<p>Maybe Mr. Green will die in mysterious circumstances (regretted by no one) before Bates has a chance to kill him, and Anna will think Bates did it. </p>
<p>I’d love it if Mrs. Hughes pushed him under a train. “Oops, sorry, my mistake,” she would say with perfect aplomb. Or the Scottish equivalent.</p>
<p>Love Mrs. Hughes also. She is definitely my hero although everyone in the house ends up putting her in difficult situations (like the Alfred visit where she had to lie about coming down with the flu)</p>
<p>My DH’s theory is that Mrs. Hughes is going to off Mr. Green! She rocks. Did you notice the things that were hanging on the wall right next to her hands during her confrontation scene? I thought she was going to reach right out and grab one while she was reaming him out. </p>
<p>Last night’s episode was over too soon–lots happening. Love all the speculation here. I think I’m a bit more sympathetic to Mary and her motivations than some. When she told Anna she knew what happened, she said she wanted to help because Anna had helped her (with Pamuk). Also, given the circumstances, I bought into the pig-saving scene. After all, earlier conversations in the show reinforced her determination to save Downton starting with the pigs. So it seemed reasonable that she would get (more than) her hands dirty to save them!</p>
<p>Well, I would have thought that Mary would have change her clothes before going out to see them. At least her shoes!</p>
<p>So Mary wasn’t “innocent” when she married Matthew? How about that. Huh. Then I have even more compassion for Edith.</p>
<p>Maybe Mrs. Hughes will off Mr. Green, and Bates will take the fall for her.</p>
<p>Color me as one who also bought the pig scene with Mary. I think she was eager to prove the guy wrong about the “landed gentry” being afraid to change their ways to save their estates. I also think it believable that she would be discreet about Rose and the Jazz singer as well because of her own past mis-adventure. </p>
<p>Um…no, you wouldn’t…or at least I think you wouldn’t. Edith wrote a letter to the Turkish ambassador explaining that the diplomat died in a “slut’s” arms–and named Mary. Mary told Matthew what happened before they were married.</p>
<p>Mr. Pamuk assured Mary–when she told him she had no experience–that she would “still be a virgin for her husband.”</p>
<p>I really think that what Edith did was unforgivable. I can never like her.</p>
<p>I also bought the pig scene. Mary was determined to prove herself.</p>
<p>So who do you think Mary will choose for her second husband? Lord Gillingham or Charles Blake? I like Blake. That actor played the son in Foyle’s War, a miniseries I enjoyed.</p>
<p>And this week’s update…<a href=“http://happyplace.someecards.com/29207/downton-abbey-facebook-recap-season-4-episode-6”>http://happyplace.someecards.com/29207/downton-abbey-facebook-recap-season-4-episode-6</a></p>
<p>I’d buy the pig scene up to the point where Mr. Blake playfully threw mud at her. It’s possible that she’d have tolerated that from Matthew and responded in kind, but no way would Lady Mary Crawley have engaged in that sort of horseplay with a man like Blake with whom she was barely civil until that evening.</p>
<p>That was a bridge too far for me.</p>
<p>I believed it, because they’d been working in that mud for three or four hours and she would have been exhausted.</p>
<p>How long has Mary been widowed? The fourth season began 6 months after Matthew’s death, and I don’t think another 6 months has passed in the season’s episodes thusfar, so it hasn’t even been a year. I don’t know what the protocol was for the times, but it seems awfully soon for her to even be considering a new mate. It’s one thing that she’s no longer wearing black and is getting on with daily life, but I think being courted this quickly would raise eyebrows even today.</p>
<p>I’m on Team Blake. :)</p>
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<p>Maybe Alfred comes back for another visit and learns of what happened to Anna; he steps forward and volunteers to Mrs. Hughes that he will poison Mr. Green. They tell Mr. Green that Alfred is showing off some of his new cooking skills, and they ask him to be a guinea pig. And of course, with no way to test for most poisons in food back then, he gets away with it, then returns to The Ritz, feeling like a hero, knowing that Anna and Bates can now be at peace. </p>
<p>Team Blake for me too.</p>
<p>I don’t just want Rapey McRaperson to die. I want him to die horribly in agony. </p>
<p>That actor played the son in Foyle’s War, a miniseries I enjoyed.
Me too.
Maybe I will have to watch Downton again.</p>
<p>I find myself thinking of the plot twists and turns on Downton waaaaaaaay too much. Now I understand how people get addicted to soap operas.</p>
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<p>First, there’s no indication Mary has been considering a new mate, except for Gillingham’s direct proposal which she considered for five minutes before rejecting. And he was a lifelong friend with whom she clearly had an easy, natural connection.</p>
<p>Second, she hasn’t been wearing black all the time, but she has been wearing purple (including while mucking pigs). I had been given to understand that purple was an appropriate mourning color in the '20s.</p>
<p>As for Mary being courted . . . the script makes clear that her parents are all in favor of it. In the normal course of things – had Matthew’s magical will not fallen out of some book, had Mary not been living with her family, had her family not been very well off, even for the aristocracy, and had Mary had a brother rather than a son who would have been the heir to Downton Abbey and the earlship – a fairly swift remarriage would have been an economic necessity for a widow like Mary. I doubt that entertaining suitors within a year of her husband’s death would have raised eyebrows.</p>