Discuss - Ep #0328

[Watching Project]

Robservations - #328

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

Re: Discuss - Ep #0328

[DarkLady]

The uncooperative Ziploc oxygen tent! The glass bottle of blood! Sam Evans, puffing away on his pipe while sitting right next to Willie's potentially explosive oxygen tent! 

Barnabas tells Julia that if Willie recovers, she also has a lot at stake. I wonder what led him to use this unfortunate turn of phrase. Maybe he's trying to look hip by using slang. He also thinks she should continue to pose as Dave Woodard's consulting physician. Even though Dave has fired her from Maggie's case? And even though almost everyone still thinks of her as a historian?? Jonathan goof? or writer goof?

While Dave Woodard struggles to zip up the uncooperative oxygen tent, Julia apologizes for hiding her suspicions of Willie (though she should really be apologizing to the sheriff, who might have grounds for prosecuting her if the doc blabs). Suddenly Willie starts to groan--he’s coming out of the coma! Abandoning the struggle with the oxygen tent, the doc tells Julia to close it, but she has no more success than he did.

Nice bit by JF at the very end of this episode, when the sheriff's deputy announces that Willie is waking up. Barnabas is immobilized with shock as the deputy announces the news. He uses all his self-command, but we can see his eyes widen with fear.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

As many times as I've seen this ep, I don't know why it suddenly struck me as odd today when I saw the wooden wheelchair:

Did they still use those back in the mid-'60s? I know when I was in the hospital back around that time I never remember seeing any. The ones I saw/were in were mostly canvas/metal and nicely padded.

But then, considering all the smoking going on around an oxygen tent, I suppose a wooden wheelchair isn't the first thing you're going to take notice of as odd. 

[DarkLady]

Nice screen shot! The wheelchair does look awfully old fashioned even for 1968, doesn't it! But I looked on the Interwebs and found quite a few pictures of 1960s wheelchairs that look very similar. They must extremely heavy too.

[alwaysdavid]

They were still using wooden chairs in the nursing home my great uncle was in 1965 and we used to race them up and down the halls. I thought of that when I saw the episode.
The death watch continues and I had forgotten about oxygen tents, but it was a good way to not have to pay the real actor.  Vince O'brien becomes Patterson for the day. I can't help but notice the lack of girth on the replacement. I never saw a recliner in a hospital room. Barnabas has to help the searchers find Maggie's ring and the sheriff makes the odd comment about not searching the rest of the house. Why would Willie not find a hiding place elsewhere. It would actuallly make more sense.
The sheriff starts to walk onstage during the closing credits

[MagnusTrask]

If they had an old fashioned wooden wheelchair from an earlier decade, I imagine they'd keep using it until it stopped working.  It might be their only one left.

[DarkLady]

I'll bet that whoever has that wheelchair could take it to Antiques Roadshow now. 

[dom]

That wheelchair is one scary looking piece of apparatus to me. I can see it on a poster for a horror/torture movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed Frid's and Graysons scenes. They weren't anything to write home about as far as the acting or even the writing goes. But I really enjoyed the theme of it, and bits and pieces of fun lines and the good moments of acting turned in by both F & G. I think what I am really enjoying is seeing Barn & Jules becoming a team. Though on the other hand, knowing what kind of team they become in the future makes it a little gut wrenching to watch them as an evil duo now.

I am not sure why some don't think that Willie probably isn't the "maniac". Though later in the episode some things seem to point that way. Barn's shit-eating grin when he convinces the sheriff and Sam that Willie is the guilty one by (accidentally, mmhmm) producing Maggie's ring makes me sick to my stomach, and that's as it should be I suppose.

Not a bad ep.