Discuss - Ep #0310

[Lydia]

Robservations - #310

And if you'd care to look back, the first WP discussion topic for this ep:

Re: Discuss - Ep #0310

[Lydia]

I just love John Karlen’s business in the beginning when he’s chasing after Sarah.  It belongs in a sitcom.

As MB mentioned a few days ago, Sarah has her doll back after giving it to Maggie.  Not a big deal.  She also has her cap back after leaving it at Collinwood, and her ball back after leaving it at the Old House.  Was that the sort of child she was - leaving things here, there, and everywhere?  Did Joshua ever find himself sitting on Sarah’s doll as he started an important business meeting?

It felt weird seeing Joe and Carolyn together today.  They were friends, with no hint that there had been anything else between them.  I know that’s how it’s supposed to be - but it’s still hard to believe that they have achieved it in such a short time since the breakup.

[DarkLady]

Did Joshua ever find himself sitting on Sarah’s doll as he started an important business meeting?

 

I guess Sarah borrows her doll back from Maggie when she's feeling lonely. And I thought she was very clever about getting her little cap back.

Willie tells Barnabas that he saw Sarah outside, but then she disappeared. Barnabas thinks Willie is lying at first, but Willie convinces him otherwise. He even gets some small measure of revenge when he shrewdly guesses, You’re afraid of what Sarah may tell someone else about you! She’s appeared to Maggie Evans, David, Vicki--everyone except you.

But later, Barnabas decides to look for Sarah hmself--at "her final resting place." Even though Willie has very bad memories of the Collins mausoleum, he has to go along anyway.

[alwaysdavid]

Willie cleans the chandelier on a stepladder which seems rather modern for the house. I want that chandelier except with electricity.  The crystal ball reappears and David is seeing things again. David hides in the coffin. What fun that must have been for the real David.

[dom]

I'm glad we won't have to compete for the chandelier, AD. I'll take it without electricity. It's funny that you mention it because I couldn't take my eyes off of it! I was fascinated more with the inanimate objects in this episode than the actual goings-on. The real stars of the show today were the Old House chandelier (actually, the whole OH set with all the burning candles), David's longsleeved button shirt, Joe's jacket and David's humongous crystal ball-- with Carolyn's hairbow getting honorable mention.

Yeah, DL, Willie seemed to relish making Barn squirm. And I rather enjoyed watching it myself. I am always amazed when Willie gets away with taunting Barn. Their present-day relationship totally fascinates me. And it never occurred to me about Wille's uneasiness about going to the family crypt but, wow, yeah, what a head-trip it must be for him to have to go back there: day or night.

I too thought about Joe's & Carolyn's previous relationship while watching them together, Lydia. I thought Carolyn looked somewhat 'hurt' when Joe asked for David, but after re-watching the episode I realize I saw what I expected to see. I didn't know it was so soon after the breakup but I still expected to see an uneasiness between them.

I know at some point during the week Barn (while talking to Julia, I believe) mentioned that way back when, Sarah perceived a change in him but wasn't aware of what exactly the change was and never held it against him, blah, blah, blah. I thought that Sarah died before Barn 'changed'? And does anyone remember if Sarah's name was always there on the crypt wall or is that a recent family history rewrite?

David is pretty good with a crystal ball. He's so smart. If he thinks about something long enough, it comes to him. I suspect he really doesn't need a crystal ball at all.

Well, if Barn's worth his salt as a vampire, he should have no problem sensing that David is in the coffin, especially after placing his hand on it. I guess we'll find out Monday.

[spoiler]I don't know if I am correctly remembering this or if it is just an old dredged up misthought, but I am picturing Barn opening the coffin and David not being in there, but actually hiding under it or behind it (or somewhere in the room). But if that were the case they'd have probably had Barn open the coffin for the Friday cliffhanger. Now that I am giving it more thought I am picturing Amy & David hiding under a coffin in the Old House. I guess it's time to stop thinking and enjoy the weekend.[/spoiler]

[DarkLady]

We'll find out that [spoiler]in 1795, Sarah died AFTER Barnabas changed. [/spoiler]

As for Joe and Carolyn, I guess their mutual concern for David overrides any awkwardness they might be feeling. Or at least that's what we're supposed to think.

Willie went back to the crypt once that we know of before now: to rescue Maggie when Barnabas locked her in the coffin overnight. He went the moment it was safe, because we could hear the birds chirping and the sky was just starting to get light.

[Lydia]

Also, Willie helped Barnabas bury Jason in the secret room of the mausoleum.  Yeah, I'll bet the mausoleum is Willie's least favorite place in the world.

As for Sarah's chronology, dom is right: Barnabas did tell Willie that Sarah died before the change.  They were in the mausoleum, looking at Sarah's plaque - which, in answer to dom's other question, has always been there - I think.  Conceivably, time is like a kaleidoscope in the Dark Shadows universe: the least little twist, and everything changes.  The only other possibility I can think of is that Sarah was present as a ghost after her death in 1795 - but when Barnabas and Willie were talking in the mausoleum that time, my impression was that Sarah was in no way present during the time of Barnabas's change.  It's a difficult problem.

Note: yes, I know what happened in 1795, when we get there.  That's another kettle of fish altogether.

[DarkLady]

Yeah. Time in the Collinwood universe is like a kaleidoscope combined with a Moebius strip.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Sarah has her doll back after giving it to Maggie.  Not a big deal.  She also has her cap back after leaving it at Collinwood, and her ball back after leaving it at the Old House.  Was that the sort of child she was - leaving things here, there, and everywhere?

Actually, the ball and the cap are different situations than the situation with the doll is. The ball and cap weren't given to someone to protect them. However, the doll was given to Maggie to protect her[spoiler]in the same way that later in the show the toy soldier will be given to David to protect him.[/spoiler]But as I said, maybe Sarah secretly has multiple identical dolls.    And what will be fascinating will be if Maggie still has the doll in some future ep and it's treated as if she's had it all along since finding it in Ep #308. 

[DarkLady]

Sarah's family is stupendously wealthy by 1795 standards. When Sam Evans was sketching her portrait and admiring her dress, she tells him casually that she has lots of other much nicer ones.

So I'm sure she has lots of dolls too, and that not all of them are identical.

[Lydia]

I don't think we need to assume multiple identical dolls for Sarah.  And the other assumption that I would discard is the one that says that Sarah knows all the time exactly what she's doing and why she's doing it.

As I've said before, my own assumptions are that Sarah came from the netherworld specifically to protect Maggie from Barnabas and that she is to some extent bound to do what Maggie wants.  But that doesn't mean that she knows all this.  There could be an unconscious part of her that directs her to do certain things, whereupon consciously she does them in the way that makes sense to her.  I mentioned before, during this round of watching, how it struck me that when Maggie first saw Sarah, she told Sarah, “Go tell your folks that I'm here,” or something like that - whereupon Sarah went to look for her folks and couldn't find them.  But Sarah gave no indication that she was looking for her folks specifically because Maggie told her to.  The connection was there, but Sarah didn't see it.

Likewise, Sarah left the doll for Maggie either because Maggie was in danger from Barnabas or else because Maggie had expressed a desire to know more about Sarah.  Sarah was not bound to let Maggie keep it forever and ever.  If the doll was meant to give Maggie protection from Barnabas, then the danger would appear to have subsided (for the moment, at least) when Barnabas started to get his knickers in a twist about Burke.  So when Sarah wanted to play with her doll, no unconscious impulse stopped her from retrieving it.  And she's free to loan it out to Maggie again whenever she wants.

Another idea came to me when I was thinking about this: If Sarah's basic mission is to protect Maggie, then throwing David under the bus may be one way to accomplish that.

[DarkLady]

Sarah's just a little girl--I don't think she came back because she has a mission. I still say that Barnabas's awakening was the stimulus that caused her to return. I'd even bet that at first she had no idea why she "awoke." I see her as confused and even frightened at the change in her brother, let alone the total absence of her parents. She sees Barnabas harming Maggie, and it's actually quite a while before she (S.) decides to visit Maggie in her lonely basement cell.

And because Sarah is just a kid, her behavior isn't always logical or consistent. She has a fairly short fuse and loses her temper pretty quickly sometimes, for instance, when she thinks Maggie has forgotten her. But she seems just as quick to forgive, because she gives the doll back to Maggie and protects her again when Barn comes to her (M's) room to kill her.

I don't think Sarah throws David under the bus, either. She probably just doesn't realize that he doesn't know how to get out of the secret room. I suspect she spends most of her time looking for her parents and finds and visits her friends when she gets lonely and discouraged. And as we'll see soon, [spoiler]she gives David a toy soldier to protect him.[/spoiler]

Anyway, just my rambling thoughts.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Umm, the whole idea of multiple identical dolls that I put forth was put forth as a joke. Hence the winking ghost smiley and the cheesy Halloween pumpkin smiley .    I fully believe that the show expects us to believe that the doll we see Sarah give Maggie and the one she's seen cradling at the mausoleum is one and the same.

As to the bizarreness of Sarah having the doll back after giving it to Maggie (and Maggie potentially still having it somewhere down the line as if she's always had it), well, I honestly chalk that up to poor continuity - and that's the point I was trying to make with my other posts. The sad but real possibility exists that we see Sarah cradling her doll at the mausoleum simply because the director of this ep and possibly even the writer forgot or maybe even never knew that in Ep #308 Maggie had the doll back. Those sorts of continuity problems happen all the time on DS. And of course the show as a whole thought nothing of them because DC himself thought so little of the audience that he believed no one would ever question such things. We often see somewhat similar things when a character is suddenly wearing completely different clothes than they had been in a previously staged version of the same scene, or they're standing in a completely different place on set than they had been in a previously staged version of the same scene, or they're holding something completely different in their hands or busying themselves with some completely different activity than they had been in a previously staged version of the same scene. I often think the motto at DS was "We don't need no f**king continuity!" because, well, let's face it, there's often so little of it.   

All that being said, though, it's certainly fun to try to come up with plausible ways to explain away such continuity errors (though good luck ever trying to explain away the different clothes  ). And I've certainly enjoyed reading the possible theories that have been put forth to try to explain why Sarah had her doll back. After all, spinning theories is certainly one of the things that these topics are all about. 

[Lydia]

Umm, the whole idea of multiple identical dolls that I put forth was put forth as a joke.

Aw, MB, you know I have no sense of humor!

[IluvBarnabas]

Even by this time the family should know better than to take David at his word that he'll do as says, no matter how reluctant he is to wash for dinner/do his lessons/go to bed, etc. Carolyn really should have gone with him to make sure he went to dinner.

Joe and Carolyn seem to get along better as friends than when they were boyfriend and girlfriend. It was probably a blessing in disguise they never made it to the altar. Carolyn had a lot of growing up to do and I don't think rushing into marriage with Joe would have been the answer, though her mother believed it was.

Barnabas says he doesn't believe that Sarah would ever harm him but not very convincingly. He HOPES she won't expose him and is one of the reasons he wants to find her but I do believe that he loves Sarah very much and wants to see her because she's still his sister. Willie isn't particularly thrilled about going but yes he knows he really has no choice but to go with Barnabas to the mausoleum.  That place does hold bad memories for him. I don't really see why Barnabas needed to drag Willie along. I hardly thing Willie's presence is going to make any difference even though he did see and talk to her once before.

Pretty daring of David to hide in the coffin. Would have freaked me out.