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| Lady Mary is set up on a blind date and goes about as well as you think |
Downton Abbey is a
show about change or at least a show about changing times. And yet this episode seemed to be filled with
nothing but stories we’ve seen before and will likely see again. Once again, Lady Mary is being set up with a
potential suitor because God forbid she be allowed to create her own life and
personality in the wake of her husband’s death.
Edith and Michael are also stuck on a merry-go-round, circling the same
story over and over. And it’s really a
shame because I’m enjoying all of these performances, I just wish they were in
service of more interesting stories.
Throughout the episode, Lady Mary is clearly a woman torn
between two worlds. The bulk of the
episode is framed around her trip to London where she, not Robert, will
negotiate the estate’s death taxes. It’s
a remarkable turn for the woman who basically didn’t leave her room for sixth
months after Matthew's death, as shown in the season premiere.
And if the entire show were about Mary and Branson operating Downton I
would probably enjoy it quite a bit. But,
alas, Mary is a woman in the early 20th-century, which means that if
she’s single for any reasonable length of time then something must be wrong
with her. So Robert, Cora, and Rosamund
all conspire to have Lord Gillingham meet her once again for an evening of
dinner and dancing. It’s not that I
dislike Gillingham, I really don’t. I’m
simply tired of watching men constantly throwing themselves at Mary. I get it.
She’s a highly attractive potential spouse. But the first and second seasons were largely
focused on finding Mary a husband (by my count, Lord Gillingham is the sixth
potential suitor we’ve been introduced to in some thirty episodes, not even counting
Matthew). I’d prefer the show not travel
down this well-worn path yet again. Let
Mary figure out who she is as an individual before tying her up with another
man.
On the other end of the love spectrum, Edith and Michael
finally consummate their relationship on the eve of his journey to
Germany. I like these two as a couple,
but their story has been spinning in circles for a year and a half now (about
six or seven episodes). With Michael
gone for an extended period of time perhaps Edith, too, can develop a life of her
own. When Edith was first offered her
newspaper column last season I thought it was an excellent way to open the
world of Downton Abbey. Instead, its main function has been to make
yet another relationship the primary focus of a Crawley woman’s life. Indeed, it seems like every line Edith has nowadays
is either spoken to Michael or about him. I really like the Downton women, but I wish
Julian Fellowes could find more for them to do than dance at parties and be
wooed by men.
Back at Downton, Edna’s finally played her hand too
far, blackmailing Branson with their
post-concert hookup and threatening him with the possibility of a
pregnancy. She’s yet another in Downton’s long line of mustache-twirling
cartoon villains brought in solely to stir the pot and cause trouble. The mark of a great show is the ability to
generate drama out of its characters reacting to their everyday lives. If you are only capable of creating dramatic
moments by inserting new characters to cause trouble (see also Mr. Green, Bates’s
wife, etc.), then the stories come off as manufactured and inauthentic. Granted, Thomas seems to be behind most of
the trouble-making, but his overt villainy has managed to put him squarely in
the mustache-twirling category himself.
Downton Abbey is a
show about changing times and is itself occasionally willing to embrace change. But it’s time for the show to make a
foundational change. Ditch the suitors,
lords, and parties. Let the women live
their own lives and make their own decisions.
That was, after all, one of the most lasting changes of the Roaring Twenties.
A couple of spare thoughts –
I know I’m supposed to be shocked and intrigued by Rose
dancing with the “gallant bandleader” Jack Ross but I was too distracted by his
terrible American accent and lackluster singing voice to care.
Lord Gillingham just about made me gag when he told Mary, “I’ll
never love again as I love you in this moment.”
Please, dude, you’ve known her as an adult for like two months.
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