Discuss - Ep #0528

[Watching Project]

Robservations #528

And if you'd care to look back, the first WP discussion topic for this ep:

Re: Discuss - Ep #0528

[dom]

Good lord, Jeff is stupid. Vicki says - "You had the dream!" Yeah, dumbass. Vicki challenges Jeff on his demands that she stay. I can hardly blame Jeff for thinking the way he does but it still doesn't make him likable.
Fun stuff, Blair & Blair. Just about everything he says is quotable. And a bullied Cass/Ange is always fun. Nicholas fails as Ange did, to keep Vicki at home, lol - very nice touch.
Cute 'girl talk' scene between Maggie & Vicki. 
Cass/Ange finds Vicki through witchcraft and engages the old rose water trick. She still hasn't learned her lesson. Stupid witch. (Pretend that was a typo.) Maggie pulls a Mighty Mouse and saves the day - er - night, by foiling Angelique as she casts a spell over a sleeping Vicki. Nicholas is not going to like this...

Mrs. Collins looks good in her new outfit with the sparkly buttons. HAA uses the teleprompter as much as everyone else. Perhaps it's time to stop making note of it. Everyone did well - no complaints really. Fun/interesting episode.

[DarkLady]

I love the scene with Nicholas and Cassandra: a long and hilarious scene in the famous gazebo (site of so many rendezvous, right through the 1841 parallel-time story!) between Nicholas and Cassandra. You interrupted me when I was doing something important, she says crossly. Vicki was about to leave, and I was trying to stop her. Amused, Nicholas comments, How commonplace you have become! You’re like some suburban housewife, preoccupied with little _human_ worries. Everyone in the house knows how you feel--especially that you’re still in love with Barnabas Collins. Don’t you start that with me, she retorts. He only grasps her by the arm and warns her, Don’t speak to me that way! He doesn’t care (quite the opposite) that he’s hurting her and lets her go only when she acknowledges that she’s there because he allowed her to be. You like Collinwood too much, he says accusingly. Perhaps you really just want to stay and keep tormenting Barnabas. That isn’t true! she insists. I _will_ restart the dream curse and make Barnabas a vampire again--but I’ll need your help. I think you’ve lost your powers! Nicholas scoffs. You can’t even keep a girl from leaving a house! I’m just as powerful as ever! Cassandra retorts. To prove it she produces a pretty little blue glass vial. I’ve made a potion, she says. You know it well-- But Nicholas refuses to help her: I’m much too talented to spend my time drugging drinks. Cassandra pleads, Vicki would never accept a drink from me. This only reinforces Nicholas’s opinion of her, but eventually he relents. All right,  he says, I’ll help you--this once. I’ll never forget how incompetent you’ve become, he warns her--and with us, never is a _very_ long time.

Fun slumber party at the Evans cottage! Vicki is wearing a prim, heroine-blue nightgown with elbow-length sleeves; Maggie is wearing an ever so slightly racy sleeveless gown in a flowered print. Maggie inadvertently rescues Vicki from Angelique's old rose water spell. Really, for someone who's supposed to be so powerful, Angelique certainly is unoriginal, isn't she.

[MagnusTrask]

I'm keeping my ears peeled this time around for any clues explaining why Nick is there at all.  He keeps going on about how petty Ang's goal is, yet there he is ... I was going to say there he is helping her do it, but he even seems disinclined to help.

So far there's been mention of a "bargain".   Blair and El Diablo allowed her to come to 1968.   Now we hear that a specific argument was made to them by Ang, including that something (presumably Barnabas escaping his curse) would have set a "bad precedent".   

So, I think Ang said, "Let me go back up top, to keep Barnabas cursed.  You don't want ordinary doctors treating people for demonic acts now, do you?   Mankind is supposed to tremble before evil, not be innoculated against it!"

So Nick was sent to enable Ang to re-enter the world, by placing her portrait at the antique shop.   Then he goes and does other important evil stuff, or just hangs out with El Diablo playing billiards or something, looking in occasionally, or hovering and watching the whole time, though he comes across as a guy with better things to do.   Eventually he catches himself up on the situation, or is alerted specifically by Ang's tree exorcism, the ripples of which are felt in Hell.

So he makes a personal appearance, to reactivate Ang, not because her goal is important to him, but because E.D. agreed to it, and he's the boss.   Nick wants this over and done with.   He actually asked one of those sane questions I thought DS never allowed to be asked:  Why didn't you just re-curse Barnabas immediately?   Presumably his attention was elsewhere back then, and he'd expected Ang just to get on with it.

I never liked the idea that Nick was involved just to "do evil" in the form of making things tough for Barnabas and the collins family, which is all I'd thought it was.   That stupid (a word I don't like or use much) goal hung over 1968 for me, and ruined it.   How do the Collinses rate special attention from the Devil?   Because they're rich?   Things now seem to make a bit more sense.   I look forward to more hints...

Again with the rose water?   I think they had her use it so viewers would get some satisfaction at seeing another 1795 thing.   The 1795 nostalgia (for ratings?) is just going to go on and on and on....

Many good Nick put-downs of Angelandra.  He really despises her!   Safe to say, I think, that they aren't really brother and sister...

[DarkLady]

I love your post, MT, and I pretty much agree. My favorite part is this:

So Nick was sent to enable Ang to re-enter the world, by placing her portrait at the antique shop.   Then he goes and does other important evil stuff, or just hangs out with El Diablo playing billiards or something, looking in occasionally, or hovering and watching the whole time, though he comes across as a guy with better things to do.

[MagnusTrask]

Thanks, DL.

[alwaysdavid]

Why does Not Cassandra just cast a spell to keep Vickie ther instead of threats of Roger when it was Elizabeth who hired her.  Then Nicholas wants her ASAP so Vickie gets away.  Vickie has a new suitcase and Jeff whisks her away from the spiked sherry. So Angelique decides to use spikes perfume and Maggie interrupts sending the blonde into thin air.