What I’m Watching: Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey: Season 5, Episode 8 (B+)

Now this is technically the season finale, but we only have to wait a week until the Christmas special airs here in the U.S., while British viewers have to wait over a month. This was a fitting storyline for a supersized episode such as this one, filled with a big trip to London and plenty of drama to go along with it. Atticus’ Jewish heritage turned out to be a big issue, in part because Rose wanted to do as much as possible while his father sternly disapproved of the fact that he would be marrying outside the faith. Surprisingly, his stag party mishap was the result not of his father’s handiwork but of Rose’s mother’s, and she did a good job of making up for it by coming out with the news of her divorce to prepare for any bad press it gave her new in-laws, resulting in a hilarious threat of divorce by Atticus’ mother if he gave them any trouble. I feel like every big secret on this show just boils over to a point that everyone has to guess it and then becomes a big nothing, like Edith being her daughter’s birth mother, something people keep guessing easily. It was very sweet that Robert chose to honor Mrs. Patmore’s nephew at the memorial after all, and she even seems to have kept Daisy from leaving due to her emotional reaction to the news of her impending departure. Tom did a nice thing for once and protected the new footman from being used by Denker, though he did manage to stick it to her in the process. Her ongoing feud with Spratt is pretty hilarious, and I enjoyed the fact that his attempt to cast her in a bad light didn’t work out anywhere near as well as he had hoped it would.