Tom at least talks about his daughter to people. Mary doesn't even mention her son to anyone else.

Oh, of course. That's why I said it was handled better. But it was utterly ridiculous as a plot if you stop and think about it for a second.

Yeah, I guess that's possible. But still, if she does get married, her afternoons with Violet exchanging snippy remarks will probably be a thing of the past.

That's odd. You'd think that the British version, being the original, would have additional dialogue, rather than the American version. Why was the dialogue removed from the ITV version?

"Oh no, our child was forcibly taken from us. But on the bright side, that annoying lady is gone too!"

Ok, I definitely did not hear anything like that. Perhaps I missed a chunk of the dialogue, or saw some edited version of the episode.

I hope so too, but there are 2 more episodes of this season left. There have to be some more twists and turns. And if Isobel marries Lord Merton, she'll have to leave Downton. That doesn't seem likely (unless Penelope Wilton wants to leave the show).

Mabel Lane Fox is a surprisingly interesting character. At least, she seems to be able to hold her own with Mary - their interactions are deliciously bitchy.

Marigold is Cora's granddaughter. She's probably high on the same stuff her granny uses.

Oh come on, the dead Turkish diplomat in season 1 wasn't ridiculous? The plot itself was insanely soapy - it's just that it was handled better than Patrick's return.

Hmm, I don't recall Anna saying anything about Mary at all. All she did was ask Bates how he could think such a thing.

Aren't Carson and Mrs Hughes the cutest thing ever? I do hope they buy an inn or something, and spend their lives running it together - extremely properly and meticulously, of couse.

Well, finally! After spending 5 episodes of the season (out of an 8 episode season!), the plots on DA are finally moving forward. Not all of them, of course - the interminable 'Did Bates murder Mr. Green' story still seems stuck in place, and shows no sign of ever concluding (I suspect that that murder investigation…

I was terribly worried about poor Mabel Lane Fox. I was sure Julian Fellows might try to get her out of the way, so that Lady Mary could have two men to herself again.

I don't think Mary is all that much like Violet. They can both be cutting and bitchy, but that's where the similarity ends. Mary is bitchy for the sake of being cruel; Violet is far less cruel, and certainly not deliberately so (she is sometimes accidentally cruel, of course). Also, Violet is hilariously funny; Mary…

That probably proves nothing other than a mistake on the casting people's part. Or maybe the actor did such an atrocious British accent that the director told him to just use his natural accent, realism be damned.

Mary's son probably thinks he's an orphan, considering that he sees his Mummy about as often as he sees his Daddy.

The most idiotic part is that Anna did nothing to disabuse him of the notion that the contraceptive was hers. In fact, her obvious relief at Bates's (utterly unbelievable, IMO) declaration of innocence made it seem more likely that what Bates suspected was true: that she was trying not to get pregnant by him because…

Yeah, I found that annoying too. I assume that the difference was because Sharona was initially Adrian's nurse, so she had a more personal and protective attitude towards him. Natalie was always his assistant, so she thought of him only as her boss.

Yeah, that was so stupid. She could have just moved so that her kid could have a relationship with his father, or something like that.