Hmm. Just for the sake of playing devil's advocate, casting the catfish (as opposed to the innocent party) has to be exponentially less work on MTV's end (it actually struck me as kind of a brilliant way to avoid having to slog through thousands of potentially very boring online romances, if your goal is to find cases…

Was anyone really shocked by the "revelation" that there are elements of the show that are faked? The whole premise—that Nev is plucking these emails at random from his inbox—is obviously contrived. I always assumed that there was a lot of manipulation going on behind the scenes; I'm still pretty entertained by the…

Ugh, thank you for bringing this up. I'm still pissed about that. The spoiler in that review a few weeks ago kind of ruined this season for me.

I actually really admired that first-season Mary seemed
resistant to the idea that her only option in life was to marry and settle down
to a life of having babies and running Downton.  I’d love it if the show revisited that; I guess we’ll see.

Wow, thanks for the thoughtful response! Yes, I would have thought it was a given that Mary would have been expected to get pregnant pretty much ASAP, but her weird demeanor in that scene suggested they had some choice in the matter—and that surprised me, in this context. I do hope they explore this more.

The weird scene with Matthew and Mary in the nursery actually made me a little curious—was there any reliable form of birth control available back then? Would they have been using it? But given the prudish approach this season is taking towards sex (which is odd given that Mary's sexual impropriety was a big plot…

Yeah, good point, and well put. It's totally gross that the show hasn't addressed this issue more explicitly, but I guess my point is just that I  doubt they're going to address it more explicitly than they have, based on how they've downplayed other heinous things that characters have done in the past (although maybe…

Yeah, good point, and well put. It's totally gross that the show hasn't addressed this issue more explicitly, but I guess my point is just that I  doubt they're going to address it more explicitly than they have, based on how they've downplayed other heinous things that characters have done in the past (although maybe…

I think its pretty difficult to argue that what happened was anything other than rape, even by the show's somewhat warped moral standards; however, the show itself seems determined not to address it. And frankly, at this point, all of the characters on this show have done such reprehensible things (rape, murder,…

I think its pretty difficult to argue that what happened was anything other than rape, even by the show's somewhat warped moral standards; however, the show itself seems determined not to address it. And frankly, at this point, all of the characters on this show have done such reprehensible things (rape, murder,…