On Hate Watching, Television Writing, and My Dwindling Love Of "Downton Abbey"

With season eight of "Doctor Who" already a few episodes deep and interviews and images featuring season five of "Downton Abbey" popping up all over my Tumblr dashboard, I've been thinking a lot about what happens when a show you used to love becomes the thing you hate watch.

Now I'm a very picky television watcher for many reasons: I don't like watching things on a television because I don't know how to work the cable in my house and prefer to be on my laptop, I can't adhere to television schedules and I don't know how to DVR, and I will often watch multiple episodes in a sitting like the millenial that I am.

Hence, I have made a rule for deciding to watch a show: Only bother with a show if you have heard from at least three trustworthy sources (friends and family with similar taste as you, reviews) that it's good and it has made it through at least three seasons without the quality decreasing.

The note about the quality remaining consistent is crucial. Shows that are canceled after only one or two seasons are either shows that are simply too good for television ("Firefly", "Pushing Daisies") or are not worth it but either way you usually won't know about them until after they're already off the air. Then you can just let history decide for you as you continue to hear about the good shows and the bad ones disappear to the television graveyard. On the contrary and in regards to shows the rule was created for, there are plenty of shows that go on for years and years with their quality gradually decreasing while their viewership remains consistent because of loyal watchers who are hoping for the quality to return, some sort of payoff, or are so attached to the characters they don't want to stop. I can't tell you how many people insisted that I watch "Lost" or "Heroes" while it was in its first season only to recant their statements over the preceding years. It was probably because of seeing how irate people got about these shows that I invented the rule.

Sometimes I even go so far as to wait until a show is almost over to start watching. With "Breaking Bad" I watched the whole show during the break between the two halves of the final season and watched the last six episodes with the rest of the world. But often if a show really seems good enough and people are really into it, I won't be able to wait the 5-7 seasons for it to be over and will start sometime around season 3 or 4 which worked out great for "Mad Men", "Dexter", and "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" which I feel remain fairly consistent in quality throughout (ignoring "Dexter"'s silly finale).

But on some rare occasions, the rule doesn't work and longevity can be the death of a good show so keep that in mind if you think a show will be longer than 7 seasons. I used the rule for "How I Met Your Mother" and by season 6 my interest had started to wan and by 8 I was completely sick of the show and stopped watching for a while, only managing to get through to season 9 on the desire to finish the show in its entirety. I actually liked season 9 a lot, more than a lot of the previous seasons, and got to be outraged with the rest of the world at the terrible ending so I guess it was ultimately worth it but there was some real pain there.

So even with the rule I've done some hate watching and I wanted to talk about three different shows that have lead me to this and what can be learned from them: "Glee", "Doctor Who", and "Downton Abbey."

Before I get into the examples, I think there are really three factors that go into how long I can feasibly hate watch something before I give it up entirely:

1.) How much did I like the show at its peak?

2.) Was the decrease in quality gradual or abrupt?

3.) In what ways did it get worse?

These are all pretty obvious but I think I may be different from other people in that I am more forgiving of an abrupt quality decrease than a gradual one. A gradual one is often more likely to be permanent and I usually won't notice that it has become the new normal until long after I wanted to quit watching from bad episodes. When I finally do, I'm angry with all the time I've wasted. On the contrary, an abrupt change is usually the result of a new story line or something happening in the show that changes it immediately and it takes a while for the writers to realize what works and doesn't work within this change. With skill, the problems can be fixed. I just like my pain acute, not chronic.

So "Glee." Perhaps it's unfair to talk about "Glee" because I didn't use the rule with it but making this mistake reminded me why I follow this rule in the first place. I watched my first episode of "Glee" on a random day in college because it was on after something else I had been watching. The show already had a ton of hype and it was only the fifth episode. The jokes were dark and peppered with musical references, the songs were fun and varied, and I enjoyed it enough to make a point to go back and watch the previous episodes.

As I continued watching however, I started to see big problems with the writing. Continuity was nonexistent and the show had no idea what type of show it wanted to be: black comedy, drama, or just something quirky. Each episode had a different writer and each of them had a different goal. Every episode seemed to wash away the previous one and the target demographic shifted from a more universal appeal to teenagers with cliche hot topic episodes and nothing but Top 40 songs. By the time season three came around with a few solid episodes followed by some mediocre ones, I decided I was done. I didn't even stop watching after a bad episode; just an average one. It just occurred to me that even the good episodes were a chore to watch. The show was never quite a favorite of mine so it didn't feel like a great loss but I ended my relationship with the show on a bitter note. Only years later did one of my friends who still watches the show tell me that it's easier to watch the show once you view it as epic theater that isn't supposed to be reality. While I love the theory, even viewing the show through that lens I'm sure I still would have stopped watching.

"Doctor Who" is a show that is more analogous to my experience with "How I Met Your Mother" but still a unique situation to most shows out there. I started watching "Doctor Who" after season 4 of the new series and really liked it. I wouldn't say that I got as into it as some people but it was still definitely important to me and I felt much more strongly about it than "Glee." Like everyone else, I was anxious to see what would come from another change in doctors and a change in management.

The thing with "Doctor Who" that makes it different from other shows is that it isn't even really a show anymore so much as it is an entity. It has permeated so much of culture around the world that it has essentially transcended the television show itself. The same could be said of things like "Star Wars", "Harry Potter", and "Pokemon." "Pokemon" is the only one of these though that is a television show and while I haven't watched it since I was about 10, I can imagine that over the years the handling of the show has changed a lot for better or for worse. This is what happens with "Doctor Who." 

I actually quite liked season 5, the first season with Matt Smith as the Doctor and Steven Moffat as the showrunner but my interest waned from there. Moffat was a very competent writer for the show in the earlier seasons and I fully understand why he was expected to be a good showrunner but it's almost as if the title made him determined to go bigger and beyond in a while that would be the show's detriment. His season length plots are nonsensical and full of holes and he does not care for consistency or canon in the slightest. This made watching the show at times exhausting. Then they ended up getting rid of Amy and Rory, who were rather interesting companions who we have followed for 2 and a half seasons, and replaced them with Clara, who has yet to prove herself to be at all engaging.

Now in season 8 we have another Doctor, Peter Capaldi, but Steven Moffat is still in charge. I watched the first episode of the season with little care for anything but Capaldi's interpretation of the character. Will I keep watching? I'll try for sure but unless they give Moffat the boot and find a new companion, it seems unlikely that I will see watching as anything other than a chore I'm performing in honor of a show that was once fun. Because of the flexible nature of the show, it always has the potential to bounce back but for now, here we are.

And then there's "Downton Abbey." I actually just let out a heavy sigh. This was one of my favorites and would still rank in my top ten favorite shows of all time if you only count the first three seasons. So what happened? 

It would be really easy to blame the entire thing on Dan Stevens, who played Matthew Crawley, deciding to leave the show but it's actually not as simplistic as that. Matthew Crawley was definitely one of the most important characters in the show and most vital to the original premise but I maintain that while the episode of his death did effectively kill the show, it was not exactly because of him.

Julian Fellowes, the showrunner, is a good writer but over the course of "Downton Abbey" it has been proven that he is not a good "television writer." Writing for television requires a different set of skills than writing a movie (as he has done many times to great success). When you write a movie there is a planned beginning and end, very little about the plot is changeable once the end goal has been met, and while actors do occasionally drop out or there are problems with production companies, a lot of things can be guaranteed throughout the making of the film. This is not at all true with television. Not planning a show many years in advance almost always ends up leading to a decline in writing usually from characters acting inconsistent and changing in odd ways or from plots becoming forced. Also, actors can and do leave (sometimes with plenty of warning sometimes with little warning) and whether or not the show can continue is heavily based on ratings and who you're working for. These are conditions that Julian Fellowes is clearly not apt to handle.

As a means of comparison, look at a television writer like Joss Whedon. He has had actors leave, get fired, get pregnant (this was the one time he failed hugely), take vacations, suffer peculiar medical problems, and die when he had other plans for them. He's also had his shows cancelled, his shows threatened to be cancelled and then not, his shows cancelled and then revived on a different network, and his shows cancelled and then continued on later in a movie or a comic book. While I wouldn't say he handled every situation perfectly, he handed so many of them so much better than other writers that he should be studied by every potential television writer for this quality. 

Fellowes does not have this quality and it's actually evident before season three, a season when three of the actors decided to leave. His original premise centers on the Crawley family's title and fortune going to a distant middle class relative they don't know. The premise then becomes more about how the world changes after the Great War. The pacing between these two ideas however is atrocious. Season 1 starts with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and ends with the start of World War I. When season 2 opens, time has sped up to 1916 and the season ends at 1919. This means that by the end of season 2, the idea that the world is changing is already in place and yet at the start of season 5, set in 1924, there are still characters who believe it's 10 years ago. The whole war is breezed through when it could have been drawn out through two full seasons and now, he's clearly trying to slow time as the show moves brusquely past his theme, making it obsolete. It's all written rather like someone who thinks their show is going to be cancelled and they are afraid they won't get to write everything they wanted to write. The end result is three great seasons that purposefully represent the pre-war era, the war era, and the post-war era and now mediocre fumbling ones that need a direction.

The other factor is that he didn't know how to handle the show's characters after season 3. I honestly thought I would stop watching after Sybil died in season 3, episode 5 but the fact was, even with my favorite female character gone, the writing was still good and I was still interested. The end came with the season 3 Christmas special, the last episode of the season. It was honestly one of the worst episodes of something I've ever sat through. What didn't make me bored made me angry and Matthew's emotionless death at the end was the cherry on top of that crap sundae. Without Matthew, Fellowes didn't seem to know what to do with Mary. Without Sybil, Fellowes quickly forgot about what was great about Tom. Without O'Brien, Fellowes didn't know how to make Thomas a solo act. Add in unnecessary Anna/Bates drama, a downstairs love square no one cares about, and making Edith more awesome only to continue to make her life hell and you've got season 4 in summation. 

Is the show unable to be saved? No, but it doesn't seem like Fellowes knows how to save it or even that it's in trouble in the first place or even what makes it great. A better writer could easily save this show by simply giving the people what they want. As for me, I'll keep watching mostly for Tom, Anna, and Edith and the hope that they all end up okay because I now am one of those people still watching because I want pay off and care about the characters. Really the most comforting thing is that Fellowes really doesn't seem to want the show to last more than 5 seasons so perhaps he is more self aware than I give him credit for. 

I think I'd be most happy with a Tom Branson spin off where he and his daughter move to America and he gets involved in politics again. Maybe it could talk about all the discrimination Irish immigrants had to face and what those communities were like. "Branson in Boston." Think about it, Fellowes.

And so I hate watch on as so many of us do and I try to tread more carefully next time. I only waited until season 2 of "Orange Is The New Black" so my fingers are crossed for the next few years.