Lord and Lady Grantham are having marital problems of their own, although Robert is largely oblivious, to the point of forgetting their anniversary. It seems that Cora is getting tired of being less of a character than an occasionally convenient plot device a bewildering choice from creator Julian Fellowes, since Elizabeth McGovern is considerably more talented than some of her co-stars, Hugh Bonneville included. What this says for the Countess' future is uncertain but since McGovern's band, Sadie and the Hotheads, have been touring a lot lately, the Earl might want to pay more attention to his wife unless he wants to lose her to Spanish flu or upcoming guest star Richard E. Grant...Meanwhile, you wouldn't think that such an already-bloated cast would need any addition, but it seems that, having adjusted to life as a single father and proxy aristocrat, Tom is now in the market for a love interest. Spirited socialist teacher Miss Bunting seems to have wandered in from a different series altogether where she plays the spunky, iconoclastic lead - she clearly thinks she's being charmingly modern, when actually she's just the rather rude love interest of a less-than-interesting character. Poor Tom - he even gets upstaged by his daughter, who has taken to calling Lord Crawley 'Donk' in a misplaced attempt to remind us that he's a family man. Then again, since one of his grandchildren is currently being raised by a pig farmer who moonlights as a fireman, that's the least of his problems. We're spoilt for choice here, with both Anna Chancellor and Harriet Walter making blink-and-you'll-miss-them appearances, both doing what they do best. Chancellor plays arch and sexually predatory Lady Anstruther and Walter is stuffy but wry as the Dowager's old friend Lady Shackleton, introduced and quickly discarded as a potential suitor for the Isobel-smitten Lord Merton. Both actresses could easily carry weighty subplots on their perfectly sculpted shoulders, so perhaps they just happened to be visiting the set and Julian Fellowes decided to shoehorn them into the script.
Review of Episode #5.1
