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| Mary and Mr. Blake get dirty in "Downton Abbey" |
Any given episode of Downton
Abbey contains about fifty percent joy and fifty percent eye-rolling for
me. Generally, my enjoyment of an
episode comes down to whether the eye-rolling comes from the characters I like
(Mary, Branson, Edith, and the Bateses) or from the characters I dislike or
find uninteresting (Thomas and pretty much the entire kitchen crew). I struggled with the first half of this
season because my favorite characters were getting dreadful storylines: Mary
was stuck in a malaise following Matthew’s death, Edith and Michael’s
relationship was spinning in circles, and Anna suffered needlessly at the hands
of Mr. Green. But the last few episodes
have seen a marked turnaround on all of those fronts.
First off: pigs! We
were promised pigs last week and we got them this week. Granted, the pigs are dying of dehydration
because apparently they haven’t had anybody checking their water trough for
several days (seems like a wee bit of an oversight), but still, pigs! And I am aware
that this is yet another man falling all over himself for the apparently irresistible
Lady Mary, but if they’re going to make her desirable because of her business acumen
and her willingness to get dirty, I could get behind that. So long as Mr. Blake refuses to care about
parties, dresses, and all that other crap, I’d like to see him stick around.
Branson, too, gets to make googly eyes with a new potential paramour
as he sidles up to a pretty young socialist at a political rally. Politics isn’t something the show has played
well with, despite having an avowed socialist among its characters. It’s been interesting but disappointing to
see Branson integrate so fully into Downton life that he’s more or less
abandoned completely his political ideas for a life of farming. Perhaps he can be lured back into the world
of politics, but it seems to be a theme of the show (one I’ll likely return to
when I review the season finale) that the only way to really change who you are
is to leave Downton. Maybe that’s
where Branson’s story is headed, but I hope not. His farming knowledge and fish-out-of water
attitude have made him one of my favorite characters this season.
Finally, Edith’s storyline seems to be progressing exactly
how you would expect it to. Once again,
though, the show sort of takes the easy way out when discussing a potential
progressive plot. I know that abortion
is a touchy subject in pretty much every sphere, but to have Edith get all the way to the
clinic without much of anything in the way of introspection on her decision
only to back out upon seeing and hearing the conditions of the place seems to
me to be a bit of a copout, as though Fellowes was saying, “See, abortion was a
thing that existed and I’m recognizing it without having any real, meaningful
effect on my characters.” I don’t mean
to belittle the gravity or difficulty of Edith’s decision, I just don’t see how
the way it was presented in this episode will have any lasting impact on Edith
other than to, perhaps, bring her closer to Rosamund, who comes off as the
strongest supporter of the Crawley family.
I wrote two weeks ago that the middle episode of this
nine-hour season felt like a piece-moving episode, not really resolving
anything, but just positioning everybody for the stretch run. Unfortunately, the last two hours have felt
much the same, with characters making only incremental progress and no real
sense of purpose being felt. With the UK
“season finale” next week (followed by the Christmas Special the week after) I
have absolutely no clue where anybody is going to finish the season. On some shows (say Breaking Bad) that kind of
uncertainty is a feature built into the plot.
Here, it’s more the result of a lack of direction. I hope Downton
Abbey can find its way quickly.
A couple of spare thoughts –
Robert takes a slow boat to the states to help Cora’s
brother and, honestly, would anybody be disappointed if he stayed there?
Now that Bates knows that it was Mr. Green in the kitchen
with a Clue joke in very poor taste,
we all know how this is going to go down, right? Maybe Anna should have let him go with Robert
after all.
“I’ve been married. I know everything.”
“I refuse to be shocked.”
So thoughts?
Comments? Just want to tell me my
blog sucks? Let me know in the comments
or on Twitter @TyTalksTV.
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