Arts: Downton Abbey, Season 3

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Tv Club Downton Abbey, Season 3 Farewell, Downton Abbey—and your vision of the Magical Middle-Class Chap. By June Thomas Posted Monday, Feb 18, 2013, at 07:48 PM ET So, farewell then, Matthew Crawley. You were a curious British analog to America's Magical Negro: the Magical Middle-Class Chap. In Season 1, you saved Downton Abbey for the Crawley family by having the good sense to steer clear of the Titanic. When you emerged from your humble Mancunian roots, you found love—and a future earlship—on the other side of the Pennines. In Season 2, you saved Europe from the Hun by fighting in some pathetically unconvincing trenches. Then you saved Lady Mary's honor by exercising more forgiveness for her dalliance with the Turkish gentleman than any true toff could've managed. In the just-completed season, you saved Downton from Lord Grantham's bone-headed investment schemes by having the dumb luck to inherit yet another random fortune. (Even you couldn't save the Swireses.) You saved it again by applying your bourgeois practicality to reform the aristocratic mismanagement of the Downton estate. And then you saved it one last time by fathering a son and heir who will remove the specter of that damned entail once and for all. No wonder you were too spent to save yourself from that oncoming vehicle! Indeed, you were such a reliable savior, it's hard to imagine how Downton Abbey can survive without you. A family that was already reeling from the loss of its kind-hearted rebel is now also robbed of its conscience. And we viewers are left without the character who was most like us: an outsider overwhelmed ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Why Are We Suddenly Getting Hit By So Many Space Rocks? Keanu Reeves Is Right About the Future of Cinema If You Don't Want Girls Judged by Their Hemlines, Stop Judging Them by Their Hemlines	Advertisement
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