“Downton Abbey” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Six

Couple weeks late on this. Apologies, my lord.

* I enjoy when Robert and Cora mildly disagree. “I suppose we’ve made our decision.” If the aristocracy has always been this genially ineffectual how does it even exist?

* “I know plenty of relatives of English earls who belong in gaol.” You becha, Bob!

* Mrs. Hughes asks her not to send Bates to America, and suddenly Lady Mary gets stroppy about the servants not serving enough! I guess not everyone‘s genially ineffectual.

* “All those handsome stewards strutting down the boat deck.” “Don’t be vulgar. What do you know of such matters?” “I’ve been married. I know everything.” Worldly, fuck-wise Lady Mary is the best Lady Mary.

* Uh-oh, the Dowager’s got a cough. Cue near-death storyline!

* Even though his potential face-turn was abandoned immediately upon the start of the season, Thomas still has his good points, and his friendship with Jimmy, odious though Jimmy himself may be, is one of them. Watching them pal around is…nice…I guess?

* Poor Evelyn Napier, always the suit, never the suitor.

* At least Anna’s realized there’s no such thing as a secret at Downton.

* The Dowager refers to Isobel’s verbosity by likening her to “a drunken vicar.” Her conversational anticlericalism is a hoot.

* “Vive le difference!” Oh brother. Cousin Rose…there’s just nothin’ there.

* “But first, kiss me. Or don’t you want to?” “Oh, I want to. Don’t you worry about that.” Now that’s what I’m talking about! Rose may be kind of a cipher and Jack Ross is one of the most weirdly acted characters on a big show ever, but that’s a fabulously romantic exchange. A few more of those and there may be something to this.

* “Have you met my niece and her charming bastard?” Edith has learned the limits of the gentility’s gentility.

* “I’m killing the wanted child of the man I’m in love with and you ask if I’ve thought about?” We can, and should, take issue with Downton‘s handling of reproductive rights, but this line is a headshot on the well-meaning paternalism of the anti-choice movement.

* Keep saying “the pigman,” Downton.

* Branson meets cute with a political woman. I’m starting to worry that the show placing the shipping of Tom and Mary at the center of its entire architecture is a fake-out!

* Oh shit, Lady Mary getting muddy, hair down, goodness gracious great balls of fire.

* Yeah, a pretty grim take on abortion indeed. Don’t be a crying lady! Keep that baby!

* “The tears and the heartbreaks that’ll flavor my puddings for weeks to come.” If it taste’s good then at least some good has come of the Ivy/Daisy/Jimmy/Alfred storyline!

* I ship Mrs. Crawley and the Dowager.

* “You’ll be rewarded in heaven.” “The sooner, the better.”

* Lady Mary’s suitor can’t stay away. “Sounds to me as if the needle’s got stuck.”

* Wow, that was some look Bates shot Mr. Green. There’s the menace everyone supposedly sees in Bates all the time.

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