Hello, my lovelies! It’s time for another season of our poshest, soapiest soap opera. I’ll be recapping each week’s episode here; look for my posts on Monday mornings.
If you need to brush up on last season, I recapped it at Bonny Glen. Here’s where we left off:
The primary task of every character this season was to decide what world to live in: the old pre-War England, or the new. Robert has clung to the past like a toddler clutching his mother’s leg. Even Carson has accepted change with more dignity than his employer. Thomas, too, seems stuck in a past built on pecking order and rank. I wondered if his trip to America would open up new prospects for him, but it seems he came back more hidebound and bitter than ever. He wants esteem in the old order, and it’s fading away before he can climb to the top of his ladder. Cora seems to be fading away right along with it; she’s much less vital a person than she was during the war. Violet may not approve of all the ways in which society is changing, but she’s rolling with the change much more amiably than might have been expected, and I didn’t think Martha’s barbs about “your world is ending, mine is beginning” were entirely fair or accurate. Violet is accepting social change tolerably well; it’s Martha’s style she objects to, and her idiom. And her personality. And her face.
Mary has decided to orient herself toward the future for the sake of keeping Downton intact for her son–and that’s an interesting twist on progressivism. She’s open to new ideas only because she wants to maintain the status quo. It’s a nice little paradox and I’d like to see Mary grapple with that problem rather than her question of whom to marry whenever she feels like marrying again. But in the end, it’s the outliers I care about–Edith and Tom.
And here’s a master list of my previous Downton Abbey recaps, both here at GeekMom (Seasons 2 and 3) and over on Bonny Glen (Season 4). Episode numbers are PBS reckoning, not UK.
Season 4 • Episode 1 (UK 1/2) • 2 (UK 3) • 3 (UK 4) • 4 (UK 5) • 5 (UK 6) • 6 (UK 7) • 7 (UK 8) • 8 (UK Christmas Special)
Season 3 • Episode 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Season 2 • Episode 5, “The Canadian Patient” • Episode 6, “The Spanish Flu” • Christmas Special (2011)
