Violet and Isobel were not at all bonding. Violet was holding her nose and being polite out of courtesy because Isobel saved her life. That was a brilliantly funny scene but it wasn’t meant to be warm and fuzzy.
Meh, I like them together sparring and whatever. They like each other whether they admit it or not.
Yes. There is a grudging mutual respect.
Yeah, that was a contrived scene that felt like it was lifted straight out of a really bad rom-com.
True, but it sure was funny watching Dr Clarkson put the Dowager in her place. 
BTW is anyone else utterly shocked that Mary knows how to make scrambled eggs?
Throwing “mud” at each other at the end was too much on top of a scene that was already too much. I put *mud *in quotation marks because surely by the time they had gone back and forth from the pig pen to the pump a few times, there was pig shit mixed in with the mud. Ewww.
Was anyone wondering where the albatross farm was? Did I fool anyone?! :o
You forgot to mention the red herring aquaculture center.
YES. I remember Sybil asking to learn how to boil water before heading off to nursing training, and here is Mary scrambling eggs & knowing where to find everything in the kitchen. My husband, on the other hand, seems to recall Mary learning to cook earlier.
…and wouldn’t her Lady’s Maid be expected to wait up for her, regardless of the time she came home? I thought it odd that everyone had gone to bed.
Leaving the key in the door?!? When, for all Mr. Carson knows, Anna was raped by a stranger who just wandered in? Mrs. Hughes knows better, but wouldn’t you think she’d play along to legitimize her “story?”
Carson doesn’t know jack.
I have a vague memory of that as well. Like when she was a precocious little kid.
That occurred to me too. Why even have a key?
A lady’s maid would be expected to wait up for her mistress unless she was given specific instructions not too. I can buy Mary telling Anna not to wait up and just go home with Bates after supper though. It’s a lot more plausible than her cooking. She not only knew where everything was she knew how to light & use a wood burning stove (or do they just leave it burning all night).
Those stoves are huge. I’ll bet they have to leave at least part of it hot overnight or they’d never get enough heat to cook breakfast. Just a guess tho.
I confess I rather like Rose. She fills exactly the same DA niche as Lady Sybil did: the beautiful young aristocrat, yearning to grow up and have fun, delighting in doing new things that shock her elders, and falling in love with handsome but inappropriate young men.
My wife and I wondered the same thing. That was bizarre.
Carson doesn’t know that Anna was raped. Bates and Lady Mary do. Only Anna and Mrs Hughes (officially) know the truth.
I thought up was a great episode. I was expecting to see Dr. Clarkson be the abortion doctor!
Going back a few episodes, I keep recalling Robert’s descriptions of the card sharp - ‘rather a tyke’ and Edith’s beau - ‘a good cove’. I was surprised at his usage of what may have been considered slang. Anyone hear of those terms before?
I’ve heard “cove” but not “tyke”, not in that context anyway. “Cove” is fairly common in novels from that period, and earlier. Dickens, surely.
She couldn’t go to someone she knows for an abortion. And she can’t have the kid there so she’ll be off to America or somewhere obscure for reasons to be decided.
And I’m not buying Rose snuggling up to a black musician. It would be social suicide akin to turning tricks. they’d pack her off to Alaska if caught.
Just watched it again. didn’t realize the rapist verbally placed himself at the scene of the crime in front of Mr Bates. So now John knows to a high degree of certainty who raped his wife.