‘Downton Abbey’ Season 2 Brings the War Home
With your permission dear, I'll take my fences one at a time.
The world of Downton Abbey literally gets a makeover in Season 2’s second installment, as the great house is turned into a convalescent ward for injured officers, and the Granthams must suddenly confront the very real consequences of war in an extremely up-close-and-personal way.
The family is suddenly forced to share their living quarters and staff with several dozen strangers. The Great Hall is now an officers’ mess, the library is subdivided into a recreation area — complete with a ping-pong table — and everyone’s suddenly getting bossed around by those that they’d have formerly considered very beneath them. It is not an especially easy transition, no matter how much everyone genuinely seems to want to do their bit.
In theory, this is all so much grist for the mill of progress, and Downton itself has shown a keen interest in the ways the lines of class and rank not only intersect but are becoming increasingly blurred as a result of the war. But the show has also apparently decided that the more nuanced explorations of these issues we saw in Season 1 were just too darn subtle, and a more sledgehammer-like approach to both theme and character is now required.
