Season 5, Episode One

Downton Abbey fans across the nation rejoice at the season opener for the wildly popular show, now in its fifth season. After the abysmal fourth season, in which the best acting was done by the butler's eyebrows, the beloved Masterpiece Classic comes back with a solid delivery featuring everything that we love best about Downton Abbey, her inhabitants, and their friends. I believe that fans everywhere have breathed a huge sigh of relief that they will not have to struggle through yet another season of forced drama which failed to raise any real emotion or feelings, even for characters that we have loved from the beginning. Writers of Downton, I caution you. You can only throw Bates in prison so many times before even we staunch supporters will begin placing our own advertisments for a new valet to Lord Grantham. But more on Bates in a moment.

The returning cast was more settled in their roles than last year, with a wider light being cast on Baxter, Cora's mild-mannered, mousy, yet sympathy-inducing lady's maid. In a classic twist of Thomas' habitual scheming, the poor woman is forced to reveal her shadowed past to the shocked but pragmatic Cora. With Molesly by her side Baxter weathers the storm and unwittingly endangers Thomas' place at Downton. Luckily for him, Edith (unknowingly) throws a book into her fire and proceeds to set the entire room ablaze. In thanks to Thomas for raising the alarm and rescuing the unconscious Lady Edith, Cora spares his neck yet again. This man has more lives than a cat, but what would Downton really be without everyone's favorite nefarious footman/sergeant/under butler?His natural inclination to drag down those whom he cannot best has moved the plot line forward many times, and is a solid prop to the entire show. While his megalomania could use a bit more explaining, I suppose that being a servant-class gay man in the 1920's is enough to make anyone have a bad day for 12 years running.

The undercurrents of trouble, time, and tide are swirling round Bates and Anna yet again. Everyone knows he killed the evil valet Green, and would be disappointed in him if he didn't. But this brooding, slightly harsh side of Bates that has always simmered beneath his smooth, kind exterior seems to be surfacing with more frequency. The advent of his wife to Downton in Season 2 began to widen his character and give real meat to the man who, formerly, we all loved as blindly as Anna. While we cannot fault the devotion of true love, only she is married to him and not we. How soon will we/must we be forced to reckon with this dark side? Can we continue to stand by the beleaguered valet? The attempt to rain horror down on Anna's head last season was shocking in every sense of the word, but failed to capture the viewers sympathy as solidly as any story line directly involving Bates and his well fare. And so the writers have gone back to what they know and are once again readying Bates for the whipping post. How convincing with this story line be? Will it secure our devotion to Bates, or do irreparable damage to his already sullied character?

Bless him, but Lord Grantham is still lost. He loves the life of privilege, as long as everyone always expects it to be that way. The world has been moving on and changing around him since the war began, and like a child trying to hop aboard a spinning merry-go-round, Robert's knees have the scars to prove that it is no easy feat to keep up. Season 3 promised a partnership of Robert, Matthew, and Tom that would have given Lord Grantham purpose and direction, while gently steering his into modern times, flanked by men who loved him for who he is. The heart-breaking and sudden death of Matthew left Robert reeling until Mary shook herself out of her zombie widowhood and took the reigns of the estate into her own hands. The work being done by Robert, Mary, and Tom is probably still in the vein of Matthew's vision for a more efficient and productive estate, but without his male right-hand to guide him, Robert is left feeling put out by being passed over for such things as a village committee, a posting that in Season 1 would have been a mere nuisance. How little we appreciate the small things, until we feel they are all we have left. In spite of his inability to pull his head out of Edwardian England, I still love Robert and hope for the best for him always.

On a side note: it was hugely unkind for the writers to have Sybil nickname him after a donkey. We all know Robert has been an idiot in the past, and trying to label him as one while passing it off as an affectionate pet name from his largely ignored granddaughter is heavy-handed at the very least.

I found it very appropriate that the opening scene was of a lone figure, Edith, riding through a grey day to visit her secret child on the farm of an estate tenant. Finally, the poor woman has something to be sad about. And how truly sad it is. I look forward to the continuation of that plot line with interest, the first time I have ever felt that way about anything related to Edith. Ever. And bravo to her for throwing the book inscribed with the name of her one-time lover, while holding the picture of her infant daughter. The man was the last in a long string of unavailable, inappropriate, and just plain wrong suitors that Edith threw herself at over the previous seasons, and I hope that she can take a note from Mary's (and previously Sybil's) book and learn to stand on her own two feet.

Ah, Mary. While Matthew was the only one who could ever feel affection for you, I've loved you from the beginning and can't stop now, if for no other reason than that you look divine in anything you wear and have flawless skin and perfect diction. The lovelorn yet ever-hopeful handsome pirate Gillingham is still circling, trying his best to erode her resolve to the point that she will marry him, a purpose he set out for himself early in Season 4. But Mary will not be easily caught, and as the show strives to reflect upon the changing times, it is no surprise that the mild-mannered buccaneer suggested the weekend of trial marriage, nor that Mary took him up on it. Sex has certainly been established as a strong overtone for this season, and is already cheapening the quality of what has been, in previous seasons, brilliant dialogue. Even Violet and Isobel had a mildly suggestive exchange about Isobel's would-be suitor, Lord Merton. Let it be known that I have an inexplicable feeling of disgust when I think of that man. My bet has always been firmly on the kindly but grumpy Dr. Clarkson, and there it shall remain.

More to come after Episode Two!