With silver stripes

I agree, you'd think by now they would have a regular way of dealing/not dealing with his birthday, which I'd kind of like to see and would have made for a more entertaining attempt at a "party" if they tried to alter that with a Batman surprise—and it's been more like 12 or 13 years now, their time!

Ok, I would follow that with some humor as Leonard goes shopping for a new mom and tries to make it all legit at the courthouse—maybe Raj's mom could get citizenship if her son's a citizen? Too much?

18 months wasn't it?

Really? I didn't know that and it surprises me, too. I don't think we should pay attention to the actors ' advice because as you say, the clues are there, like Liar and skip code in the first episode—caught both of those the first time … though oddly had a hard time finding Liar again later. I did but it didn't jump…

Wept tiny, heartbroken tears for Mike, who is my hero. I must work on my laconic-ity and my slipknots. But yes, his daughter-in-laws dialogue in particular was incredibly clichéd.

I choose to believe that Rose is not really dead and this is all a ploy to get Mutter

Shhhh, don't worry about realism on this show. Telenouvela, remember?

I agree the author is perhaps overlooking Petra and Jane's cash-strapped similarities as well as their shared golden parachute. But I'm also going to take a more sympathetic stance on Petra: yes, she comes across now as a gold digger but Petra's Eastern European poverty was a more unstable and potentially dangerous…

Agreed

The date. I'm fine with a bit slow. There's no way I am not watching a show with them together at least twice!

I think he was just in London to negotiate a higher rate for his writings and didn't have notice that the Dowager was returning that day.

Maybe he'll be delighted to have some real-world challenges trying to run the Crawly estate, he seems to smart to be content playing his way through life.

Oh darn, I just repeated your points.

But she also reamed her mother for being mean to Mrs. Hughes when Mary was trying to give the bride something she did want and Mary felt she deserved. I think Mary just feels that she knows best for everyone but she takes a genuine… not interest exactly but concern…in those she actually cares about.

That's a good point

Why you bringing' up old sh*t? That was so 19…teen something.

Edith's behavior towards the Drewes was near-unforgivable. I hated every minute of her then. Her only saving grace there was that she was in love (with her child) and had no idea—or perhaps will—how to deal with the situation. The grammar on this is a bit wonky but basically I'm agreeing Edith has always been a wreck.
…

Sweebid.

The height difference did help, I was actually embarrassingly excited by that when they showed up in scene together, but it really only worked when they were together. Men have different features and can wear different colors and cuts, it's almost like they were going for interchangeablity.