Is Julia the Ultimate Squator and Freeloader?

[Janet the Wicked]

I love it when Joe (Young Haskell), and Sam knock on the door of the Old House and Julia answers. They're like, "What the heck are YOU doing here?"

[Mysterious Benefactor]

But Elizabeth and Roger did'nt check her background and her credentials to see
if she has a college degree in history, also did'nt check if Julia wrote history books in the past.

Elizabeth, Roger and Carolyn can't be that naive.

Well, Julia had the good and trusted Dr. Woodard to vouch for her, and he was apparently the only background check they needed to accept her. Foolish? Obviously - because he was lying. But that's one of the advantages to being seen as good and trusted - you can get away with almost anything when situations demand it for the greater good because people always assume you're being truthful.   

[GooberCollins]

Julia turned into a pretty crappy doctor, if you ask me. She went from raising the dead to pronouncing Elizabeth dead repeatedly. 

On the subject of the indecency of Julia spending most of her time at the Old House, I've always thought Roger and Elizabeth gossiped about that a lot. "Oh, Liz, Julia is over at Barnabas's house working on that book again." "Yes, those two spend a lot of time alone together, just the two of them, working on the book." Of course, if Julia heard all that, her first thought would probably be, "If only!" 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Julia turned into a pretty crappy doctor, if you ask me. She went from raising the dead to pronouncing Elizabeth dead repeatedly. 

True. But I don't know if we can fault Julia too much on that because Liz was in a supernaturally induced coma. Not exactly the type of thing doctors learn to differentiate from real death in medical school. 

Of course, if Julia heard all that, her first thought would probably be, "If only!" 

Exactly! 

[Doug]

Well, Julia had the good and trusted Dr. Woodard to vouch for her, and he was apparently the only background check they needed to accept her. Foolish? Obviously - because he was lying. But that's one of the advantages to being seen as good and trusted - you can get away with almost anything when situations demand it for the greater good because people always assume you're being truthful.   

Yeah I was watching that episode, I think it is either # 283 or 284. But I forgot about Woodard vouching for Julia
to be a family historian to the Collins family.

[GooberCollins]

Yes, the coma was supernaturally induced, and so Julia probably shouldn't be at fault there. But she did stop being Super Doctor. At first she was just a blood specialist, then she was a psychologist running an insane asylum (and a psychologist running a funny farm as opposed to a psychiatrist doing it is about as likely as Willie's arm actually being "totally drained of blood" is in the real world! ), then she was Dr. Julia Hoffman, M.D., D.D.S., OBGYN... everything under the sun. And then her mad scientist phase where she raised the dead not once, but twice! And all that just disappeared suddenly.

[Josette]

What bothered me about Julia pronouncing Elizabeth "dead," was that Elizabeth kept telling everyone that that's what would happen.  While they didn't believe her, there was a previous episode when she appeared to be dead and then revived.  So, one would certainly think that Julia would have taken a bit more time and perhaps do some tests to determine whether she really was or not.

[Lydia]

I think that Elizabeth really was dead when Julia pronounced her dead.  Granted, at some point during all this we heard Elizabeth's thoughts when she was supposedly dead - but her spirit was a separate entity from her body at that point.  It was in the same place, but it could not have dependent on the body, because there was no way for the body to support it.  All tests on Elizabeth would have come up negative except for one: time, which showed that the body did not decompose.  But the non-decomposition angle was saved for another storyline.

Looking over this post, I'm thinking that it was out of character for Julia just to forget the whole business when Elizabeth eventually came back to life.  She told Barnabas in episode 291 that she was interested in the line between life and death.  Or something like that.  It's conceivable that (contradicting my earlier assertion) during all the time that Elizabeth was believed to be dead and was not breathing, eating, or eliminating matter, there was something in Elizabeth's body that was alive - but what could that something have been?  Julia should have been eager to investigate the mechanics of Elizabeth's experience.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Somehow, though, I doubt the family would have looked kindly on Julia conducting an investigation by poking and prodding what they believed to be Liz' corpse, which they would have no doubt felt should be left alone to "rest." Though that said, nothing ever seemed to stop Julia from doing her little experiments in secret. ... OK. Never mind.    And who knows, maybe she did. In fact, perhaps she was so secret that not even the audience knew. 

[MagnusTrask]

I couldn't believe that when this happerned, the family didn't instantly say, "She was right!  We should have listened to her!  In fact, despite the examination, she must still be alive right now!   Let's not bury her!"   They just reacted as if no one had seen this coming.

[Lydia]

Elizabeth had been having mental problems even before she decided she was going to be buried alive, so it's not entirely surprising that the family and Julia assumed that she was dead when she seemed to be dead.  And, going back to my previous theme: what physical evidence was there that Elizabeth was not dead?

Straying still further from the original topic...the word "bury" takes on a new meaning in Dark Shadows.  Coffins in a mausoleum are not buried in the non-Dark Shadows sense of the word, but on Dark Shadows, people in those coffins are occasionally referred to as having been buried.  I can't think of any specific examples off-hand - but it always surprises me.

[MagnusTrask]

Elizabeth had been having mental problems even before she decided she was going to be buried alive

What were they?  I've forgotten.

[GooberCollins]

I'd say not leaving her property for 18 years qualifies.

[Lydia]

Literal LOL, Goober, though I was referring to Elizabeth's belief that she was Naomi Collins and her attempted suicide, which happened before she got the notion that she was going to be buried alive.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

That may not be true. Cassandra told Liz she would think of nothing but death in Ep #513 and already in Ep #514 Liz exhibited signs of being terrified at the thought of being buried alive when she heard sounds coming from behind the wall in the Old House's basement and flipped out, so it could be argued that her obsession with being buried alive was touched off there and then. But regardless of whether it was or not, when Liz attempted suicide with the belief that she was Naomi in Ep #520, that was due to Cassandra's shenanigans - and Barnabas realized that and insisted to Julia that it was the case. Julia was skeptical at first, but she soon came around to believing it too due to Roger's remarks about how Liz had been behaving peculiarly. So, Julia wouldn't have seen Liz' behavior then as a real mental problem but as a supernatural one. And so, while it probably would have clouded the family's judgment when it came to Liz' belief that she would be buried alive, that incident shouldn't have clouded Julia's judgment in the matter.