The Televangelist: ‘Downton Abbey,’ Season 2, Ep. 1

• PBS
• Spellbound by the number of plots

Two years have passed since we last got a glimpse of life at Downton Abbey, our favorite English estate filled with pomp, circumstance and scandal. Despite the jump, very few things appear at first to have changed at the manor. After Edith and Mary ruined each other’s futures as best they could, they seem to get along passably well. The Mary and Matthew saga took a hiatus as Mary spent time in London and Matthew reported for war, though they are reunited early on with a third party addition - that of Matthew’s sudden and mysterious fiancée Lavinia, or, as the Dowager Countess refers to her, “that blonde piece.”

A few other new faces have appeared around the halls of Downton including Ethel, the cheeky new maid, Vera Bates, estranged wife of John, and after the second time jump, the PTSD-suffering valet Lang. And though there were a few faces lost for good (the dearly departed Mr Pamuk, his friend Evelyn Napier and the spunky maid Gwen who left to become a secretary), Thomas, the former footman, reappears on the battlefront getting a dramatic wakeup call about the perils of war he hoped to avoid by being in the medical corps.

Through all of the many twists and turns and explosive revelations of last night’s episode, the crux of the frenzy was the Great War. As some of the characters yearn for battle (such as Robert, Earl of Grantham, who is disappointed in his honorary appointment to the regiment, and William, a footman who dreams of the glory of the fight), those experiencing it first-hand have no such illusions. Lady Violet sighingly remarks, “war makes early risers of us all,” but it means more than just that. Every member of the Downton household from upstairs to down, just like everyone in England, was affected in some way by the war that seemed far away and was built upon motives that were shrouded in uncertainty even for those of the highest ranks.

As Carson, the Grantham’s tireless butler, suffers from a heart attack (despite what that quack Dr. Clarkson might say) from of the stress of the improprieties the war has caused (maids serving in the main dining hall? I never ...!), Matthew remarks to Thomas in the trenches, “war has a way of distinguishing between the things that matter and those that don’t.” As the wheels of progress turn and some of the feudal traditions of the past begin to slowly strip away, the individuals of the estate must make a choice: adapt or be left behind. Or possibly perish, in Carson’s case, though even he begins to thaw by the end of the episode as he gives Mary some “wild” advice to follow her heart as regards Matthew - a very modern sentiment indeed.