I’d take this news of study with a large grain of salt—or maybe some well-buttered crumpets, because it’s English, and I do adore me some crumpets—because the authors only interviewed 77 people involved in television and film production. But it’s interesting to see the extent to which a new report reveals that people who work in those industries in the UK feel that class still plays a major role in determining who’s able to gain entry to jobs and to influence:

A survey of professionals in the industry has found that working-class people are discriminated against because they do not have the “right accents, hairstyles, clothes or backgrounds.”

Presenting the study yesterday at the British Sociological Association’s annual conference, researchers said people from working-class backgrounds, women and those from ethnic minorities did form networks within the industry, but they were not as powerful and were “discriminated against because they were not trusted insiders.”

“Most jobs were gained through friends and friends of friends,” the researchers from Durham University and the University of St Andrews said. “Openings were rarely advertised and producers tended to rely on the grapevine.”

It’s not that this is totally different from the American entertainment industry. But I was struck by the sense that class is so legible in the UK. Perhaps this is only my experience, but I’ve always read accents as regional markers and grammar as a class marker: what shows Boyd Crowder is a Kentuckian as his accent, and his syntax and use of words like “ain’t” show that he’s less educated than other characters. It’s got to be incredibly frustrated to be judged by something that’s hardwired into you before you have a chance to know that it might be important. And it’s a worthwhile reminder that there’s no perfect, bias-free entertainment industry out there in another country for us to emulate. We’re all stuck replicating our prejudices and class systems.

This post contains spoilers through the March 29 episode of Community.

It was, of course, tragic that Community went on a long hiatus if only for the show’s prospects and for our collective enjoyment. But who knew that the show’s long absence from airways denied us a hilarious sitcom riff on Mitt Romney’s declaration in Iowa last summer that “corporations are people, my friend.” Because it’s hard to imagine a show other than Community where an actual personification of a corporation—in this case, a hunky blond named Subway who wants to open a non-profit shelter for disabled animals, reads 1984, and pushes all of Britta Perry’s buttons—would walk jauntily onto the scene. Especially at a time when the show’s deepest friendship is in the middle of a reassessment.

Subway’s appearance on the show is a continuation of the plot that began with Community‘s return: Shirley wanted to own a sandwich shop, but the Dean circumvented her by welcoming a Subway franchise onto campus. Subway (the person) is a way of getting around the Greendale bylaw that requires any on-campus business to be 51-percent student owned. It’s terrific not only for Community to get a chance to make a bid for some of the product placement money liberated by the end of Chuck‘s run on NBC, but for Britta to get a truly entertaining love interest who wasn’t part of the main cast. Britta gets a bad rap for being a buzz-kill, but I appreciate the show acknowledging that it may only be within the disastrous dynamics of the study group that she’s a bore, and there’s a place where her passion is a better fit, and where there’s someone who shares her values and is available for gratifyingly kinky sex.

In keeping with, though in a much more veiled key, I thought it was a nice touch that, as Troy and Abed are facing serious problems in their friendship, Air Conditioning Repair School Dean Laybourne showed up to drive a wedge between them along the lines of their aspirations. Community‘s done a nice job of suggesting that blue-collar jobs can be not just legitimately rewarding but a calling and an art as high as filmmaking. And Laybourne sought to divide his prized target student from his best friends by playing with that idea. To Troy, he implies that Inspector Spacetime and Abed don’t have sufficient respect for Constable Reggie and Troy, that they devalue the work and creativity of the world’s journeymen. And Laybourne exploited Abed’s elitism and nerdery, suggesting that Constable Reggie—and Troy—are a drag on Inspector Spacetime’s wild adventurism and creative spirit.

And if this does escalate to full-scale war, I’m Team Troy and Team Blanket Fort. As much as it’s probably time for Abed to learn some realistic life skills and to experience some failures, it’s also probably time for Troy, now that his friendship with Abed has liberated him from jerky jockdom, to figure out an identity that’s more authentically his own.

“Bending is the coolest thing in the world!” Avatar Korra, a rebellious teenager who’s just arrived in Republic City, the metropolis founded by her predecessor Avatar Aang, declares towards the middle of the premiere episode of The Legend of Korra. Fans of the first show in this series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, about a little boy who can manipulate earth, air, water, and fire in a process called “bending,” might be inclined to agree with her. The concept around which the series was based—that there are people who can manipulate each element, but one person in each generation who can manipulate all four, and gets special responsibilities along with his special powers—set the stage for stories that combined spectacular animated action sequences with intelligent meditations on the proper use of power and our relationship with the natural world. In Avatar: The Legend of Korra, which skips forward two generations to follow Korra, a young Avatar who is training with Aang’s airbending son Tenzin, flips our assumptions upside down, and gives us something very exciting in its place.

When I saw the trailer for this new incarnation of the show, I wondered whether the decision to include steam-punky technology, including airships, crime-fighting equipment, and cars, would pull the series away from its core. Instead, it’s turned out to be a brilliant decision. Aang’s model city, a place he intended “to be the center of peace and balance in this world,” may have advanced technology. But it also has many deeply poor people, something that comes to a shock to Korra who tells a vagrant she shares a meal with that “I thought everyone in the city was living it up.” Triad gangs made up of benders extort protection money from shopkeepers.

And a political movement believes that bending, the very device that made Avatar: The Last Airbender so cool, is responsible for the city’s problems. “Are you tired of living under the tyranny of Benders? Then join the Equalists,” a political speaker tells a crowd, setting off Korra’s initial outburst. “For too long, the bending elite of this city have forced the non-benders of this city to live as lower-class citizens…Together, we will tear down the bending establishment.” Korra’s not wrong that bending’s a cool concept. But the speaker appears to be right about individual benders: he embarrasses Korra by revealing that her first instinct is to shut him down, rather than to work with him. Similarly, Republic City law enforcement may be coming down on Korra pretty hard, but she did act like a vigilante in trying to round up the Triad gang, and caused an enormous amount of damage. Without regulation, bending isn’t exactly producing peace and prosperity in Republic City.

Hopefully, we’ll see more of those themes, particularly bending’s relationship to economic inequality, in future. We’ve heard “with great power comes great responsibility” a million times, but almost always in the context of an individual struggle for self-control. Tackling the role of special powers and special advantages in society on a larger scale is something entirely different, and very interesting.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched all four seasons of Sons of Anarchy. And while shotgunning the show’s episodes may not be for the faint of heart (so much grotesque violence!), it’s given me a lot to think about with the show. So every day this week, I’ll be considering another aspect of life in Charming, California.

Given how much of the fourth season of Sons of Anarchy was about the financial vulnerabilities of, in particular, Clay and Jax, I started thinking a lot about how SAMCRO could function more effectively as an organization. Could the club start a fake pension fund as a way to explain the accumulation of its illict profits as legitimate proceeds of the auto body shop? Could it pay for the education of the club’s mechanics so they could get certification that would make them employable elsewhere? There are upsides and downsides to any potential solutions in terms of how much attention from law enforcement.

But in the end, I realized, the club will never give members the tools that would make it easier to leave. The Sons of Anarchy are a lot like the Republican Party: the MC is increasingly a vehicle for angry, white people to see their grievances legitimated even as it provides them with very little in the way of tangible benefit.

So much of the tension in season four is driven by the fact that, despite the large profits the club sometimes turns on deals, their members live rather financially precarious lives. Clay is drawn to the deal with the cartel even though it involves moving drugs, something that’s absolutely beyond what the club previously defined as the pale, in part because he sees the end of his ability to ride and work with his hands and doesn’t have a nest egg. Jax mires himself in Charming because, as he explains to Tara, he’s an only-decent mechanics with few other prospects for an honest, steady job outside the club, but he can’t accomodate himself to the prospect of living mainly on his wife’s income. As a viewer, it’s hugely frustrating to see Jax insist on an arrangement that places his children and his fiancee in continual danger for the sake of his pride, and that really seems to act as a bridge to a plot arc that renders Tara unable to support him, to provide a financial incentive for them to leave town. But I understand Jax’s desire to be able to support his family even as I’m angry at his insistence in boxing himself in to a dreadful situation.

The thing is, the club provides other things for Jax and Clay, and not all of them are jobs or collections of letters on philosophies of anarchist governance. It’s given both men positions of authority not just within the club, but in Charming itself—being part of SAMCRO gives them standing that without money or formal education, they’d be unlikely to achieve by other means. It gives them a sense of identity that’s written directly into their skin and can be used to negotiate their relationships with other people and other groups. And it gives them justification to pursue their grievances without restraint: if someone offends them, they’re free to pluck that person out. Those cognitive tools for identifying themselves and justifying even their worst behavior are powerful enough that even though the club is actively detrimental to their long-term financial security, their relationships to their families, and even their safety, people like Opie, Clay, and Jax are willing to stick with it. That loyalty is a testament as much to the poverty of opportunities for them elsewhere as it is to the power of the club.
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This post contains spoilers through the second season finale of Downton Abbey.

I don’t think I’m alone in this, but there was something disconcerting in seeing a rising fervor for Downton Abbey this season precisely as the show revealed its major structural flaws. And while the season finale (really, the Christmas episode aired as a stand-alone in the UK) contained a number of beautifully-filmed emotional high points (I particularly like Carson framed between Matthew and Mary during the servant’s ball), it also illustrated how those flaws have hollowed out or overstretched what could have been richer stories.

Downton Abbey seems to have become allergic to consequences. Presumably the next season will see Sir Richard attempting to exact vengeance on Mary, but unless Matthew is to behave the cad and back off his proposal, any efforts to shame her will be blunted by the protection of her marriage. Bates, it seem, will not hang, and the show seems dedicated to the idea that the only way Anna can be happy is through his eventual exoneration. Lord Grantham will forgive Sybil, and she and Branson will bring a grandchild back to Downton eventually. The only people who seem to have their ambitions thwarted, and then not even consistently, are Thomas and Edith—the show’s determination to short shrift the latter seems increasingly like habit rather than narrative integrity.

How much sharper would Downton Abbey be if Mary were forced to suffer disgrace and exile? If Bates had actually murdered his wife, a crime that would simultaneously feel emotionally justifiable and expose the hollowness of a system where the servant classes rely on noblesse oblige, rather than merit, for advancement? If Sybil had difficulty adjusting to life with Branson, and the show was brave enough to turn that fairy tale into an exploration of the costs of progress?

But that would require a broader story, and it points to the clutch of weaknesses at Downton Abbey’s core. I agree with Maureen Ryan that the longer season of the show has exposed some of Julian Fellowes’ limitations as a television writer. Enough is going on here that Downton Abbey—and it’s rare that I’d suggest this for a British show, though I often think American shows should have shorter season runs—really might have benefitted from an American-length season, and from an American-style writers’ room to give the storylines and the characters room to breathe.

The time jumps between episodes have become a way of moving the story forward, sometimes rapidly, but they’re also an crutch for Fellowes. When Sir Richard declared to Mary after she broke off their engagement that ““I loved you, you know…more than you knew. And more than you ever loved me,” it’s difficult to believe it from what we’ve seen on screen. The vast majority of their courtship and engagement was conducted in the language of power. Perhaps we’re meant to believe that a tenderness developed between them in the moments we aren’t privy to, but that’s a bit of a cheat, asking us to do the work that Fellowes hasn’t.
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This post contains spoilers through the February 12 episode of Downton Abbey.

As part of the ongoing debate over Downton obsession, Reihan Salam’s theorized that we like the show because it gives us elites who have higher aspirations than the ones we’ve got today. After this episode, I’d amend that somewhat and suggest that Downton Abbey is satisfying because it puts characters who seem to have earned reprimands in their place through the lens of class. The show actually exploits our ingrained class prejudices by aligning them with character development.

Take Thomas, for example. I am not any particular fan of everyone’s manipulative gay former servant, but I thought what happened to him this week was genuinely tragic. I’m with O’Brien that going into the black market is an awfully risky move, but I sympathize with Thomas to a certain extent. What legitimate enterprise would let him get to a place where “I should have enough to go into business properly”? As progressives, our instincts should be to support Thomas in his attempts to rise above a position he believes he’s too clever for—something he may have legitimately proved in his management of Downton Abbey during its period as a convalescent home. When he finds out “I been tricked. I been had. I been taken for the fool that I am,” that ought to be a moment of profound sympathy. Because Thomas has never been given the tools to make his way in legitimate business, he’s particularly vulnerable to such deception. And yet, the show suggests that having concrete ambitions just made Thomas worse. “You made such a point of not being a servant anymore, our ears are ringing with it,” Carson grouses, when Thomas asks if he can stay longer at Downtown. His redemption comes when Carson is felled by Spanish flu, and Thomas takes up his duties, acting as—and retreating into the role of—the perfect servant. The show provides a double message: service is Thomas’s place both because he’s born to it and not to anything else, and because he’s been awful in the past it’s proper penance.

And while I don’t think it’s as overt—or perhaps even as intentional—there are more examples of that kind of setting people back in their proper position, but in a way that suggests it’s more the result of their character than the constrictions of class. Ethel, after busting her way into lunch with the grandparents of her child, can’t come to an accommodation with them that would allow her to stay in her son’s life while also getting financial support for him from them. Cora falls ill with Spanish Flu shortly after she announces she’s going to help Isobel out with her refugee project. Anna stands up for herself with Mr. Bates, telling him “If she can do it, so can we. I have stood by you through thick and thin. Mr. Bates, if we have to face this, than we will face this as huband and wife. I will not be moved to the sidelines..denied the right even to be kept informed. I will be your next of kin. You will not deny me this.” But she’s rewarded for her persistence by seeing her newly-minted husband hauled off to jail. Lavinia, who’s always been more of a plot device than an actual person, is dispatched in a properly ladylike fashion, dying of a broken heart.

The only people who are allowed to transcend class boundaries are Branson and Sybil. And then he’s allowed to move one step up, from chauffer to journalist, a limitation in keeping with our sense that he’s a bit pushy, while she’s required to move many steps down—Lord Grantham is clear that he’ll only help them a little. Because we wouldn’t want to incentivize nobly born young ladies to embrace the idea that things are better when they’re independent and have meaningful things to do with their lives, or as Sybil puts it, ” I don’t want to get used to it. I know what it is to work, to have a full day, and be tired in a good way,” now would we? Violet’s explanation at the end that “The aristocracy have not survived by their intransigence,” and the solution that follows, is the epitome of Downton Abbey’s politics: Branson can be ennobled in character, but not in substance. The nobility may change styles, but their grip on their privilege remains quite firm, thank you.

This post contains spoilers through the January 29 episode of Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey spends much of its time exploring changing roles in a world at war, particularly for women. But this week’s episode, one of the best in the season, seemed to me to be particularly good at exploring what choices were and weren’t available to these women we’ve come to know and care about so much, and the way the people around them conspire to limit their choices, ostensibly for their own good. It’s fitting that the episode began with images of Daisy and Mary bound by fate rather than choice as Matthew and William are terribly injured in France. “Someone walked over my grave,” a suddenly stricken Daisy tells Mrs. Patmore, and Mary drops a cup of tea in the drawing room, telling the family startled by her loss of composure that “I suddenly felt terribly cold.”

I wrote two weeks ago that it was awful to see Daisy trapped into marriage by everyone at Downton’s sense of her own good. This week, everyone conspires to make William’s dying wish to wed her before his death come true. “He was happy to think they were true!” Mrs. Patmore says of the lies she encouraged Daisy to tell. Daisy isn’t the only one whose true consent is not considered particularly important. When the vicar worries about a gravely injured William’s ability to truly express his intentions, a riled-up Violet, who’s already taken on the medical establishment and the military, takes him to task. “Can I remind you, William Mason has served our family well? At the last, he saved the life if not the health of my son’s heir,” she lays down the law. “You cannot imagine that we would allow you to prevent this to happen…You living is Lord Grantham’s gift. Your house is on Lord Grantham’s land…I hope you can find some way to overcome your scruples.” In the end, it’s really only William who is thinking of Daisy’s ability to have choices, even if they’re choices after he’s gone, when he says that they should marry so she can have his pension after his death. “It won’t be much, but I’ll know you have something to fall back on,” William tells Daisy, becoming truly worthy of her love, or at least her affection. Seeing Ethel and Jane’s plights in a world without a man, that’s no small thing to leave Daisy, who lacks both those women’s force of personality.

While Daisy’s getting railroaded into a wedding, Lavinia’s being denied the one she badly wants. It’s striking that Dr. Clarkson takes Lord Grantham aside to inform him not just as Lord Grantham says, “You mean there can be no children?” but that there can be “no anything.” The continuation of the family line takes precedence over any individual woman’s happiness. And once again, a man makes decisions that he insists are for a woman’s own good. “I love you so much for saying it,” Matthew tells Lavinia when she insists that despite his paralysis, she wants to be with him. “But there’s something else that may not have occurred to you. We can never be properly married…It’s not important now. But it will be. And it should be.” It’s a terrible knot: there’s something admirable in Matthew insisting that Lavinia has a right to sexual happiness. But it’s dreadfully paternalistic in him making that decision for her despite the fact that she isn’t allowed to have the life experience that would give her the knowledge to weigh all the elements of her choice. “I couldn’t marry her now. I couldn’t marry any woman,” Matthew tells Mary later, revealing the challenge may be less his concern for Lavinia’s well-being than his own self-loathing. “And if they just wanted to be with you?” Mary asks, cleaning up his vomit and tending him with a solicitousness that would have been impossible when we first met her. “On any terms?” “It’s nothing,” Mary tells Isobel of her nursing when Isobel finally arrives at Matthew’s bedside. “Sybil’s the nurse in the family.” But Isobel knows something important has occurred. “It’s the very opposite of nothing,” Isboel insists, referring less to Mary’s specific actions and more to her arrival into being the kind of person who can truly think wisely about her own and other’s happinesses.

Evidence of that inequality between men and women is everywhere. The Major can refuse to acknowledge his child with Ethel and reap nothing but the disapproval of Mrs. Hughes: his ability to choose comes at the price of a double cost to her, the inability to do anything but have the baby, and the choices that event robs her of in the future. As much as Vera Bates is totally the worst, Sir Richard’s manipulation of her is a stark reminder of what happens when the advantages of gender are multiplied by the advantages of money and class (Violet, of course, is a reminder that those same factors can erase the gender gap). And Branson’s continuing to insist that everything rests with Sybil, without really acknowledging the costs she faces, telling her ” Sometimes a hard sacrifice must be made for a future that’s worth having. That’s all I’m saying. It’s up to you.” Would that it were. Would that it may be.