Welcome Alondra!

No, no, no. Indigestion is more up here. What you're about the experience is a chest burster.

Mrs. J: "Well, whatever comes out, I'll boil it up, and serve it for dinner!  That saves me a trip to the market!"

There is no cannibalism in Dark Shadows fandom.  None whatsoever.  And when we say none, we mean that there is a certain amount...

"This is the darkest discoteque I've ever been in!  Why can't this dream start with my being spanked at one of Caligula's orgies, as usual?"

Actually, I just overloaded on Adam and the Dream Curse and I'll have to knock off for awhile.    In the patch I'm in now, the writing and logic have gone into a tailspin.    I'm now where Adam is trying to tell everyone about the taped message but can't yet (and... camp??  I don't see it).     I see no addition to the Frankenstein story yet.  When I was a kid, I was absorbing the old movies and new TV equivalents of those stories simultaneously.    I could get involved in all, equally, I guess.    It was all relatively new.

I never anticipated the Dream Curse being as bad as it is.    These people must scream their lungs out and their hair must turn white each year when the little tykes come around for Trick-or-Treat.   Good thing that doesn't happen, apparently.    The Collinsport kids must have found out the hard way.   Is this how Maggie found out they were "kooks"?

[spoiler]The first dream I could almost get behind, with a little help from my imagination.   At the end, I imagined more scale, with a tiny silhouette of Maggie at the bottom of the screen from the back, with the green skull towering above her.  They could have done that.[/spoiler]

Up until this point, for a long time, they had been telling a story they were anxious to tell-- Barnabas's.   What he's like now, then how he got that way.   It's a very compelling story.    Then after 1795, this very long arc is over, and then it's no longer a matter of exploring this fascinating character's story, but... what do we do now?    They didn't need something to "fill time" before.   No story that you come up with out of thin air to keep a show going is going to be as compelling as one you're burning to tell.

Even from what little I know or have heard, I saw DCs fingerprints on the Adam story.   Either this is the start of the twirling Rolodex, or it just was handled so well up until that point that one couldn't tell.

Later, they tried to reproduce the Barnabas arc with the Quentin arc, and that certainly worked, but they always seemed to be repeating on DS and trying to cover their tracks so people wouldn't notice, sometimes very well.    John Lennon said they'd write songs at first by thinking of one they liked by someone else, then changing bits.

W: "Lotsa husbands like a nice, wood-panelled den to go off and think and smoke in...it doesn't mean he wants ta get away from ya!"

I'm getting all caught up in this, so I'm going to wish you happy birthday again!!!   Happy Birthday!!!!!

 
 


I'm really stupid!!!!!!
But I mean well!!!!

I've been watching this period for the first time since original airing.   Comments:

Interesting how they made a point of making everything the same as 1967 when Victoria returned from 1795, for continuity, yet they sped ahead from that point on with updating the show, and improving 1968 to match the level of 1795.    New characters, more clever dialogue (such as from Elliot Stokes... I didn't get any clue as to what a great character he is from 1970), bigger jolts, faster plot, and suddenly Julia is out of the frumpy ugly hair/clothing and becomes "herself" as I know and love her.    It's as if they caught up abruptly with the time lost during the flashback, time that didn't pass for the characters but did for the real world.  I got the impression of DS suddenly becoming "modern".

The Frankenstein plotline has yet to win me over.   Doctor Who did it brilliantly, so it can be done.   A lot of the dialogue has gone back to being too simple and awkward, such as between Lang and Barnabas, which goes against what I said earlier, but everything is mixed and confusing so far.   I noticed JF is back to having more trouble with lines as before 1795... did he do it for continuity??

Maybe awkwardly said lines come from awkward or uncertain writing... maybe Frid was forced to keep stopping to think how he was going to deliver a line, because these new lines could be coming from a reforming character, or someone neutral, or someone who's still a villain... and the lines don't indicate any of this either way.   I've noticed JF using a villainous tone when the line is pretty benign.   One must blow lines if one has to stoip and think how to read them.

Lang... good pain acting.

All the photos from Caption This are coming to life before my eyes!

One episode break... Duelling Portraits!  (Barnabas's and Angelique's)



[spoiler]With Barnabas's sudden cure, 'my' DS starts.   I felt this especially when Roger was being drawn to Ang's portrait, to hurt Lang, with that music.  I don't know why.   Everything is smarter, really moves, is more vital.

As the Frankenstein monster's shroud is pulled away to show Barnabas, I instantly thought, Dracula Meets Frankenstein!

That "life force" idea worked back then, but it's now been used so often that it's become a lazy meaningless science-fiction premise.   How handy, a vague something that can be yanked out of one body and into another, like pouring liquid from one bottle to another...

Couldn't Lang have just stuck Barnabas's "essence" into Clark's intact body, without the fleshy crazy-quilt Lang just had to build?    How dare he claim to have created life, when he just took intact limbs and parts and organs and sewed them together?    Sure, reanimating is hard, but that intricate biological "machinery" was already built, and Lang or Frankenstein wouldn't have known how to even begin to build any of it from scratch.   Leave it to a doctor to steal God's (or who/whatever's) thunder.

Back later.
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