lately i have noticed some changes to our personal profile options.

for one it used to tell when a member was "last active".that seems to have disappeared.

another was the "show topics started by this member" option.i found that option to be particularly useful because often when i have a question about the show i forget if i already asked it and what the replies were and that was a handy tool rather than having to re-read all of my posts(which are now in the hundreds vs. the 50 or so topics i've started).

why were these options changed?

i'm sure i'm going to get majorly spoilered across this topic but there has been a development that has put me in quite a quandry.

i'm currently watching the 1897 storyline(specifically dvd set 14)which deals with laura collins.upon meeting her in 1897 barnabas recalls another laura collins(in an orange riding habit!)that he knew as a child in the 1700's(who is also of course the same laura collins who showed up in 1966 to claim david).

then he goes on to tell a tale that goes completely outside what had been any established fact upto this point.
specifically that his uncle jeremiah(who remember was supposed to be close in age to barnabas according to what was told in the 1795 storyline)had a wife before josette.laura stockbridge had been his first wife!

this threw me into a tailspin!there had never been any mention of this "first wife" ever from what i can recall.i watched the first laura collins story some time ago but from what i can remember she had been l.murdoch stockbridge then l.murdoch radcliffe and was not a collins until she married roger(presumably sometime in the mid-1950's).this throws the whole "cannon" out of whack majorly!

are there any thoughts/explainations that might help me out here?

all the fuss the silver filigreed fountain pen caused a few weeks ago made me think.

d.s. fans understand a certain "language".i wasn't thinking so much about specific names(collins)or types of creatures(vampires)but more in terms of commonplace things and ideas that resonate with fans but wouldn't have any special signifigance to anyone else.

i was thinking about fountain pens and foundling homes and afghans.about telephones and teleprompters and bleeder valves.about sedatives and seances and sleeveless dresses.about music boxes and medallions and mausoleums.about kinescope and canneries and caretaker's cottages.

i know there's lots more.what can you guys think of?

i just started dvd collection 13(oh you'll hear more later!)

so i am just becoming aquainted with miss sabrina stuart.here she appears to be some sort of psychic invalid in the care of her dear brother nedbradfordjeffpeterclarkstuart.

now a stand-up kind of fellow all around he also appears to be her primary caregiver.so i would assume that he is responsible for this poor girl's grooming as well.so i wonder what made him think that applying an inch thick layer of seafoam green eyeshadow was doing her any favors?

i guess that we're also suppossed to assume that the visual implication of the phylis diller style fright wig is the shock of witnessing the transformation of chris jennings caused her hair to go white.

but i'd like to think that if my sister was in my care i would run a brush through her hair once in awhile.wouldn't you?

and finally why in the year 1969 in this sad girl being pushed around in a 19th century wood and cane wheelchair?was this a visual metphor for the storyline to come?

after viewing the final alexandra moltke vicki episodes a few months ago i took a "breather" from watching the show.now i'm moving foreward.

however i just couldn't bear to watch the betsy durkin vicki episodes.alexandra is vicki to me.and i just didn't care enough about adam's tedious saga to watch the conclusion of it.
so i skipped ahead(something i never did before)to dvd volume 12(beginning with ep.656).the start of the quentin storyline.also my first dvd(i always watched on vid.).

here maggie is ensconced as collinwood governess.she's just moved in.aside from everything else there are some hilarious continuity and prop gaffes here.when maggie goes to unpack "her" clothes in her new bedroom she pulls out of the suitcase vicki's red a-line dress with the purple sleeves.it was an oft worn fave of vic's...did they think no one would notice .then she goes to the wardrobe and nothing says victoria winters like a closet full of sleeveless dresses.later in the same episode "maggie's" blue suitcase is packed as amy jenning's for a trip to boston.could they really only spring for one suitcase?

it was interesting to see maggie in vicki's old "governess" persona since after the 1795 storyline they sort of dropped that part of the character and vicki's focus was almost exclusively on jeff.as much as i like maggie i still would love to see how vicki would have handled this new storyline.

these were also joe haskell's final episodes and it was so sad how they treated this character.

anywho since i skipped ahead several episodes i have a few questions.how was vicki's disappearance explained to everyone or was it at all?how did maggie end up at collinwood?

all that said so far i like what i see.no more adam and i simply cannot love that enough.and the david and amy stuff is cool too.david suffered a major slight after 1795 and here he's given a storyline again.

with a few exceptions like joan bennett(who was a major hollywood star in the 1940's) and david selby(a major prime-time soap star in the 1980's)most of the cast of d.s. had relatively low-key careers in terms of mass audience recognition(at least before and after the show left the air).

some were well known stage actors but most of that work wasn't filmed.so unless you were there you never saw it.

but i was thinking...does this in a way endear them further to "us"?does it make them more "ours" than if they had had careers that cast them in numerous starring roles on other films and t.v. shows where they played other characters that became better known?

would we be as breathlessly excited at the thought a grayson hall or diana millay or lara parker sighting somewhere on the dial if they appeared on different shows all the time?or does the relative rarity of it add to the allure for us?

because this is the most prolific body of work for many of the cast members they can be defined by the characters they played here and that's "ours"(as they began to drift from the mass-conciousness when the show left the air 30-odd years ago).

i've never seen alexandra moltke or nancy barrett or kathyn leigh scott in anything else so to me they are vicki and carolyn and maggie.

anywho...just a thought.

the topic on george mitchell got me thinking about matthew morgan.
over the weekend i re-watched the episodes where matthew kidnapped vicki and that ultimately lead to his demise.i hadn't seen them in years.

they were a very tense and suspensful group of episodes.i remembered them as only a few episodes but this plot lasted for nearly three weeks.i thought it was more disturbing that this young girl was at the hands of a desperately disturbed man as oppossed to later storylines when the captor is some sort of monster(which can be read as being "cartoonish").by the end of it both characters looked like hell.it was interesting to see the old house before barnabas and julia held court there.very different feel.

i also thought that these were a very transitional group of episodes.the show was just evolving into what it became.
carolyn(who was a b*tch across these eps.)and joe's relationship was in it's death throes.maggie was begining a not-so-subtle flirtation with joe.burke was realizing the extent of his feelings for vicki.josette was making her presence known.and of course this ultimately being a ghost story it was steadily moving away from being a darker version of a standard soap into something else entirely.then there is the first appearance of laura collins(in a hat and gloves no less!).there was something so strange about diana millay's delivery that i can't take my eyes off her when she's onscreen.

there was some nice attention to detail here.the collinwood pantry was well stocked and in the exterior shots of david running up to the old house he held a grocery bag in his hands.which meant that these were shot with this specific storyline in mind.and i love the diner set!later it would have become absolete(it's hard to imagine angelique and nicholas conspiring over grilled-cheese sandwiches)but it was a great set.

because of the strange way the show is marketed(with the pre-barnabas episodes being treated almost like another show)there are lots of fans who never saw this.which is sad because thayer david fans should see this very vivid portrayal of matthew morgan...so different from the urbane professor stokes

anywho...thoughts on these episodes?

last weekend i found a four dollar copy of suspiria at the flea-market.
i had never seen it but heard alot about it.suposedly the ill-fated 2004 version of d.s. was stylistically inspired by it.plus it featured joan bennett so i took it.

the person i bought it from warned me not to watch it alone because it was so scary.now i didn't find it all that scary but loved the style and mood of it.the super-saturated color palette and musical score gave it a very distinctive feeling.and the sets and locations were eerily beautiful.

joan bennett didn't have as much presence in it as thought she would.she was almost a cameo.but i did think she had aged alot since d.s. and the movie was filmed only a few years after d.s. left the air.they revived liz's beehive hairdo for the film which was a nice touch.
according to the bennetts,an acting family the reviews for joan were not kind(one critic likened her to a "wax-work princess margaret" and another "a programmed grand-mother doll").

what do you guys think of the film?