Spoiler Alert!!!

WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FINAL EPISODE OF "DOWNTON ABBEY" SEASON 3! 

Seriously.  You've been warned.

Okay, if you keep reading you can't yell at me. 

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An Open Letter to Dan Stevens

Dear Dan Stevens,

By now you are probably tired of being yelled at for your decision to leave Downton Abbey (and for your misguided refusal to appear in even one! episode next season as a recurring character), leaving Julian Fellowes little choice but to kill off your character, Matthew.  So I’m not going to complain.  I won’t harass you. 

Instead, I would like to introduce you to someone.

His name is David Caruso. 

Dan, meet David.  David, Dan. 

(Come on, David, remove your sunglasses.  It’s quite rude of you to leave them on when speaking to someone else.)

Pause.

(Thank you.)

Now, Dan, you may not have heard of David before today.  He’s on a TV show here in the States called "CSI: Miami".  It’s awful.  Truly, truly horrid. 

(I’m sorry David but it’s true.  You know that, right?  I mean… right? 

No! No, David, don’t leave! I’m sorry.  Please stay! 

I’ll… I’ll let you put your sunglasses back on.  You probably prefer having them on in order to hide the tears threatening to spill over and run down your cheeks as you contemplate the career you could have had.  Sure, you’ve made a lot of money from CSI, but what’s money in comparison to the respect of one’s peers?

Pause.

Umm… yeah!  Yes, sure! Sure, you have the respect of your peers. Of course you do, don’t be silly!

David… David… David waaaaaaiiiiiiit!!!)

Uh, sorry, Dan.  David had to… go to this… thing. 

You see, Dan, several years ago, David was the star of another TV show called "NYPD Blue".  It was great.  When it premiered the critics went nuts for it, it got great ratings – huge hit.  Huge!  And David, well, he got a lot of attention, being the star and all.  And then this weird thing happened and he decided to leave the show. After just one season.  22 episodes.  This show that provided him with terrific writing and fabulous other actors to work with. Because he thought that it was holding him back from being a big huge movie star what with all the praise and adulation he received for his performance on the show. 

I… I just realized that 22 episodes in one 9 month period is a lot more taxing than shooting 22 episodes spread out over 3 years.  Hmmm… So I guess David felt “monopolized” by his incredible good fortune as well.

Anywho.

David got a bit big for his britches and basically looked this incredible gift horse in the mouth because he wanted to be a movie star.

Pause.

Have you ever seen the movie JADE? 

I didn’t think so.

Follow Me?

FOX debuted its new show THE FOLLOWING on Monday, January 21st.  Whether or not to follow it down its very twisted, violent yellow brick road is a question I can't answer for myself yet.  I suspect one - and only one - more episode is necessary before I decide to DVR or not to DVR. 

It has several things going for it, number one by a long mile being Kevin Bacon.  Despite his fame and his extensive filmography, it seems to me that he is still thought of as a "reliable" actor whereas I think he deserves more kudos than that.  He suffers a bit from the problem that plagued Alec Baldwin until Tina Fey rescued him - that of character actor trapped in a handsome man's body.  Bacon not only holds the screen like the best stars do, but he imbues his character, Ryan Hardy, with the right amount of weariness and wariness called for in a former FBI agent with a drinking problem and a pacemaker - both the result of surviving an attack by the serial killer he caught and sent to prison years earlier.

Said serial killer, a former English professor and Edgar Allen Poe enthusiast, has escaped and is out to finish off his last victim, a lovely young woman who barely survived her attack. 

The tone of the show is moody, tense and gripping - all pluses. It is also extremely, profoundly violent.  And, as usual, most of that violence is directed towards women. Yes, in this particular episode we see several male cops and security guards killed but they are background to the main event - the torture and subsequent display of a woman's mutilated body.

When LAW & ORDER: SVU first began airing, I watched it.  By that time the LAW & ORDER franchise felt like comfort food.  SVU was a bit harder to stomach since the crimes were sexual in nature, but I managed to hang in there for a while. It was never appointment TV for me, but I could curl up to it on a Friday night if nothing else called to me.  But eventually I couldn't watch it anymore.  In order to remain in the cultural zietgeist and on the ratings radar, they pushed the envelope further and further, the crimes becoming more gruesome, the bodies bloodier and violated in astonishingly sick new ways.  And, you guessed it, most of this violence was done to women. 

Now comes THE FOLLOWING and sure enough, the serial killer in question here murdered 14 women, gouging out their eyes in the process.  The visuals provided to the audience are disturbing to say the very least, not to mention the scene that takes place in a basement full of dismembered dogs.  Viewers are also hostage to treated to the sight of the aforementioned surviving victim meeting her death at the hands of the escaped serial killer - hanging upside down from some pulley system, her eyes gone and bloody gaping wounds in their place.

I can understand the appeal of a show about a serial killer.  They fascinate us - how does such a human being go so wrong?  What motivates them?  Why, really, is the question we want answered.  But my guess is that this show will not even remotely attempt to answer those questions as it will be far more concerned with luring viewers in each week with greater violence, more graphic footage and almost all of it footage of women in the process of or shortly after being hunted, caught, raped, tortured and dismembered. 

Enough.  Enough of this fetish, please. 

Violence can be shown in film, on television and in plays in a way that does not glorify it or make it "sexy" (in tv development exec parlance).  My fear is that this show - as well acted as it is - will be one that uses violence with no awareness at all - no awareness of its tacit glorification. 

To DVR or Not To DVR?  I think I answered my own question.