Palmolive is a reliable brand, as is Dial.  Lux is a great brand, but can be hard to find.  I wonder about Ivory.  It has been 99 and 44/100 % pure for decades.  Can’t the manufacturer improve on that level of purity?  And what exactly is in the 56/100% that is not pure?  That quibble aside, there are a lot of really good soaps.

Which brings us to this week’s episode of Downton, another good soap.

It’s interesting that whenever the writers want to advance an important story line, they just move right out.  Last week, Edith found out she is pregnant, had a good cry, and made the grave decision (off camera) to terminate her pregnancy.  In this episode, she makes her way to London, having somehow found a doctor in London who can perform the procedure.  I don’t think they had Yellow Pages in England at this time and if they did, the doctor she was looking for wouldn’t have been listed.  She gets to London, breaks down under questioning from Aunt Rosamund, who turns out to be a peach of an aunt.  The two go off to the disreputable clinic, where we play out a scene like the one in the old silent movies where the heroine is tied to the railroad tracks.  As the train bears down on her, she makes her escape.  In this case, Edith is next in line to have the procedure performed, realizes that she can’t go through with it for a dozen good reasons, including her future relationships with Mr. Gregson, with her niece and nephew, and with her parents and sister.  Having spent most of the episode projecting her feelings of guilt onto her Aunt Roz, she comes to her senses and leaves the clinic.  All that in one episode!

The Anna-Bates situation has been brewing longer, but it too advanced rapidly.  The story of the rape moves through the house like the flu.  To keep Mr. Bates from the trip to America, Mrs. Hughes must tell the story to Mary, leaving out the identity of the perpetrator.  Mary must tell Cora and Cora, without telling the story, must arrange for Robert to take Barrow instead of Bates.  With all that done, we are just about to relax with a cup of tea and a nice slice of one of Mrs. Patmore’s cakes when who should arrive but Lord Gillingham and his degenerate man Green.  As the episode ends, Green tells the assembled servants that he went downstairs during the Melba concert, which seals his fate.  Mr. Bates now knows the identity of the rapist, whose days are now numbered.  My point is that we started with Bates in the dark and the story of the rape limited to Anna, Bates, and Mrs. Hughes.  We ended 40 minutes later with the tale spread to Mary and Cora and with Mr. Bates now completely in the picture.  Brisk, efficient storytelling.

On the other hand, when it comes to the minor characters, we end up with an exhausting amount of over-plotting.  Think about Albert’s planned visit to the Abbey.  Mrs. Patmore decides he must be headed off, lest the Ivy-Daisy feud disrupt the smooth functioning of the kitchen.  She enlists Mrs. Hughes, always a good person to have on your side.  Mrs. Hughes enlists Mr. Carson after the requisite brow-beating.  Mr. Carson maneuvers Albert to the pub, tells him the house is infected with the flu, buys him a drink, gives him dinner and a room and heads back to the Abbey.  Albert turns up the next day anyway.  Neither of the scullery maids sees through the tissue-thin excuse ginned up by the Patmore-Hughes-Carson triumvirate.  Ivy shows Albert the interest that she withheld while he worked at Downton.  He leaves with his heart fluttering and Mrs. Patmore’s worst fears are now realized.  The writers even allow Mrs. Patmore a dose of poetry, when she complains that for weeks her puddings will be flavored with tears.  Anyway, the whole thing involved an awful lot of screen time, scene changes, one-on-one confrontations, dissembling, and fretting in order to make a slight change in the situation of a few quite minor characters.  Tiring.

Mary is showing signs of complexity.  When Mrs. Hughes seeks relief for Bates, Mary plays the “we pay you and expect service in return” card.  (You know that card.)  A year ago, Mary would have thought such a statement to be vulgar in the extreme.  Her growing experience managing the farm is turning her into a manager of the household, too.  Then she jokes with her father about what a nice time Barrow will have on board the ship chasing after the male stewards.  He actually has to warn her not to be vulgar, in his own light-hearted way.  Given Mary’s class prejudice, it’s nice to see that she has a certain tolerance where sexual orientation is concerned.

But the real breakthrough comes when she decides to take a walk down to the piggery with Mr. Blake.  And a lucky thing it was that they chose that destination!  The pig man had violated a basic tenet of the pig man’s creed by not ensuring that the pigs had sufficient water.  As we all know, a pig who is thirsty at sundown will be dead at dawn.  Mary and Blake keep the pumps working and use the conveniently available pails to save the pigs (the writers even allow Mary a pun) and then have a bit of fun slinging mud at each other.  Then Mary outdoes herself and cooks eggs.  I would say their relationship is advancing right on schedule.

And Tom has met the next Mrs. Branson!  True, she is not a born revolutionary like dear Sibyl, only a Liberal.  Still, I think she’ll do.  I don’t know how Tom will run into her again, but I’m sure the writers have that all worked out.

Tom got to that political meeting through the intercession of Isobel, whose purity of heart and all-round goodness were on full display in this episode.  I chuckled that she referred to the then Prime Minister as “dear Mr. Lloyd George”.  I don’t know that much about him, but what I do know suggests that it is just possible that his mother and his wife referred to him as “dear” but if they did, that was it.  No one else would have thought of using the word.  Here is how John Maynard Keynes described him at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference: “a half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity.”  Not a fan.  To be fair, Keynes later said some very positive things about Lloyd George, consistent with the observation that if you find a pithy and incisive quote from Keynes on any subject, you will also find an equally incisive statement from him to the contrary.  The Liberals, who had been in power continuously since 1910, were demolished in the 1922 election.  The party never again won a majority in the House of Commons and saw its position as the principal opponent of the Tories taken by Labor.

But Isobel was only warming up.  When Violet fell ill, Isobel had the opportunity to rebalance the scales of charity, on which Violet had placed her just treatment of Peg in the previous episode.  The scales are again in balance, as Isobel gave all her strength and devotion to restoring Violet to health.  Violet perhaps gains an ounce of advantage by agreeing to play cards with Isobel, but it’s a debatable point.

There were a number of plot details in this episode that I found annoying.  Jimmy wishes he could go to America, but remember that he came to Downton because his former employer – a Duchess – was going abroad and he didn’t want to go along.  Robert is called to America by his mother-in-law so that he can help his brother-in-law, her son.  The son has gotten himself into some serious financial difficulties involving oil leases.  But remember that when Mrs. Levinson (Cora’s mother, Shirley MacLaine) visited Downton, she was a witness to Robert’s near destruction of the family fortune.  The family was hitting her up for an advance.  So there she is, a wealthy woman living in the country that was emerging as the world’s financial powerhouse, and she calls for help to her English son-in-law who knows little of America and even less about investing.  The whole thing seems highly contrived.

There was frustratingly little to talk about when it comes to Rose and Mr. Ross.  We knew that she was going to use Edith’s trip to London to re-establish contact.  And when Rose establishes contact, she really means it!  I thought for a moment that the two of them would tip the boat over, but perhaps that would be overdoing it, what with Mary and Blake having a water and mud fest of their own back in Yorkshire.  I remain interested in learning more about Mr. Ross, although Rose shows so little interest in anything outside of the present moment that I begin to doubt that my questions will be answered.

So, we’re left with the question of what will happen to Edith and her baby.  The previews of next week’s episode indicate that she will give the child away to that worthy farm family that she spent time with during the war.  I’m not sure they would show us that preview if that is where they mean to take us.  I think Mr. Gregson will turn up in the nick of time.  It’s a pure guess, but I think the writers found a device to get him out of the story temporarily during Edith’s pregnancy crisis.  Perhaps he was hit by a car or a bus while out for a morning constitutional in Munich.  He didn’t have his ID with him, or the ever efficient German police would have figured out who he was.  He was taken to a German hospital and suffered from amnesia when he awoke.  He’ll be back sometime during the third trimester.  With any luck, he’ll have his German divorce papers in hand.  I know I have gotten these things wrong in the past, but I have a hunch this time . . . .

Finally, I think the actor who plays Mr. Green needs a new agent.  If you were representing him, wouldn’t you fight like a tiger to avoid having his character admit in front of Mr. Bates that he went downstairs during the Nellie Melba concert?  You lose that fight and the next thing you know your client is being fitted out with stage blood, a broken neck, the whole bag of tricks at the disposal of the make-up department.

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving character than the debased and degenerate Mr. Green, but surely the actor who plays him is innocent and need not be sacrificed to our desire for vengeance.  Well, I fear it is too late for these regrets.  Mr. Bates means to have his revenge.  Or will someone else beat him to it?