David Kern feels that Downton has jumped the shark and I find myself wondering what people expect from the show. Why did they feel betrayed?
As I mentioned last week, I do not watch Downton for the drama but rather for the 'feel' of the show. When it gets it right it is beautiful and when it gets it wrong it is easily discernible*. What other television show can offer even a glimmer of the excellence we sometimes see on Downton?
I was not that affected by the death of Matthew Crawley. I had heard he wanted out of the show and I went into the season with ambivalence toward his character. I often wonder what these actors expect out of their careers. How many times has a lead character on an popular show left for the sake of his career and how many times has that turned out to be a boon for him? Alistair MacKenzie left Monarch of the Glen to become a bit player in American police dramas. Every once in a while we see him as the murderer on Psych or Castle. He left a highly popular show in height of its glory with more fame than he deserved and ended up nowhere.
Matthew MacFadyen left MI-5 or as the British call it Spooks to play Mr. Darcy next to the single worst Elizabeth Bennett ever. Now the BBC gives him permanent work on various series which makes him look rather silly.
How can a 13 week season cramp the style of an actor? How arrogant is it to think your career will be better when you are already on the most watched show on television around the world?
I suppose this all has something to do with the race for the next Bond which always encourages British actors into making stupid decisions. I feel no sympathy for Dan Stevens and I do think Downton can survive the loss. Neither he, Matthew Macfadyen or Alistair Mackenzie will be Bond, so what exactly are they after?
Downton Abbey will survive the loss of Matthew Crawley. I suspect the death scene which many resent comes down to Julian Fellowes holding out hope that Stevens would change his mind. I thought that last dull kiss was proof that Dan was indeed leaving and had already left in spirit, and seconds later, hair blowing, it was over.
Downton Abbey is what it is: a beautifully done British period piece. It tries to give us real glimpses of different parts of life during those lost times and in doing so it sometimes pushes the limits of drama. I am ok with that. I like looking back in time. I like to escape to tea and sympathy. Take me out to the cricket match and invite me to the Ghillies Ball. Every once in a while give me a superb death bed scene like Lady Sybil's where we absolutely enter the room and feel the sheer panic of the family and the helplessness of science. Give me a Mrs. Hughes who lets me know that no matter what all will be well.
Come next January I will still be watching Downton Abbey. I will still deeply mourn the death of Lady Sybil and I will still feel like it was good riddance to Dan Stevens but mostly I will be absorbing the beautiful replicas of another era: England before the Estates (tenements). Downtown Abbey is a series of successful vignettes some much better than others but all easy on the eyes and many deeply moving.Well worth my time on a Sunday evening.
*Lord Grantham's ridiculous statement about Barrow being 'born that way.' In spite of the BBC's stellar attention to period detail they cannot escape the post-modern take on homosexuality.
Have to disagree - I will not miss Sybil (and I wish she would have taken Branson with her. Never saw anything there between them).
ReplyDeleteBut Matthew was important, or was supposed to be. Matthew, Mary, & the future of Downton were supposed to be key. (And I do fault Stevens for his obvious "I don't want to be here" attitude in this season)
I've heard that Fellowes originally intended 3 series: Pre-war, War, Post-war. I think we would have had a much better quality program if he would have stuck to that instead of letting the international success of the show go to his head.
This isn't new to me since I watched it when it was on in the UK. My original dismay has eased but I'm still convinced that I am done with this show. Some other period drama will fill the gap, I am sure. ;)
I felt more like the show had reached its zenith after last week's episode.
ReplyDeleteThe finale gave me a boost. Everyone seemed happier in their relationships. My prediction is that Mary will rise to the occasion and run the estate (together with Branson) (complete w/nod to women's lib), saving the land for their children (future).
My favorite new idom? *dont be such a big girl's blouse*
Dana, After last week I thought the same thing. I had to check to see if it was the finale. I found it weird that the last show of the season would take place a year later.
DeleteCindy, last week's was actually the finale in the UK and then what we saw last night was th Christmas special- on Christmas Day, several weeks or so after the season "ended". Yes, it did have that nicely wrapped up feel to it... My husband and I had to look it up after that.
DeleteSo Karen, you didn't find Sybil and Branson believable? I find Branson's emotional attachment to the dead Sybil very moving. She did not start out as one of my favorites but over time I liked her better and I thought the death scene was perfectly executed.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the series started out depending on Matthew and Mary but not as much as Monarch of the Glen depended on the Monarch but there is the baby.
What do you think about the rumors of a Pre-WWI Downton? I would miss beloved characters but the period would be better.
I guess I never bought into Sybil & Branson from the beginning. I will admit that Allen Leech made her death very poignant - especially liked that he called her "love". In their relationship over the series, there was too much telling about their what a great love and grand passion they had and not enough showing of it to the audience, in my opinion.
DeleteI also note that Jessica Brown Findlay left the show for other opportunities and has not received the censure that Stevens has received. Whether that's because she's better at not stirring things up, her character is less beloved (that's the case for me) or we have a double standard for actors and actresses, I do not know.
I'd give Pre-WW1 Downton a chance, although it wouldn't be the same without Maggie Smith or the other much loved characters.
Karen,
DeleteI admit I just assumed they killed off Sybil for the drama of it but now I see it makes more sense that she left too. Not much publicity about it which may be because she was quiet or maybe just not as interesting as Matthew, the heir, leaving.
Stevens left for work on Broadway, which probably would interfere with even a brief TV filming season. And he's playing a role in the stage version on which one of my favorite movies was based, so I guess I feel more sympathy for that than I would for chasing American TV roles.
ReplyDeleteI love the show for much the same reasons you do, but I am giving Dan more leeway. It seems to me he left more for life than for bigger fame and glory. He judged the Man Booker literary contest last year, is the editor-at-large of a literary magazine, is acting on Broadway, has a young family. It seems he desires time to do the things that are important to him. Maybe Downton and the success from it just affords him that opportunity. I can't fault him for that even if it changes the landscape of my favorite show. And I loved Sybil and Branson too.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter also pointed out that I was making quite a few assumptions about Dan Stevens and she is not even a Dan Stevens fan. I suppose I should give him the benefit of the doubt but it still seems to me a frustrating trend that these actors get great benefits from being on a popular show but only use it as a jumping off point. Once I heard he wanted out of the show I did not really bother to read any more about him and it did seem to me that he phoned in his performance this year leaving Mary to carry the weight of making the relationship work.
ReplyDeleteNope, going to disagree on this one too. There were times this season when I wanted the shake Mary and yell, "You are his wife, woman. Act like his wife!" Of course the whole plot line was a bit dubious at best -- he inherits a fortune right at the very time it is needed. Ah well.
DeleteAlso want to say that morning time is going fabulously at our house these past few weeks (that is how I found you). I love the way it helps me to prioritize the things that are important and not just give lip-service to them.
I meant not going to AGREE. :-)
DeleteI am suffering from something terrible today and the kids are sick too so basically I am laying around with my laptop. I do agree that they had Mary act incredibly cold and hard this year. Some of her dialogue was completely out there and made it harder to like her. I did like the last line about which Mary Crawley was she? I hope she will not turn out to be worse next season. I wonder what was up with that?
DeleteI agree with you about the whole post-modern thing with Thomas. My 17yo and I discuss things like that after every show. However, I will not be watching it next year. 17yo and I read an article on the problems with Christians watching DA and while I talk out the moral ambiguities of the show with him and mostly watch it for the same reasons you do, my son thought the article made some good points. So 17yo made me a pact that if don't watch DA, which has moral ambiguities, then he won't watch The Walking Dead, which I have intensely disliked him watching and have been quite vocal about it. What mother could resist such a deal! ;)
ReplyDeleteI will have to live vicariously through your blog and look at photos and watch A Room with a View and Enchanted April and Howards End instead. :)
Joy
I don't think DA will expire without Matthew. There is a lot that can be done with Lady Mary running the place in her son's name. There are still Mrs. Hughes, and my personal favorite, Daisy, to cheer everyone up. The costumes will still be grand, Maggie Smith will still be wonderful, and there will still be some good acting and the evocation of an era.
ReplyDeleteJoy
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ReplyDeleteYou know, life is like that--incredibly tragic and odd and unbelievable and funny and wonderful and mystifying and frustrating and infuriating and weird--to the point that, really, truth is stranger than fiction. My own found-wedding-ring story is like that, I think--if I wrote a short story with that happening someone would say, "Nah, that's one of those dumb happily-ever-after stories that could never happen in real life." But it did. And new fathers sometimes die--my own husband could have, easily, after being up with me two nights in a row and driving home alone from the hospital in foggy early morning.
ReplyDeleteSo no, they didn't jump the shark. It was kind of like real life--how else can you get rid of a character whose actor wants to leave? I don't think I'll buy a repeat back injury, though. ;-)
(My ring story is in the October 2012 set of posts on wrasselings.blogspot.com in case anyone reading this hasn't read it yet. :-) I love to share it!)
I think about your ring story all the time now as my own ring is getting loose on me and whenever I check it I think of you and also when I go to Walgreens :)
DeleteI once had an amazingly weird thing happen. We had moved from the South to NJ and knew no one there at all. My dad came to visit and he said, "I once recruited a player from this town." Right then our dog ran into the road and got hit. I went outside and a runner was running by and he had on a jacket from Stetson University which is in FL and he stopped to help with the dog. I had never heard this man's name until a few minutes before this and I said, "Are you Bobby ?" and he looked at me like I was very strange and I said, "Your old coach is in the house." It was totally bizarre. My dad and the player had a nice time reminiscing and our dog lived.
Whoa! So glad the dog lived! :-) That wouldn't have been such a great story otherwise. You must be pandering to the *Touched By an Angel* market. ;-)
DeleteSybil and Matthew both chose to leave the show for their own reasons. I liked both of their characters very much, but will miss Matthew the most.
ReplyDeleteI haven't watched the episode yet, so I was going to wait to read this, but since about 15 people on Facebook posted spoilers already...
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to imagine how the show goes on without Matthew, but I'm sure it will. I tend to agree with Cindy that "truth is stranger than fiction" so the wildly unlikely happenings don't bother me so much.
What really made me nervous this season was the prospect of a sick or dying Mrs. Hughes. What a relief. I just love her.
Light bulb moment: It's like the chapter in Mind of the Maker: Free Will and Miracle. We don't want the character to call the shots. For Matthew to be written out of his own free will smacks of an author who is not in control of his own story. That's an earthly problem that conflicts with our heavenly longings.
ReplyDeleteRenee,
DeleteI think you are on to something and why I feel for Julian Fellowes more than for the actors. What is the role of an actor? Isn't it to give life to the writing? If the author cannot count on the actors how is he to write? I realize these actors cannot commit their entire lives to one show but what if they did? Wouldn't it make the artifact better? But then again maybe DA should have been a 3 act play.
Great thoughts, Renee, as always.
Just what I was going to say -- great thoughts!
DeleteWow. I'm sort of honored to have been mentioned in this post! I feel like I've somehow hit the bit time to have been mentioned by Cindy Rollins in a blog post. And I'm not being sarcastic. =)
ReplyDeleteThe reason I argue that Downton jumped the shark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark) is that it has long since ceased to be concerned with telling stories in a way that isn't manipulative. Perhaps I should have said that the actual moment the show jumped the shark was the moment Crawley's legs came back (a moment that Dan Stevens himself has cited as motivation for his desire to leave the cast).
There's an old maxim in fiction writing that most of you probably know that argues that a good story teller is more concerned with "showing" than "telling". Downton, for whatever reason, has for quite a while been more concerned with telling us how we should feel and think and how we should respond than it is with telling quality story.
Perhaps part of the problem is I saw Matthew's death coming about ten minutes into the episode and felt it a bit contrived and trite. Knowing Stevens wanted off the show certainly didn't help, but I would have been far more interested in Mary's future with a baby had they quietly written Matthew off to American on business or something like that, knowing that the character is off somewhere else and unable to help raise the kid or help Mary. The show built in too many emotionally driven arcs to make any of them feel truly powerful. I imagine had Sybil not died that Matthew's accident would have been much more meaningful. Come to think of it, had Matthew's wartime injury never occurred his injury would have meant more.
Anyway, just because I think that it's jumped the shark doesn't mean I won't watch next season so I suppose the joke's on me!
This is where I admit that I did not technically know what the term meant and I started to mention that a couple of times but didn't take the time. But I did understand the concept. Thanks for the motivation to click on Wikipedia and find out.
DeleteI noticed almost from the beginning that Downton had a sort of unusual way of dealing with drama and I can see where the whole Matthew being healed plot was contrived. I tend to think the goal of the show is to reproduce an era and because of that they add in plots that are not quite true to the characters. I think it is a good idea gone wrong. We saw it in the "Lord Grantham likes a Maid" subplot which I felt was a perfectly legitimate idea if not executed well. In that time period Lords were known to have dalliances with maids.
I think the whole homosexual plot arose from the genuine desire to illustrate the whole Oscar Wilde time frame. That was a legitimate idea for the show to explore they just failed to explore it faithful to the time period. I can believe in the hush-hush aspect, just not the 'born that way' propaganda.
Perhaps that is a backwards way to look at the period when you already have a cast of well-developed characters. And that I think is where the show excels. It has a lovely and loveable cast.
As to Matthew being shipped off to America...Monarch of the Glen tried that( Australia) and it did even worse violence to the character than death would have. Julian Fellowes was a part of the Monarch cast so I am sure he knew that would never work.
I watched Monarch of the Glen long after it became merely a soap opera because I loved the characters and the scenery was incomparable. I suspect I will do the same with Downton.
AHHH...I wish you would have typed *SPOILER ALERT* at the top of this post! I am watching a few episodes behind. Although I would be more disappointed if it were season 1 or 2, not drawn in to 3 as much. A few years back I watched MoTG despite it soap-opera-ishness as well...loved some of the characters and the scenery, and the theme song. I do like me some catchy theme music. One of my favorites is on Hetty Wainthropp.
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