Discuss - Ep #0969

[Watching Project]

Robservations #969

[MagnusTrask]

Storyline overlap!! 

Someone fixed Jeb's suit.  And someone put yellow bunnies all over this posting page. 

It always gets me when DS plays touching sentimental music when some bastard is romancing a victim (here, Jeb/Carolyn).   So Strack brought in Sky... was Sky in the Blue Whale drowning his sorrows over being devoid of personality?  If so they apparently couldn't help.   With money though, who needs a personality?   Sky's a new kind of vampire victim.  He doesn't like it, and can even defy the vampire and seek help, though from another vampire in this case.   Was that why he could do it?  You can defy your vampire mistress to her creator?

Meg's coffin is said to be in the East Wing...  Yes, the next storyline's coming!   Product placement for "Rick" brand white rice....   That lamp in the honeymoon "suite" with three white column things is one my parents had in the house through my childhood.

Barnabas surely thinking:  Must find doorway that will lead me OUT of this storyline... and he finds it!   BUM!   As opposed to bum bum BUM....   BC's utterly earnest shock and repeated cries of "Why?!" are insufferable, but I'm sure it wasn't Mr. Frid's doing.  His acting was held hostage by a Mr. Curtis I feel sure.    I liked the doors suddenly flinging themselves open as if by the unnatural confluence of realities.

[Janet the Wicked]

How in the hell were you able to see the brand name on the rice box? I played that scene three times and didn't see it. Must be your everlasting prowess.

OK, so just why is Jeb so hell bent on marrying Carolyn anyway? It's a good thing for him Collinsport isn't located in the South. Mama Liz would never, ever allow such a wedding. The wedding notices alone down there take up whole pages of the newspapers.

Oh. Barnabas is lighting a match. I thought he was zipping up. Do vampires pee?

And speaking of the vampire mythos, and I know we've been going back and forth on Sky's big blabbermouth and how a vampire victim wouldn't divulge the whereabouts of his master, but here's another. Why is there a mirror in Barn's foyer?

Onto the east wing. What happened there? There's a chair kind of hanging on something and it is askew, as well as a crooked picture on the wall. Did Matthew Morgan have tantrums there or something?

I read a thread today here about an article written regarding the "lackluster and unintentionally funny" episodes - DS Remembered - IMHO, I think they should have kept up with the location shooting and definitely, oh so definitely, not have done the old master's tomes. I would be interrested to know what made the writers take this course, but I have a feeling that Old Man Curtis had the wherewithall thoughts that if it worked once, it will work again and our sponsor will be delighted.

On to parallel time. And in the infamous words of Bette Davis, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

[Lydia]

The beginning of 1970 parallel time slaps the viewers in the face like a bucket of cold seawater, and after that it's hard to take an interest in the shabby remnants of the Leviathan storyline.  I sort of wish they could have kept Christopher Bernau around another day or two so Barnabas could have been more shocked when he saw parallel time for the first time, but that's no big deal.  It's grand and glorious to see new life pouring into the show.
　
Suddenly Jeb's a nice guy.  The transformation has been unfavorably commented on elsewhere in the Forum, but I'm not uptight about it - to use Jeb's word in the way he uses it, which always strikes me as wrong, but 40 years later, how many people notice the wrongness?   Or maybe I'm wrong.  Anyway, I have no trouble believing that Jeb's Leviathan self contained all of his unpleasantness, and that the unpleasantness was completely destroyed when the Leviathan box was smashed.  I wish we could have seen some inward wondering on Jeb's part at how all his anger and malice have disappeared like clouds after a storm and left only the rainbow of his bright new personality, just as Magnus would have liked to see more of the inner transformation when Barnabas went from vampire to human in 1968.  But on Dark Shadows, I guess they're more interested in showing us the transformation from good guy to bad guy than the transformation from bad guy to good guy.

You can defy your vampire mistress to her creator?

If that's the case, then I wish we could have seen it sooner.[spoiler]Julia could have gone to Angelique and complained that Tom didn't bite her often enough, and Judith could have gone to Barnabas and told him it was bad form for him to bite outside the family.[/spoiler]

[Taeylor Collins]

Great comments from everyone! 

I think that the kisses between Nancy & Chris look very uncomfortable and they probably were.  Out of everyone on the show I think that Selby can pull them off the best.  He seems to always make his leading ladies look comfortable as well!  Nancy as Pansy &  Selby as Quentin I think had great chemistry and I loved to spy them kissing!  HEE  Now if he would just kiss me all would be right with the world.  Okay enough about kissing.   

I like the fade out of the voices with the music blaring over them before the fade out to credits.  WOW…happy music!  I don't remember hearing this particular piece recently.
 
It looks as if Grayson’s hair is finally getting out of that in between stage I am sure we have all dealt with.  It is looking better and I hope she continues to grow it out. 

I think one can see (through their performances) the fondness Grayson and Nancy had for one another.  It doesn't feel just like acting. 

YAY! Barnabas!  Why did they make the camera all wonky when they showed the bite marks? 

Boy everyone was coughing today.  Can you imagine the cloud of smoke in that studio on a daily basis?   

Nice to see that Barnabas is going to try and help Megan instead of just doing away with his “problem” if she will let him.

It's interesting to see shirtless men on Dark Shadows.  Of course I enjoy it and I especially enjoy it when David Selby is the shirtless man!   It seems like I read or heard that DS was the first or one of the first soaps to feature men with their shirts off??  Does anyone know if there is any truth to this?

Is this the first time we have seen the East Wing?  I can't remember at the moment! 

A fully furnished room in the closed off East Wing accompanied by a picture of Quentin and David, I have  to wonder what is going on. Why aren't Elizabeth and Julia responding to Barnabas? 

Great cut when Elizabeth closes the door.  This seems very Star Trek to me but so far I like it!  As you all well know I like the Leviathan episodes but after it turned into a disaster it is nice to see a new storyline brewing.  The show literally seems reinvigorated not only through the new storyline but also with this intriguing room that is furnished beautifully and splashed with color that brightens up the whole Dark Shadows world.  Kudos to the set designers, lighters and actors for their efforts!

Can anyone remember what their reactions to these new developments were when they originally aired in 1970?? 

I really enjoyed this one!

I got a little carried away!  Hope I didn't write to much!

[Lydia]

Is this the first time we have seen the East Wing?

No, we saw it briefly in 1897.

Jamison does hear; he calls to his mother, I'm in a locked room in the east wing.

[Taeylor Collins]

Thanks a bunch Lydia!

[Gothick]

Ah, here it is--the fateful first glimpse of the REAL star of the show in 1970, Hoffman!  I just adore every snide, sinister, sardonic word that drips from those sublimely bitter lips of hers.  Yes, Hoffman is one jive mo-fo, and indigent female pensioner-relatives in hand-me-down sweater sets better not forget it.

Love the line--I think it's actually in a subsequent episode--where Hoffman is orgasmically crooning over the late lamented Angelique "let them remember HER" and Liz snaps, "How could anyone EVAH forget her?" 

Hoffman and Liz don't get too many scenes together in the later body of the PT 1970 storyline, which is a pity.  I love how the two characters play off one another.

G.

[IluvBarnabas]

I thought Sky had a lot of gall expecting Barnabas to help him when he was the one who blabbed to Jeb about Barnabas being a traitor. I know Barnabas feels ashamed that because of him Megan is now a vampire who has already nibbled on her first victim....but considering her first victim used to be one of THEM (the Leviathans) I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for Mr. Rumson.

Believe it or not, I don't have any problem either accepting Jeb's transformation from cheap, insufferable pig, to suddenly devoted husband. It was a welcome change from his bullying, threatening Leviathan self. I don't mean to say he should be absolved from the havoc and bloodshed he wreaked when he became whatever it was he became, but had [spoiler] he lived a bit longer [/spoiler] we might have seen him having to come to terms with that emotionally.

[loril54]

Can anyone remember what their reactions to these new developments were when they originally aired in 1970??  

I really enjoyed this one!

I liked it, I never like the Leviathan story, as a teenager.

I really like it.

[spoiler]They had to do something different so they could film the movie[/spoiler]

[Midnite]

There's a picture of Donald Hotton, the minister who married Jeb and Carolyn, on the Memory Alpha site from his appearance as a Bajoran on the Star Trek: DS9 pilot--
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Donald_Hotton

Jeb (thinking):  "No one came running in when the minister said, 'If any man knows any reason why this couple should not be united, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.'"
And it's a good thing no one did; can you say 'stampede'?

The boom mic made an appearance over the wedding bed.

Someone fixed Jeb's suit.

It did look a lot cheaper in the previous ep.  Don't know if it was the DVD transfer, or camera adjustments back in the day, or whatever, but it's weird how colors and textures can vary from one episode to another.

Speaking of coats, Liz walked into Collinwood in the same one that Angelique wore in the previous ep.

Product placement for "Rick" brand white rice.

Nope, it said RICE.  If there was a brand name on that box, it was obscured.

I have no trouble believing that Jeb's Leviathan self contained all of his unpleasantness, and that the unpleasantness was completely destroyed when the Leviathan box was smashed.  I wish we could have seen some inward wondering on Jeb's part at how all his anger and malice have disappeared like clouds after a storm and left only the rainbow of his bright new personality,

This would explain Jeb's transformation if it was only his dark side that was destroyed along with the box, but that's not what we're told.  They've explained that the box's destruction wiped out his entire physical body and stripped away all of his powers, but not that it targeted certain (negative) parts of his personality.

Based on what they give us, my interpretation of his personality makeover is that the destruction of his physical self left his essence, or spirit, behind, and that remnant of him willed itself to be good for Carolyn's sake-- that the change in him came about by a choice that was motivated by love.  That's just my take.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Don't know if it was the DVD transfer, or camera adjustments back in the day, or whatever, but it's weird how colors and textures can vary from one episode to another.

I've been wondering the same thing. And one thing I've noticed is that the lighting can be very different from ep to ep. Some days things look almost washed out, while other days there's a great deal more contrast/color. It's odd.

Based on what they give us, my interpretation of his personality makeover is that the destruction of his physical self left his essence, or spirit, behind, and that remnant of him willed itself to be good for Carolyn's sake-- that the change in him came about by a choice that was motivated by love.  That's just my take.

That's an excellent interpretation - particularly when love or the betrayal of love can be traced to be a major motivation/factor in nearly everything that happens on DS.