So I Took A Viking River Cruise

Our ship in Passau, where we started the cruise

Almost everyone I know who watches “Downton Abbey” is fascinated by the idea of a Viking River Cruise.   Those ads are irresistible come-ons to a certain demographic of the population: those white, upper-middle-class Americans who would like to display a continental flair but haven’t had the time or opportunity to acquire one.  My wife and I are empty-nesters who had never been on any cruise, never mind a river cruise, but found the ads so compelling we decided to take the plunge:

The Value Proposition

The ads always implied a degree of luxuriousness that I always thought was out of our price range.  So I was surprised when I received a mailing last January that promoted a “two-for-one” sale and actually looked at the cost.  We had been planning to go to Prague, Vienna and Budapest anyway, and the brochure advertised a Danube cruise that included Vienna and Budapest (but not Prague, alas) for a lot less than I had expected.  And when I called to book the cruise I was further informed that the price included the cost of the airfare.

This seemed too good to be true.  But I’m happy to report that it wasn’t.  My wife and I are just back from the cruise and we agreed that we never could have flown to Europe, rented a hotel room and fed ourselves for the price of the cruise — certainly not for that level of comfort.  I hardly think that Viking would want to present itself as a budget option for a European vacation, but the bottom line is that if you plan this right, it’s actually cheaper to take a cruise then to try to arrange everything yourself.

I say this because here’s what’s included in the price of the cruise: airfare from many major US cities; transportation to and from the airport to the ship; overnight accommodations; daily tours; all meals (including wine at meals, and yes, there were people who drank champagne at breakfast); and some post-dinner entertainment or briefings.  To veteran cruisers, this is not news but to me it was a surprise at how easy everything was, in addition to being affordable.

To achieve a rock bottom rate we booked the cheapest cabin, which was on the lowest deck of the ship.  The cabin itself was two-thirds underwater and our view was out a portal that you could peer through only when you were standing up.  The room itself was very nice — modern but smallish. There was a TV, a closet and a bureau, just like a hotel room. The bed was extremely comfortable and the feather pillow was the best I’ve ever rested my head on in any hotel anywhere.  The only weird aspect of the cabin is that the bathroom and shower are encased in glass walls.  The glass was clear when we checked in and no one explained that you could make them opaque by hitting a certain switch; so the first day was a bit awkward.  But even with the clouded glass walls you want to make sure that you and your companion have already achieved a degree of personal intimacy because there’s no sound-proofing.

Our cabin — note the glassed bathroom and shower and don’t forget to switch from clear to opaque glass

The rooms on the second and third decks were somewhat larger, although with much nicer views.  These cabins either had French balconies (basically floor to ceiling picture windows) and actual verandas with two chairs and a small table. There are also a handful of suites with separate living rooms and bedrooms (which cost twice as much as our semi-submerged stateroom).  Under the right circumstances, I’d think about upgrading to a French balcony to get the extra light. I don’t think the verandas are worth the extra expense, though, because it’s not clear when you’d be sitting there; you don’t really want to be planted on one side of the ship when the boat is cruising (given that there are sights on both sides of the river bank); worse, when the boat is docked, it’s likely as not to be tied up to another Viking ship so there is no view at all except for the cabin of another ship.

Given the wide variety of prices, it’s interesting that everyone is treated the same regardless of what deck they’re on.  I suppose this is an American conceit — that everyone is equal.  This is not like the airlines with their first class and economy section.  Regardless of how much we paid, we all ate the same food, had access to the entire ship and went on the same tours. So, yay democracy!

The Ship Itself

If a big ocean cruise is like a floating resort, a Viking River Cruise is like a floating boutique hotel.  The ship only has space for 190 passengers and offers none of the features that attract folks to a rowdier ocean cruise (i.e., no casinos, climbing walls, pools, or daiquiri bars).

As nice as it was, this is not a high-end luxury cruise.  Their target market seems to be the upper 5% not the upper 1%. Nevertheless, the common spaces were casually elegant and great places to hang out.  The ship has three decks of common areas.  The top deck is an outdoor space with deck chairs and tables that extends the full length of the vessel.  When you’re up there you understand why Viking calls them “longboats.” It takes a long time to get from aft to stern.  This is where you want to be when there’s daytime cruising and you want to see both shores of the river.

The next deck down houses the lounge.  This is a fairly swanky bar with floor to ceiling windows from which you can also watch the passing scene.  It’s a mellow space during the day and the gathering place for all passenger briefings and the late-night entertainment.  Off and on throughout the day, we were treated to a pianist; he was a perfectly decent guy but for my taste, his repertoire was a little too heavy on show tunes and other American standards that you’d get in any dive piano bar.   Off the glassed-in lounge was an outdoor lounge where you could have casual meals or get patio bar service.  Also on this level was the “library,” which consisted of a bookcase of books and a few comfy chairs, and the Internet center, which comprised two wired PCs.

The Lounge

Beneath the lounge was the main reception area and concierge desk attached to a large formal dining room (again, with floor-to-ceiling windows).

And that’s it in terms of amenities. When you weren’t touring on land, you basically had to entertain yourself by reading, looking out the window, taking a nap or drinking.  The ship does have Internet service but it was spotty (this was the most vocal complaint from the passengers).  I was never prevented — for long — from getting email or social media and I was able to access NYTimes.com (but not the WSJ.com), so I wasn’t as unhappy as some other passengers.

In terms of actual cruising, the ship spent a lot more time tied up at the dock then it did moving from place to place.  We cruised for one extended period during one afternoon, complete with narration of sights on the shore; we also cruised one day from 7:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. so we could experience a dramatic entrance into Budapest.  More often the cruises were at night.

A highlight of cruising was going through the locks.  I never knew the Danube had locks but there they are. We had to navigate nine of them on this voyage.  This was fascinating to watch for a couple of times.  After that, not so much.  We went through most of the locks at night anyway (which was actually a problem for me because the banging of the ship in the lock woke me up.)

How About the Food?

This is the question that everyone asks.  The food was fine, considering that we all ate at the same time.  My wife and I had all our meals on the ship (except for one lunch) and you could either eat off a menu in the dining room or have a buffet in the outdoor lounge.  Breakfast was the same every day: a big spread of egg-, yogurt- or bread-based choices, plus meat, cheese, muffins, smoked salmon, etc.

We never ate lunch in the dining room, preferring the casualness of the outside lounge, but the menu had three choices each day plus buffet options too.  Upstairs in the lounge we ate buffet-style with sandwiches, salads, soups, etc.

Dinner was at 7:00 p.m. each night in the dining room.  The daily menu had three first course options, three main course options (meat, fish and vegetarian) and multiple deserts.   And of course all the wine you could drink.

The food was uniformly good.  My main complaint was that — like the piano music — it was too Americanized.  A lot of steak and a lot of fish that people would recognize from home.  The one night we went completely exotic was the best night — an Austrian feast, with all local delicacies.

The advantage of this approach is that you almost certainly will not get a bad meal.  The downside is that you never get the thrill of finding a really great local restaurant and experiencing something out of your comfort level.  Another downside is that there was just too much food around all the time.  With so many options it was hard not to overeat at breakfast and lunch; and it was hard not to overindulge between meals, with a frequent afternoon tea, and cookies and coffee available 24-hours a day.

Your 150 New Best Friends

For me the most daunting aspect of the cruise was the prospect of interacting with a ship full of strangers for seven days.  I mean, what if someone wanted to talk to me!!  In the end I shouldn’t have worried because there was an unspoken etiquette that everyone would attempt to be friendly to everyone else.

Viking markets to Americans and the clientele was overwhelmingly USA.  I was not the only passenger who had been seduced by the Viking ads on Downton Abbey — this was a frequent refrain.  At least half the other passengers fell into one large demographic group: white, married, upper-middle-class, heterosexual, Americans aged 55-70 — the kind of people who would be interchangeable at a suburban country club.  Usually one spouse was retired, frequently both.

Outside this basic norm there was one single guy traveling alone, two Japanese-American couples, one large group of unattached women, one couple with a sulky teenage daughter, a British couple, a German couple, an interracial couple, a gay couple, a couple of dozen passengers over 70 or under 55 and then a handful of oddballs to add color.

We made it a point to eat with different people every night and in the end I feel like I learned more about America than I did about Europe.  Some of the people we met included:

• A Japanese-American from Hiroshima who survived the atomic bomb because his father had moved the family outside the city limits several weeks before the attack.
• A couple who’d raised their family in Fairbanks Alaska and have been on seven Viking river cruises.
• A guy from New York who’d trained as a priest but became a lawyer for the New York State prison system, and a hard-partying couple from Texas whose son actually did become a priest.
• Beekeepers from Maryland who use localized bee stings to treat arthritis.
• A couple who’d lived in Santa Monica all their lives and whose daughter-in-law is in charge of costuming for several TV shows.
• A perfectly happy couple from Charlottesville who were each on their third marriage and whose son was also on his third marriage. The husband was a HUGE Sound of Music fan who admitted to being videotaped several times dressed as Maria and singing and twirling, “the hills are alive…..”

Our strategy was to walk into dinner about five minutes late, identify a table with interesting-looking people and ask if we could join them.  They’d almost always be relieved they didn’t have to eat alone like the sad sacks in a junior high school cafeteria.  Twice we sat with two sets of couples who had gone on the cruise together, but instead of being fifth wheels, we found ourselves acting as new blood for four people who might have gotten a little tired talking to each other.

There was also a group of five couples who’d met last year on the Rhine River tour and enjoyed each other so much that they’d planned to go as a group this year. They always sat together and boisterously enjoyed themselves, becoming the de facto popular kids table.  My wife and I never got to be chummy enough with anyone to exchange email addresses or Facebook accounts but we still felt a pang of regret when the tour ended and we realized we’d never see these folks again, given that we all had these shared memories.

In Between Eating and Sleeping

Budapest was beautiful, especially at night

Since the ship doesn’t spend a lot of time cruising and the passengers are very get-up-and-go types, the land tours are crucial to the success of the cruise.  I’d never appreciated the importance of a program director before, but on our ship, The Freya, our host was great.  The rarest of species — a funny German — Oliver was the glue that held the tour together.

The passengers met every night at 6:45 for Oliver’s 15 minute briefing on the coming day’s activities.  As part of the cruise package there were six daily tours and numerous additional ad-ons for special outings — concerts,  a winery tour, a chance to see palaces or the Lipizzaner stallions in Vienna, a visit to the Jewish quarter in Budapest.   We went on all the regular “included” tours, which usually left at 8:30 a.m. and lasted for two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half hours.  These tours usually involved a combination of bus and walking, with narration from local guides throughout.  The guides ranged from very good to excellent — the best ones were in the former Eastern Bloc countries of The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, who had grown up under communism, despised it, and were hilariously sardonic and cynical about their former regimes.  All of this made me grateful to have grown up in the U.S.  Being caught between the Nazis and Soviets, never mind their losses in World War I and the wars with the Ottomans, these countries have experienced a lot of tragedy.

Our stops were at a number of smallish cities I’d never heard of — Passau Germany, Lintz Austria, Durnstein Austria, Meltz Austria and Bratislava (the Capital of Slovakia) —  and two world capitals: Vienna and Budapest.  The half-day tours were fine for the smaller towns but not really adequate for the big cities.  Between the half-day tour and the half-day of free time, we only scratched the surface in Vienna and Budapest and of course, we never explored any of the local restaurants.

Still, everywhere we went was remarkable.  We had a full-day visit to Cesky Krumlov — an amazing little restored city of The Czech Republic that is like stepping back into a Disney fairy tale. Elsewhere we saw three gorgeous St. Stephan’s cathedrals, each more fabulous than the rest.  We visited a local winery. where we had an EXTREMELY convivial wine tasting. We saw an Monastery that was so sumptuous that it looked like a Tsar’s weekend palace.  Great stuff everywhere from a civilization that peaked 200 years ago.

Each night there was some kind of activity planned on the ship.  A lecture on Mozart, another lecture on Austrian history, a night of games, a dance party another night.  We skipped a lot of that, being too tired at 9:00 p.m. for those kind of activities (although somehow we managed to stay up past midnight watching The Sound of Music on our cabin TV. But that’s another story.)

Will We Do It Again?

Sure, I’d take another Viking River Cruise, although probably not right away.  I still want to see Prague and Berlin and not just for one day.  But the idea of floating down the Rhone or Rhine rivers through wine country sounds very enticing.  In the meantime, Poldark is returning to Masterpiece Theatre and we can reminisce about our cruise at the beginning of each episode.

Downton Abbey: The Pigman Goeth

Warning: major spoilers ahead regarding jarred horseradish and fat stock shows .

There are two great themes on “Downton Abbey”: gender conflict and the iniquities of the class system.  “Downton” started out as a meditation on class but with a an increasingly female-skewing audience it slowly morphed into a series about women asserting their rights in a changing world.  But the exploitation of the working class was back in full force in this second episode of the final season, perhaps even more vividly than Julian Fellowes intended.

Baron Fellowes is so enamored by the Crawleys that I wonder if he really understands how thoroughly he just exposed them as privileged, selfish monsters.  After what they’ve just done to the Drewes, how are we supposed to admire them or think of them as anything other than parasites?  And I’m not just reacting to the discovery that they are still requiring the servants to iron the newspapers before they read them.

Let’s review the sad story of the Drewes, who have been working the land at Downton since before Waterloo: Edith got herself knocked up, went to Switzerland to give birth in secret and left her daughter with a nice Swiss couple.  She changed her mind and stole the daughter back, convincing the very kind Mr. Drewe to adopt her and keep her close to Downton.  But that wasn’t not good enough, so she stole the child a second time and brought her to live at Downton itself. But no one is supposed to know it’s her actual daughter — especially not Mary.

All of that is bad enough, but now it transpires that Mrs. Drewe bonded with dear Marigold when she was in her care and became slightly unhinged when she was stolen away.  When the Downton children are brought round to see Mr. Drewe’s prize pigs, Mrs Drewe can’t help but scooping up Marigold into her arms and re-bonding with her.  Cora’s immediate response is that the Drewes will have to move out of the area before Mrs. Drewe spills the beans on Edith and Marigold, but Lord Grantham, in one of his periodic fits of decency, resists.

But even Lord Grantham can’t save the Drewes when there’s a second episode.  At a local agricultural fair, Edith lets Marigold wander off and Mrs. Drewe takes her home, stealing her back for a few moments of super-intense cuddling.  Well, that seals their fate.  After having done Edith the enormous favor of adopting Marigold in the first place and then having done the extra-special favor of not ratting her out when she came calling for the baby, the Drewes are sent packing without a second thought.  Edith and Cora coldly declare that it’s “for the best” and even Lord Grantham for all his supposed decency doesn’t intervene to suggest that maybe Edith and Marigold are the ones who should leave for London, as they plainly intend to do anyway.

It’s enough to make you think Daisy is right when she spouts some Sixties gibberish about Cora: “It’s the system’s fault and she’s part of it.”  Daisy, of course, is in a lather because her father-in-law Mr. Mason is about to be evicted from his tenant farming gig in the neighboring estate (we’re sure learning a lot more about tenant farming than we ever expected to on this show).  In the neat and tidy way that things work out in the “Downton” universe it seems like the Drewes loss will be Mr. Mason’s gain, since their departure occurs at the precise moment Mr. Mason needs a farm.  I have a feeling that Daisy’s outrage about the system won’t extend to the treatment of the Drewes since Mr. Mason will benefit from it.

But what’s most appalling about the Drewe’s situation is that Mr. Drewe will not fight for his family.  He’s such a caricature of the loyal yeoman farmer that he self-evicts himself before Lord Grantham has the chance to do the deed.  He seems not to realize he has a very significant card to play – he knows Lady Edith’s secret and could threaten to reveal it pushed.  It is possibly historically accurate that the tenants, servants, and townspeople would be so deferential to the Crawleys that they would sacrifice their own happiness to satisfy every whim from the big house, but Mr. Drewe’s extreme self-sacrifice seems a bit extreme.

Mr. Drewe is not the only one who cannot stand up to the Crawleys.  Mr. Carson is so in thrall to them that he can’t refuse their offer to host the Carson/Hughes wedding reception in the big hall.  And here we have another example of class conflict.  Mary Crawley, in her role as the grand lady benefactor, insists that the reception be at Downton even though Mrs. Hughes has declared that she wants to have a reception someplace where the happy couple, not the Crawleys, are the center of attention.

You don’t have to be a bridezilla to want to plan your own wedding and I suspect that Mrs. Hughes will get her way eventually, but I hope Julian Fellowes doesn’t drag this out too long because this is one of those low-consequence conflicts (like the squabbling between the Dowager Countess’ servants) that takes up too much time on “Downton.”

Lady Mary (“Your reception will be in the big hall if it’s the last thing I do”) sets in motion many of the plots this week.  It was her suggestion to bring George and Marigold down to the Drewes that started that row of dominoes tumbling, and of course her insistence on throwing the wedding reception is the source of conflict among Mr. Hughes and Mrs. Carson.  She’s just blithely going on her way causing chaos without knowing it.

Mary’s at the center of the Bates’s plot too.  She and Anna are like sorority sisters in Mary’s bed chamber, each confidentially exchanging their reproductive secrets.  When Anna pronounces that she can’t have children Mary agrees to spring for a free visit to her doctor on Harley Street.  After all, this guy miraculously cured Mary’s own infertility so certainly he can do the same for Anna.  I’m not sure it’s wise for Baron Fellowes to refer back to previous medical cases on this show because they involve some of the most ridiculous aspects of the whole series: Mrs. Patmore was blind until she wasn’t; Mathew was crippled and impotent until he wasn’t; Mrs. Hughes had breast cancer until she didn’t; Lord Grantham had a heart problem until he didn’t.  All it takes to solve a medical problem on this show is for Fellowes to wave his wand and it goes away.

In any event, off go Mary and Anna to the doctor, who diagnoses a case of “cervical incompetence,” which despite the absurd name turns out to be a real condition. Huh, one point for Baron Fellowes for identifying a real condition and a real treatment (read about it here).  Apparently all the doctor needs to do is put a stitch in the neck of the womb when Anna’s 12 weeks pregnant and that will do the trick.

What I don’t like about this plot is that Anna and Bates are supposed to have an ideal marriage but they still keep so many secrets from each other.    You’d think Anna would have learned to trust her own husband but she can’t help herself.  The visit to the doctor is secret, as were her first two miscarriages, her rape, her previous criminal record, etc., etc.  Of course Mr. Bates doesn’t help his case by spouting dialogue that would be cringe-worthy in even the sudsiest fem-weepie: “Being married means you don’t have to cry alone.”  For all the lovey-dovey talk, the Bateses have one of the most dysfunctional relationships on the show.  Each one jumps to conclusions about what the other wants and acts accordingly, and they’re at the point now where you can never be sure when one of them is actually telling the truth.  Witness that discussion about adoption: can we really believe what either of them is saying?

Marital secrets figure into the hospital consolidation plot too.  For some reason Lord Grantham decides he should not invite his wife to a rump meeting of the hospital board even though she’s a trustee.  I’m not even sure what was the point of that secret meeting other than to give Fellowes an opportunity to rehash the countervailing arguments for any dim viewers who might be in the audience.  Cora eventually finds out about the meeting, and is surprisingly not as pissed as she should be, but this only gives us a chance to hear the arguments repeated a second time during a tour of the hospital.

I barely have the energy to type these words since the hospital plot is so enervating. It’s obviously a ruse to create a conflict between Isobel and the Dowager Countess that will replicate some of their sparks from earlier conflicts in the series.  So far, at least, the logical arguments all seem to be in favor of consolidation.  They’ll get better medical equipment and access to the latest quack theories of the medical establishment.  At least that’s the theory of Isobel, Cora and Merty.  Merty himself makes the very good case that the Crawleys themselves would never be treated in that hospital so why should the people of the village be expected to live with such substandard care?

There may be a good fact-based argument for keeping local control of the hospital and the Dowager Countess and Dr. Clarkson advocate, but we haven’t hear it.  Instead we get this lame plea from Dr. C to Lady G: “I wish we could persuade you to help stem the tide of change.”   If Dr. Clarkson had his way, they’d still be using leeches to cure pneumonia.

I can’t imagine how this plot will continue any longer although I expect that it will.  Lord Grantham keeps dithering, hoping that the situation will sort itself out.  Little does he know that this conflict will not abate until Julian Fellowes himself decides that he’s had enough; and if the murder case against Anna taught us anything, it’s that he has enormous patience for protracted sluggish plots.

Some other thoughts:

• I was surprised that the one funny line of the show was a semi-smutty one.  When Mr. Bates, unaware that Anna was headed to London to see a gynecologist, told her to rest and put her feet up, Anna responded, “I’ll put my feet up.”

• Are we supposed to feel sorry for Thomas, who’s looking more vampiric as the series progresses?  After he’s wreaked havoc on the downstairs staff these past five seasons no one likes him except the saintly Baxter.  Well, what did he expect? All all, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”  His crush on Andy is unreciprocated – not surprisingly Andy doesn’t want to get private lessons on how to wind the clocks, since he’s undoubtedly worried about exactly whose clock will get wound.  Mr. Carson doesn’t discourage him from looking for another position, but when he goes on a job interview the head butler has remarkable gay-dar and takes an instant dislike to him.   This is another plot that seems to be going nowhere.

• Since when has Mrs. Hughes been jealous of Mr. Carson’s affection for Lady Mary?  Now all of a sudden it’s a thing.

• The whole point of forcing the Drewes to leave is to keep Mary from learning about Marigold’s maternity, but what is she going to think when her prize-winning pigman disappears without a good explanation?  I wonder if they’ll take Golden Empress with them and really break Mary’s heart once and for all.

• Mary doesn’t make a very credible agent.  Does she think the job consists exclusively of meeting tenants in the drawing room and approving livestock entries in local fairs?  If she were a true agent and really minding the store she wouldn’t be jaunting off to Haley Street with her lady’s maid every time there’s a case of cervical incompetence.

• Edith’s not having much luck getting her way with the managing editor of her magazine.  The problem here is that we don’t know whether she is being unfairly dismissed because she’s a woman or if her ideas are actually lame.  Given the high number of female viewers of the show, I imagine we will see Edith’s vision vindicated as she emerges as a flapper Katherine Graham. I think it’s a bit lazy, though, for us not to be able to judge for ourselves whether her ideas are any good.

• Merty is getting more obsequious every episode.  He’s even mailing his own letters in hopes of bumping into Isobel in the street so he can curry her favor.  What is that spell she casts?  The same spell that the Dowager Countess cast on Prince Kuragin or that Cora cast on Mr. Bricker.  They must all share some kind of special Downton pheromones.

• I’m not sure of the ethics of Moseley obtaining the previous examination papers for Daisy so she can study for her test.  Morally I guess it’s the same as reviewing previous SAT tests, which is at the heart of SAT prep classes everywhere.  Sill if it were truly ethical, Moseley wouldn’t be skulking around with them.

• Still no sign of any suitors for Mary and Edith, but there is a hint of that in next week’s coming attractions.

PS. Last week I questioned whether Mr. Mason had actually been a tenant farmer or an actual landowner.  Turns out that in Season Three he was introduced as a tenant of Downton — not at the neighboring estate.  So my memory on that was off, but not as off as Julian Fellowes, who, after all, wrote the thing.

The Joy of Hate-Watching

The dawn of the so-called Golden Age of Television has brought many pleasures — but none as unexpected as the rise of “hate-watching.”

Hate-watching is that counterintuitive phenomenon in which viewers watch TV shows they mostly dislike for the sheer pleasure of criticizing them, either through Twitter, snarky comments, or just inward groaning.

You wouldn’t think that better TV would lead to more hate-watching — but with the industry offering more than 400 scripted shows this season, there are bound to be more than a few that hit that sweet spot of “good enough to be watchable but not good enough to be taken seriously.”

More important, the increase in quality programming has raised the bar for all shows that want to stand out. As recently as 20 years ago, a routine procedural like “Law and Order” could be nominated for an Emmy, but last year even shows as great as “The Americans” and “Justified” were left out. This increased pressure to develop outstanding television has some showrunners reaching for a level of sustained quality that exceeds their grasps.

Hate-watching is on my mind now because of the launch of the final season of “Downtown Abbey,” which I’ve been hate-watching and blogging about for several years. My wife, who bailed on the series after only three episodes into Season One, can’t understand why I would spend any time at all watching a show I find so objectionable. And yet there I was last night, going out of my way to watch it live and then complain about it all evening.

It’s important to note that hate-watching is different from watching a guilty pleasure. The latter is a show you actually enjoy even though you know you shouldn’t — one whose appeal you feel like you have to explain. You might, for example, think that “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” is a lot of fun, but feel like you’re slumming whenever it’s on. That’s a guilty pleasure. In contrast, by its very definition hate-watching is following a show you don’t really like.

The origins of hate-watching go back to Comedy Central’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” which ran for six seasons in the 1990s. This show, in which characters watched and made hilarious comments about cheesy sci-fi movies, showed how much fun it could be to watch bad content.

Hate-watching television is different from hate watching bad genre movies, though. The true hate-watching experience on TV usually involves a prestige show that has failed to live up to its early expectations. Like say, “Glee,” Smash,” “House of Cards,” or anything by Aaron Sorkin. I suspect that by the end of its most recent season, most of its remaining viewers were actually hate-watching “True Detective.” These are shows that are trying to produce quality TV, and maybe even think they’re succeeding. They’ would usually be better as outright spoofs because they are undone by their own seriousness and lack of self-awareness.

In other words, hate-watchable shows straddle that fine line between quality and parody. They are just good enough to watch — and are sometimes even weirdly compelling — but ultimately fail the test of creating true-to-life characters or believable plots.

Television is especially susceptible to hate-watching because of the unique challenges in creating a multi-episode, multi-season work of art. Sometimes the writers just doesn’t have enough original ideas or insights to sustain more than a few hours of content and have to resort to recycled or farfetched plots to keep the show going.

That was the fate of “Downton Abbey,” which had a decent first season and even made some interesting observations about class and gender roles in early 20th century Britain. But the show quickly devolved into a glossy soap opera, with storylines on amnesia, false murder accusations, convenient deaths — and worst of all, no serious consequences for any particular financial or health-related reverse.

And yet, as much as I like to complain about “Downton” (and about “Glee” before it), I still watch because I somehow became attached to the characters and want to see what happens to them. Nobody sets out to make a show that’s hate-watched, but developing decent characters is the key to sustaining a hate-watching audience even when an admiring audience has deserted a show. For example, a lack of affinity for the people in “House of Cards” explains why I went from “hate-watching” to “not watching” at the beginning of Season Three.

The reviews suggest that “Downton Abbey” is better this year. I hope so, because I’d rather “pleasure-watch” than “hate-watch.”  I’m not optimistic, though. If it suddenly became a serious drama, it would lose half its audience. No, I think I’m resigning myself to a final season of snark.