With the last few weeks quietly rumbling along, Downton Abbey's "Season 5, Episode 6" felt like an explosion. Mary gets a bob! And rides in a Steeplechase! Isobel accepts Merton! Carson and Hughes plan a future together! Bates is not a murderer! Edith runs away with Marigold!

"Season 5, Episode 6" was great fun, and not only because it finally (though Mary) announced "we are in the 1920s!" But in Downton's classic style, a lot of it brushed with greatness without actually achieving it.

That brings me to Thomas. While I'm absolutely thrilled to have been 100% wrong about his drug addiction, I wanted so much more from his story than what we got. Thomas is one of Downton's best and most complicated characters, and when it has come to his homosexuality, he's always been quietly confident about it. One of the most affecting things, though, has been his desperation around romantic rejection. A man he loved during the war died, and then Jimmy (who is straight, or at least, bicurious but pretends to be otherwise) wanted nothing to do with him. The blossoming of an eventual friendship between Thomas and Jimmy, though, was a beautiful thing, and the badly-kept non-secret that Thomas is gay has always been treated as nothing more than an "eccentricity" by those at Downton.

That's why I find it so hard to believe that Thomas would go through such great lengths to find a "cure," at least, as far as we viewers would know. I have zero doubt that Thomas has struggled his entire life -- being bullied by his father, rejected by those around him, unable to love freely. He tells Clarkson that he just wants to be more like other people.

That was heartbreaking, and one of the few times we've seen Thomas let his guard down even a little. But there is such a missed opportunity in not exploring Thomas' thought process and struggle to go to London in the first place and seek this treatment, especially since him moping around sick these last few episodes would have gone from irritating to exceptionally sad. Instead, it just felt like a flash bomb that -- even though it finally opened the door to a friendship with Baxter, and I so glad she's slowly getting a personality -- came and went far more quickly than that storyline deserved.

I could write an entire essay on Thomas, but I'll move on to Downton's other most tragic figure: Edith. The show doesn't even try to make her sympathetic, does it? As she sits at the breakfast table, sick with the knowledge that Michael Gregson is most assuredly dead (because Hitler killed him, y'all), her family cheerfully banters around her, ignoring her grief. Later, after the news is certain, Edith sits like a ghost in the drawing room, while Mary saunters in debuting her bob. When Edith tells her that was unkind, Cora defends Mary, who then snaps at Edith anyway that she always ruins everything. Later, when Edith goes to tell the truth and collect her child, she's treated to the rantings and ravings of Mrs. Drew, who surely could not have been that blindsided by this. The whole thing is terrible, and you know what, Edith I hope you find happiness away from Downton, because you sure as heck will never find it there. (Although you know she's going to be convinced to come back by the Dowager Countess).

There were many more cheerful things at the Abbey, though. Mary had some very Bright Young Things-esque machinations of love with Charles Blake to get Mabel Lane Fox and Tony Gillingham back together, and there was a splendid Steeplechase on top of it. Actually hearing Sybie call Robert "Donk" was glorious. It is delightful, too, that Isobel has accepted Merton, and I hope she goes through with it, because it will be a change of pace not just for her, but for the show. Rose and Atticus continue to be precious (mostly him, he's scrumptious), while Carson and Mrs. Hughes gave me full-on feels. And apparently, we don't need to #HangBates (again). Cora handled Robert, stopping his pouting and getting him back in her room, and Molesley even offered to help Daisy with some of her studies.

Again with Molesley, though, Downton treads close to greatness. His revelation -- that he left school at 12 because though he was bright, his family was poor -- was a fantastic commentary on why public education is a wonderful thing. Molesley could have had an entirely different (and probably much happier) life if he had been able to continue with school. His short speech to that fact says more about education of that day than everything Miss Bunting said (or Daisy quotes from her) combined. It isn't explored further, not yet, but Daisy appears to be on the right track to achieving autonomy in the future, away from the house. It seems, too, that she isn't the only one.

Episode Rating: ★★★ Good — Proceed with cautious optimism

Musings and Miscellanea:

-- "Of course it's terrible, but what did she think he was doing? Living in a tree?" - Mary, who is back to being Season One levels of cold, having retained nothing from her time with Matthew. I love it, though.

-- Has Edith left to run Gregson's publishing company? What of her own editorial career? (Which we never hear anything about).

-- Hitler killed Gregson. Fellowes, sometimes I literally can't with you. Also that they had Cora enunciate it like eight times.

-- "Oh it is you. I thought it was a man wearing your clothes." - Violet about Mary's bob.

-- "At least she can carry it off. Most of them look like bald monkeys" - Mary's fake-French stylist. And she really did look like a Vogue fashion plate, as Miss Fox pointed out.

-- "Harsh reality is always better than false hope" - Clarkson which, wow, bleak there, guy.

-- The Dowager's domestic issues with her housekeeping staff were just as hilarious to me as they were to Isobel. And such names! Dinker? Spratt? Very Dickensian.

-- Violet stopping off to see the Russian Prince and him making overtures to run away with her was just really weird, though. He's not romantic, he's just pushy and a little creepy.

-- Isis had better be ok!! But she's probably about 20 years old now, so …

-- "I blame the war. Before 1914, nobody thought about anything at all" - Violet.