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Gay Girl’s Goggles: “Downton Abbey” recap (2.09) — A Christmas Carol

Apparently the Downton Abbey Christmas special was quite divisive among fans. Apparently Julian Fellowes experienced a Steven Moffat level of grief for doing the things he did to his characters over the course of Season 2. Apparently some people had problems with the pacing and the sudsiness and the oh-so-convenient Spanish Flu. Well, phooey on all you naysayers! Did you or did you not spend multiple hours in the company of Michelle Dockery’s face? Answer: Yes. So hush now. Hush and repent and weep openly with me, for we won’t see Lady Mary again until 2013.

It’s Christmas! William is dead (sniffle); Lavinia is dead (her?); Sybil has really run off to Ireland to marry Branson; Jane is no longer employed as a maid/hooker; and Ethel and her giant baby are nowhere to be seen. Which means we can concentrate on the things that make this show worth watching: The relationships between the Granthams and their staff, Marry and Matthew doing their looks, and the Dowager Countess saying all the perfect things. Oh, and the constant apocalypse that is John Bates’ life.

Let’s start there. Bates has been in prison for quite a while now, and despite Sir Richard’s displeasure, everyone’s number one feeling at Downton Abbey is the impending murder trial. They can talk of nothing else. In fact, Ms. Hughes, Ms. O’Brien, and Lord Grantham are all being called to testify at his trial. Unfortunately for poor Bates, it is opposite day when his trial happens, and his archenemies (a lowly lady’s maid) gives the most helpful testimony while his biggest supporter all these years (an earl) pretty much damns him to be hged. On the witness stand, he’s like, “Bates has always been a hard worker and a loyal companion. Why, I remember this one time when he helped pick out my cuff links even though he was so tired from a long, hard day of murdering his ex-wife.” Verdict: Guilty. Sentence: Death.

But the whole “You’ll be hanged at dawn!” thing was just a fake out. Bates really only gets life in prison. He makes Anna promise to make friends and not pine away endlessly for him for all eternity and she agrees that even though she’ll never find a martyr as determined to nail his own self to the cross as Bates, she is several levels hotter than him and will probably be OK.

Also smokin’ hot is Thomas and his return to his footman duds. And by “smokin'” I mean, literally every time he is on screen, he is engulfed in a veil of cigarette smoke. It’s like he floats around on a cloud nicotine vapor or something. After losing all his money on his black market sheneanigans, he returns to the service of Downton. Remember how in the pilot episod, all he wanted was to be the first footman? Well, six years and one world war later, all he wants is to be the first footman. This week’s scheme is his most sinister one yet: He steals Lord Grantham’s dog and locks him in a shed in the middle of the woods so he can find him and be a hero. My roommate and I paused this scene to shout at each other for fifteen minutes about how Thomas was beyond redemption if he killed Isis. But then, by the end of the episode, when he showed up all disheveled from crawling through the woods on his hands and knees, through brambles and over briers, because he really was worried about the dog – well, we forgave all his previous transgressions. And his smile when he realized Isis was OK! His actual smile! I don’t think we’d ever even seen it before!

You know who else stole my heart this week? Little Daisy. After some hilarious high jinks with a Ouija Board, Daisy agrees to visit William’s dad on his farm. She’s still tying herself in knots over the fact that she married William on his death bed, even though she didn’t like him like him. But William’s dad doesn’t care about all that. His wife is dead, all of his children are dead, and he asks Daisy if it’s OK if he loves her like a daughter. She cries, he cries, I cry – I’m crying while I type this! – and it looks like our little scullery maid is finally going get promoted to sous chef.

But let’s talk about the most important thing: Lady Mary.

Sir Richard can tolerate the way the Grantham clan gives Christmas presents to their servants, he can tolerate the way they won’t STFU about Bates’ murder trial, he can tolerate the fact that Mary has been engaged to him for half a decade but still won’t set a wedding date or, like, look at his face. He can even tolerate the obscene amount of eye-shagging that happens Mary and Matthew are in a room together. But when Mary says she’ll stand with Matthew while he’s shooting birds instead of standing beside Richard while he’s shooting birds, the guy just loses it. For a hot second, I thought he was going to shoot his gun loader to prove a point that he’s not to be trifled with.

Of course, every time he starts hollering at Mary, Matthew comes running to glare at him. After one such staring sessions, Matthew is like, “Mary, that guy is the worst. You can live at Downton forever, you know. You don’t have to marry him or anyone else who isn’t me.” But six years ago, Mary spent probably fifteen uncomfortable seconds getting poked by a Pamuk, and the comeuppance is Sir Richard.

Finally, Lord Grantham asks Cora if there’s some untoward reason that Mary is marrying such a jackass, and Cora goes, “Well, now that you’ve started sleeping with the servants, perhaps you’re in a position to hear the truth: A couple of years ago, I agreed the dead body of a Turkish diplomat across the house in the middle of the night after he died deflowering our eldest daughter.” Lord Grantham is shocked, but also a little premarital boning is no reason to spend your life with new money. He tells Mary to break it off and then go to America to weather the scandal. After all, there are cowboys there.

So Mary does break it off and Richard does agree that he’ll destroy her, but nothing takes the sting out of having your family’s reputation ruined by a snowy proposal by the love of your life. No, you didn’t dream it! No, it was not a fan fiction! After Mary sends Richard packing, Matthew follows her out into the night, out into the snow, and gets down on his knee and asks for her to marry him. For real this time. He knows about Pamuk, doesn’t care about Pamuk, just wants to use his heart to love Mary for all time and his magical penis to sire a house full of children with her. They twirl in the snow, and here come the waterworks again!

Oh, and Sybil is pregnant and Edith is rekindling a pre-war romance and these are the things the Dowager Countess said:

 Oh, darlings, how will we make it until 2013?

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