Dowton Abbey S2 - this week's episode
Feb. 1st, 2012 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIs it just me or is Dowton Abbey not as good this season as last? The story threads feel more labored and contrived somehow..filled with manipulative war story cliches...
*Matthew comes home, the last male of heir of Dowton Abbey, paralyzed and of course he can't have sex or kids, so he sends his weak fiancee away. A fiancee that we've rarely seen and seems to do nothing but cry about how she can't live without him. Meanwhile the woman who he spurned, because she initially turned him down, is nursing him, sticking by his side in almost martyr fashion. Becoming quite the nurse - a complete role reversal from last season. I feel like I've fallen into a 1930s/1940s movie...or 1950s for that matter, starring Greer Garson and Rod Taylor in the leads. Or maybe Bette Davis and Henry Fonda. It's all so melodramatic and teary. Yet I find my eyes dry.
Oh and in true soap fashion - the woman he spurned, Lady Mary, is to be wed to Sir Richard Carlyse a wicked newspaper man who holds her reputation over her head. (Last season she slept with a Turkish Prince...who died in the act of trying to make love to her. Bates, Anna, and her mother helped her move his body back to his rooms. It was all rather hilarious. But Edith, being snippy, decided to spout off her mouth ...and as result the scandal landed in the lap of Bates' nasty wife, who in turn sold the info to Sir Richard. Mary smartly got there first, and revealed the information to Sir Richard. I keep waiting for someone to off the evil wife...but I guess we aren't watching Godsford Park.)
*The servant...William...melodramatically dies, after trying to save Matthew...but first he must marry his one true love Daisy. (Too bad she doesn't feel the same way. I felt sort of sorry for Daisy...who gets roped into the whole mess out of guilt.) He insists so that she will get his pension and war fund as his widow. The parish minister bulks at performing the marriage because he believes Daisy is trying to cheat the system. (He's wrong but right at the same time. Daisy doesn't want to do it, everyone else wants her to.) It's all rather touching, but I find it to be a bit contrived. I knew William was a dead from the outset. I just kept waiting for him to get killed.
That's really all that happened. Was rather bored. I know, it's sad. But it reminded me a lot of those 1980s War miniseries...the Winds of War, and War and Remeberance, or Pearl Harbor.
All of which I found to be rather...difficult to connect to. I'd say I'm not a fan of War movies, but that's not quite it. I think it's the heightened melodrama...just feels off somehow?
Also the show is getting preachy on the class consciousness. The Brits are bit more into this than the Americans are in their dramas...mostly because it's an older country and classism is bit more complicated over there. It's complicated in the States too, but it's based less on "aristocracy and birth right" and more on well "money". Sir Richard Carlysle's speech to Mary underlines the difference. In the US - we have old money (people who had it since the 1700s) and new money,
but that's about it. Or inherited wealth. And here? Inherited Wealth is well, frowned upon. We make fun of the trust fund baby. While self-made has a legitmacy to it. But money/wealth equaling power? That's true in both countries. Just the aristocracy, which doesn't always have any money, is in a whole class by itself. We don't really have that in the US. And I think it's the one of the major cultural difference that stands out and is why British costume dramas are so fascinating to Americans...we can't quite wrap our heads around the whole aristocrat bit.
*Matthew comes home, the last male of heir of Dowton Abbey, paralyzed and of course he can't have sex or kids, so he sends his weak fiancee away. A fiancee that we've rarely seen and seems to do nothing but cry about how she can't live without him. Meanwhile the woman who he spurned, because she initially turned him down, is nursing him, sticking by his side in almost martyr fashion. Becoming quite the nurse - a complete role reversal from last season. I feel like I've fallen into a 1930s/1940s movie...or 1950s for that matter, starring Greer Garson and Rod Taylor in the leads. Or maybe Bette Davis and Henry Fonda. It's all so melodramatic and teary. Yet I find my eyes dry.
Oh and in true soap fashion - the woman he spurned, Lady Mary, is to be wed to Sir Richard Carlyse a wicked newspaper man who holds her reputation over her head. (Last season she slept with a Turkish Prince...who died in the act of trying to make love to her. Bates, Anna, and her mother helped her move his body back to his rooms. It was all rather hilarious. But Edith, being snippy, decided to spout off her mouth ...and as result the scandal landed in the lap of Bates' nasty wife, who in turn sold the info to Sir Richard. Mary smartly got there first, and revealed the information to Sir Richard. I keep waiting for someone to off the evil wife...but I guess we aren't watching Godsford Park.)
*The servant...William...melodramatically dies, after trying to save Matthew...but first he must marry his one true love Daisy. (Too bad she doesn't feel the same way. I felt sort of sorry for Daisy...who gets roped into the whole mess out of guilt.) He insists so that she will get his pension and war fund as his widow. The parish minister bulks at performing the marriage because he believes Daisy is trying to cheat the system. (He's wrong but right at the same time. Daisy doesn't want to do it, everyone else wants her to.) It's all rather touching, but I find it to be a bit contrived. I knew William was a dead from the outset. I just kept waiting for him to get killed.
That's really all that happened. Was rather bored. I know, it's sad. But it reminded me a lot of those 1980s War miniseries...the Winds of War, and War and Remeberance, or Pearl Harbor.
All of which I found to be rather...difficult to connect to. I'd say I'm not a fan of War movies, but that's not quite it. I think it's the heightened melodrama...just feels off somehow?
Also the show is getting preachy on the class consciousness. The Brits are bit more into this than the Americans are in their dramas...mostly because it's an older country and classism is bit more complicated over there. It's complicated in the States too, but it's based less on "aristocracy and birth right" and more on well "money". Sir Richard Carlysle's speech to Mary underlines the difference. In the US - we have old money (people who had it since the 1700s) and new money,
but that's about it. Or inherited wealth. And here? Inherited Wealth is well, frowned upon. We make fun of the trust fund baby. While self-made has a legitmacy to it. But money/wealth equaling power? That's true in both countries. Just the aristocracy, which doesn't always have any money, is in a whole class by itself. We don't really have that in the US. And I think it's the one of the major cultural difference that stands out and is why British costume dramas are so fascinating to Americans...we can't quite wrap our heads around the whole aristocrat bit.
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 01:34 am (UTC)They produced it with the BBC. So co-own the rights.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-03 02:33 am (UTC)There's a new series of 'Upstairs, Downstairs' due to be aired on the BBC soon, though. Let's hope it's better than the first series was! :)