I am pleased (?) to report that the Bafflement Trend of 2012 is still going strong. As usual, some people got the memo about it and some people just chose to look amazing, but that means there’s something for everyone to make faces at one way or the other, which is what a red carpet is all about.

Let’s open on a Full Baffle:

Kristen Wiig deftly avoided the choker+low-neckline Saloon Girl ensemble mistake (recently made by Jennifer Lawrence, sartorially breaking my heart every time she leaves the house). However, she instead chose a lovely dress with a neckline so high that it bangs against the choker when she walks, which has to be a red flag that you have chosen the wrong accessory for your dress. But that’s putting aside the even bigger flag that, amidst all the ’90s trends that are coming back, the choker is not one, for a very good reason, and that is because LOOK AT IT, KRISTEN. LOOK AT IT.

Moving on.

With Kristen leading the way as Unfortunate ’90s Bride, let’s just tackle all the brides at once, shall we?

BRIDAL DIVISION

Tilda Swinton, So Chic It Doesn’t Even Bother You She Didn’t Wear a Belt Bride.

Rose Byrne, So Chic You Decide Not to Laugh at Her Hair Bride.

Zoe Saldana, Got Her Bridal Portrait Taken in a Delightfully Ramshackle Designer Field Bride.

Viola Davis, Everybody Gasps Bride.

Judy Greer, Such Amazing Accessories You Can Just Tell You Wish She’d Fought Her Mom for the Grey Dress Instead Bride.

Kaley Cuoco, I Missed My Chance to Be a Debutante, but Not This Time, NOT THIS TIME Bride.

Julianna Marguiles, For My Second Wedding I Traded Up and I Am Ecstatic About It Bride.

Octavia Spencer, The Top Half is Actually a Great Cockail Dress and This Skirt Comes Off for the Reception Bride.

Kelly Osbourne, Oh, This Old Thing? I Found it at a Vintage Store, it Belonged to Jean Harlow Bride.

But of course, there were those who eschewed the bridal action in favor of the official color of New York City.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK DIVISION

Tina Fey, looking awesome.

Archie Panjabi, in a drapey bib I can sort of let slide, and some insets of a different texture that nearly put her in Bafflement except I liked her earrings so much she lives here instead.

Emma Stone. The dress is sort of wearing her, but it’s an adorable dress, so that’s not as big a problem as it could be.

Melissa McCarthy. I like the sequin inset and the drape of the bodice quite a bit. After Judy Greer, though, I sort of wanted a more colorful clutch purse here.

Emilia Clarke, who could have removed about three design elements before she left the house, except that without the platinum hair she’s not recognizable yet and she was trying to get her picture taken, so, mission accomplished. (The tendrils of hair getting snagged on her high collar have no such excuse.)

Amber Heard. I think it’s nice that she honored her love of comic books with a Strategic Bosom Cutout. (I love the rest of this look, but that chest fissure reminds me of every fight Rogue ever got into.)

Of course, a lovely color is more likely to be photographed, and no one’s in this for their health, so a lot of ladies went with color. Sometimes there’s only one color that happens over and over (looking at you, Yellow at the Golden Globes), but this time around there was actually a nice variety, and almost everyone looked good! Almost.

ROY G. BIV DIVISION

Michelle Williams. I actually really like the bodice details here, but if you’re going to have an asymmetric hem that shows your shoes, you should probably pick better shoes.

(Note: No yellow dresses. Nobody wanted to have the Golden Globes thing happen again.)

Emily Blunt. Man, were two-shoulder dresses subject to a fine this year? I’m honestly asking.

Ellie Kemper, who paid the $200 for a symmetric dress (in a really great color).

Jessica Chastain…existing inside this dress. (I really do not think there is a lot to her acting, and I cannot get behind this Keira Knightley-esque ubiquity.)

Diane Lane, in a gunmetal blue dress on which she did not have to pay the Two-Shoulder Fine.

Julie Bowen. The color is great, the tassels are great, the idea of the design is great. However, when the visual width of the shoulder treatment is about twice that of the skirt, it makes you look startlingly thin, and that’s pretty much all I take away from this outfit.

Regina King, in a dress so girly that Giselle from Enchanted stopped by to ask her to tone the ruffles down a little. (However, the color is amazing on her and she looks like she loves it, so it’s a win.)

Sofia Vergara. This is where the clutch comment comes back to bite me, because I wanted more interesting clutches, and she brought one, and the jade green is amazing, but the snakeskin is…pass.

Speaking of passing, passing right by this swarm of relative whippersnappers are the grand dames who have been playing this game long enough to either do it right, or not give a fuck. Both of these things are awesome.s

THE PLEASE, NEWCOMERS, PLEASE DIVISION.

Jessica Lange, wooing me effectively with sequins.

Glenn Close, working Full Glam to great effect.

Meryl Streep, “Oh, sorry, is this dress a little weird? I couldn’t quite hear what you said about it because I’m Meryl fucking Streep.”

People who do not deserve to stand within fifteen feet of Meryl Streep include everyone in:

THE GLEE DIVISION

Lea Michele, we know your vagina is famous. Put it away.

(Pictures of her always make me laugh, and then make sort of a sad face, because her public persona is Former Vegas Showgirl Trying to Prove She’s Still Got It, and I do not know why someone who is barely old enough to rent a car by herself needs that.)

Dianna Agron, in a beautiful color and classic shape.

Naya Rivera, who manages to make Bombshell look a lot more natural than some people whose names rhyme with Blea Schmichele, and who is singlehandedly subsidizing the double-sided tape industry this evening.

And Jane Lynch, who looks great in this. She has a tendency to pick a lot of dress and then look uncomfortable, but this is simple, nicely tailored, and the perfect color for her.

And of course, stranger even than Glee’s success, there is…the Bafflement.

BAFFLEMENT DIVISION

Gretchen Mol. The more I looked at this dress, the more I wanted to like it, and wish someone else had worn it, because for whatever reason, on her that collar just looks like Weightlifter Neck.

“I am going to this fancy acting event,” said Busy Phillips, flipping through her collection of beachy cover-ups. “If I wear a dress that’s only nice, no one will take my picture. And yet, I want them to! What am I going to do? WHAT am I going to do…?”

Heather Morris IS an extra from the wedding scene in Children of Dune!

Jennifer Carpenter. The thing about her dress is this: I completely see and accept the bodily-interior theme of the beading. Ribs and sternum outline? I’m with you. Boob flowers? If you insist. Pelvis flowers? Sure thing. But if you’re going to do that, you cannot stop at the knee. I want glittering tibia and fibia, I want another big circle with anchoring flowers at the side of the knee, I want the works. If you cut it off at the knee, it’s just a too-casual cocktail dress with pelvic flowers, and that, Jennifer Carpenter, is nobody’s friend.

So many dresses, yikes! And yet, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Head on over to Yahoo! (from whence these photos came) to check out the full spread!

For the Golden Globes, many people decided to keep the baffle in the details, so mostly-lovely garments are supplanted by a single rogue element that was clearly designed to make my heart hurt.

And no one was immune from Baffle Fever. Not even Tilda Swinton. NOT EVEN TILDA.

I could not love 80% of this more – the shoulders, the sleeves, the tailoring, the silhouette of the skirt are all great. A case could even, maybe, be made for the color, though I would have liked to see it a greyer, less Easter Egg pale. But something about the skirt-matching sash disaster make her look like a mother of the bride from SyFy’s Children of Dune, and that is no place you want to be, Tilda. Trust me.

Other people’s attempts to baffle me with their outfits under the cut!

But lest you think the whole red carpet was flooded with tailoring issues last night, it’s not true!

LOOKING AWESOME DIVISION, where everyone’s a winner!

Connie Nielsen, who manages to look like every movie where a lady in a dressing gown has excused herself for two minutes and come out casually saying, “Will this be all right?” and the strings section goes batshit with glee.

Kelly Macdonald. The sequins had such depth of color, and I am a sucker for this silhouette (which Amy Poehler also wore to great effect last year).

Viola Davis! This is a very strange pose (as if people were shouting, “But does your dress have a slit in it? IT’S IMPORTANT, WE NEED TO KNOW” until she gave in), but in normal poses this was a great goddess dress.

Julianna Marguiles, who is wearing a gorgeous smoky-purple dress, amazing emerald earrings, and exactly the expression I would be wearing if I looked like Julianna Marguiles.

Taissa Farmiga! I could do with a slightly more purple shade of fawn (I bet this looked lovely in person but photographed a little flat), but there’s texture in the bodice, she’s not standing in a puddle of her own skirt, and it looks like she can breathe. Proceed!

This could be any photo of Kate Beckinsale from the last seven years, when she discovered light neutrals and her makeup artist, but why fix what’s not broken, I guess!

See also: Sofia Vergara, who I have rarely seen without this silhouette. However, the skirt has gorgeous texture and movement, which is what a skirt like that is for, and the color is great, so it works.

However, many more ladies this year received Bafflement Memos than not, and most of the rest of the dresses had something about them that made me tilt my head like the RCA dog.

In fact, there’s an entire division that we should just get out of the way.

YELLOW DIVISION

I have nothing against yellow. Michelle Williams wore mustard in one of my favorite Oscar dresses ever. Cate Blanchett wore a daffodil yellow once that was lovely. However, this year, the only yellow dresses to be had came in Tweety Bird Delight, and that was it. And the Tweety Bird lobby was powerful enough that it was EVERYWHERE.

As much as it pains me to say it, I think Maria Menounos did it best – a color like this should probably speak for itself, and keeping the lines clean was a nice call.

I also like how Lauren Miller handled it:

I enjoy the detail at the bodice, though her little standee flap in front was a Stump Everyone entry, because surely in your dressing room you turned from side to side, saw that it looked ever so slightly like the prow of a ship, and went, “You know what? Perfect.”

Paula Patton looks like the prettiest half-melted crayon in the box!

Missi Pyle saw what was happening from the glitzy hotel room in which she was getting ready, looked at her own yellow dress, and said, “I’m going to look different from those other yellow dresses, dammit!” Then she yanked the gold sheer curtain right off the window, twisted a rosette in the limo, and wandered in front of a thousand cameras.

I actually think I might have liked that dress best right up until it imploded. But Missi Pyle was far from alone in this; many a dress last night was playing a game of One of These Things is Not Like the Others.

THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS DIVISION

Laura Linney. The color is gorgeous, the folding in the bodice looks interesting and not like the dress wilted, which can be tricky on this kind of dress, and the bell shape works with the fabric, but the fold at the waist that runs down part of, but not all of!, the skirt looks like every seventh-grade sewing proejct where you accidentally sewed your sleeve to the skirt when all you were trying to do was hem the collar and now you have to pick out eight thousand stitches.

Jodie Foster. What a lovely color on you! I like this silhouette! I am a fan of sequins! The bead trim is…okay, I guess, if I don’t have to think about it long! But what, exactly, are you trying to draw the curtain back on?

Kelly Osbourne. I love the hair, and I actually love the bodice, too (hopefully those darts are only unfortunate from this angle), and there would be nothing wrong with the skirt except that, when you have a stiff fabric and the dress is six inches too long, you are standing in a puddle of what instantly looks like upholstery.

Freida Pinto, this color is lovely. Does it come in dress fabric?

Octavia Spencer. Good length, good fit, good amount of glitzy on the front without being overwhelming. Wish she’d pulled the sleeves a little more off the shoulder.

Emily Watson, this necklace is lovely. Are you shitting me with this dress color?

Nicole Ritchie, who has great herringbone texture on this dress, and a swimsuit neckline that ruins it.

Morena Baccarin would like to remind everyone that she has breasts.

Zooey Deschanel would like to remind everyone that she’s a retro darling.

Nayta Rivera, stop trying to make smocked turtlenecks happen. They’re not going to happen.

Amy Poehler, the next time Emily Watson gives you dress advice, don’t listen.

Elizabeth McGovern, wearing the top of a nice dress, and the bottom of a very questionable one.

Local medalist in the “Too Much of a Good Thing” subdivision, Dianna Agron, whose bodice is AMAZING OH MY GOD, and whose skirt is a semi-transparent performance piece about the Christmas decorations at the Norwegian Cultural Center in Springfield.

Michelle Williams, this is a lovely dress that looks great on you. Whoever told you to wear that headband is not a real friend.

Emma Stone. I like this dress, actually. I like it a lot! I just question the engineering of side of the bodice where the material is just randomly unsecured and getting scrunched up everywhere. Did she need ventilation?

Tina Fey, in a lovely color, demonstrating Too Much Skirt in about three ways.

In thumbnail, I loved this for the same reasons I loved Kelly Macdonald and Sofia Vergara’s dresses. But when I opened it up, all I could picture was Evan Rachel Wood desperately plucking enough exotic birds to give as gifts to the many PR people keeping her career afloat, and then looking at the pile of feathers and thinking, “I might as well do something with these, I guess.”

KateWinslet, in two great colors for her, and a bodice that literally looks like the sleeves ripped along the top seam when someone yanked the front shut for that awkward knot.

Julianne Moore, who liked the hem of her skirt so much she asked if they could repeat it, and is, in this photo, wishing she had been more specific.

Rooney Mara, who looks like she was one fitting short of a great dress. (You’re in a puddle of your own skirt, Rooney, and unless those tulle poufs are pockets, let them go.)

Love this right up until the skirt. Accordion chiffon is nobody’s friend, Glenn Close.

THAT SKIRT IS NOBODY’S FRIEND, HELEN MIRREN. WHAT IS THIS. The rest is great.

THE MASTER POSERS DIVISION

Winner, and still champion:

Lea Michele, who you can just tell walked the entire length of the red carpet with teensy steps, her chin surgically taped to her shoulder to make sure her angles were good all the way into the building.

Trying a different tack, Angelina Jolie:

See also:

Still, at least there’s nothing wrong with that dress in and itself, which is more than these people can say!

TOTAL DISASTER DIVISION

Madonna. “Yes, perfect, I wanted all the Basketcase puns I could get, excellent decision, make this dress something that I wear outside the house in front of a thousand photographers, that will work well.”

Meryl Streep, who could have saved this whole outfit by not having the world’s worst cutouts. No such luck.

Oh, Charlize Theron, I needed that laugh, thank you.

Piper Perabo, it’s great you had fun. In a translucent tarp dress, not everyone would!

I’ll just leave this here.

SHAMELESS HEARTSTRINGS DIVISION

Uggie, you adorable jerk.

Believe it or not, this is only a sampling of the horde of celebrities that descended on that carpet last night. A more extensive photo gallery is over at Yahoo, from whence these photos came.

Since it’s early days, everyone’s still warming up and trying their B-roll getups, and the theme of the season has yet to really coalesce. However, looking at an even dozen of these looks, I’m going to make an early call that this year’s Hollywood prom theme is Stump Everybody. I sort of dig it, except when I just can’t even.

First up, the People’s Choice Awards, where Jennifer Lawrence, wonderful actress and hilarious behind-the-scenes person who looks wonderful every time she’s on a talk show, continues her nearly unbroken streak of looking like a disaster on the red carpet. I’m not sure what the disconnect is, because her talk show outfits are always fine, and often cute! But you tell her it’s a to-do, and she chokes.

Jennifer, I love that you love color (and this one looks lovely on you). I love this silhouette. But Saloon Mermaid is not a good look on anyone, and you seem like you know that, so I have no idea what’s happened.

The cringing continues!

Nina Dobrev, who won an acting award diplomatically titled “Favorite Actress,” seems like a very nice person, and despite the fact that she looks like she’s riding out stormy seas underfoot, I actually like this dress. The sleeves are well done, and I appreciate the continuation of the detail down the bodice, which keeps the sleeves from looking tacked-on.

Speaking of:

Another seemingly-lovely person who cannot manage to leave the house without making a series of very determined and very unfortunate decisions about her clothing. It’s almost admirable that she didn’t stop at looking like a bad Barbie dress; she wanted to look like a bad Barbie dress an eighth-grader made by hand using the pattern that came with Fashion Dreams Skipper. (She’s the Chair of the Board of Stump Everybody.)

Speaking of:

Chloe Moretz, vying for Underage Starlet of the Year. The dress is actually cute, and I appreciate the minimal accessories, and at first I thought she was just about to sneeze when they took this picture, but the more pictures of her I saw, the more I realized this was her Sexy Face, and I didn’t even know what to do with that except close all the pictures with swiftness and make a Liz Lemon face for a second.

Speaking of:

Tine Fey did not appear. (Sorry, some segues just don’t work.) However, Lea Michele did, and as usual, she wants to make sure you know she did, so she wore the most diva outfit her stylist could find, because if flapper fringe on a dress is good, a dress made bafflingly and entirely of fringe is even better. Next year she’ll try to outdo herself by eating only ONE grape a day, and will show up in a dress made out of a single length of draped dental floss, looking even more carefully posed than she does right now.

Speaking of:

Even though it looks as though Cobie Smulders is in for a super-embarrassing time as soon as she sits down, this is on the verge of being a really great look. That necklace is a stunnah, and that’s three-quarters of the right dress for it!

And if the People’s Choice Awards seemed like a random red carpet, the Critics’ Choice Awards had an even more motley crew. Luckily, some of them were old hands at this, and managed to show up looking both Awesome, and Like Themselves. Exhibit A, as always in this division, Tilda Swinton:

She and Cate Blanchett are two of the best red-carpet dressers you can come by, I think. (In case you’re in the market for someone to walk a red carpet for you.)

However, many of the ladies who appeared on this red carpet seemed determined to bemuse all those who looked upon them, and they ran that shit like it was a Bafflement Contest.

Not Viola Davis, of course. Viola Davis knows better, and just decided to show up looking great instead. I love this color on her.

But Michelle Williams is in on it. Her styling from the shoulders up is really nice, the neckline is lovely, and I can get behind a retro-Hollywood wrap silhouette any day of the week. But did she put on a cocktail dress over an unrelated long black skirt? Honestly asking, because otherwise I don’t understand the decisions at work here, even though Michelle’s smile is taunting me to guess. Michelle, what do you know that I don’t know?!

I DO know what Elle Fanning might not have known: this dress might have looked lovely in, say, the initial ad campaign where it was shot in a wheat field with sunlight filtering through it, or on a model in a stark white studio with her hair askew and looking like an effigy for Free Love, but if you can’t control the light, you can’t control this dress. Points given for age-appropriateness, and immediately removed for tablecloth-resemblance. It’s a wash.

Chloe again! She’s dropped the Sexy Face (good news!), probably because she’s distracted by the Muppet pulling across her sleeves and choking her with her own collar (bad news!).

But the winner of this round of Bafflement Wars is clearly Kirsten Dunst:

It’s so confusing I sort of have to hand it to her. “Here, this dress has a layered skirt that’s sometimes opaque and sometimes not. And ribbons that look as though they were sewed on at random on a dare. Then I belted them. DID YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.”

And no, I have not a word. You enjoy your award, Kirsten; you’ve earned it.

Pictures via Yahoo.com and the Hollywood Reporter, for anyone who wants some extracurricular bafflement.

The Moth is actually where all this rigmarole got started in the first place: my friend Eileen, who knows from period pieces, brought The Moth over on a visit on a lark, thinking we’d watch it a little and then hang out and actually do something in New York. That was foolish, obviously, because as soon as we finished that one I was looking for the next one. Also, it turns out we accidentally started with the best one, which made the rest of the Catherine Cookson Experience sort of a slide downhill? Not that I hold that against Eileen at all; I think the only way to handle Cookson is to start with a nice one, because if you open with The Tide of Life the entire thing sort of becomes a non-starter.

However, that does nothing to diminish the fun of this puppy, where things are good and/or good to make fun of, which is the ideal combination for a great time in a Cookson, I feel.

Vital Stats:

Era: 1913.
Heroine: Robert Bradley and Sarah Thorman, who deserve equal billing here, I think. He’s a ship-builder who loves to read and feels social injustice keenly! She’s a lady of the manor with budding feminist feelings! Together, they fight crime.
Siblings that require looking-after: Millie, Sarah’s younger sister, who has Peculiar Yet Winsome on speed dial.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Somebody sure is!
Asshole Father?: This thing is an Asshole Father-Off, and competition is fieeerce.
Romantic interest(s): Each other! Marvelously. In a way that makes you want to bang their dolls together almost as much as they do.
Bairnsketballs: Check.
Fistfights: Oh gosh. Definitely a few fights, including one instance of someone getting attacked by a carpentry implement to the face.
Assaults: None! It’s a Christmas miracle!

Under this cut, endless glee. Also, endless pictures, sorry.

So, the setting for this one means that it covers a lot. There are pubs as the centers of political debate, the rise of industrial employment and urban living leading up to and during the war, and some low-level feminism. But mostly it’s an adorable love story, and some of the usual plot soup that Cookson does so much.

Also, as per usual, this is a DVD of a recording made when someone held a pin camera up to a VCR recording, so the quality of the screencaps is iffy, and occasionally there is just nothing doing in terms of legible screencaps. It’s all part of the charm of Cookson.

This is Robert Bradley, intellectual and forward-thinking ship builder!

And everyone in this picture will make his life miserable.

It’s his uncle, his aunt, and his cousin Carrie, who have come to help him bury his father, and to offer him a job in their country town far away from the bustle of the shipyards. For some reason, Robert thinks this is a good idea, even though his uncle is clearly a totalitarian religious nut who completely sucks and Robert is a man who can own property and has a perfectly decent living, and is generally not a dummy except when he has to have occasional lapses of judgment for plot purposes, I guess.

Upshot: Time to get some tweed and head for the country!

The lapses of judgment continue as he starts to date villager Nancy, despite the fact that when he meets her she is wearing this hat, which could not be a more up-front sign that something is terribly wrong.

But that subplot is almost immediately cast aside, when Robert goes for his nightly 35-mile constitutional and ends up at the right lake at the right time to meet a young lady who scares him shitless by just appearing out of the night like some asshole.

(She’s The Moth! I know it’s super tangential to the major plot, I didn’t name the thing.)

The young lady, Millie, is quickly discovered by stick-wielding butler Filch and Sarah, Millie’s older sister, who keeps Filch from getting into it with Robert and then informs him with Older Sister Face that he’s trespassing.

Robert’s like, “Yeah, I’m completely sorry for trespassing at Millie Scares The Pants Off You Bay.” Meanwhile, Sarah has realized that Robert is being played by Jack Davenport and is dreamy.

(Get used to this. They stare at each other A LOT.)

Once all the municipal land ordinances are settled, everyone returns to things as normal. Robert heads home to his awful family and the cousin whose extracurricular activities he has to cover for before his shithead uncle beats her to death.

Sarah, meanwhile, makes her way back to the big house and her milquetoast fiancé and nasty abusive-drunk father and doormat mother and a forced piano recital.

(Everyone in this picture will make her life miserable.)

In fact, they waste no time making her life worse – her mother succumbs to Lady-itis, leaving Sarah behind with her drunk-ass dad and a pile of letters she gives Sarah about how Millie isn’t her father’s daughter, but her mother’s LOVAH’S DAUGHTER.

(In case you couldn’t tell Sarah’s mom was unhappy, they had her cry in front of a window where it’s raining as she writes her letters, which all sound like, “My Dearest Darling, how I wish I was banging you instead of hanging out here amongst the landed gentry! Your illegitimate daughter continues well, and I love her way, WAY better than my older daughter. Kisses.”)

While Sarah is off dealing with things way better than could ever be expected and running the house and being cool, Robert is having kind of a time of it. Perhaps tired of her bizarre hat collection, he breaks up with Nancy:

They stand in front of that tractor business the entire time, and it runs the ENTIRE TIME, so that halfway through their breakup, as he’s shouting over the motor that he can’t be tied down, not by her or ANYONE, both of them are slowly engulfed in a thin grey film. Excellent planning, everyone!

However, Tractor Lung is the least of Robert’s problems, since when he comes home he finds out Carrie has a case of Bairnsketball and since he covered for her the night she was out late, he is Private Enemy Number One. He denies being the father, even as his aunt screams that he is, he is, can’t he stand up for his cousin, and you understand why, especially as Uncle Shithead gets more and more upset, but you also understand Robert’s need to extricate himself from this entire quagmire of awful choices, but not before Uncle Shithead gets him right in the brainpan with a chisel. (It’s even darker and blurrier than the rest of this miniseries, so screencaps were just not going to happen.)

When he recovers from Ye Olde Reality Showe, he realizes that in order to get work he’ll have to apply up at the Big House. (Also he thinks Sarah is pretty, but we’re not at a point where either of these jerks is going to admit something like that to themselves.)

Sarah is not super happy with him because something he offhandedly told Millie means Millie has been diving for invisible sixpence in the dirt and knocking over Sarah’s awful fiancé, etc. Robert, realizing he’s on thin ice, applies a little of the ol’ Davenport.

(It really is kind of delightful how Angry Butler is like WE DO NOT HAVE A JOB FOR LADY-MAKE-OUTERS and Sarah is like, “Make out, you say? Sure we do.” and Angry Butler is Not Pleased. This begins the leitmotif of supporting characters marveling at how much these two want to bang faces.)

Robert gets the job, and tries to settle in to being subservient in a household, when his carpentry skills have meant, in the past, that he can make his own terms. It’s interesting!

But, not as interesting as Sarah barging into her dad’s office demanding he sober up and stop buying jewelry for his mistress (of course) and pay this stack of bills already, at which point he cracks her across the face (of COURSE).

Robert, working nearby, does not think that was cool Whatsoever and checks in on her. Because he is the best and they are the best, he respects her wish to be left alone, and just lets the housekeeper, Mrs. Angry Butler, know what’s up, so that some half-decent parenting can happen.

The semi-happy family! (Mr. Angry Butler ends up going way off the rails, and it’s especially sad considering that at this point he and Mrs. Angry Butler are basically the only parents Sarah and Millie ever had, and even then they’re so powerless that Sarah is basically alone inside. Except for the hot new guy, but we’ll get there.)

To illustrate this even more sharply, Sarah decides that since the house is probably going under, she’s going to appeal to her fiancé to let her and Millie live on the cottage on his hunting grounds, take the surrogate parents with her, and get the hell out of this whole scene.

However, when she shows up at Downton Abbey, he’s playing tennis with some other woman! Being British, we all know what THAT means.

He tries to tell her she misinterpreted their friendship. She handles it as long as she can (Her: “James, we’ve been engaged for three years.” Him: “…”), but finally she flings his diamond ring at him so hard she cuts his mouth open (yikes), and heads out into the field for a nice primal scream and a breakdown.

Luckily, Robert is there to literally pick her off the ground and then hold her close to console her, like you do with that employer you haven’t known very long.

When Sarah informs the household that she’s not going to be relieving them of the burden of the one responsible person in the entire house, everyone’s thrilled.

Gormless brother Rupert Penry-Jones is especially thrilled.

Meanwhile, Robert becomes Millie’s best friend ever, and settles in with the downstairs folks, including sassy maid Maggie and grumpy stableman Greg, who also have crushes on each other and are like the kittens of people.

Things are fairly quiet until Drunk Dad decides Millie is the cause of all their problems and he should drown her (YIKES).

Luckily, Angry Butler is on the scene!

Look, an actual murder captured on film in a Cookson! He throws the guy into the river, and the guy dies! (This makes one of the very few Cooksons with direct cause-and-effect with regard to death. Usually butlers push people into rivers, and then piranhas attack them, and then they get pneumonia, and THEN they die.)

Robert shows up in time to be helpful, at which point he runs home and breaks the news to Sarah just the way you do to the employer you have and want to maintain appropriate relations with.

Her reaction is perfect (Angry Butler: “I’m sorry!” Her: “Don’t be.”), everything is covered up neatly, and things cruise along pleasantly at home while they wait for the financial anvil to fall.

That awkward moment where the guy you have a crush on is showing some other girl his workhorse, and it’s not a euphemism.

But tensions escalate, and when Rupert Penry Jones insults Maggie and Maggie cries about it, Sarah gets an attack of the Unreasonable Interference and barges in.

HOW TO HAVE A ROMANCE MOVIE ARGUMENT: A DIAGRAM

1. Barge in demanding explanations! Freeze on an inexplicably funny face.

2. Close the object of your affections in with you, manfully yet without excessive force.

3. …Because you’re saving the excessive force to press her up against a wall and explain yourself in a husky voice as she has Every Feeling All At Once.

4. Aim for Phantom of the Opera lighting, if at all possible.

5. Get some distance about halfway through so you can explain that Maggie was upset because Lord Gormless insulted Maggie’s looks. Add, “How would you like it if you heard that a man would have to be blindfolded before he could touch your body?” and move even closer than before to give her the old up-and-down.

6. Now that she’s had her sexual awakening, tell her you’re quitting, and then just let the awkwardness siiiink in.

But the awkwardness doesn’t last long, because the whole downstairs begs her to ask him to stay, and Millie begs her to ask him to stay, and because nothing gets your motor going like that dude who mildly menaced you in the barn. They have a long conversation, including things like education vs. intelligence, and then she asks him to stay, and he can’t even pretend to be hard to get any more, look at his face.

Two things here: one, they keep framing Sarah, Robert, and Millie like family, and two, basically you can assume from now on that when these two talk to each other they are hiding Super Emotions behind their voices because all they want to do is get five minutes alone so they can finally just neck.

Exhibit A: Actual Christmas present he gives her, actual reactions.

On the eve of the New Year, everyone gathers to dance to accordion music provided by someone who is either their gardener or a hostage.

But the party’s interrupted by Uncle Shithead, bringing news that since the death of Carrie and Carrie’s baby, Uncle Shithead owes him an apology, and also has pneumonia, so whoops. (Not shown: the scene where he probably says they should go ahead and just have fun without him, if they think that’s what the Lord would really want them to do, don’t worry about him, he’s just sitting here having pneumonia, he’ll be fine if the fluid drains, please, go ahead and keep dancing, those hostages are expensive, etc.)

Uncle Shithead soon perishes of his illness (yay!), and while Robert tries to balance his sizeable inheritance of land and business and money with the job he insists on keeping back at the house for no reason stop looking at him, he and Sarah are seriously not fooling anyone, including Greg in the background.

(Re: that last one – since they’re British and it’s the Edwardian era, we can assume she’s getting pregnant RIGHT NOW.)

Also not having it: Angry Butler, who’s getting a twitch like Daria’s history teacher just thinking about his darling Sarah lowering herself to chat with a Davenport:

He ends up writing a letter to her family friend Lady Noseypants, who stops by for one scene to remind everyone that if a woman lowers herself in marriage than everyone of good society vomits just thinking about it and also she’ll never be allowed to be forced to give them recitals ever again and we hope you are thinking about this, young lady. Sarah mostly deflects, except for the moment where she admits how alone she is, which is actually very sad except that we are pretty sure she will end up with a hottie hubs, if she can just hang in there.

But Angry Butler tries to pull an Uncle Shithead on Robert and concussion him right out of the house, and Robert has had enough of all this nonsense since he’s worth more than Lord Gormless as it is, and since he knows Sarah will never admit her feelings, he is peacing the hell out.

But what’s this? She’s saying she’ll miss him! Will he at least kiss her goodbye?

Girl, will he EVER.

(No joke, this kiss goes on for ages, and there’s inexplicable Lord of the Dance flutes, and a spinning camera, and the whole thing.)

And Matthew Crawley is not happy about it. Get out, Davenport! I SAID GET OUT.

And he does! And after some verbal abuse from her brother, who has rented out the estate to the army without asking anyone, she heads to Robert’s place to ask if she and Millie can live there, and if Robert will marry her. He agrees vociferously, and they blissfully make out some more, and everything is just the more adorable ever.

Back at the house, the situation is deteriorating.

(Angry Butler set the whole place on fire, which even Mrs. Angry Butler cannot get behind, especially when they realize that Millie was NOT in the garden, but instead chasing her puppy in the attic. Also, that puppy chills out for several very uncomfortable scenes of people carrying it while trying to smash windows, dodge open flames, etc. It is the world’s most uninterested dog. Oh, fire? That’s fine I guess.)

Angry Butler dies attempting to rescue Millie; Robert burns the living hell out of his hands actually rescuing Millie (and the puppy).

He tries to manfully break off their engagement, but Sarah is not having that, because she is in it for the duration no matter what it means, and she says she wants to marry him as soon as he can put the ring on her finger, and it’s all really adorable.

(Not shown: hilarious cut from “I want to marry you as soon as you can put the ring on my finger” to his super-bandaged mitt shoving a ring onto her finger, like as soon as he realized that marriage meant sex, he was down with WHATEVER.)

Honestly though, this is one of the few Cookson couples who you actively root for, and this is probably my favorite Cookson couple, because they have conversations about things besides each other, and they have in-jokes, and they get to know each other, and they are just the best, okay, people have feelings about things is all!

Just look how thrilled they are to be making out! (They also take a break from making out to laugh a little about her having to peel both their clothes off, which is a great and adorable ending even if it makes you wonder who exactly dressed him that morning and if that was awkward for him and Aunt Shithead or what.)

Basically, of all the Cooksons, this is the best-written, and one of the few not-awful Cooksons that rises above Cheeseball Fun (lookin’ at you, The Rag Nymph) to take a stab at Actually Good (lookin’ at you, The Wingless Bird). This is the one I saw first, and it will forever be my favorite Catherine Cookson Experience.

I am a huge fan of the yellow robe-type outerwear, and I really love how it’s cut to fill the frame.

Some of the rest of it…well.

Things get interesting.

The first photo from this movie showed a too-innocent Snow White in a wonderfully acidic setting that hinted at a subversive take on the story. This set leaves me with a little less confidence, both for the story (which I was prepared for – Snow White can get a bit gummy), and, more importantly for me, in the visuals (and it is something I have always felt in his previous films; no matter what else might go wrong, I am never at a loss for gorgeousness).

The big reveal here is, I suppose, the previously-unseen Wicked Queen, here played by Julia Roberts in what I feel comfortable guessing is some serious miscasting:

That is some seriously determined cartridge-pleating in the skirt, and I dig the court gown influence:

(photo source)

And while in theory I also dig the “JE SUIS LA REINE” feeling of this dress:

I just flat-out do not like it, and the close-up doesn’t help, because while I like the gauntlet sleeves more, I like the fabric less, AND this picture also shows another angle on Snow White’s first dress that I also don’t like. This picture crushes dreams!

(Maybe the whole film will have acidic, super-saturated lighting and everything will immediately look great. This is my hope.)

The kids’-cartoon feeling I get from these two dresses does not diminish whatsoever when one takes a look at the Queen’s second-in-command (who is apparently the one she sends into the woods to kill Snow White, which is smart, because in a kingdom full of huntsmen and soldiers and knights and mercenaries, this is definitely the person I would send to do some cold-blooded killing).

Check out the chevron effect on his bias buttonholes! That’s a nice detail.

The Prince makes out slightly better in the dude-clothing department, in what looks like a changeable-taffeta riding coat with a little steampunk-buckle action in front:

Meanwhile, Snow White has been hanging out with her seven outlaws/miners/supporting companions, whose costumes completely baffle me. Are they supposed to be crusted with dirt? Are they lava monsters? I know nothing. (Nice colors on Snow, though that doesn’t really balance out the questions this picture poses.)

At least she gets to practice a little swordplay, it looks like. You kick some ass, Snow!

And of course, no fairy tale is complete without the heroine being overdressed at a formal event!

It seems remiss not to mention this dress when looking at the dress above:

However, Bjork looks a million times cooler than poor Snow up there, partially because Bjork can carry off whatever she feels like, and partially because when it came to this outfit, even Bjork was like, “You know, let’s stay away from hats.”

However, as we iris out on this whole event, we see that Snow White is not even the most unfortunately-dressed person at this party.

The lady to her left, dressed as Pink Marshmallow Pavlova, has it worse. So, so much worse. That is going to be an awkward party for her when the society pages come out.

I honestly don’t know what to think here; Tarsem Singh has never turned in a dull-looking movie, so part of me wants to wait to see these in motion (and with the acidic lighting, or something) before I make a call. On the other hand, I dislike more of these costumes than I like, and Nathan Lane, Assassin for Hire, is giving me pause. But let’s be honest, if this is a great movie I will probably enjoy it, and if it’s a terrible movie I will probably also enjoy it, so I’m going to luck out either way on this!