What Can We Learn from the Leaked 'Downton Abbey' Calendar?
The return of Downton Abbey is so far away for us Americans, but that doesn't mean we can't take the time to analyze these photos that have come out from the fourth season coming to us via Vulture and Hypable. The photos apparently come from a 2014 Downton calendar that was available on Amazon, hence the elegant formatting, but they essentially act as teaser photos. (Note: we have not been able to find the calendar on Amazon, though this Downton Abbey fan blog was posting the same images on Tuesday) The only person that really looks happy is Lady Edith! So that's a change.
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Here's Edith—the ugly duckling of the family, the one that got left at the altar—looking rather sexy and cavorting with her married editor beau Michael Gregson. You know, the one with the nutty wife, a lá Jane Eyre. But things seem to be going well for them here. So that's good news. Everyone just wants Edith to be happy and get laid at this point.
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But now we come to Lady Mary. She's dressed in black and is clearly not taking this whole (spoiler alert) widowed-after-having-a-baby thing very well. She looks fairly grim and she stares out the window. Is she thinking of Cousin Matthew? Or of a new beau supposedly coming her way?
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And finally here's Branson looking fairly happy with his young daughter. That's nice. His spouse died before Mary's so he probably had more time to recover.
And finally we've got Branson and Mary together with their children. Once, again, Branson looks more content, and Mary looks severe. Branson is grasping Mary's child's hand. Are the widow and widower helping raise each other's children? Margaret Lyons at Vulture thinks there's "weird chemistry" here. We'd have to agree. That'd be strange and we don't approve.
There you go. Is your appetite significantly whetted? Well, tough luck. You have to wait until January 5, 2014 to get new episodes. That is, unless you want to fly to the U.K. once a week starting in September in the U.K. (or some other means involving illegal, gritty side of the Interwebs). That's your choice though. The show has a lot of work to do leading into their fourth outing, and we're curious what the show will do having lost some of their leading actors. Oh well, at least they gained Paul Giamatti.
