For a long time I was completely out of the loop on TV shows. We gave away our TV in 1998, and while this had many happy effects it also meant that I was hopelessly lost when TV came up in conversation. It's surprising how often TV comes up in conversation.
Only recently have I taken to watching TV shows online. Now I know that Glee is not a show in which the happy muppets (like Elmo and Ernie) have voted the grumpy muppets (like Bert and Oscar) off the island and thus can effervesce to their fuzzy hearts' content. But Glee didn't suck me in like Downton Abbey.
I never thought I'd blog about TV, but I can't resist. Birth! Death! Drama! Spoilers ahoy--
1. Whenever I see a woman on the screen suffering through a contraction in bed I have to advise her through the monitor: Get UP! It hurts more BECAUSE you're lying down. Stand UP! Lean FORWARD! You'll feel BETTER! Don't complain that it hurts if you're HORIZONTAL!
I might not be a very patient doula. Although-- I would totally have felt bad about shouting "get UP!" at a woman with fulminant pre-eclampsia if she hadn't been fictional.
2. Is it really true that there was no treatment whatsoever? I am remembering a James Herriot story in which he blows off a man worried about his pregnant dog. He jolts awake in the middle of the night, saying, "Myrtle's got eclampsia!" He speeds over to the man's house and administers...something. I thought it was calcium but maybe that was for cows down with milk fever. Would it have been magnesium in that era? Speaking of things that make a person want to shout, how about those two august doctors standing agog?
3. Isn't Cora's ire misplaced? If Sybil's condition didn't resolve after delivery, a marginally faster C-section wouldn't have improved matters, would it?
4. Can you imagine if this had gone down in Dublin? They'd have assumed it was all Tom's fault for taking her to live among barbarians.
5. This was the first time I've ever shed a tear for a TV character. Sybil was so sweet and earnest and well-meaning.
I have been interrupted approximately 70 times to arrange ponies' manes and tails into pompadours. In my previous experiences of mothering 4-year-olds, the required skill set included things like "draw a skid steer loader that is clearly different from the mini-excavator you drew yesterday" and "identify a scelidosarus accurately while feigning interest in same." Not so much with the pompadours. I am interrupting my musings about Downton Abbey to tend to my ordinary life, which features no Mrs. Patmore and no O'Brien (though thank goodness for that, really), but I'd love to hear what you think about this development.
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