Shove These Downtown Abbey Season 5 Scoops Down Your Gullet!

Here we are again. Another January another season of Downton Abbey. With that comes a whole heap of piping hot preview news from America's favorite polemic for class divides! As a man with his finger on the pulse of America, I'm treating you to the hottest details of this brand new season! Can't handle the heat? Then stay in the kitchen, because that's where you belong, you North country runt and you should be glad for the opportunity! I should sick the hounds on you! The hounds!

Spoilers ahoy!

Episode 1 ends with Edith's room being consumed with fire, but fortunately everything is safe and, besides, Lord Grantham let's us all know that Edith's room is "Where we keep the cheap stuff."

Ugh. Common people.

Episode 2 shakes up things even more when Landis, a distant relative of Cousin Rose turns up at the steps of the abbey looking for a few days of rest in the country. Played by Cheeky the Walrus (Lark Rise to Candleford, Bleak House), Landis wastes no time ingratiating himself with the family-- To everyone's dismay!Can the household handle the boisterous antics of their new, rough and tumble Welsh compatriot? Can Mrs. Patmore keep up with Landis' demand for raw clams? Will Mosely recover from his goring? Will Lady Edith's charms finally work on this two ton tub of blubber?

Lightning strikes again when another Turkish diplomat dies under the care of the Granthams. This time ol' Lord Grantham's antique blunderbuss misfires turning Yolga's entire midsection into a pile of human jelly! Will the Granthams be able to pull another fast one under the noses of the Turks? Will Isis let go of the ambassador's femur? Will Edith find love in the pile of human compote that is the former bureaucrat?

Lady Edith realizing even Lady Rose is better liked than she is.

A colorless portal opens up in the back-up pantry. Carson locks it up ater voice from beyond the void begin moaning “Bring us the boy heir. Bring him to us.” Seeing an opportunity, Alfred charges a tuppence a gander. In an unrelated side plot, Edith will find love with a chimney sweep stuck between the second and third floor.

After Mr. Bates' favorite topiary is the victim of a racially motivated crime, the valet finally snaps, taking it upon himself to “cleanse” the county. After arming himself with an array of homemade weapons including a fire poker tied to another fire poker, he will descend upon the township with a vengeful fervor that might be charitably described as "holy."Most of his bloody hand of vengeance will, like so many fraudulent flower contests, take place off screen, though fans will rejoice in the twenty minutes of every episode dedicated to Bates muttering “No justice, punishment.” Edith will temporarily take up a fascination with a particularly handsome ficus.

Episode five finds Lady Mary in a pickle as she tries to corner the selvedge denim market from under the noses of a Japanese firm led by a hyper-intelligent construct made out of a bunch of electric kettles taped together. Penned by visionary novelists and stuff enthusiast William Gibson!

Episode 7 in the immediate aftermath of dealing with the
"Pig Man problem."

A war orphan from the “Irish What-Have-You” will arrive in the form of Elmer the Sheep Dog. But as Elmer becomes the center of the household's affection, what of Isis, Lord Grantham's most loyal companion? She may or may not align herself with Thomas in order to make this shaggy dog into a shaggy dog story! But, Lady Edith might have bigger plans. Can you say "Lady Sheep Dog?"

One episode of the season is just a re-dubbed episode of the original Upstairs, Downstairs. See if you can notice which one!

And, of course, no season of Downton Abbey would be complete without a big to-do at the end! But times are a changing (try telling the Dowager Countess that!). Instead of a fair or a cricket game or even the start of WWI, the ladies of the house jump onto the latest trend sweeping through the inbred remains of the British aristocracy: Hunting men for sport! Mary, Rose, Lady Grantham, and even Tom, that hideous Fennian trot, all get in on the fun shooting, stabbing, and running over all kinds of peasants! First one to a thousand points gets Mrs. Patmore's prize kippers and gravy! And also Edith will elope with Three Toe Joe, the town's least stable toilet wine aficionado.

Other details to look forward to:

* A 47% increase of the use of the phrase “Cor blimey, guv!”

* After four seasons, a character finally gets to drop the c-word. You'll be surprised gets the honor!

*In an effort to cut down costs, most of season five is shot in Toronto, including most of the interior shots. Wonder why Downton Abbey suddenly resembles large sections of the Argonaut's home stadium? Wonder no longer! And keep an eye out for everyone's favorite CFL receiver Derrick "Mookie" Mitchell!

*A co-marketing deal has seen to it that Thomas' signature cigarettes are replaced with an e-cigarette, making him even worse than he already was.

*Every scene will end with someone shouting “Bah! Poppycock!”

*Lady Grantham will be visited by a Martian that only she can see.

*Lady Grantham will develop severe and acute blood pudding-induced schizophrenia.

* I don't know. Crumpets?

Well, that's all the hot gossip (or “sip” as those in the know call it) that I have for Downton Abbey season 5. Stay tuned for next hot scoop of sip when I tackle season 4 of Sherlock (in its new format change, it will primarily revolve around Sherlock's struggle to keep his dad's business afloat, while at the same time struggling to find time to be a single father. Also Watson is Sherlock's neighbor and stops in from time to time to deliver some well needed, if off kilter advice).

James Kislingbury is a writer and a podcaster. Sometimes he wonders what O'Brien would look like underneath a thresher.

I've been saying this shit for years!

(Author's Note: In preparation of a bit of writing on Hannibal, here's something about a show that I have previously ranted about. I don't think anyone listened that time either.)

People need to be watching Foyle's War!

Besides Foyle's War being a well made and well researched procedural set during WWII, it also very obviously draws from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

Speaking of brassy gals from the second world war, Agent Carter of Captain America, from her design to her character, is also cribs from the same source material as Foyle's War. Considering that Agent Carter is going to have her own TV show, you should get caught up on these things if you want to remain ahead of the pop culture curve. I say this for your own sake, not for mine.

To summarize: I have an essay in the works. Furthermore, Foyle's War-- which you can watch on Netflix and Amazon Instant-- is quite good. I mean, its wigs aren't as good as Downton Abbey's wigs, but then again, whose are?

Chasing the Dragon

 

Upon trying to chase the reaction to my entry on Young Adult, I decided to watch a movie on KCET's Classic Cool Theater called Go For Broke and crack wise like a shit bird until I got bored.

PBS' Classic Cool Theater is a program basically designed to prevent the senile from getting riled up by tricking them into thinking that it's still 1951. It comes complete with a newsreel and a vintage cartoon, which means that my dad isn't the only person in the world who misses those things. Go For Broke, the program's feature for the week, is a propaganda film in favor of Japanese-American soldiers in WWII, this whole movie feels like it's a cunt hair away from a character going "Me so solly!" which would be way out of line as that is a Chinese stereotype. It's a strange watch.

What follows are the reactions I had between the point where I started the movie and the point where I gave up because I wanted to play the Leviathan DLC in Mass Effect 3--

 There is a character with a ukelele. Apparently the 1940's had insufferable hipster, douchebags of all creeds and colors, too.

 And apparently their commanding officer is an Aryan superman. Not sure if this is supposed to be ironic. Right now he's arguing with a doughy guy about how he doesn't trust the Japanese-American recruits. Want to bet if he changes his stance on them by the end or not? Alright-- Double or nothing, do you think one of them has to jump on a grenade for him before he sees the light?

Van Johnson is a dead ringer for a guy who would rape Captain America just for sport.

He doesn't trust the Japanese. I haven't heard the word "nip" get thrown out yet. Considering how often McHale's Navy seemed to use the word, I think it might mean I'm not paying attention.

Huh. Apparently a big chunk of the cast were actually in the 442nd. Daniel Inouye is strangely absent. Must have been busy.

Hmmm.

Anyways, off the top of my head there is Audie Murphy in To Hell and Back, as well as the guys who raised the flag on top of Mount Suribachi in The Sands of Iwo Jima. Nowadays I think that's sort of standard operating procedure (just about every action movie nowadays, it seems, comes with the approval and resources of some aspect of the DoD), but I can't think of the last where soldiers were included in a film and they weren't serving a purpose that other than an elevated stuntman.

Blacked out there a bit. Apparently the US Army has decided to flank the Italian Army by way of invading southern California.

Alright. Action. Rad. Some Germans are gonna get shot and that's almost never a bad thing in a WWII movie.

I can't tell if the German is firing a semi-automatic weapon or not. I'll put this on my giant, useless list of firearm errors that you'll find my suicide note sitting on top of.

This movie seems about as harmless as every other WWII movie before 'Nam. It needs, like, Jack Palance or maybe the guy who got killed in the Twilight Zone movie from Combat in it to round out the cast, though.

Alright, the grenades went off a little bit too soon, but that was still a well put together piece of action. It actually looked like people might have been fighting in a war and not on a set somewhere in the foothills of Sunland.

Two of the soldiers are going to check a room in the bunker they just took. . . And a pot belly pig comes running out. I think that just about represents the tone and stakes of the picture overall.

. . . I just now realized that this is a movie made in 1951 wherein a bunch of Asians killing a bunch of other white people. Chew on that one, Quentin.

I can't help but think about Broken Blossoms. Now there's a movie that doesn't quite get why people keep calling it racist. It's like if a Ricky Gervais character went back in time and decided to that making movies was his calling.

Then again at least Go for Broke has the common decency to try and hunt down people of Japanese descent to be in this movie-- and people who were veterans of the regiment in question, no less. Even Memoirs of a Geisha with all of its budget and prestige didn't manage that.

Speaking of Griffith, as much as there has been said about him over the years, I'll add this: I think he is most guilty of one of the white man's great follies, which is that he doesn't understand why the racist things he is going are racist.

Other items in this category include: "What do you mean I can't say that? Rappers say it all the time!" or "I've got plenty of black friends" and "Why are they so angry all the time?"

For further information on this subject consult your local dad!

Now I'm actually wondering what the appeal of this movie is, because it carries none of the shame of DW Griffith's more odious works have. It clearly wasn't built with the intention of detached, ironic jerks like myself watching it (even if I was watching it on Classic Cool Theater which makes me think that even they are saying "Hey, isn't this a bit neat?"). It's trying to say something, which is that at a certain point and time a bunch of Americans with every reason in the world to give up rose to the occasion. That's why I was watching it in the first place. There's a reason nobody equivocates about the 442nd's legacy and it's not because they don't want to seem racist.

I guess it's this combination of seeing a movie with sincere intentions, progressive intentions, too, and still have it be mired in tropes of the time. There are little bursts of things in this movie that you usually follow up with the thought of "Boy, that's a bit racist, isn't it?" yet it's about how great these men were and how important they were to the United States.

It doesn't hurt the movies seems to be no better or worse made than a good chunk of the WWII movies I've seen from the era, either. It's just that this one happens to be about the Japanese can be Americans too and that must have been something of a bolt from the blue in 1951.

(It should also be noted that Classic Cool Theater also just had an episode featuring a movie called Blood on the Sun, which definitely puts Go for Broke into relief. . . it also makes me assume that any movie featuring not white people on this particular program might not be safe. That might have been presumptuous.)


(The introduction to this scene is embarrassingly bad, but good, goddamn this is a rad judo fight.)

The legacy of the 442nd is one to be proud of, but maybe this movie is better at pointing in the right direction than being something to be proud of in and of itself.

Alright. I'm bored. I'm going to go watch a better movie about WWII, one where the only time I think about race is because someone gave a dog an unfortunate name.

(Go For Broke is also copy right free, so you can watch it all right here freely and legally.)