ladymaryface replied to your post: I take back what I said about this actress playing...
she was so bad :( i feel like there could be some interesting areas to explore with the character but the actress is so bad that i don’t even care anymore.
Ugh. I know! Because, I agree, it could have been interesting to have her as a parallel to Mary and Edith-- and I think they were trying to do that with Edith especially this episode, but she was just so bad that it's hard to take anything about the character seriously (but good for Laura Carmichael for taking control of those scenes). I felt like she thought she was in a summer camp production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. Maybe Sir Peter Hall should go yell at her (she's in a production of The Seagull here so, actually, he really could).
I feel like bad acting is the equivalent of the Marsha Norman Rule Number 3 of Dramatic Writing-- you can't make a character clinically insane because the audience won't care. You can't have bad acting or the audience won't care.