On Matthew

We always had season one. The first season of DA gave us one of the most interesting, not technically interesting I suppose, more, enthralling romances on a television show that we'd seen in quite a while. Andy Greenwald had a nice piece in Grantland about the dearth of romance on what are considered "good" television shows. We appear to have taken a turn towards the dark, Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones are all current exemplars of critical darlings, but they are very rarely concerned with love. Rather, it's a recapitulation of DFW's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men."  These characters are too busy scheming, rising up the corporate ladder or making drugs to have time to lavish love on other living and breathing human beings. That's why the love story between Matthew and Mary on DA was so pleasing. Yes, we all understood how it was going to end. Jane Austen wrote the playbook on this one. And yet, despite the obvious ending, the first season of DA had one of the most satisfying and engrossing love stories that we've had in a while, in large part due to the appeal and charm of Dan Stevens' Matthew Crawley.

Matthew was the outsider to Downton, the signifier of the change that was to come. And, in that way he was both the mobilizing force for change and the emblem or stand in for the audience. We all knew where all these rich families were going and so did Matthew. They were going to have to work. It didn't hurt that he was rakishly handsome, that never hurts anything. But, in addition to his good looks he was hard working. And most viewers, and people in general tend to see associate themselves with the hard working folks like Matthew rather than the Abbey clan. Thus, we were always rooting for him. If he wanted Mary, then, dammit we wanted him to have her.

Of course, it's my argument that the show would have been truly great if it had wound up mid way through season 2 with Mary and Matthew getting together. However, this show is getting ratings. Anyhow, this lead to Matthew going away to war, coming back with spinal bruising, getting engaged, having his fiancee die after seeing him kiss Mary, feeling guilty about that, then finally giving up and marrying her. Jane Austen is rolling over in her grave at these plot contrivances. I can't blame Dan Stevens for anything that happened in Season 2, in fact, he thought the scene of Matthew rising from the wheelchair was over the top, but you play the hand you're dealt. By the end of season 2 Matthew had proven himself in war and come home to reclaim Mary. What was left for him? Apparently nothing as Dan Stevens decided he wanted off the show.

To his credit Stevens says he realizes that he probably won't ever have it this good again. He just says he's interested in new projects, hell, he got to judge the Booker prize this year. The man is doing things. How much do we blame him for ruining our fairy tale and how much do we blame DA for ruining our fairytale? I don't have a good answer. However, if the third season was any indication, as I wrote the other day, Matthew and Mary had spent all their good lines. What was left was lying around with one another declaring that they were showing their true selves, this becomes tiresome in the best of D.H. Lawrence, so I'm not sure that it could have ever lasted on television.

Unlike Sybil we have no idea what his death will do to the characters on the show, whether it will be an earthquake or a minor shockwave. I don't know which way to bet. I could see either plot point used, though I hope judiciously. Maybe someone should read that Frost poem about how the living go on living. Unfortunately, Matthew dying at the end of a season, though it serves as a nice plot contrivance, doesn't much allow the characters, and thus the audience to grieve. He is just dead. That's the way that death has always been and always will be, and yet, we like to feel like the suffering was somehow meaningful. In its current state, Matthew's death is more a plot engine than an emotional one, which seems sad given how intensely likeable he was for the first two seasons of the show. Again, the character was one of the most romantically interesting people we've had strolling around on a well reviewed and watched show in a long while. I think that's why so many people are upset that he's gone, even if, as I argued a couple of days ago, it allows the show to travel down new avenues.

Let's all just imagine a different outcome though, one where the show skips ahead a generation or two instead. One where the marriages of Matthew and Mary's children are what's important, and the land is divided up piece meal. Imagine a final episode of the show where Matthew walks down the long hallways of Downton peering into the rooms now full of dust once filled with the people he had loved so dearly. Perhaps that's the way I'll imagine this season ended instead, with an elderly Matthew saying goodbye to the house that he learned to love.