Last Sunday night, with a mere flick of a finger on the remote control, viewers were able to catch a glimpse of television at its highest and lowest. Up above, in the thin air of Olympus, stood the 500th episode of The Simpsons; down below, like an overripe fruit beginning to rot, rolled the season two finale of Downton Abbey.
The house of Downton, it can no longer be denied, is in disrepair. The British show’s fall from grace is already so widely acknowledged as to have merited an entire essay in the recent edition of that unimpeachable chronicler of pop culture cool, the New York Review of Books. Its author, the poet James Fenton, acknowledged the show’s tremendous appeal, but he also noted that certain recent plot developments, such as a terribly disfigured man claiming to be a long-lost heir or an influenza epidemic that conveniently claims the life of one character and neatly resolves an untidy love triangle, have been enough to send even the most ardent of fans on the first train back to London.