Downton Abbey Update: Season 6, Episode 7

Man the Countess was dropping classic lines all over the place on her way to the South of France last Sunday night, first noting that "my reason for traveling is to make myself eager to come home . . . a month among the French should manage it." She then followed that stinger by noting that her return wouldn't occur "until nostalgia has smothered my fury," a sentiment which many of us could apply to family holiday gatherings. The Countess is like a polished-up British version of Donald Trump and I mean that as a compliment. It would be fitting if those lines along with her verbal evisceration of Mrs. Cruikshank prove to be her swan song because she deserves to go out on top based on her body of work whether you like her or not. Just like Kobe.

We were going to feature
Shkreli here but that guy
scares the crap out of us.

The same can't be said for Mr. Barrow, however, who now appears to be on a collision course with the same fate as Lane Pryce from Mad Men. You have to give Julian Fellowes credit for somehow conning us into awkward feelings of sympathy for the show's answer to Martin Shkreli. Barrow's fate is probably not suicide, however, because Fellowes is a master of diversionary tactics but there's part of me that hopes it does end that way just so Mr. Carson can discover the swinging corpse in the kitchen and dismissively say "Mr. Barrow, do please get down from there and resume your search for alternate employment." 

No, Mr. Barrow isn't getting off that easily. Remember that the only servants who are allowed to die at Downton Abbey are the ones who go off to war and get shot by the enemy like William Mason. Superficial self-inflicted wounds like Barrow's don't count. William earned his honorable discharge from the show with an act of bravery on the battlefield. Barrow is nothing more than an under-butler with highly questionable proclivities and appears doomed to live the rest of his days occupying the purgatory that is Mr. Molesly's vacated footman job. I'm sure there's some greater meaning to Barrow's story of descent and, if I'd actually ready Dante's Divine Comedy in college like I was supposed to, I could write something about it that at least sounded intelligent but I didn't. I did, however, watch a lot of Rockford Files reruns though. Tuition well spent. Let's press on.

While all the primary characters stayed intact, we did get some wholly predictable collateral damage at the racetrack. The only question leading-up to the inevitable crash in Turn 1 was who it would claim and we should've known because nothing portends death on a show like Downton Abbey more than cringe worthy sophomoric banter. The quick if not dull wit of Charlie Rogers got him planted in a ditch by the side of the road under a flaming Matchbox car. The poor bastard might as well have been wearing a red Star Trek uniform because he was doomed from the moment he walked onto the screen.   

Best television opening
theme and sequence ever.

And that brings us to the Crawley sisters. Edith has decided to mull over a marriage proposal from perhaps the most stable and grounded male character the show has ever produced. Sure he doesn't have a pot to piss in but Edith is already rich and owns an apparently successful magazine so she could buy him such a pot. If the examples of her past major life decisions are any indication, particularly with regards to men, she will surely reject the proposal and immediately fall for a man showing all of the early symptoms of Polio.  

Mary, on the other hand, flat-out announced that she's running in the other direction despite the uplifting advice from Chauffeur Tom that, if she commits to love again, she will absolutely be devastated because that's what love is all about. If Tom ever gets tired of being so useful around the property, he's got a great future as a writer of melancholy country music ballads. Then again, he's Irish so his people wrote the book on suffering long before he sold them out for afternoon tea and tuxedos at dinner. 

So where do we go from here? Well Lord Grantham's miraculous recovery has to be a mirage and the communal joy surrounding the welcoming of Tiaa the puppy was just a set-up for the inevitable and tragic sweeping of the knee. The demise of opulence needs a name and a face to go with it and that has to be Robert Crawley, the man who acknowledges its impending arrival but also fondly remembers it at its peak when the servants didn't just bring you lunch, they presented it as a grand buffet fit for a state dinner. At the rate things are currently going, however, life wouldn't be worth living in five years anyway. Might as well get out now while you can still get a cucumber sandwich served-up by a depressed footman in this bitch.    

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com.         

Fantasy Golf: The Northern Trust Open Preview

Would you believe me if I told you that Phil Mickelson was my second choice last week? Maybe it was a blessing that I didn't go that way with the pick because then instead of the mild sense of relief I felt when that putt lipped-out, I would've felt the sting of being that close to hitting the trifecta only to be undone by a Class II Phil screw-up. (Winged Foot is of course the Class V which would then make Jean van de Velde's British Open meltdown* the equivalent of the storm in The Day After Tomorrow).** 

Oh who am I kidding? Picking Jimmy Walker over Mickelson cost me $600,000+. It was a stumble that could prove costly in the end. On the other hand, if you've ridden with the FGR this year, you've only used three of the top twenty players in the world and you've gotten wins out of two of them (you know I'm going to milk those two wins for as long as I reasonably can and then for at least another month after that).       

Now we move down the coast to the Northern Trust Open where we've been alternating "A" List winners with riff-raff since Mickelson went back to back in 2008-09. Since then, the winners have been Steve Stricker, Aaron Baddeley, Bill Haas, John Merrick, Bubba Watson and last year's winner, James Hahn. This means we should be due for a stud performance, especially when you consider that Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy are on the guest list. I wouldn't roll the dice on either of them as a one and done pick but I'd certainly factor them into any other semi-legal gambling endeavors I might be undertaking (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). 

As for whom I would pick, it would come down to Jimmy Walker (used him), Hideki Matsuyama (used him too), Dustin Johnson (used him and something seems squirrelly with his game right now), Bubba Watson (plan to use him later), Charl Schwartzel (always disappoints me when I use him), Sergio Garcia (see Charl Schwartzel) and Bill Haas (yawn). As we head to print, I'm going with Haas but that could change to Sergio at the last minute. I switched from Hunter Mahan to Matsuyama late with the best possible results and almost did the same with Walker to Phil last week but I chickened-out. 

Now I'm waffling back and forth between the equally unscientific strategies of (a) going with my first instinct or (b) riding this second guess method. Or maybe I should go with option (c) which I guess would be Schwartzel under the theory that sooner or later he's going to have to come through for me. Or maybe I'm overthinking it (maybe?) and option (d) is the way to go because I'm foolish to save Bubba for later. Holy crap I've turned into Vizzini from The Princess Bride and look how things turned-out for him.*** 

I hope you've found this salient "analysis" helpful. Believe me that just as much irrational thought went into the picks below. Good luck.

The Day After Tomorrow's frigid
plot and setting severely neutralized
some of Emmy Rossum's strengths.

The Northern Trust Odds

Jordan Spieth - 6/1
Rory McIlroy - 6/1
Dustin Johnson - 14/1
Hideki Matsuyama - 16/1
Justin Rose - 16/1
Bubba Watson - 22/1
Sergio Garcia - 25/1
Adam Scott - 28/1
Jimmy Walker - 28/1
J.B. Holmes - 30/1

Ten Guys We Like

Bubba Watson - 22/1
Sergio Garcia - 25/1
Jimmy Walker - 28/1
Bill Haas - 33/1
Charl Schwartzel - 33/1
Freddie Jacobson - 60/1

But maybe they could do a
sequel called The Day After
Tomorrow 2: Havana Nights.

Brendan Steele - 66/1
William McGirt - 100/1
James Hahn - 100/1
Bryce Molder - 100/1

The One and Done Pick: Sergio Garcia

The Sleeper Pick: William McGirt

Footnotes

* Check-out the Sportcenter recap of that British Open final round. You couldn't have had a better narrator than Kenny Mayne. And how ironically clutch was Jean van de Velde's ten foot triple bogey putt to force the playoff? He doesn't get much credit for that. Not sure why. (Oh right. The biggest choke-job in the history of golf. Never mind).

** It was so cold in Baltimore last weekend that the penguins at the zoo circulated a petition demanding indoor plumbing. It snowed most of Monday and then turned to freezing rain. Today it's fifty degrees with periods of South Asian monsoon. This weekend it could hit sixty degrees . . . in February. I'm not going to draw any scientific conclusions but I believe the climatological term for what's happening is "nuts."  

*** Editors Note: I bailed on Haas and switched to Garcia at the last minute. This decision could ultimately be the source of a lot of anguish and regret but at least I get to root for Sergio this weekend? 

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com.

Downton Abbey Update: Season 6, Episode 6

I feel as though I've missed a great opportunity waiting until this late to make Downton Abbey a regular part of the FGR writing cycle. What are the chances that I'm ever going to latch onto another show that is both so frivolous while at the same time so ripe for commentary (much less watch it as it unfolds season by season instead of binge-watching like some Adderall popping college kid who's parents thought they were doing him a favor by not having a T.V. in the house). I'm open for suggestions if anyone has discovered a worthy replacement.* In the meantime, we'll just have to make the best of the time we have left with the Crawleys, their servants and the men who inexplicably want to marry their strumpet daughters in spite of the sudden tragic death that goes hand in hand with that commitment. Which transitions us smoothly to last Sunday night's episode.     

Nobody met or initiated their demise (the Carolina Panthers notwithstanding) so, with but two episodes to go before the final servant bell tolls, we had to satisfy ourselves with some good old-fashioned class bashing by Lady Mary and that aristocratic apologist Mr. Carson. It was whimsically entertaining to say the least but Downton is at its best when tragedy, or at least the threat, of it is in the air. We can be pretty confident that will be the case next week as we'll be treated to an early 20th century version of the Daytona 500 in which one of the drivers will be carrying the curse of the aforementioned Lady Mary as his co-pilot. What couldn't go wrong?

That Berning sensation
ain't your ulcer. 

And don't forget Lord Grantham and his one or two not so subtle coughs per scene to remind us that the Grim Reaper could enter his room just as easily as that nosy little socialist from the house tour. I assumed that was supposed to be Bernie Sanders' dad but I checked and he emigrated from Poland in 1921 so it is highly unlikely that he was in England to interrogate Bobby Grantham on June 6, 1925. And yes I just Googled "Downton Abbey timeline" to determine the exact date of the open house so I could figure-out whether or not Bernie Sanders' father might have been there. What kind of life is this? 

It would appear that, after five and half seasons of taking more abuse than O.J. Simpson in the Naked Gun, Lady Edith's tortoise strategy is going to payoff in the race to be the happiest daughter. Lady Sybil retired early when she married the chauffeur, had a chauffeur baby and then paid the ultimate price for her act of royal rebellion. Lady Mary appears doomed to suffer another tragic loss before the series finale and, even if what appears to be the inevitable is somehow averted, she'll undoubtedly blast another relationship into oblivion with her freeze ray dooming her and young George to a lonely existence at Downton where he'll probably end-up like the creepy mama's boy from Game of Thrones who kept wanting to throw Peter Dinklage through the hole in the floor. At least they'll have Carson around to defend the abbey from thieves and evolution.

As the end draws nigh, I really just have one request and I don't think it unreasonable if I may be so bold. Young Daisy should be on schedule to take her nebulous exams this week and, if she performs well, it could be her ticket to a better life far away from the bowels of the abbey. I hope she bombs them in spectacular fashion. Then I hope she stays true to the impertinent twit she has become and blames Mr. Mosely for her failure. Then I hope she storms out of the school and gets run over by a double-decker tour bus carrying 87 obnoxious Americans on their way to Downton Abbey for Tom Branson's Magical Mystery Money Grab house tour. And yes, double decker buses had been invented by then. I looked it up. (What kind of life is this indeed?)       

Footnote

"And I'm still going to call
you 'Brody' so get used to it!"

* I started watching Showtimes' Billions with Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis this week. It's going to be hard to fuck-up a show with those two guys in the lead roles so let's hope they don't find a way. As far as it filling the Downton void, let's just say it doesn't have quite the same subtlety. When one of the main characters poses the question, "what's the point of having fuck you money if you don't get to occasionally say 'fuck you,'" you know the writers aren't striving for the same level of nuance as Julian Fellowes (for you troglodytes, he's the chap who writes Downton Abbey).     

Fantasy Golf: AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am Preview

Some people who devote a stupid amount of their time to things like picking the winners of golf tournaments are probably humble and unassuming. Suffice it to say that I am not one of those people as evidenced by the fact that I once devoted almost 2,000 words to a detailed account of how my fantasy football team went undefeated. Don't be fooled by the feigned effort to be self-deprecating by comparing that feat to when Homer Simpson almost sacrificed his marriage to catch a legendary fish.* That was out and out bragging. And this will be too.

You see it all started way back in January when I sat down to perform some in-depth analysis on the Farmers Insurance Open. The obvious pick that week would've been Jason Day who was the defending champion and is arguably the best player in the world today (I wouldn't argue it but someone could which technically makes it "arguable"). The FGR decided to shun conventional wisdom, however, and go with another past champion and one of the hottest players on tour in Brandt Snedeker. Did we foresee the bizarre turn of events which led to Snedeker shooting what may end-up being the best round of the year and then taking Monday off while the leaders struggled on the back nine, ultimately handing him the win? "Foresee" is a strong word. If you want to use it, please feel free but we'll just let the results speak for themselves.

Then we moved on to the Waste Management Phoenix Open where Bubba Watson was the logical choice based on his back to back runner-up finishes in 2014-15. We saw it differently, however, so we looked down the list of favorites past Snedeker and defending champion Brooks Koepka to the 4th and 5th players on the list . . . Rickie Fowler and Hideki Matsuyama. The easy thing to do would have been to pick Rickie because, well, everybody loves Rickie. But you can't let emotion cloud your judgment in these matters. Instead, you must trust your research and, in this case, that research showed that Matsuyama had historically played the TPC Scottsdale better than Fowler which may have something to do with Rickie's inability to figure-out a 342 yard par 4 (here's an idea Rickie. . . 5-iron/sand wedge).

Speaking of Rickie, anyone else 
who wears this needs to be
knee-capped with a 9-iron.

To commemorate the two week winning streak we've added a running total for our picks (see below). So now when this season inevitably starts to unravel like Marco Rubio under cross-examination by Chris Christie, we'll always have those two weeks just like Marco had his third place victory speech in Iowa to look back on and smile. (Don't worry, we'll give equal political bashing time on Thursday).** Unlike Marco, however, we still have our whole season ahead of us.

Downton Abbey Update

(Coming Thursday).

Back to Golf

We're leaving no stone unturned in an effort to keep the streak alive but fortunately we think we found the answer under the first stone because we're not much on manual labor. Brandt Snedeker had the fifth best odds when he won and so did Hideki Matsuyama. Coming into this week, we had a feeling it was going to be Jimmy Walker based on his past success at the AT&T and the likelihood that he would've probably won the Farmers if not for the weather (and the fact that he wasn't the FGR pick). So we cross-referenced that hunch with this week's odds and what do you know? Heat-up the gravy because we're about to roll a turkey (that's bowling lingo for three strikes in a row but I added the cheesy part about the gravy and frankly, I already hate myself for it).

The AT&T Pebble Beach Odds

So we're researching Downton
Abbey and accidentally type
"Abbey hot" and . . . 

1. Jordan Spieth - 9/2
2. Jason Day - 8/1
3. Dustin Johnson - 11/1
4. Brandt Snedeker - 14/1
5. Jimmy Walker - 18/1
6. Bubba Watson - 18/1
7. Phil Mickelson - 22/1
8. Justin Rose - 25/1
9. Patrick Reed - 30/1
10. Brooks Koepka - 30/1

Ten Guys We Like***

Dustin Johnson - 11/1
Brandt Snedeker - 14/1
Jimmy Walker - 18/1
Phil Mickelson - 22/1
Kevin Na - 33/1
Hunter Mahan - 70/1
Bryce Molder - 90/1
Will Wilcox - 100/1

. . . BOOM, there's Abbey Clancy.
(We just can't miss these days).

James Hahn - 100/1
Brendon Todd - 150/1

One and Done Pick: Jimmy Walker

Sleeper Pick: Brendon Todd

One and Done Picks to Date

Hyundai:	Dustin Johnson	$148,000
Sony:	Matt Kuchar	$77,604
CareerBuilder:	Ryan Palmer	$75,897
Farmers:	Brandt Snedeker	$1,170,000
Phoenix:	Hideki Matsuyama	$1,170,000
	Total	$2,641,501

Footnotes

* If you don't click on the link and read the General Sherman post (your loss), then at least check-out this Drunk Homer Simpson Montage with one of the truly epic lines in the history of man at 1:48.

** We've gone out of our way to avoid politics in the past but there is way too much material out there now to ignore. We'll do our best to keep it balanced but that's going to be tough until the Republicans thin the herd a bit because every time a candidate on either side opens his or her mouth there is massive potential for mockery and the Republicans currently lead the Democrats seven mouths to two.  

*** Jordan Spieth is always one of the "Ten Guys We Like" when he's in the field. 

Email the Fantasy Golf Report at fgr@fantasygolfreport.com.