That was my thought too. I wonder what Baxter is up to. They introduced the letter from her criminal co-worker and she seems reluctant to ignore it. Maybe she’s still carrying a torch for him?
And Daisy is becoming the Wesley Crusher of DA. Shut up, Daisy!
Maybe her criminal co-worker is the Crawley cousin and heir who was SUPPOSED TO be on the Titanic, but instead slipped away to join London’s underworld! FULL CIRCLE BAM.
If that were to happen it would redeem the whole series for me. 
Not that DA needs redeeming, but yeah, that would be pretty mind-blowing.
Wait…wasn’t he the one who was supposed to marry Mary?
I’ll bet he did the whole Titanic switcheroo just to get away from her.
Edith gets a proposal, Henry’s friend dies in a fiery crash, Carson gets a well-deserved lesson on domestic tranquility, Barrows can’t catch a break (but Mosely does), Violet runs away, and NEW PUPPY!!!
And a mystery around Mrs. Patmore’s B&B! Hmmmm…
And $10 Tom hooks up with Edith’s editor.
I didn’t see Tom show any particular interest in the editor.
What’s the mystery about the B&B? I seem to have missed that, too.
Violet’s scene with Dickie’s DIL was priceless.
Very glad Mary kicked Henry to the curb. I never liked him.
What’s with Robert telling Rosamund to shut up at the table??
But the VERY BEST PART was the new puppy!! Yay!!
There was a guy lurking in the bushes with a camera and a notebook outside the B&B.
Private Dick following a cheating hubby?
Puppy!!!
Robert’s face when he saw the puppy was the best.
$10 Tom?
It’s a bet. “I’ll put $10 that Tom hooks up with Edith’s editor”.
I bet he doesn’t. They’re opening the way back up for there to be a Tom/Mary connection.
I hope Edith trusts her young man enough to tell him about Marigold. Not much basis for a marriage if not.
StG
Good calls, StGermain. Mary is so hard to read, and so flighty in her affections, that they might just have her do a turn on a dime and pair up with Tom. That way they resolve both “love” issues for those characters.
Would it be evil of me to suspect the new puppy gives somebody rabies? 
There was too much made (visually) of the bloke in the bushes (see ivylass above) for that not to be relevant. There have been too few red herrings for that to be all there is to that.
I do want something good to happen to Barrow. And Justice demands that Edith get an upper hand (and a long-lasting one) on Mary. Otherwise they have wasted too much screen time on that particular conflict.
And I have done a 180 on Spratt: now I really like the guy!
But I am well prepared to be surprised with how this creative crew finishes off this show. It’s clear that my ideas on “what needs to happen” are inferior to theirs. That’s mainly why I continue to enjoy this program and why I hope Masterpiece can find a suitable replacement series!
I’m not a Mary/Tom 'shipper (she’s had plenty of beaus, she needs a brother to say things she won’t listen to from Edith) and I do like Talbot, so I hope Mary ends up with him. Talbot screwed up by calling Mary just hours after the incident and pressing her for a relationship status 
but IMHO if Mary still feels the same way after a couple of days, Tom needs to say one word to her: [del]Her ladyship’s soap[/del] steeplechase. 
Robert snapped at Rosamund because he was calling the crash “bloody business,” she snarked (as sisters do) that he was being ineloquent or banal in expressing his feelings, and he was not in the mood to be snarked at.
A couple of episodes ago, the former maid Gwen returned to ask one of the ladies to join the board of Hillcroft College, a school for young women in Yorkshire. My guess is that the next step for Daisy is to attend that school.
And her possessiveness over Mr Mason is a nice change. Right after William died, he wanted to get close to her but she was reluctant because she never loved his son William.
Meanwhile Moseley has risen nicely. One year, he lost his job at the Abbey (or was it at the Dowager Countess’s house?) and was reduced to working on a road crew.
And was the real reason for Violet to take a long boat trip that Maggie Smith needed to be written out of the show? Perhaps she had a movie to shoot?
Robert said “bloody” — a mild epithet still considered unsuited for mixed company at the time — at the table not once, not twice, but thrice. She gently rebuked him for it, and so he told her to shut up.
I love how Robert doesn’t mind that the puppy isn’t house trained yet but he’ll take him upstairs anyway. Yes, he loves the new puppy so much that it doesn’t matter…and a servant will be along shortly to clean the shit out of the carpet.
If it weren’t the final season, then, yes, they might write Violet out via a long boat trip. But it is the final season, so…
Perhaps they want to kill off Violet, but doing it off-stage (as it were) seems more palatable than having her found on the grounds of either DA or the Dower House.
Or maybe she’ll return in the last minutes of the final episode, in triumph, Prince Igor in tow (his inconvenient wife having snuffed it).
Someone really should have said, “You thought that was a bloody business? You should have seen the tablecloth a few weeks ago!”
Shouldn’t Daisy be about 25-27 years old now? In any event she’s a trained cook, and for all her whining about other people moving on she could easily find other employment employment if she decided to leave Downton. Yes, the upper classes were downsizing, but cooks were still in demand. Hotels, restaurants, school, etc. are other possibilities (granted the first 2 would be hard for a woman to break into).
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to immediately think that.