THE COMPLETE SCRIPTS: SEASON ONE
She sounds strict but of course she isn’t. He looks at her.
WILLIAM: You’re a kind woman, Mrs. Hughes.
MRS. HUGHES: So you’d miss me, when I’m gone?
Is she joking? It’s hard to say.
WILLIAM: I don’t know how this house would run without you. I don’t, truly.
MRS. HUGHES: Stop flannelling and get on. Before I betray you to Mr. Carson.
He goes, but his words have helped her with a decision.
(Source: elsie-hughes)
putting this under a readmore because I can? in any event, I really hope we never get facts because like a) they’ll probably be inconsistent and b) I’m really picky about my headcanon at this point.
Read More
I think she’s rather partial to [Mr. Carson] as well.
- Phyllis Logan. thank you for getting right to the real questions, interview.
‘We’ve touched a bit on her past (in the first series Mrs Hughes was stepping out with a farmer, but turned down his proposal), but it would be good to see some more of that. A love interest for her would be nice.’ What sort of love interest? ‘Ooh, I don’t know,’ she says, mischievously. ‘A toy boy?’
So a little while ago I finally went through PBS’ s3 bios for the cast. And I was really pleasantly surprised by them, mostly because they affirmed a lot of my own observations and that’s always nice. In particular:
An immoveable standard bearer, Carson may butt heads with his cohort Mrs. Hughes, but he extends great loyalty to her, as he does to the dowager countess, Violet, and always, to Lady Mary.
Now, this really isn’t anything new and I feel like everyone recognizes that these three women are clearly Carson’s sun, moon, and stars (possibly in reverse order but I’m not going to get into that metaphor). But I thought maybe I’d like to talk about why this is and what Carson sees in them and how they’re rather inherently similar. But then I also made a graphic last night with Violet, Cora, and Mary all sitting in a row as countesses (or would-be countesses) of Grantham and I thought that would also be fun to discuss. So, um, since my thoughts tag is mostly a mess of poorly written ideas (especially when it comes to Mary/Hughes parallels that was not written well and really needs to properly be done wow I’ll get on that later) and most of it is cringe-worthy and embarrassing so – let’s add more to that? Yes, great.
I’m going to try and only talk about three-ish things, so this is a sort of grab bag of hopefully short-ish meta thoughts prefaced by this pretentious write-ups and just so I don’t get off track and seem even more full of myself here is a table of contents complete with roman numerals:
i. On Carson (and Duty)
ii. Mary and Violet vs. Cora
iii. Mary and Mrs. Hughes and Embodying One’s Position
iv. A Summation of Carson’s Love
I really don’t expect anyone to read this because it’s bizarre and incoherent and tedious and long, but um, here we go:
Read More
I am so glad you asked. So glad I wrote over a thousand words (I’m so sorry). 
