Catching You Up on “SVU” and “Downton Abbey”

Jed Groettum watched these shows so you don’t have to. Law & Order: SVU:

A quick recap so far of that Law and Order SVU episode you just turned on halfway through: Some people were just walking along doing a normal everyday thing and they stumbled on a body. Then the detectives showed up and were like, “What the fuck?” Then they found a person they thought made sense as the killer, and brought him in. But then, some shit jumped off and they were like, “Oh…SHIT! It’s really this other person!” Then Ice-T was like, “I’m a cop, and that’s ironic!” And that’s where you picked it up.

And the epic tale that is Downton Abbey:

So that one daughter who wanted to marry the guy that she’s not supposed to want to marry was sort of storming around huffing about how it wasn’t fair that social protocol stupidly forced all these people to deny themselves true happiness. Then some shit went down where they decided to be together after all, and the very idea was just scandalous! So, they held a highly formal little informal party, in part to celebrate the idea even though, frankly, NO ONE was at all comfortable with the idea, which was just an absolute outrage, given that thing about her new gentleman suitor, which…just wow, but also because there was that other issue which required a delicate hinting at, with the right person of consequence, under the right circumstances, at just the right time, and so they needed to create the opportunity. As you can imagine, because so much was riding on the evening, everything had to be just right. So, they announce to the kitchen that they need all of this put together, LAST MINUTE, but as you recall, at this point in the story, the kitchen has its own world of scandals! So, those couple of people that you probably remember taking the lion’s share of offense to the idea of the daughter and her new man just wouldn’t stand for it, and they slipped in to the dining wing and replaced his salad fork with a French salad fork, knowing that he would be humiliated by this when the third course was brought out, and thus would have to leave Downton Abbey out of shame, with nowhere to go but enlisting in the war effort. What happened next was really a twist though, because the butler discovered the ruse and told the daughter, who then orchestrated the replacement of the one attacker’s black dinner vest with his virtually identical black about town vest! Well, he gets this thing on, and by now, his dressing servant has long gone, so the trick of it was, he HAD another black dinner vest, but had no one to take him out of the about town vest and put him in the dinner vest, and thus had to attend the dinner in the about town vest. Nothing could possibly work out for the better between all concerned parties if credibility of the entity he represented was tarnished by the about town vest, and the daughter knew she’d gone too far, so she alerted the kitchen to this at the last minute in a panic. If they couldn’t get him into the right vest, they’d have to change the menu to make the vest acceptable by serving a late afternoon cheeseplate before the first course, but the kitchen had no cut cheese of course, and as you recall from the last episode, the guy with all the experience as a formally trained cheese cutter had left D.A. because he’d been chased off by all that shit that went down. So, the only person left that was available to cut the cheese was that young person who had been awkwardly trying to adjust to life in the kitchen and find their place until now, and they had no choice but to have them cut the cheese! Everything was riding on this, because if the new cutter botched the job, they and half the kitchen staff would surely lose their jobs, but if it went off without a snag, it would be the young person’s big chance to start down the road toward becoming a person of consequence. Well, they all show up to the party, and the cheese plate comes out, and my god, people were beside themselves at how late in the afternoon this family had the audacity to allow a cheese plate to see the fucking light of day, but then they tasted the cheese, and looked at the man’s vest, and looked at their watches, and a few people shook their heads in disgust, but then something really amazing happened. A couple of people of consequence began to think about the strict adherence to antiquated formalities and ask themselves if there wasn’t a better way, and they ate a few more pieces of cheese and laughed a bit, and you could tell that things were really changing, and that these people were adapting to a brave new world. That’s pretty much everything that’s happened in the episode you just turned on up until now.

Long-time readers (reader?) of the blog will remember Jed as the guy who was alone in having read the consent form.