Discuss - Ep #1046

[Watching Project]

Robservations #1046

[MagnusTrask]

Strange to see a larger-than-life-size portrait, somehow.   ***  Oh I remember.... their thing with Claude North was to have characters repeat the name at every opportunity.   Good example, the Ang/Tim scene.   I can see DC chomping on a cigar, telling everybody, the mystery of Claude North will draw viewers in!  We'll be beating viewers off with sticks!   I know, just look at my track record!   Just write in the name "Claude North" as many times as humanly possible!  (I don't know much about Dan, but there's a sort of cliche image building in my imagination.)

Oh no, this is awful, Carolyn being informed... and they give us a good long time to anticipate it, Carolyn chatting away, Barnabas wondering when and how to break in... well done.   The real stuff happens to the Loomis House characters (even when they're at the big house).

[Janet the Wicked]

Who leaves a knife on a chair? In my world that’s an accident just waiting to happen. Not that I’ve sat on a lot of sharp objects, but still. And Barnabas puts it back on the chair, even though there’s a perfectly good table beside it!

What is this all powerful medication Stokes gives Angelique? Never mind. I don’t care.

Barnabas: “I always liked Will.”  Since when??? You mean you liked him even when he had you trapped in your coffin and was holding you at bay so that he could use you to write his next tome? Give me a break, Barnabas.

I liked Carolyn and Will. Their marriage reminded me of some of the old movies where the husbands and wives fight like cats and dogs, but deep down truly love one another. And it didn’t hurt that the characters were portrayed by two of DS’s better players.

[Lydia]

Of course I was reminded of the Adam and Eve storyline in the previous episode, with Julia pulling the levers for the the electricity, and today as Barnabas tried to coax some information out of the girl, I was reminded of him praising Adam when Adam was only a few days old and spoke a word or two.  Incidentally, having seen Donna Wandrey's performances in the our-time storylines, I'm impressed with what she does in this storyline.

There's a mystery about the mausoleum that never gets investigated: the plaques.  They never change.  The names and dates are always the same.  We didn't see them clearly today, but I know they're the same.  This leads me to suspect that the mausoleum could be used to travel through time and between time bands, if only somebody could figure out how - maybe via another lever on that lion's head - but nobody ever tries.

The table in the foyer, on the other hand, does change.  Somebody please tell me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it pulled out much farther towards the front than usual today?

Carolyn said she and Will were happy before Angelique came into the picture, but I'm having trouble working that out.  Carolyn is surely less than 25 years old, and Daniel is surely over 10 years old, so how could Carolyn and Will have been married before Angelique was around?  Of course it could be that Angelique didn't take an interest in Will when he and Carolyn were first married, but that's not the impression I got.

Why is it that Professor Stokes has white hair and Tim Stokes has dark hair?  I started wondering that today.  Is there some hair-whitening experience in Professor Stokes's past?  Or does the alcohol keep Tim Stokes's hair pickled?

[MagnusTrask]

I thought about Tim's black hair, but had only the thought that Tim's weaselly nature would lead him to dye it.   Wait, wait, no, I'm not saying that dying one's hair is weaselly.  Lots of cool people do it.  But... the vain and self-obsessed do it the most.    Tim needs "crutches", such as continuous alcohol, so this could be another one.   He seems to be going for a sort of evil car salesman look, with the dark slicked-back hair and dark clashing suits...

[Taeylor Collins]

Great comments guys!

6/29/70

I find myself sickened that Barnabas cannot go after someone his own age even if it's not Julia. Yeah, yeah I know he is supposed to be 25-30 but he doesn't look it.  But as MB recently pointed out with Curtis at the helm it would never happen for him to be with Julia or someone older than he.  I would have loved to have seen someone else take the reigns of the show completely as Curtis planned for the 1991 show.  I think Violet Wells would have been a wonderful head writer; I love her episodes and she turned out some classics in my humble opinion.  I know he wasn't there the last few months of the show but he was still in control most likely of what was going to the screen.  We all know he was upset with Grayson leaving for her "lift" and that was around November-December.  So there was some of his presence felt toward the end.  This is a bit off topic but I find myself being annoyed by Curtis more and more.  Listening to the commentary on Burnt Offerings he struck me as a total smart ass who often interrupted the co-writer of the film when he seemed to disagree with him.  It was most annoying. I personally don't think I would have gotten on with the man.  Maybe I am reading him wrong?

“You are very lovely!”  *COUGH* There are more coughs on DS than any show but I suppose if we watched any other soap from that era we would hear the same thing?

It seems on DS there has been at least 5 characters /actors so far that start out with non speaking roles. Quentin, Beth, Roxanne, Adam and Istavan, the later who never spoke! If I am forgetting anyone let me know!

Once again this Carolyn has pants on which is a cool contrast to the frilly Carolyn from RT. And as usually Nancy Barrett has the crying down pat. She is one of the best criers on the show for sure as Nancy is such a wonderful character actress who I wish would have done more film and television roles.  I really enjoyed Jonathan's performance today as Barnabas.  He could have easily bitten Carolyn to keep her quiet but he didn't.  I felt it showed the audience once again why they fell in love with Barnabas.  He played his guilt ridden feelings very well and he and Nancy Barrett turned in the best performances in my eyes on this episode.

There was an obvious stop tape or cut as the actors needed to get back to the Old House.  I watched an interview recently on one of the DVDS in which a technical director or something talked about how this eventually came into play as time went on.  They also used pre tape segments for those who may not have the interviews.

[MagnusTrask]

It seems on DS there has been at least 5 characters /actors so far that start out with non speaking roles. Quentin, Beth, Roxanne, Adam and Istavan, the later who never spoke! If I am forgetting anyone let me know!

How about Josette, Gerard, Daphne (?), and don't forget the guy Tate created out of thin air!

[Taeylor Collins]

Well I didn't point out [spoiler]Gerard/Daphne [/spoiler] as I said so far and that is spoiler territory! Actually Tate's guy could talk and [spoiler]was about to until Tate came in to kill him.[/spoiler]  And yes I forgot about Josette!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Here's a rather odd voiceover promo for this ep:

"...Enter the mysterious world of Dark Shadows Monday as Barnabas Collins brings Roxanne to the mausoleum and shows her the plaque bearing Angelique's name. That's Dark Shadows here on ABC..."

Considering that Barnabas never even took Roxanne to that mausoleum - they went to the old Collins mausoleum where he showed her the secret room - one has to certainly wonder if ABC's promo department or someone who worked on DS was smoking something that caused them to hallucinate? Either that or if they were creating their copy from early outlines of the DS scripts that were somehow changed before the eps were actually taped? Otherwise a promo like this that heralds an event that never took place on the show makes no sense whatsoever! Though it also makes no sense that there wasn't someone whose job it was to check the voiceovers for accuracy. But then...