Miss Baxter (Raquel Cassidy) finds Thomas Barrow (Rob James-Collier) bleeding to death in the servants’ bathroom
Soon over. Not to worry. Not much to get through now.
The best framing of the last two “regular” episodes of Downton Abbey is probably Fellowes’s sneering bad-mouthing of BBC as this leftish outfit who would have hampered his coming hijacking of Trollope material for the elite in the form of an adaptation of Dr Thorne. (Part of a decade trend, explains John McCourt in The Irish Times.) The photo of this self-satisfied boaster (just click) is another where he resembles Hitchcock, maker of signally nasty movies, horrifically violent towards women. He is throwing stones at the BBC to support David Cameron and MPs of that ilk who (following the US gov’t’s attitude towards PBS), are doing all they can to destroy the BBC as we have known it. Bite the hand that fed his career.
There have been many Trollopian motifs in Downton Abbey: In these last two episodes we have in the story of Mrs Crawley (Penelope Wilton) and Lord Merton (Douglas Reith) the young grown heirs who do all they can to prevent the older generation from fulfilling their needs for companionate and sexual love (one of many places is in Trollope’s Orley Farm).
Mrs Crawley (Penelope Wilton) struggling against the pious hypocrisy of Lord Merton’s coming daughter-in-law who does not care how miserable she and her husband will make the older couple, just as long as Mrs Crawley takes over Lord Merton’s care as he ages
Fellowes may have gotten the Pelham story from the background to The Warden: a Rev Francis North, Warden of the Hospital of St Cross unexpected became the Earl of Guilford after the death of a bachelor cousin (see latest Oxford ed by Nicholas Shrimpton, Introd. p. xvii).
Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) afraid of this man’s (Henry Haddon-Patton) sheltered life (we would not be asked to believe this in Trollope) cannot get herself to tell him on her own that Marigold is her daughter, and liking his sensitivity so cannot say no to the marriage
Yet just to say how smooth it all is to ignore the point. Fellowes wants to carve in cement the idea that this ruling class rides over all, and everyone fits in.
In these two episodes our third heroine, Anna Bates (Joanne Froggart) falls back to where she belongs: the careful diplomatic lady’s maid …
Because that’s the way it is and ought to be. Your loathing is so much useless banging against a wall which he claims won’t come down.
*******************************
To come to these two week’s salient themes and events, I thought again that Anibundel hit an important note when she remarked in her recaps of the last two episodes there’s something “emotionally horrific” about them (7: “But do they live happily ever after?”; 8: “The Truth about Mary”).
So Episode 7 achieves true heartlessness in the exploitation killing off of a character invented suddenly as of rooted importance to our new suitor-hero, Henry Talbot (Matthew Goode): what took my breath away was the overt kick Fellowes got out rubbing in the watcher’s nose that once someone, anyone dies, not only does just about everyone in the world carry on just as before (maybe one person affected, in this case the rival car driver in a death-race), but they are as happy, cheerful or occupied as ever. No one gives a shit — for even the grieving other car driver can’t resist asking the ice princess, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) to marry him. She of course says no, being heartless herself — her ostensible believable reason that he has no rank nor money; he has forced her into this, it seems. She won’t admit to him the one legitimate reason: she lost her first husband to a car accident. What is she to be perpetually afraid to be widowed this way again. But no, not she, she won’t ask him to give this up.
At the races — he later tells her when it seems it’s money and rank alone that he lacks, that he didn’t think she was that small and she is electrified with nauseated resentment
Episode 8 multiplied this effect: we had a roller-coaster of humiliations and deaths of hope: Lesley Nicol as Mrs Patmore business is going to fail from public mortification; ho ho how funny this is everyone feels:
Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nichol) upon being told her lifetime savings may have gone poof in a squalid incident — the risks to a woman of opening a B&B or boarding house
Kevin Doyle as Mr Moseley is made a fool out of by his students after years spent trying to get the right to stand in front of a classroom.
Writing on the board
Cold and indifferent to him, seemingly disdainful
And Lady Mary finally outdid herself in attempting to destroy Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael’s love affair) with such cavalier bitchiness that for a time she was excoriated by the decent people in the house. Tom Bransom (Allan Leech) rounds on her as a coward bully, for once sneering at “her maid” as her friend (of course she would show a respect sympathy). And her father (Hugh Bonneville) on her snide remark that he and Carson together led to Thomas’s attempt at suicide as even he didn’t expect such a “blow, low even for you:”
and the worm turned:
Summing one another up at last: Lady Mary starting it: “You’re pathetic,” and Lady Edith finally, you’re a bitch … can’t bear to see anyone happy if you’re unhappy …
Fellowes is so true to the characters he does leave a line where Lady Mary almost implies she could go after Pelham now. Though as ever her mother (Elizabeth McGovern) overlooked it by treating it as trivia in her usual complacent way (“you wouldn’t want people to think you’re jealous”); and the Dowager, Violet (Maggie Smith) hurried back from her holiday in France to reassure the audience underneath Mary has a heart, she just pretends not to (as all worldly sensible people do and Fellowes’s high class heroine would).
Violet to the rescue
We did have to endure and cannot overlook the talk before and after Mary’s bombshell that Edith must tell Bertie Pelham, now Marquess (Henry Hadden-Patton). Robert had a good moment here to Lady Rosemary Painswick as she carries on insisting they cannot do this to this “other family:”
Lord Grantham asks Lady Rosemary (Samantha Bond) when she is planning to leave
We can remember how she tried to drive Edith to have an abortion and when Edith wouldn’t, to give up her child to strangers.
But such talk is in effect a form of blaming Edith for not telling him, and she says she might have tried to “trick” him (he’s another of the blind people of these 7 years who never once thought, Where does Marigold come from?). So Mary had to do it even if she did it so viciously. Tom is still half-used as a chauffeur by both Mary and Edith: so much for his views. Fellowes is so clever at getting the audience to accept this formula of resignation: Edith’s grating showing up at this ice princess’s wedding is accompanied by plangent speech about how someday they would be the only ones with shared memories of the world they had known so must not estrange themselves from one another.
But life you know carries on. Fellowes does what he’s so good at: involves you emotionally in realistically conceived and deeply felt characters’ deep crises and when the shit hits the fan, slips away. Snubbed and ignored, and sideswiped, and nagged to get the hell out of there once too often Thomas slits his wrists. But we are given no scene of him doing it, no over-voice, no aftermath: just what the public was told, a social scene of the upper class Master George showing some concern
and then Thomas at the wedding (looking a bit worn but none the worse for the wear) and it seems he is not going to be sacked after all. And suicide if it does not succeed can be hidden.
Here the arch enemy was Carson who once called Thomas disgustingly repugnant; we have later to endure Mrs Hughes’s (Phyllis Logan) calling his behavior to Mrs Patmore too as “curmudgeonly:” this is to trivialize the cold shoulder bully who behaves with repugnant words and active cruelty to real people in favor of upholding an abstract hierarchy of the rich
Here her forthright face-to-face response is the right one: to tell him he’s wrong and they won’t do as he wishes
************************************
The most unqualified good moments are in the secondary stories where Fellowes seems more comfortable:
The servants picnicking
Mr Moseley succeeding with his students by telling who he is and about himself, and that learning is for itself, not lying that they can have anything they want as a result of this learning, Daisy (Sophie McShea listening)
And through stills:
Lady Mary at Matthew’s grave just before she’s about to marry Henry — this can remind us Fellowes never meant to kill Matthew off, but used it, together with the rape of Anna, brilliantly in the fourth season ….
Edith knowing she has done the right thing to bring up her own child, Marigold — the still closes the episode and so can remind us how often Fellowes has imagined unwed mothers whose raison d’etre becomes their child …
I agree with a friend that the dialogue, the scripts have been much less interesting the last two seasons.
I have read that the “final finale,” the last Christmas episode will not be aired for two weeks. If this is so, it shows a astute appreciation of how soap operas work in our lives. Their slow pace, the turning of their daily worlds punctuating our experience of our own once a week makes us react to them as we do to friends we see regularly. They enter our lives as part of the thread.
The latest family member: Violet’s present to her son, Lord Grantham of a puppy to replace Isis
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Your blog is very interesting, but I have a different take. I think Lord Fellowes is… what is the British expression? having us all on… or something like that. And sending up the aristocracy rather than celebrading it. Nothing about this series makes sense if you take the characters and plots seriously. Although it may be meticulous in the period detail as to clothes and table settings, etc, it is full of anomalies in language and behavior. For instance, a B’nB? I’ve never seen that expression used in anything written in the early 20th century. And the way everyone thought the scandal about the adulterous couple was hilarious? No way. The reason Mrs. Patmore was losing bookings was that people really would have been shocked. The younger generation of aristocrats- particularly an icy bitch like Lady Mary- might have found it amusing, but the older characters would have seen at once how serious a matter it was, and the servants (with a more middle class mentality) wouldn’t have thought it was funny at all. As to the characters, how can you care about any of them? Lady Mary consistently behaves almost as badly toward all of her suitors as she does to her sister, including the ones she marries, and yet they all fall in love with her on cue. I could never believe in her great grief (much less PTSD!) Even as the show tried to humanize her through the seasons, she showed no affection toward her child whatsoever, and reverted to her most spiteful toward Edith in episode 8. She’s supposedly so fond of her brother in law, but she still treats him like an underling. If you look at it as a comedy/satire, it all makes sense; as a serious soap opera, not at all. Which brings me to Thomas. First of all, I enjoyed that he was allowed to be a villian in spite of being gay… he wasn’t despicable for his sexual proclivities, but just because he was a conniving bastard. Again, the show tried to redeem him, but really, attempting (especially unsuccessfully) suicide is exactly what one might expect from such a sniveling brown-noser when all his attempts at rising in status at the expense of others finally result in failure. (I think there is a hint of homophobia here; real men usually succeed on their first try.) The most incredible thing is that the family would feel bad and resolve to keep him on. If one of them attempted suicide, yes, it would be covered up, but a servant? They’d have him sewed up and then out the door with a few pounds and no reference within days. And I can’t imagine that they would let him have access to their precious heir- although there does seem to have been a certain amount of carelessness about such things in real life, especially when it came to sending young boys off to “public” schools!
This is just a reply to Michelle whose brings up central issues in watching this mini-series. I’m of the view entertaiment does cultural work, and one which has become a sociological event should be examined (Sociological event is Truffaut’s term for a movie which is trash or poor art but has a huge watching audience who form communities around and against it — so Poldark is a sociological event, the 1995 P&P mini-series often labelled as the one “with Colin Firth is one too.) In a couple of my blogs over the years, and the for the first 2 episodes this season I tested whether the series is ironic or satiric: seriously sending up this aristocratic world and having some sympathetic for those it exploits mercilessly, and FWIW, the evidence goes well against that. You’d have to go back and read the one I called “the exhaustion of a reactionary sensibility.”
From the get-go I realized Fellowes could be simply making fun of the audience; he’s nasty enough too and the complacent dismissals he makes of anachronisms, and the moronic turnabouts suggest this. You could only prove it to convince if you saw his private letters or heard his conversation (say in groups like Romney spoke his real mind in front of). The sneers in his latest interview and much that happens on the show suggests a nasty man. That his material could prompt the thought of a suicidal man as a brown-nose sniveling person reminds me of the kind of thing Trump says almost daily (he mocked a disabled reporter one day). If so, he has certainly had all the laughs he wants on the way to the bank and there is more to come, Further his attitudes have entered people’s sensibilities so that drip by drip people are inured to empathy.
Against this (that he has been mocking his very audience) is not only the huge number of people who take him and the program seriously but also respectable studies in academic books of costume drama on British TV (yes I respect them). In one where one of my essays was published (on Davies’s mini-series of Trollope) there were two persuasive essays which certainly did take the characters seriously.
And over the years in some seasons I believe if Fellowes in one of his mind is despising us for even writing these commentaries, he has also entered deeply into his characters. I bought and read two of the published screenplays; They are very instructive: many long notes on pages where you see the autobiographical roots of what he writes and how he is emotionally involved. So I would say we have to reject the idea (however in character) of him sending up the public. Myself (as you saw) I take it to be effective soap opera (I do not use the term denigratingly at all) most of the time (not all); the material was exhausted by the end of the fourth season. Orwell said rightly all art is propaganda. The one thing I can say for the show is it has not encouraged physical violence; only profound moral violence and an acceptance of a hierarchy still with us and recently showing its cruelty in all sorts of ways over social programs.
In details he’s irritating: the obsessive repeating patterns tell us, enforce the idea the purpose of a woman’s life is children and she is a primarily biological creature. He is finally ambivalent over homosexuality — there’s an essay comparing Thomas in this program to a homosexual male servant in the original Upstairs Downstairs where the man was tried and hung as a dastardly criminal. But as on this level it is very rich, we could go on about this all day and if Michele is right and he is laughing at us, I will stop here.
“Well, I defer to Ellen, as I am not an academic. To use a literary term, my viewing of Downton has not been a “close reading.” All I know is that I can enjoy it taking the whole thing with a grain of salt, and if I took it seriously, I’d be throwing things at the television. Michelle”
I want to see Edith’s baby’s daddy return in the last episode, but I rather think she will be a prototype for a strong single woman of the future. Also, don’t forget that the quality did visit Mrs. Patmore’s for tea and allowed the photographers to take their pictures doing so. So noblesse oblige!
From Diane R:
“I also read and appreciated Anibundel’s review of the latest DA. I especially agreed with her observations that Edith has found an inner peace that Mary lacks, and that it roots, at least in part, in her knowledge she has found something she does well. Edith does radiate a generosity and kindness that rounds out her character, and we know that no matter what happens with Bertie, she will be OK.
Mary is an unhappy person, lashing out. It’s hard to forgive what she did, not just because it was cruel but because it was self indulgent, low. I am trying to decide if Fellowes fully wanted to ritually humiliate her. There’s certainly an attempt at it. Choosing the lap dog, half a man former chauffeur to excoriate her (is this what his socialism has come to, scolding the daughter of a rich earl because she won’t marry down?) is an attempt to humiliate her, as is having Edith call her a bitch, but it never quite works. They are never quite going to bring down Mary. Is that Fellowes intention, not to bring her down?
I agree too that this episode was action packed after several dull episodes. How will it all wrap up in the finale? So much to resolve, so little time!”
I will let anibundel know your praise of one of her insights — her blogs are filled with these. That last still suggested she was firm in her identity now.
It may be the last episodes are super-packed because he is thinking of a movie. Such a master at spinning and delaying and engaging us in soap opera style, would surely know how to do this. Many of these actors and actresses will not go beyond British TV and will agree to be hired (especially if he pays). So then we can go on some more in our cinemas.
Nowadays there are a number of TV programs which have spilled into cinema movies and vice versa began to happen in the 1970s.
Ellen
Janet Mills Elliot: “Was Dickens putting us on when he wrote Bleak House–full of preposterous characters and hard to believe plot lines? Nevertheless, the reader follows it with bated breath, laughing and crying where Dickens intended and caring about the characters. All fiction is a put on when it comes to that. I loved Downtown Abbey, especially the way the characters’ attitudes and their lifestyles changed and evolved as they moved from the Edwardian Age, through WW1 and into the Twenties. At the beginning of the century, domestic service was the single largest occupation in Britain. I loved seeing the servants begin to take charge of their lives and move into new occupations and relationships with their former employers. The roles and opportunities for women began to change dramatically after WW1 and the series excellently reflected that. I think Fellowes was very serious about portraying the times (of one representative family) and the personal and social challenges they faced. And it was all done with gorgeous scenery, settings, costuming, and wonderful acting.”
There’s plenty of evidence that Dickens wanted his audience to take his tales very seriously indeed, but that does not mean that Fellowes is not having us on. Now and again I glimpse mockery or at least scepticism towards his reader in Trollope: in passing remarks about how much a character understands of what he or she reads, for example. I sense this is more pervasive in Thackeray and would guess that Fellowes likes Thackeray’s writing too. Since I anyway feel no distaste or despising of a readership in Thackeray (just regret about them), the two do not have to go together either.
“Well, that is my point. It would be an odd and rare author or filmmaker who would lavish so much time and effort, not to mention reputation and legacy, just to have a joke. There may be those who don’t much respect their audience or who are only churning it out for the money, but I don’t see Fellowes like that. That said, I really know nothing about his motives! Trollope has been accused of being mercenary in his literary productions, but I think he honestly cared about what he was writing and his characters and his lasting reputation with his readers. I think most writers must.
Janet:
Yes, PBS will be airing a repeat about the manners of Downton Abbey this coming Sunday and then the finale episode will be on March 6.
The 8th episode that I watched was 73 minutes so they must have cut something.
I’d argue that Carson and Lady Mary are two of the most unlikeable characters in the series and more anti-heroes than heroes – not exactly villains, but there’s nothing overly admirable about either of them in my opinion.
Tyler
Thanks for confirming this.
Here’s a suggestion, Tyler: Fellowes’s Lady Mary is his version of Austen’s Emma. Emma is in many ways highly unlikeable. The trouble with making Carson a key anti-hero is the man with the real power is Lord Grantham.
My British DVD took 76 minutes. I noticed that few of the blogs mentioned the Countess’s dialogue with Lady Mary which led to the wedding, so at first I thought it eliminated in the PBS airings. Maybe parts were cut: that’d make a big difference as most scenes nowadays are so short. DA‘s were longer I’ll give him that and many over the years brilliantly written.
The full 73 minutes were shown on the PBS station in NY. I felt the writing was hasty, in that the emotional impact of certain conduct — by Lady Mary and by Carsons, principally — went mostly unexplored. I don’t agree with you, Ellen, btw, about Cora. I think her reaction to Mary here (and in the past) was clearly critical, if expressed with some restraint. “You don’t want people to think you’re jealous” was meant to be cutting and came off that way to me. Perhaps we Americans are simply frustrated by English reserve, but I’d have liked more feeling. Lady Edith, too, was remarkably stoical about the loss of her man.
Bob
Once I was lucky enough to interview Fellowes (telephone) and we talked for 30 minutes or so. I thought he was clever, but not in an ugly way, and actually, a pretty nice fellow who was well aware of his good fortune in making a living doing what he liked doing (acting and writing). Who can ask for more?
Well (to allude to Mandy Rice-Davies), he would talk that way in a phone conversation one-on-one, wouldn’t he? You are a representative of an academic periodical? Mr Knightley says people one-on-one are usually much nicer. This does not erase the six seasons or his many interviews or his overt politics. Maybe Trump is fun on a phone if he thinks it will be in his interest to be.
I can see there’s no love lost, hahaha, but I wasn’t interviewing for an academic journal. At that time I was wearing my journalist’s arts page editor hat and we were talking about his stage adaptation of the musical Mary Poppins. I liked the idea that his Mary Poppins was not sugar sweet like the film one–mine isn’t either. Here’s the story: http://www.morningjournal.com/article/MJ/20090712/NEWS/307129977
IN response to Michelle again: Well I’ve defended taking entertainment or our culture seriously. I thought your idea good and it makes sense of a lot of the absurdities mixed in with solemn complex psychology and assertions of all sorts about sociology and politics in the program. Your idea has explanatory power. Cynicism is rife in film and TV because the products are expensive commodities by which huge sums may be made.
Elissa:
“I think you’ve hit most of the important notes here, and I’d like to explore these a bit further because, after all, we fiction lovers all, at heart, are in some way soft touches for a bit of soap opera, and so we get sucked in [over a period of years in this case], especially when the scenery and “packaging” [yes, I do mean those *exquisite* fashions and art deco jewelry, especially the coronets] are as magnificent as Fellowes presents us with.
But I think it is important that we never forget we are in the realm of soap opera here — it is a world where major characters come and hold us for a week or two, then vanish completely or return briefly [Lady Cora’s mother played by Shirley MacLaine and later her brother Paul Giacometti {watch him as an uber-Javert with serious sexual sadism issues in the powerful series Billions along with his nemesis, played by Damien Lewis, who incorporates the nimble cruelty of his Homeland character with the powerful cunning and acumen of his recent Henry VIII role in the film version of H. Mantel’s novels}] and then are mentioned only by letter or in passing, one where life-altering tragedies [Matthew’s fatal car accident] are foreshadowed in a moment of joy [that car was a wedding gift to himself] and occur to allow a main actor to leave and/or to pick up the pace of a dulling plot, a world that actually uses very serious topics such as racial discrimination [lady Rose’s flirtation with a black jazz musician] and the women’s suffrage movement [Miss Bunting]to tease us into paying closer attention. Then, all is dropped — resolved within an episode or two. We all knew Rose’s romantic episode would be broken up — but by Tom, the former chauffeur?? — and that Miss Bunting would have to go — once again, psychologically spurned, ironically by Tom, the former chauffeur — but her presence did have some lasting effects both for Daisy and Mr. Moseley and even for Mrs. Patmore. Miss Bunting, we must remember was so shrill and one-note that most of the viewing audience truly hated her even if they sympathized with her “mission.” Again, we are firmly set in the grounds of soap opera here.
Still, some stronger notes have emerged in these last episodes — and all with the Dowager Countess/Maggie Smith’s virtual absence — but her influence and presence are felt, and she animates these episodes throughout, that adorable puppy becoming so symbolic.
For the downstairs players: Poor Mrs. Hughes/Carson!! What a dud her husband has turned out to be [and I do think we are meant to see this as he is also a dud in the marital bed that he made such a fuss about before the wedding]. Old, stalwart, reliable Carson, is revealed to us in these last few episodes as petty, mean, spiteful actually — and quite boring. But Mrs. Patmore, who still trembles when in the drawing room with his lordship, is becoming more feisty and developing a business acumen; she will manage well in her “retirement.” And your comment, Ellen, about visits from the police thrusting fear into the hearts of the servants [and, we see from other literature] and middle classes but simply displeasure and annoyance from the aristocracy is an acute one [with the exception of perhaps the first police detective, Bucket, to wander into the pages of Victorian fiction in Bleak House and arrive at the door of Lord and Lady Dedlock]. Here, we must acknowledge that powerful police presence that catches innocent people of the middle and lower classes in a vise-like grip that is so frighteningly presented in the Julian Barnes novel Arthur & George about Sir Arthur Conin Doyle’s courageous solving of the George Edalji case [recent BBC serial with masterful Martin Clunes as Sir Arthur and a mature Art Malik as the Reverend Edalji whose son is persecuted just doesn’t have the power of the novel]. In fact, the mean and petty Soames Forsythe isn’t above using the police to hound those who can’t pay their rents/debts to him as well as to threaten, menace, and terrorize his romantic rivals and even his estranged wife. And we’ve seen Daisy come quite a way: once Mr. Mason is gone, perhaps she’ll feel free to travel a bit and meet up with her old flame [tall, red hair] who became a chef at the Cordon Bleu and ….
Notice in this world of soap opera that two of the most put-upon melodramatic characters of yesterday, Anna and Mr. Bates, have devolved into happy and so-boring married couple of now. Question — somebody please help me here — Did Bates really kill horrible Mr. Green or did another female victim truly do this?? Did the police hound that woman into a “confession” and treat her as unfairly as Anna?? Frankly, having Bates kill Green would have kept us nicely within the realm of soap opera; arresting Anna for this after we had spent 1.5 viewing seasons with Bates in prison both facing a legal death by hanging sentence and being menaced daily by a nasty fellow prisoner was both absurd and had the opposite effect that I think Fellowes was hoping for: we all lost interest. Frankly, I lost interest with that implausibly weak ending for the Mrs. Bates murder narrative with the weak and most unsatisifying ending of suicide by cyanide baked in a pie. Who takes cyanide by baking it into a pie?? Does heat inactivate cyanide?? After that, I stopped caring. Soap opera does demand bold resolutions, and this 2-season storyline simply collapsed like a balloon whose air leaches out when the ribbon is untied.
A crisis at work now [as much as publishing medical textbooks can be said to have crises] that I must attend to — would like to return later to discuss Ethel [the former servant turned prostitute because she was seduced/raped by a Crawley family guest], Farmer Dawes [misused really by both Lord G. and Edith], Lord Grantham [and the real Napoleonic desk in the library from which he writes], Lady Mary vs Lady Edith, and of course, the soul of this saga, the Dowager Countess.
Elissa”
I enjoyed reading your posting, Elissa. You brought back some of the depths and carry-overs of experience over this six years. Soap opera is a powerful genre when in the hands of someone who can write them, someone direct them, and people to act. I especially liked your point about the puppy dog as symbolic of the Dowager’s central importance over the years. I closed my blog with a still I captured of the dog in the basket.
We must not look for consistency though — as in a roman fleuve, a novelist may eliminate characters four books on, so after all we are supposed to dismiss all the circumstantial evidence thrown at us that Bates pushed Mr Green and go for a woman victim, hysterical, nudging him over. Did he do away with his wife though? we are supposed to forget or decide not.
I predict Fellowes will leave many threads open — the form has this built-in as did Gosford Park. So we may yet see Downton Abbey, the movie ….
I am again getting a lot of hits as I had not all season long. People are now tuning in (or streaming or watching DVDs or whatever is the mode) for these last episodes. Fellowes is cunning to make us wait two weeks for the final finale.
Ellen
Ellen wrote: “Fellowes is cunning to make us wait two weeks for the final finale.”
I highly doubt that Fellowes had anything to do with the scheduling or the Academy Awards or the decision not to have the D.A. finale on the same time as the Oscars on another channel. It just happens to be a convenient situation to create greater suspense as well as fuel the anger toward Mary (whom I wish I could strangle – I’m still hoping that Bertie will return to Edith).
Tracy Marks”
My reply:
“To Tracy, I hadn’t thought Downton Abbey would be on against the Academy awards — which I never watch as boring; and this year the racism and the awful norms for so-called great films are so transparent. I would do nothing to support this — even watching is too much support. So I didn’t know when it was on on TV.
Have I mentioned to you that the two Austen films are not even coming to my area — not a sign of even an advertisement (Love and Friendship; P&P & Zombies). We also don’t get better black films at all.
You still agree that it’s convenient — works up suspense. I’ve read that when the programs are transferred to PBS there is an understanding of when they will be broadcast. He may well involve himself. He is an astute publicist; it is again not a coincidence that when the Tories are after the BBC, Fellowes gives an interview slamming them for leftism. I expect if he does make a movie, Downton Abbey, the Movie, we’ll have endless publicity. I wish myself some of it might take the form of a fourth book of the scripts, for the fourth season. After that it has so fallen off I doubt I’d buy any more. I did like the romance of the Dowager with Kuragin (a name from Tolstoy) but forget what season that was in.”
Rory wrote:
“‘My British DVD took 76 minutes, Tyler saw a 73 minute program in Michigan and Bob 73 minutes in NYC.’
US film rate is 24 frames per second, Europe/Rest of the world? is 25 frames per second, so it can happen that US rendering of the same film is about 4% longer than the European, accompanied perhaps by a slight shift in voice tone. One sees this often with films on satellite, where IMDB will list a film as 100 minutes (US length) but European actual transmission may be 96 mins from the same original.”
Thanks. I thought a scene or so had been omitted because a few of the blogs I read speculated that the Dowager had got lost at sea, and did not seem to know that the Dowager made a flying visit back to persuade Lady Mary to marry Henry — and make it plain that Lady Mary was a good person after all. This includes Anibundel’s and she is usually accurate on the literal stuff.
Ellen
Elissa:
“Absolutely agree. And allusions to Trollope certainly do seem to abound in Fellowes’ works, but then again, they are both, with a somewhat cynical eye, portraying human nature in its “splendid” varieties. We are in for a treat with Fellowes’ Dr. Thorne, I think. And, of course, that series will set us up for his version of the remaining novels in the Barset cycle.
But to return to Downton: I’d like to consider how Fellows presents the final arc of the Thomas Barrow storyline and how it is really a window into the very selfish, uncaring arrogance of the aristocratic Earl and Countess whom he serves. We’ve had a “softening” of the Barrow character (formerly a coward, bully, animal abuser, blackmailer, petty criminal-black marketeer [albeit somewhat “petty” crime involving canned goods, in wartime, punishable by death, nevertheless]) over the past two seasons — he does emotionally reach out to his fellow servants/his family, really, and at poignant moments expresses his true fondness for others, including — the late Lady Sybil, “who always treated me with great kindness.”
Last season, however, he actually literally saved the life of a daughter of the household, Lady Edith, by carrying her out of a burning bed in the room in which she had carelessly started a fire. For his thanks — and the Earl never thanks him much less rewards him
and Lady Cora merely offers one of her weakly delivered “we’ll forget you’ve been nasty to my maid because you’ve done us such a favor” lines as she floats up the grand staircase back to bed. How easily they forget!! By the first episode of this final season, Barrow has been put on notice by the butler Carson that “his lordship feels an under-butler is a bit of an extravagance he can no longer afford.” Despite saving Lady Edith’s life some months before — and perhaps the lives of the grandchildren and nursery-maids on the higher floors by rousing the household to the fire — and despite that he apparently
spends as much time every day playing with and interacting with the family 3 grandchildren as do their mother, father, and grandparents, Thomas has been given notice: he is expendable, and Mr. Carson literally hounds him every day as to the progress of his job search. Lady Edith, whose life Barrow saved, never, ever thought to offer him a job at the
publishing company in London that, frankly, she inherited quite illegally [some would say stole] since there was a living [albeit insane] wife. They are a cold bunch, these Crawleys, with Mary the worst of course — and yet, ironically, it is Lady Mary who does have both empathy for Barrow, and — amazingly — they are a curiously sympatico pair. In a brief dialogue of genius as Lady Mary and son George visit Barrow sitting in bed as he recovers from his suicide attempt, Fellowes has them reveal in almost coded language how similar they both know they are in remoteness of character, in a shared sense of isolation. A high point of this series, this small scene with a little boy and an orange
as props, I think.
Now, for Mr. Carson, whom I’ve long adored and who has, as I’ve written the other day, devolved into a pompous, bloviating bully. It is interesting to note, however, that several seasons back when he first discovered Barrow’s homosexuality, he displayed true kindness and decency toward the man rather than having him immediately fired and cast
out [as was poor Ethyl — more on her below], making him unemployable. So we are definitely seeing a down-turn in character for Carson. Poor Mrs. Hughes: I think she wished for a husband she could admire; he has certainly let me down.
As for Lord Grantham, in many ways we see a somewhat but not very much kinder, more benevolent man than the one encountered six seasons before. When we first met him, he was capable of actually turning out Bates — to whom he owed an “enormous debt” for personal assistance during war [what war?? Boer II??]. Now I read this as saving the Earl’s life by pulling him out of harm on a battlefield and getting him life-saving medical care — The very same life-saving act that Barrow performed for Lady Edith in fact. When Bates’s lame leg seems to prevent his lordship the Earl from feeling “properly valeted,” Lord Robert thinks nothing of dismissing the man, who *will be left without recourse — no employment — headed for destitution, the dreaded “workhouse.”* Have these entitled Crawleys no sense of decency, no real sense of honor?? Perhaps that is why they have such a “low-sounding”
name: “Crawley” — for all their splendid surroundings and glittering jewels, they are an appalling bunch!! Of course, Lord Grantham feels a twinge of remorse, a sense of obligation really, and recants. So Bates is saved, spared the workhouse, so he can carry on and serve his lordship, brush his collars, etc. for another two generations. That the
family have their own lawyer defend Bates when he is arrested, found guilty of murder, and imprisoned is less to their credit as “kind” people; it is that having one’s valet accused of murder is an affront to the honor of one’s House or line, and so Lord Grantham naturally provides for legal services just as he would pay a veterinarian to geld
one of his stallions.
Let us move on several seasons. We see Lord Grantham cleverly protecting Lady Mary — a *great victory* — from a blackmailing young woman who has learned the “Mr. Parmuk secret” by writing her a cheque for 50 pounds from his stately desk in the Downton library. A wonderful Fellowes’ in-joke here: that very desk actually does sit in the library
at Highclere Castle [the setting of fictional Downton Abbey] and is known as “the NAPOLEON desk” after its original owner!! Very clever use of a prop here!!
But we see Lord Grantham at this desk of Napoleon’s once again, and it is part of the storyline that also cleverly resonates and shows how very small a man in character Lord Robert really can be. Yes, I refer here to the whole Farmer Dawes [both before and with Marigold] saga. We’ve actually first encountered the Dawes family during the WW I years when Lady Edith drives a tractor on Mr. Dawes’s farm, becomes somewhat attracted to him and kisses him. A decade later, this past between them establishes the sense of intimacy that has him readily agree to create a “plausible” back story for Edith and enable him to foster her illegitimate daughter Marigold [an uglier child I’ve never seen in my life] with his own family of five or six, allowing Edith to visit and be near her daughter. When this scheme ultimately results in near disaster, Dawes, his half-crazed wife, six children, various livestock, are unceremoniously thrown off the land he and his family, as he tells Lord Robert “have tenant farmed since before OLD NAPOLEON’S TIME” without so much as a farthing in compensation. Where they will go, what they will do not to starve is simply never addressed. It’s better this way, with Mrs. Dawes far removed from Marigold, the Earl and Countess agree as they stand on their sun-drenched long lawn. And Mr. Dawes
accepts all this with a quiet sense of resignation even though it clearly means doom for him and all his family — very much the same way Bates had been resigned to his fate with his dismissal years before. O where is the spirit of Miss Bunting when we truly need her?? Too bad son-in-law Tom didn’t stick up for poor Farmer Dawes. AND, might I mention, it isn’t as if the Earl of Grantham doesn’t have other properties/large estates to where he might have relocated Dawes; we know he has other holdings in other counties because the family has visited them. Badly done Lord Robert, badly done.
And so, we learn that for the Earl of Grantham it is important to value heritage and to hold Napoleon’s desk in pride of place in one’s library, but it is not important to value a family that has served his own since at least Napoleonic times and that has harbored his own grandchild in an attempt to save his own daughter’s “reputation.” And so we last see
the Dawes clan headed off and away from Downton in their rickety wagon — the workhouse in their dismal future. A most Dickensian scene.
Let’s end with a whimper for this once “glorious” family: Ethyl. Remember maid Ethyl anyone? She was the foolish servant whose head was turned and who was seduced by a nasty young man who was a guest at the house. Pregnant, she had to leave Downton in disgrace, and, destitute, she was forced into prostitution to provide for her son. With some
financial help from Mrs. Crawley [Matthew’s mother, not the Countess, Lady Cora] who is clever enough psychologist to realize how much the paternal grandparents would want this child of their now dead son, and the assistance of Mrs. Hughes, the child is indeed adopted by his paternal grandparents. But Edyth must not only give up all claim to her son, she is abandoned and will probably die on the streets of disease.Now in the scheme of life, I ask — nor do I mean to sound like the shrill Miss Bunting — why is Ethyl cast off onto a heap of garbage to die and rot for bearing an illegitimate child but not Lady Edith?? The answer is simply money and access to it. This all leaves me with a most sour taste, and suddenly I am no longer sad to say good-bye to Downton and its glittering world of [truly] exquisite fashions and art nouveau coronets after all. Just think how one of Lady Edith’s serpentine arm bracelets could have saved the lives of poor Ethyl and her son.
And so, Downton, farewell, adieu. Bring on Dr. Thorne and the renewed saga of the Grantleys, the Proudie daughters, and yes, a return to the Crawleys — of Hogglestock!!”