i've been watching this dvd all week and i'm really enjoying it.
i'm stunned at how different this storyline feels than the months that preceded it when everything took place within the shadow of the adam storyline.here that's all spept away like so many cobwebs.
during the preceding story much of the action took place at nicholas blair's house and the collins family wasn't that prominent much of the time.here collinwood is re-established as the main location and the family returned to front-burner status.it has a whole diffrent "feel".
with victoria gone and roger and elizabeth "away" for part of these episodes barnabas is now squarely the show's "moral center"(which is really bizzare if you think about it).he and julia almost seem to be the master and mistess of the house.
it was great to have elizabeth return(with a chic new pageboy hairdo)and finally be done with her tedious buried alive obssession.here she's imperious liz and i love it.mrs. johnson is also featured prominently in several episodes and i can't love that enough either.
even though david is under a "dark influence" it's interesting that he has the type of relationship with maggie here that he had with vicki early on.sort of playing nasty tricks on her and a very "i'll get even with you" attitude.although he does now seem a bit too old for a governess.
where as the adam/eve/nicholas storyline has a more scifi/camp(
)feel this is much more rooted in the gothic tradition.
the only part of this collection of episodes that i didn't really care for was barnabas' return to the year 1796(or whatever the heck year they decided it was)to save vicki.it seemed sort of pointless.it didn't really change anything within the context of the rest of the story.vicki was tucked safely away in the past and if they couldn't get alexandra back i don't see why they bothered to do this with another actress.
i've met david selby and terryane crawford at the fests before but didn't really have a context to put them in.i thought beth was quite beautiful.
the longer i watch the show the more i realize that each storyline needs to be treated as it's own seperate entity and not look for too much connection to what happened before it because it just won't be there and you have to accept it on it's own terms.so far i think this is quite good.