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SeaStar
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| Posted: Jan 13 2014 at 2:32pm | IP Logged
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Definitely disturbing last night- so hard to watch, especially since Anna is such a good person. And as a woman- with a daughter of my own- this is the stuff of nightmares.
This show has never been one to shy away from brutal topics- I still remember the blind soldier in Season 2 who slit his wrists because he felt so hopeless. That was awful- a different kind of awfulness, but still terrible. Or Ethel having to become a prostitute to feed her little boy. Horrible.
I can't help thinking today how things like this still happen all the time in our world. DA is fiction, a soap opera, and the people on it are never going to be happy for long spells at a time.
Mixed feelings over all... do I want to keep watching? I did not find this one very entertaining  ... though I got a laugh over Tom's reaction to having to dance with the Duchess.
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TracyFD
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| Posted: Jan 13 2014 at 3:23pm | IP Logged
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I sense the purpose of this is to get at Bates' reaction. (Personally, I wasn't totally convinced of his innocence concerning Vera's death.) Seems Uncle Julian is making viewers uncomfortable on purpose to explore larger issues.
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4 lads mom
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 9:27am | IP Logged
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I’m done....I can’t handle that kind of stuff and am so thankful, Marilyn, that you said something....I didn’t watch it, but looked it up...that was enough for me.
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JennGM
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 10:11am | IP Logged
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This was very graphic and dh and I were extremely upset. I think they will lose a lot of viewers. I don't care if this is historically accurate, to view that and not have the guilty party pay is not right and not comfortable to view. Anna's reaction is overblown...she should have told her husband, or at least tell him when that guy is gone.
My husband was physically upset from that scene, and getting mad that they didn't go to her until the end...life going on with her downstairs didn't seem right. And we just think it's unbelievable that no other servant was downstairs. That is so improbable. With all that clean-up and attention needed for the guests, there had to be some people who could not be spared.
What bothers me most with Thomas Barrow -- he should not be there. Because they showed mercy and contriteness to him, he should be a changed man. His same old character isn't right and is annoying me.
The Tom situation with the girl -- they are making him into a weak person. He was upset before at the advances that girl was doing, and then this episode he's now befriending her. Very inconsistent and very maddening.
I don't know if we'll be watching again or not. Haven't decided.
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MarilynW
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 10:30am | IP Logged
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Jenn - I was almost physically sick. I had not been planning to watch DA much - but it was a girl's evening I had planned with college daughter before she went back to school. Trying to take something positive away from this - at least I got to have a discussion with dd on personal safety, always having a buddy, that she can always tell us about anything etc etc etc
I am very affected by what I watch - and really try to focus on positive and happy and uncomplicated, especially during the cold and dark winter, when I have to work on mood anyway.
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JennGM
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 10:35am | IP Logged
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I'm physically affected, too. Probably not as much as you are, but I really am sensitive. My dh and I watched The Hobbit Saturday and I just hated it. I cannot stand all the darkness and violence. Don't throw tomatoes, but I just didn't like the Lord of the Rings movies, now Hobbit, nor did I like The Passion. I just can't stand the graphic violence. When I'm reading, I can gloss over and don't have to "see" blood and guts and stuff. In a movie, with the music to create a more passionate scene and all the visible violence, I just can't handle it.
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Martha
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 12:06pm | IP Logged
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JennGM wrote:
This was very graphic and dh and I were extremely upset. I think they will lose a lot of viewers. I don't care if this is historically accurate, to view that and not have the guilty party pay is not right and not comfortable to view. Anna's reaction is overblown...she should have told her husband, or at least tell him when that guy is gone.
My husband was physically upset from that scene, and getting mad that they didn't go to her until the end...life going on with her downstairs didn't seem right. And we just think it's unbelievable that no other servant was downstairs. That is so improbable. With all that clean-up and attention needed for the guests, there had to be some people who could not be spared.
What bothers me most with Thomas Barrow -- he should not be there. Because they showed mercy and contriteness to him, he should be a changed man. His same old character isn't right and is annoying me.
The Tom situation with the girl -- they are making him into a weak person. He was upset before at the advances that girl was doing, and then this episode he's now befriending her. Very inconsistent and very maddening.
I don't know if we'll be watching again or not. Haven't decided.
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Everything you hate about it is what I felt made it genuine.
Fact is the majority of rapist even today get away with their crime unpunished. And that's of the ones people go to authorities about. Should they be punished? Yes. Are they? Do their victims always make punishing them their biggest priority? No.
Fact is people often don't change their spots, even when people stake their life for them. Should they? Absolutely. Do they? Not all that often. And it doesn't change one bit that those kinder people should be kind to them.
The set up of the story was that the staff would get that ONE opportunity to enjoy the performance. And yes, it's actually quite likely they would have deserted the downstairs to do so. And the guests would not dared to interupt the performance to ask for anything anyways.
I was greatly disturbed by the show too. If there are regular scenes like that, I wouldn't be able to watch, but there aren't. One disturbing scene in a season is not all that much in a historical drama of any merit IMHO. Tho I certainly agree injustice in the world is difficult to stomach.
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JennGM
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 12:47pm | IP Logged
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I guess I'm not looking for true realism in my viewing. Watching TV is supposed to be relaxing.
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MomTo8
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 12:50pm | IP Logged
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I am one of the viewers they lost! I will not be watching anymore. I admit to being overly sensitive-it is not something I can help.
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SeaStar
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 1:28pm | IP Logged
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Scenes I have found disturbing in DA:
Very first episode: Thomas upstairs with his friend the Duke 
Suicide of the soldier in season 2
Mary's finance Richard grabbing her and threatening her in a very ugly way not to cross him (season 2)
Watching Sybil die- how horrible was that??
Seeing Ethel reduced to prostitution and living in squalor
Anna's attack
the close-up of the dead Vera Bates
the close up of dead Matthew
I don't know if I can say the attack was worse than watching Sybil die or seeing the pool of blood on the floor after the suicide. All so disturbing.
The attack was a hate crime- was that it? Or the sheer violence? Or the way it scared me and made me not want to let dd play outside?
Still trying to sort it all out- but like Martha said, it is not every episode that shows scenes like this. And then what about shows like CSI? I've never seen it, but the commercials make it look like each episode involves some grisly crime. But lots of people watch that show 
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Martha
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| Posted: Jan 14 2014 at 1:41pm | IP Logged
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JennGM wrote:
| I guess I'm not looking for true realism in my viewing. Watching TV is supposed to be relaxing. |
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TV, like literature, theatre, paintings and other arts is not "supposed" to be anything. If you want to watch something more relaxing, then of course that's what you should watch. Drama tv shows are rather intended to have some drama. 
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I used to watch CSI, Criminal Minds, Dexter and some other crime dramas years and years and years ago. It's been a very long time since I watched any of them. I can have one or two shows on my watch list that have some too real reality stuff in them, but that's about my limit. Plenty of other folks have higher or lower limits.
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SallyT
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I haven't watched it yet -- and I may not. I always read spoilers first, so that I'm not blindsided/manipulated by what the writers have plotted for a given show, so I do know what happens in this episode. And I'm not sure whether I'll nerve myself for it for not.
That's an interesting question Melinda raises. I'm also one of those sensitive viewers -- I pretty much don't go to movies any more unless I just can't avoid it -- but I do, for example, adore Foyle's War, which depicts grisly things fairly graphically, though not, I think gratuitously. The camera doesn't dwell for long on a woman who's been pushed out of a high window, for example, but you see her, and even though that glimpse is brief, they don't pull punches about what she would look like.
And yes, that's unsettling, because the violence that can happen to a human body is, and should be, unsettling to us. Our own fragility is unsettling. We can choose not to watch things like this, and I can understand being turned off by those brief scenes in Foyle's War, but they don't seem like an outrage somehow.
So why does this scene feel that way to so many people? I think it has something to do with, maybe, the writers crossing a line from being honest to being manipulative and un-trustworthy? Or seeming so. Building up Anna as a lovable character gives her, in our minds, a kind of immunity. Bad things have happened to her, but our natural response to her, in the relationship the writers have established between us and her, is that whatever bad things do happen to her, the writers won't take her . . . *there.* Whatever "there" might mean. And somehow I think there are "theres" worse than death for a beloved character. To take a good character and leave that person horrifically wounded . . . I think that feels like a betrayal on the part of the writers.
Now, you could make a case for the art of this. In real life, bad things do happen to good people. Sometimes the very best people suffer horribly, and none of it is deserved, and in the moment of suffering that seems like an outrage, especially to people watching the suffering. Often enough, in my observation, the person suffering isn't angry at God for allowing the suffering, but the people who love that person are furious. It's even worse if that person has already come through great suffering, and everyone's thinking, "Well, that's over at last . . . " And then it isn't.
So, you could say that the writers are pushing the envelope for those reasons, to evoke in us precisely that response . . . for what reason we can't now know, but perhaps it will turn out to be a good one. As a Catholic, Julian Fellowes may well be thinking some Catholic thoughts about the role of suffering in human experience, and that could play out in interesting ways.
Or maybe they just want to drive up ratings, and it's going to be "Who Shot J.R." all over again (to date myself pathetically).
Either way, I think there's a huge difference in our response between seeing a graphic image of "Murder Victim #2" and seeing violence done to a character for whom the writers have gone to enormous links to establish audience empathy and affection. Example A makes us shut our eyes. Example B gives us nightmares.
I still haven't decided whether to watch or not. I can't bring myself to tell my husband that that's what happens, but perhaps we should talk about it together before we proceed.
Sally
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CrunchyMom
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Sally, I think you've described very well my own situation, that of loving crime dramas like Foyle's War while being apprehensive about watching this episode myself.
Even with Foyle's War, had Sam been the vicitm of a violent crime, I would probably have stopped watching.
Plus, I also agree that a violent assault like what I've seen described is in many ways more disturbing to think about. In identifying with her character, I think it also makes the assault feel personal as something that could happen to us. Serial killer: not likely. Rapist: a statistical possibility.
I remember Fellowes saying in an interview that the incident in the first episode was based on a true story he'd heard growing up. I imagine many of the storylines are true stories he is drawing from the era. Now, the chances of all these incidents happening in the same household are low, but that is where we are asked to suspend our disbelief, much like the detective who is always around whenever a murder is committed.
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SeaStar
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I think part of what made this episode harder to watch was the fact that Anna was very out of character from the get go in this one.
I kept thinking: what's going on? She's flirting with that guy? But how can that be- she is so devoted to Bates!
That gave me a very uneasy feeling the whole time- and then  - the attack.
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MarilynW
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My dd heard that in the UK - there was a warning before the airing of the episode. I don't believe that PBS had a warning? (I missed the beginning of the episode) Interesting to note there was an outcry in England after the episode was aired - article in The Guardian
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SuzanneG
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MarilynW wrote:
| My dd heard that in the UK - there was a warning before the airing of the episode. I don't believe that PBS had a warning? (I missed the beginning of the episode) |
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Yes, there was a warning....saying there was "adult content" or "disturbing elements" or something like that.
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juliana147
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I must have missed that warning, Suzanne! I might not have kept the show on if I had seen it. Guess I was doing too much multi-tasking, as usual. I find it hard to find the time to sit and watch a tv show.
That was the first time I've watched DA. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
I won't be watching it again. Not impressed!!!
And Sally, maybe I should look for spoilers first... that is a good idea...
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Angie Mc
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I watched it on my computer last night because our recorder died on Sunday but I knew SOMETHING happened because of the buzz here. I didn't read this topic until now and...
I'm more of a fan. Really, I thought they did an amazing job of capturing the shear horror of r*ape. Perhaps I have a strong stomach for this topic because I worked in Domestic Violence and other women's issues when I was younger.
I found myself thinking, oh no, they aren't going to target Anna for the next catastrophe, are they? Which shows how well these characters are developed...I actually CARE about Anna. I didn't see her flirting at all...I saw her assuming the best about this guy which is what Anna does best.
I was relieved that they didn't show more visual brutality...they could have. I thought they captured the moment of truth (this guy is a criminal and is my enemy) perfectly. The shock. The confusion. The panic. These guys are this evil, predatory...and they make things happen...they find or make the opportunity. They twist blame onto the victim. And they most often get away with their crime.
I also think they captured Anna's post reaction perfectly. She isn't thinking straight. No woman thinks straight under such circumstances. Anna is true to Anna in that she is trying to protect Mr. Bates. She just wants it to all go away. She wants it to have never happened.
On a lesser note, I was pleasantly surprised that Edith's guy came through for the family via being street/card wise; that was fun. And...Rose. I just can't make myself go for her. I honestly don't know why she is there...but my 18 year old son is a fan 
Until next week!
Love,
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CrunchyMom
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I thought that this short video clip with the actress who plays Anna explaining some of her process in dealing with the incident.
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: Any Downton Abbey fans?
