Downton Abbey Season Finale Recap

I liked the previous season's Christmas season more, primarily because I got to have some good old fashioned heart flutters watching Mary and Matthew in the snow as opposed to blood seeping out of his corpse in this year's finale. But, that cultural touchstone of 21st century Downton Abbey shows us once again that life and love are ephemeral. Either that or an actor wanted off the show. Either way, no heart flutters this time around.

It's hard to evaluate a show for narrative continuity or ingenuity when you're aware that the actor dictated, in large part, the terms of his exit. In the context of she show, the death of Matthew felt both sudden and rushed. I'm sure that they felt they were achieving some sort of cinematic and effective overlap having the child just born, the family discussing things coming together, (despite Sybil's death), Robert saying he accepts Matthew, (which,  before he became troll Robert he always liked Matthew. He was the first one, but, no matter. The show must go on. I never let facts get in the way of a good story) and then having that person going home carefree and being hit by an oncoming car. Well, it felt rushed. Why couldn't he have gotten a good old fashioned shot to the stomach while hunting? Maybe it would have given us a few moments to appreciate him.

Of course, if Downton Abbey is to continue, as it seems it will, for another few seasons they were going to have to rough some things up anyway. The Atlantic had a piece about why DA had been so boring this year, in which the claim was made that it was because everyone was married. Now, to the writer's credit they went on to say that the real problem is that the complexity and nuance of give and take that comprise a marriage were largely off stage. I'll not argue that marriage is as heady as those first stages of romance but it is not the uncomplicated affair that DA presented this season.  I complained at the early, and a bit deus ex machina resolution to the Cora and Robert quarrel after Sybil's death, and I said the same about Matthew and Mary sitting around in bed telling each other they fall more in love with one another every day. Neither seemed plausible. So, perhaps Dan Stevens, like JBF before him, has done the show a favor by forcing himself to be offed. If the marriages we saw in season three were any indication of what was to come, what was to come was something approaching boredom, or as I call it, watching Anna tell Bates that she loves him while he's in prison.

The show was at its best during season one when it had three marriageable girls all wandering around the grounds getting into mischief with Turkish fellows, chauffers and older men. Of course, the show also profited in the early going from being about the flower shows, the difference between forks and how to properly clean a fireplace. These little gestures, like Jimmy and Alfred sitting in plush chairs for a moment and the audience wondering how they could think of such a thing were the pleasures of season one. By the mid-point of season two we had spinal bruising and an actor with the loudest voice in the world claiming to the heir. It was clear how far some parts of the show had fallen off rather steeply. And yet, we were still given our moment in the sun, which turned out to be in the snow, of Matthew and Mary together at last.

The fourth season, it it's to be successful at all, will have to simultaneously manage the exciting prospect of three marriageable women with care. We had another rather careless plot device in this episode, a maid introduced and dismissed all in about fifteen minutes of screen time. If they wanted to make the point that Branson changed, fine, I'm not certain that carrying out an entire plot arc in fifteen minutes is the way to go. Of course, having the maid as seducer was already tried with Robert along with the man who proposes marriage at the fair (to Mrs. Hughes in season 1) and apparently Fellowes thought it was such a good plot device that he'd try it twice more with Mrs. Patmore and Mrs. Crawley.

The episode itself was just fine, if a bit slow. However, I would much rather the show take its sweet time than tumble us through plot after plot in a scant 50 minutes. In fact, I think the latter half of season three, called boring, was largely comprised of better television than that of season 2. The second season still had some cards on the table and yet it consistently went over the top. I feel that season three was about the show finding a way to still exist beyond the story of Matthew and Mary. Of course, if it was ever to be a classic miniseries it would have ended roughly half way through season 2 with the Christmas episode, but I suppose that is neither her nor there. The show must go on, and it must go on without Matthew in this case, and I think it has a chance, at least character wise, to do so.

It seems that audiences want things two ways with DA. Season 2 was roundly panned for turning into a soap opera, and rightly so, but it now seems that the backlash to season three is that it is too boring followed by shocking deaths. Well, the show has a third way, as I've stated above, and it is by following the trail of the next to last episode, highlighting the humor and class distinctions between Mrs. Crawley and Violet, or the placement of a tray. I think the show is definitively at its best when these small intrigues are placed alongside the inevitably larger storylines that will arise. (That's one of the reasons that I liked Mary better than Matthew this season. Sure she was a bit acidic towards Edith, we could probably let that go, but she at least retained a bit of her cheekiness in her relationship with Matthew).

Of course, whether we'll become attached to Branson as we were to Matthew, or to Rose as people were to Sybil, highly doubtful, is really at the heart of the matter. If Fellowes can create three dimensional characters who are pulled in a variety of different directions by duty, class, love, etc. then the show has a chance to reinvent itself. However, if they remain tugged along behind plot contrivances like the tiresome and confusing Bates imprisonment then the show's original excellence will be nearly forgotten by the time they all die in a train wreck in Season 7.

This whole write up has been about the future of DA, and that isn't by accident. This season, and this episode in particular was not about wrapping up storylines but about opening new ones. The trip to Dunn Eagle, which apparently just proved that Matthew was right, and provided us with Mosely dancing.(I can only hope that Mosely continues to be featured on the show as he's quickly becoming one of my favorites for keeping it lighthearted) was a bit of a dud. Perhaps they could have gotten Matthew shot there, or not had another sister with a surprise birth. The trip felt a bit empty in a strange way besides Edith discovering another doomed lover.

There is also the risk that we'll grow tired of these people after another couple of seasons, that the petty intrigues will no longer be amusing, but just petty. Any show that runs on for longer than two seasons runs that risk. It is my great hope that the next character who is killed off the show will exeunt under the writer's terms rather than as their choice. In a weird way, the forced exits make the season itself seem forced, sure some moments were missed in terms of developing martial complexity, but killing off two main characters is a lot to handle in a short episode run. In the end, they couldn't really kill of Matthew, his marriage to Lady Mary already did that, that was when he went from a phantasm of unmet desire to good old fashioned flesh and failure, land use and farming. Let's remember him as he was rather than as he turned to be. Let's all picture him walking in to the family concert for the soldiers in full regalia and joining Mary in song. There, wasn't that nice?