The secret of comedy is, as everyone knows, .   .   .   .   timing. Just ask Mr. Bricker and Lord Grantham. Had I known last week what Bricker was going to pull this week, I would have saved the joke about the linguist and the maid. As it is, for a topical chuckle on an event that resulted in a rare example of overt physical violence on this show (putting aside World War One), I refer the reader to the footnoted joke that appears in the commentary to Episode Four. And at one time I thought Bricker might be gay! In an idle moment, I pictured him and Barrow together in a seaside cottage somewhere. Instead, he ends up getting cold-cocked by a jealous husband, an earl of the realm no less, and fighting it out with him on the bedroom carpet. The hidden depths of these art historians!

I was curious to see that when Mr. Bricker left, he tipped Carson but not Molesley. I had not noticed anyone tipping Carson before now. I found an article on proper decorum at house parties written in 1922. It said that gentlemen guests should tip the butler, the valet if one was “supplied” and possibly the chauffeur, but no one else. Once again, Molesely draws the short straw. By the way, when the house was preparing for the cocktail party – such a racy event! – there were numerous young fellows rolling up carpets and doing other heavy work. Couldn’t they help polish silver, put away dinnerware and the like so that Molesely doesn’t have to do everything? Where are all these people in between cocktail parties?

The show has been hinting at a Jewish angle for two years, and it appears that things are now getting serious. I expected something a couple of years ago when Cora’s mother (Shirley MacLaine) was a guest at the Abbey. Her name, and therefore Cora’s name before she married, was Levenson. Her husband, deceased, was a furrier in Cincinnati. No other information was supplied. No doubt there are plenty of men named Levenson active in the fur trade who are pillars of their local Presbyterian church, but I wouldn’t bet it that way. In the current season, while Cora is sauntering about the tonier districts of London’s West End with Mr. Bricker, she tells him that her father was Jewish. When she puts it that way, it’s a fair inference that her mother was not.

The writers might have left us with this interesting genealogical footnote, but have instead opened new possibilities through the introduction of a fully Jewish character with the unlikely name of Atticus Aldridge. The two consequences of Mr. Aldridge’s entry into the story are demonstrations, respectively, of Russian anti-Semitism and Rose’s naïveté.

Rose is described as administering to a group of Russian émigrés, but in fact only two have really entered the story: Prince Kuragin, who is the moody fellow with a Violet past (sorry), and Count Rostov, who has lost control of his emotions twice so far. The first occasion was Rose’s tea party at the Abbey, when Rostov lost it under the prodding of Sarah Bunting, who we learned later had been just warming up, preparing for her big moment at the Crawley dinner table. The second incident was in the present episode, when Rostov’s quiet game of chess with Kuragin was interrupted by the presence of Mr. Aldridge. When Rose reports that the ancestors of her new friend were fellow countrymen of Rostov and Kuragin and first left Russia in 1859, Rostov is able to conclude that the rest of the family left Russia in 1871. When this chronology is confirmed, Rostov announces that the Aldridge family is not Russian but Jewish. After this bit of deduction, he flies into a rage and storms away. It’s bad enough that he has to fill his time with chess and tea in an old church in York, but it is more than he can bear to have his peace interrupted by a descendant of those that his own ancestors drove out of his native land.

Russian and Ukrainian anti-Semitism was (is) virulent, violent, and remarkably durable. The Aldridge family, as they are now called, left by way of Odessa after pogroms in 1859 and 1871. The Ukrainians put on another pogrom in 1881. In 1891 the Russian government forcibly removed all Jews living in Moscow (some 200,000 persons) and St. Petersburg (another 2,000) to the “Pale of Settlement” – an area where Jews were at first permitted, later encouraged, then finally required to settle. A new series of even more violent pogroms began in 1903 and continued through 1905. That 1905 pogrom was as much as my great-grandfather was willing to put up with. He left for America and after getting established here, he sent for the rest of his family in 1910. The timing of their emigration had a pattern similar to that of the ancestors of our new friend Atticus, but more compressed as circumstances no doubt dictated.

The Russians and Ukrainians put millions of people in such fear for their physical safety, the security of their homes, and the lives of their families that some two million Jews left Russia between 1880 and 1920 and started all over again in places like Britain, western Europe, and most particularly the United States. I have no doubt that those people, like tens of millions of others who immigrated to the United States at that time, would have gladly contributed to their native country what they ended up contributing to the societies that they joined.

It might have occurred to Rostov that here we have (courtesy of Julian Fellowes) one of history’s little ironies. Rostov and Aldridge have washed up on the same shore via very different routes, and have met through the agency of the same lovely young lady. They have a lot in common despite appearances. It might have been to Rostov’s advantage to explore, or at least leave open, the possibility of a cordial relationship if not more. Not in this episode, and maybe not in this life. When Czar Nicholas II’s ministers informed him of the importance of the military arrangements with Britain that were then being negotiated, the Czar (according to Barbara Tuchman) combined his two favorite prejudices by announcing “An Englishman is a zhid (a Jew).” He agreed to the military arrangements, but he retained both prejudices. Rostov seems to be of the same mind as to one of them.

In the meantime, Rose’s naïveté concerning the relationship between Jews and the wider societies in which they lived is almost staggering. She has not been locked in a convent her entire life; she might figure something out now and again. On the Russian side, she might have heard that Russian pogroms had driven out countless Jews. And on the British side, has it never occurred to her that she really doesn’t run into very many people who are not rich, titled, and in communion with the Church of England? (OK, the Russians are only formerly rich and are Orthodox Christians.) She seems to know two Americans (Cora and Mr. Ross, who let us agree she got to know well enough to kiss), one Catholic (Tom), and now one Jew. (Atticus? That’s really his name?) She is not a candidate for Britain’s Miss Diversity of 1924. So, it seems hopelessly (what’s the word?) jejune for her to blithely spout that after all we’re all just plain English, as if to say what difference does anything else make as long as we all drink tea at 11:00 and 4:00.

Well, I may find her ignorance exasperating but clearly Mr. Aldridge does not. He is entranced not only by her beauty but by the simplicity and purity of her personality. He is going off to London to start a new job, but we find out later, after they part, that his family has just acquired a stately home in the neighborhood – well, the same county – and a title (money and a title – two out of three, only missing on the Church of England connection) so we know that we’ll be seeing more of him.

Meanwhile, Carson and Barrow are each reverting to their worst impulses. Carson is becoming stuffier and more insufferable as each episode unfolds. He doesn’t know anything about investing, but he has to pretend he is an expert because he won’t admit that there is something he doesn’t know. Incidentally, did you notice that Mrs. Patmore asks him if a local builder has gone public (except that like a good Yorkshirewoman she says “pooblic” just as Bunting wishes Daisy good “look” instead of luck)? The expression did not enter the language until mid-century, and even then I doubt that it was immediately on the tongue of country house cooks. I expect that the anachronism was intentional.

Barrow’s course of medication is clearly damaging his health. He is sweating like a draft animal, he has bags under his eyes, and even Violet notices that he looks pallid. But as the outer man deteriorates, the inner man retains his bitter sarcasm and his habit of retailing the most damaging gossip. Those around him who are not annoyed are instead offended. It’s hard to see this ending well for Mr. Barrow.

I know that I occasionally miss points of detail in the plot, but I was truly surprised to learn that Anna had been in London on the day of Mr. Green’s death. Unless the writers added this point after the fact in order to make her a more realistic murder suspect, I just missed it completely when Green died. Now that Anna has no alibi, it seems a racing certainty that she is going to be charged. When are these English police going to get one right, finally?

I would like to say that Mr. Blake is a very clever and patient fellow and I think he has hatched an excellent plan. He and Mary clearly bonded in the pig sty and I think she will soon come to see that sending him away was not a good move. He knows that he has to get rid of Gillingham and the best way to do that is to lure him away to his first love, the fabulously wealthy heiress Lane Fox. He also knows that Miss Fox is someone too intelligent to be manipulated through subtlety, so he manipulates her openly by telling her his plan. The fact that her reaction was to leave the manger à trois in a huff demonstrates that Mr. Blake’s spell is already taking hold. If she had said “Don’t be ridiculous” and then dug into a hearty plate of roasted beef, that would have signaled that she had no further interest. Her hasty departure tells us that Blake has touched a nerve and she will come around in time. By the time Gillingham leaves Mary for the third and last time, Blake will be flavor of the month.

I have a plea to make to Tom. Please, Tom, do not go running after Sarah Bunting. If you look, you are sure to find another companionable socialist in the neighborhood, one that can get along with the Crawley family and at the same time work toward the complete rearrangement of society.

Just a final word about Edith. It looks like she is going to kidnap Marigold (on the advice of her aunt and her grandmother) and then install the child somewhere in London. Aunt and grandmother strongly prefer France, where we learn that there are numerous boarding schools that cater to children born to wealthy but unmarried parents. The London arrangement will allow Edith to play some kind of role in Marigold’s life beyond a couple of visits a year, which is the most to be expected of the French arrangement. Couldn’t all of these problems, both logistical and emotional, be resolved if Edith just told the truth and claimed Marigold as her own child? Of course that would fly in the face of convention and would be a terrible shock to family and friends. It would lead to gossip and the occasional nasty comment face to face. But the family and friends would get over the shock and the scandal would ultimately fade. A lot of the plot of this show is the result of tension between what the characters want and what convention demands of them, so the cleanest solution of Edith’s problem may not contribute to the telling of the tale. I expect that Edith’s and Marigold’s story will come out eventually, but in droplets as with so many other Downton developments.

I apologize that I am posting this comment a full week after the show aired. I think I could produce at a faster pace if there were something actually, you know, happening on this show.