‘Downton Abbey Recap’ (Season 2, Episode 3): Missing in Action

In which a happy ending is still a cheesy one

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Crawley sisters.” – Mary

Have you seen the episode? The recap is long, so feel free to skip down to my analysis near the end of the post. For my introductory masterpost to this season, click here.

Recap:

1918. Downton’s still a hospital and several months has not made things easier for the family and staff. Cora and Isobel have transitioned from mutual dislike to open enmity. Isobel’s screeching at being rendered irrelevant is hard to sympathize with, but girl, I feel for her. She strongly feels a need for public service, but right now the easiest option for her to help is blocked. She’s probably too old to be really useful as a nurse. She can’t enlist in the army as a woman. And she doesn’t have a huge house that can be converted to a convalescent hospital. Cora’s righteous indignation at the appropriation of her house is understandable, but Isobel, like Robert and so many of the men in the series, has to come to terms with how she’s going to serve her country best. After a particularly heated exchange with Cora, one where Cora is almost malicious, Isobel decides she will leave Downton to work with refugees in France. Everyone can hardly conceal their glee.

In the meantime, business at the Downton convalescent hospital proceeds more or less as usual. Edith decides to organize an amateur concert for the patients, pulling in talent acts, bad actors, and even roping in Mary to sing a song for the audience. With Isobel gone, her house staff, consisting of Mr. Mosely and Mrs. Bird, is bored to pieces. But when a soldier wanders into their kitchen, Mrs. Bird begins an amateur soup kitchen. Mrs. Patmore and Daisy stumble upon it one day in town and decide they’ll help. O’Brien, up to no good as usual, tries to get them in trouble, first with Mrs. Hughes, and then with Cora. To her credit, Cora doesn’t give a shit — in fact, she rolls up her sleeves to help. I don’t know if we’ll ever fully investigate why O’Brien is constantly causing trouble, but it’s reaching Sue Sylvester in Glee proportions. It’s interesting and drives the plot, but feels increasingly unreasonable. I also lose respect for Cora for putting up with O’Brien’s machinations — indeed, for even benefiting off of them. It’s gross.

Mary has decided to accept Richard Carlisle’s proposal of marriage, with little enthusiasm and even less affection. Her father is tolerant but concerned, and asks gently if she might not consider Matthew. Mary’s response is surprisingly bitter. “What does Matthew have to do to convince you he’s in love with Lavinia? Rip open his chest and carve her name on his heart?” It’s almost teenage petulance. I love it. Robert asks her to at least write to Matthew and tell him that she’s decided to marry someone else. Mary, looking older and more haggard than you’d ever think possible from Michelle Dockery, says that she will to please him, but she doesn’t think Matthew will mind or care.

(BB GIRL YOU POOR THING COME HERE LET ME HUG YOU)

Mary and her grandmother Violet are continuing a sweet and candid friendship. Violet, out of nowhere, with uncanny dowager countess intuition, asks if Sybil has a beau. Mary hasn’t given it a single thought, but Violet is certain Sybil must have someone on her mind. She’s the right age, and everything. Violet presses even further. Perhaps the reason Sybil hasn’t said anything is because it’s an inappropriate beau. Remember, war brings down class boundaries!

So is being freakishly psychic just part of the whole dowager countess thing? Like when you inherit, you get a crown, a cape, a huge house, and secret powers?

Mary seems ready to dismiss it, but then runs into Sybil and Branson having one of their car tête-à-tête’s.  The framing of this shot is magnificent — Sybil and Branson, caught in their own drama, and Mary walking up to them, small and in the distance, but firmly in between them. Sybil and Branson are sort of talking about what he wants to do after the war when Branson says rather boldly that he’s waiting for her to run away with him — because it’s “obvious” that she’s in love with him, too. Sybil protests this (as she well should!) but before they can discuss it more, Mary interrupts. She doesn’t overhear anything interesting, but is intrigued enough to ask Sybil about it later.

Sybil gives away her hand almost immediately, which makes sense. It’s not really in her nature to keep secrets. Sybil admits only that she’s confused but “nothing’s happened,” which startles Mary considerably. She asks Sybil some hard questions, and Sybil scoffs at them, which worries Mary even more. “Darling, this isn’t fairyland. What did you think, you’d marry the chauffeur and we’d all come to tea?” She makes Sybil promise not to do anything stupid, and in turn promises not to tell their father.

Later Sybil finds Branson and tells him she’s told Mary about “us.” At first, Branson thinks he’s being asked to leave service, but when Sybil assures him of Mary’s silence, Branson smiles. “That’s the first time you’ve said ‘us,’ ” he grins. Point for winning on a technicality, I guess. It’s all very Victorian, but still pretty cute. And Sybil stands up for herself. “You’re asking me to give up my whole life,” she says. That’s a little much, even for torrid eye-sex romance.

Matthew, meanwhile, gets Mary’s letter in the trenches. William’s standing duty with him, his wartime valet, or something. They’re both talking about their imminent leave back to Downton. Matthew’s expression is almost entirely unchanged as he’s reading the letter — which is a little tough for certain unnamed fangirls to handle — but before he goes out on the risky patrol, he grabs the tiny stuffed dog. Matthew and William make their way to the German lines, but find themselves ambushed by enemy troops. They run. Germans are shooting at them. And that’s the end of the scene.

It isn’t until Daisy is fretting about William’s late return — which leads her to ask Edith to get news, which leads Edith to ask her father — that we find out Matthew and William are missing. Edith is standing with her father when he gets the message, and Robert is so stricken by the idea that his new heir might also be dead that in a surprising emotional outburst he grasps Edith’s hand, and asks her not to say anything to anyone, specifically Mary.

This is a heavy burden to bear. In a rare moment of sisterly affection, and the second-best scene of the episode, Edith gets Mary alone, and bursts out: “There’s something you ought to know. Papa said not to tell you, but I don’t think he’s right. It didn’t seem right not to tell you. I’m not trying to upset you, truly.” Mary is stunned, but manages to stammer out, “For once, I believe you.” She finds a quiet place and crumples silently, hand over her mouth. Anna comes across her and immediately knows. “They’ve told you, then.” Mary seems hardly surprised to learn that “they all know, downstairs,” and lets herself be led into her room.

Meanwhile, the downstairs crowd has begun to realize that Bates is still around, in that damn pub. Thomas finds out and mentions it to O’Brien within hearing of Daisy, who tells Mrs. Hughes without thinking, who brings it to Carson, who brings it to Lord Grantham, who tells Anna, who of course knows already. In his grief, Robert reaches out to Bates, visiting him at the pub and confiding his fears about Matthew’s possible death to him. It’s one of the few snippets we get of a friendship that is more talked about than shown to us. It’s not terribly convincing, but whatever. Bates is persuaded to return to Downtown, displacing poor Mr. Mosely as Robert’s next valet. Mosely’s been burned bad by Bates twice, first for Anna, and now for this. He is pretty milquetoast, but it’s depressing, seeing him flail around pathetically.

Bates’ return makes Anna very happy, which is always nice (though their romance is gross, I’m sorry, it just is), but it makes Thomas and O’Brien very unhappy. Thomas gets even more intolerable and O’Brien gets menacing. I forget why they don’t like Bates. It’s got something to do with why he was hired six years ago, right? But what is it, again? I’m sure I could analyze why — I think it’s because Bates is an outsider shown favoritism right from the get-go, who has a strangely personal relationship with Lord Grantham (forged in another one of those class-upending wars). They’re threatened, and why not? This is all they live for. But it’s a long grudge to hold on to, as even Thomas admits. Honestly, I care so little for Bates in this plotline that I feel just about as Thomas does — who cares? Don’t we have other things to irrationally hate?

And finally Mary and Edith get together for their concert.  Mary’s distraught, but puts on such a cheerful show for the troops that the many layers of her character seem abundantly clear. She’s so used to performing for others that it’s second nature. She tells the audience, with amusement, that she and her sister pulling together for a double act is quite a rare occurrence, but it is wartime, after all. Her parents are nonplussed, and Violet, sitting back, says with some acerbity, “Well, now I’ve seen everything.” Mary puts on a brave face and begins to sing… before completely trailing off, staring at the back of the room. Because Matthew has just walked in, attended faithfully by William.

Mary’s so shocked she can’t continue, and gradually the audience realizes just who has walked in. They are greeted with all the warmth upper-crust British people can muster, and then Matthew says cheerfully, “Come on, don’t stop for me.” And he picks up her song, walking down the aisle to meet her. She continues singing the duet with him — “If you were the only girl in the world, and I were the only boy” — and the audience applauds wildly. And we all sob into our pillows, because this is the best scene of the episode.

Afterwards Matthew says he got her letter about Carlisle. He’s happy for her — as long as he’s good to her. If he’s not, well, Carlisle will have Matthew to answer to. And when Matthew looks visibly shaken at the state of the convalescents around him, Mary reaches out to grasp his arm, assuring him that the war will be over soon.

Oh and yeah, Ethel slept with that mustachioed patient (who seemed in perfect health, didn’t he?) and now she’s pregnant.

And on that note, the episode concludes.

Analysis:

So yeah, they definitely strung out the audience with a missing-Matthew plotline and then had him come back and SING TO US. I’m torn between being desperately happy at his safe return and drowning in cheeseballs. The look on Mary’s face — so sweet! But the egregious emotional manipulation — so egregious!

It didn’t seem like this episode was going to stand on its own legs for the first twenty minutes or so. Cora and Isobel are still locked in conflict; Mary’s still carrying her torch it’s the hottest accessory of the season; and Anna and Bates are still trapped in a crappy plotline, but all of the disparate plotlines weren’t braiding together into something with an arc. Then the news that Matthew and William were missing broke, and all of a sudden, you could see how every little piece of the puzzle that is Downton Abbey took in that news and reflected it. Edith reached out to Mary, Mary internalized it, Robert reached out to Bates and (ultimately) Cora, everyone wished Isobel would come back, and Violet refused to worry. Not every plotline followed suit, of course, but that in itself was telling, too. Sybil and Branson are so wrapped up in their own world — and, indeed, so removed from the strict social construct of Downton Abbey with their illicit romance — that they seemed entirely unaffected.

But the class structure of the world Downton Abbey takes place in holds firm. I don’t think I’m being ridiculous when I say that the real tragedy in the house was that Matthew might die. William is a dear character, and their shared peril underscored that war threatens both the upstairs and downstairs crowd equally, of course. But Matthew’s death would mean much more than William’s would. His life carries the symbolic weight of the title of Grantham and the fate of hundreds of people. It’s just a fact of life in this world — an unsettling one, but one I felt complicit in, too. It doesn’t help that Matthew is also everything a romantic lead should be — handsome, young, heroic, articulate.

Even if you don’t completely agree with me that Matthew’s potential death is spun to be more meaningful than William’s, I do think the show’s writers go out of their way to demonstrate that certain characters’ personal decisions are just more important than others. Matthew and Mary’s relationship isn’t just a subject of conversation for everyone because they’re remarkably pretty. Their decisions also — unfairly — involve a lot of land, a lot of money, and the lives of their tenants and servants. At its best, Downton Abbey shows that this privilege can also be a prison. At its worst, it elevates the lives of some characters above others. That’s in line with the mores of the time. Hell, it’s in line with the mores of our time — we’re watching this show because of its sumptuous production values, just as we take too much interest in the antics of certain Kardashians and Hiltons. I think the writers are mostly just being honest about both what people would have thought at the time and what viewers want now — but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

[Just to be absolutely clear: Julian Fellowes has never pretended to be terribly progressive — the man sits on the House of Lords and is an outspoken conservative, guys — and sometimes it’s a little disturbing seeing his unabashed worship of the aristocracy unleashed in Downton Abbey. Let’s be realistic — the entire show is a love letter to the class system. Plotlines might meander into progressive territory, but the show glorifies a house and a way of life that would cost, in our time, millions and millions of dollars. I love and root for Mary and Matthew like they’re my BFFs, but we have to accept the hard truths first.]

The other element of this episode that really shone was the growing affection between the Crawley sisters. You can tell they’re growing up. Mary’s concern for Sybil is mirrored by Edith’s concern for Mary, which is in turn an echo of Sybil’s concern for Edith from last week. Sybil was never a part of the intense sibling rivalry that colored Mary and Edith’s relationship, so she’s growing to adulthood without that baggage. Mary, meanwhile, has altered so much since losing Matthew that for once, Edith is no longer jealous, but sympathetic. And Edith seems to have found some real purpose working with the soldiers. Maybe they’re all just sick of fighting, but in any circumstance, it’s heartening to see a family pull together.

This is very much one of those episodes where the plotting got frustrating, but the framing and subtle brilliance of the shots and the nuanced performances of the actors carried through the episode. I’m not sure how much we can keep relying on that, but we’re approaching the season’s halfway point, so we’ll just have to see what happens next.

More ‘Downton Abbey’ Recaps:
(Season 2, Episode 2): “The War Comes Home”
(Season 2, Episode 1): “War Begins”