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 February 5 episode of Downton Abbey:

This seems like a worthwhile moment to make the salient if somewhat disappointing observation that Downton Abbey, while handsome and as well-acted as ever, really seems to have devolved into a common melodrama this season. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with common melodrama—Revenge has thrived on camp and plot twists. But while that show’s remained relatively focused, telling us how the various developments we’re seeing on screen illuminate the central story of who framed David Clark and why, Downton Abbey’s dangerously close to feeling like a mish-mash of dramatic plot devices tossed together for effect: these are flash bombs, producing a lot of temporary light, but I’m not sure the heat they’re generating is nearly enough to scorch the ends of Peter/Patrick’s hair, much less maim him permanently.

Speaking of which, why don’t we start there? I think there would be a fascinating story to tell about a maimed war veteran who, amidst his trauma, is ambitious and clever enough to try to upjump himself using the opportunities presented by the war. But it’s a story that’s much more interesting if it’s told from the perspective of the perpetrator than from the perspective of the objects of his long con. And it needs to be a long con for there to be any sense of investment or risk. If an impostor is so easily dismissed and driven out, both from the plot and from the consciences of most of the characters, why bring him up at all? This ought to have been a storyline with profound implications for the succession question that Downton Abbey has taken as its overall framework, but instead it became a soap opera drama of the week, and that feels like a substantial failing.

And I feel the same way about Mrs. Bates’ death. Now, there’s no question that divorce trials can be protracted things, but they have to come to an end at some point. The show could have taken some time off-estate to handle the proceedings, or could have had Vera hang around to raise the temperature of things between Sir Richard and Mary (he could always release Vera from her contract, ruining Mary and saving himself from having to do it directly, which for a gentleman with aspirations of truly finding his place in the nobility would have been the place to do it). Killing her off feels like succumbing to the temptation to have a dramatic event thrown into the mix, rather than to actually carry out a process to its full conclusion—it’s a rather American way to deal with an English problem of prolonged longing and suffering.

The only plotline the show is actually letting build to a true boiling point is the dynamic between Matthew and Lavinia and Mary and Sir Richard, two couples who are in the rather delicious position of being affianced—and thus allowed certain intimacies—but not not married—leaving some barriers and dangers intact. There’s no question that Mary and Matthew are deeply emotionally engaged. “I shall have arms like Jack Johnson if I’m not careful,” she jokes during one of the afternoons with Matthew that have aroused so much comment. “I’m strong enough to wheel myself,” he says, but Mary insists “I shall be the judge of that.” There’s no clearer sign of intimacy than a proprietary air about another person. Matthew may insist that “I can only relax because I know you have a real life coming…I have nothing to give and nothing to share. And if you were not engaged to be married I wouldn’t let you anywhere near me,” but I’m not sure he even believes himself.

It’s rough competition Sir Richard faces, and he doesn’t quite know how to play by the rules of the society that he wants to enter (not that it’s clear he’d be allowed to play, given Mary’s rather withering “Your lot buys it. My lot inherits it.”). When he tries to woo Mary with a new home, asking ” Shall we give the house another chapter?” she responds rather drearily, “Well, I suppose one has to live somewhere.” Starting a new house will never quite have the romance of continuing an ancient line. And buying someone’s reputation is not quite the same as saving them—it lacks a certain selflessness. But unlike almost everyone else in this world, Sir Richard isn’t content to be limited by the rules of decorum: what he can’t have with ease, he’s willing to force, an attitude that puts Mary at a sexual and strategic disadvantage. Punctuating a warning that “If you think you can jilt me or in osme way set me aside, you have given me the power to destroy you, and don’t think I won’t use it…I want to be a good husband, but don’t cross me. Ever. Do you understand? Absolutely never,” with kisses is not something she has a defense again. At least not yet.

And of everything left to juggle in this story, that’s the one thing I’m left excited to find out, just as I’m desperate to know who the body on the beach is in Revenge. There’s something to be said for setting up a central mystery and sticking to it. Downton Abbey‘s always going to be a more complex story than Revenge because it’s about society, rather than individuals. But that doesn’t mean this prestige drama couldn’t learn something about storytelling, focus, and impact from ABC’s soap.

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.

I went into this thinking I was going to write about Gemma Teller Morrow, and the Queen herself will definitely get plenty of attention in an upcoming Sons of Anarchy week. But I’m not quite caught up on the show yet, in part because I got distracted along the way by a woman who reminds me a lot of Gemma: the Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham. Maggie Smith is a genius, of course, and the Dowager Countess has become one of the most famous and impressive zinger machines in any form of popular culture. But beyond the barbs, Violet is a fascinating model for women in television that upsets the norms on everything from age, to sexual involvement, to deployment of power. Watching her grapple with modernity is one of the most creative and moving long arc plots any network’s put on television in years.

The first and most obvious thing that makes Violet—and consequently her storylines—so different from almost anything else we see on television, is her age, and the corollary to it, her widowhood. Every other woman we’ve talked about in this series has been in her teens and twenties. I spend a fair amount of time arguing that we need to tell stories about women who are single or prioritizing their careers or intellectual commitments over the search for romance, or who are confident who they are instead of going on heroes’ journeys. But it is absolutely true that there are common experiences and processes that people tend to go through during those years, simply by virtue of leaving high school, going to college, and entering the economy. And those stories can vary broadly in the details, but there are powerful tropes about all of those processes, and it’s extremely hard to find something new in them or achieve escape velocity from them. The easiest way to tell different kinds of stories about women is to tell stories about different kinds of women. And while we often talk about different kinds of women in terms of race or class, telling stories about women in different stages of life opens up different arcs and issues.

Unlike questing twenty-somethings, the Dowager Countess of Grantham has a sense of herself that’s been fixed by time and consolidated by money and position. Violet’s beyond sex and marriage—at least for herself—though she’s manifestly confident in the wisdom that experience has given her about both. When she says things about Sybil not being entitled to her opinions “until she is married—then her husband will tell her what her opinions are,” it’s an example of retrograde thinking, but it also comes from a set of developed convictions about how to preserve harmony. Her instruction to Cora that “We are allies, my dear, which can be a good deal more effective,” comes from the same place. She didn’t have the opportunities that her granddaughters do to make errors and recover from them. The rules that govern her life are the result of figuring out what makes life, if not easy, less emotionally difficult.

And it’s fascinating to see what happens when, after someone’s gone through the process of being uncertain and crafting an iron-clad self, the world changes and makes those rules less necessary, even ridiculous. When Violet and Cora talk about how angry Violet gets when her rules are violated, that anger comes out of two very different places. First, breaking the rules by doing things like having premarital sex with Turkish diplomats who die in your bed, carries greater risk in Violet’s world than it does in, say, her granddaughter Mary’s. It makes sense that Violet would be not just disturbed by the mess her granddaughter’s created, but afraid for her. The world is changing such that Mary may survive it (based on what we’ve seen in the American air schedule), but neither she nor Violet know that for sure yet. And second, it must be terrifying to see the world order change around you and to realize that your rules may not be relevant, they may not guide you correctly any longer, and to face, at an advanced age, the prospect of reinventing yourself. That process in your teens and twenties is fantastically difficult, and we like to think that we only have to do it once.
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