Sir Richard wants Lady Mary to be the Wendi Deng to his Rupert Murdoch. (Slate)

Downton Abbey, Season 2

Sir Richard Carlisle, played by Iain Glen, on the new season of Downton AbbeyStill courtesy © Carnival Film & Television Limited 2011 for Masterpiece.

From: Seth Stevenson|Posted Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012, at 11:01 PM ET

 

To: June Thomas and Dan KoisJune, you're right, ultimately we are in this for the soapy pleasures. Which makes me wonder if a key to Downton's success here is that it's filling a niche American TV has abandoned. Whatever happened to all those prime-time soaps about wealthy families? The '80s airwaves were lousy with them: Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest. But they've disappeared. Perhaps the closest thing we've got now is the Kardashians and they're a very different, and slightly less scripted, kettle of douchebags.

So, Episode 1! England is at war! Everything is changing! Or is it?

Lady Sybil is still a plucky proto-feminist, insistent on joining the war effort and (given the show's internal logic, this is progressive) learning to cook. Bates is still a bizarrely uncommunicative self-flagellant. Cora still looks and sounds like she's on Xanax half the time. The Dowager Countess still brings good zing—though I admit that her dismissal of Cora's flower arrangements as more fitting for "a first communion in Southern Italy" left me bewildered on multiple fronts, and her reference to "the guns at Lucknow" sent me scurrying to Wikipedia.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club/features/2012/downton_abbey_season_2/week_1/downton_abbey_season_2_do_lady_mary_and_sir_richard_have_a_future_.html