‘Downton Abbey’ season 6, episode 5 review: Robert’s health crisis overtakes hospital plotline, Edith’s romance

Through most of Sunday night’s new episode of “Downton Abbey,” there were some moments where love was in the air. However, at the same time there were also moments where there was the potential for great despair. Robert was feeling ill, and ITV explicitly aired a content warning prior to this episode. There are only a few select times that they have done that over the course of the series, with one of the most notable ones being back during the infamous Mr. Green episode.

For most of the episode, we spent our time wondering just when we were going to get to the moment that we were warned about. It happened right around the fifty-minute mark, as Robert began vomiting blood as his ulcer apparently ruptured. This is the thing about this show; it has a tendency to go from zero to sixty in almost a split second when things get rough, and immediately the house went into a panic as to what to do to help him.

The good news is that for now, it appears as though Robert is going to be on the mend. If nothing else, though, this incident should be the reminder for viewers that anything can change in a moment, even for the Earl. Granted, this is something that we should know already thanks to the deaths of Matthew and Sybil.

As for the rest of the story, Edith’s love life moving forward is something that we were excited to see, as was some further posturing as to whether or not Mary and Henry Talbot could eventually be a thing. Tom is still figuring out what his place in the world will be, and Carson is getting adjusted to having someone in Mrs. Hughes cook for him. In all honesty, this was not the most eventful episode of the series; it was more about a transition, as whatever happened to Robert will be reverberate through the final weeks of the series.

Oh, and clearly Mary is on to the secret regarding Marigold. Episode Grade: B+.