Downton Abbey - Recap: The Struggle Is Real
This is a review of the American airing of Downton Abbey – Season 4, Episode 5. There will be slight differences from the original UK airing, necessitating a different approach. However, reviews for the original episodes can be found by clicking the “Downton Abbey” tag. Episodes from UK airings are tagged as “Series 4,” while American airings will be listed as “Season 4.”
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One of the things that is always on the periphery of Downton Abbey, but not always front-and-center is its exploration of class. There's a wide chasm between someone like Anna (Joanne Froggatt) and someone like Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), and it's a point that's often lost in storylines that do their damndest to illustrate that, really, the help isn't all that different from the people they serve, and vice-versa. Everybody has his or her own issues, and everybody stumbles and falls in equal measure. Yet here, we see the stratification of English society brought to bear on the episode in a way it really hasn't in recent weeks. Whether it's Cora getting Anna and Bates (Brendan Coyle) a table at a fancy restaurant after the maître d' blows them off, or whether it's Rose (Lily James) causing a stir by hiring Jack Ross (Gary Carr) to sing at Lord Grantham's birthday, the barriers of class are still there, even if we can't always see them.
One of the things that bugged me during the episode's initial UK airing was its relatively sense of formlessness. I didn't sense any kind of structuring or guiding narrative here, since the episode avoided ever focusing on one main storyline like it had in weeks past. But given several months to mull it over, I can see how this approach mostly works here. I've said in the past that Downton Abbey is sort of like a novel or a collection of short stories, concerned more with sketching a world and allowing us to live in it than with letting the plot have control over the steering wheel. And this is an episode that really illustrates that narrative approach, as each storyline plays out like a series of vignettes, lingering long enough to sketch out a story, but not so long that we ever truly feel like the entire picture has been painted.
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The marriage of Anna and Bates is doing slightly better following last week's confrontation, although there are still huge issues stemming from Anna's rape, as one would presume there would be. Anna doesn't appreciate Bates treating her like a victim, and it's something with which Bates has difficulty coming to grips, as Anna's rape is a reflection of his own powerlessness. Bates projects his own feelings of helplessness onto Anna by making it about protecting her, since he feels he failed to protect her from Green in the first place. Anna's attempts to seize agency over her own life, by refusing to be seen as a victim, contrasts with Bates's need to portray her as a victim, since he can't make amends for his own perceived failures unless Anna needs protecting and consoling. "Every time I remember what you've been through, I want to murder," Bates tells her, and it's a really dark moment. Not because of Bates's desire to murder Anna's rapist, but because Bates seems to intend this as some sort of declaration of love, as if love is represented solely through action. It's a chilling moment that is perfectly in keeping with the illustration of Bates as someone who can be warm and caring one minute, and potentially sinister the next.
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And romantic discord isn't the sole province of Anna and Bates this week, as the relationship between Edith (Laura Carmichael) and Gregson (Charles Edwards) isn't going all that great. However, this is for vastly different reasons. Gregson has mysteriously vanished while in Germany, with no one knowing whether or not something terrible has happened to him. And that's not even the biggest issue at stake here: like many of us assumed last week, it turns out Edith is pregnant, exacerbating her already-immense concerns. Yet while everyone in the family can sense that something is terribly wrong with her, Edith blames her awkwardness on her concern for Gregson, as she fears the worst. Far more than just being a case of "middle child syndrome," it seems like it's Edith's lot in life to have...well, a fairly lousy lot in life. I mean, sure, she's a Grantham and was born into high society, but that won't mean all that much if she ends up having a baby out of wedlock. For as much as class is a very real thing, it's ultimately completely ephemeral, like breath on glass. It can evaporate at the drop of a hat, as not even one's high birth could save their reputation from a scandal of sufficient magnitude.
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Take the travails of Lady Rose, for example. In arranging a birthday party for Robert (Hugh Bonneville), Rose hires Jack Ross to perform, and from the way the high society types react, you'd think they'd never seen a handsome black man before. It seems inevitable that this story is headed for scandal, as Rose takes an obvious liking to the singer. Forbidden love might be too expected, but I like how it continues to shape Rose into the new Sybil, in a way. She doesn't subscribe to the rules of the society in which she was raised, and that kind of anarchic spirit has been sorely missing on the show since Sybil's death. I doubt Rose is going to spark a class uprising or anything, but it's great to have a character who could give us this kind of storyline, as the show desperately needs the shot in the arm that Rose's romantic entanglements could provide. Right away, Julian Fellowes milks Jack's appearance for all that it's worth, having Mary (Michelle Dockery) catch Rose kissing Jack in the kitchen. And so Mary becomes the curator of her cousin's romantic secrets. Interesting.
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And we have more romantic entanglements to go along with it: Alfred (Matt Milne) gets a callback from the Ritz in London after one of the final four candidates for the cooking course drops out, and so he chooses to depart Downton Abbey, to the immense disappointment of Daisy (Sophie McShera), who overcomes her heartbreak just long enough to wish him luck. Their parting is a poignant moment, and it's contrasted well with Daisy's eventual outburst towards Ivy (Cara Theobold). Basically, Jimmy (Ed Speelers) takes Ivy to see The Sheik (which is, thematically, a significant choice, since it is adapted from a novel that has one literature's most controversial rape storylines), and after the movie, Jimmy gets a bit aggressive in his attempts at making a move. And so, later, Ivy complains about the lack of decent men, which prompts Daisy to rip her to shreds for ignoring a perfectly good man in Alfred. I will say, it was a pretty satisfying moment, even while I admit that I've often found Daisy to be needlessly petty in her dealings with Ivy. If nothing else, Ivy needed a good, stern talking to from someone older to whom she might listen (and it's easy to forget just how much older Daisy is, as it's been well over a decade since season one, in the show's universe, despite no one appearing to have visibly aged at all). It's a far more effective way of tying up the love rectangle than expected.
As for other developments, Molesley (Kevin Doyle) attempts to get rehired following Alfred's departure, but Carson (Jim Carter) is hesitant. However, in a moment that's evocative of the show's themes of class, Carson changes his mind once Molesley serves tea to the other servants. Carson rehires Molesley, satisfied that the former valet knows his place in the hierarchy. Thomas (Rob James-Collier), meanwhile, is intent on making sure his spy knows her place, as he continues to lord some unknown secret over Baxter in order to get her to do his bidding, in this case figuring out what happened with Anna and Bates. He doesn't really get anywhere this week, but much like Edith, Thomas's lot seems to be to never really get anywhere. He essentially has the opposite problem as Mary, who seems to be having all sorts of potentially fortuitous developments forced upon her.
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Case in point, the arrival of yet another potential suitor: Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden), the boss of Evelyn Napier. Blake is in town on business, as the Crawleys are looking to get into pig farming. Blake and Mary have a strange dynamic, as they're testy with one another for no immediately apparent reason other than that the story needs them not to get along. But Ovenden and Dockery actually have decent chemistry, so it makes the storyline seem less perfunctory than it might otherwise have been. Mary's renewed investment in the estate is contrasted with the internal conflict faced by Tom (Allen Leech), as he's still not sure about moving to America, stating that while he's grown to love the Crawley family, he feels has no place in their world, since it's not like some other Earl's daughter is going to give him a second look. This all culminates in the best scene of the episode, as Mary, Tom, and Isobel (Penelope Wilton) sit in the nursery with baby George and little Sybil and talk about love. Isobel discusses her late husband, Reginald, and recounts how she felt literally "sick with love" when they were first married. Tom affirms this feeling when talking about how hard he fell for Sybil. Mary, meanwhile, recalls Matthew's proposal in the season 2 finale, stating that while she had been cold without her jacket on that snowy evening, she still felt warm because she knew Matthew was about to propose. It's just a beautiful, simple scene that does a lot to remind us of just how endearing these characters can be, even while their individual storylines aren't particularly fruitful.
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Actually, scratch that, Isobel's storyline is kind of great, upon rewatch. It's a fairly straightforward story, but it says a lot about the class structure, as Isobel attempts to exonerate Pegg (Joncie Elmore) from Violet's (Maggie Smith) constant accusations of theft. Violet inherently distrusts Pegg because of his low station in life, and also simply from the fact that she doesn't know him all that well. When her prized letter opener goes missing, whom else would she suspect? Yet Isobel plays detective in order to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing heirloom, and while her search isn't a waste of time, it turns out Violet doesn't need Isobel's catalyzing influence in order to reach a realization of her own fault. Violet discovers that she was at fault for misplacing the item, and has already apologized to Pegg and rehired him by the time Isobel has her facts together. It's not the most compelling story in the world, but it helps to further illustrate the stratification of society, in addition to providing an excuse to put Wilton and Smith onscreen together again, not only to indulge in some wonderful interplay between the actors, but to also further develop the bond between those two characters.
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Class is often subtext on Downton Abbey, and so it's pretty potent when issues of class become the text itself. Downton Abbey couldn't get away with a meandering, mostly subtextual episode like this every week, but there's something inviting about episodes like these, which privilege the opportunity to spend time in this world and get a sense of the period over simply telling a salacious story.