A Fictional Betrayal

Warning, if you are a fan of Downton Abby and haven yet watched the end of season three, this post contains a spoiler.

They killed off Mathew.  I knew something bad was going to happen.  I watched it the night after it aired Sunday on PBS, so I had already seen a Monday morning Facebook post, “Downton Abby sucks.”  I watched ready for tragedy.  And then it finally came, that accident—like a cartoon show from my childhood with that ridiculous toy-like milk truck.  Downton is a mysteriously gripping show for many people I know and for me too.  That death was just wrong.  However, that’s not a very articulate critique.  Jace Lacob says it better:

[W]hat I found frustrating was how Fellowes orchestrated his demise, having Matthew run off the road by an errant milk truck after joyfully greeting his baby boy for the first time. It was maudlin and too predictable, especially compared with the way in which Sybil had just been sent out of the world a few episodes earlier. Sybil’s death rocked both the audience and the show itself,… Matthew’s death, on the other hand, was pure melodrama bordering on camp. As he revels in his newfound fatherhood, he’s driving his car…with an almost beatific pleasure. Carefree, ecstatic … and completely unaware that the massive milk truck is bearing down on him at roughly five miles per hour. Naturally, he drives off the road and the audience is treated to the sight of blood trickling down Matthew’s face, lest we think that he could have somehow survived this collision…The heavy-handedness of all of those elements detracts from the momentousness of Matthew’s death and how it will affect each member of the Crawley household and their staff….It also rings as particularly false, given the odd foreboding that filled the earlier parts of the episode, mentions of packed rifles, a drunken Molesley (Kevin Doyle), and deer stalking in Scotland.

The accident was a flaw in a fiction that is often so smooth and griping. It makes me ponder again the attraction of fiction in the first place.  Why and how did Downton become such an inordinate hit with so many in the PBS circle?  In a way, I pondered this in late December in a post I called “Inside My Reading Mind,” and I’m still pondering.  I’m also pondering another statement from Lacob which may be serious or sarcastic, but either way it poses questions about the construction of fiction.

[L]et’s be honest, the minute that Lady Mary gave birth to a son, ensuring the continuation of the dynasty and a rightful succession … Matthew was a goner. He had served his purpose, ensuring that the Crawley line would continue and that Downton Abbey—which he had absolutely and completely saved by dragging it and Robert Crawley into the 20th century—would not only remain in the family, but also turn a profit.  Matthew was, in essence, a stud bull. His only purpose was to father a son. With that act completed and Downton saved, what was Matthew’s future importance within the narrative? Other than potential squabbles with Mary, serving again to prove how headstrong she is, where would the drama have come from? His plots were tied up way too neatly for him to survive, in other words.

We depend on fiction writers to save us from the superfluous.  Was that what Matthew became?  I can’t decide and his death was deeply unsatisfying.