The Wild Blog in the West

It's the Christmas Special, which means a super-sized Downton episode!  This one was both less tedious and less morbid than the previous one.  While there was threat of a scandal, at least no one died this time. Plot Synopsis So we jump ahead an entire year to the summer of 1923, and as expected, virtually nothing has changed.  Nothing except Edith going to Switzerland for eight months, having a baby girl, breastfeeding her herself, then giving her away to a Swiss family before heading home.  Nope, nothing other than that. Since apparently even Rose's brother and sister in England hate her, the Crawleys will be overseeing her presentation at court and the subsequent festivities.  The entire family heads down to London, save Branson, Isobel, and Violet, to the never-before-seen Grantham House.  The servants are all flustered, and Mrs. Hughes and Daisy make a late trip down because the housekeeper at Grantham House is ill and there will be a lot of gu...

I had to use that once.  Now I shall never speak of it again. This was the final episode of Series Four, before the Christmas Special that officially closes things out.  It was one of the better Series Four episodes, and one of the better Series finale episodes, at least since Series Two.  Nothing earth-shattering happened, but some plot lines wrapped up nicely and there were a few pleasant surprises. Plot Synopsis Lord Grantham is still away in America with Thomas, so Cora has the challenge of actually exerting herself for the upcoming village charity bazaar, which seems pointless because half of the people in the village hate the other half. Even with Thomas gone, Baxter dutifully collects gossip around the house to share with him.  She tries to get Molesley to spill what he knows about the Anna-Bates situation, but he doesn't bite.  Instead, he later asks Baxter if she would like to join him for coffee.  When she refuses, Molesley tells her ...

I was going to call this "Gone to the Pigs" or something of the like, but that was too silly.  Besides, while the pigs subplot was memorable, it was not the meat of the episode.  Pun intended. Plot Synopsis First, Downton Abbey is in a tizzy because Lord Grantham received a telegram from Cora's family in America, stating that they want him there right now .  For some reason, they think that having him testify before a Senate committee is a good idea, him being an upstanding English earl and all.  However, Bates does not want to leave Anna and begs for Thomas to take his place.  This simple request unleashes so much turmoil that one would think the nation had declared war again.  Before everything settles, Mary knows that Anna was violated, but not that Lord Gillingham's valet was responsible.  Anna refuses to disclose any more details to her. Before Lord Grantham leaves, Violet comes to wish him off.  If it's not clear by the way she cough...

Most of this episode was fairly quiet, like the last one.  However, this one had several good moments, and that's before the "secret" was revealed at the end. Plot Synopsis First, I'll get the never-ending love quadrangle out of the way.  Thankfully, this is the end and now Daisy can get a good plot line.  She begins this episode thrilled that Alfred is staying at Downton, only for her happiness to be dashed when Alfred receives a letter informing him that one of the accepted candidates dropped out, so he gets to fill the position.  When it's time for him to leave, he tells Daisy that he's sorry he hurt her, and that she will make a man very happy, just not him.  His honesty is refreshing, but couldn't he have said that a few months earlier?  How many months -- no, years  -- has this plot line dragged on?  Daisy manages to wish him luck, and they end on a good note. Later, Jimmy tries to take advantage of Ivy after they see a Valenti...

Sometime after writing my review for Serial Experiments Lain , I visited an IMDB message board.  One of the threads was "Which anime series are like Lain?", and one suggestion was Monster .  I will sometimes watch the opening episode of an anime series out of curiosity.  But Monster  was the first time I did it and was hooked. That is saying something, considering that getting hooked meant committing to a 74-episode series, far longer than any other anime I had watched.  But one episode led to another, which led to another, and before I knew it, I had finished the entire series in less than a week. The anime is closely based on Naoki Urasawa's manga series of the same name, which ran between 1994 and 2001 in 18 volumes.  The anime series aired in Japan in 2004 and 2005, then in the United States in 2009 and 2010 on the SyFy Channel. Plot Synopsis Dr. Kenzo Tenma is a Japanese man living in Dusseldorf, West Germany in 1986, at a time when Germany s...