There are some good defenses of Jonathan Franzen, particularly from an archival perspective, in our thread in his comments on E-Readers (I’m glad no one’s defending the idea that the president is too busy to read fiction, though). I absolutely agree with everyone who says we need to think carefully about and allocate appropriate resources to digital archiving. But I think Simon Pits raises the most convincing argument in defense of Franzen’s worries about e-readers making literature impermanent. He says:

Franzen’s point is that with a e-books, an author never need “finish” writing a book. The ability to constantly revise, improve or worsen and censor remains. While authors, publishers and distributors today aren’t taking full advantage of this, certainly it cannot be far. Think of the controversies surrounding the teaching of Huck Finn. In an e-book world, Nigger Jim gets renamed to Jim or Black Jim or Slave Jim or something that may offend fewer, but tells us less about the culture and society in which the book was written.

A couple of thoughts. First, I think even though it’s theoretically possible to keep editing a digital manuscript in a way it’s not possible to change a print copy, there are still some structural factors mitigating against it being a major problem. Most writers I know tend to feel that they have to walk away from a project at some point, if only for their own sanity. I know writing a novel is different from blogging, of course, but even then, folks feel like they have to be done sometime. And even if they don’t, I think there’s probably a limit to the extent to which digitial publishers are going to be willing to push fixes, something that requires a lot of file maintenance, checking to make sure changes haven’t introduced new errors, and then either updating or getting readers to update their texts, something that might seem particularly annoying for new tweaks rather than minor functionality.

And second, there’s been real resistance to authors going back and fiddling with what are considered foundational texts, whether George Lucas is making Greedo shoot first or an edition of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” These alterations tend to be treated as a kind of cowardice, whether it’s Lucas lacking the courage to make Han Solo kind of a jerk or the political correctness that avoids exposing people to uncomfortable ideas and words even if those things might move their thinking forward. I don’t normally trust the market with a lot of things. But I’m actually reasonably confident that outcries against endless tinkering, customer demands for the portability of content from device to device and from format to format, and the desire to retain customers will make it easier to preserve digital content in its original form. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to back up those forces with an independent dedication to digital archiving. But unless things change, I think this might be a case where customers’ demands and the imperative to preserve texts are relatively closely aligned.

This post contains spoilers through the February 5 episode of House of Lies.

At the end of last night’s episode of House of Lies, Jeannie may just have been talking about Marty when she told him “I might possibly be the only person on the planet who has known you longer than five minutes and actually likes you. And all you do is shit on me. So fuck you.” But to a certain extent, she could have been talking about the show’s attitude towards women. Like Marty, House of Lies may not be aware that what it’s doing to its female characters is bad. But it is, to the point that I’m considering walking away from what I once saw as a promising show.

First, let’s talk about Marty’s “Medusa black-hole ex.” From day one, it’s been a huge problem for the show that Monica is supposed to be both a pill-popping, irresponsible sex maniac who also happens to be completely fantastic at her job and together when it comes to her professional life. There’s a bridge to be drawn here about how the skills that you need to be an excellent management consultant could make you a toxic person in personal relationships. But there’s a difference between treating people instrumentally and getting yourself so blotto you can’t be roused, a state that doesn’t tend to discriminate between days when you have to be at work early and days you don’t. And the show has never really explained that fundamental contradiction, or explained who Monica is as a person at all (much less what drew Marty to her in the first place).

She’s nothing but a vile shrew, telling Jeremiah that he hates her not because, as he puts it “you’re toying with my son, you ignore yours, and you are the perfect poster girl for narcissism, but “because you want to fuck me.” She shows up to care for Roscoe not because she actually cares but because her married lover reneged on a promise to take her to Fiji. And are we supposed to believe for a minute that Jeremiah would leave Roscoe with her when push came to shove given what comes next doesn’t seem totally out of left field? “I arranged an internship for his fat as fuck daughter. I even let him…do you know what a golden shower is?” Monica rants, before dragging Roscoe along with her to burgal her lover’s house for what she thinks she’s owed: “We are talking about roughly $16,000, and that is a conservative monetization.” They bond briefly over how great she looks in a couture dress (I do wish the show hadn’t fallen back on the gay/gender-questioning kid=fashion maven trope), and then Monica decides to steal a painting. “It’s kind of creepy,” Roscoe tells her of the Egon Schiele. And of course it’s all about Monica, again: “There’s still some beauty in there, isn’t there?” she needs to know. Ultimately, Roscoe gets himself to school and out of her way, but it’s frightening to think what a less-resourceful kid might have been dragged into.

All of this is not to say that female characters can’t be loathesome. But if we’re supposed to believe that she and Marty are deeply entangled, and by something other than just sex, that she’s very good at her job, there has to be something else going on here, and we need to be made to see and understand it. We got at least some of that last week, with Jeannie’s on-the-road affair, though again, it would have been nice if we knew more about her engagement before we saw her reacting badly to it. And I barely even want to get into Clyde and his corn-eating Mormon, a nakedly gross-out tactic that continues to confine Clyde to a distasteful combination of infantile and frat boy.

The one thing I thought worked well about this episode was the way it handled race and ethnicity. As soon as it became clear, as Marty put it that “Brant Butterfield: racist? He’s not going to want to hear a word out of my mouth except for the best way to shine a shoe or the optimal way to load luggage into a Pullman car,” the show could have done something corny about race and reconciliation. Instead, Marty went into killer mode, taking advantage of the situation to set up a test for Jeannie while getting himself out of responsibility for a situation that was doomed to awkwardness. And he first bonded with the secretly-Jewish CFO, then warning him in Jeannie’s presentation that he’d be only too happy to sell him out, saying “You should check and make sure that number is…kosher.” Sometimes, it’s satisfying to see bigots learn. And sometimes, it’s satisfying to see Marty say “I’m sorry for interrupting, Mr. Butterfield. Sometimes I just don’t know my place,” all while putting Butterfield in his.

For two Super Bowls in a row, Chrysler’s been the company to watch, first dropping gorgeous art-deco spot about the revitalization of Detroit starring Eminem and a gospel choir, and this year, rolling out Clint Eastwood for an ad that sounded as much like an Obama campaign message as a pitch for cars:

The team behind both ads is Wieden + Kennedy, based out of Portland, Oregon. And they have a strong track record of creating inspiring advertising with communal messaging that even if it’s not specifically progressive, feels resonant with progressive values. They’re the team behind the Go Forth campaign for Levi’s that used Walt Whitman’s poem to argue “we must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger”:

And they did Coca-Cola’s “Hard Times” commercial, a recession-friendly spot that first stripped C. Montgomery Burns of his fortune and then brought him back into the Springfield community as a productive citizen who shared the rest of the town’s values (they also did this year’s Coke Polar Bear spots where fans of rival teams bond over Coke products):

Even their Velveeta ads employ a call to a return to traditional family values, leavening the stretch with a liberal dose of humor:

In other words, Wieden + Kennedy have a strong track record developing exactly the kind of messaging that the Obama administration will be looking for this fall. Even if the Eastwood spot wasn’t designed to give the incumbent a boost, the Obama re-elect campaign might consider looking West for ad help this fall.

On Wednesday, I blogged about wishing The Help would get Octavia Spencer better parts. It looks like the universe is giving me what I want and need, because this sounds fantastic:

Chris Evans, John Hurt and Tilda Swinton already are on board, as is Korean actor Kang Ho Song, who starred in Joon-Ho’s international breakthrough, the Korean monster movie The Host. Snow Piercer, which Joon-Ho co-scripted, is set in a future where, after a failed experiment to stop global warming, an Ice Age kills off all life on the planet except for the inhabitants of the Snow Piercer, a train that travels around the globe and is powered by a sacred perpetual-motion engine. A class system evolves on the train but a revolution brews. [Octavia] Spencer plays a passenger on the train who joins the revolt in order to save her son.

I’ve said this repeatedly, but I’m much more interested in culture that explores either the leadup to an apocalypse or what comes after than television or movies where people spend a lot of time running around avoiding terrible things that are going down and ultimately avert disaster. It’s much more important—and I think much more interesting—to think about the choices we can make that will let us avert catastrophic change, or to really reckon with what life would be like after, say, the world warms enough to melt away the polar ice caps. The ultimate worst-case scenario in global warming or a fuel shortage may not actually come to pass, but playing with what the consequences of those developments would be like in a genuinely frightening, compelling way is an important spur to serious thinking about the consequences of our actions.

Similarly, I’m glad to see a sci-fi action movie that’s going to star at least some people of color. The Hollywood default to a world full of white people* is particularly weird given our demographic trends. And if we’re going to play around with the idea that large swaths of habitable land would be devastated (or at least, that we’d lose a lot of major costal cities), it makes sense to set a big post-disaster movie some place other than Los Angeles or New York. Diversity means diversity of location, too, with all the benefits, constraints, and visual freshness that come with it.

*I grant a blanket Tilda Swinton past because I’m pretty sure she’s here from the future anyway.

Amanda Marcotte and I are usually on the same page when it comes to pop culture, and I think this season of Parks and Recreation has been a bit rocky. But I think she’s somewhat off in tracing the show’s problems to Leslie’s relationship with Ben:

Then the writers decided Leslie needed a boyfriend. This shouldn’t be a problem in itself; Leslie has had boyfriends before without any meaningful compromises to her character. For some reason, however, the writers decided that hooking Leslie up with Ben, a nerdy assistant city manager played by Adam Scott, meant returning to tedious Hollywood clichés about how women can’t have both their careers and their love lives. To drive the knife in, throughout season four, Leslie stops being the hero of her own story and spends much of her time being rescued by her new boyfriend…the formerly competent administrator needed Ben to rescue her at every turn. When Leslie, who once swiftly dumped a boyfriend to keep the job she had, finds herself unable to break up with this new boyfriend to get the job she has always wanted, Ben saves her by dumping her first. Ben also comes to the rescue when their relationship is revealed to their boss; he quits so that Leslie doesn’t lose her job. Ben immediately goes to work as Leslie’s campaign manager, because by this point in the show, it’s just assumed that he’s her natural caretaker.

I think this argument underestimates the extent to which running for office is not just a big deal for Leslie, it’s a big challenge. And it is for all women. A 2008 Brookings report found that “men continue to enjoy more comfort, confidence and freedom than women when thinking about running for office…Women are less likely than men to be willing to endure the rigors of a political campaign. They are less likely than men to be recruited to run for office. They are less likely than men to have the freedom to reconcile work and family obligations with a political career. They are less likely than men to think they are ‘qualified’ to run for office. And they are less likely than men to perceive a fair political environment.” The “tedious Hollywood cliches about how women can’t have both their careers and their love lives” are a little bit more true in Hollywood than they are in other settings. It’s one thing to be Gabby Giffords and be married to a freakin’ astronaut: it’s another to be a chipper bureaucrat who got caught dating her boss, who is still trying to get rid of his reputation for being arrogant and reckless with public funds. I’m not saying that’s fair for Leslie to be judged by who she dates, but I don’t actually think it’s unrealistic to say that it would be a small-town scandal.

Now there’s no question that Leslie’s overcome some of these obstacles: she’s confident in her abilities and qualifications, she’s willing to work hard to stay in the race, and she was recruited. But she was also dropped by her recruiters as a likely loser, which no matter how willing Leslie was to bull on without their support, must have been a blow. And even though she’s in the race, Leslie might be right to perceive some challenges and to feel real nerves about them. As Brown University political science professor Jennifer Lawless wrote “Voter bias against women candidates also appears to be on the rise: nearly one in every four Americans agree that ‘Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than are most women.’” So it makes sense that as Leslie enters this stage that’s new not just to her, but to her friends, that she’d hesitate, vacillate, misjudge conditions, and make wrong decisions out of justifiable caution and nerves.

And speaking of first-time candidates, I don’t think that Ben is Leslie’s campaign manager because he’d a dude. I think he’s her campaign manager because Leslie tried to foist the job on Ann, who is totally unsuited for the position for reasons that are specific to her character rather than to her gender, and comes to realize that it makes much more sense that for the only person she knows who’s run a successful political campaign (and who, by the way, needs something to do with himself) to coordinate her efforts. It’s not as if Leslie’s just kowtowing to Ben’s decisions like a vulnerable kitten, either: she pushes back against his negative ad, and ends up coming up with a much more powerful idea. During “Bowling For Votes,” Leslie was wrong and Ben was right about how she was spending her time, but the reasons she was wrong were understandable. Almost all of Leslie’s victories while at the Parks Department have come when she’s been able to win over one person or give a one-off good performance. And Leslie’s fantastic at striking deals with Ken Hotate, or helping get to the root of Kelly Larson’s Twilight obsession, but she has less experience with people who don’t like her, or with the need to conserve her emotional energy by connecting with a lot of people at a much shallower level. There’s no question that Leslie is at a core level hyper-competent, but that doesn’t mean that running a campaign or switching jobs doesn’t require new skills—and it would be a pretty boring gambit if Leslie didn’t have to learn or grow by shifting settings, something that’s been good for characters like April and Jerry, too. Having the campaign be a hard, transitional, vulnerable experience doesn’t mean it’s anti-feminist.

All of this said, I do think the show has struggled with how to handle the having-it-all dilemma. It’s not so much that I think that the question of how women balance work and love is a silly one to ask as I think that Parks and Recreation has struggled, like some of its network cousins, to figure out a new and meaningful answer to that question. On The Office, Pam’s essentially given up on the career half of the equation, reconciling herself to work at Dunder Mifflin and avoiding dealing with her problems in sales. On 30 Rock, Liz has reached a point of decidedly modest expectations, laboring away on a lowest-common-denominator show and dating a guy who’s good-looking but whom she essentially supports. Parks and Recreation, I think, would like to reward Leslie with a happy outcome, even though it’s not necessarily easy when your dream job opportunity and your dream guy arrive at the same time (Leslie is, I think, far more involved with Ben than she ever was with Dave, which makes the choice more difficult). And I’m sympathetic to that as a narrative challenge: in a world of antiheroes, it’s hard to think of a television character who I’m more emotionally invested in than Leslie Knope. Finding a way to give her realistic challenges that help her grow is something the show’s struggled with this season, even as I think they’re right to recognize the difference between catching a possum and achieving not just a functional but idealized adult life. With luck, Parks and Recreation will continue to find ways that Leslie’s campaign can expose the ways in which she and Ben are different, while giving them both opportunities to grow into different versions of themselves.

The bridge is yours.

-60 percent of the content Netflix users stream is television shows rather than movies.

-Supervillains in American politics.

-The ruins of Jim Bakker’s Christian amusement park.

-Finally, a reasonably accurate map of Panem!

-Tell me, Nick Fury, how has the world changed?

This post contains spoilers through the February 5 episode of Luck.

While I essentially agree with Tim Goodman that difficult television isn’t inherently a bad thing, I’m still having trouble finding my big emotional hook into Luck. Fortunately, my political hook’s presented itself in the stocky, short-fused person of one Chester “Ace” Bernstein, also known as Dustin Hoffman, or a man currently living out the kind of cushy parole of which Bernie Madoff can only dream. He is—or would like to be—the man who holds all the other characters’ fortunes in his hands even if they don’t know his name. And at the moment, he’s reading like a dour Al Swearengen (fitting, given Geri Jewell popping up on the track next to Marcus this week)—a visionary without the sense of humor or personal charm.

Or perhaps he’s Rhett Butler, who before he married her told Scarlett O’Hara “There’s good money in empire building. But, there’s more in empire wrecking.” Ace has come out of prison at the perfect time to capitalize on a wreck. “The U.S. economy’s in the fucking toilet. The New York bankers with their three-card monte bond swaps brought the whole fucking walls down. Tremendous structural damage to tax base, unemployment, plus my impression, tremendous, tremendous compression of the leisure gaming dollar,” he explains to his potential fronts. “In California, established and passed by the legislature, horse racing is legal and casino gaming isn’t. Leaving aside for a second the fucking rain dancers. And like the whole state economy, the race track is desperate for new streams of revenue. Perfect fucking Trojan horse.”

There’s a grandiosity to his schemes, a grand sense of what Ace thinks he’s owed. And while he’s almost meek with the parole officer who has Malcolm X on his wall, who asks him, with what sounds like genuine concern “How are you settling in?” Ace can be button-poppingly angry when asked about his prison experience, snapping at the investor who remarks that his company name will be on the new venture that it’s “Because I’m a fucking felon. Anything else you want to explain to me?” But it sounds like he’s angry less that people don’t understand what he’s been through and more that they don’t understand the code that got him there, founded on an overdeveloped sense of responsibility that led him to take the rap for his partner’s cocaine stash when the drugs were mistakenly pinned on his nephew, a New York University student. “All I remember from that time is a little boy who was running around with his shoes untied,” Gus recalls. “The question is, Ace, what if it was all turned around?” “Mike would have given me up in a heartbeat,” Ace says with certainty. Self-righteousness may not keep you warm at night, but the fire it provides will fuel you during the day.

Interestingly, it seems like the biggest threats from Ace’s plans may come not from Mike and the other higher-ups, but from below, from Escalante, bitter already at losing his horse in a claiming race. “Ace Bernstein that they calling him coming with his beard to see what his $2 million bought him,” he grumbles. “Ace Chester Bernstein gonna look to running my business?” And it remains to be seen what their history is. “There’s a picture for your, Escalante behind a pushcart full of fruits and vegetables,” Gus muses at the end of their day. “Doesn’t know to this day it was you who got him through the gate?” “It was him made himself into something,” Ace tells him. Escalante may be living by the code, just on a different scale.

Predictably, but ludicrously, NBC has already apologized for M.I.A.’s bleeped use of the word “shit” in a verse during last night’s Super Bowl halftime show and for her flipping the bird in a gesture so fleeting it barely registered during the sound and the fury and the chariot bearers and the church choirs. I profoundly wish they hadn’t. The incident was so fleeting that to argue it impacted innocent children doesn’t just strain credulity but snaps it. And groveling to the forces who are massing to make hay of a minor slip gives unfortunate credibility to decency mavens everywhere, who are complaining that it violates Madonna’s promise to have a clean show (a promise she essentially kept in her own performance) and to argue that it’s clearly a legitimate controversy because lots of people have written about it in a scramble for post-Super Bowl page views.

I’ve always thought M.I.A. could be sort of irritating in her striving to be controversial, but I also assume that combination of pop-culture it-girl factor and rebelliousness is precisely why she ended up on the bill with Nicki and Madonna. Flipping off a fairly distant camera in a busy shot during a performance with a lot of pelvis bumping seems entirely consistent with that image. NBC got what they paid for, a well-executed performance with a frisson of danger, and I’m not sure why they should be sorry for that.

And NBC shouldn’t take seriously the idea that artists shouldn’t be allowed fleeting obscenities, or that obsessive monitoring outweighs creative and mildly risky programming. The publication of articles about the fact that M.I.A. did something entirely in character is not the same thing as demonstrating that harm came from her performance. In the absence of any remotely compelling evidence to the contrary, I seriously doubt that millions of American families are going to have to have tough conversations over their orange juice this morning about what that thing that lady did on stage means and why we don’t do it in polite company.

If they do, part of that conversation should include the fact that sometimes people gets excited or overwhelmed and act out, and that self-control is an important thing, whether you’re Meryl Streep getting overcome during the Golden Globes and letting an obscenity slip or M.I.A. on a Super Bowl stage getting caught up in the excitement. Humanity is a rough, obscene thing, and this is one of the gentlest possible ways of dealing with it—certainly much more gentle than the New Yorker story about the sexual assault and murder of toddler James Bulger by two ten-year-olds, which I read not knowing what I was getting into when I myself was ten, and which left me gravely shaken for months. By the time children are old enough to understand obscenity and indecency in all their forms, they’re also nigh-impossible to protect entirely. The issue is not preventing them from seeing anything, but giving parents the tools to discuss whatever their children might encounter in a meaningful and supportive way.

And frankly, if parents are going to take on the futile quest of establishing a zero-tolerance policy against anything that might potentially get obscene, it makes no sense that they’d allow their children to watch the halftime show in the first place. Justin Timberlake’s exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast (something for which she was unfairly pilloried) was, to at least half of that duo, a shocking and unexpected accident. Prince may not have gotten naked, but his guitar-and-groin silhouette made a sexual statement on a vastly larger and clearer scale than M.I.A.’s finger against a busy background. Bruce Springsteen, who may be extremely sexy but is hardly a legendarily lewd performer, crotch-slammed a camera. The Super Bowl halftime show has a well-established reputation for being a place where people like to get a little controversial and even if they don’t plan it, do so by accident. And the game itself is a violent spectacle in which men are sometimes injured in a way that’s uncomfortable to watch and to discuss, even for adults.

If I were worried about my kids, promises or no, I’d keep them away, particularly in a year that featured performers famous for taboo-defying performances that suggest oral sex; a singer with a blow-up doll persona; and singer famous for being a a global-citizen authority-bucker who has been criticized for her praise of the Tamil Tigers, all of whom were announced in advance and all of whom are exceedingly Googleable. Kids who are young enough to be damaged by their first exposure to a fleeting obscenity or gesture probably shouldn’t be up late enough on a school night, and if kids are staying up because they’re already passionate Madonna, Nicki Minaj or M.I.A. fans, nothing in that performance was something they wouldn’t have absorbed from the music.

Whether it’s Prohibition, SOPA, or efforts to crack down on Janet Jackson’s nipples, policies that try to get to zero on things that most of adult society is either not horribly offended by or rather invested in having access to are doomed to failure. In particular, in a world with wildly differing standards, you’re never going to get society to protect you or your children from everything you find harmful—that’s work you have to do on your own, even if it means opting out. Whether you’re really willing to do that is a good test of how far your commitment extends.

This post contains spoilers through the February 5 episode of Downton Abbey:

This seems like a worthwhile moment to make the salient if somewhat disappointing observation that Downton Abbey, while handsome and as well-acted as ever, really seems to have devolved into a common melodrama this season. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with common melodrama—Revenge has thrived on camp and plot twists. But while that show’s remained relatively focused, telling us how the various developments we’re seeing on screen illuminate the central story of who framed David Clark and why, Downton Abbey’s dangerously close to feeling like a mish-mash of dramatic plot devices tossed together for effect: these are flash bombs, producing a lot of temporary light, but I’m not sure the heat they’re generating is nearly enough to scorch the ends of Peter/Patrick’s hair, much less maim him permanently.

Speaking of which, why don’t we start there? I think there would be a fascinating story to tell about a maimed war veteran who, amidst his trauma, is ambitious and clever enough to try to upjump himself using the opportunities presented by the war. But it’s a story that’s much more interesting if it’s told from the perspective of the perpetrator than from the perspective of the objects of his long con. And it needs to be a long con for there to be any sense of investment or risk. If an impostor is so easily dismissed and driven out, both from the plot and from the consciences of most of the characters, why bring him up at all? This ought to have been a storyline with profound implications for the succession question that Downton Abbey has taken as its overall framework, but instead it became a soap opera drama of the week, and that feels like a substantial failing.

And I feel the same way about Mrs. Bates’ death. Now, there’s no question that divorce trials can be protracted things, but they have to come to an end at some point. The show could have taken some time off-estate to handle the proceedings, or could have had Vera hang around to raise the temperature of things between Sir Richard and Mary (he could always release Vera from her contract, ruining Mary and saving himself from having to do it directly, which for a gentleman with aspirations of truly finding his place in the nobility would have been the place to do it). Killing her off feels like succumbing to the temptation to have a dramatic event thrown into the mix, rather than to actually carry out a process to its full conclusion—it’s a rather American way to deal with an English problem of prolonged longing and suffering.

The only plotline the show is actually letting build to a true boiling point is the dynamic between Matthew and Lavinia and Mary and Sir Richard, two couples who are in the rather delicious position of being affianced—and thus allowed certain intimacies—but not not married—leaving some barriers and dangers intact. There’s no question that Mary and Matthew are deeply emotionally engaged. “I shall have arms like Jack Johnson if I’m not careful,” she jokes during one of the afternoons with Matthew that have aroused so much comment. “I’m strong enough to wheel myself,” he says, but Mary insists “I shall be the judge of that.” There’s no clearer sign of intimacy than a proprietary air about another person. Matthew may insist that “I can only relax because I know you have a real life coming…I have nothing to give and nothing to share. And if you were not engaged to be married I wouldn’t let you anywhere near me,” but I’m not sure he even believes himself.

It’s rough competition Sir Richard faces, and he doesn’t quite know how to play by the rules of the society that he wants to enter (not that it’s clear he’d be allowed to play, given Mary’s rather withering “Your lot buys it. My lot inherits it.”). When he tries to woo Mary with a new home, asking ” Shall we give the house another chapter?” she responds rather drearily, “Well, I suppose one has to live somewhere.” Starting a new house will never quite have the romance of continuing an ancient line. And buying someone’s reputation is not quite the same as saving them—it lacks a certain selflessness. But unlike almost everyone else in this world, Sir Richard isn’t content to be limited by the rules of decorum: what he can’t have with ease, he’s willing to force, an attitude that puts Mary at a sexual and strategic disadvantage. Punctuating a warning that “If you think you can jilt me or in osme way set me aside, you have given me the power to destroy you, and don’t think I won’t use it…I want to be a good husband, but don’t cross me. Ever. Do you understand? Absolutely never,” with kisses is not something she has a defense again. At least not yet.

And of everything left to juggle in this story, that’s the one thing I’m left excited to find out, just as I’m desperate to know who the body on the beach is in Revenge. There’s something to be said for setting up a central mystery and sticking to it. Downton Abbey‘s always going to be a more complex story than Revenge because it’s about society, rather than individuals. But that doesn’t mean this prestige drama couldn’t learn something about storytelling, focus, and impact from ABC’s soap.