With the body barrels…

This. There is no way Henry and Mary end anyway but ugly.

I also loved that he wasn't "Rah, Rah Aristocracy!" He wasn't full Bunting, but he was realistic and had his power point presentation, "Here's why you people suck and deserve to wander the hedgerows in moth eaten tea gowns and de-jeweled tiaras."
He also made Mary go to the movies and make out. He was a man of the…

“If you’re trying to get rid of me, I’m going to make this as hard and as horrible as I can”
Let's play the pyramid!
Things a stalker says! Things people say before the divorce gets UGLY! Things that are a red flag that this marriage is going to end with a gun shot!

Matthew was a good brother-in-law as well. I imagine Henry Talbot will be as well. What with all the sex, I am sure Mary will be breakfasting in bed again, leaving Edith to make a new ally over morning coffee.

I think the family knew they had to shore up Mary before she pulled the whole house down. Then they could help Edith.
They know Edith trucks on. Mary's apparently damn disaster when she goes emotionally off course.

Scarlett O'Hara was also kind to her slaves and they loved her because that novel was being written by a delusional southern belle like Julian Fellows.
I love the show, but sometimes the "Hurrah for the aristocracy! Let's let them fix all our problems!" propaganda gets a little thick.

Of course you wouldn't. what a crappy dinner party. Don would drink all your liquor, try to sleep with your wife and Mary would mock your china pattern and roll her eyes at your fury when Don inevitably sleeps with one of the other dinner guests after drunkenly striking out with the lovely Mrs. Beast of Man.

Mary would not have been Peggy Olson. She might have wound up being Joan. She wanted the easy life of the Countess of Grantham. She didn't want anything to change and yet change was thrust upon her. She eventually rolled with it, but she was no agent of change.
Edith and Peggy both embraced new roles for women because…

Next time on Downton Abbey, Robert will spew blood across the table thrice as secrets long buried are revealed…

Well Tom was more open to falling in love with a race car driver than Mary was.
Also Tom is turned on by the speed. All 65 miles an hour of it.

The dowager is magic.

Robert's reaction was my favorite. He was almost as excited by Edith getting herself a Marquess as he was by his "PUPPY!"
I am sure his rolling fantasy had him having parties where Edith and Bertie would arrive fashionably late and be announced, "The Marquess and Marchioness of Hexham." and all the fancy folk would oh…

Is it too late for Mrs. Hughes to take a run at Mr. Mason?
Even my husband is muttering from behind his iPad, "You know she can sleep at the big house whenever she wants, right jerkass?

Team Blake. He made her almost tolerable. And he didn't put up with her nonsense.
It would have served her right to end up with Evelyn Napier. But I would have felt badly for him. He was the upstairs Mosely (prior to us discovering Mosely is the most brilliant man in England…).

My head canon still insists that Lady Edith is Rosamund's daughter. Cora interest in Edith is sporadic and Robert's "Isn't she great?" attitude towards her is new and based solely on the fact that she's not dull anymore.
Whereas Rosamund has always seemed to have a very soft spot for Edith. It could be because Robert…

A person really can't blame Lady Edith for getting a piece of that before he got on the boat. He was legitimately debonair and he taught her a lot about herself. Not even including sexy time and out of wedlock childbirth.