Discuss - Ep #0592

[Watching Project]

Robservations #592

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

Re: Discuss - Ep #0592

[DarkLady]

Barnabas and Julia now sound like the parents of a teenager. He shouldn’t have been allowed in here, Julia tells Barnabas. He won’t listen to reason, Barnabas replies.

Carolyn tells Adam about her rather trippy delirium in the lab, where she seemed to see disconnected body parts.

Is Carolyn dead? Everyone seems to think so, and she certainly looks it. Adam is sure that Barn and Julia are to blame and promises to make them and all the Collinses pay. Fed up with Adam’s threats, Barnabas retorts, You think no one else will miss her, only you--because you think it is your loss. Well, it isn’t. She is part of me, not you. She is one of my family, and I feel as deeply about her as you _think_ you do. You were the one who wanted her as a life force. If anyone killed her, it was you. Barnabas’s words only make Adam angrier, and he reiterates his threat. Barnabas tries to keep Adam away from the stairs, but gets beaten up for his pains (and takes his own fall partway down the basement stairs).

But when Julia goes up to Josette's room to get her medical bag, both Carolyn and the multicolor afghan are gone....

[MagnusTrask]

I noticed that about the afghan too, DL!   Quoting my notes: "Carolyn and the black afghan disappear!"  I was going to add, dum dum DUM!

This is a good one, despite all the Barnabas/Julia scenes continuing to be sloppy and bad and awkward.  I wonder if they're forgetting good lines and winging it clumsily because they can't commit to this storyline, or if the lines really were bad on paper.   I've been thinking today that there are enough good moments and good acting and writing, in spurts, that if everyone had just tried harder, and committed, this storyline could have been made to work.

Sci-fi sounds during the Experiment in the redo....  the 60 second countdown is silly.   Then...... it fails, Carolyn is carried upstairs to a bed, and while Adam is there.......  "!!!" is what I wrote in the notes.   I'm hit over the head with this amazingly abstract and indescribable sequence of images and cryptic utterances from Carolyn!   This was actually very imaginative and daring.   It seems to be the writer's ruminations on what a disturbing and awful process having life drained from you must be, and how it was unsurvivable, at least for her.   It started with an image of "Eve", and I wondered if Carolyn was somehow sharing experience with a slightly, unsuccessfully reviving Eve, feeling what Eve felt for a few moments.  The rest... it seems to reach beyond anything literally understandable or describable.   Good going, DS.

What were Carolyn's last words?  I couldn't make them out.   Farewell, Carolyn Stoddard.

Why doesn't Adam begin his rampage by killing Julia and Barnabas?  Maybe because he really isn't murderous.

Jonathan Frid gathers himself together when presented with a good speech... and we hear what just might be Barnabas's first moment of utter moral outrage since 1795.   He delivers this very well, with practically explosive indignation.   It's well written.   So how many other similarly good lines in this episode did we lose because they weren't delivered?

[DarkLady]

I like what you say about the Experiment, Magnus. Somebody maybe tried to imagine what it really would be like.

Here's what I have for Carolyn's last words to Adam: I felt alone, lost in a fog. I saw disconnected body parts (which we see in a trippy sequence--they looked like plaster casts). They seemed to converge and want my soul.

That's all I've got--does it help?

[MagnusTrask]

I like what you say about the Experiment, Magnus. Somebody maybe tried to imagine what it really would be like.

Here's what I have for Carolyn's last words to Adam: I felt alone, lost in a fog. I saw disconnected body parts (which we see in a trippy sequence--they looked like plaster casts). They seemed to converge and want my soul.

That's all I've got--does it help?

Thanks.  I'm interested in everything she said.   I think she said something less abstract and more personal to Adam right at the end, though.

[DarkLady]

If she did, I didn't make a note of it. Maybe one of our colleagues who has the DVDs can help out.....

[alwaysdavid]

Adam takes Carolyn upstairs where it is warm?  A drafty room with unlit fireplace as opposed to an underground even temperature basement full of hot equipment. Makes a lot of sense.  Carolyn dreamed of body parts that wanted her life and she dies.  I we'll remembered this episode from the first time as it all seemed kind of modern artsy that was shocking to the old folks of the time. Carolyn is dead and Adam goes off to kill Vickie and the family.  Nobody tries to stop him.

[Ronny G]

I thought the experiment lab scene was disturbing because Carolyn really sounded in agony!
Then I wondered if Carolyn and Adam are in love then why does Adam need to create a mate since he already has Carolyn?
I was also creeped out by Carolyn describing her near death experience with all the disembodied body parts floating around. Well done!