The episode opens with Anna, the head lady’s maid of Downton, handling a huge leather briefcase on the cupboard. Gwen walks in and Anna asks what is in the briefcase. Gwen is at first ashamed to admit it, but then she shows Anna but asks that she keep it private. The thing in the briefcase happens to be a typewriter and Gwen confesses to Anna that she is taking shorthand and typewriting courses because she plans to leave service at Downton and become a secretary. Mrs. O’Brien walks in and tells them there is a task that needs to be done, but Anna and Gwen are standing in front of the typewriter so that Mrs. O’Brien cannot see it. Mrs. O’Brien tends to spill the beans on a lot of people at Downton Abbey, so she would of course tell everyone about the typewriter and that Gwen was leaving service. Meanwhile, Mary and Cora get word that Evelyn Napier is coming to Downton Abbey, and Cora is still trying to set up someone with Mary even if she doesn’t want Cora to pick a husband for her anymore. Mary is not interested in Matthew right now, so she is putting him off, but it’s hard for her to just make her own decision like that because Matthew Crawley is Robert Grantham’s cousin and heir to the estate at Downton. If Matthew marries Mary, then Cora would lose her inheritance.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Carson and the other staff members are looking at Gwen’s typewriter, which either Carson or someone managed to steal from Gwen. Gwen comes down and is upset because someone took her typewriter and showed everyone downstairs without her permission. Carson asks her why she is keeping a typewriter, and Gwen responds that she loves her job at Downton but she is planning to leave service to become a secretary, and that is why she has been taking a bunch of classes and keeping the typewriter. Carson asks her if there is anything wrong with working in service, and Gwen says no there isn’t, but she doesn’t picture herself working in service forever and wants a better-paying opportunity. People are divided about her decision to leave, and even during dinner, the Grantham family talks about it. Lord Grantham and Cora just want to make sure everyone is happy working at Downton, but Isobel thinks that if Gwen wants to find work elsewhere, she should. Sybil, one of the Grantham sisters, is one of the few who actually fully supports Gwen in her decision to leave (besides Anna, who is cool with Gwen ‘s decision to leave service since they are close friends) and after she overhears Carson telling her father that Gwen wants to be a secretary, she actually shows Gwen an ad in the papers for an open position as secretary in Thirsk. Gwen is doubtful that she will get it and thinks she should stay in service, but Sybil never gives up on her and explains to her that the reason she supports Gwen’s decision to find a new job as a secretary is because times are changing and women are demanding more equality and Sybil supports this reform and women’s rights.
The part with Gwen reminded me of this documentary that I saw about personal finance on Netflix called Get Smart with Money. There was a young woman in the documentary who worked a couple of jobs in the service industry and was struggling to make ends meet, and in addition she also had these amazing skills with making art and wanted to become a freelance artist but wasn’t sure how to market her art and make money from it full-time. She sat with a financial adviser who encouraged her to start a side hustle to bring in extra income because she had these incredible skills that she could offer to people. I also thought about how in the recent years of the job market more people are learning new skills and going back to school so they can learn new skills because it’s not enough to get a degree from college anymore. It’s a competitive job market and the demand for different skills is always evolving and I’ve noticed that a lot of the jobs that are high-paying are typically jobs in software and technology. I remember in 2017 working in food service and was paying off student debt but my loved ones encouraged me to learn some new skills so that I could get a new job with higher pay, and the most in-demand skill I learned about was in coding. So I took a programming course and it was expensive and I ended up taking more than a year to finish it, and there were times it was hard to learn the material at first and I wanted to give up so many times, but learning this skill gave me something new to learn and work on. I didn’t end up getting a job as a developer or in the technology field but it was useful to have this skill because I also learned to commit to something challenging and stick with it for a long period of time. I also remember when working in food service, I was stuck on having these big dreams of moving to a huge metropolitan area for my music career and becoming famous and making money from it, and I was so impatient to leave the job because I wanted to achieve my dreams. However, I also learned to treasure the connections with people I met working in the job I had and on my last day I ended up crying in appreciation because I ended up developing a lot of great connections with people at the job. When I had the job I also took on a side hustle (a short project for a website someone was doing) and even though I didn’t yet know how to apply advanced knowledge I gained from the course to the project I had the basic skills needed to complete it. It was so nice getting the paycheck from that project. Honestly looking back I could have thought, Gee wouldn’t it be nice if I just had a side hustle? But at the time I was so focused on paying off my student loans and working full-time that taking on a side hustle seemed too much for me to take on. However, after watching the documentary on Netflix it makes sense why I would need to market my skills at some point so that I can gain extra income and don’t need to rely on one income for all my needs.
Meanwhile, while Gwen is figuring out how to leave service and get the job as secretary, Mary goes riding horses with Evelyn Napier and a bunch of men. Evelyn brought Kemal Pamuk, who is an ambassador for Turkey and is visiting England. At first Mary thinks Mr. Pamuk is going to be unattractive and uninteresting but she sees him and finds out he is quite fine-looking. She ends up ditching the guy who was supposed to ride with her, Lynch, and rides with Mr. Pamuk instead. The two feel an instant chemistry for one another and Mary ends up having a great time with Mr. Pamuk. They come back to Downton to change their clothes for the evening, and Thomas Barrow, who is gay, finds Mr. Pamuk quite attractive and is secretly excited that he is going to be Mr. Pamuk’s assistant during his stay. Thomas is seduced by Mr. Pamuk’s good looks and hits on him but Mr. Pamuk is disgusted by Thomas’s advances and tells him he won’t tell anyone Thomas hit on him if he lets him into Mary’s room so they can have sex. During dinner, Evelyn and Matthew see Mary and Kemal giggling and enjoying each other’s company at dinner and feel jealous that Mary likes him more than she likes them. Kemal ends up taking Mary away from the party to a private space and starts to kiss and fondle her, but she is appalled because she understands that she is an unmarried woman and that this kind of interaction with Kemal isn’t appropriate and tells him that neither of them is to speak of the kissing with anyone. However, Kemal ends up having Thomas lead him and Mary into Mary’s bedroom. (At this point, after watching it a few times I was wondering whether this was consensual sex or rape. Some said it was sex, others said it was rape, so I wanted to make sure I understood correctly since at times I have tended to unfortunately conflate the two. Thankfully people have called me out on it) Kemal coerces Mary into having sex with him and then shortly after dies. Mary grabs Anna and has her and Mary’s mom, Cora, drag Mr. Pamuk’s dead body out of Mary’s bedroom. Cora of course is pissed and asks Mary what happened, and Mary is in tears because of Mr. Pamuk’s sudden death, and Cora tells her she must never let this news get out that Mr. Pamuk was in Mary’s room because the family would freak out. I thought they could just stealthily sneak Mr. Pamuk’s body out of Mary’s room, but as I soon found out after watching the entire show, nothing is private at Downton Abbey and there is always someone watching. In this case, it was Daisy. Daisy was getting some laundry done late at night and went down the hall only to find Mary, Anna and Cora farther down the hall dragging Mr. Pamuk’s corpse away from Mary’s room. Of course, this scares the shit out of Daisy and continues to haunt her for the next episode.
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