Something last season made me think Baxter’s secret was a relationship with another woman - did I imagine that? Maybe I just figured it would have been something Barrow was especially attuned to.
whoops, wrong forum!
Ok–so I look up Marigold as I was curious about her and WARNING Wiki gives away her whole future story!!
Spoilers rarely bother me but I was very surprised. All I am going to say is that it gets complicated and that I did not finish reading the entire future events.
Bunting is a boorish stereotype. Fellowes, a Conservative peer, probably couldn’t help himself.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Bates did in fact do in Green. He can be stone cold.
Everyone knows that Isobel belongs with Dr. Clarkson. What is she thinking? She hates the high society. She’ll be much happier with days in the clinic and nights around the cozy drawing room fire.
Will Edith channel the dead Sybil, break out, and embrace her motherhood? You know that secret is toast. She’s already ahead of Mary on the feminism scale.
Did you know that Lady Anstruther is Duck Face from Four Weddings and a Funeral? Jimmy looks like he’s off the show. Wonder what gig his actor got.
I work with old people, and I realize the babies on the show could presently still be alive and among my 90
something clients.
And why is Isis still so alive and well? She too would be geriatric. It’s now 1924, and when the story started in 1912, she was already well beyond puppyhood.
If you don’t have cable you can watch at least the first episode on Connecticut Public Television. CPTV messed up and left off the last five minutes of the episode last night. To atone, they put the whole episode on their web page.
Lord Grantham was simply excellent during the scene at the end. He needs to be useful more than his current circumstances allow.
Mary is grating on me more and more and I think mostly it is her bored, drawling voice. Although I loved it when she said, “I must go upstairs and take off my hat”.
S2 sent me a COLLEGE related Downton Abbey video (has no spoilers) –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5YMV6FNFac&feature=youtu.be
Hope I didn’t violate TOS…
I hope they don’t make us wait until season 6 to find out about Gregson.
Baxter definitely has some dirt on Bates. Maybe she gave the jewelry to him, and he sold it?
I wish the newspaper editor guy would reappear, the guy who was briefly engaged to Mary. I don’t want him to be with her again, But I thought his character was interesting.
^^^LOL! thanks @CountingDown. The video was hilarious; particularly the tea pong.
Count me in on wishing that Emma Bunting blows herself up with an anarchist bomb. Sadly, Fellowes will try to convince us that she’s really wonderful by having her tutor Daisy in math. Yuck. Sybil will be turning over in her grave.
Can someone explain why the Granthams live in an abbey? An abbey is part of a monastery, yes? A church? I’ve never understood why the home is called Downton Abbey then.
Henry VIII wanted a divorce. The Catholic Church wouldn’t let him get one. So he in essence threw the Church out of England, took over all their property, and established his own state religion. Then he handed out the properties he’d expropriated to his nobles.
Thanks, cardinal Fang. I guess a lot of remodeling of buildings came next?
Wow…so much hate for Bunting. Interesting as her character is a voice of the very idealized version of the modern age we currently live in where the idea of rigid social class hierarchies and unearned deference due to the social position one’s born in is considered by many to be as obsolete as Pony Express compared to modern USPS.
Also, considering Fellowes’ own family background and political sympathies, his sympathies are probably much closer to yours even though he will expand Bunting’s character and role in the season for the sake of good conflict and thus, ratings. All good for his own bottom line even though I am being quite crude for pointing out that bit of his economic reality. 
Isobel Crawley also makes a real cutting remark when upon hearing and seeing Miss Bunting, she makes a comment about how wonderful there will be at least one intelligent person at the party.
In another interesting interplay of social classes and snobbery, I found it interesting the Countess Violet’s butler felt it so beneath him to serve the doctor because he was a commoner that he slighted him multiple times and had to be put in his place each time by the countess.
Considering such circumstances, I cannot blame the doctor for his prejudice against aristocrats regarding their inclination for leisurely sporting activities over reading…especially of the serious intellectual kind. Especially considering in that period and world, the aristocrats still had far more power over commoners like him despite his medical training as a doctor.
Duck Face also played Caroline Bingley in the BBC Pride and Prejudice. She was great in that!
Elizabeth McGovern is looking so old … It is depressing …
I did like the fact that Miss Bunting went below to thank the servants for their hard work. I thought that was thoughtful and sweet. At least she’s being true to herself and not letting the aristocrats inhibit her.
Entire episode is available on PBS.org.
Don’t quite get all the dislike for Sarah Bunting, either. It’s refreshing to have an outside the family character who speaks her mind and doesn’t feel the need to tip toe around out of fear of offending the sensibilities of the “ruling” class.
Had no idea that was Duckface!
Baxter may have taken the jewelry for money to support a child out of wedlock, or hmmmm to make that child go away. What else couldn’t she confess that would be worse than stealing, not returning the goods, and going to jail?
Bunting doesn’t make sense to me. In one scene she’s conciliatory and embarrassed by her past behavior and wants to be sure she’s truly invited to the party. In the next scene, she’s rude and brash at the same party! Some writer is confused.
If you want to see a young Elizabeth McGovern with Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage directed by Richard Benjamin (Paula Prentiss’ husband) watch Racing the Moon.
It is a gem.
I really liked the first episode of DA season 5. Immediately following that was another DA shoe - The Manners of Downtown Abbey. I enjoyed that also. Did anyone else watch the Manners show?
There was a man last season that I thought would be good for Mary. Some practical farming government type but I can’t remember his name. Hopefully he will come back. Mary + Tony = years of drawling boredom!