CAUTION: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS CONCERNING THE PREVIOUSLY AWESOME, NOW TOTALLY DUMB AND STUPID TV SHOW DOWNTON ABBEY:
Anna and I just burned through all of season 3 of Downton Abbey. As the season prepared to enter it's final five minutes, Anna and I were leaning back on the couch, marveling at how smoothly they'd wrapped up the season... and then Matthew, who had been as baller as baller could be throughout the entire season, and whose wife had just given birth to their first child, got into a fatal car accident, and WHAT THE HELL, MASTERPIECE THEATER? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?
At least, that's what I was yelling at my t.v. during the final minutes of Downton Abbey's last episode for almost an entire year.
It really threw off my groove. I was prepared for a smooth, happy finale a la the greatest finale in the history of television. Everyone had gotten their happy ending: Even Thomas had redeemed himself (as much as could be expected). If the episode had ended even two or three minutes sooner, it would have been freaking amazing.
In short, I am unsatisfied.
I am unsatisfied with how the writers of the show chose to end their season. I am unsatisfied that their long tradition of ultimately rewarding virtue ended in the senseless death of a new father, a faithful husband, and frankly an absolutely baller dude.
I know the arguments: I went through my writing classes at Biola hearing them over and over again. How good stories reflect reality, and how reality is fallen. How a happy ending is a sure sign of naivete, and how a sad ending is a mark of intelligent realism. This sad attitude of cynicism has pervaded modern retellings even of explicitly "escapist" literature (in the Tolkien sense of the word), so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to find it here.
But I was surprised. Up until this point, the world of Downton Abbey had been one of a very "Proverbsy" nature: Good is rewarded, and the traps of the evil are sprung upon the ones who set them. But the end of this season seems to be a surrender to the prevailing "realism" of the age: The cynicism that would end the gospels with the crucifixion, that would rather end the book of Job with our hero waiting for an answer that never comes.
Granted, the point of this post was stronger when I thought that Downton Abbey was only going to be 3 seasons long (I must have gotten it confused with my beloved Sherlock). But to end the season with a shot of blood slowly snaking past the dead, open eyes of a new father, while his wife expectantly awaits his return, rubs me the wrong way.
Because yes, that may be what "real life" is like. But that is not nearly the same as reality. The reality is that the wail of Ecclesiastes has been drowned out by the gloria of the angels. The tomb of Christ marks a mere intermission, where the old scenery of Act 1 is cleared away to make room for Act 2.
Downton Abbey has done a lot of amazing things (in fact, I'm already planning a second post talking about some those things), but in this case, it failed. It settled for reflecting "real life", at the expense of reality. The show may redeem itself in the season to come, but for now, we are left with a shattered estate, a shattered marriage, and a multitude of shattered lives. And I am unsatisfied.
