Downton Abbey

SPOILER ALERT! WHAT FOLLOWS CONTAINS A SYNOPSIS AND COMMENTS ABOUT LAST NIGHT'S EPISODE. IF YOU MISSED IT OR TIVOED IT, AND DON'T WANT TO BE TIPPED OFF, STOP READING NOW!

This paragraph is mostly filler, so people who glanced downward before reading the spoiler alert won't get any clues about the show before watching it. One of the things about "Downton Abbey" that I've wondered about is the name of the property. Why Downton Abbey?  Why not "Downton Manor" or "Downton Estates" or something like that? Then I remembered English history enough to recall that in the 1540's - just recently in English history - King Henry VIII suppressed all the Catholic monasteries and convents in England, confiscated the lands and buildings, tossed the monks and nuns onto the roadside, then sold off the properties at bargain prices to political pals and opportunists. He thus replenished the royal treasury, destroyed Catholic influence in England, and cemented lots of political alliances all in one brilliant, ruthless act.

One of Earl Robert Grantham's ancestors was undoubtedly a beneficiary of Henry's "largess."

Well, that should be enough background to fill a screen and prevent anyone from accidentally discovering the plot of last night's program. On to the plot and the commentary.

We'll start with the downstairs cast. Bates is still in prison after being convicted of murdering his wife - on weak evidence. Now in prison for life, he's run afoul of his gangster cellmate and the two of them are planting evidence in each other's bunks. Bates got the better of the cellmate last night, but the villain is in cahoots with one of the guards and they're hatching new skullduggery to get even with our boy, probably by next week. Meanwhile, good-hearted Anna, Bates new wife, is trying in every way she can to re-open his case, and has a promising bit of evidence almost in hand. If she can get a certain witness to say what she actually saw, Bates will be exonerated, but the witness doesn't like Bates and will not volunteer the information.

Speaking of bunks, it's more and more obvious that Thomas Barrows, the cowardly opportunistic valet to the earl, would like to get the new footman Jimmy - no, call him James at Downton Abbey, where we observe the formalities - into his bunk. Jimmy James (It sounds like a sandwich shop, doesn't it?) isn't fully aware of Thomas' advances, though he is getting the idea. The lady's maid, Sarah O'Brien, is encouraging the two men to be together as much as possible. Once Thomas' ally on the staff, O'Brien now strongly dislikes Thomas because he has been dismissive of her nephew, the new footman, Alfred. One suspects that Thomas will fall into O'Brien's trap, make a pass at Jimmy, and bring scandal on himself.

Otherwise, Ethel, once a maid at Downton, fell into prostitution after bearing a child out of wedlock with an army officer who had the bad luck to be killed in action shortly afterwards. Dismissed from domestic service by Mrs. Hughes, and scorned by the soldier's parents - at least his father - Ethel had little recourse. Now she has agreed to give her toddler son to his grandparents to raise.

Mrs. Isobel Crawley, feeling sympathetic and trying to help, hired Ethel as a maid at her home near the
Abbey, which caused her other maid, Mrs. Bird, to resign in disgust. Mrs. Bird then went on to write a letter to Mr. Carson, the Downton butler, telling him what happened, and he forbade anyone on the Downton staff to enter Mrs. Crawley's home. I guess he thinks prostitution is catching, or Ethel is so alluring the male staff would not be able to resist her. Meanwhile, Ethel failed to distinguish herself as a cook for Mrs. Crawley.

One more bit of downstairs news. Daisy, impatient for a promotion to assistant cook, is attracted to  Alfred, but every time she works up the nerve to make a play for him, Mrs. Patmore, the cook, interrupts. Now Mrs Patmore has hired a new scullery maid, allowing her to promote Daisy, but the girl's happiness is crushed when Alfred shows an interest in the new employee, named Ivy. So Daisy is consistently bossy and rude to the new girl.

The main events of the evening were upstairs, however. Edith, middle daughter of the Earl Robert and Lady Cora, wrote a letter to the London "Tines" advocating women's suffrage and now has been asked to do a weekly column for the paper. The earl is not pleased. Edith needed an ego boost after being jilted last week.

Meanwhile, after consenting to invest in the property last week, Matthew Crawley, son-in-law and heir to the earl, finally takes a look at the estate accounts and has concluded that the earl doesn't  seem to know anything about management. The estate is going broke because he can't seem to make any economies or develop his properties. The earl is emerging more and more as a kind of pinhead frankly, a nice enough man, but incapable and wrong about almost everything. More about that in a minute.

The main event, and the tragedy of the episode, was the death of Lady Sybil Crawley Branson, shortly after giving birth to a daughter. Tom Branson, for those who missed previous episodes, was once the family chauffeur, and an Irish nationalist, who married Sybil much to her family's distress. Now he is a wanted man in Ireland, a fugitive after participating in the arson of an estate house there.

With Sybil about to deliver her baby, the earl sent for a renowned obstetrician from London, who refused to acknowledge anything abnormal, even when the family doctor insisted she might have eclampsia, and must have a caesarian section to save her life. With Tom paralyzed by indecision about which doctor to trust, Robert entrusted matters to the specialist and Sybil died in agony. The death scene was harrowing. The actress's throat seemed to swell as her airway closed. I don't know how they did that, but  it was very graphic.

In the aftermath, there were tears and a good deal of bitterness. The London doctor quickly departed.
Tom Branson was left with a newborn daughter to raise and a wife to mourn. Lady Cora communicated through the staff that she was no longer willing to share a bed with the earl. And the surviving sisters, Mary and Edith, were temporarily reconciled.

If all this sounds very melodramatic, that's because it is. What sets "Downton Abbey" apart from the afternoon soap operas is the setting, the passage of time in the stories, and Julian Fellowes' willingness to actually kill is characters. Call it a high tone soap opera if you wish. I'd say it's a kind of guilty pleasure. Perhaps we know we shouldn't be intrigued by this amount of angst, but we are anyway.

And look at that. I've gone through  the entire plot without once mentioning the dowager countess, Lady Violet, played by the wonderful  Maggie Smith.