the gang in 1795...

[michael c]

...were they a bunch of chowderheads?

i've been watching 1795.i haven't seen it in a few years and in a second go round i'm noticing a few things.

for starters the persecution vicki undergoes is more relentless than i had remembered.for goodness sake she showed up under strange circumstances in a short skirt and a charm bracelet.she said stupid things.but a witch?

doesn't a witch need some sort of motivation for her acts?didn't anyone look around and say "well angelique certainly has gained a great deal from all of this misfortune".as soon as barnabas announced the engagement light bulbs should have been going on around collinwood.she secured a husband,home,marriage into a wealthy and prominent family.at the very least she improved her station as a ladies maid.

josette was supposed to be as innocent as the driven snow but couldn't she recognize a rival when she was staring her in the face?what was everyone thinking?what did this silly girl sitting in "goal" get out of any of this?

[MagnusTrask]

And why wouldn't job 1 of any witch be to use her powers to put suspicion onto someone else?   That, or walking straight out of gaol at a suitably dramatic "screw you" moment.

It seems improbable that the gaolers wouldn't think of these things, but witches did burn, so the same convenient, sloppy logic that led to the arrests of witches in real life could have also led to rationalizations, such as "the witch doesn't escape because we are so pure and righteous and are doing God's work, so God's stopping her"... that sort of thing.

[Gothick]

MSC, I think there's a huge amount of really sloppy writing around Vicki's persecution and trial as a Witch.  I find it nearly impossible to sit through any of Vicki's trial scenes.  I keep reminding myself that people who persecuted Witches tended to be really ignorant and here and now in this supposedly enlightened age we have far too many examples right before us of just how dangerous and vicious ignorant people can be.

There are some wonderful elements to 1795 but IMO Vicki's role in the story is far from being one of them.

G.

[David]

I find that everyone in 1795 thinking Vicki is a witch to be perfectly reasonable for a bunch of Puritans.

Look at the nonsense religious nuts believe in today.........
it's the same mentality.

But Vicki herself is too naive to be believable.

David

[adamsgirl]

I think it was natural for suspicion to fall on Vicki. First, there were the odd circumstances she showed up in and her "strange" clothes. Second, she kept calling people by other names and seemed to know Barnabas right off the bat. Then, all that misfortune befell the Collinses. Angelique, on the other hand, was a trusted servant of the DuPres family, so she was able to get away with everything she pulled without causing suspicion. However, there was one scene -- SPOILER ALERT!!!!!
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where Abigail suspected Angelique when the family first moves into the "new" house. Jeremiah's ghost was wreaking havoc in one of the rooms, and old Abby thought Angie had done it (which she had).

Too, Vicki did not know when to keep her mouth shut! I mean, what struck me was how stupid she was, telling people about airplanes and telephones! Duh -- and that was BEFORE she admitted she came from the future, which was another mistake. All in all, Vicki didn't use her head, but then again, she "didn't understand!" -- LOL!

[michael c]

the dupres and collins families didn't otherwise strike me as "puritans".they were wealthy and extravagant.

by the late 1700's weren't we almost a century away from the puritan movement?

vicki always gets slagged for her dimness during this storyline but it seems like just about everyone else checked their heads at the door as well.

[loril54]

vicki always gets slagged for her dimness during this storyline but it seems like just about everyone else checked their heads at the door as well.

I do agree with you!  I bet everone was screeming at home. "It is Angelique"  But have the Collins ever been smart. you wonder how they made their money.

[Brandon Collins]

Vicki was incrediably stupid during this time period, as Adamsgirl pointed out, telling young Daniel and Sarah about airplanes and telephones. Not to mention that she admitted to being from the future, just like Adamsgirl said. All in all, Vicki was 60% of the stupidity running around during this time.

And, truth be told, it's not all that unthinkable that maybe those accusing Vicki may have thought that she didn't give a hoot damn about being found out, because, she was a witch, and everyone feared her. So maybe her accusers thought that she didn't care if she was found out, because they would just pop up dead anyway.

Actually, look what happened

SPOILER
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Abigail and Trask, her two BIGGEST accusors, DID die, even though it wasn't by Vicki's hand.

[David]

Though the official Puritan era was long over by 1795, Puritanism as a state of mind still existed, as it does today.

Just watch any random episode of the 700 Club & listen to Rev. Pat espouse the same kind of lunacy that inspired the Salem Witch Trials!

David

[adamsgirl]

You have a good point, David. Although "official" Puritanism had ended by then, it left its stamp on our society and continues till this day. I find it fascinating, though, because I've always been intrigued by history.

[Gerard]

What really bugged me was the whole thing about putting Vicki (or Phyllis) on trial for witchcraft.  The Salem incident was just barely over a 100 years old and had embarrassed the heck out of New England, bringing such trials to an end.  To think, a century later, that they would accuse somebody of the capital crime of witchcraft to me was simply ludicrous.  Okay, so it was a good angle, but it was still horrifically historically innacurate.

Now, I could see them still filled with superstitious puritanism and thinking Vicki was a witch, and wanting to deal with her, yet knowing putting her on trial for it would be impossible.  It would've made more sense, in my opinion, if they had charged her with murder, since that was a crime, and said she used witchcraft as the weapon.  That way, they could've had their cake and ate it, too.  They could argue that they weren't trying her for witchcraft, and even though it was no longer considered a crime, that doesn't mean that it didn't exist.  All they had to do was prove that she used it to commit murder or any other illegal mayhem.  That, I think, would have made the whole story more interesting:  she's being tried for murder, and the "weapon" was witchcraft, and there could be a whole lot of arguments between the characters if the accused choice of weapon was real or not.

Gerard

[MagnusTrask]

I think part of the idea was that Collinsport, Mass/Maine was SO out-of-the-way, so much of a backwater, that time had stood still a bit, and given a weird enough newcomer to the community, witch-paranoia could be revived.   I really hope everyone does know that the ideas of witches and with-trials were a century (and a half??) out-of-date by this point.

This was the United States and we even had the Constitution by this point, so no sloppy vague patchwork of states or communities with their own laws anymore.... I would think that there was zero possibility of any backwater thinking it was on firm legal ground, having a damn witchcraft trial.    But this one of the few storylines that works, sort of, so let's not dismantle it please....

I'd call this a spoiler re 1840, but I think it's better to brace for these things... if you didn't like the improbable 1795 witch-trial, just stay tuned for 1840....

I'm getting very disillusioned lately, re DS.    It's my circumstances probably.    I'm not picking up on the atmosphere of it, and the holes in plots are more apparent.

[IluvBarnabas]

I agree that Vicki was very stupid to keep blurting out things that were going to happen....while her heart may have been in the right place (the same can't be said for her head) it never occured to her that all she was doing was giving the people who believed her to be a witch more ammunition to use against her?

SPOILER ALERT:



Not to mention she also turned others against her by blurting out what the Collins Family History Book said (Josette, Joshua, the Countess, even Naomi nearly turned on her when Vicki tried to warn her about Sarah).


As adamsgirl point out, the weird stuff happening didn't start happening until Vicki arrived so it's not surprising she rose to the top of the suspect list of being a witch. However, Peter Bradford pointed out a bit later on that Vicki never profitted from the evil that was being done, but one person did.....Angelique. For the most part, Angelique did a great job of casting suspicion away from her, but there was one occasion where her behavior could have fallen under suspicion....the fact she knew how to 'cure' Sarah through a special brew, she was able to, as Abigail had said, accomplished something doctors of medicine hadn't been able to do.


The witchcraft trial did sort of drag, but despite that I enjoyed 1795. It's just too bad that Vicki acted like such a nitwit when it came to being accused of a witch....but I suppose they needed someway to have her go back to the 20th century eventually and hanging was the only (or perhaps the only imaginitive) way to get her back there.

[Brandon Collins]

SPOILERS

The 1795 trial wasn't quite as preposterous as the one in 18*0. I mean, the same things basically happened, with the real witch pinning the blame on someone else, but in 18*0, another 45 years into the future from 1795, and nearly 200 years from the original witch trials, this should've been completely discounted. They definitely should've known better. It would've been a helluva lot more interesting if they had've made some kind of slavery storyline, since this was around the time when the initial stirring of emancipation was going around.

[adamsgirl]

Yes, Brandon -- 1840 was preposterous with that trial. However, the writers took a stab at explaining it, because even Desmond brought up the Consitution. They said some nonsense about the law being outside the Constitution because it was enacted prior to the Revolution, or some such idiocy. It didn't ring true, but it moved the storyline along, or so they thought.