Season finale review: 'Downton Abbey': Christmas in February
SOME HAPPIER ENDINGS IN THE SEASON-ENDING CHRISTMAS SPECIAL, BUT WAS IT GOOD AS A WHOLE?
By Alan Sepinwall SUNDAY, FEB 19, 2012 10:37 PM
PBS just finished showing the second season of "Downton Abbey" (U.K. viewers saw the finale back at Christmas). I reviewed most of the season in non-specific terms in early January, and promised to weigh in with more details — and an opportunity for you to discuss the same — after it had all finished airing here in the States.
That time has come, and I have various thoughts on both the finale and the season coming up just as soon as I have a loader... As I wrote back in January, I had a very mixed reaction to "Downton" season 1, where I loved most everything to do with Mr. Bates and the rest of the servants downstairs and rolled my eyes at most of what was happening upstairs with Lord and Lady Grantham.
My reaction to season 2 was equally mixed, and yet weirdly backwards: I took much greater enjoyment out of what was going on with the lords and ladies than I had a year ago (though parts of their stories annoyed me) and suddenly began viewing anything to do with Bates and his Anna as the chore I had to get through to get to the rest. In fairness, there were lots of eye-roll-inducing storylines going on throughout the house, but none felt quite as shamelessly melodramatic as the return of Bate's estranged, unapologetically evil wife, who lacked only a mustache to twirl.
Her constant manipulations and betrayals seemed designed only to make Bates and Anna miserable, and to prolong their attempt to get married and just enjoy life for a bit. It was storytelling for the sake of delaying an outcome, not for its own sake. For that matter, there were times in the second season where it seemed like "Downton" creator Julian Fellowes was so desperate to keep star-crossed lovebirds Lady Mary and Lord Matthew from finally making it work that he was going to take a page from "She's All That" and have Mary discover that Matthew had only pretended to fall for her to win a bet. That, or have a meteor land between them right before they finally declared their love.
I'm aware that social mores getting in the way of true love is a staple of fiction both of and about this era, but Fellowes kept throwing ridiculous obstacles in their path like he was terrified the show would disintegrate the second they were allowed to be together. (I call this The "Moonlighting" Fallacy.)
Fortunately, Mary and Matthew finally cast aside their various excuses for not being together — including Mary's uncouth nouveau-riche fiancé, newspaper magnate Richard Carlisle — in the Christmas special, and if their decision didn't entirely redeem what had come before, it at least gave me hope for the third season(*). (*)
How many seasons will the show be on the air before the Emmys, Golden Globes, etc. finally acknowledge that it's not a "miniseries" and has to compete with "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," and all the other ongoing dramas? 3? 5? 12? Other contrived, rushed and/or silly storylines included Lord Grantham contemplating an affair with the new housemaid(**), an impostor claiming to be the not-so-dead heir to the family fortune (that, or he was the true heir, but horribly disfigured and suffering from amnesia) and an outbreak of the Spanish Flu that was used to resolve far too many plots. (**)
That near-fling not only seemed to come out of nowhere, but played very awkwardly in how it tried to present Lord Grantham's decision to send her on her way as yet another example of why he is good and decent and a representative of why the aristocracy's passage into irrelevance is a great tragedy. Hugh Bonneville's performance almost always makes the man's perfection plausible and engaging, but even he can only do so much at times.
Read the rest of the review: http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/season-finale-review-downton-abbey-christmas-in-february
No comments:
Post a Comment