SONIA BRAND-FISHER: Episode two of Masterpiece Classics’ “Downton Abbey” has begun to unearth both tension and hope that we will see unfold in this new season. Cora and Mrs. Crawley have begun shooting daggers from across the rooms that are left to their usage after Downton has gone through its full conversion into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers.

ZOË RICE: Like Sonia, I felt that the second episode of Downton rushed to fit too much into its designated time slot. Any TV program – but especially one that sets up numerous suspenseful plot threads – will jockey with the problem of pacing. Too slow and viewers complain that nothing happens, but too fast and what does happen feels either disingenuous or somewhat unsatisfying, as if we didn’t earn it. For me, the reveal of Lavinia’s deep dark secret fell into the latter category.

HOWARD MEGDAL: I largely agree with Sonia and Zoë, but allow me to spotlight a plot point that really didn’t work for me: Thomas, back to run the house?

ZOË RICE: Howard asks for more Sudeikis as Mitt, and we get it. Howard, can you also ask for a #1 Mets starting pitcher? Sudeikis got the rigidity right, and Romney’s distance from the common man. The firing jokes were on point. A solid open.

HOWARD MEGDAL: This was a solid opener, and captured the zeitgeist of politics perfectly. SNL is hopefully getting its election year fastball back.

KIP MOONEY: Sometimes when a show hasn’t done something in a while, it can feel completely new. That’s what tonight’s episode did, and why I enjoyed it so much.

Instead of having Mitch and Cam bicker the whole episode like…

ZOË RICE: Santorum has been largely ignored by SNL, so to see him get his spoof due was welcome. Unfortunately the open was slowly paced and not really funny until the last moments.

HOWARD MEGDAL: There’s some kind of value-added for me, though, having one of the Jewier people you’ll ever see playing Santorum. You’re hyper-aware at every moment that this isn’t Santorum, in a Chevy Chase-as-Ford kind of way.

MOLLY SCHOEMANN: They knighted Salma Hayek. You know, like how you do.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/8989119/Salma-Hayek-made-a-Knight-in-France.html

AKIE BERMISS: It has always been my secret desire to get a knight hood from some ancient white-country. And put something like “sir” on my checks or my debit card. would be fun. Of course, Salma Hayek HAS done great things for France. She totally deserves this award. But seriously, how does the title of Chevalier not become an utter joke now?

SONIA BRAND-FISHER: The second season of the much anticipated “Downton Abbey” began with a literal bang, of guns and the grit-shrouded trenches that signify the horrors of World War I. A far cry from the continuously glistening elegance of the previous season, this episode made promises for a season that deals with more than the contained and aesthetically delicious drama of a single household. We are notified by the slightly dropped necklines and the re-costuming of a few footmen to wearing uniforms that this is a very different time than the previous season. Even with the announcement at the end of Season 1 of being at war with Germany, it was still at a lavish white garden party with little to indicate turmoil other than a few choice facial expressions. In the two hour premiere of the second season, we have seen war, death, politics, rejection, and regret under a huge umbrella of uncertainty.
HOWARD MEGDAL: What precisely is it that made the return of Downton Abbey such an emotionally rewarding event for me on Sunday night?

ZOË RICE: One would imagine two years of war changes everything. And yet, upon re-reading last year’s Perpetual Post review of the season 1 premiere of Downton Abbey, I realized part of the success of this season’s opener rests on the fact that the series has remained entirely true to its early roots. As Howard noted last year, at its heart, Downton Abbey is a lofty soap opera. One with excellent characterization, heart-stopping poignancy, and moments of pitch-perfect dialogue, but a drama all the same – and thankfully for us, not a Greek drama, “when everything happens off -stage.” The Great War has amplified last year’s themes of modernization, progress, and change for every character, both upstairs and down. Downton Abbey has always been as much about the conflict of change as it has any gripping plot point, and I’m more ready than ever to see how each character copes with the tangled effects of progress and loss. (I fear much trouble for Mr. Carson.)

DANI ALEXIS RYSKAMP: Michele Bachmann predicted “a miracle” in Iowa only to come in functionally last (ahead only of Jon Huntsman, who didn’t campaign in Iowa; Herman Cain, who is no longer running at all; Buddy Roemer; and “No Preference”). Not surprisingly, Bachmann offered her concession speech not long after. And I’m inclined to believe – perhaps too generously – that it wasn’t sexism that cost Michele Bachmann in Iowa.

CHRIS PUMMER: Save the sexism talk. Bachmann’s ship sank because if would have been lunacy to consider her as President of the United States, and the media should be shamed for ever trying to tell us we should have taken that prospect seriously.

KIP MOONEY: I’m really going to try to look at this show with fresh eyes in the back half of this season. But I didn’t have to try that hard, because after ending the first half of the season on…

MATTHEW DAVID BROZIK: There are so many wonderful holiday movies—and by “holiday,” I mean “Christmastime”; and by “wonderful,” I mean “boring.” The single best holiday movie, hands down, is the one that has not snow falling from the sky on…