Goodbye, Downton...For Now

Like Christmas when I was a child, I wait all year with great excitement and anticipation and then poof! It’s over in a flash and I’m left feeling empty and alone.

Of course I speak of Downtown Abbey. It just started and tomorrow night season three will conclude and then what? Luckily I’ve DVRed all the episodes and bought the DVD so I can console myself by watching them over and over as I’ve already started to do (Hello, my name is Elaine and I’m a Downton-aholic) but still…

There’s nothing like that cold Sunday night in January when, after a hectic holiday season, I need a bit of a pick me up and there she stands, Laura Linney, seemingly as excited as the rest of us, and utters the words I have been waiting eleven months to hear, "Tonight we come back to the spellbinding magic of Downton Abbey." The music starts, we see Isis’ rump waddling along Lord Grantham, and I get chills all over.

And what a season! Superbly written and acted, it kept us enthralled. Bates and Anna, Lord Grantham’s financial downfall, the death of Lady Sybil, Mrs. Hughes cancer scare, a wedding that finally happened and a wedding that never made it back up the aisle. We saw Lady Mary blossom into a kind, lovely woman. Of course, she was there all along under the cold alabaster exterior. And we saw Lady Edith come into her own. And Branson. I wasn’t sure about him at first but he fit beautifully upstairs where he seems to have gained a great respect for the Crawleys.

And downstairs…I cried for Thomas and his tortured soul and loathed O’Brien who doesn’t have one. Will Anna and Bates unlock the horrible secret behind those words, Lady Grantham’s soap? Will Thomas be humbled by Bates’ help or will he revert back to his conniving self?

So tomorrow night I’ll sit in front of my television anxious to see what happens, all the while willing it not to end. A few tissues will become soggy before the screen fades to black, no doubt, and melancholy will envelope me.

Years ago in the heyday of Dallas, my friend Janet and I would watch the season finale and then say that we hoped we didn’t die over the summer before we found out what happened. So here’s my wish for the coming year. I wish for world peace, an economy on the rise, good health, blah blah bah. And come January 2014, on a cold Sunday evening, for Laura Linney to look out directly at me and say, "Tonight we come back to the spellbinding magic of Downton Abbey."

Carnage on the Kalahari

I like TV as much as the next person. Sometimes I just want to be entertained and sometimes I want to learn something from the viewing experience. So when I read in People magazine—my weekly secret indulgence—about a new Discovery Channel series called Africa, I decided to tune in. I’ve watched these kinds of shows before, so I really should have been prepared, but we never are, are we?

The first installment in the series is called Kalahari, referring to a region in southwest Africa. It’s a hostile area filled with fossil lakes and desert fog and has very little water. I was really looking forward to the sweeping landscape and the breathtaking photography these kinds of shows are famous for. And then I started watching. A better name for it would have been Carnage. In big letters. And bolded.

It began with a windswept sand dune and a spider rolling down it. Incredible. And then it moved on to the good stuff—the big animals. I love giraffes, those gentle vegetarians that don’t seem to cause much trouble. That is until another male invades their territory. A giraffe’s neck is six feet long. It weights more than five hundred pounds. When a giraffe fights it starts by swinging its neck like a pendulum, gathering speed and then WHAM! it strikes the other animal continuously until it is down. Horrifying.

It was time to take a break. I pressed pause. I needed a cup of tea and maybe a Xanax.

Act two of Kalahari/Carnage started off with, say it with me people, more carnage! This time around it was between a leopard and an antelope. Antelopes and zebras, do they ever get a break? After that the show moved on to giant, gross, repulsive slimy bugs doing God knows what to each other. Time to fast forward. After the bugs came the birds of prey circling over the remains of some animal carcass. I’ve never been a big fan of birds. Now I know why.

I looked at the clock. Halfway through. Surely they would show me something warm and fuzzy next. They did. Baby ostriches, just hatched, were trying to get across this vast expanse of sand to the watering hole before they died of thirst. And just to make it interesting and get their little hearts going, those sadistic Discovery Channel people tossed in stampeding zebras, a couple of elephants and lions on a rampage.

When was this going to be over? And then…black rhinos, whose numbers have been depleted to fewer than five thousand, gathered at night at a secret watering hole. Something like this had never been filmed. First a mother emerged out of the dark with her calf and then others arrived. It was truly breathtaking.

So in the end, I did learn some things. In one of the most inhospitable landscapes on earth, life prevailed and I was witness to these incredibly beautiful creatures.

Just remember to fast forward.

Alex, I'll Take Popes For A Thousand

Now that the craziness of the holidays is over, I thought it time to turn my attention to more intellectual pursuits; something stimulating and fun at the same time. Something that has the potential to turn into a life-changing event with the added bonus of perhaps adding to my meager retirement coffers. Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again when the Jeopardy! Challenge is upon us.

I enjoy Jeopardy! I don’t watch it every night but I try to catch it a couple times a week. I like shouting out the answers with reckless abandon to an empty room, which gives me the advantage of not being embarrassed if I’m incorrect, which I admit happens. I like final Jeopardy! best and give myself a pat on the back if I get the answer correct—especially if the people on the show don’t. I also scowl at the television if the contestant gets things wrong, telling them they’re an idiot and how did they ever make the cut. Yes, things can get pretty hairy at my house around six-thirty each evening.

But here’s the thing, they’re not idiots. Not even close. I’ve taken the test before. I sign up, receive my instructions and on the appointed evening I log in and stare down the timer until the test begins.
You get fifteen seconds per question. Just in case you didn’t know, fifteen seconds is not a long time, especially when you have to type out your answer. At least it doesn’t have to be formatted into a question as it does on the show. But you still have to come up with something. The computer spits out fifty questions, moving on to the next one whether you’re ready for it or not. Afterward, they don’t inform you of your score. If you’ve done well, they’ll call. So far they haven’t.

But before you go judging me and shout out the word idiot, do you know who the pope was in the year 1215? Huh? Do you? Because that’s the caliber of the questions you have to deal with. The fact that I get even a handful correct is pretty impressive—or maybe disturbing because, really, why would one know the answer to such a thing? It’s Pope Innocent III in case you were curious, by the way.

So suffice it to say I won’t be asked to be on the genius tournament with the likes of Ken Jennings any time soon, but nevertheless, there I’ll be on January 10 trying my hardest to find out exactly how much I don’t know.

But keep watching the show. You just might spot me—in the audience.

Happy 2013!