Discuss - Ep #0465

[Watching Project]

Robservations #465

[michael c]

what can i say here.the 'car crash' episode.

i'm not doing the "watching project" but this episode left me speechless when i watched it.

first vicki is acting really,really weird.i know she's under barnabas' control but alexandra played the character in a way she never had before and never did again.she seemed strangely "in control" and actually bended barnabas to her wishes and was quite manipulative even.

then the sight of jonathan and alexandra squished into this tiny fake car was just too much!

then the drama of the crash.a car crash on dark shadows.a show that had just sent it's heroine two hundred years into the past and the best they could come up with was a car crash.at the same time i loved the bizzare "ordinariness" of it.like everyone shopping at 'brewster's' during the leviathan storyline.

remember how i said the week or so of shows leading up to the 1795 storyline had been something of a "red herring"?they threw in alot of stuff that didn't really effect the storyline as a whole or the continuity of the show.this week of shows had the same quality for me.there was something in effect "false" about these episodes.

they're picking up threads of the moments leading to the seance but they're not really "real" because none of it is going to matter from this moment on.everything and everyone is going to change in their essential function on the show.julia's haircut is more monumental than one thinks.

the business with barnabas biting vicki in these episodes really bugs me.not only because his reluctance to bite her was a pivotal part of the storyline but more because ultimately it was unnecessary.it doesn't really go anywhere.nothing really interesting or permanent becomes of it.it's a big,fat red herring.

but i absolutely love this episode!

[Lydia]

Yes, the scene in the car was very strange.  It just seemed wrong for Vicky to be driving, and unmanly for Barnabas to be the passenger.  I loved the way Barnabas handled his cane in the car.  All in all, he seemed completely out of place.  And the crash itself seemed greater than it should have been.  Vicky couldn't have been going that fast.

I liked Vicky's purple dress.  I like anything purple.  Especially prose.

So they're tearing down a building in Collinsport that's roughly two centuries old.  To put up a supermarket, perhaps?  I expressed my admiration of that courthouse a few weeks back, but beauty must give way to progress.  The 60's were a fine, fine decade.  Wasn't there some plan afoot to flood the Grand Canyon in order to provide electrical power to the southwest?

[MagnusTrask]

Around here they bulldoze anything old, too.

[EmeraldRose]

I thought it was great when Joe brought the charm bracelet back to Vicki. It's more proof that she really did go to 1795.
 
This was the first time that the same actor played two different characters in the same episode.  Joel Crothers played both Joe and Nathan. I enjoyed seeing Nathan Forbes again. I guess Vicki must have been psychic, because she had no way of knowing that Nathan was dead on that date in 1795. Or...  Maybe Nathan came to her in the dream and/or made her have the dream, just to taunt her. 

I agree, Barnabas and Vicki did look strange in the car.  It was quite amusing that TPTB at DS decided to use a typical soap opera plot device of a car crash on this show. Of course, Barnabas couldn't be the driver, because he came from an era when there were no cars, and he didn't bother to learn how to drive.

----- Sally -----

[MagnusTrask]

Really?   I thought he drove in one of his earliest episodes, but then I only have those early spliced-together highlights tapes they sold before they knew people would want every second of DS.   No driving in those.   No cow draining either.

He at least thinks he's learned to drive after 1897 when he 'encounters' Quentin again.   Did he take lessons and we didn't see it?    Well, it doesn't seem as if he did.

[Joeytrom]

In later 1968, in an episode where they are arranging a "dinner party" at the Old House to lure Nicholas Blair there while Barnabas checks out Blair's House, it is implied that Barnabas will be driving to Blair's house, so he apparently learned by then.  Perhaps Julia taught him off camera once he became human.

[michael c]

yeah b. learns to drive at some point because...

Spoiler:

for reasons i do not recall remember how barnabas "accidently" drives right into "grant douglas" in front of the antique shop during the leviathan episodes.

[IluvBarnabas]

Hmm....I wonder if David was playing around with the old bleeder valve again...

Spooky dream....Nathan was both taunting and menacing...but also funny in a bizarre kind of way especially when he's hitting on Vicki and calls Peter a "puny sort of fellow" not worthy of her. I guess even in death, for Nathan, once a womanizing scumbag always a womanizing scumbag.

[Roland]

It seems to take an awfully long time for the two of them to drive to the same spot, Eagle Hill Cemetary, that people seem to walk to in no time flat.   

Has poor Burke, still apparently missing in the Amazon jungle, been completely forgotten by everyone at this point?   Vicki not only never asks about him (like have they found the body) when she gets back, but is already ranting on about some other guy name Peter Bradford whom she now claims to love.   

[IluvBarnabas]

It seems to take an awfully long time for the two of them to drive to the same spot, Eagle Hill Cemetary, that people seem to walk to in no time flat.   

Has poor Burke, still apparently missing in the Amazon jungle, been completely forgotten by everyone at this point?   Vicki not only never asks about him (like have they found the body) when she gets back, but is already ranting on about some other guy name Peter Bradford whom she now claims to love.   

In episode 365 Elizabeth more or less confirms that Burke's body WAS indeed found, that 16 bodies were found in the wreck, the same amount of people that were scheduled to fly on the plane. Vicki refused to accept it at first, but now, apparently, she has.

Remember when she went back to 1795, she was there for a few months in that time, even though by present day, she was only gone for a few moments.

So I guess Vicki must have accepted that Burke was really gone somewhere along the way during her time in 1795.

[Midnite]

In episode 365 Elizabeth more or less confirms that Burke's body WAS indeed found, that 16 bodies were found in the wreck, the same amount of people that were scheduled to fly on the plane. Vicki refused to accept it at first, but now, apparently, she has.

It was #364, the ep preceding the seance.

Vicki refused to accept it at first, but now, apparently, she has.
...
So I guess Vicki must have accepted that Burke was really gone somewhere along the way during her time in 1795.

I think it was falling for Peter (who apparently was her true love, ugh) that helped her come to terms with the loss.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Nathan was ... funny in a bizarre kind of way especially when he ... calls Peter a "puny sort of fellow" not worthy of her.

Truer words were never spoken by Nathan - in life or in death. 

[Midnite]

Truer words were never spoken by Nathan - in life or in death.