Downton Abbey ends as it began--generously

On this week’s Masterpiece Studio podcast about the finale of the popular PBS series, Downton Abbey, creator and sole writer Julian Fellowes explained his goal for the show’s ending.

“I didn’t want it too tidy, but I did want a sense of warmth,” he said. “I wanted a sense of generosity towards these people we’d come to know so well.”

With this, Fellowes perfectly captured what has made Downton such a grand way to spend a Sunday evening for the past six years. In a television landscape littered with severed zombie heads, political scandal, and carnivals of sexual depravity, Downton was a show that approached its characters with a spirit of grace.

Of course, we expect the benevolent Lord and Lady Grantham to come in for a happy ending. But scheming, gay footman Thomas? Of all the ends Fellowes tied up, this one was the most resonant and characteristic of the show’s overall appeal.

The easiest thing in the world for Fellowes to do would have been to whip up a new love interest for Thomas, have him shake the dust of crumbly old Downton and its crumbly old butler, Carson, off his oxfords, and stride off into a sunset of new, modern morality. Culture critics from coast to coast would have stood up and applauded. Instead, Fellowes wrote something infinitely more satisfying.

Thomas’ brokenness inspires the compassion of Carson and the rest of the household. They pick him up and bring him back into the fold, even, in a sense, placing a ring on his finger, by giving him Carson’s former job. With this final reconciliation, Thomas is at last at the hearth rather than outside looking in.

It was the many moments like this that single-handedly curbed the notion that for a show to win loyal viewers in the 21st century, it must push the edges. Instead, Downton found an enormous and enormously varied audience by pulling the edges back—by asking why we once had those boundaries in the first place and what valuable things society lost by carelessly shrugging them off.

I can’t help but compare the current presidential race to Season Two, when Lady Mary lets her fear that her way of life is dying provoke her to get engaged to a wealthy, powerful, but ultimately dishonorable man. “He lives in a tough world,” she says in defense of his corrupt business dealings. Like her grandmother, I want to furrow my brows and sniff, “And will you be joining him there?”

Downton celebrated real, if often small, heroism, rather than the anti-heroism so prevalent in today’s pop-culture. That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty of sinful behavior—Fellowes could hardly have told any sort of resonant, realistic human story without it. But it was rarely reveled in and usually followed by consequences and (gasp!) even judgment. When Lady Mary’s one-night stand with a handsome diplomat is revealed, no one, least of all Lady Mary herself, pretends that what she’s done isn’t shameful. Later seasons reflect changing societal attitudes toward sexual morality as both Mary and Edith engage in affairs outside marriage. But these too have costs. Edith endures the heartbreak of having a child she can’t publicly claim. Mary finds she has brutally toyed with a friend’s affection, perhaps ruining his prospects for a happy marriage.

Certainly Downton had its soapy moments. But for most fans, I don’t think this was the series’ chief appeal. Rather, it was the moments of kindness: Mrs. Patmore’s motherly (and at times, crotchety) affection for Daisy. The Bateses chaste and humble romance. Violet and Isobel’s unlikely and hilarious friendship. Branson maturing past his Marxist prejudices and learning to love his wife’s family. Mosely, thank Heavens, finally setting aside his habitual self-pity and discovering a new vocation. Mary, thank Heavens even more, at last repenting of her ill treatment of Edith.

Yes, Fellowes had it exactly right. Downton was a generous show that after all the ups and downs allowed its characters to be generous with one another. I don’t hold out much hope that many networks will take a page from Fellowes’ book, considering that none have attempted to do so already (curious thing, that). Instead, I will hope that the rumors are true and Downton, the movie, is already in the works.