With Jack Hoffman overseeing the latest score, he noted, “It’s looking pretty danged good. I just wish we had a ten day run of this material.”

There was certainly a visible gold streak running through it. Once it was all sifted and weighted, it was a solid 11.5 additional ounces of pure gold. Hoffman combined it with their earlier collections into a very heavy jar containing all of their fortunes. It’s mass was up to 81.57 ounces, which equates to about $130,000.00. That’s enough to make a difference in the lives of these hard-working men, even divided.

Hoffman passed the bottle around, with a stern warning to the overjoyed men. “I’m gonna let you hold it,” he said. “You drop it, you get to clean it up and it better be the same weight!”

Find out how much they collect next as “Gold Rush” continues Fridays at 8 p.m. EST on Discovery.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

On February 21st, Leland Sundries’ new EP, The Foundry, will be released, featuring Nick Loss-Eaton on guitar, banjo, harmonium, harmonica, and vocals. These Brooklyn indie-folksters recorded the project in an old creamery building, and it follows their debut, The Apothecary EP, which The New York Times picked up on: “Leland Sundries, a band from New York led by Nick Loss-Eaton, is dedicated to storytelling in a way that recalls Woody Guthrie and his Folkways brethren. [Their] scrappy Americana will get you longing for empty two-lane highways and kudzu-encased back porches.”

A streamer of The Foundry is presented here for HuffPost readers.

Tracks:
1. Airstream Transmission
2. Monitor Arms
3. Giving Up Redheads
4. Apparition
5. Bywater Rag
6. VFW Hall

A Pre-Grammy Conversation with Geoff Emerick

Mike Ragogna: Geoff, how did you feel about Paul’s Grammy rehearsal?

Geoff Emerick: Unbelievable. I saw the rehearsals and they were just amazing – he’s in really, really good voice. The new song, “My Valentine,” is unbelievable live.

MR: Are you ever surprised how great his live performances are?

GE: Well, no. I’m surprised in a different way. I’ve known Paul since 1962, so I can read his mind. I can’t really explain it, but I’m never really surprised.

MR: Did you run into any challenges mixing the performances?

GE: No, actually. It’s amazing how it all sort of comes together. During the rehearsals, I was surprised at how clean and tight it sounded. I told Paul when I heard it that the vocals sounded really great. It helps that he’s doing it in a live atmosphere so he’s pushing the vocals out a little bit more. It sounded really good.

MR: Are you pleasantly surprised that Paul’s voice has remained this strong after all of these years?

GE: Well, with a lot of singers, the voice never really seems to change. I mean, it does with some singers. But sometimes, if you look after your voice, it can just continue to improve. Robin Zander of Cheap Trick has the most amazing voice also, and it just improves.

MR: Geoff, can you tell us a little about your book Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording The Music Of The Beatles.

GE: Basically, the book begins when I was about six or seven years old and fell in love with music and goes through the age of sixteen, which is when I started at Abbey Road Studios. I always wanted to be involved in new music in some way, so I didn’t necessarily want to be a recording engineer. I also didn’t know the system of physically making a record.

MR: Were you also responsible for new talent that was picked up at EMI over the years?

GE: I wasn’t necessarily responsible because the production department was primarily responsible for that. But I ended up recording at a very young age. I worked with the likes of Matt Monro, Ken Dodd, and many others over the years.

MR: And you worked with some great talent including Kate Bush.

GE: Yeah, I did work on Kate’s first record, I’d left Apple by that point.

MR: You went to Apple right after Abbey Road, right?

GE: I left Abbey Road and went to Apple where I stayed for four years and built a studio. I did a Stealers Wheel album there as well and then went back with George Martin.

MR: Now, you were very much a part of The Beatles throughout a great deal of their success. Did you sense that the group would have the success and impact that it did?

GE: Oh, absolutely. I knew that from very early on, mainly because their whole mindset at the start was sort of anti-establishment and that was different back then. I personally knew that there was something there simply through listening to John and Paul’s songs while hearing what everyone else in the industry was doing. Revolver was obviously a huge step forward, even from the technical side. When we did Sgt. Pepper, we knew that it was something special – it was mind-blowing. But there’s no way we could have imagined that it would be what it became.

MR: And as their sound and they as people evolved, you became a part of each of their solo careers.

GE: Yeah, but I was mainly working with the songs and the structure of the songs. I would embellish mistakes on the original rhythm tracks to make them more quirky, things like that. I suppose that’s how a lot of the arrangements turned out the way that they are…they were mistakes, you know? They’re not normal.

MR: Pretty wild. Geoff, What advice might you have for an artist that’s just starting out?

GE: I always look at this job in visual terms. From a recording engineer’s prospective, it’s like making a film. It starts on the studio floor. You rehearse and rehearse, then you start on your camera shots, which might be the solos, then you go for the take. Now, when you’re recording, you record it all together and try to piece it all together. They don’t go for that “magic take” as we used to call it. I never got into the business of technicalities. We had to make all of those sounds ourselves with bits of tape and God knows what else. (laughs) It’s such a shame. I’m looking at it from an artistic side. It’s as if you have a pallet of paints and a brush, and you’re painting a beautiful picture with sounds, painting it with sounds that are in your head. That’s the way that I perceive it. I’m not interested in how we get back there, but it has to happen. It’s like with the new computer animation compared with hand-drawn animation. There’s no pigment in the computerized drawings, and there is with the hand-drawn. That makes all the difference.

MR: Looking back on your own career, what piece of advice would you choose to give yourself?

GE: I don’t know. I don’t want to stop doing this, but I do want to continue searching for the next thing that’s mind-blowing. We’ve gotten into the lull of content, so I would love to find some incredible content from somewhere and make another album that will be amazing and everyone will want to go and buy it, you know? The album used to be like a stage performance, even down to the fact that the songs that they played were strung together by the keys that they were in. Bands used to spend days, once they finished recording working, on how to segue the album from song to song. It was a piece of art. When you buy an album these days, you can just purchase a bunch of individual tracks and it doesn’t make any sense.

MR: Do you think there will come a time when people will start to demand that artists make those sort of albums again rather than continuing with the single track download mentality?

GE: I think that has to be retaught. That would have to go all the way back to music education in schools again.

MR: Is there anything coming up in your immediate future?

GE: Well, I am hopefully going to be producing a soundtrack for an upcoming film, but I can’t say what the film is. That’ll be fun to do though.

MR: Any words for artists and HuffPost readers out there?

GE: Just enjoy it, you know? You’re trying to capture a moment when you’re recording. Of course, I’m thinking of recording in the old sense when we rehearsed and put things together piece by piece. But you’re supposed to be capturing a moment in time and that’s why it’s often said that the first take has a certain magic to it that can’t be captured if you’re doing take after take. Why is that the case? I don’t know, it just feels good.

MR: Having lived through the phenomena that was The Beatles, do you think that there’s another band that could have the same amount of influence as they had?

GE: Probably, because if you think about it, Mozart’s music was the pop music of his day and it became our classical music. It’s similar for my generation because The Beatles’ music was the pop music of our day, and in 100 years time, it will be the classical music of their day. Music will continue to evolve.

MR: How would you describe The Beatles’ place in history from now into the future?

GE: I think it will continually evolve.

MR: Do you think it will become more important or more mythical as things tend to do?

GE: More important, I would think. If all goes the way I hope it does. Hopefully, their music will be a standard when people look back at the great songs and the way they were structured because I don’t hear anything today that comes anywhere near that music, which is a shame.

MR: Well, here’s to the future. (laughs)

GE: Indeed.

MR: Geoff, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us.

GE: It’s been my pleasure, Mike. Cheers.

Transcribed by Evan Martin

Note: The following contains spoilers if you have not seen Season 3, Episode 15 of CBS’s “The Good Wife,” entitled, “Live From Damascus.”

“The Good Wife” has shoved a potentially big game-changing storyline in the middle of a very busy (and slightly inconsistent) episode.

“Live From Damascus” — alternate title: “A Night Of Many Stars” — sets the stage for the next chapter of “The Good Wife” in the matter of a mere 15 minutes. The rest of the hour? Kind of useless when compared to the bigger picture. Rita Wilson (she was deliciously smug), Jonathan Groff, Amy Sedaris, Parker Posey, John Benjamin Hickey, Denis O’Hare and Edward Herrmann all made return appearances in this jam-packed episode of “The Good Wife.”

Let’s just get through the less interesting stuff first — and by less interesting, I just mean when compared with the overarching storyline that drives the show. As individual storylines, these two plot lines would be fine on their own; but shoved together with Will’s storyline, they brought the episode down. OK, here we go:

Lockhart & Gardner took on Wilson’s Viola Walsh and her client Neil Gross (Hickey) with a class action suit against a software company. Their claim: The software company allowed the Syrian government to … get rid of American citizens, so to speak. Jonathan Groff played Lockhart & Gardner’s main client. He turned in an understated performance while looking extremely sharp, which was refreshing compared to the other guest stars. Yadda, yadda, yadda Kalinda’s Syrian contact dies, Viola offers Caitlin a job to unnerve her and mess with Alicia’s head, Pink Damascus is really a man in Kansas, Groff’s character’s sister is alive. End of that story.

Eli’s ex-wife, Vanessa (Posey) returned to talk about her campaign and sleeping with a Bin Laden. Eli yelled about some stuff and then ultimately agreed to help the campaign and Sedaris’ Stacy made some cute faces and walked around. More and more Eli Gold feels like he belongs on a separate show. Nothing against Alan Cumming’s performance, but when we’re dealing with much meatier stories — Will’s potential disbarment — having a good chunk of time used up by Eli and Stacy butting heads hurts the pacing of a once flawless show.

Now for the good stuff:

Hello, Lockhart & Associates. Will is suspended! After Wendy Scott-Carr tipped off the bar, Edward Herrmann’s character gave Will the scoop. Diane flew into action, telling the board that Will started the pro bono initiative at Lockhart & Gardner, a lie she hoped would save his career. In a way, it did. Instead of an investigation, the board agreed to offer Will a six month suspension. After counsel with Alicia, Will took the suspension. Lockhart & Gardner is now Lockhart & Associates. “You’ll still have a place when you come back,” Diane tells him. What will this do for “The Good Wife”? I hope it does wonders. Maybe a little less court time, a lot more Diane time and … Alicia and Kalinda. That’s right, Alicia is Kalinda’s attorney now.

“You and Kalinda should talk as soon as possible.” Thanks for saying what we’ve all been thinking, Diane. We know “The Good Wife” is bringing on Kalinda’s ex-husband, so Alicia will be diving into Kalinda’s past thanks to this IRS case. Despite her hesitation, Alicia will represent Kalinda and the two will rekindle their friendship … I hope. Tequila shots for all by the end of the season!

We will still see Will this season — his sisters are coming to town — but let’s end this recap on a high note: “Follow Diane’s lead, Alicia, you’ll be fine.”

Gasp count: About one and a half. (Yes, half a gasp.)

Did you like the episode? What do you think will happen at Lockhart & Associates?

“The Good Wife” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. EST on CBS

Allen won Best Original Screenplay at the WGA Awards on Sunday night for “Midnight in Paris,” besting the scripts for “50/50,” “Bridesmaids,” “Win Win” and “Young Adult.” Of course, only Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo’s work on “Bridesmaids” is up for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards alongside “Midnight in Paris,” meaning Allen’s victory could be hollow. Because it was written outside the bounds of Writers Guild of America, Michel Hazanavicius’s script for “The Artist” was not eligible for the WGA award, but stands a good chance of earning an Oscar — assuming the Best Picture favorite receives a surge of support across the board from Academy voters.

Things are a little more settled on the Best Adapted Screenplay side: Alexander Payne, Jim Rash and Nat Faxon won the WGA award and will likely do the same next week.

For a complete list of WGA winners, including television, documentary and animation winners, head over to The Hollywood Reporter.

Want to watch their take on the Best Pictures nominees? Click here for more on Oscar.com!

It’s been strange to watch so many people and publications succumb “Downton Abbey” frenzy in the last two months. There are still things I love about the PBS drama, which concluded Sunday, but it’s weird that ”Downton”-mania swept the land just as it became clear that Season 2 was not as good as Season 1. 

As I said in my review of Season 2, I thought the first half of the season was almost unbearably choppy and badly paced, but things smoothed out a bit as the season progressed, and I very much enjoyed the season finale that aired Sunday night. It was the most satisfying “Downton” outing of the year, and I wonder if that’s because it was conceived of as a Christmas special that aired in the U.K. a couple of months after the regular season ended. Obviously it was strongly linked to what came before, but almost functioned as a standalone movie, and its conclusion was wonderfully romantic and moving, even if we had to endure a lot of contrivance to get to Matthew’s lovely proposal and and Lady Mary’s emotional acceptance.

Would that the rest of the season had been that good. Julian Fellowes, the creator of “Downton Abbey,” is good at writing movies, at depicting a specific social world and at creating barbs for Maggie Smith to wield like an aristocratic ninja. What the second season of “Downton” has proved is that he’s much less skilled at writing for television. The second season of “Downton” was longer than the first, but it was much more ungainly and contrived, because Fellowes didn’t have a firm grasp on how to ladle out pleasing portions of story and character development within each episode. Season 1 was shorter and more manageable; it was about the length of two feature films. Season 2 was longer, and far less satisfying, because Fellowes’ sense of pacing was really off much of the time.

“There was no need for all of this crap to be stuffed into roughly one hour of story time,” the critics Tom and Lorenzo wrote after last week’s episode. “We’re not saying everything would have been totally believable and not at all a crusty old cliche if he’d just spaced it out more, but he could have sprinkled the silliness throughout at a confident pace.” Exactly.

The problem is, like another refugee from the world of film, Frank Darabont, Fellowes doesn’t know how to knit together believable incidents and compelling character development and form that into a consistently interesting season of television. I know, it’s weird to compare a costume drama with a zombie horrorfest, but both “Downton” and “The Walking Dead” stumbled in their second seasons. Each show would merely repeat information about characters (Daisy feels bad about her relationship with William, Shane is a troubled hothead, etc.) without developing those individuals in interesting ways. You’re not really learning how to cook if you cook the same dish the same way a dozen times.

Stories and incidents are obviously necessary for any kind of filmed entertainment, but Darabont didn’t give his show enough of either, and the characters suffered. Fellowes threw a lot of incidents and accidents into his show, but the results were often contrived, and the characters suffered. Are you sensing a theme here?

Here’s the thing: Stories should be interesting and make sense and have peaks and valleys and all that, but their main function should be to shed light on the people in the story. Too often, Season 2 “Downton” stories felt like underdeveloped attempts to kill time. For instance, we got lots of scenes of the disgraced housemaid, Ethel, but that story didn’t actually go anywhere until very late in the season. Ditto Mr. Bates’ “psycho ex-wife” story, which went around in circles for two-thirds of the season.

At least it did go somewhere, which can’t be said for a few other Season 2 stories. Here’s a rule of thumb: If a story could be removed entirely from a season and it wouldn’t matter because it had no real effect on the characters, it’s a not a good story. This season in “Downton Abbey,” we had the story of Patrick the pretender — the disfigured soldier who claimed to be the heir to Lord Grantham’s estate. He was hurriedly wheeled on stage, he lingered long enough to seem preposterous rather than pathetic (Really? A Canadian accent developed out of nowhere?), and then he was abruptly hustled away when the show was done using him to stir up a strangely ineffectual bit of drama.

The Patrick story wasn’t just disconnected from everything else and didn’t just have little impact on the characters, it was also another waste in a season that had more missed opportunities than zingers from the Dowager Countess. What would it be like to be a grievously wounded man trying to re-integrate himself into an appearances-obsessed society? We never found out, because we didn’t get to spend enough time with Patrick for his plight to emotionally move us. He was just there to revive the by-now threadbare inheritance storyline, and that was that.

It’s not that I expected “Downton” to become a grim accounting of the psychological and physical costs of World War 1, but the house was quite literally chock full of injured men, none of whom we got to know in a significant way (true, we did spend some time with the troubled Lang, but Season 2 had so many stories whirling around that it didn’t have much time to spare for his PTSD). The Great War was an event that changed the course of the 20th Century in myriad ways, but the only real evidence of the war’s effect on society and the class structure was Lady Sybil’s chemistry-free relationship with the chauffeur, which was about as exciting as a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal. (If nothing else, shouldn’t running off with the help be at least a little bit sexy? Is that asking too much?)

Of course, the second season featured Matthew’s grave injury, but that was miraculously cured in what felt like a matter of minutes (did they get Maggie Smith to whip out the magic wand she used when she played a Hogwarts teacher?). Thank goodness the show has such an incredible cast: What might have been deeply silly stories were saved time and again by nuanced performances. As Matthew and Lady Mary, Dan Stevens and Michelle Dockery gave their characters specific, complex personalities and often brought more texture to the Matthew-Mary relationship than Fellowes’ scripts provided. In one of several storylines that were never fully fleshed out, Lord Grantham’s sadness and lack of purpose would have seemed petulant and pointless had anyone besides Hugh Bonnevielle played the straying aristocrat.

One frequent refrain I’ve seen from some online commentators as Season 2 has progressed is that the show has become “a soap opera.” I take issue with that critique, in part because it’s always been a soap opera — as Tom and Lorenzo have wittily and accurately pointed out, every single storyline on “Downton Abbey” is something we’ve seen before on TV dozens of times. But familiarity isn’t a crime if the execution of eash story is top-notch.

And that’s where “Downton” went wrong this season. It frequently sacrificed the characters on the altar of plot, and that’s incredibly frustrating, given that the unexceptional plots are not what we tune in for. We watch quality programs to see the characters react to frustrations, to rise challenges and and to explore possibilities. We watch to know what these people are going through and to identify with them on some level, even if, on the surface, our lives seem different from theirs. A good show will allow us to see ourselves in the characters, whether that program set in space, a cop shop, a chemistry lab or a grand estate.

With a show like “Downton,” which hews closely to established tropes and traditional ideas, we know the plots are going to be familiar, if not mundane. But if the stories are handled elegantly and create interesting emotional and intellectual dilemmas for the characters, that familiarity wouldn’t be a problem at all.

But Fellowes seems to think that piling on more stories is how you create more drama, and he seems to believe that creating increasingly contrived obstacles to characters’ happiness is what storytelling is all about. No, the point of the stories should be making the audience care about the people in the house. The point of every plot should be to shed light on who they are, what they want, why they want it and what compromises they’ll have to make to get it. 

In that regard, “Downton Abbey” could learn a lot from the admirably disciplined “Revenge,” which generally apportions just the right amount of story into each hour of television and creates believable obstacles even in a very heightened, soapy world. And as I said in this piece, “Spartacus,” for all its excess, focuses with laser-like intensity on providing new information about the characters in every single scene of the show. It’s insulting to shows that do these things well to call Season 2 of “Downton Abbey” “a soap opera.” If we’re going to be accurate about it, no matter how pretty it looked and how well it was acted, portions of the second season were like a bad soap opera, the kind that feature sigh-inducing evil twins and mustache-twirling villains (Sir Richard was well-played by Iain Glen, but imagine how much more intriguing that story would have been if he’d been a complex and realistic rival to Matthew?).

Whether it’s soapy or gritty, any show that consistently draws our attention to “the Creaking Wheels of Plot” undercuts the characters in any number of ways. I borrowed that phrase from writer Jason Arnopp, who recently wrote a great piece called “Five Ways To Kill Audience Satisfaction.” One of Arnopp’s pet peeves (and I’m completely with him on this) is characters who do things that don’t make sense because the story requires them to do those things — even if those actions violate the rules of the world the writer has set up.

“If characters do stupid things because, for instance, the film would be over if they didn’t, that’s when the writer feels our wrath,” Arnopp wrote. “We hear the Creaking Wheels of Plot and it’s a terrible noise, reminding us that this is just a figment of someone’s imagination and a slightly clunky figment at that. The spell is broken, even if only temporarily.”

It’s not as if “Downton Abbey” is the only show guilty of that kind of corner-cutting; it seems to be happening all over these days. The fourth season of “Sons of Anarchy,” for example, ultimately betrayed the foundations of the show’s world and, sadly, made its characters permanently less interesting. Despite the fact that all the characters reside in the brutal, unforgiving culture of a biker gang, the audience was supposed to believe that head biker Clay, who had done a series of terrible things that would absolutely require vengeance from his stepson Jax, would merely get a demotion. And speaking of Creaking Wheels, an entire season’s worth of story machinations were waved away, as if by another magic wand, in the first 10 minutes of the Season 4 finale. The best way to get me to emotionally and intellectually detach from a show is to set up stakes that the drama then tells me never mattered anyway. All in all, the integrity of several characters, especially Jax, was sacrificed in the name of a story that not only wasn’t dramatically satisfying, it didn’t make much sense.

Here’s an example from the other end of the television spectrum: “How I Met Your Mother” recently began the process of getting Robin and Ted back together again, and I wish I could say I was upset by that development (or in love with it), but I’m simply indifferent to it. The show has become so inconsistent about who the characters are that I’ve lost interest in them and their lives. Ted and Robin are like “Downton’s” Lady Cora — they are whoever the story needs them to be that week. At this point, the “HIMYM” characters’ personalities are so arbitrary and vague that I don’t have any investment in what happens to them (and I’m particularly disappointed in the way the show has depicted Robin, formerly a confident and complex career woman, as a self-described “mess”). And speaking of machinations, the CBS show could introduce the Mother tomorrow and I don’t think that’d be enough to win me back, given how many pointless, time-wasting shenanigans there have been on that front.

Though I’ve more or less given up on “HIMYM” and the increasingly broad “Office,” at least they have the excuse of being very advanced in their runs; it’s hard to keep characters consistently interesting over six or seven seasons, and, as critic Linda Holmes has pointed out, that task is even harder for comedies, which put characters’ faults and foibles at center stage.

But “Downton Abbey” is only in its second season; there’s no excuse for it to be this sloppy and inconsistent. Hiring more writers would be a capital idea; Fellowes wrote every Season 2 episode himself, which was an insane undertaking and only revealed his consistent shortcomings as a TV scribe. 

Still, it’s not as though “Downton Abbey” is the only show that doesn’t understand what many of its fans are tuning in for. So I’d like to issue the following plea to those who create television:

Dear television writers of the world, we care about your characters. Do not mess them up for the sake of storytelling expedience. Do not give incident pride of place over people.

So, TV writers, come up with cool plots. You should absolutely expend a lot of blood, sweat and tears on the mechanics of each episode and the structure of the season. But we shouldn’t have the mechanics shoved in our face and have the characters suffer as a result. We shouldn’t hear and see that creaking machinery, and those mechanical objects shouldn’t fall on the characters’ heads regularly. Whatever you do or don’t do, please don’t betray your characters just to make that week’s story work. Your cast and your audience deserve better than that.

To return to my specific thoughts on “Downton Abbey,” there were a number of things I enjoyed about the second season. As I said, I thought Sunday’s episode was bloody enjoyable, and all season long, there were scenes and story strands that kept my interest; it also helps that when he’s on his game, Fellowes can craft compelling dialogue.

Against all odds, I ended up liking Lavinia and was sad when she died; anything involving Carson or the Dowager Countess was usually gold; and the show’s sense of atmosphere was absorbing when the direction was good (though there was some horrendous directing and editing this season, it must be said). Half the reason I stick with the show, even when the writing slips a few notches below melodrama, is because country-house settings and period dramas are my crack, and thanks to the lushness of the world and the incredible work of the set decorators and costumers, the sheer amount of fancy eye-candy on display was impossible to resist.

Having said all that, it wasn’t pleasant to see the character assassination of Isobel Crawley, who was once a rather interesting rattler of upper-class cages, and I once again wished that Thomas, who showed glimmerings of humanity, had evolved into slightly more than a cardboard villain. But my fears for the show’s third season involve more prominent “Downton” characters.

I haven’t talked much about Bates and Anna yet, because I haven’t been able to bring myself to do so. I absolutely adored this star-crossed couple in Season 1, but Season 2′s machinations and the one-dimensional Mrs. Bates threatened to overwhelm everything good about that story line. Brendan Coyle and Joanne Froggatt gave terrifically committed performances, but I am nervous about where that couple stands now. Will Season 3 consist of Fellowes constructing ever more preposterous and melodramatic obstacles to the happiness of Bates and Anna, as well as Matthew and Mary?

Will the whole drama be all about things that happen and events that accumulate, as opposed to the reactions and emotional lives of the people those things happen to? Will “Downton Abbey” try to further its status as a crossover hit by showcasing larger-than-life stars like Shirley MacLaine, who’s booked a role in Season 3? Or will it keep its focus on what made Season 1 and parts of Season 2 so wonderful — restive yet rule-bound aristocrats and servants who share complicated relationships and, in some cases, parallel aspirations?

“The key here is building stories that spin from the character outwards into the world, instead of the world imposing stories upon its characters,” Ryan McGee wrote in an essay that will appear Monday on the AV Club site. I couldn’t agree more. We’ll see if Season 3 of “Downton Abbey” manages that feat.

Ryan McGee and I will talk about Season 2 of “Downton” and other shows in this week’s Talking TV podcast, which will be posted Monday or Tuesday.

Also on Wednesday night, The Situation moves from Seaside to “Suburgatory” to make his acting debut. And after last week’s “Grey’s Anatomy”/”Private Practice” crossover episode, Fox gets in on the action Thursday evening with a “Bones”/”Finder” crossover of its own.

The winter finale of “Fringe” airs Friday night, kicking off a weekend that will culminate with Sunday night’s Oscars broadcast, as Billy Crystal returns to host for the ninth time.

Check out our slideshow to see what else is worth watching this week.

He was in the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on an October night in Costa Mesa, Calif., watching the high-stepping cast electrify the crowd once again despite more than a dozen years crisscrossing the nation.

“To be at the back of a hall with the audience jumping to their feet at the end of the show after all these years, it’s just so gratifying and just so pleasing,” says Erskine, the show’s senior executive producer, by phone from Dublin.

Even so, the end of the road is nearing. “Riverdance” is currently on an 82-city farewell North American tour that’s winding across the U.S. and Canada and ends in June. This month, the show left Texas, hit the Southeast and next goes to the Plains.

“It’s certainly emotional to be saying goodbye,” says Erskine.

The show has been touring continuously in North America since 1996, sometimes with two companies simultaneously. While organizers insist there’s still interest in the U.S., new markets beckon in South America, India and China.

The touring company includes six principal dancers, 18 troupe dancers, a live five-piece band, flamenco dancer and two American tap dancers, one of whom is also a baritone soloist.

Padraic Moyles, one of the principals, is dancing with a heavy heart. He joined “Riverdance” in 1997 and fell in love with his co-star and now wife Niamh O’Connor while in the show. While he has performed elsewhere, he says American audiences are special.

“Anybody who joins the show from here on out and doesn’t get the opportunity to perform it in America, will be missing something,” he says. “I hope that someday, whether its 10 years from now, it does come back so that people get to experience that reaction again.”

“Riverdance” opened at Dublin’s Point Theatre on Feb. 9, 1995, at a time of renewed Irish optimism and pride surrounding the onset of the booming “Celtic Tiger” economy. Years of relative poverty were disappearing and being Irish had a new cool, thanks to a new generation of athletes and musicians like U2 and The Cranberries.

“The timing couldn’t have been better. We just picked up on a vibe that was happening in this country and we suddenly felt, `Maybe it’s not so bad being Irish. Maybe we don’t have to be the butt of every joke,’” says Erskine. “It couldn’t have happened five years earlier. It just wouldn’t have happened. I don’t think we would have had the courage to have done it.”

It has since been seen by an estimated 22 million people in 40 countries, from Red Square to the Great Wall of China. It made its American debut in 1996 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and packed the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway for 18 months in 2000-2001. Not bad for a show that first premiered on the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest as a seven-minute segment.

The two-hour “Riverdance” show is loosely based on the story of Irish culture and mass immigration to America, the story woven through music and dance styles including flamenco and tap. Most of the dancing is drawn from traditional Irish step dancing, in which the arms and body move little while the feet create the sound and action.

Erskine attributes the show’s success to the fact that it isn’t a cookie-cutter experience. It wasn’t pulled together to make money, but to blow the dust off Irish folk music and dance, he says, and that purity of creation shines through. Plus, the sound seems to touch a very human part of us.

“That pounding out of rhythms I suppose is quite primal. That goes back into all our cores, no matter where we’ve come from. The beating of drums is how we first communicated,” he says.

The show has lasted despite losing original stars Jean Butler and Michael Flatley, who also was co-choreographer. Flatley went on to create his own shows, “Lord of the Dance” and “Feet of Flames.”

Moyles suspects that although “Riverdance” is pure Irish, Americans have embraced it so strongly in large part due to their own immigrant heritage. “Many of them have their own folk dances. They probably see their own heritage within `Riverdance,’” he says.

The final North American tour – at least for now – will take the show to such Irish-heavy cities as Chicago, Kansas City, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Boston, and will conclude at Wolf Trap National Park in Vienna, Va., which will represent the 14th time “Riverdance” has played there.

While the show is leaving America, it has tours planned for Belgium, New Zealand and Australia. The show is also going to India in October and plans a 10-week tour of China. There are also dates set in Argentina and Brazil, which excites Erskine because “Riverdance” hasn’t been farther south in the Americas than Mexico before.

“As we are saying goodbye,” he says, “we are also saying hello.”

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Online:

http://www.riverdance.com

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Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Multiple sources tell PEOPLE that although the couple originally hoped to reconcile, a reunion might not be in their future after all.

“They had both been wearing their wedding rings and had mutually thought they might be able to work it out,” one source says. “But it doesn’t look like it’s going that way.”

So let’s talk about the issues plaguing the fifth season of this scandalous CW favorite. I want to put in my disclaimer here and note that I actually have loved and continue to love Gossip Girl a great deal. I went into the show in the first season entirely because my roommates were excited to watch it. By the end of that season I was the one obsessed with the show, buying headbands and referring to my friends only by their first initials. Needless to say, they really regretted getting me hooked on Gossip Girl.

Gossip Girl, about a bunch of rich Upper East Siders and their insanely ridiculous lives, has never been a perfect show. Even when the plot holes were big enough to drive one of Chuck Bass’ limos through the show’s lovably psychotic characters and absurdist sense of humor remained intact.

This season, however, Gossip Girl feels like it has seriously lost its way. With more than half the season already past I worry that the show might not get back to what viewers loved best: the scheming characters, the juicy scandals and the tumultuous friendship between a blonde bombshell and a Queen B(ee).

I’ve narrowed my essential issues with this season of Gossip Girl down to four:

1. What is Gossip Girl without those three little letters: BFF?

Gossip Girl started not with a bang, but with a feud. The catty catfight in question was between recent boarding-school returnee Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and current high school drama queen Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester). Throughout the course of the show the girls have pushed each other into fountains and cakes, but they’ve also been there for each other when the chips were down. Their friendship has often been written with all the obstacles of any good love story. The relationship between Serena and Blair with all its ups, downs and field hockey fights is the central relationship of Gossip Girl.

This season Gossip Girl has almost wholly sidelined the dynamic between Serena and Blair and it’s hurt the show. Giving no narrative space to this core relationship is a mistake. At the end of the day, after all the schemes have been hatched, this is a show about two girls who could not be more similar or more different. This season, the girls have had scant screen time with each other and no narrative emphasis put on their relationship.

Both girls have been almost wholly wrapped up in their own separate storylines, barely touching base with each other. In previous seasons, Blair and Serena would turn to each other when times got tough. Now an episode might include a single scene of the girls having a post-game conversation after all the drama is over. While once a driving force for the show, this season Serena and Blair’s friendship has taken a backseat to the merry-go-round of love triangles and guest stars. While the girls’ current feud over Dan (Penn Badgley) is sure to put some attention back on their core dynamic, ignoring the central friendship of the series for nearly the entire season has made the show less enjoyable to watch.

2. The Magically Disappearing S

The series began with Serena’s return from boarding school and throughout Gossip Girl’s run the blonde and brunette society girls have traded off the narrative lead. While things were more equitable in the first season, there have been times when either Blair or Serena has stolen the plot limelight. I can’t remember any time, however, when Serena’s story has been so thin.

This year, Serena’s character has consistently been used as a prop to lend importance to the show’s guest star storyline of the moment. Besides stalking her fake cousin Charlie/Ivy (Kaylee DeFer) she’s done scant else of importance. She briefly worked in the film industry, although mostly this turn of events worked to forward Dan’s book storyline. After that Serena briefly dated Ivy’s ex-boyfriend, a chef/psychopath with a tendency towards blackmail. Making Serena once again an accessory to the ongoing Ivy plot. Then Serena decided to take down Gossip Girl with Nate’s (Chace Crawford) help, which lasted about the thirty seconds it took Serena to utter that declaration of war. Shortly after Serena began working at Nate’s gossip site, once again playing a minor role in Nate’s storyline while having no momentum of her own. In terms of her love life, which is one of the central devices of the series, Serena has spent most of the season pining for the emotionally unavailable Dan. This mostly just positions her as an obstacle to the burgeoning Blair and Dan romance.

Serena has been present to service everyone else’s storylines this season without having any kind of character arc herself. “What is Serena up to this week?” You might ask yourself before watching an episode. The answer is that she’s usually acting as a plot device in whatever storyline the writers need moved forward. As one of arguably the two main characters of the show (see above) Serena should have her own character arc. Her character shouldn’t be used to prop up guest stars or make already crowded love triangles more dramatic. It’s time to give Serena a real storyline that starts and ends with her.

3. The Deconstruction of Blair Waldorf

Serena’s not the only Gossip Girl suffering from narrative whiplash. The writing for Blair has been possibly even more troubling than the lack of any kind of story for Serena. Unlike Serena, Blair has received a lion’s share of the plot this season. Unfortunately, this narrative prominence has done her character no favors. Throughout the run of the show, Blair has been an underdog, a striver and above all a schemer. “I’m the crazy bitch around here,” she once told Georgina after a particularly satisfying take-down.

Not anymore. This season, Blair has put away her Queen B crown in favor of a pretty princess tiara. In her quest to become the princess of Monaco, she has barely schemed once all season. When Prince Louis’ (Hugo Becker) sister Beatrice was obviously gunning for her, she didn’t even notice. Even Serena, one of the more trusting and naive people on the show currently being convinced a complete stranger is her cousin, could see Beatrice was bad news. Did Blair find out her plan or scheme to take her down? Nope, she just sat passively by and did nothing.

In fact, sitting passively by and doing nothing appears to be Blair’s lot in life now. The issues with Blair’s characterization might be the most troubling of the season. Blair has gone from an active character, constantly engaged in a fight with the world around her, to a passive victim. When things used to go wrong for Blair Waldorf she would wipe her tears and plot revenge. This season, when times get tough Blair literally runs away from her problems. Whether that’s to cry on Dan’s shoulder in Brooklyn or run away to the Dominican Republic, Blair has become a classic damsel-in-distress.

It’s hard to imagine Blair reacting to threats with anything other than a good take-down, but this season she has barely schemed at all. She doesn’t fight for herself. She used to routinely try to destroy people for sometimes no apparent reason at all. This season she has become the perpetual victim of other people’s plots. I miss the strong, tough Blair Waldorf who always had a backup plan, even if they often (or always) went awry. I find this new iteration of Blair much less interesting to watch.

I found myself sighing with relief when Georgina Sparks (the great Michelle Trachtenberg) reappeared because it meant that finally someone would be actively moving the plot forward. Blair used to be an active character that fought for her place in the world, now she’s a reactive character always ten steps behind everyone else.

4. Holy Plot Twist!

I’d venture to say Gossip Girl isn’t well known for its exceedingly realistic plotlines. The show operates in a heightened reality where 20-year-olds own hotels and the travel time between Brooklyn and Manhattan is the blink of an eye. Blair and Chuck (Ed Westwick) could be getting breakfast in one scene and going to a fancy dinner party in the next scene with no explanation. Time and space apparently just move differently on the Upper East Side.

In the pantheon of crazy Gossip Girl storylines, however, the ones from this season are so absurd they still manage to stick out. The worst offender? Blair, a formerly non-religious character, making a pact with God to save Chuck’s life. Gossip Girl loves its film homages; you’d only need to take a gander at the hilarious episode titles to see that. There is, however, a line between homage and just ripping a storyline out of a movie and plopping it wholesale into your show. You cannot just take the plot of the movie End of the Affair and use it for your modern day show about rich New York socialites. It just doesn’t work. Besides a few instances of Blair using God like her personal Pez dispenser of favors, she’s never shown an avid interest in religion. Why would she suddenly feel like if she didn’t hold up her end of the bargain to marry Louis God would Final Destination Chuck? Why does God care whether or not she marries a boring French dude?

I wish I could say that the God pact was the worst offender from this season, but the whole business with Blair’s dowry is equally as bad. And yes, the word I just typed was dowry and no, they haven’t jumped into any DeLoreans and gone back in time. Why would Blair have signed a pre-nuptial agreement with Louis that included a dowry clause that would bankrupt her family if she left the marriage? Why is it better for Blair to stay married to Louis for a year and then divorce him? Doesn’t that look equally as bad? A year is not that long. When Louis threatens her at the wedding why doesn’t she just immediately go to one of her two lawyer fathers for legal advice instead of trying to jet off to the Dominican Republic? None of these are questions the show is interested in answering. And that’s not even touching the half-season long pregnancy storyline that ended in convenient miscarriage and went nowhere. Stop looking at the plot holes, the show says, just enjoy the ride.

It would be much easier to do that if any of these storylines were fun enough to turn your brain off while watching. None of them, however, are a particularly good time to watch. This isn’t like the time that Serena declared she’d killed a guy or when she was nearly killed by wolves in a car crash. Both of those were hilarious. I can overlook plot holes if there are wolves involved. In fact if wolves had come and eaten everyone at Blair’s royal wedding I would give the whole thing a huge pass.

Gossip Girl has sported some pretty unrealistic stories but because they have had high entertainment value it’s never bothered me before. Remember that one time Jenny (Taylor Momsen) decided to become a teenage drug mule because she was bored? I do too and it was amazing. Gossip Girl often stumbles when it’s unrealistic plot twists don’t match their inherent entertainment value. Georgina running from the Russian mob and convincing Dan he’s the father of her baby? Love it. Blair making a pact with God and refusing to believe in the existence of modern medicine? Not a fan.

With all this ranting aside, Gossip Girl is still a highly enjoyable show. It’s got a good set of talent both behind and in front of the cameras. All of the problems listed can be fixed. And the fifth season has sported some fun stories like Chuck’s new leaf (complete with lovable canine companion) and Dan’s book. I wouldn’t be writing unless I really did love the show and all its characters. With most of the cast’s contracts up at the end of next year, the show’s sixth season, my guess is that the show is winding down. I want to see Gossip Girl go out with a bang, in a way that respects the essence of all the characters.

It’s not too late to fix the problems with Gossip Girl; none are insurmountable. Whenever Blair and Serena ride off into the sunset, I’d like to look back at the flaws of season five as a blip in the road on an otherwise enjoyable journey. I hope I can.