The Partial Defrosting Of Lady Mary By The Persistent Lord Gillingham

Where's The Special Victimmes Unit When You Need Them?

Alert Type: Misplaced Blame Alert.

Issue: Anna is sticking to her story about how she got injured.

Complicating Factors: Bates doesn't even kind of buy it, and decides he must somehow be at fault "because she is without fault."

Resolution: Anna tells Mrs. Hughes that she wants to move out of the cottage she's been sharing with Bates and back into the house, away from him; she can't stand to let him touch her anymore because now she's "soiled," and she's still certain that if he finds out the truth about her rape, he'll murder the culprit and be executed. Mrs. Hughes reluctantly tells Anna that she'll get her a room when one becomes available.

Spoiler: Given the activities of certain lady's maids in the recent past, a room may be available to Anna sooner than Mrs. Hughes thinks.

Tough Luck For Mabel

Apparently Mary came to the house party drenched in all the pheromones, because Tony digs her mucho. As he gets ready to leave (and says, in an aside, that he's not crazy about Green, I guess so that we can see he's a good judge of character), he tells Mary he wants to meet her someplace, and she very nicely turns him down, without even mentioning his almost-fiancée. But as his motor pulls away, she can't help giving him one last, longing look....

Discretion Is The Better Part Of Sleeping With Your Mother-In-Law's Maid

Good lord, Tom. Don't sleep with Edna, no matter how drunk you were. And definitely don't talk about it with her someplace that Thomas might be lurking so that he overhears all your guilty talk. You might as well write "MAIDFUCKER" on your forehead in the 1922 equivalent of Sharpie.

Too Many Cooks Spoil The Puff Pastry With Asparagus

Alert Type: Changing World Alert.

Issue: Ivy's doing her "first big thing" for Mrs. Patmore, and when Jimmy is shitty about it on the grounds that it's pretentious and has a French name, Alfred defends her/it.

Complicating Factors: Well, there's the whole Ivy/Alfred/Daisy/Jimmy love quadrangle, but in addition to that, part of the reason Alfred takes up for Ivy's dish is that he has dreams of applying to a chef's training program at the Ritz.

Resolution: Jimmy lets himself be shouted down on the asparagus issue because he knows Ivy has hot pants for him.

Spoiler: This is all about to blow up in everyone's faces.

Overly Attached Lady's Maid

After a meeting in London with The Tax People, Mary rolls into the drawing room at Aunt Rosamund's to see Tony there...

...and handles it with perfect aplomb!

Mary's like, how's your FIANCÉE? and Tony's like, don't be shitty.

Then Rose's dude Sir John is like, what if we went to a jazz club after, and Rose is like, jazzzzzzzzzzz! And Mary's like, Tom, you're being squirrelly as hell — you want to come, right? And Tom's like

But he has to go. Think about your shameful indiscretions on your own time, Tom, you dirty whore.

A Spoonful Of Sugar

In the aftermath of the Boot Room scandal, Alfred is even more determined to cram for this Ritz test. Mrs. Patmore briskly says that they'll all help Alfred prepare, and when everyone else leaves, she very kindly tells Daisy that the best thing she can do to assuage her guilt is to help Alfred get the best start on his project: "It'll be better to part friends." I don't even know why Daisy even tries to forge any kind of relationship with anyone else; she'll never make a better friend than Mrs. Patmore. And considering what a whiner Daisy is most of the time, it's more than she deserves.

Holding Out For A Hero

Sir John might have thought Rose was a likely romantic prospect for him, out or not (she's not). But he kind of blows it by getting way too drunk at the jazz club, puking everywhere, and leaving Rose alone on the dance floor while he takes off to collect himself. Fortunately, Rose doesn't have to be alone and embarrassed for long.

Shame

After all the mishegoss at the dance club, what with Rose actually touching A Black Person with her gloved hands, Mary is finally like, jesus christ, Tom, what is your problem. He's like, I'm so disgusting that I can't even tell you how disgusting I am or you'll despise me. And she's like, I'm not going to get into specifics but JOIN THE CLUB. And Tom's like, huh. And Mary's like, if you can't tell me, tell SOMEone. And Tom's like, hmmmmm.

Real Tough Luck For Mabel

Planned Un-parenthood

Who called the meeting? Tom and Mrs. Hughes.

What's it about? Tom having finally confided in Mrs. Hughes about his gross indiscretion, she's come up with a plan of attack to get Edna to back up off him.

How'd it go? Pretty badly from Edna's perspective. She starts out tough, saying she's not scared of them ganging up on her because she wants her baby to have a father. Then Mrs. Hughes announces that Edna's not pregnant, because she wouldn't let herself get pregnant until she knew for sure that she had Tom on lockdown: "Why else would you buy this book of instructions?" Turns out Mrs. Hughes found a copy of Marie Stopes's Married Love in Edna's room, so she's pretty sure Edna knows a few lifehacks when it comes to preventing conception. Tom's like, but what if I had agreed to marry her? and Mrs. Hughes is like, she just would have gotten pregnant then, how dumb are you? Mrs. Hughes says that unless Edna drops the charade, Mrs. Hughes will call the doctor and have him forcibly examine her, and that if Edna tries to go over her head to Cora, Mrs. Hughes won't give her a recommendation and Edna will never work again. Edna backs down and leaves, and Mrs. Hughes is like, shit, thank god that worked, I was totally bluffing. The only thing missing is Tom and Mrs. Hughes in a freeze-frame high-five.

Shade

Class Recognize Class

Did The Smooth-Talking Gigolo Convention Let Out Early?

You can really tell that the world is changing based on the fact that Edith is having an unchaperoned dinner at Michael's, and when I say unchaperoned I mean that all his servants have gone home and literally anything can happen — not like at a Lady Warwick's house, where she'd ring the bell REAL early so that the nobles could sneak back to their own beds before their maids and valets woke up. So anyway, after Michael's finished telling her that he has something for her to sign to give her authority over his affairs, and that he thinks he'll pass the time in Munich by writing a novel because OF COURSE HE WILL, she's like, maybe we can go out to that jazz club, and Michael's like, I don't want to go out, and then they start kissing, AND THEN...?

Mabel Triumphant

Thomas stops Lord G to offer up a possible replacement for Edna. Oh good, this'll end well.

Tom and Lord G ask Mary when they'll be seeing Tony again, and Mary's like, he was just telling me that he's going to get engaged to Mabel and I'm FINE.

Aunt Rosamund tells Edith that the maid saw her coming in at 6 in the morning and totally narced on her: "Be under no illusions. A lot may be changing, but some things will stay the same." She manages not to say the word "skank" out loud, but I think we all heard it anyway.

Tom is cheerful to have gotten rid of Edna while Mary is clearly ambivalent about ditching Tony but neither of them actually tells the other what they're thinking about because as much as the world is changing, REPRESSION NEVER WILL.