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B*tch Ranking 'Downton Abbey': The Americans Arrive, Substituting Vulgarity for Wit

By Alexander Joenks | TV | February 24, 2014 |

By Alexander Joenks | TV | February 24, 2014 |


I take everything I ever said about cousin Harold back, because Paul Giamatti can do absolutely no wrong in this world. But who tops our completely arbitrarily ordered bitchrankings this week? Let’s see, door number one!

Mary: Oh but now I have a moral crisis now that I’ve been presented with minute circumstantial evidence. Wait, maybe if he can help Papa I’ll forgive him for tipping the rapist that slept in my house into traffic. That idiocy aside, she had some fantastic zingers, usually by eviscerating Edith’s very existence when she wasn’t around.

The rapist: Seriously, I mean fuck that guy. He’s not even around anymore, but he spreads like a stain.

Edith: For one moment I thought that her balls had dropped, and she was going to go get her baby, aristocratic shock be damned. Nope, just secretly giving her to the pig farmer. I don’t think that even counts as a single ball dropping. Half ball? Maybe a quarter.

Adolf Hitler: I kind of want to photoshop Edith wearing a t-shirt that says “Hitler killed my boyfriend and all I got was this lousy bastard” but I’m way too lazy to bother when I can just describe it instead.

Thomas: one of these days, Machia-dickhead here is going to go one step too far, Molesly is going to give a pained nod to Bates, and then Thomas will disappear. And there won’t be any moral quandary because seriously, no one cares anymore.

Dowager Bitch Goddess: these rankings don’t even really need to list her, because her contrary growls are in the hall of fame and she’s now just playing the game for beer money.

School teacher: nobles are a bunch of twats, but I still totally want to see your cool house, you know if you’re ALLOWED to. Ugh. I sort of liked the fake-pregnant-date-rapist lady better. She was evil, but she had ambition, which was at least interesting.

That said, Robert, seriously, you’re all upholding the fine traditions of the past yada yada? I’d have paid sixteen Internet dollars for Tom to have looked you right in the eye and said: “um yeah, I’m an aristocrat now, so I banged a townie, doesn’t get more traditional than that. Was there a form I was supposed to have Carson fill out afterwards? Did I not tip enough? Too much?”

Rose’s parents: I know her parents don’t like her, but you’d think at some point in the last 18 months of show time they’d bother coming back to see their precious angel get her official nod from the King and all that.

Even so: ugh, Rose. She’s like a walking propaganda poster in favor of a communist revolution.

PBS: I was pretty sure this was the Christmas Special, so I knew it would run long. I looked it up, and it had a two hour block set aside. So when Carson and Mrs. Hughes walked into the ocean and the screen went to the Masterpiece book flipping at 10:34, I was first confused and then annoyed. I was promised 2 hours of Downton, and I’m coming up 26 minutes short. Not cool, commercial-free television that I don’t pay for, not cool at all.

Bates? Batman. I’m sticking with this theory. Name a criminal skill and he has it. But he was only in jail for a few months, which to me means that he already knew all of these things. Prison just gives him the convenient excuse for where he acquired all those talents. Of course, he did murder a dude and kept the train ticket in his jacket pocket for eight freaking months. Creepy serial killer trophy? Was the real reason that Anna gave the coat away because Bates insisted on wearing it during their stiff upper lipping? I hope they washed the jacket before giving it to those poor Russian refugees. Running from communism into the open arms of British working class overcoats that have a year of murder stank on them? They might write a letter to Lenin asking to come back.