Any other Downton Abbey fans?

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Sybil's death was really tragic. I kind of had a bad feeling about it throughout the episode, because there's extensive signposting in every show about what is about to happen and it became obvious pretty quickly that something was wrong with her. Then you had a brief glimmer of hope when she delivered well, but then they signposted her fate with her last conversation with Cora. Still, tragic. She was by far the most likable of the three sisters, though I like the two others more than in the first season.

Lord Grantham is an interesting character, it's hard not to like him because he's a genuinely good and caring man; but at the same time he's clearly a reactionary and retains a bit of a stuck-up aristocratic style which he showed by being a dick to Clarkson and choosing the aristocratic stuck-up doctor who was full of sh**t. So, I don't hate him as a villain like others seem to, though I don't love him.

(ftr, I've seen the entire third season and the 2012 xmas special, but I won't spill the beans except to say that it stays good until the end)

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The actor playing Matthew signaled that he was leaving the cast during the filming of the third season (as did the actress playing Sybil), so maybe they were forced to kill him off.

The people on the interwebs bitching about Matthew's death/killing are quite stupid. Given that the actor said he was leaving, what were they to do? Clone him? Find a guy who looks just like him and who was willing to join the cast? Somehow explain that shortly after his own son was born he ran off to some other country with an unknown woman? Be serious guys and stop bitching. I don't know when Sybil's actress announced she was leaving the cast, but my comment would hold for her as well if she announced during the filming.

Besides, Matthew was a nice guy but he was going to get boring as the modernizer/kind father and loyal husband/young heir. Sybil would probably have become kind of boring if she had survived. I'm excited with Tom Branson, the former Marxist Irish Republican, becoming the leading young male in the family. His whole transformation from fire-breating far-left radical to de-facto capitalist aristocrat has been quite amusing and having him as the leading young male in the family is an interesting twist.

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Good article on the Matthew death shazam:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/18/downton-abbey-why-last-night-s-season-finale-has-fans-seeing-red.html