Matthew’s pain ripples outwards and touches almost everyone in the family. Where are the older women in her life to tell her this is a terrible idea?), but also the future of the entail. This not only severs the possibility of a fulfilling life with Lavinia (whose eagerness to sign onto a sexless marriage is noble, if not a little immature. Matthew is paralyzed, and with the injury comes the hard truth that he will never procreate (Ooh! Mentions of consumation on Downton Abbey? How very!). Nearly everyone in this episode is having some sort of crisis, and there is very little redemption. If Downton before the war was fueled by order, now it is fueled by despair. When the most titilating visual of the entire episode is Lavinia crying in a corset, then it is clear we have entered new territory. Everyone else is in somber grey and white, devoting themselves to drabness as much as the cause. Only the Dowager Countess (and Lady Mary on her fated trip to London) still turn it out. The stately house still exists, but the bedazzled costumes do not. (WATCH: Take a Video Tour Through the Real Downton Abbey)įor one thing, the glamour has vanished. Welcome to the bloody, bloody Downton Abbey - it’s not exactly what we signed up for. The war has gone and detonated all over everything, and all of a sudden the plotlines we were told to invest in simply don’t matter as much. The love story has been trumping the war, but only because the war hadn’t really been a force in anyone’s life until now. Because there were wounded soldiers at Downton, we could acknowledge the front without any of the big tragedies, leaving us to care as fervently about a tender duet between Mary and Matthew as we would have in peace time. For the past few episodes, the show has tiptoed delicately around the war, allowing it to enter the house in a controlled and even comical way with the convalescent home scheme. Suddenly, our glorious little micro world has something to prove life inside Downton has to become even more intense and overwrought to rival the horrors of the battlefield.
This presents a whole set of problems - why anyone should care about the house’s internecine mini-dramas when boys are getting their heads blown off, for example. The war has blown open that conceit, and now the show has morphed into Downton Abbey vs. Downton functions best when its characters live in a bubble, because that’s where all the drama lies. Which is all to say, the second season should be much better than it is, and this week’s episode revealed cracks in the show’s shiny veneer. We are truly living in the Golden Age of Downton hype. Jim Morrison’s widow apparently watches the show alone, in bed, in sweatpants and a tiara. A recent article in the New York Times described viewing parties for the show that feature 1910’s cuisine, hand-painted teacups, and fascinator hats.
So here we are, in Season Two, and people are nuts for Downton. (MORE: Don’t Be Fooled- Downton Abbey Is a Soap) It’s a fully-formed fantasy pre-packaged escapism in a difficult time. That, more than anything, may be why Americans are clinging to the show. The first season had an unstoppable energy, and its universe was so intricate that one could disappear into it entirely.
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From the first Dowager quip, writer Julian Fellowes proved that it was possible to make a series set in the past that did not feel dusty. I like to think that Downton worked because it was simply too good to ignore. Some have suggested that the class issues felt vital in the age of the 99%.
Maybe we craved frothy love stories in a post- Sex and the City world. Perhaps we needed a dose of sumptuous luxury in a time of economic drought. No one seemed interested in ordering what Downton Abbey was serving.Īnd yet, when it hit, we ate it up. British period pieces sat on the DVD shelves of American women everywhere, sure, but they didn’t feel fresh. No one was waiting for an Edwardian period drama set in Yorkshire Mad Men opened the doors for the possibility of a successful historical study, but the charm of that show was the fact that many of its viewers had either lived through or heard first-hand stories of that era. Though it seems odd to think of Downton Abbey as anything but a television juggernaut, it wasn’t necessarily destined for iconic status.
Follow formula for a cult hit is a tough one to sketch out.
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