Downton Abbey, Season 5 episode 2

Downton Abbey is like Lay’s potato chips, no one can eat just one. The second episode has me fully engaged in all the fun and silliness. I revise my first review a little; the series is a happy habit.

The episode begins at breakfast.  I recently discovered there are some complicated rules about who gets breakfast in bed, but on this day they are all together. Mary jabs at Edith about starting the fire. If Mary had burned down the whole estate, she’d be forgiven! Poor Edith, everybody hates her. I still think that she is her Aunt Rosamund’s illegitimate child. Mary is planning her sleepover week with Tony. It’s sad how Anna gets tasked with procuring her birth control.  (It’s also sad how she honestly worries that Mary, a twenty-something year-old mother and widow may find the task of dressing and undressing herself too much!) From what I could tell from the drawing that was flashed at the pharmacist’s, it looks like some sort of diaphragm. I think there is a chance that since everyone is so embarrassed, that there will be a mishap and pregnancy in the future. No fun goes unpunished in Fellows world. (Sex = death, oye!)

The war memorial debate rages on, Lord Grantham values his cricket pitch too much to turn it over to the public. This causes tension between Carson and Mrs. Hughes as well, who favors a more public location.  Charles Blake, one of Mary’s “also ran” suitors, shows up under the guise of accompanying an art expert to Downton. This shockingly tan man wants to assess a painting from the Grantham collection. The art expert seems to have eyes for Lady Grantham, and she seems to enjoy this worldly man over her stuffy husband. (I cannot blame her; everything is a battle with him.)

Rose floats around this episode lobbying for a wireless radio. She wins when the King decides to broadcast his first speech, which the whole household attends. The look on the Dowager’s face is a sort of fascinated horror.  To Carson’s dismay and Rose’s delight, the wireless will stay in the study.

Daisy continues her lessons with Ms. Bunting, much to Lord Grantham’s open scorn. At least she knows where she is not wanted and declines their half asked dinner invitation. But Branson takes up her torch and expresses an anti-imperial opinion, which helps everyone at dinner from dying of the usual boredom. It's not a big surprise that Lord Grantham blames the teacher for Branson’s opinion.  I wish Branson would just forget these people and leave for America already.

The episode closes in sexy Liverpool, where Tony and Mary are going to eat fish-and-chips and do it like rabbits. (Rabbits wearing diaphragms!) I like how incensed Mary was at Blake’s suggestion that she’s just sexually attracted to Gillingham, like that’s a bad thing.

I continue to root alone for Edith and Marigold. The poor girl needs someone to love; it might as well be her own daughter. I’ve heard there will be four engagements this season. My quick picks; Dowager Countess + Lord Menton, Mary and Tony, Dr. Clarkson and Lady Crawley and maybe Carson and Mrs. Hughes. But this being Downton, half of these probably won’t happen or will end in car accidents. We’d expect nothing less from our potato chip habit!