'Downton Abbey,' Season Five

Writer/creator Julian Fellowes’s Downton Abbey was originally planned for three seasons. But when Dan Stevens (who played Downton heir Matthew Crawley) heard that the phenomenally popular Masterpiece period soap had been extended for a fourth season, he acquiesced to Matthew’s sudden, gruesome death by car wreck rather than continue on the show.

After finishing Season Five, I don’t blame him.

Did you even remember to watch?

In previous seasons, the Facebook feed would light up on Sunday nights in January and February, gnashing over the latest twists and erupting in fury at spoilers.

This year, one of the only statuses I remember about Downton Abbey was my former French teacher realizing that she had forgotten to tune in the previous night.

I began to catch up online about halfway through the season’s U.S. airing, but it was quite a feat to finish the whole thing before free online streaming through the PBS website ended on March 15. I had to tackle one episode in three or four attempts over the course of a week (with lines like “I’m going upstairs to take off my hat”) out of a dogged sense of loyalty to the show I’d loved.

Not that ISIS

Speaking of dogged loyalty, after taking Lady Sybil, William Mason, Lavinia Swire, Michael Gregson, Mrs. Patmore’s nephew, and God knows how many others without turning a hair, the biggest threat to life and limb Fellowes could conjure this season was the death of Lord Grantham’s dog, Isis.

The impeccably groomed beast has been bounding across the estate since the Edwardian era, but when she grew distended and listless in 1924, all Lady Cora could think was that perhaps Isis was pregnant. Maybe folks weren’t as hip to the average lifespans of Labrador retrievers in the 1920s.

Some people pointed out how unfortunate it was that Fellowes named Grantham’s dog Isis, given the world events following the premiere of Downton. But the setting for the show is the real-life Highclere Castle, home to the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon when he discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun with Howard Carter a century ago. So the name may be an allusion to this real-life Egyptian connection.

It’s pretty telling that we have to dig as deep as Carnarvon, Carter, and King Tut did to extract some excitement from Season Five.

A season without a spine

1912’s Season One has an inciting incident for the ages: the sinking of the Titanic, which both of the Downton Abbey heirs had the misfortunate to be on. Subsequent seasons weather World War I, the Spanish Influenza, and a host of high-stakes drama, from an elopement with the chauffeur and fatal eclampsia to suicides, marriages, miscarriage, sexual assault, and even an orgasmic death, with a corpse carried through the halls.

But what is the spine of Season Five?

Well, the whole thing starts with a real bang as Lord Grantham is mildly offended by intimations that the locals don’t want him as the chairman of their WWI memorial committee. Later, Fellowes seems to be trying to make up for the relative peace in Europe with a series of fiery arguments over dinner, some involving an uppity socialist schoolmistress and others a nasty son who objects to poor Isobel Crawley’s engagement to Lord Merton. Sure, Maggie Smith’s expressions as the Dowager Countess Violet make it worthwhile, but the Somme it ain’t.

Instead of following engrossing historical or familial arcs, Fellowes seems to be amusing himself with episodic hijinks as long as a goodly number of us are still watching. Every time a major conflict looms, he whacks it down quicker than a hasty gardener.

Christians and Jews and tutoring, oh my

Why was Baxter in prison? Okay, I’ll tell you, Milady. Can Rose really marry a Jewish guy? Hey, Cora’s dad was Jewish (so much more palatable than when Rose kissed that black singer before everyone decided it was All a Terrible Idea, Really). What was Lady Cora doing with that amorous art historian in her boudoir? I didn’t invite him, dear; let’s put it behind us. Those pictures of Rose’s fiancé letting a bare-shouldered tart out of his hotel room? It was all a prank, darling. Lady Edith’s secret love child? Let’s bring her into the fold and agree that Gregson would have married Edith forthwith if he hadn’t been killed in the first rumblings of WWII. The assistant cook, Daisy? In what may be the least compelling story arc of all, she gets some tutoring, but doesn’t shirk her chores. Lord Grantham is having severe chest pains, but oh, it’s just a stomach ulcer. Mix and repeat to a gentle soundtrack of clinking beads as everyone “goes through” to dinner.

Even the footman Thomas Barrow, whose raison d'être for four seasons (with a little time off to fight in WWI) was lurking in stairwells to murmur malicious insinuations about everyone in earshot of the house, becomes a sympathetic chap in Season Five. The central conflict of the finale is arguably Thomas’s effort to cut a snobbish butler down to size in the name of the Crawley honor.

Meanwhile, Lady Mary deals tartly with two or three fairly interchangeable suitors, uses a contraceptive device that she foists off on the long-suffering Anna when she’s done with it, and (are you ready for this?) gets a haircut.

Speaking of Anna, and her devoted valet husband, Bates, Fellowes really seems to be out of ideas. Anna, just like Bates in a previous season, goes to jail for a murder she didn’t commit. The Crawleys decry the Bates’ dreadful luck before they leave for a grouse-shooting party, and when Anna returns, Mary goes so far as to invite her to walk in the front door.

Yes, Season Six is coming next January. Somehow, this time around, I can wait.