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There are also valid reasons to dislike him, many of which I have pointed out in this thread
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Oh, but I never said that there
aren't valid reasons to dislike him. Believe me, I'm aware of all of those reasons.
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As far as liking him--arguably the majority of viewers who want him for Mary do so because of the allusions to Matthew Crawley, many of which you made in this thread.
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There are similarities, that's true. But why can't former Matthew fans like Charles because simply because both men happen to embody character traits that we ordinarily find attractive anyway? My issue was with how you phrased it:
"Viewers might want that kind of dynamic because it's hard to let go". That sounds like you're saying we're all so distraught over Matthew's death that we can't move on, so we're clinging to something similar. I just don't think that's the case at all.
It's like saying that Mary has been (or was, if you think she's over him) keeping Charles around because she's unable to move on past Matthew. Do you think that's true? Because I don't.
I think that Mary finds certain character traits attractive, and Matthew and Charles happen to embody some of those same traits. And I think that many viewers are attracted to Charles
not because they find it "hard to let go" of a fictional character, but because that's the kind of TV character they generally gravitate towards.
After all, it's not as if Matthew and M/M broke some kind of mold. They were two witty people who fell in love with each other in spite of their initial bickering and prejudices. Where have we seen that story before? Only
everywhere!
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More than that I have a problem with his notion that Mary only values intellectually charged conversation over love and loyalty and in essence her partner's making her happy because it's frankly a load of bull. He seems to have this ridiculous idea that she can only be happy with a guy who challenges everything she says ( I.e. him ), and can't be happy in a marriage based on companionship, attraction, compassion, shared experiences / background, basically everything she wants from Tony, when there is potential in that kind of dynamic which she evidentially sees.
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But when did Charles say any of that? All he said was that Mary is cleverer than Tony. He never said Mary would
never be happy with Tony, or that she wouldn't find other things to value in her marriage with him. He was just talking about that one issue potentially being something that Mary would find hard to deal with.
I mean, when we take into account that Tony and Charles served in the war together, that means that Charles has insight into Tony that Mary might not necessarily have. I assumed that his warning was at least partially based on that knowledge.
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but as of last week she didn't want Blake.
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Eh. I'm willing to wait and see on this. At one time, Mary was panting with desire for Pamuk over Matthew. And we see how that turned out.
I'm not counting Charles out yet.
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I mean she isn't bored by Gillingham and she told Blake "I'm sorry if I've hurt you"--to me that's her making a decision, at least for the time being, of him over Blake.
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She isn't bored by Tony yet, but I'd be very surprised if the Mary/Charles conversation wasn't foreshadowing of some kind that she may be bored soon. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the point was of the conversation -- it certainly didn't stop Mary from going with Tony, which makes me think Charles's warning will somehow come into play later.
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She doesn't necessarily dislike him, but she doesn't like him enough to choose him over Tony, or for his spiel to stop her from taking Gillingham for a test drive.
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Mary's stubborn, though. She had already made up her mind to take Tony for a test drive, so that's what she's going to do, and from what I could tell Charles's speech only made her even
more determined to prove him wrong, which IMO says more about the connection between Mary/Charles than it does about Mary/Tony.
Anyway, I don't know that Mary's decision in 502 means that her heart is finished with Charles forever. As we saw with Matthew, sometimes Mary needs to lose something to realize how much she valued it. She hasn't lost Charles yet. If she were to lose him, how would she react? My guess is that she wouldn't take it well, and that's why I'm hoping JF goes there.