The Downton Abbey finale: Did it make up for a controversial season? (The Week)

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Week - The period soap's second season was tarnished by outlandish plots, but all may be forgiven thanks to some intensely gratifying moments in Sunday's finaleDownton Abbey, the British soap opera about the upstairs-downstairs entanglements of masters and servants at an English countryside great house during World War I, has been an unlikely runaway hit for PBS, which airs the period drama as part of its Masterpiece Classic series. But as season two of the show progressed, fans and critics weren't shy in complaining about a perceived downgrade in quality. (Caution: Spoilers lie ahead.) "At various points, it was wildly inconsistent, consistently maddening, melodramatic beyond reason, and seemingly paced by someone who needs three minutes to count to four, and four seconds to count to a million," says Willa Paskin at New York. Still, Sunday's season finale has some critics arguing that Downton Abbey redeemed itself. The show's central couple — the headstrong Lady Mary Grantham and the heir to the Downton estate, Matthew Crawley — finally got engaged after two seasons of frustrating will-they-or-won't-they developments. Did that save the controversial second season?

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