DOWNTON ABBEY: “Season Six, Episode Five” {Recap}

Warning that this episode contains some mild gore.

Mr. Mason is moving in while Tom is trying to find his place and thinks of putting a repair shop near the road for passing trade. Andrew wants to help out with the pigs when the time comes, but he also can’t read the books that will help. Barrow wants to help him, even after all the tenuous conversations over the past few months.

Lord Chamberlain is on a tour of the north to see the hospitals all over, as his wife is the goddaughter of the late Lord Grantham. For the scheme of hers to work, she needs all the help on her side. Now the Dowager won’t have Dr. Clarkson on her side. Danker takes her opinion about Dr. Clarkson’s defection to the man himself. He won’t leave it alone, thought. Not that I blame him. Danker’s misstep gets her fired and it also gets the Dowager in a tissy. Danker then uses her knowledge that Spratt’s nephew was here to help keep her job. Can’t we just be hid of her? But that all pales compared to Chamberlain’s dinner, where Lord Grantham has a bursted ulcher in the middle of the table during the rowe. Perhaps this will get the Dowager to see the new plans for the hospital as a good thing?

Henry Talbot is calling to set up a date with Mary and to test his new car. Ah, what a great date idea! Mary still isn’t a fan of the racing, but she goes to watch him test the car all the same.

For their first meal as a married couple, it doesn’t go well. The meal might be undercooked and Mr. Carson also doesn’t approve of the choice of vegetable. He even went so far as to say it wasn’t as good as his mother’s. Oy men!

Edith does have another trip to London to find a new editor for her magazine and also for a date with Bertie. Bertie and her in London get along very well, spending a day in the public gardens and then a night at her flat. She picks her new editor, another woman Edith’s age, with some idea of an article about Victorian babies as modern women. Bertie also has some good luck when they’re at her flat, concluding in a kiss before a night out to dinner and dancing.

Baxter almost had her day against Mr. Coyle, but he changed his plea before she was called to testify. It’s rather anticlimactic that she can’t confront him.

Of all of this, though, it seems small when Lord Grantham’s life might hang in the balance? Lord Grantham is fine, but at what cost to the family and its stability? Too bad the last thing we think about in the episode is what Mary finally thinks of little Marigold…