The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, January 12, 2016 — 5

‘Downton Abbey’ is 
back for a final jaunt

By DANIELLE YACOBSON

Daily Arts Writer

The roaring twenties are stir-

ring up a storm, and things are 
“positively frugal” at the Down-
ton 
Abbey. 

With only two 
handmaidens 
and 
a 
single 

hall boy left, 
how will the 
lords and ladies 
manage to go 
on? It’s 1925, 
and those who 
can’t keep up 
are left behind. 
So, let the flap-
per dresses and 
jazz music run wild — Downton 
is entering the new age. Wom-
en’s rights, secret daughters, 
marriages and threats of bank-
ruptcy are all on the horizon in 
the Masterpiece Classic’s final 
season, along with the usual 
dose of snobbery and back-
handed sass, of course. In true 
“Downton Abbey” fashion, the 
lords and ladies eagerly trample 
into their backyard expanse for 
a weekend hunt as the final sea-
son springs to life, promising to 
tie up loose ends without unrav-
eling too many new threads.

After winning three Gold-

en Globes and 12 Primetime 
Emmys, the British period dra-
ma’s sixth season premiere lives 
up to the expectations set by 
its resounding critical acclaim. 
Consistently showcasing epi-
sodes of breathtaking cinema-
tography and precise dialogue, 
“Downton Abbey” proves, once 
again, to be anything but a pas-
sive viewing experience. Much 
of the series’ merit lies in the 
nuances: the witty remarks, 
oftentimes delivered by the bril-
liant Maggie Smith (“Harry Pot-
ter”) as Countess Violet Crawley, 
and the exchange of snooty 
looks color even the smallest 
moments. Perhaps this attention 
to detail is what drew audiences 
to the series in the first place. 
“Downton Abbey” has proven 
to be more than a historical 

analysis of the highbrow upper 
class 
elite 
juxtaposed 
with 

the slim pickings lives of their 
working-class 
staff. 
Instead, 

the show highlights the surpris-
ing relativity of human nature, 
even within seemingly opposite 
groups of people.

Other than showing some 

ankle and sporting dramatic 
hairdos (winning the series 
three Primetime Emmy awards 
for outstanding hairstyles), the 
women of Downton continue to 
challenge the boundaries of the 
status quo. The opening hunt-
ing scene shows Lady Mary 
(Michelle Dockery, “Non-Stop”) 
straddling her horse rather than 
riding side-saddle, which, as 
Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonn-
eville, “Iris”) points out, is “so 
much more graceful.” Mean-
while, Lady Edith (Laura Car-
michael, “Burn Burn Burn”) 
toils with her editor, whose male 
ego cannot handle working for 
a woman. In tune with previ-
ous seasons, Lady Mary and her 
sisters (past and present) bring 
the “modern” into a house des-
perately holding on to the tra-
ditional past, and the familiar 
themes of progress and inevita-
ble change ring through.

Going back to the basics, 

“Downton Abbey” starts its 
sixth season with what it does 
best: blackmail with the intent 
of social destruction. The secret 
fling between Lady Mary and 
Tony Gillingham (Tom Cullen, 
“Weekend”) was brought back 
from the dead when a gold-dig-
ging employee of their getaway 
hotel comes to haunt the Abbey’s 
reputation. The scandal is put 
to rest (for now), but the most 
significant takeaway from the 
interaction is Mary’s intent to 
stay single — until the right man 
comes along, anyway. Her grow-
ing self-sufficiency has allowed 
the focus of Mary’s character 
to switch from juggling her 
budding love life to honing her 
shrewd business savvy, and 
exploring the idea that a woman 
in the 1920s is not defined by the 
husband at her side. Mary’s rela-

tionship status could take a vari-
ety of directions by the series’ 
end, a creative decision that will 
make a significant statement to 
the progression of women into a 
new era.

Romances are heating up 

downstairs too, as Mr. Carson 
(Jim Carter, “The Golden Com-
pass”) and Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis 
Logan, “Secrets and Lies”) take 
the next step before officially 
tying the knot. As the Abbey’s 
relationships go, there have 
been matches both political 
and passionate, and everything 
in between. Yet, Mr. Carson 
and Mrs. Hughes’ love is one 
rarely depicted on screen, and 
it’s executed fantastically on 
“Downton Abbey.” The two 
middle-aged singles have devot-
ed their life to work, and have 
grown to love each other years 
after the conventional time-
frame of typical newlyweds. 
Mrs. 
Hughes’ 
reservations 

before setting the date of the 
wedding, however, are of the 
unspeakable nature: she is wor-
ried about Mr. Carson’s sexual 
expectations. Both comical and 
surprisingly relatable, the story 
arc brings out an innocence and 
vulnerability within the char-
acters and serves as a gentle 
reminder that love is never too 
late. Although their relation-
ship is not bold or passionate, 
the nuances in their friendly 
exchanges hold more weight 
than a grand, romantic gesture. 
After all, hearing Mr. Carson 
say he is tickled when she walks 
into a room is infinitely more 
satisfying than an over-the-top 
declaration of eternal love.

Half a world and nearly a cen-

tury away from the modern day 
America, the Abbey’s dramas 
and scandals have found a place 
within the emotions of its audi-
ence. In a season premiere that 
showcases unforgettable visu-
als and the emotional versatility 
of the cast, “Downton Abbey” 
sets up high expectations to do 
the beloved characters justice 
as their stories, after five years, 
come to a close.

A-

Downton 
Abbey

Season Six 

Premiere

Sundays at 

9:00 p.m.

PBS

TV REVIEW
‘Man Seeking’ great, 
hilarious television

By BEN ROSENSTOCK

Senior Arts Editor

It’s good to have “Man Seek-

ing Woman” back.

In its second season premiere, 

“Wings,” 
“Man 
Seek-

ing 
Woman” 

repeats 
the 

winning 
for-

mula 
that 

made its first 
season 
such 

an unexpect-
ed 
delight. 

As in the first 
season, 
Josh 

Greenberg 
(Jay Baruchel, 
“This is the 
End”) 
navi-

gates a surrealist dating world 
with his best friend, Mike (Eric 
André, “The Eric Andre Show”), 
and sister, Liz (Britt Lower, 
“Unforgettable”), at his side. 
With the help of self-referen-
tially deployed TV and movie 
tropes, the show uses absurdist 
fantastical elements to tell relat-
able stories about millennial 
dating (last season, for example, 
featured Josh attending a wed-
ding in literal Hell to emphasize 
the perils of going to weddings 
while single).

The episode begins with an 

excellent introduction, as Mike 
is visited by a pair of weary sol-
diers coming to deliver some 

tragic news: Josh has a girl-
friend, and as a result he won’t 
be spending much time with his 
best friend anymore. The scene 
uses the popular trope of the sad 
arrival of troops to break the 
news to the family of a deceased 
soldier, likening the impending 
death of a friendship to an actu-
al, physical death. It’s all there 
in one hilarious line: “Doctors 
say he may never hang again.”

Because of “Man Seeking 

Woman” ’s tendency to structure 
its episodes in roughly three 
segments, some episodes can 
feel disjointed. So while there’s 
a strong narrative through line 
with Josh and Mike’s friend-
ship in jeopardy, it still feels 
oddly structured. Mike is the 
main focus in the first act as he 
struggles to keep his friendship 
intact, but the second act pivots 
to tell the story of Josh and his 
girlfriend Kelly (Sarah Gadon, 
“Maps to the Stars”) going on 
a trip to a cabin with Kelly’s 
high school friends. Then the 
third act pivots again, as Josh 
and Kelly break up and Josh 
returns home to find that Mike 
improbably has a college-age 
child (Maya Lowe, “Killjoys”), 
apparently created when Josh 
and Mike “accidentally jizzed 
into the same toilet and then 
it got struck by lightning.” In 
this final sequence, Josh tries 
to bond with his daughter, ref-
erencing the common story 

of a father desperately trying 
to connect with the family he 
abandoned.

Despite the slight awkward 

feeling that the shifting plots 
create, all three of the stories 
are strong. The first one espe-
cially is excellent because Josh 
is almost always the sole view-
point we get to see, with Mike 
relegated to the over-the-top 
funny best friend role. The sec-
ond act uses a parody of slasher 
films like “I Know What You 
Did Last Summer” to show what 
it’s like trying to fit in with your 
partner’s friends, who all have 
their own inside jokes and a 
shared history you’ll never be 
a part of (in this case, an acci-
dental murder that resulted in a 
lumberjack being brought back 
from the dead to get revenge). 
And the closing segment ends 
cleverly, with Josh and Mike 
sending their daughter off to 
college, musing on how it seems 
like just yesterday that she 
came into their lives.

Still, by far the strongest 

material is when “Wings” focus-
es on the dynamic between Josh 
and Mike and the core idea of 
the episode: it’s hard to date and 
still maintain your friendships. 
It’s a relatable struggle that mil-
lennial daters understand, and 
seeing it presented in such a fan-
tastical context makes it both 
hilarious in its absurdity, and yet 
all the more real.

LITERATURE COLUMN

The growing debate 

over genres

“

I am on the side of the pix-
ies and the dragons,” said 
author Kazuo Ishiguro, 

defending his approach to the 
fantasy genre in his 2015 novel, 
“The Bur-
ied Giant.” 
Ishiguro’s 
statement 
came in 
response 
to stones 
thrown by 
science fic-
tion novelist 
Ursula K. Le 
Guin, who 
criticized Ishiguro’s use of the 
“surface elements” of a literary 
genre. Welcome to the genre 
debate, the conversation about 
the shift in reading and writing 
that currently dominates liter-
ary discussion.

As I began to dive deeper 

into contemporary fiction and 
the corresponding discourse 
about it, many questions arose 
in my mind. How did these 
rigid rules of genre form — was 
this categorization out of con-
venience or pure snobbery? Are 
genre books and traditionally 
serious “literary” books, books 
that hold merit through social 
commentary or the explora-
tion of the human condition, 
mutually exclusive? When did 
it become acceptable to use the 
word “genre” as an adjective?

Genre may have begun as 

a matter of convenience, but 
in the last century of Ameri-
can literature, a clear divide 
emerged between genre novels 
and literary novels. This bisec-
tion rested on the American 
public obsession with realism, 
a fascination not mirrored in 
other countries. To this day, 
award-winning novels tend to 
focus on the minutiae of real-
istic life. Novels like Jeffrey 
Eugenides’s “Middlesex” and 
Jane Smiley’s “A Thousand 
Acres” win Pulitzers while 
other writers whose novels 
consider the strange and the 
uncanny are overlooked.

But after years of genre nov-

els beginning to incorporate 
the characteristics that earn 
literary novels prestige, the 
boundaries between “literary” 
and “genre” are beginning 
to dwindle. A genre novel, 
“Swamplandia!,” was a runner-

up for the Pulitzer for Fiction 
in 2012, the year no one won 
the prestigious prize. With its 
transcendent writing about 
a family running an alligator 
wrestling amusement park in 
Florida, the unusual “Swamp-
landia!” presumably would 
have won if not for its uncanny 
subject and the fact that the 
author, Karen Russell, was 
extraordinarily young when 
she wrote the novel.

More and more established 

authors are conflating the sta-
tus of literary with the escap-
ism of genre. When Colson 
Whitehead, esteemed novelist 
and winner of the McArthur 
Fellowship, penned a zombie 
novel, it was surprising. How-
ever, as Whitehead said in an 
interview with NPR, “I did 
have to give myself permission 
because zombies were so popu-
lar. But I think the idea is that 
if it’s good, people read it. So 
all I could do is really salute my 
childhood influences and try to 
do the best I could in reinvigo-
rating the genre, putting a new 
spin on it.”

With genre becoming a part 

of mainstream “serious” lit-
erature, there is an increase in 
capitalization of these beloved 
methods of literary escapism. 
Stores like the exclusively mys-
tery book-driven Aunt Agatha’s 
in downtown Ann Arbor thrive 
because of their audience’s 
devotion to the mystery genre.

I talked to Jamie Agnew, 

the co-owner of Aunt Agatha’s, 
about how this fusion of liter-
ary and genre is affecting the 
24-year-old store. He cites a 
growing interest in mystery 
and the loyalty of the mystery 
reader as the backbone of the 
store’s continued success. But 
Agnew doubts there’s going to 
be much synthesis between the 
literary world and his genre of 

choice: mystery.

“I know that many people, 

especially in a place like Ann 
Arbor, think that slogging 
through a painfully serious and 
literary book is somehow more 
virtuous than reading a book 
that is entertaining, but to me 
that’s a fairly recent attitude,” 
Agnew said. “The great novels 
of the 19th century are both 
profound and enjoyable to read, 
and quite a few of them had to 
do with the themes of modern 
mystery such as identity, guilt 
and murder. If ‘Crime and Pun-
ishment’ came out today, what 
section of the bookstore would 
it be shelved? I’ll add that I 
think literary fiction is a genre 
like any other, with just as many 
artificialities and strictures.”

Agnew sees mystery, which 

has an incredibly different 
history from other genres like 
romance or science fiction, as 
growing to greater significance 
since its conception.

“The movement I have 

seen the most is from static 
protagonists — like Poirot or 
Philip Marlowe, who change 
little over the course of many 
series books — to more nuanced 
figures like Steve Hamilton’s 
Alex McKnight or William Kent 
Krueger’s Cork O’Connor who, 
over the course of succeeding 
installments achieve a depth of 
characterization impossible in 
any single novel,” Agnew said. 
“Lately, it has been the vogue 
for ‘literary’ writers to attempt 
thrillers, presumably seeking 
the vitality and popularity lack-
ing in their own genre, but not 
all of them have the skills to 
pull it off.”

As the lines between liter-

ary and genre continue to blur 
in this way, we’ll inevitably see 
some failures and some daz-
zling successes. Genre conven-
tions will always exist, there’s 
no arguing that — but maybe 
in the next few years, some of 
our favorite books will be ones 
featuring more unconventional 
protagonists. When the genre 
war is over, Ishiguro will be 
proven right — the victors will 
inevitably include the pixies 
and the dragons. 

Lerner is solving the mystery of the 

replacement editors. To give an anon-

ymous tip, e-mail rebler@umich.edu.

REBECCA

LERNER

B+

Man 
Seeking 
Woman

Season Two 

Premiere

Wednesdays 

at 10:30 p.m.

FXX

I’d be bullshitting you if I 

tried to say anything too neat 
and tidy like “ ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll 
Suicide’ saved my life.” I knew 
that Bowie didn’t really know 
what I was going through. He 
made great music, but he wasn’t 
“speaking to me” or showing me 
how I needed to live. But in his 
music and in my weird way of 
thinking, he gave me the tools I 
needed to be courageous when 
I didn’t know how, and he let 
me be comfortable with myself 
when I was in a full–on panic 
about who I was.

I have a really hard time 

being open and honest about 
my feelings. I still — and I don’t 
even know why I do this — I 
still avoid identifying myself as 
gay unless I’m really comfort-
able with whomever I’m with. 

I take my anxieties and my pri-
vate fears and project them onto 
art that I love and then I try to 
talk about that art with people. 
I nervously ramble about the 
show “Community” when I’m 
worried about loneliness or I 
put on a Van Morrison record 
and over-explain all the tracks 
when I really want to say “I love 
you” and mean it. But David 
Bowie helped me with a dif-
ferent kind of emotional hon-
esty. I never really connected 
with anyone else over Bowie or 
had any kind of multi-layered, 
meaningful conversations about 
his work. Instead, he was an 
artist who helped me so much 
at just communicating with 
myself. Instead of just saying 
“I’m gay,” I could tell myself “I 
want to be like David Bowie,” 
and that made all of my feelings 
so much better. Because David 
Bowie is fucking amazing and 
had one of the greatest careers 
ever and just made the most 

beautiful music that of course I 
would love him and everything 
he meant.

Bowie has so many amazing 

achievements that I’m sure will 
be counted up and summarized 
by millions over the next few 
days, years, generations. But for 
me personally, he’s always going 
to be kind of this mentor figure. 
He wasn’t a substitute for the 
friends who helped me in a very 
tangible, important way and to 
whom I’m forever in debt to. But 
during an incredibly tumultuous 
year, a rock star from Mars made 
a gay, Midwestern high school 
freshman feel unique instead 
of freakish, proud instead of 
despairing. He’s a huge part of 
why music means so much to me, 
and every time I see an artist be 
really honest about who they are 
in a public forum, I’m so happy. 
Because I think of me and David 
Bowie and I know that a con-
fused kid has just found a new 
light in his life. 

BOWIE
From Page 1

PBS

30 seconds ago she was a cat.

TV REVIEW

More authors 

are mixing 
literary and 

genre. 

