On Sybil

Well now that the whole of the known world, or at least the English speaking portion, or at least those who enjoy a good costume drama, have had time to digest the death of Lady Sybil now new stories are coming to light, such as, she quit. I'm of two minds about an actor quitting during a successful run of a successful run of a show, or perhaps, four.

My primary reaction when I hear that an actor has decided to leave a very good show is that they don't know how good they've got it, and, how human. It's in our nature to be often dissatisfied, and it is this nature that has often lead humanity writ large to create and innovate, discover new vistas like trading mortgage back securities to make us all rich. However, this is also a great flaw. It seems highly unlikely that Jessica Brown Findaly will wind up on a show as good and beloved as Downton Abbey for the rest of her career, let alone immediately. In that sense, it always seems like a bit of hubris when an actor wants to move on instead of just enjoying what they've got.

A lot of life turns out to basically be figuring out whether the things we've got our good. And then, assuming they are good, learning to appreciate them. This is no easy feat as our conscious minds tend to constantly suggest that we could be doing better, a fact that's reinforced by the knowledge, perhaps made worse by television that people are doing better. That's why reality television is so great. It reminds that people also have it worse. I'm only kind of joking. In my estimation, she had it pretty good.

It's also reasonable to consider JBF as an artist who feels that her remunerations and acting abilities are not being properly used in the ensemble cast of Downton. It's great for a show to have buy in from a large cast, Arrested Development style, but it's also fairly rare. It's tough to say that the character of Lady Sybil was going to have much interesting or challenging for JBF to do over the next three or so seasons. It's then easy to understand why she'd want to move into other projects, spread her wings etc. And I think people who love a show tend to blame an actor or actress for the very sort of thing that they wish they could do, find out when something isn't fulfilling them anymore and move on. It's also relevant to point out that she's young, and youth tends to suggest innumerable possibilities in the future. As we age, it is the disclosure of these possibilities, which makes it so hard to understand how we could have ever been so young.

I'm also of a mind that without the discovery of some new cousins Downton has already completed its best arc. The battle between Mary and Matthew, the Dowager and Mrs. Crawley, and Bates vs. Thomas and O'Brien. Certainly we can keep revisiting these themes, but they were the freshest, wittiest, and most satisfying when they were being waged in the first season, with some carrying over into the second. So, again, though I won't guarantee that the show's best parts are over, I'd guess that they very well might be, and nothing I've seen in the latter part of season 2 or season 3 has convinced me otherwise. So perhaps it was her strong sense of narrative arc that lead her to leave...though I doubt it.

Interestingly, the fact that she wanted to leave the show gave the viewers the best episode of the new season of Downton to date. As I wrote in my last blog post, the finality of death, the shock that not everyone is invulnerable, is what made that episode of Downton one that had actual stakes in it. The other story lines in the season have been like wells that brought up one bucket of water before being exhausted.

The downside of this revelation is that it doesn't give me much confidence that the writers of Downton had the forethought to plan for this death in order to slow the show down. If it was forced upon them, then it becomes far less about artistic integrity than about saving one's as-. And yet, I'm also inclined to give them credit for the magnificent way that they went about pulling the thing off, so perhaps I should take back my caveat and hope that the best is yet to come. Maybe we can find another handsome cousin who wants to take walks through lakes. Or perhaps we can continue the trade offs between Game of Thrones and Downton and find a nice resting place for the wary bones and head of Eddard Stark. Wouldn't it be nice to watch him presiding over the declining years of the abbey, occasionally going out to visit the peasants and wow them with his swordplay.