‘Abbey’ end quite a relief
“Downton Abbey” is over, and I am a little relieved. It’s nice to have my Sunday nights back. After a laborious season, it’s finally done. I can go to dinner with friends and not have to be home by nine. I am free at last!
Here’s the thing: Toward the end, the show became a hostage situation. I was the Patty Hearst of PBS. I felt compelled to watch, even though I was bored. It was the Newton N. Minow version of Stockholm syndrome. When people say a show is “captivating,” I now know what they mean. It’s like a black dot in their palm.
A friend of mine said, “I gave up on that show three seasons ago.” I couldn’t. I’m a completist. Even though it irked me, I had to see it through.
Certain things bothered me more than others.
If you took a drink every time the Dowager Countess of Grantham said the word “hospital,” you would be on dialysis by now, if you were lucky enough to still be alive. Every episode featured multiple appearances of the word hospital, and, yet, you never actually saw the hospital!
Storylines showed up and then disappeared. There was Baxter’s thief and Spratt’s escaped convict nephew. They were talked about but never seen.
That’s some sort of Chekov’s bait-and-switch right there.
Creator Julian Fellowes had quite a conundrum. We wanted a happy ending for Lady Mary and for Lady Edith, but we also wanted to see them tear each other’s throats out. Most sisters have a love/hate relationship, but these two had a hate/hate relationship. Is that a thing? That should be a thing.
It was pretty weird to see Mary verbally viciously eviscerate her sister in one scene and watch her walk down the aisle in the other. Edith even threw rice!
She probably should have been throwing poisoned ninja stars.
If only the English language was as easy to understand as Downton made it look. Andy learned to read in one episode. He couldn’t get through a whole sentence last Sunday, but in the final episode he had his nose in a book. A thick book. No pictures!
This season was most annoying, as the Brits would say. The episodes crawled by at a glacial pace, and then everything happened in the last two. It’s as if Fellowes didn’t realize his show was ending. P.S. He knew.
The last episode was poorly written. There was little to no conflict with any of the Crawleys, their servants, family and friends. Just happy endings.
I also picture him handing out copies of the final script like Oprah announced those free cars. “You get a happy ending, and you get a happy ending. Everyone gets happy endings!”
Jim Carter (butler and major domo for the Crawley clan) must have looked up at him and said, “What about me?” And everyone looked away sheepishly (sad trombone sound here).
The show was like a weird friend. The one who says stupid stuff that makes you laugh. After a while they get on your nerves, but a few days go by, and you can’t wait to see them again. I’ll miss my visits to Downton Abbey.