Post-Edwardian drama
Sep. 25th, 2012 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotI'm conflicted. On the one hand, I love Edith and I want her to have someone who loves her, for whom she comes first, who can see all of her good points. And Strallan is sweet. But on the other hand, their entire arc gives me the impression that she's not really in love with him - he's just the only man who's ever shown an interest in her, and she's convinced herself that she loves him - and that he's equally imagining his own love because of her interest and solicitousness and because he's worried that he's unlovable. It just really does not capture me the way early Anna/Bates did. I can't help but be on Violet and Robert's side on this, it's not a good relationship for either of them and they should cut it out before they get married and then realize how dreadful it is.
epea_pteroenta said everything I'm thinking about Matthew and Mary. I don't entirely agree with Matthew about not taking the money (mainly because Lavinia's death was so ridiculous on a meta level) but I can completely understand why he'd feel as he does about it - but his inability to try to understand Mary's issues strikes me as OOC.
I'll copy a comment I made on her LJ, too: I love the tradition vs. change stuff - it's why the early 20th century is so interesting to me - but at the same time ... the repeated "this is 1920!" lines strike me as presentist. It doesn't feel like they're saying "this is the modern world" like anyone might at any time when faced with hidebound tradition, it feels like "I am aware that the 1920s were a decade of social change, and now that we are in it things must change."
On the whole, I think I'm just depressed over the fact that what promised to be a great, interesting show about how people relate to one another in a world with a very strict class system as that system crumbles got ... basically all of that taken away in favor of obviously-writer-motivated external drama. And I don't object to drama and "soapyness" (though I think Downton lacks what's actually essential to a soap opera - tangling plotlines, or rather, after one plotline ends with one group of people, it doesn't switch up and put them in plotlines with an entirely different group of people - characters interact with the same characters in each plot; actually, it might be better if this did happen, because one of the problems is that once you've got Bates in prison, say, Anna has nothing else she can do because he's her only one. What if Molesly tries to Nice Guy her? What if Mrs. Hughes offers her an apprenticeship sort of thing like Daisy's got? What if O'Brian's pissy because Anna's becoming a lady's maid?), but when it feels like the only reason for something to happen is that Julian Fellowes needs there to be drama, it absolutely does not work for me. And the worst part is that it's not even dramatic things that progress and create more drama (like the whole Pamuk thing, which I thought did work), it's dramatic things that sit there and don't go anywhere. Anna and Bates talk in prison and nothing happens. Mary and Matthew talk about the money and neither changes their mind.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it's at least not as crazy as last season (though I'm not optimistic about Ethel's return), it just strikes me as being out of ideas. Shirley MacLaine is great, but she feels like a glitzier retread of Isobel in S1. Watching Violet struggle to be nice to her is awesome, though.
The ending did not work for me, and it's my fault for not having read the books and getting emotionally involved, but I really could not get behind Christopher and Valentine. Sylvia's struggles were infinitely more interesting (did Valentine have any struggles?) and I'd have much rather seen her come to a better understanding of what appeals to Christopher and Christopher come to an understanding of the fact that his wife loves him and has been having sexless affairs to try to make him jealous. When they got together in a hotel I was really happy this seemed to be happening, but it was not to be.
Also, pretending you have cancer in order to make your husband pay attention to you is so incredibly insane that it earns my respect. It's gutsy.
epea_pteroenta said everything I'm thinking about Matthew and Mary. I don't entirely agree with Matthew about not taking the money (mainly because Lavinia's death was so ridiculous on a meta level) but I can completely understand why he'd feel as he does about it - but his inability to try to understand Mary's issues strikes me as OOC.I'll copy a comment I made on her LJ, too: I love the tradition vs. change stuff - it's why the early 20th century is so interesting to me - but at the same time ... the repeated "this is 1920!" lines strike me as presentist. It doesn't feel like they're saying "this is the modern world" like anyone might at any time when faced with hidebound tradition, it feels like "I am aware that the 1920s were a decade of social change, and now that we are in it things must change."
On the whole, I think I'm just depressed over the fact that what promised to be a great, interesting show about how people relate to one another in a world with a very strict class system as that system crumbles got ... basically all of that taken away in favor of obviously-writer-motivated external drama. And I don't object to drama and "soapyness" (though I think Downton lacks what's actually essential to a soap opera - tangling plotlines, or rather, after one plotline ends with one group of people, it doesn't switch up and put them in plotlines with an entirely different group of people - characters interact with the same characters in each plot; actually, it might be better if this did happen, because one of the problems is that once you've got Bates in prison, say, Anna has nothing else she can do because he's her only one. What if Molesly tries to Nice Guy her? What if Mrs. Hughes offers her an apprenticeship sort of thing like Daisy's got? What if O'Brian's pissy because Anna's becoming a lady's maid?), but when it feels like the only reason for something to happen is that Julian Fellowes needs there to be drama, it absolutely does not work for me. And the worst part is that it's not even dramatic things that progress and create more drama (like the whole Pamuk thing, which I thought did work), it's dramatic things that sit there and don't go anywhere. Anna and Bates talk in prison and nothing happens. Mary and Matthew talk about the money and neither changes their mind.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it's at least not as crazy as last season (though I'm not optimistic about Ethel's return), it just strikes me as being out of ideas. Shirley MacLaine is great, but she feels like a glitzier retread of Isobel in S1. Watching Violet struggle to be nice to her is awesome, though.
The ending did not work for me, and it's my fault for not having read the books and getting emotionally involved, but I really could not get behind Christopher and Valentine. Sylvia's struggles were infinitely more interesting (did Valentine have any struggles?) and I'd have much rather seen her come to a better understanding of what appeals to Christopher and Christopher come to an understanding of the fact that his wife loves him and has been having sexless affairs to try to make him jealous. When they got together in a hotel I was really happy this seemed to be happening, but it was not to be.
Also, pretending you have cancer in order to make your husband pay attention to you is so incredibly insane that it earns my respect. It's gutsy.
