saki

The Jane lovefest really annoyed me - the show is just so convinced of her amazingness, that they forget to show it sometimes and just tell us about it. A lot. How awful of Rafael not to do anything at all for Petra, despite contributing to the Jane video! How self-centred of Jane not to do anything for her own mother or grandmother! I also thought it was very poor form to accept Petra's hospitality and then shout at her sister. Was that really the time? Who would she be jealous of? Everyone loves her.

I'm catching up with the show on netflix. I've had this feeling for some time but this episode just sealed it for me - I really feel like Jane is actively enjoying stringing along the two guys, at this point. I know they want us to see her as naive and stuff but there has just been sooo much of her fluttering her eyelashes at each of them in turn, kissing one, then the other, etc etc, for me not to see it as deliberate at this point. I also feel like she just kind of expects everyone's lives to revolve around her - at the beginning of the show, I really liked how secure she felt with her mother and grandmother but, at this point, it feels actually a bit selfish the way that she expects them to base their lives around her. It doesn't occur to her to even ask them whether they're ok to look after Mateo while she goes to grad school. It doesn't occur to her either that Michael or Rafael might ever tire of her - she seems to assume that they will always be waiting in the wings for her to make her decision. I still love the show as a whole but I'm kind of over Jane.

It's true that Sybil was much more of a rebel than Edith but Mary is overwhelmingly the most traditional of all three, which is a massive difference between her and Mary. Mary's obsession with the estate and nice dinners and traditions is all completely alien to Sybil. Edith is kind of in the middle there. I just wanted to make clear that your assertion about Mary and Sybil's affinity and Edith not being at all like Sybil is not shared by all

I don't agree with this. I think Mary and Sybil do have those similarities. But Sybil and Edith also share a lot of qualities too - they were both always more interested in life outside Downton, both have much more progressive politics, both actually did something in the war effort (nursing and driving a tractor being a lot more similar than moping and singing one song)... I also don't see any particular evidence for Mary and Sybil having been closer.

I love dry witty humour - but, for me, Mary doesn't display that at all. I don't like Tom that much but I wouldn't wish Mary on him - I don't see how someone who loved someone as down to earth abd warm as Sybil could love a cold class conscious person like Mary. I don't see Tom/Edith as a great fit either but they are both outward facing which is important, I think. Mary is all about the estate and doesn't share their interest in politics, etc

I mostly enjoyed this, actually, It was bit cliched, no real surprises, but I think that's what Christmas specials are supposed to be like so that was fine with me. My favourite bits: Edith's happy ending, which was very long overdue. Cora finally having a bit of a purpose in life, it was interesting to see her at the meeting. Isobel finally getting together with Lord Merton. Rose and Atticus - they are just very sweet and it's nice to have characters who are so happy. The hats - Cora had one that was particularly stunning. Edith's dresses - the one that she wore to dinner at Bertie's and the blue one she wore in the scene with her future mother-in-law especially. In comparision to her other dresses, her wedding dress wasn't that amazing but she looked radiant the whole episode. Things that I thought were funny: Talbot having to ask whether Mary was pleased or upset by the motorcar business - given that she only really has one expression, it is quite hard to tell! Talbot and Tom continuing their bromance. "Not in Lady Mary's bedroom!" "Not Susan after your mother?" "No." "So, you're both second hand car salesmen?" Things that were a bit disappointing: No clear Baxter/Molesley - after all of the scenes they have had together, I do feel a bit cheated that we didn't even get a kiss. Things that didn't work for me: Thomas' redemption - for the reasons given by tentatively yours above Mary's redemption - we didn't even have a reference to her telling Bertie in the whole episode. If you hadn't seen the previous episode, you'd have the impression that Mary had nothing to do with Edith and Bertie splitting up. It was not portrayed as Mary righting a wrong, but doing something lovely and generous. I didn't care for it. I found it a bit weird that we had so much Edith/Talbot in this episode - at the beginning, it sort of felt that he was seeking her out.

So, going back to this episode.. For me, it was largely really upsetting to see what Mary did to Edith - I found it genuinely really hard to watch her being so cruel. I'm not entirely sure why I found it so difficult to watch - I guess, it was partly how calculated it was, you could see Mary thinking about it and planning it and then deciding to finally do it, it was absolutely not an spur of the moment thing and partly the awfulness of her response (as I've said earlier, the way that she never acknowledged it - even when both Tom and Edith tell her to her face that she can't get away with playing the innocent and pretending she didn't do it deliberately, and the way that she doesn't apologise properly). But there were some good bits: I enjoyed Edith at the magazine and the Spratt as the advice columnist - felt that was a welcome return to the tone of Season 1. Cora's line - "it's 5:30 and we're in North Yorkshire, did you expect me to tell him to pitch a tent?" - was funny. Completely inadvertently funny but Tom and Talbot's bromance.. I laughed out loud when Tom was trying to leave Talbot to propose to Mary and Talbot was all "Don't go!" and then when the two of them were going off to the church together, they made such a lovely couple... Things I was more 'meh' about: Barrow - I just didn't find this storyline worked for me. There are some people who have been consistently kind to him - like Anna, Baxter, Molesley and Bates - so I didn't really find it realistic that not being Andy's reading buddy and being made redundant drove him to suicide. Mary/Talbot - I thought this was written really badly. I still have no idea what was meant to be going on. For some of the time, it was written as though the racing car thing was the big problem but, then, when she decides to marry him, she doesn't raise the issue at all. Is he still going to race? Does she now not mind? Who knows? I actually do think the actors had some chemistry - though, to be honest, I think Michelle Dockery plays Mary as such a cold fish that she doesn't have a lot of chemistry with anyone - I don't think that was the major problem, I just thought the writing was all over the place. I think it's been obvious for several seasons now that Julian Fellowes doesn't see Tom as a massively important character so I didn't find it that surprising that he had no plot and no very satisfactory ending.

I don't think we do know she does the full job. What we see from her is obviously different to what we saw from Tom and the glimpses we've seen from Bertie. They didn't get breakfast in bed, they had to look after their own clothes/hair. If they wanted a day off, they had to actually ask their employer. Bertie has made it very clear that he can't get down to London to see Edith anytime, that he has to fit it around his work. Mary has not once, ever, on the show said that she couldn't do something she wanted to because of work - what we have seen is nothing like a woman with a proper full-time job. I just don't buy that I should somehow feel sorry for Mary because her life is so hard. Other than perhaps Robert, she is the character on the show who has had the most good fortune. Why on earth should I feel sorry for her rather than, say, for Daisy who at the beginning of the show was a girl barely into her teens who was up at the crack of dawn working hours and hours in a backbreakingly tough job, being shouted at by Mrs Patmore, for an absolute pittance?

I'm sorry, I just think this is total hyperbole. She doesn't have to be the estate manager, she is choosing to be one - she could hire one and go off and live somewhere else. It's not just because she's a woman that no-one would hire her - she doesn't treat it like a proper job, there is a massive difference between the way that she "works" and the way that, say, Bertie Pelham was working as an estate manager. She can pick and choose what she does, she can swan off to London whever she feels like it, she doesn't even have to brush her own hair!

Totally agree. I suppose it is unfair that Mary doesn't inherit. But it feels just as unfair that Edith and Sybil weren't going to. And that Rosamund didn't. And, while it is unfair that some people are never going to inherit because of their gender, it's much much more unfair to me that some people are going to have do really ridiculously hard work and graft - like Daisy, Mrs P, Mrs Hugest - and that some people, because of the accident of birth, can make one mistake and have their children taken away (Ethel.) I don't feel this great tragedy about Mary's position, frankly. Not least because she will have known her WHOLE life that she wasn't going to inherit, this wasn't some massive surprise for her. For most of her life, she will have expected to have a younger brother so it's not like she always expected to marry the heir, she was brought up with the assumption that she'd be leaving Downton when she got married. And, I'm sorry, I also find laughable this idea that she is now working for the estate - as Cora would say, she's not exactly going down the mine. She still seems to have plenty of time to go to parties, sit around having her hair brushed and to be spiteful to her sister. No, I don't think that's so clear. When she wanted to show her American grandmother "what Downton was about", did she show her the village? No, she threw a grand dinner. What she's been doing on the estate has been about moving towards farming the land themselves (i.e. getting rid of tenant farmers) which benefits her and the family, not other people. I see absolutely no evidence that she's interested in the village as a whole. There are a couple of individuals who are beneath her like Anna who she'll be nice to but, when Anna disagrees with her (as we saw over the contraception), she has no problems ordering her to do things she's uncomfortable with.

But does Mary get annoyed when Edith is sad? I don't think that's true - I think she gets annoyed when things go well for Edith. That's certainly what happened in this episode - it was Edith looking happy that caused Mary to lash out. And, previously, too, it's been when - say, Robert is proud of Edith for getting out the magazine issue, that Mary is sulky and upset with Edith.

Matthew Goode isn't imported, I think he's English. Matthew Goode isn't imported, I think he's English.

We'll see. There are still myriad ways for JF to screw Edith over. She could be left at the altar AGAIN. Mary could decide to stop the wedding because it's not about her. Bertie could have a heart attack before he gets to the altar. I really don't think Edith's happy ending is a cert.

I think this is exactly right. Mary's romances are ridiculously over the top - the worst example of this is Evelyn Napier who is apparently, a decade later, still pining for her after seeing her for a handful of hours over the years. Similarly, Talbot, Gillingham, Blake, Matthew, etc, etc. It doesn't work - it's not convincing that men fall in love with her so quickly without really getting to know her (although, I would argue that they'd be even less likely to love her after knowing her better) and it's just really dull, narrative-wise. I would have liked to have seen Mary chase a man more, be in doubt over whether he likes her, work to impress him, not have every eligible man in London chase her for no obvious reason. On the other hand, Edith and Bertie was played so well - Bertie shows some interest in the Christmas special but a believable "I'd like to dance with you" kind of interest, not love at first sight, and then it develops at a more reasonable pace.

I am still worried that Edith won't get a happy ending. I know the signs all point that way but this thread was full of post after post of people convinced that Tom and Mary was going to happen and that was clearly totally wrong.