Finally

[chocolatepot]

Okay my first and most important thought is that I really wish Mary had put aside mourning entirely at the end rather than just ... moving into second mourning. Because that was acceptable after the war, you could say, "fine, I've mourned, and now that I'm moving on with my life I'm just going to dress normally." It would have made much more of a statement, even if it was just a green or light blue check or something.

I really loved Thomas getting the nanny fired - I'm not sure what exactly Fellowes was doing, if he was saying that Thomas personally disliked her and used her mentioning she'd left the kids alones as a ruse to get her sacked, but my interpretation is that he genuinely cares about the babies (look at his smiley little face when he sees them outside!) and picked up on her red flags.

Thomas may actually be my favorite character next to Edith, I don't know what to make of that. And I'm pretty tired of Anna and Bates. I hope Bates and Thomas can reconcile over some external conflict this season, because I'm tired of their loathing.

POOR EDITH. This is obviously going to blow up in her face in some fashion.

So tired of Robert. I don't know what Fellowes can do with him besides kill him off, he is just so aggressively annoying, but I guess they've seen too much death recently to put in another one. But I mean ... it's not just his age, Violet seems fairly able to move with the times, or at least avoid being really obvious when she can't.

My first thought was that I'm optimistic because as much as I had issues with Robert, I thought it was a decent episode. But then I remembered that I always find the series openers to be decent, Fellowes's problem isn't that he can't write but that he can't plot seasonal arcs. So we'll see.