This episode could be subtitled “A Night at the Improv”.  Several story lines turned on the ability of the characters to improvise solutions to problems that they had not anticipated.

Rose provided the most spectacular example.  She immediately recognized the problem for her father-in-law when poor Diana Clark and her son Daniel walked in through the front door, expecting a quiet weekend in the country with Daniel senior.  In the next instant, Rose found a solution, needing only to know the name of the unexpected guest to put her plan into action.  She quickly and silently enlisted Mary and Robert, who played along a bit less naturally than did Rose.  All that practice breaking and entering and stealing correspondence at the end of Season Four paid off.  Then, they saved the reputation (for the moment) of the Prince of Wales; this time, that of a Jewish peer.

Lord Sinderby nearly had a coronary when his unexpected guests arrived, and with all the money at her disposal dear Lady Sinderby could not buy a clue.  What a lovely coincidence that Diana Clark’s little boy has the same first name as her husband!  No one seemed to question why Rose’s old friend walked in, said hello, and then drove off in the car that brought her, but apart from that, the thing went off like clockwork.  The long-term dividend is that Sinderby now realizes what a prize his son found when he brought Rose into their family.  Also, we learned that Lord Sinderby is far more welcoming to shiksas than he first let on.  He just draws the line at marriage, and that line has now been moved back.

One other thing we learned is that Mr. Barrow still has his fangs and it is never a good idea to cross him.  If Sinderby had collapsed under the strain of Miss Clark’s brief visit, he would have had only himself to blame for antagonizing Barrow.  Incidentally, I thought it was very clever of Mary to recognize that she had set Lord Sinderby’s humiliation in motion.  It took quick thinking to picture the sequence of events that led to Miss Clark’s arrival.  If Mary had stayed with Gillingham, she would have been up all night explaining it to him.

Tom did a nice bit of improvisation himself when he prevented Robert from giving a drunken Christmas speech by making a sober one of his own.  It came off very well, but talk about a reversal of stereotypes!

Finally, Violet had her moment of improvisation when she pretended that Denker’s soup was edible by forcing herself to swallow a small spoonful and declaring it delicious.  She then used Denker’s momentary victory to impose peace in the household.

Bates and Molesley engaged in creative problem-solving, not quite amounting to improvisation because both plans were thought out ahead of time.  It seemed obvious last week that Bates would take the blame for Green’s murder in order to obtain Anna’s release. The plan was flawed because Bates actually has an alibi, even though he doesn’t want it.  On top of that, could he really hope to avoid discovery?  It’s a nice try to disappear to some unknown location in Ireland, but in all likelihood an Englishman with the manners of an upper class servant who walks with a limp and a cane would have been easily found, even if the Irish authorities did not particularly like cooperating with the English police.  He can’t expect to get around the fact that he actually has a rock solid alibi.

Molesley decides to use Bates’s photograph to establish that alibi and with the aid of Baxter goes on the most abstemious pub crawl ever witnessed in the city of York.  They prove Bates’s innocence, but in the zero-sum game that is the Bates family legal situation, this should have meant that Anna was heading back to the pokey, possibly to swing for a crime she didn’t commit.  Fortunately, the eyewitness that put Anna in quod in the first place is now less confident in his identification, so Bates and Anna can have a carefree Christmas 1924.  Their happiness will always be contingent on the whims of the writing staff, but no one in this story is immune from that malady.

Both Mary and Edith have attracted new beaux and I expect we will see both of the new chaps next season.  Each of them had a connection to the house in Scotland, although I didn’t follow the details.  The fellow who seems to be interested in Edith is the “Agent” which at first sounds like he would be a fellow of a middling station in life who looks after the place when no one is around.  In fact, he is distantly related to the current owner, which might mean that he will inherit the place one day just the way Matthew ended up the heir to Downton.  That would be nice for Edith.  Mary’s fellow somehow did Atticus out of his turn to shoot, although why they all couldn’t fire away together at the poor birds was not clear to me.  I also didn’t understand why Mary had to give the fellow such a hard time about it.  By the end of the episode, we learn that he has sufficient spine to stand up to Mary’s badgering and that he is clever enough to have figured out the story behind Miss Clark all on his own.  Add in that he has money, as evidenced by his expensive car, and he may turn out to be the successor to Messrs. Blake and Gillingham.  I thought Blake was going to be the guy, but this may be another one of those occasions when I am – what was that word?? – wrong.

The love affairs of the older generation are coming apart.  Isobel and Lord Merton are being divided by his willful and unpleasant son Larry.  And Violet is bringing Princess Kuragin back from Hong Kong to reunite with the Prince.  I noticed that Violet has changed her story about why she did not run off with Prince Kuragin back in 1874.  The earlier version, which she told when he first appeared at Downton, was that she was going to run off with the prince when her husband gave her a framed portrait of their two children.  That persuaded her to stay for their sake.  No doubt she had sanitized it.  In the current version, she and the Prince did run away and were pursued by the enraged Princess Kuragin, who caught up with them, forcibly removed Violet from the coach that was carrying her and the Prince, and sent Violet back in the place in the cab that the Princess had vacated.  A rather different tale and far more interesting.

The balance of the episode was devoted to one treacly event after another.  I confess I found it disappointing.  Both Robert and Tom had to tell Edith that they know that Marigold is her child.  Robert wants her to know that all is understood and forgiven, just in case his chest pain turns out to be fatal.  Tom wants her to know that he will be pulling for her from Boston.  Hugs and kisses all around.

Tom, Mary, and Edith hold hands to conduct an impromptu memorial service for Sibyl, which Robert gets to witness.  All very sticky and sweet.  I had thought that when Carson had earlier proposed to Hughes that they buy a house together, he was really proposing marriage in his indirect reserved way, but he did it for real in this episode, closing the loop that opened when they tiptoed to the edge of the sea last season.  All very reminiscent of Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold in Gigi singing “Ah yes, I remember it well.”  Another dose of treacle is dispensed when Robert tells Tom how much he will miss him and Tom tells Robert how much he will miss him.  Add in a few Christmas carols and it’s time to break out the insulin.

Well, on the bright side, no one died, no one ended the season in prison, and no one has a fatal disease.  There are some for whom things could be better – Isobel and Lord Merton – and others for whom things could be much worse, such as Anna and Mister Bates.  Everyone seems to be about as happy as his or her particular circumstances may allow, which is not a bad place to leave things until the start of the next, and so it is rumored, last season of the show.