Discuss - Ep #0250

[Watching Project]

Robservations - #250

[IluvBarnabas]

Maggie just can't seem to get a break can she? She put on a pretty convincing act there for Barnabas, to make him think she believed once again she was Josette, but slipped up with Willie (but hey how was she to know the coffin would only look good to her AFTER Barnabas made her his bride?).

And Willie....you know he really would like to help Maggie, but he can't. He wouldn't allow her to escape or to stake Barnabas because even as Barnabas lies sleeping in his coffin he proves he still has enormous power over his servant and can control his actions.

When Barnabas woke up as Maggie was about to stake him....whoa! And then he sits up baring his fangs....freaky!

Yet another awesome episode today.

[dom]

Great episode! I say so because before I knew it - it was over.

A few bloopers today - the camera or mich obscuring Josette's portrait in the opening segment. Frid really screwed up his lines in the basement scene - at one point you can hear either some kind of tape reverb or someone is actually feeding him his line. And then there was the unsteady brick wall Maggie (shouldn't have) leaned on in the basement.

KLS did a fine job today. I was thrilled with Maggie finally coming out of her vamp stupor. It made the whole episode very tense and enthralling. It's a shame that Maggie didn't use her act to run away. I guess Willie forgot to lock her in her room - giving her at least two good opportunities to escape - and yes, I was silently yelling at her to escape NOW you idiot! (lol) Perhaps they had the front door locked - I guess that is what we are meant to believe. Did anyone else's heart stop as Maggie went to leave Barn and he called her Maggie and she stopped? Whoa - waiting to exhale! I kept thinking that Barn is as stupid as David - his not being able to tell Maggie was faking - must be a male family trait. She couldn't fool Willie though.

Karlen was very good today also. I kept wondering if Willie liked pretty sparkley things or if he was thinking of the monetary value of the necklace (which looks gorgeous on video in B&W. I wonder what color the large gems are in the necklace? Does anyone recall if this necklace resurfaces in 1795? The stones look dark so I would guess they were rubys or emeralds). I never got the impression that it represented freedom to him. It was as if the old criminal Willie was trying to resurface for a moment. And is Willie a jack-of-all-trades or what? (How to build a coffin in nine easy steps.)

This is the first time I've ever seen the back entrance to the Old House basement - what a thrill - I loved it. I guess they had to do something in order to get Maggie down there unseen. They could have had her listening from the basement door we are all familiar with but I like the way they chose to do the scene very much. It rekindled the exploratory child in me. Unfortunately, the wobbly wall and Frid's going up broke the spell but this ep was so intense that I was not frustrated by it.

I got a real kick out of Barn & Willie during the coffin scene when Barn asks if Willie can find the beauty in a well built coffin. Willie says no and Barn offers to give him the capability - and Willie says, no thanks - lol. I loved it.

I also enjoyed Willie and Maggie in their segments together. Willie is so smart (in this ep anyway). Maggie may as well have been imitating Roger for the aire of snobbery she tried to capture in her attempt to fool Willie. But to no avail. (Damn that heartbeat!) She certainly showed she has a backbone and almost convinced Willie to let her stake Barn. Maggie the vampire slayer, lol. I guess Maggie's got hairier balls than Willie.

If we didn't have sympathy for Willie before, he's certainly working his way into our hearts now by his display of sympathy and empathy towards Maggie. I really love that aspect of Willie right now.

Barn says that neither Willie nor Maggie will ever be completely free as long as he's alive (alive? okay). Then he later says that after tonight he will have no control over her (uh, okay). He's certainly underestimating Maggie's strong free will. Too bad Maggie suddenly got real stupid at ep's end.

Seeing Barn baring his fangs and Maggie's back to the wall pose were corny as all hell.

[Lydia]

Watching the storyline this time around, I've been surprised at how brief this period has been.  I remembered Maggie as having wandered around in Josette's dress for days and days - weeks and weeks - when in fact there are only a very few episodes in which we see her that way.

Somehow this episode didn't grab me today.  There are some episodes that I can watch over and over again and feel the suspense as if I were watching it the first time - but this episode didn't have that magic today.  (If only I could have watched it with dom!)  We're supposed to be cheering Maggie on in her re-assertion of her identity, and I keep thinking, "Forget Maggie.  If you'll just be Josette, Barnabas will never hurt you again.  He'll always be the courtly gentleman worshipping the ground you walk on, and don't you want that?"  In fact, I felt quite sorry for Barnabas, thinking he was so close to his goal, and being hoodwinked.

Then when Barnabas was talking on and on about how after tonight, Maggie will be free of his power and will be Josette forever, I was thinking:  "Don't be so sure.  Once she's a vampire herself, I'm betting she'll revert to being Maggie no matter how thorough a brainwashing job you do."  Maggie doesn't know that, of course.  She doesn't know much of anything, or else she wouldn't be trying to kill Barnabas with a metal chisel.  And that sends me off on another tangent: if the chisel had been made of wood, would she have picked it up?  Could she have picked it up, with intent to destroy?

I'm not surprised that Maggie didn't run away.  She tried it once, and it didn't work.  (Somehow that sentence transports me straight to Gilligan's Island.)

Still, there's a great Friday cliffhanger.  We've seen enough of Barnabas's violence to know that Maggie's punishment is going to be very, very ugly.

And the necklace was beautiful.

[CT!_CTP/FITBs]

Be sure to check out these (hopefully  ) humorous topics related to this episode:

From "Caption This!":

From "Complete This Phrase / Fill In The Blank(s)":
(none yet)

[loril54]

I don't remember that Josette was that haughty as Maggie portrayed her. 

I think Barnabas is smarter than most people think that he is. I think that is why he decided to try and trick her. Josette seemed to be what Maggie thought that she should be.

I wonder if the second coffin was really a coffin seemed kind of short.

Otherwise I really liked this show. [spoiler]one of our favorite charactors is coming, another Collins.[/spoiler]

I liked the interview.

[EmeraldRose]

I thought it was great that Maggie was remembering who she was. It's too bad Willie couldn't do anything against Barnabas; Maggie and Willie would have been gone!  But then what?  Barnabas just would have tracked them down and punished them again.  I can see Willie's point.  They can't get away from Barnabas, and being punished by him is something they would want to avoid.  Poor Willie and Maggie!

The necklace looked like it would be beautiful.  I hope it did surface in 1795.  The beauty of it would be much more noticeable if it were in color.

That scene at the end was corny.  But as a 12 year old girl, I sure thought it was scary!  Pretty dumb of Maggie to think that a sharp metal object would kill Barnabas!    But I don't blame her; I would have tried it, too!  After all, the people on DS seem to have never heard of Dracula and other vampires before, at least not until Julia came into the picture. 

Maggie's hair and face sure were pretty today.

----- Sally -----

[dom]

So I am gathering that only a wooden stake can kill a vampire? Very interesting. I really didn't know that. I mean, I knew that but I never really thought about it. I would have guessed that anything through the heart would kill a vampire. If that's the case, it would have been really neat to have had Maggie do the deed only to have Barn get up anyway - but then he probably would have killed her on the spot.

Maggie picking the chisel up and putting it on her coffin was really mind-numbing. I mean, really! 

[Midnite]

Pretty dumb of Maggie to think that a sharp metal object would kill Barnabas!

Maybe Maggie had seen Billy the Kid versus Dracula the previous year, in which Billy dispatches John Carradine's Dracula by pounding a huge metal spike into his heart. 

[Lydia]

Perhaps, at this point, Barnabas could have been destroyed with a metal implement.  Dark Shadows was never too fussy about adhering to rules previously established in other literature.  Later, in 1795, the wooden stake rule was honored, but during this period, the vampire was still supposed to be a temporary aberration, and it might have seemed not worth the bother to worry about what a weapon was made of.

[Sunny_Collins]

So I am gathering that only a wooden stake can kill a vampire? Very interesting. I really didn't know that. I mean, I knew that but I never really thought about it. I would have guessed that anything through the heart would kill a vampire.

Doesn't the stake have to be made from the branch of a holly tree?  :-

The only thing I have to say about this episode is, why did barnabas have to wax poetic about a coffin!? Yuck!!! 

[michael c]

lydia makes an interesting point.

when i first watched these episodes a few years ago i watched them on vhs.so via the process of ordering the five episode tape,watching it a few times,ordering the next volume,waiting seven to ten days to recieve it and so on my memory of maggie's abduction and imprisonment was that they lasted for several weeks...perhaps even months.

but having rewatched these episodes again recently on dvd i was surprised that in fact this whole period was quite brief.from start-to-finish perhaps three weeks.

[dom]

I had pretty much the same reaction. I first saw the brainwashing eps in the 90s (I think) when I discovered that DS had been released to video. And watching KLS in that 'who am I' stage drove me up the wall. And as if that wasn't bad enough, my partner would constantly walk around imitating it (and he was annoying enough without the impersonation, lol). I was pleasantly surprised this time around watching along w/the WP - it seemd shorter and it wasn't so painful - maybe it just seems so the first time around.

Of course now we get to trade in the repetitive trance-like state for what is going to seem like an endless loop of
[spoiler]London Bridge Is Falling Down[/spoiler]
Perhaps I'll be lucky and this won't be as painful for me the second time around as well, lol.

[Sunny_Collins]

Of course now we get to trade in the repetitive trance-like state for what is going to seem like an endless loop of
[spoiler]London Bridge Is Falling Down[/spoiler]
Perhaps I'll be lucky and this won't be as painful for me the second time around as well, lol.

I like [spoiler]London Bridge.[/spoiler] The song reflects very well Sarah's current mood. If she's happy, the song is lilting and energetic. If she is sad, it's rather melancholy and slower.

I'm also fond of flutes, so maybe that has something to do with it as well.

(I hope I got the spoiler tags situated properly. It's my first attempt at putting them in manually. Apologies if it isn't correct.

[Midnite]

I hope I got the spoiler tags situated properly. It's my first attempt at putting them in manually.

You did great!