Saw a significant chunk of the Manor House finale last night. Good reality show on PBS - people went to live in a giant mansion, and they had to do it Edwardian-style, so there were a bunch of servants supporting this one family.
At the end, the lady of the house, who is an ER doc in real life, talked about the tremendous gap between the priveleged and the oppressed and said something like, 'There were these terrible lows, but these were balanced by these tremendous highs. Of course, today we've evened things out a bit. So while the situation has improved for some people, those highs have been lost. Some people would say we've gone to far in evening things out.' What an evil cunt, but then she was corrupted, I guess, by living in tremendous privilege with tremendous power. Or she's just a cunt. Interestingly, her sister, who was not married and therefore in a lesser societal station, lost her shit and had to leave the show for a while. I guess her sister didn't notice.
Also, the chef loses his mind and, it appears, starts drinking heavily. He confronts Mr. Marie Antoinette at a party, saying that he did not follow the rules of the show by forcing him to update and healthy-ize his menu. Later in the evening, they show the First Couple being served some small dark snack. They take a bite, grimace, and then spit it out.
Finally, the old servant dude, whose grampa had been a servant in a similar home, had a really good point. He said that all the bad things that happened with the servants were hidden from the owners, so they only saw the good things about the servants, encouraging a great fondness for them. That fondness, though, was not reciprocal, presumably because, as a maid pointed out, the servants knew, through the course of their job, everything about the family. Plus, you know, that whole servitude thing.
Posted by mattb at June 17, 2003 11:02 AM