Discuss - Ep #0123

[Watching Project]

Robservations #123

WELCOME, LAURA COLLINS!

(Even though we shouldn't even know it's Laura - thanks a lot credits for ruining the mystery!  )

[MagnusTrask]

Beat me to it!   Very good one.  Thayer's acting in the first scene is great, where he ponders what Josette is.   This scene may just be the point where DS starts to matter, over and above being just another well-done daytime drama.   

Josette's getting to Matthew in a very deep way.  I'm sure none of it involves clear thoughts that could be put into words, but suddenly there's a world after death, possibly.   None of the characters express it (except Quentin, once), but what's so disturbing about ghosts, really, is that this might be our personal future, that we would have no control over.

As Matthew may or may not feel his own mind slipping away, as he has more and more trouble stopping himself from violence, suddenly just as his control's disappearing, a terrifying world of "comeuppance" opens up in front of him like some black chasm.   That's how we usually see ghosts, as restless spirits unable to move on, often because they didn't deserve to, possibly...?   Matthew hasn't believed in anybody or anything but Liz for 18 years, and thought all he had to fear about killing someone was discovery and jail.

Diner.   Is she going to appear in this scene?  I'm getting ahead of myself.   Good, realistic conversation between Maggie and Joe about Burke and Carolyn.   In the middle of it, yes... there's Laura!!   I'm now watching this storyline for the second time, having gone through it first over the holidays.   Then and now, I kept backing it up, and replaying the moment she walks in, because after we slogged through Roger-vs-Burke for so long as it kept running out of steam, it's so strange to see a new storyline begin, the first time on DS that a storyline's changed... and it starts with the exact moment this woman walks through the door of a diner, without any fanfare or anything.

Is Diana Millay pregnant?   It ends with David seeing Vicki.   DS is waking up and taking off now.   David and Vicki in the next ep, that's a good scene.   No writer listed.

[Janet the Wicked]

Thayer David’s make-up seems more and more over the top every day. His eyebrows look like Spencer Tracy’s in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, for crying out loud.

Maggie to Joe: Your idea of swinging is a net full of fish coming over the side.
Now why would she say such a hurtful thing to Joe? I don’t get it.

Joe looks like he fell down a mountain, made his way back to the top and fell back down again. How did he get that filthy searching for Vicki?

[DarkLady]

Joe may look messy, but he still looks very handsome, IMHO.  I guess the sheriff thinks that Ben has already killed Vicki and hidden the body somewhere in the woods, so he probably has all the searchers climbing over rocks and investigating every hollow tree.

Nice work by Thayer David--and nice effects too--when the portrait glows right before Ben's horrified and deranged eyes. He runs out of the house, and we hear seagulls calling--a sound effect that doesn't happen too often later on.

The first time I saw these pre-Barn episodes, I was also impressed when Laura walked into the diner. Her arrival brought a whole new set of dimensions to the story, and I certainly had no idea what was going to happen next! Whether Diana Millay was pregnant or not at this point, her outfit is still amazing in this day and age, though it was typical for the time: a well-tailored pastel suit with a nice blouse, a hat, and gloves!

Vicki is really MIA here--she doesn't appear at all in this episode.

Once again Ben goes for water, and once again he doesn't bring a bucket with him.

[tragic bat]

Beyond the very ominous pun, it struck me as interesting that Laura mentioned Phoenix, Arizona--it was a case study brought out in the book I read recently, called "Losing Our Cool, uncomfortable truths about air conditioning," as it was this invention that allowed the population explosion in cramped conditions in this otherwise very inhospitable climate by burning massive amounts of fuel.  Very interesting that such an 'old soul' that perhaps likes the heat would venture to Pheonix in that era; perhaps that is part of why she describes it in such a melancholy manner, while Maggie thinks it sounds dreamy (appropriately, since this was the era when much of the population moved from north to south, due to air condition's influence.)   

Anyway, this is the first time I'm seeing these episodes (and after just rewatching appropriate segments of 1897), and I've been pleasently surprised at the high-octane storytelling this early in the show, what with Mathew's kidnapping and Laura's arrival. 

[DarkLady]

"High-octane storytelling"--I love it! 

[MagnusTrask]

Welcome to the WP, T. Bat!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Joe looks like he fell down a mountain, made his way back to the top and fell back down again. How did he get that filthy searching for Vicki?

   But maybe we're supposed to believe it was because of all those filthy, dusty rooms that we never saw on the second floor of the Old House and in the basement. Perhaps he went back to search them more thoroughly.    But whatever the reason, at least Joe's disheveled look makes a lot more sense than the other soaps of the period where people could be rescued from being trapped in fires and still have every hair perfectly in place and with their clothes looking like they had just come back from the cleaners. 

[alwaysdavid]

As Joe and Maggie talk at the counter he reveals he and Carolyn are history and then the lady in the suit comes in and she looks familiar to Joe. The lady knew Grace who was the person Maggie replaced five years earlier. She knows the town and asks about the Collins family.
David brings more food for Matthew and eventually it all leads to David opening the secret panel and finds his governess thus blowing the theory that Roger was the culprit.

[Lydia]

thanks a lot credits for ruining the mystery!

If think there were no credits on my DVD - just the Dan Curtis Productions sign - and I was admiring how they finessed the issue.

None of the characters express it (except Quentin, once), but what's so disturbing about ghosts, really, is that this might be our personal future, that we would have no control over.

I don't think that's true.  Does anybody worry about becoming a ghost?  I mean, assuming a hypothetical belief in them in the first place.

It ends with David seeing Vicki.

You're getting ahead of yourself here.  Alexandra Moltke wasn't on the show today, so all we saw was David seeing...something.  Could be Vicky alive, could be Vicky dead, could be Vicky naked, could be a secret panel carelessly left open, could be Josette, could be a tailor's dummy...could be anything!

Maggie was awfully chipper as she listened to Joe's story of his breakup with Carolyn.  If I were Joe, any interest I had in Maggie would be sort of dampened at this point.

Maggie told the mysterious coffeeshop patron that she (Maggie, I mean) had replaced Grace there five years ago.  Maggie's supposed to be 23 years old, right?  So she would have come to the coffeeshop straight out of high school – assuming that she finished high school, and at the usual age.

[Lydia]

I just remembered something.  Maggie was changing the wall menu today as she talked to the mysterious stranger.  She does stuff with her hands as she talks more than anybody else on the show – and I love it.  Did she initiate this, or did the writers?

[MagnusTrask]

Does anybody worry about becoming a ghost?  I mean, assuming a hypothetical belief in them in the first place.

I think it's strange that we see no sign that people who believe in ghosts worry about becoming one, because it seems to be the obvious question: is this my future?   Often, becoming a ghost is seen as a punishment for evil acts in life, or the consequence of them.   Matthew could have old ghost stories going through his head right now, where evil people are never allowed to rest, just as he's getting ready to kill someone himself.   This could be a large part of why Matthew is so disturbed by seeing proof of ghosts.

Maybe no one worries about becoming a ghost, but if ghosts were proven to be real, I think a person would have to be a fool not to start worrying.

[Lydia]

Often, becoming a ghost is seen as a punishment for evil acts in life, or the consequence of them.   Matthew could have old ghost stories going through his head right now, where evil people are never allowed to rest, just as he's getting ready to kill someone himself.

But Matthew knows that everything is all Vicky's fault, so he hasn't earned any cosmic punishment.

[MagnusTrask]

But Matthew knows that everything is all Vicky's fault, so he hasn't earned any cosmic punishment.

People are never that simple.   Matthew doesn't seem totally sure about anything.   Anyone who keeps yelling his ideas over and over like that, without acting on them, is really trying to convince himself.   We all have somewhere in the back of our heads the idea that murder is wrong, even if we don't listen to it, and bury it deeply.   He never expected any sort of afterlife probably... now that's changed.