1840 ben stokes question

[michael c]

i am currently trying...for the third time and with limited pleasure...to get through the 1840 episodes.

i'm confused about ben stokes status. here he's still serving as some sort of manservant at collinwood...


but when professor stokes first showed up in 1968 didn't he tell everybody that ben had been released from his indentured servitude by joshua, granted a piece of land outside town, and lived out his old age there?

i suppose continuity is not the series' strong point(especially by 1970)but how did stokes' status change? this time period always has me at sixes and sevens.

[MagnusTrask]

Sorry you're not enjoying elderly Ben, Daniel, and the Gabriel-Gerard sparring as much as I do.   In DS rewritten time-lines are always a possibility, but you could easily say that after many years in town, Daniel invited him to live out his advanced old age (as opposed to his early old age) as a full member of the household at Collinwood.   I don't think he works for them in any sense any longer.   This is his retirement.   

Since his time at Collinwood ends unpleasantly, it might have been considered necessary just to say he lived out his life in Collinsport.   The family history isn't exactly accurate.   If Elliot was also going by journals of Ben's, maybe the last few pages were torn out my the family, or maybe he lost interest inmaking entries by the time he moved into Collinwood.

[michael c]

i'm also confused as to why daniel is so "aged" and "senile"...


by 1840 only about 40-odd years had passed since the events of 1795(96?97?)when he was just a small child.


everything about this storyline throws me off.

[MagnusTrask]

Daniel could be about 60 years old.   Even now, when people survive a lot longer generally, 60 is old enough to be considered "old" by plenty of people.   He has a mental disturbance, but even if it was referred to as senility associated with age (and I'm not sure they did), that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what it really was.  Maybe it's after-effects of traumas, from the events of 1795, or what happened with his wife.   Or maybe it's medical, but not age-related.  Or it IS senility/Alzheimer's, which has been known to affect people in their 50s.

Daniel doesn't appear to be infirm from old age.   They keep him locked up, and there's nothing for him to do in that room but stay in bed, really.  Once he's out, he walks around well enough.

[David]

By late 1970, most of the DS personnel were tired of doing the show and wanted to move on. They were going thru the motions, but their hearts weren't in it anymore.
The writing was no longer what it had been, with established facts being routinely ignored.
The cast was phoning it in.

I wish they had simply stuck with it to the 5 year anniversary, given the show a proper ending, and then let it go.
DS, which reached heights of incredible brilliance during 1795, 1897 and The Haunting of Collinwood stories, has one of the worst final fadeouts in soap opera history.
A shame really, when one considers how great the show had once been.

[Gerard]

I really didn't see any contradiction in what T. Eliot Stokes said about his ancestor's history (having his own parcel of land) and Ben's living in Collinwood in 1840.  I just figured that he remained on good, if not increasingly friendly terms with the surviving Collins family and interacted with it frequently, and by 1840 (or a bit earlier) he was too old to live by himself so the Collins of that time had him move in to help care for him.  Being a proud man, he still wanted to help out around the house in exchange for their roof, food and care.

As for Daniel, he would've been at least 50 in 1840 which, at that time, was still an old age, even among the gentry.  The geriatric effects would not be surprising.

Gerard

[michael c]

i agree david...

the whole enterprise by this point just feels spent. stale. played out.


in the show's final year they covered five different time periods. at the end of the day i just don't care about yet another temporary cast of characters.

i'm just trying desperately to plod through it so i can say i finished the series.

[MagnusTrask]

I think that after several disappointing storylines, starting with the falling apart of Leviathans, 1840 was where DS rallied, and brought the vitality and magic back, for awhile.  I don't see how anyone can have endured through those previous storylines, and not feel relief and a certain amount of excitement, when Julia finds herself in 1840.

I'd have to include 1968 amongst those disappointing and ridiculous storylines.   There had already been lots and lots of problematic DS by the point 1840 started.   I have more appreciation of 1841PT than I used to, also.  It's not really my kind of story, but I can now see that it was well done.

[michael c]

1968 was for sure an unparalleled disaster...

but i actually have a certain fondness for the leviathan period(although, yes, it falls apart). i love 1970 parallel time. for me it's the final period on the series that feels energized and original.

things start to go south for me with the "summer of 1970" episodes. it very much feels like a retread. a feel that continues through this period.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Say what you will about the '68 storyline, but I loved the whole VampAng aspect of it. It was such poetic justice for Angelique to have to suffer under the same curse she'd placed on Barnabas and for her to have to exist under Nicholas' thumb after she'd made so many people's lives such a living hell back in 1795/96.

And as for Ben, I've often thought that perhaps his presence at Collinwood could be related to Carrie's parents' deaths. Perhaps they all resided in the same house on that piece of land that Prof. Stokes spoke of, and perhaps after they died it became too much for Ben (and also Carrie) to handle, both emotionally and physically, so he and Carrie moved to Collinwood.

[MagnusTrask]

For me, the stuff that happened in the Old House in 1970PT was more interesting, and the Collinwood stuff was very hard to get through.   We only got Collinwood for a long time, of course, while Barnabas was incapacitated.   Then always-drunk Tim Stokes comes along, and things get more twisted, in a good way.

1995 was interesting.   1970 with Hallie and David was painful.   My theory is that someone in charge decided to give up even the pretense of new stories, and decided on a long term strategy of giving viewers a long, dragged-out reprise of all the elements that were popular in the past, recycled, just barely altered enough for viewers not to see obvious self-plagiarism.   This was the extended storyline of 1995/Summer 1970/1840.   They sort of got away with it....

[Uncle Roger]

All soaps recycle storylines at some point. One Life to Live revisited Viki's DID disorder numerous times, eventually passing the DID to her daughter.

DS moved at a much faster pace than its contemporaries so it began repeating stuff much sooner than other shows. Barnabas repeats himself with virtually every KLS character than comes along. The writing was fresher then so it wasn't quite so glaring.

Daniel's senility in 1840 may have been accelerated by [spoiler]his murder of his wife. If I remember correctly, only Ben (and Angelique later) were aware that Daniel had offed Harriet. Sorry we never got to see them as a couple onscreen. They sound like one of the Collins' most dysfunctional relationships.[/spoiler]

[tragic bat]

I agree that 1970PT was the last good storyline.  I've never rewatched 1840 after seeing it for the first time (in the scifi run around 2000) as I felt it was derivative, absurd, and only takes away from earlier parts of the show, it doesn't add anything worthwhile. [spoiler]The ludicrous and disgusting way that Ben is later dispatched is one example, of which there are too many for me to list.[/spoiler] At times not even the actors could take it seriously anymore.

[MagnusTrask]

I agree that 1970PT was the last good storyline.  I've never rewatched 1840 after seeing it for the first time (in the scifi run around 2000) as I felt it was derivative, absurd, and only takes away from earlier parts of the show, it doesn't add anything worthwhile. [spoiler]The ludicrous and disgusting way that Ben is later dispatched is one example, of which there are too many for me to list.[/spoiler] At times not even the actors could take it seriously anymore.

The thing that semi-ruins most of 1970PT for me is that the two basic situations in the plot are lifted from "Rebecca" and Dr Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde.   Everyone knows Jeckyl and Hyde, but I wonder if 1970PT is great mostly for those who don't know the Rebecca story.

[spoiler]Ben's death certainly was disgusting, but that's horror for you.   Judah taking control of Ben to decapitate him seems horrific to me,[/spoiler] and just what Judah would want to do, not ludicrous.

[DarkLady]

I always thought that since Ben was so kind to Daniel in 1795, Daniel repaid the favor by inviting Ben to live in the Great House, where he would be well taken care of. I thought it was very touching that they let him have the portrait of Barnabas, which is in the place of honor above his mantel--another nice touch, because a servant normally might not get a room with a fireplace. [spoiler]The way he is dispatched is pretty awful, though, and pretty gratuitous.[/spoiler]

Daniel isn't only senile [spoiler]but also pretty thoroughly insane. It was sad that the little boy who wanted so desperately to go home to New York with his sister well again would end up decrepit and mad in a house he must have hated. I agree that when he murdered his wife it must have made his insanity even worse, but somewhere it's implied that he originally started losing his mind when Joshua told him about the thing sleeping in the coffin in the secret room.[/spoiler]

It's true that although 1840 isn't the best of the storylines, it's still entertaining to watch Gabriel and Gerard and Quentin and Samantha too.