Free Bates, Pt. II: Downton Goes There... And Back Again
Foolishly, the writers of Downton Abbey did not go back in time to alter Season 5's plot development after my plea not to drag the show’s viewers through another Bates Goes To Prison debacle.
We have been there and we have already donned the “Free Bates” tees with Mr. Bates’s face on them, but apparently Julian Fellowes will not stop until we have a matching set, one with the Mister and one with the Misses. Because in the last episode that aired in the good ol’ US of A, Anna was arrested for Mr. Green’s murder.
To recap, Mr. Green (Lord Gillingham’s valet) raped Anna during a party last season. He mysteriously turned up dead in Piccadilly Square (sort of the Times Square equivalent of London) on a day when Mr. Bates claimed to be in York and Anna was in London attending to Lady Mary. Ever since, the police have been after the couple, and even revealed in the last episode that they know Mr. Green had raped other women.
I don’t think Mr. or Mrs. Bates did it, and I find the whole “let’s split up the valiant lovebirds via a black-and-white criminal justice system” plot quite tired, considering we went through it once before when Mr. Bates was on trial for the murder of his wife (which by the way, I do believe he was guilty of).
In fact, I have what is probably a rather cockeyed theory in that I suspect Mabel Lane Fox – Gillingham’s former and now again current fiancé – may have done it, since she seems to be a pretty stolid woman who doesn’t take issue with seeking out justice. And if she really spent that much time around Gillingham, it wouldn’t surprise me if she were either subject to or witness to Green’s despicable behavior. Or perhaps she knows who did the deed. In any case, I feel we haven’t seen the last of Mabel Lane Fox – she’s too dynamic of a character.
All the Bates drama aside, I applaud the writers’ decision to have Lord Grantham recognize fairly quickly that Edith’s ward is, in fact, her own child by her now deceased lover Michael Gregson. Way to not create any painstakingly drawn out BS there, guys. Try to apply that to the Bates’s criminal justice run-in, kthanks.
Rose’s marriage to her Jewish beau became a delightfully soapy miniature whodunnit episode within an episode when someone set him up to look like he cheated on her during his stag party.
But what really intrigues me about this relationship is its future, considering that we know that at this point in the show Hitler has begun his rise to power, as evidenced by his mob’s murder of Gregson.
I’m quite sad that the finale is coming up this weekend. My Sundays will be just that much less entertaining. And yes, I realize this is almost my third post in a row about Downton. And no, I do not care.