#das5

Season 5, Episode 3 Oh, Abbots, a word to the wise. If Lady Mary Crawley (Michelle Dockery) ever asks you to “hide the thing,” please know she’s referring to the more-than-gently-used diaphragm she took to Liverpool for her weeklong fling with Lord Gillingham (Tom Cullen). If she tells you, “There must be some corner cupboard in the cottage where nobody goes,” don’t believe her! As surely as Mrs. Patmore’s sauces come to a hearty boil, somebody will go there, and it will almost certainly be your husband, who will want to know why you’re blockading his boys, which will remind you that you’d like to know what he was doing in London with a certain Mr. Green (who, by this point, could be a character in “Clue”). Oh, I admit this last part is pure speculation — when last seen, Anna (Joanne Froggatt) was simply slipping the diaphragm into her pocket — but there’s no way it can end well, can it, Abbots? And come to think of it, why doesn’t Mary just throw the blasted thing away? Is she planning a week in Manchester, too? Nether Alderley? Well, here’s what we can say for sure by the end of Episode 3: Lord G is ripped in a way that 1920s men never were, and he can rip it in bed, too. The sex, to judge by the look on Lady Mary’s face when they’re together, is just fine. The aftersex, to judge by the look on her face when he leaves the room, is … not so much. “He’s a nice man,” says Mary, “a very nice man, but not … I mean, of course, we talked about things ….” I think Mary is trying to say that his intellectual organ is a little on the small side. Which may explain the utter lack of voltage that has existed between these two characters from the get-go. Lord G. is trying to press his advantage, but I don’t see Mary (or the audience) tolerating him for much more than another episode or two, barring some game-changing revelation. Ten to one she hightails it back to Charles Blake (Julian Ovenden), at least until a character played by Matthew Goode — fresh from lighting a fire under “The Good Wife” — is introduced in the finale, called the “Christmas episode”

Charles Blake: So you chose the pretty boy. You’ll get bored of him soon enough. Mary: What? Sex? What are you sex talking about? I sex think I’m rather offended! Sex. Charles: You’ll be back for this big, giant head soon. *mic drop* **************************************************************************** Tony: Now that we’ve spent weeks discussing and planning for sex, let’s go out to eat. Mary: Darling, I think I’d rather you put it in me straight away.