11:30 PM, 14 October 2012
It started so peacefully: while the Downton toffs waited for Sybil to produce someone who can take over the house in series twelve, elsewhere there was light scandal, moderate sexiness and amusing subterfuge, in what was often the funniest episode of the series so far.
Thomas, who remembered he was gay last week after six years of asexually fighting in wars and opening bad shops, got straight on with wooing Jimmy James the hot footman. It was the old "winding the clock" trick: standing behind him, one hand on the shoulder, the other guiding Jimmy as he caressed the mechanism. Next week: Thomas invites Jimmy to the cinema and offers him some popcorn from the suspiciously large box on his lap.
Down the road, mad feminazi Isobel Crawley trashed every known moral touchstone in England by offering maid-turned-prostitute Ethel a job. Mrs Bird, the cook whose expression and demeanour are vinegar-soaked at the best of times, took this poorly. "I cannot work alongside a woman of the..." she said, so angry she couldn't finish the euphemism. "Night"? "Ghetto"? "Horizontal business sector"?
Mrs Crawley was not pleased by the insubordination and flipped into full pithy-smackdown mode – which, when you spar with the Dowager Countess, is something to be reckoned with. Mrs Bird said people might think she too was on the game. "Nobody could look at you and think that, Mrs Bird." Oof! Mrs Bird announced her intention to move to Manchester, where she understood "a plain cook" would be in demand. "They will find one in you," said Mrs Crawley. Ooh, burned, Mrs B. Burned!
The other thing burned, later, was Isobel's dinner when Ethel, newly ensconced, attempted a kidney soufflé. She dropped it as well as burning it and subsequently presented Mrs Crawley with some undrinkable coffee. Leaving aside that most people, even in 1920, would surely be jubilant at the lack of a kidney soufflé, it seems Isobel may have erred.
READ MORE: http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-10-14/downton-abbey-series-three-episode-five-review-anna-cracks-the-case-lady-sybil-gives-birth
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