. They almost fire him and report him to the authorities for being gay, which was against the law, but they keep him on and the guy he kissed drops it. They shouldn’t have helped this jerk. He has had 500 chances and screws someone over every time. He got beat up for following or protecting the guy he kissed. I am unclear on what he was doing and if it was a hate crime or just that he was drunk. Again, my attention to this show isn’t great. At least he is sort of nice to look at.
Well, there you have it! Everything you need to know about Downton Abbey without wasting hours of your life like I did. I am going to say that I won’t keep you all updates on the happs of the worst family ever, but I have a feeling I will get bored enough to watch the next season too. I don't know why I hate myself so much. Until then.
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