I just got around to watching this week’s Downton Abbey.

So, pardon me if this isn’t absolutely au currant, but: Mr. Bates, the valet in love with Anna, the ladies maid (what a ridiculous sentence!), is a huge jerk!

Some background: Bates and Anna are in love, but in a Bronte-esque twist, it turns out that Bates is already married, and his conniving wife is blackmailing him and won’t let him get a divorce. To save Anna and Downton Abbey, he quits his job, lies and says he’s going to London to live with his wife, when secretly he’s working at a pub like, one town over. Which of course Anna discovers because, uhm, she’s not an idiot??

Bates suffers from the typical male machismo of refusing to let anyone else shoulder his burdens and insisting on solving every problem himself, even when it means lying to and hurting the woman he loves. The “this is my problem, I don’t want to drag you into this” is so annoying and so condescending, especially because Anna tells him repeatedly that she doesn’t care about her reputation or her job, and that she’d happily be his mistress so he can forget about trying to get a divorce. (Which, I dunno, sounds like a good solution to me!)

I know we’re all supposed to sort of love him because he’s hapless and old and has a limp, but, if I were friends with Anna (or even better, if I were Lady Mary Crawley) I’d turn to her while she was doing my hair or adjusting my corset and say, “You know, Anna, I really think he’s shady and much too old and unattractive for you! Now please fetch me a glass of sherry.”

Anyone else watch Downton Abbey and slightly mistrust the revered Mr.Bates? Or, not watch Downton Abbey but really resent when people leave you out of huge important problems in their lives because they “don’t want to worry you”?