I took on overtime hours last night so I decided that I'd wake up a bit early before going into work in order to catch the show on WUCF's live broadcast on the big TV. (I mentioned I have a big 50 inch LCD TV in the living room now, right?) Much nicer than streaming it through the PBS website a day or so later on my smaller computer monitor.
The episode nicely tied up almost all the loose ends and implied a happily ever after existence for everybody in their fictional world as the year 1926 dawned for them. A far cry from the early seasons where tragedy lurked around every corner. I guess as the characters became more beloved over time it became harder for the writers to bump them off for dramatic effect. Can you imagine the outcry if old Lady Grantham were to just suddenly keel over as she was bantering with Mrs. Crowley or giving a stern eye to her conniving lady's maid Denker?
The season's only real shocker was Robert's bloody projectile vomiting scene where even the future Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin gets a bit of crimson puke on his white tie and tails. Maybe this is why he years later appeased Hitler? He'd seen enough bloodshed at that one frightful dinner party.
So although the season and the finale were quite tame and gentle, it seemed a fitting end nevertheless. The show was about the last years of a now almost forgotten past. Under new taxation regulations and a general rethinking of the role of landed gentry altogether, the sun was certainly setting for the British version of the ancien regime. And then after the Second World War, the social order would change completely but we see in this series that the writing was on the wall regardless.