Downton Abbey Season 3 Finale

Right off the bat I must declare that Downton Abbey has definitely morphed into an American style soap opera. I came to this conclusion after watching two hours of the Season 3 finale with the TV closed caption turned on. Why I did not do this in the past was a grave error in judgment. Between my hearing loss and difficulty in understanding the King’s English, I’m sure I missed many subtleties of this TV drama. Thanks to the closed caption I was able to get the jist of what was going on without bothering the High Primal for an interpretation.

In this last episode everyone in the Downton Abbey family including the servants come up smelling like roses except for Matthew. Poor Matthew! Lady Mary bears him a son and he celebrates by driving his convertible into a truck. I thought I detected a smile on his corpse which was completely unnecessary since he had nothing to smile about unless Dan Stevens who plays Matthew was relieved to be written off the show. The episode abruptly ended with his death. The after effects of his death will have to wait for Season 4.

In fact almost all the events in the finale seemed to be designed to get speculation going about Season 4. My best guesses:

-Tom Branson the widowed Irish Mick will bed the widowed Lady Mary and together they will rule Downton Abbey.

-Lady Edith will bed the newspaper editor, get pregnant and give birth to a cub reporter.

-Mr. Barrow and James agreed to be friends in tonight’s episode but Season 4 will see them both coming out of the closet and resume Barrow’s failed attempt to bed James. Barrow referring to him as Jimmy is the tip off.

- The Season 4 shocker will be Carson the butler bedding Mrs. Hughes the housekeeper.

- The wild card in Season 4 will be Cousin Rose coming to live in Downton Abbey. It turns out that Rose is a nymphomaniac who beds all the footmen in sight.

- Not surprisingly, the producers will change the name of this Masterpiece Classic to “Once Upon a Mattress”.

It should be noted that today is the start of MLB Spring Training. It won't be long before I can watch baseball instead of Masterpiece Classics on Sunday nights - and with no need for closed captioning.