Vickie: George, dear. Have you deigned to watch Downton Abbey this season? I won’t see it until January.
George: I had a prior date watching paint dry that took precedence over seeing Darnwell Crappy. How smoothly you introduce a new subject! Two lumps, please.
Vickie: And cream?
George: Yes, thank you. Lady Elizabeth McGovern has a smarmy suitor in the shape of Withnail, Dame Maggie is being Dame Maggie, and Lady Mary has found a second facial expression as she tumbles into bed with an admirer only to be espied by Dame Maggie’s wonky-eyed butler, meanwhile there’s a Marxist below stairs! By George!
Vickie: Now this second expression of Lady Mary’s, rapture?
George: I couldn’t tell, I think it may have been indigestion.
Vickie: But I thought you said you hadn’t seen it?
George: I see bits and pieces… Spoilers for next season: Hugh Bonneville becomes a Nazi, James Earl Jones plays Dame Maggie’s long lost brother, Jerry Lewis portrays Bonneville’s dad, and in the series finale Dr. Sam Beckett quantum leaps into Lady Elizabeth McGovern and puts right what once went wrong… At the end of the episode, Darnwell Crappy never existed and everyone watched (the original) Upstairs, Downstairs and Gosford Park instead! Metafiction!
Laughed like a drain, one of only two acting skills.
Dame Mags is always Dame Mags.
One of only two acting skills, Mme Design? Tish tosh, I rather doubt that. However, it rather begs the question, what is the other?! I am pleased we were able to entertain, as the Queen said to the Duke of Edinburgh after he laughed to see her trip over a corgi (its name was Gervaise). He didn’t see the inside of their bed chambers *that* night.
The tears, darling, the tears. I can have ’em in the aisles on both counts.
Dame Maggie was peeved to miss out on four particular roles on which she had set her sights: Noel Coward, James Bond, Winston Churchill, and Muhammed Ali. True!
I don’t doubt it.
I love George Kaplan’s comments too!
I confess I didn’t really read this post, as I will not see season 5 until it comes out on dvd… but I did catch your mention of “Withnail” – as it’s my favorite movie of all time and my eye is trained to seek it out. Love Richard E. Grant!!
[…] Fetch me the Downtons, now! Or, what transpired at tea with George and Vickie… […]
@Vov Schulenberg: Why, thank you, Mr Schulenberg, you are too kind. By the way, I love your name!
@Marcheline: I love Withnail and I, as well!
“SCRUBBERS!”
“I DEMAND TO HAVE SOME BOOZE!”
“Here, hare, here.”
“I mean to have you, boy. Even if it must be burglary.”
“GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN!”
“The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. And as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black.” (I will refrain from mentioning the doll “what ****s itself”, oops, too late!)
Oh, and the wrenching final scene with the “Paragon of Animals” speech from Hamlet. Wonderful.
@First Night Design, Aha! Tears! You “have them in the aisles on both counts”? Luckily, there’s no possible off-colour rejoinder I could make to that – is there?! Seriously, I am sure you have had audiences both roaring and bawling – and appropriately, too!
I’m so glad you believed me about Dame Mags, it would pain me to think you could conceive that even a single blatant untruth could issue from my lips or fingers… *winks*
I think you’ll find there is, Mr. K. So this is where you’ve got to. I’m waiting for your answer to my answer on R&V and you desert me for that Lester hussy!
I beg forgiveness, Ms Design, I thought you had fled for higher ground! The Divine Ms Lester is blameless, something which cannot be said for me!