Karen Brown, Writer

Random Thoughts From a Sleepless Night

I'm hooked on the TV series Downton Abbey. Isn't everyone? One thing that I have enjoyed learning from watching it is that rich people are not immune to suffering. They just act like they are.

Have you ever thought, while you are watching, that there is one person in the show without whom the entire household structure would collapse? And it isn't Lord Grantham. And it isn't Lady Grantham. And it isn't Carson the butler. Uh-uh. It's that lowly kitchen magician Mrs. Patmore. If she had been the one to get the Spanish flu in one of the early shows, there wouldn't have been any later shows. She is the indispensable cook who holds it all together with her kitchen skills and knowledge of just how things function both upstairs and downstairs. No social event could survive without her. I don't know about you, but I think she deserves a huge salary bump. 

And what about Thomas a/k/a Barrow? He has held various positions in the household and has always been a bit PO'd that he was never as grand as he wanted to be. I'm not sure what his present position is, but it appears that he is being paid just to wear a tuxedo and stand around looking smirky. But now he is secretly looking outside the mansion for employment. Could that be because he has run out of people he can bully at Downton, or is it because he is clever enough to see that the aristocratic system is dying and he is in danger of becoming redundant, as the Brits say? Getting paid to stand and smirk, after all, is a pretty cushy job.

So relieved that Lady Mary is dumping Lord Something-or-other. He's a nice guy, but I sense something just a bit creepy about him.

Oh, that insufferable school teacher! Her opinions, of course, are legitimate, but how did she not ever learn that a person doesn't accept the hospitality of a dinner invitation and then use that opportunity to criticize the host and hostess's life style? Right in their faces? It's a good thing I'm not writing the script; that girl would meet with a terrible fate.