When Writers Run Out of Gas

Watching Downton Abbey. Self proclaimed junkie after Breaking Bad. Season finale fizzles like a wet balloon sputtering around the room and then falling on a bare light bulb...sizzling in flaccid relief. Such over burndened metaphors would have been a relief to the turgid soap opera Downton became at the end. It would seem Julian Fellows lost his way but probably after five seasons he probably just ran out of gas.

Lets face it it happens. After the early seasons built around the verisimilitude of the era and the characters drawn so handsomely to the early twentieth century standards of gentlemen and their servents we were destined to drift aftter Matthew Crawley left the series and we lost our great love story. But more than that Julian burned through his material after World War I ended. This gave the series natural drama and we remained focused on the main characters.

But then history paused and we were left with flappers and F. Scott Fitzgerald besotment done badly by the upper class and worse by Rose wannabe flapper who goes for African American jazzmen and then forgets about him after matriarch in training Mary's wrath. The point is the soap opera moves in when the writer moves  out because then we just have drama for dramas sake with no underpinning.

Alas Julian probably should just shut it all down instead of ending the season on the beach with the servants and strange little sublots that wither and die like vines in a toripid heat. If this overwritten it is only because Downton was so underwritten and I wanted to right the apple cart.

I still have some gas left.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...


 

The Appeal of Downton Abbey

Yeah Ok. I admit  it. I'm hooked. And I don't watch anything on television except movies, American Experience, and crappy reruns of really old shows. So why am I so into this drama of an aristocratic family in England at the turn of the century? Could it be our very democratic ideas have become tiresome to us and we now are fascinated with a world where the servants dress better than we do? They are dapper are they not? And they are Irish.

And maybe it is the class rigidity we find comforting. In England of that time you were either of the upper class, the middle, or the working class. And you did not move. Upward mobility is an American ideal not an English one. The English were very comfortable with knowing their station and yes there were those who chaffed (read any DH.Lawrence novel) but for the most part people accepted their position and relished the security.

Notice the way everyone stands up when the Butler or any of the family walk in. Uh oh. Here comes that other very un-American word: respect. Or better yet respectability. Our culture has lived on the fodder of breaking apart respectability. Our bread and butter is the story of the upstart from the lower classes who rises up and reveals the immorality of the upper class. A lot our movies from Trading Places to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Good Will Hunting to Gatsby all are variations on the theme that classes should be obliterated and that were is something corrupt about the upper classes.

But not Lord Gratham who cares about his tenant farmers and keeping everyone employed. This then is a different upper class from our American counterpart. A sense of nobles oblige permeates Downton Abbey against the crass consumerism of our own culture. And we are weary. We are weary with out politics, our blood soaked culture, our nihilism that permeates every corner of our entertainment mega industry. Is it any wonder we are drawn to the quiet venerable niceties of the late nineteenth/ early twentieth century when everyone knew their place and did their part?

Or is just a really good story?

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man...the American Dream upside down

Why Americans Love Downton Abbey

The Masterpiece theatre series Downton Abbey is very popular. It is a show  about a landed family in England at the turn of the century. It is very well done and the plot lines are very intriguing. Still it is not that different from other dramas Masterpiece theatre has aired, but this one seems to have caught on like wildfire. Now why is that? Why do we care about an aristocratic family and their Irish servants? Could it be that we crave something about that old world so lacking from our own now?

Lets face it. American society is pretty crappy about now. We have these horrible shootings that are so heinous we cant even talk about it and yet, yet, we cant do anything about it. We have a government that is split down the middle with calls for revolution, secession, impeachment. Our television and movies export so much violence we suffer PTSD after we walk out of movie theatres. We now have armed guards at our schools and theatres. We have been in a five year recession. We yearn for a simpler world. Not only that, but a world where all is in order.

And Downton Abbey even with it's drama is all about order. The aristocracy is on top and the servants are on the bottom and every one is ok with that. For all our freedoms and our assault on classicism of any type, we have lost something in the process. We have lost any certainty our society can handle its own problems. We have lost the fait that we can provide a decent world for our kids. We are out of control and we know it now. Twenty dead children say it is so.

And so we tune into this bygone world of Lords and Ladies. Of footmen, butlers, and valets. We even envy the Irish servents who know their  place, where they will live, and where they will die. We know nothing of our future or our place in the world anymore. Is it any wonder that a world where honor and tradition are pre-emiment would appeal to us now. If only we could go back in time.

And stay there.

www.billhazelgrove.com