Episode Synopsis: Downton Abbey, Season 1 episode 4

The episode opens up with Mr. Bates, Anna and Gwen walking through the fairgrounds at Downton, and talking about the upcoming fair. Anna sees Mary and asks her how she is doing, and Mary tells her she is still grappling with the death of Mr. Pamuk. Anna tries to tell her it is going to be okay, but Mary is still grieving over his death and doesn’t think she will ever move on. Cora, Mary’s mother, is having tea with Violet Crawley, her mother-in-law, and they are talking about Mary inheriting the estate. They talk about how Mary is grieving over Mr. Pamuk’s death, and Violet tells Cora that the real issue is Mary getting married to Matthew because she is the firstborn so there is more pressure on her to get married. However, Mary doesn’t want to marry Matthew because he comes to Downton thinking he doesn’t need to live the family’s aristocratic lifestyle and takes pride in being middle-class. Meanwhile, Lord Grantham meets Tom Branson, the new chauffer, who is from Ireland. He compliments Lord Grantham’s library and Lord Grantham tells Tom he is welcome to borrow any of the books, and asks Tom what books he likes. Tom says he loves history and politics, and Lord Grantham is quietly suspicious of this because he hasn’t met anyone on the staff who has explicitly expressed their interest in politics. Mr. Molesley is serving Isobel and Matthew tea, when Isobel finds that Mr. Molesley’s hands have a really bad rash all over them. She examines them and determines it is a skin condition called erysipelas, and insists that she take him to the doctor to get his hands checked out. Matthew is embarrassed and insists Molesley’s case isn’t that extreme, but Isobel is happy because she gets to put all of her extensive training as a doctor to use, so she insists that she treat Molesley’s condition.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Anna is coughing and sneezing and Mrs. Patmore, who is running a tight ship, tells her she needs to get out of the kitchen. Anna asks if they can go to the fair tonight and suggests Daisy needs to especially go because she has been thinking a lot about the death of Mr. Pamuk. Daisy can’t tell anyone that she saw Anna, Mary, and Cora carry Mr. Pamuk’s body down the corridor, though. The Dowager Countess visits Matthew to ask about him inheriting the estate, and it’s funny because she is not used to swivel chairs and she is startled when she finds out she is sitting down in a swivel chair. Mrs. Hughes tells O’Brien she needs to stay behind and watch the other girls because Anna, the head lady’s maid, has a cold, but Mrs. O’Brien complains and tells Mrs. Hughes she is not a slave and refuses to do so. Mr. Bates, Thomas Barrow, and William are all in the dining quarters downstairs talking about the fair, and William talks about how he is going to ask Daisy out to the fair, and Thomas snidely puts him down and tells him he doesn’t have a chance. Mr. Bates tells him to leave William alone, but when Daisy comes by and William is about to ask her if she wants to come to the fair that evening, Thomas interrupts him and asks Daisy to the fair, sabotaging William’s chance at asking Daisy out. William is crushed, and Mr. Bates calls Thomas out on what he did. Thomas acts like he is indifferent and continues to smoke his cigarette. Tom drives Cora, Sybil and Edith around, and overhears them talking about dresses. Sybil says she really likes the new fashions for women (this is around the time of the suffragette movement.) Because Tom is interested in women’s rights he takes an interest in Sybil for being interested in politics. He tells her that he overheard their conversation and hands her some pamphlets about women’s rights, telling her that he is a socialist and is going to quit his job as chauffer one day because he is interested in politics.

In the evening everyone goes to the fair (except for Carson) and Mrs. Hughes reunites with Joe Burns, who she fell in love with a long time ago. They catch up on life, and he tells her that he married someone but she died three years earlier and his kids are grown up. They play a game at the fair and when he wins, he gives her a toy he won so she can have something to remember him by. He asks her about her life and she tells him she is planning on staying at Downton Abbey even when she retires. He asks her what will happen if the estate is sold, and she tells him that there are a number of other catastrophes that could happen to the estate (a plague, a war, etc. After watching the entire series and seeing how Downton went through World War II and the 1918 flu epidemic, I just thought, Wow yeah everything she said happened and Downton was still intact.) Joe proposes to her and tells her to think carefully about her decision so that she doesn’t make the wrong decision in a hurry. When Mrs. Hughes comes back everyone sees her smiling and they speculate about her finding a new man, and Thomas makes some snide comment about it and Daisy, who is in love with Thomas, follows along with his joking. Mr. Bates tells Daisy that she shouldn’t make that kind of joke just because Thomas is making the joke because she’s usually a nice person and doesn’t gossip or backstab people like Thomas and Mrs. O’Brien do. Earlier, Mrs. O’Brien is complaining because she has to stay behind and work while everyone else gets to go to the fair, and because she is so bitter, she tells Tom Branson that the chauffers have their own place to eat on the estate and that he shouldn’t eat with them, and Mr. Bates tells her to lay off Tom since he’s a new employee and is still getting used to everything. Tom asks Mr. Bates what he is doing, and Mr. Bates tells him he is sorting Lord Grantham’s collars. Tom jokes that he should be doing something less time-wasting than sorting collars, and Mr. Bates, who has a good sense of humor, laughs it off and Mrs. O’Brien, who is always up to something, frowns suspiciously at him, like, “You shouldn’t trust this guy too much. He’s a troublemaker.” Mr. Bates asks where Anna is, and Mrs. O’Brien tells him she has a cold and is upstairs in her room. He goes upstairs and brings Anna dinner (earlier, when he got fired from his job and was alone crying in his room, Anna brought him dinner) and they are deeply in love with each other at that moment.

William is playing the piano alone in the staff dining room, and Mrs. Hughes finds him playing by himself because he is still sad about Daisy rejecting him for Thomas. She tells him she wants to hear him play, but he says it’s fine, and that he is going back to work. Mrs. Hughes saw earlier that Thomas was picking on William for having his buttons undone on his vest and Daisy didn’t stick up for William, so she tells William to not let Thomas get to him because Thomas is jealous that everyone likes William more than they like him, but William tells Mrs. Hughes that not everyone likes him, implying Daisy. Mrs. Hughes knows who he is talking about and tells him that in that case, Daisy is a foolish girl who doesn’t deserve William. Later on, in the kitchen, Daisy is telling Mrs. Patmore how cute Thomas is. Earlier, she told him she had a crush on Thomas and Mrs. Patmore is surprised that Daisy is interested in him. She tells Daisy that Thomas is not the guy for her, and when Daisy asks her why she tries to tell her that Thomas isn’t actually interested in women and was just pretending to be interested in Daisy so he could make William feel like a loser. Earlier, Mr. Bates went over to William’s room to check in on him, and William, without turning to see who it was, tells Mr. Bates to leave him alone. Mr. Bates closes his door and finds Thomas coming out into the hall having overheard what happened, and tells Mr. Bates that William never stood a chance. Mr. Bates grabs him by the collar and tells him to keep away from Daisy and to stop bullying William, but Thomas just smirks and says Mr. Bates’s threat doesn’t scare him.

When Mrs. O’Brien is doing Sybil’s hair, Gwen comes in to ask her about something, and Sybil sends Mrs. O’Brien away (Mrs. O’Brien loves to eavesdrop on people’s conversations so she can gossip with Thomas, so she is not pleased with this request but leaves.) Gwen shows her that she got an offer for an interview; the previous episode Gwen told everyone she was taking typewriting classes to become a secretary and leave the service industry, and Sybil and Anna were the only ones who supported her decision to leave. Sybil helped her apply for the job and sent in a letter of reference for Gwen, and Gwen is super overjoyed about this, but later on, when she is alone in the kitchen Gwen gets another letter and is downcast when she finds out they cancelled her interview and went with someone else. Sybil is so excited for Gwen’s interview and has her look at interview outfits, but Gwen cries and tells her about the cancellation and insists she is never going to become a secretary. Sybil, however, never gives up on Gwen and tells her that she just needs to keep going after her dream and to not get discouraged just because she didn’t make it the first time.

Mary is talking with her father, Lord Grantham, about inheriting the estate. He tells her that he is a custodian so he cannot actually buy the estate himself; he is just taking care of it for the sake of the people before him who lived at Downton. And he can’t take Cora’s money out of the state or else Lord Grantham would have to sell Downton Abbey, and that wouldn’t be fair for Matthew because he even though he would be the heir in title, he wouldn’t have any money to pay for Downton. Mary tells her father she isn’t going to marry Matthew because she is stubborn and won’t marry a man just because her family picked him for her. Meanwhile, Isobel picks up some tinctures for Mr. Molesley’s erysipelas and gets him to take them. At first the nurse is insistent that Isobel shouldn’t just pick out these remedies herself and that Molesley should see Dr. Clarkson about it, she refuses.When they go to Dr. Clarkson and the Dowager Countess, Isobel insists that Mr. Molesley’s erysipelas cleared up thanks to the tinctures she picked out for him. However, the Dowager Countess looks at Mr. Molesley’s hands and asks him how his dad is doing, and Mr. Molesley tells her he has been helping his dad out in the garden and has been trimming his rue hedge. The Dowager Countess explains that Mr. Molesley’s rash was a rue allergy, not erysipelas, and tells Isobel that while they appreciate her services, that she should leave it to the professionals (aka Dr. Clarkson and the Dowager Countess) to figure out stuff like this, and she smugly smiles to herself as she gets up to leave before Isobel can say anything.

Mary finds out that they are going to let Matthew inherit the title to the estate because he is the heir and she leaves the drawing room, and goes to her bedroom because she is angry. Cora comes to her room and finds Mary crying alone in her room, and asks what is wrong. Mary tells her that all everyone ever talks about it Matthew inheriting the estate, and she doesn’t get a say in it. Cora tells her that she wouldn’t have been able to stand up for Mary because of the estate rules, and Mary tells her that Cora doesn’t care about her feelings, and that everything is ruined and that after her affair with Pamuk her reputation is ruined. Mary is still trying to deal with the death of Mr. Pamuk, who she loved very much, and is overwhelmed because her family doesn’t seem to care about her decisions or think she can make her own decisions about the estate. Earlier, when they are walking on the fairgrounds, Matthew and Mary are talking, and Mary apologizes to Matthew for criticizing him being middle-class, and he asks her more about what she does. She tells him that she envies him having a regular 9-5 job because mostly her and her sisters help out with charities and other events but mostly spend their time at home until they find a husband, and she finds this life quite dull.

Mr. Hughes is in her office, thinking about Mr. Burns’ marriage proposal. Carson comes in and she has him sit down so she can tell him what happened. She tells Carson that before coming to Downton, she had fallen in love with Mr. Burns because he was a farmer and she was a farmer’s daughter from Argyll, so they had a deep connection. But after that they never saw each other, and he married someone but she died three years earlier, and they found each other at the fair and he proposed, but she turned down the proposal. Carson listens and then Anna comes in telling Mrs. Hughes to come because there is chaos in the kitchen and Mrs. Patmore needs Mrs. Hughes’s help. Before leaving, Carson asks Mrs. Hughes if she is considering leaving Downton, and she jokes “where would I find the time?”

The episode ends with Edith, Mary, the Dowager Countess, Lord Grantham and Cora in the drawing room. Sybil is trying on her new outfit and Anna is helping her try it on. When she finally goes into the drawing room, she is wearing a fashionable headband and these beautiful blue bloomers. Her family is aghast, particularly Lord Grantham because they normally wear dresses, but Tom Branson is looking through the window at her and is smitten. Earlier in one of the sisters’ rooms, Edith and Sybil are talking and Sybil says how confining corsets are and that she wishes women wouldn’t need to wear them all the time. I remember the first time I heard about bloomers was when I read a book as a kid called You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer!, which illustrates how Amelia Bloomer reformed dresses with the invention of bloomers. The closest thing I had to bloomers growing up was skorts, which was a combination of shorts and a skirt. I guess if you were worried about the guys seeing your panties during gym class, you could wear skorts and not worry because there were shorts underneath the skirt.