Discuss - Ep #0759

[Watching Project]

Robservations #759

[Pansity]

Oops, I'm ahead again. But then again I'm out of order because my disk acted up and I had to restart it, so decided to leave watching 758 for tomorrow.

Grayson voiceover.  Back to the duel of the gods (and their minions).   Question comes to mind, what great favors does Ra expect from Laura to continue going to bat for her when things go badly?  Doesn’t seem bringing two little kids into the fold is worth one of the old gods going to all this trouble. 

Angelique definintely has one of those cat that ate the canary smirks all through this first scene. Interesting, given what’s about to happen, that she’s able to be so calm and even welcoming of it.  Guess she gets a kick of out not letting Quentin  in on things.  He’s there, has no clue why,  but the more he sees of Angie’s powers the more he’s thinking what he could do if he had her powers (whether or not he’s thinking in terms of the curse, or just being his greedy widdle self is open to conjecture).

Then we see Laura’s ceremony progress, and  when Quentin feels Angelique’s arm, he knows something is VERY wrong, and keeps demanding to know what’s happening.  In a way it would make more sense to have let him in on it. Not knowing what ‘s going to happen and why it is or isn’t part of the plan would, you would think, be a liability.  Knowing would lessen the chance of him messing things up with the wrong reaction.  Or, maybe Angelique knows  that if HE knows, Laura will know he knows,  either through her powers or because he messes something up.

Ok, now this is the second time he’s watched  a woman burn to death.   That sort of thing could really give someone a phobia.    Hmm given what we know about Quentin being an abject coward, interesting point to ponder is whether he’s horrified on Angelique’s behalf or whether he’s only scared he’ll be next.

Dirk the cavalry barges into the cottage, of course after it’s all over.  Roughs her up a bit when he’s trying to “help her” as well.  LOL amusing accidental turn of phrase when he overheard her talking to Ra about how she’s displeased him and he wants her back: “”Laura, no one wants you.”    Don’t think anyone at Collinwood would argue with THAT sentiment.

Of course the first person to come into the Old House after the burning is Magda.  JUST the person a freaked out Quentin would most want to see.  He’s really in shock, and it doesn’t take Magda long to see something is terribly wrong.  Of course her first thought is he stumbled over Barnabas, but then she finds out what really happened. Hmm  this actually seems like some kind of concern, he wants to stay and let Barnabas know.  Magda, though, wants him gone, and points out that if Laura had the power to burn Angelique, with all her powers as a witch, “just THINK what she can do to YOU”.  She just has waay too much fun scaring him away and telling him to run, which he does, like the scared little boy in over his head that he really is.

Someone needs to SMACK Barnabas (again).  He’s so one track mind on what’s going on with HIM that he doesn’t even consider that something might have happened that he needs to know about. At least he finally  showed some sense and listened.  Great Magda scene, she shows a lot of smarts and common sense, pointing out quite rightly if Laura had told, they’d know already because someone would have come.  Noticed, though that she didn’t include Dirk on the list of people Laura could have told.

And it’s the attack of the cheesy looking bat!  RD sure overacted for a gamekeeper who must see bats all the time.  Again, we have Barn taking a quick solution that comes back to (pardon the pun) bite him later.

And Laura has another new dress just to go to meet Ra. LOL yellow is appropriate for the sun god.  Wonder what happened to the party dress we only saw that once.  Nice verbal fencing between Barnabas and Laura – and nice booga booga when he opens the servants entrance door to reveal Dirk.  The audience probably guessed what would happen, but for Laura it was a complete shock.  She, like Barnabas, has trouble processing it when plans go wrong.  She’s convinced he’s powerless, but that smirk says he’s up to something – whether it will work is the only question.

GREAT ending when Laura finds an empty bed in Jamison’s room.  Not much of a stretch to see that coming.  But the laugh, and the materialization of Angelique in that lovely creepy green light is wonderful.

Jeannie

[alwaysdavid]

Grayson Hall is really good here with her glee at tormenting Quentin with his fears.  I can see why she liked playing Magda because you can see she put a lot of work into making her totally different from Julia Hoffman.
I have to say that when Barnabas reveals Dirk to Laura, that Roger Davis does his best acting as Barnabas's sprawled out limp victim. 

[Pansity]

...I have to say that when Barnabas reveals Dirk to Laura, that Roger Davis does his best acting as Barnabas's sprawled out limp victim. 

    Truer words were never said.

Jeannie

[Taeylor Collins]

Roger Davis does his best acting as Barnabas's sprawled out limp victim.

I have to ask does anyone like RD?? LOL GOOD ONE alwaysdavid!

VO: Grayson Hall

I love how Grayson sort of “whispers” her voiceovers.  Angelique is a crafty lady!  It looks as if Roger Davis has blood on his neck! Okay well now I see why—he gets bitten.  Not on screen of course.  Off Topic: I love that Angel and Spike bite men onscreen.  It wouldn't have been proper in the 60’s I guess though! 

THE LAUGH!! 

One of my favorite endings E V E R!!

[MagnusTrask]

To balance out the Roger Davis feeding frenzy a little-- I'm getting ahead of the WP here, I have to say [spoiler]I like Crazy Dirk.   Also Crazy Tate.  There are at least four DS actors who seemed to love going crazy onscreen:  M Wallace, N Barrett, R Davis, and L Edmonds.   (My favorite LE role is LE as Edward as the butler.)[/spoiler]

[Taeylor Collins]

Roger does crazy good, he just annoys me.    I personally think that [spoiler]Nancy[/spoiler] and Marie do the best crazies on the show.  However, I am partial to women!

[Midnite]

Production mistakes kept taking me right out of the episode.  Selby and RD were watching for their cue at the start of their scenes, and Grayson seemed to be getting instructions from an unseen person (she answers, "What?!") during her entrance.  In the blooper that Taeylor mentioned, RD's scarf was low enough to reveal his bite marks before he was bitten.  And LP's arm was clearly visible while Laura was trying to wake Jamison.  Sloppy, sloppy.  Not to mention RD's overplaying of the bat attack that was noted by Pansity.  And this one can't be blamed on direction or camera work, but I'd swear that when Laura ran up to the unconscious Dirk, she called him "Derek" before getting it right the 2nd time.  (The blood gushing from his wounds must've reminded her of an oil well. )  We get great storytelling, but this is not DS at its best.

Laura: "O great god Ra, why have you forsaken me?"
She has GOT to be kidding!!

Magda to Quentin:  "What do you DO here? This is a public house? You come, you go, as if you live here. You do not. Get out."
LOL, what a beatdown.  She's managing to not only berate him (which gets better, as others pointed out), but also to start working on getting him out of the Old House before Barnabas emerges from the basement; of all the DS characters, could Magda the one who's the most clever?  She definitely thinks fast on her feet, and as we saw in the cottage in the last ep (when she relieved Laura of the scarab), she lies convincingly too.

Laura to Dirk:  "I must take the children.  I promised Ra."
Huh??!  I thought she wanted the children.  I don't understand!

Had things gone differently (and they surely would have in a Barnabasless 1897), would she really have returned for Dirk?  And didn't he realize the price of admission was burning alive?

I'm assuming that the purpose of the seemingly endless window shot was to reveal that it was dusk, but it really didn't, and the crack in the pane was yet another distraction.

I'm pretty sure this was the only time somebody called this Laura a Phoenix.

Ok, now this is the second time he’s watched  a woman burn to death.   That sort of thing could really give someone a phobia.   

And they both came back, yikes.

[Pansity]

Laura: "O great god Ra, why have you forsaken me?"
She has GOT to be kidding!!

Maybe she'd like a list?  I get this mental image of Laura, after returning to Ra, being in as much hot water as Angie was when Nicky sent her back to Diabolus.  Her cunning plans are right up there with Baldrick (Black Adder)

Magda to Quentin:  "What do you DO here? This is a public house? You come, you go, as if you live here. You do not. Get out."
LOL, what a beatdown.  She's managing to not only berate him (which gets better, as others pointed out), but also to start working on getting him out of the Old House before Barnabas emerges from the basement; of all the DS characters, could Magda the one who's the most clever?  She definitely thinks fast on her feet, and as we saw in the cottage in the last ep (when she relieved Laura of the scarab), she lies convincingly too.

I'd put her right up there in the top 5 smartest characters myself.  She outthinks most of them at one time or another, and is very quick to pick up on things that happen or she is told about.

Laura to Dirk:  "I must take the children.  I promised Ra."
Huh??!  I thought she wanted the children.  I don't understand!

Sense I got is that Ra wanted the kids, and that that was part of the Phoenix thing in each one -- they had to bring the kid (in all but this case, we're only told of one male child).

Had things gone differently (and they surely would have in a Barnabasless 1897), would she really have returned for Dirk?  And didn't he realize the price of admission was burning alive?

That might be giving him too much credit for brains and for thinking ahead.  He didn't seem too swift on connecting cause and effect in other cases.

Ok, now this is the second time he’s watched  a woman burn to death.   That sort of thing could really give someone a phobia.   

And they both came back, yikes.

Was trying to answer some private correspondence this weekend, and discussion of an on line psychopath made me think of this subject.  Quentin as we first see him is a self absorbed, callous guy.  One could reasonably discuss  whether or not his manipulation of others, bullying and physical abuse take him over the line into the territory of psychopath. But his reaction to both burnings show that he's not that far gone.  He has what one would think of as a normal reaction of sick horror to watching and hearing someone burn to death.    For those who would take that normal reaction for granted as a given -- not necessarily.  The individual whose pattern of behavior made me think of this routinely told people who had experienced 9/11 in NYC (including one person who was on a cell with a friend in a Tower when the Tower imploded) how watching people falling, and seeing people on fire was the funniest thing they ever saw. That lack of anything resembling empathy or compassion is what I understand to be the clinical definition of a sociopath.

Jeannie

[Midnite]

Laura: "O great god Ra, why have you forsaken me?"
She has GOT to be kidding!!

Maybe she'd like a list?  I get this mental image of Laura, after returning to Ra, being in as much hot water as Angie was when Nicky sent her back to Diabolus.

I was thinking that Ra has come to her aid so many times, possessing Dirk and sending really old scarabs and torching witches, that she had no right to complain.  But your take works too. 

The weird thing about Laura is that had she not publicized her intention of taking the children "away," she probably wouldn't have aroused so much suspicion and would've had a better chance of succeeding.

Sense I got is that Ra wanted the kids, and that that was part of the Phoenix thing in each one -- they had to bring the kid

Ah, okay.

(in all but this case, we're only told of one male child).

You mean just one that she managed to take with her?  She gave birth to 3 sons.

That might be giving him too much credit for brains and for thinking ahead.  He didn't seem too swift on connecting cause and effect in other cases.

Dirk had the hots for Laura, that's for sure.  (No pun intended, I swear!)

Was trying to answer some private correspondence this weekend, and discussion of an on line psychopath made me think of this subject.  Quentin as we first see him is a self absorbed, callous guy.  One could reasonably discuss  whether or not his manipulation of others, bullying and physical abuse take him over the line into the territory of psychopath. But his reaction to both burnings show that he's not that far gone.  He has what one would think of as a normal reaction of sick horror to watching and hearing someone burn to death.    For those who would take that normal reaction for granted as a given -- not necessarily.  The individual whose pattern of behavior made me think of this routinely told people who had experienced 9/11 in NYC (including one person who was on a cell with a friend in a Tower when the Tower imploded) how watching people falling, and seeing people on fire was the funniest thing they ever saw. That lack of anything resembling empathy or compassion is what I understand to be the clinical definition of a sociopath.

That's part of it, though they're able to recognize empathy in others and use it to their advantage.

I'm in agreement with what you say here about Quentin's behavior.  Someone who is afraid of punishment, as Quentin was of hanging for Jenny's murder, and fears consequences, as he was of Magda's wrath, or who shows genuine pain as he did when Beth hit a nerve about a side of him that he thought was hidden, or who knows they have done something wrong even when they feel their actions were justified, as when he stared at his hands after they were the instruments of Jenny's death-- that person is demonstrating higher responses that a sociopath/psychopath (a term used now is antisocial personality disorder) cannot.  It's Q's anxieties that make me believe that he was not socipathic.  In addition to the qualities you mentioned, I'd add that he was spoiled, accustomed to getting by on his good looks, and violent, but his problems are psychological; they're not physiological or genetic and so they can be changed by experiences.  Gosh, I hope that made sense. 

[Taeylor Collins]

That made perfect sense Midnite!  And Pansity, people laughed at humans burning to death and falling?  My GOD I can't kill a bug hardly and considering what kind it is, I will usually put them outside!  I don't understand murders and people who do horrible things to other humans or animals.  I can't wrap my brain around it.  It baffles every fiber of my being.  SOMETIMES, that is why I believe there truly is EVIL roaming around and I am not a religious zealot by any means.   However, that is for another discussion!

[Pansity]

I was thinking that Ra has come to her aid so many times, possessing Dirk and sending really old scarabs and torching witches, that she had no right to complain.  But your take works too. 

Sounds to me like we pretty much have the same take.  Laura is absolutely oblivious to the fact that her own mess ups are why she keeps having to call for help.  I can't make up my mind who her cunning plans remind me more of, Blackadder or Wyle E. Coyote.  Only question I have is just how long ago she finally hit Ra's last nerve....and what kind of whoopass he's going to have waiting for her for being so annoying.

The weird thing about Laura is that had she not publicized her intention of taking the children "away," she probably wouldn't have aroused so much suspicion and would've had a better chance of succeeding.

Yeah, she had some need to rub everyone's noses in what she was going to do.  Moreover, that she would be able to do it without they're being able to do a thing to stop it.Makes you wonder if that's how she behaved when she was having the affair right under Jenny's and Edward's noses.

You mean just one that she managed to take with her?  She gave birth to 3 sons.

That's probably me not being clear enough again.  I'm going by memory here, but didn't each of the Laura phoenixes that they got the backstories on (in 1967) have one male child who died by fire with her?

Dirk had the hots for Laura, that's for sure.  (No pun intended, I swear!)

Snicker.  Makes you wonder if he was interested in her before she left -- or before she was involved with Quentin.  If so, that's twice that women chose Quentin over him -- which would sure explain why he seemed so pissed off at Q every time he saw him.

That's part of it, though they're able to recognize empathy in others and use it to their advantage.

I'm in agreement with what you say here about Quentin's behavior.  Someone who is afraid of punishment, as Quentin was of hanging for Jenny's murder, and fears consequences, as he was of Magda's wrath, or who shows genuine pain as he did when Beth hit a nerve about a side of him that he thought was hidden, or who knows they have done something wrong even when they feel their actions were justified, as when he stared at his hands after they were the instruments of Jenny's death-- that person is demonstrating higher responses that a sociopath/psychopath (a term used now is antisocial personality disorder) cannot.  It's Q's anxieties that make me believe that he was not socipathic.  In addition to the qualities you mentioned, I'd add that he was spoiled, accustomed to getting by on his good looks, and violent, but his problems are psychological; they're not physiological or genetic and so they can be changed by experiences.  Gosh, I hope that made sense. 

Don't worry, that explanation was great. .  It was good to get feedback from someone with actual training in it, rather than my own level of informed layman.  (After seeing multiple instances of these patterns of behavior in various DS venues-- goes without saying not on THIS board  -- in the last few years, I got reading recommendations from the head of the psych dept at my job, as well as from sites like bullyonline.org and wiredsafety.org).  It's good to know I'm on the right track with the character analysis. There's quite a bit of difference between a spoilt, entitled brat who is used to having life on a silver platter, a guy who never learned that actions have consequences and people are responsible for their actions and  an individual who is fully aware of hurting people -- but doesn't comprehend why that's a problem.  As we see as the plotline progresses, Quentin is both capable of and does demonstrate that he's learned from his mistakes. The sad irony is that in most cases it's too late for him to change the outcomes, no matter how great his guilt and regrets.

Taeylor -- the calculated cruelty is mindboggling, isn't it?  The way I understand it is that's a good part of why disturbed people like that get away with what they do  -- the behavior is just SOO astounding and over the top that part of your mind can't register that it can actually be happening.  In the real life case I cited, I was advised for that very reason to routinely keep -- and archive and keep permanently in case I was personally targeted in retribution -- screen caps of conversations  and emails from the venue (at least before I hit critical overload and gave up on it), due to longstanding patterns of abusive behavior.  Sad thing that those in authority in that venue, even with documentation, managed to flip reality on its head to the point where I was told I was picking on this poor sweet thing that never hurt a soul. (This goes back to what Midnite  explained about these individuals targeting and using other's empathy, while having none of their own.)

Jeannie

[EmeraldRose]

There were many milestones in this episode.
(1) Angelique was the first doppelganger.
(2) First time that Angelique and Barnabas actually worked together against a common enemy!
(3) First time 1897 Laura was called a Phoenix.
(4) We found out that Laura promised Ra that she would take her children with her. It wasn't her idea.
(5) Barnabas bit Dirk.

I noticed a couple of bloopers, too. 
(1) At the end of the previous episode, when Quentin got up off his chair just before Angelique "burned up", the chair fell over. At the beginning of this episode, he held onto it, so it wouldn't fall over.
(2) They had a long shot of the window at the cottage when Laura and Dirk were kissing. I didn't see anything out the window. But maybe it wasn't really a blooper. As Midnite said, maybe it was to show that it was dusk, and Barnabas would be coming soon. If that was the case, it certainly wasn't very noticeable. I went back over it again to see if anyone was outside the window, and I couldn't see anything. 

They played my favorite dramatic music again when Doppelganger Angelique disappeared. I loved it!

It was very comical to watch Magda scare Quentin when she told him that Laura would be after him next, and he should run. I loved it! 

I loved it when Barnabas smirked as Laura was going upstairs to get Jamison, Laura didn't find him, and Angelique appeared in that really neat green light and laughed!

I can't help but wonder: Who stopped Laura the first time? Was it Angelique? Was she in the original 1897 storyline? Barnabas obviously wasn't there before to bite Dirk. By the way, that was a great scene when Barnabas opened the door for Laura to discover Dirk, who had just been bitten by him.

----- Sally -----

[Lydia]

Question comes to mind, what great favors does Ra expect from Laura to continue going to bat for her when things go badly?  Doesn’t seem bringing two little kids into the fold is worth one of the old gods going to all this trouble. 

But they're Collins kids!

Couldn't Barnabas have found a closet in which to hide Dirk?  I'm surprised that Beth didn't trip over him.

I really enjoyed seeing Dirk with the bite marks and the blood running down his neck.  So far Laura has made him her slave and Barnabas has bitten him, and I want to see more more MORE victimization of Dirk.  The other thing that made me laugh was when Dirk said he had saved Laura before so surely he could save her again.  Apparently he hadn't a clue that Ra had been involved when he saved Laura before.

Here's a milestone for you: Barnabas didn't give the show away to Laura when he was talking to her in the foyer!  Usually he just can't stop himself from gloating, but today he kept his mouth shut even when Laura taunted him that Angelique was gone.  That's just got to be a first.

Like everybody else, I loved watching Magda today.  Those rolled r's were great!