DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '09 I => Topic started by: Watching Project on May 15, 2009, 10:03:29 PM
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Robservations #780
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VO: David Selby
David Selby get’s another great line. “It’s my hymn!” I love that Quentin is calling Trask on his shiz!! A werewolf and a vampire facing off! Barnabas and Quentin are gonna work together—YAY!
David is very tall! As if you all didn’t know that! LOL I admire tall men. They are yummers!
Why the heck would Barnabas sleep in that secret room?? Lord only knows how many people know a bout it. How very carless of him!
“…Unusually high strung!” Boy is that an understatement! As I have pointed out before I feel sorry for Carl, but honestly he gets on my nerves a bit! Why, why are you killing another Collins Barnabas? Messing with the future timeline, much?
Where are all the servants when Carl is screaming all over the house?? Oh yeah, I forgot DC is too cheap to pay them! ;)
Love the green light that comes up revealing Barney!
I thought Q was Gregory when it was just showing the feet walking. That was a nice surprise that I don’t remember everything about DS, scene for scene!
Lord, those baby blues, lips, and nose---IT’S TOO MUCH! I can’t take it! [faint2]
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LOL on the replay of the tag Karlen makes it a point NOT to touch the flmsy gravestone!
Quentin in the drawing room with the gramophone and a numb look on his face. But this time we see why they set him up there. Trask comes in the front door, and if Q was in his room, he'd not have been there to lecturre. And that would have deprived us of a great verbal fencing match between Trask and Quentin (the later in full formal articulate smartass Rhett Butler mode). [love2]
Poor Carl – truer words were never said than what he said to Trask “People I think I can trust, it turns out I can’t.” That in a nutshell seems to be the problem of everyone in the family: Quentin trusts Evan and doesn’t trust Beth. Judith distrusts her brothers and trusts Trask. Carl doesn’t trust anyone else but trusts Trask. Edward trusts Barnabas but doesn’t believe either of his brothers. It goes on and on.
In these scenes Carl seems frantic to the point of manic and unbalanced. And off they go, armed with the ubiquitous cross, to go a vampire hunting.
Barn is out of his coffin, but the mausoleum door is wide open. The door creakis open and Barn turns to see Quentin bound in. Nice interchange, once Quentin points out he knows (and apparently saves himself from getting bitten). Barn raises rhetorical question of “You can look at me without fear” and Quentin points out (in a good character moment, though already telegraphed through good acting throught the storyline) that he’s always with fear. Darn, the close up stays on Barn. I would have liked to have seen the reaction shot when Quentin asked if his brother was dead. Is he relieved? Annoyed? Worried? Of such things character development is built. Barn seems slow on the pickup though, and it apparently annoys Quentin. He has to spell it out in words of one syllable that not only was Carl there, “HE KNOWS!!”
Interesting undercurrent in the scene. Quentin is doing what he has to to save Barn and thus save his own hide, but he seems very ill at ease and uncomfortable. He also seems to watch Barnabas very closely, like watching for something. I don’t think that he told Barn his part in Carl being inside the mausoleum, why he doesn’t want to be the one to find Carl. He knows Carl is NOT going to trust him and is real unlikely to listen to him if he tries to keep him from talking. My though t is that in the back of his mind hes thinking Barn has some power to make Carl forget without killing him – IF he chooses to. My guess is that that's the life ring he clings to to keep from facing the fact that he was willing to have his own brother killed to save his hide.
Quick work. Someone found a TARDIS and used it to move the coffin <G>.
Back to the Drawing Room, and Barn playing with Carl’s mind (or whatevers left of it). Karlen does panic beautifully. Carl is beyond his last nerve. Barn is really being unnecessarily cruel here. Maybe subconscious revenge for the practical jokes?
Carl was strangled, but he’s still visbily breathing, unlike Jenny. Feet approaching the Drawing Room. LOL I bet on Quentin. And it IS. At least he has the grace to be upset that Carl is dead. Really upset, he’s on HIS last nerve now, and Barn is not helping things. I’ve said before some time back, I think Quentin is scared to death of Barn, wondering if this would happen to Carl for talking, what will happen to HIM if something goes wrong. That's my theory on why he was so quick to tell Barn that he knew he had to do it. Hes got enough problems without a pissed off vampire thinking he's going to rat him out. Barn was capable of consciously deciding to kill Carl to keep the secrets, then dumping more guilt on Quentin by pointing out that it protects him too.
FINALLY someone stands up to a Trask for telling the family where they will and will not go in the house. Unfortunately it doesn’t work with the overbearing Trask. Bet Quentin is seeing his life flashing before his eyes as Trask opens that door. Good thing Barn works fast, the body's stashed somewhere. YIKES! There goes the hand. Quentin is trying so hard not to freak out that his reactions aren’t right. He waits too long to react when Carl falls, and Trask is right on it. But once he DOES react it seems very genuine, horror, shock (and we know a heck of a lot of guilt probably a ton of other emotions roiling around too). Proably all the reactions-- and then some -- that he bottled up when he really DID find Carl, but had to hold in because of Barnabas.
Ugh Trask playing Vampire hunter at the Old House. I always wondered why Barn didn’t just deal with Trask early on. He deserved killing waay more than Carl. Now we have the stay here till dawn challenge. And right on cue, the cock crows for the fade out.
Jeannie
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Poor Carl – truer words were never said than what he said to Trask “People I think I can trust, it turns out I can’t.” That in a nutshell seems to be the problem of everyone in the family: Quentin trusts Evan and doesn’t trust Beth. Judith distrusts her brothers and trusts Trask. Carl doesn’t trust anyone else but trusts Trask. Edward trusts Barnabas but doesn’t believe either of his brothers. It goes on and on.
I liked this.
I think we're underestimating how horrific the murder of Carl is though. More and more, unfortunately, this one incident undermines the image I've had for forty years of Barnabas as an heroic figure. It changes everything. He's not just messing with history (which is something he eventually came to see as his prrpose there), he's committing murder, of a relative, an innocent, who only happened to find out his secret. Certainly I identify with the panic and desperation, but at this point in the story Barnabas falls apart, lying less and less convincingly, making stupid mistakes right and left, leading to the murder of a cousin.... It was a spectacularly disastrous and hasty move too, since it was taken without knowing if Carl had talked yet. Barnabas is falling apart, in his senses and in his morals.
I'm not saying it was bad drama, it wasn't. It was daring I suppose. I've often said that the only pleasure Barnabas takes from life is when he destroys an enemy. He even does it with Carl, who only became an enemy by finding out his secret.
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Carl still breathing after death. Could the camera operators not anticipated this since it's occurred before and go for a close up? The practical reason for Carl's death was that John Karlen left the show to move to LA according to 16 magazine and permanently. Maybe he irked DC enough to want to do him in in a violent way. Also this is really the end of the first storyline and the beginning of another and DC seemed to always crank up the body count at the end of a story.
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If DC really saw Barnabas killing Carl in cold blood as just a practical move because of John Karlen's plans, then he truly was nuts. You don't have a protagonist kill a man for finding out his secret life, not if you want him to stay a protagonist. Barnabas is acting as he did when he was the show's villain whom we were meant to despise.
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I have honestly never saw Barnabas as a hero, however, I was about 15 when I started watching the original show. I love Barney, but he isn't hero material. He is always in a very gray area!
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I have honestly never saw Barnabas as a hero, however, I was about 15 when I started watching the original show. I love Barney, but he isn't hero material. He is always in a very gray area!
"Anti-hero" would be a good description.
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Why yes it would PC! Thanx! :)
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Great point you guys are raising about why they chose to KILL Carl rather than send him off somewhere. Of course it's anyone's guess why they decided to kill him, but once they did, they made excellent use of it. One theory to think about is, when finding out Karlen was leaving, they decided to kill Carl -- and in THAT way -- to use it for character development for Quentin.
Think about it: The death of Jenny and the curse are already starting to change him -- or let us see more of what's behind the mask he shows the world -- pick one. He's been doing things that horrified him, and he is learning empathy and compassion for others. He's learning things about himself that he'd rather never have known. Now he learns he's capable of knowingly leaving his brother to be killed -- then is later complicit when he IS killed. This isn't something he can listen to Beth and rationalize away because it was the creature did it, not him. HE did this, and made a decision to do this -- and it wasn't the same kind of life and death panic that he faced with Jenny and the knife. KNOWING that he is capable of doing this, and has to keep living the charade, has GOT to have an effect on him.
Another interesting point -- I don't believe we ever find out what, if anything, he's tells Beth about this. Given how things go with them later, I'm thinking maybe he thinks not even she could accept him if she knew what he'd done. On some levels that could even explain Amanda Harris, someone who only knows of him what he wants her to know, rather than both the good and bad of the person he really is. Speaking of her also makes me think of his [spoiler]violently self loathing speech to Julia, expecting her to run in fear and disgust once he remembers who he is.[/spoiler]
As to Barnabas being an anti hero: Virtually all of the main characters of DS could be described that way. Only the degrees of good and bad in each of them varies.
Jeannie
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Very good post I could not add to, except to point out that Karlen was already gone. His reappearance with Pansy is almost immediately followed by his death, so the writers must have had his end mapped out, and must have brought him back consciously intending to use him in the way they did.
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i'm surprised carl's death has such resonance with fans.
1897 is a time travel storyline,which is in effect "temporary",and the characters that populate it are,accordingly,"disposable" in a way.
they are created to be eventually killed off.true 1897 lasted longer than the other storylines set in the past but aficionados know that most of the major characters will be six feet under by the time it winds down.
for me it's nowhere near as shocking than if barnabas had killed one of the "real" present time characters like willie or maggie evans or mrs.johnson.that would have been shocking.
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For me, the characters in 1897 seem better drawn and more interesting and easier to care about than the relatively neutral "present day" characters, so they matter more to me. It's all fiction, and the late 60s are 40 years ago now, so every era in DS is now a sort of period piece populated with many now-deceased characters.
I also think it matters how and when people die. Not everyone is doomed to die in 1897, and the fact that that happened in 1795 doesn't mean it will in 1897. Many could live fulfilling lives after all this is over. If Barnabas saw the people of 1897 as disposable though in the way you're talking about, because he came from the future, that would be an interesting part of his motivation in killing Carl.
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You make some really great points in that post, Magnus. One thing I'd like to add about Carl's death is the thing that bugs me above all other things I've mentioned. Barnabas does it NOT KNOWING what role Carl plays in future events, and what things will be irretrievably changed by his death. I go back to the reference I just made in another topic to "City on the Edge of Forever", but in this case the circumstances would be the reverse. How will the absence of someone who previously existed change the big picture of how history had to play out? Yes, this is true to some extent of everyone Barn dealt with and had a part in the death of, but with Carl he's part of the actual family, thus has more chance of changing things (eg -- by NOT being around to give birth to a branch of the family that originally existed in "real time").
Jeannie
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Since there are only two branches of the Collins family in the future, I think it could be safetly assumed that Carl really had no functional part in the future other than the childish uncle of the heir, Jamison Collins. But Barnabas had no idea what Carl had to do with future events, and his lack of research is really irritating. Barnabas is presumably supposed to have supernatural powers, so couldn't he have just erased Carl's memory? [ghost_azn]
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We're meant to know that Barnabas is acting rashly and irrationally, since it's clear that Carl had told the secret and Barnabas didn't even find out before acting. I think all this was a combination of the fact that Barnabas's violent vampire nature was always a huge force that he could not always control, and the fact that we're all "human", and when our backs are up against the wall, often we behave out of blind panic. An idea that has been helpful to me in different situations is that some moments in life fill our heads with exclamation points, crowding out everything else, including capacity for reason. It's not that we forget to reason, we just can't. Our heads are overloaded.
I'm not sure Barnabas ever realized that his vampire nature was acting upon him. Almost always people assume that they have total free will. And I'm talking about all of us! Barnabas's larger ego from (1) being a vampire and (2) being from a priveleged background (though he was a decent example of that) would have made it even harder to perceive. I'm sure that if Magda had explained to him how vampiric he actually came across, day to day, Barnabas would have been surprised.
Anyway, now that I see 1897 Barnabas in this way, a 1969 spirit deluding himself that he's in control of a cursed 1897 Barnabas whose soul he's over-riding consciously but who may actually be in control on a deeper, perhaps more important level, I see 1897 very differently than I did as a child. It's more interesting this way, but I have to give up my heroic or sympathetic Barnabas figure. Or maybe I don't. I care more about conficted figures and did even as a child, I think, so maybe I got it back then more than I knew. And I never liked heroes that much come to think of it!
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That is one heck of a great post, Magnus. You covered a lot of the whys and wherefores covering Barnabas' behavior and brought up some things I never even thought of. [clap] I really like the theory about the vampire nature of the 1897 vamp controlling the astral traveller Barnabas without him even knowing it.
Jeannie
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Thanks Jeannie. Other shows would have spoon-fed us this from the start (if they actually did mean for his vampire nature to be controlling him), explaining it to the viewer, and more subtle shows would have let us know in no uncertain terms eventually, but DS never comes out and tells us. Barnabas himself passes all the way through 1897 and goes back home again, without suspecting that his judgment and impulses were being affected.
I like this sort of thing now. It's like real life, we have to figure it out for ourselves. It's also like real life in that we don't really find out what's behind our feelings and actions, or those of others in our lives, certainly not completely. I've decided lately that my family were never really interested in having me know them, and I really don't know who they were. Do I know who I am? Not really.
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Thanks Jeannie. Other shows would have spoon-fed us this from the start (if they actually did mean for his vampire nature to be controlling him), explaining it to the viewer, and more subtle shows would have let us know in no uncertain terms eventually, but DS never comes out and tells us. Barnabas himself passes all the way through 1897 and goes back home again, without suspecting that his judgment and impulses were being affected.
You're quite welcome, Magnus. We've discussed this delightful lack of spoon feeding before. and we're definitely on the same page. This way is just more fun, it makes you think and pay attention, and look for the throwaways and actions with many differnt interpretations.
That's how I feel about Quentin's reaction to Carl's murder. They don't TELL us how Q is scared to pieces of Barn, but they sure set it up so the audience can pick up on things if they choose to think about it. Same with this idea about the two sides of Barnabas. It requires a deeper analysis than some people are willing to invest, but that's always the way. No matter what the show, some people are into the analysis and delving deeply into characters and their reasons and motivations -- and some people aren't.
Jeannie
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I find myself being very delvy when it comes to shows I truly get into! :)
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I find myself being very delvy when it comes to shows I truly get into! :)
Really, Taeylor, Blake's Seven. See it somehow. I'm done on that as of now!
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I'm done on that as of now!
Thanks! [ghost_smiley]
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In the redo of the opener, Carl kicked the step open before realizing that it was the solution he needed. That was cheating.
Quentin to Barnabas: "You're my only hope."
(Help me, Obi-Wan Barnabas...)
Seriously, I'm still not buying it. Quentin should be focusing his energies on keeping Magda happy until the next full moon, because SHE is his only hope.
Barnabas: "Tell me the truth, Carl! Tell me the truth!"
Carl: "aughurghgurgleghghgh"
How the heck was he supposed to answer while his airway was being crushed? (A creature that can dispatch a coffin that quickly and bend bars does not strangle like normal people.)
We're meant to know that Barnabas is acting rashly and irrationally, since it's clear that Carl had told the secret and Barnabas didn't even find out before acting. I think all this was a combination of the fact that Barnabas's violent vampire nature was always a huge force that he could not always control, and the fact that we're all "human", and when our backs are up against the wall, often we behave out of blind panic.
That is just wonderful, Magnus.
And I must admit that fanging Carl to learn what he needed to know (as he did with Dirk) before killing him would have denied us an exciting Friday cliffhanger.
If DC really saw Barnabas killing Carl in cold blood as just a practical move because of John Karlen's plans, then he truly was nuts.
Yes. Yes, he was.
You don't have a protagonist kill a man for finding out his secret life, not if you want him to stay a protagonist. Barnabas is acting as he did when he was the show's villain whom we were meant to despise.
Exactly. Rachel Drummond's murder conspiracy came about recently so that KLS could go on safari with her boyfriend... and it had much less impact since one of her killers was insane/doomed and the other was under the thrall of a vampire.
He knows Carl is NOT going to trust him and is real unlikely to listen to him if he tries to keep him from talking. My though t is that in the back of his mind hes thinking Barn has some power to make Carl forget without killing him – IF he chooses to. My guess is that that's the life ring he clings to to keep from facing the fact that he was willing to have his own brother killed to save his hide.
If one puts stock in the voiceover, it makes it clear ("knowing...the man will be killed") that Quentin expected his brother to die in the secret room. So Quentin finding Carl and stopping him from talking would, I imagine, involve some sort of violence.
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Major Milestones: [milestone]
1. Barnabas killed Carl! [cryb] IIRC, Carl was the 4th person who died because Barnabas was there. The others were Pansy Faye, Dirk, and Rachel.
2. Carl told Trask about Barnabas. Barnabas quickly moved the coffin before Carl and Trask went the Mausoleum, so Trask didn't believe Carl at first.
3. When Trask discovered that Carl was dead, he gave Barnabas an ultimatum that he should stay up after dawn! [shkdg]
I'm really angry that Barnabas killed Carl, before he even knew who Carl had told. [ghost_mad] I know, John Karlen was leaving the show for a while... But they could have explained his absence by sending him away to Europe or someplace. Also, Barnabas could have easily hypnotized Carl into telling him what he wanted to know and to make Carl forget all about his being a vampire. [ghost_undecided]
I noticed at the beginning that the step inside the secret room moved by itself, before Carl even touched it! [signerror] At the end of the last episode, Carl was the one who moved it. It was amusing to watch Carl purposely not touch that huge cross in the beginning! [ghost_cheesy]
Barnabas certainly moved that coffin quickly! I wonder if one of his supernatural powers enables him to transport the coffin from one place to another, similar to his disappearing from one place and appearing someplace else. Kind of reminds me of the transporter on Star Trek! [ghost_wink]
----- Sally -----
[snow_bigglass] [hippy2]
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Oops! I didn't notice this topic had two pages! [6184] I just read what's on the second page, and had to comment on it! [ghost_wink] I waited too long after the last post to change it, so I had to write this post.
Anyway, now that I see 1897 Barnabas in this way, a 1969 spirit deluding himself that he's in control of a cursed 1897 Barnabas whose soul he's over-riding consciously but who may actually be in control on a deeper, perhaps more important level, I see 1897 very differently than I did as a child. It's more interesting this way, but I have to give up my heroic or sympathetic Barnabas figure. Or maybe I don't.
Wow! I never thought of it that way before! [scratch2] That's a fascinating, very astute way of looking at it. [ideag] Sheds a whole new light on the subject. But I still hate that Barnabas killed Carl! [ghost_mad]
----- Sally -----
[snow_bigglass] [hippy2]
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IIRC, Carl was the 4th person who died because Barnabas was there. The others were Pansy Faye, Dirk, and Rachel.
And poor, disposable Sophie.
Besides Charity and Beth, what WAS he doing in 1897 to satisfy his bloodlust, anyway?
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Oh, yeah, I forgot about Sophie. Thanks for reminding me, Midnite. Since you have a better memory than I do, I always know that you will gladly correct my mistakes. [ghost_wink]
That's a good question! I guess his 1969 spirit was able to squelch the 1897 vampire's excessive thirst! [ghost_cheesy]
----- Sally -----
[snow_bigglass] [hippy2]
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Quentin to Barnabas: "You're my only hope."
(Help me, Obi-Wan Barnabas...)
Seriously, I'm still not buying it. Quentin should be focusing his energies on keeping Magda happy until the next full moon, because SHE is his only hope.
"There is Another?" I just got the weirdest mental image of Magda as Princess Leia.....
If one puts stock in the voiceover, it makes it clear ("knowing...the man will be killed") that Quentin expected his brother to die in the secret room. So Quentin finding Carl and stopping him from talking would, I imagine, involve some sort of violence.
I thnk you're right. To me, this would tie into that line he had (paraphrasing here) about no longer being able to believe his own lies. He used to be able to lie to himself and do things, then do mental gymnastics to justify them. If we take him at his word, he can't make himself believe these things anymore -- but I think he still TRIES to, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. I think if push had come to shove, he COULD have gone through with killing Carl -- but not without paying the emotional price of having done it.
Jeannie
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Barnabas: "Tell me the truth, Carl! Tell me the truth!"
Carl: "aughurghgurgleghghgh"
How the heck was he supposed to answer while his airway was being crushed? (A creature that can dispatch a coffin that quickly and bend bars does not strangle like normal people.)
Exactly. Every time I see this episode, it appears to me that Barnabas did not intend to kill Carl when he did. Maybe he planned to kill Carl after making sure Carl hadn't spilt the beans to anybody - but that's speculative. Of course Barnabas wasn't about to admit to Quentin that he had just made a stupid mistake, so he let Quentin believe that Carl's death was deliberate.
I remember being thoroughly shocked by Carl's death back in 1969. But it was because I liked seeing Carl on the show, not because I thought it was dreadful of Barnabas to murder his relative. In fact, I was taken aback when Quentin expressed regret over Carl's death.
I'm trying to remember if Barnabas knew about the secret passageway off the living room, because that would have been the intelligent place to hide Carl. It seems very unlikely to me that Barnabas would not know. Maybe in the heat of the moment he just forgot.
I noticed that Trask, when nobody answered his knocking at the door of Collinwood today, didn't just barge right into the house the way did the other day. An odd retreat into good manners, canceled out by his barging into the drawing room. Incidentally, I was surprised when he said to himself in the mausoleum that he must help poor, deluded Carl. It gave the impression that, contrary to what we have learned about Trask so far, there is some Christian charity in him. Or maybe he just figured he would score points with Judith if he loosened Carl's strings.
Barnabas certainly moved that coffin quickly!
Forget the coffin, what about the pedestal?
I don't remember seeing previously the cross that Trask is sporting. I daresay it was there, but that he wasn't making a point of it.
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Incidentally, I was surprised when he said to himself in the mausoleum that he must help poor, deluded Carl. It gave the impression that, contrary to what we have learned about Trask so far, there is some Christian charity in him.
Gregory believes with all his heart and soul that he is the most righteous and compassionate of human beings. This isn't just some simple conscious lie that he uses to score big bucks for himself. It's an unconscious lie, and those are more dangerous. He is compelled to act in a manner which appears good and kind, as he sees it (and he doesn't see bellowing accusations at people to be unkind, it's the old cruel-to-be-kind thing). He hates the Collinses, and shows it to them every day without showing it to himself. You can tell yourself you are compassionate toward those you hate the most, and that every act of hatred is for their own good. My father was this way.
Trask really believes he can't leave the animals to run the zoo. In no way does this constitute "good intentions" and in no way does this absolve him. Liars just lie tpo others, but hypocrites also lie to themselves, and they believe their own lies about themselves far more than others believe them. They lie to themselves to give them an easy, irresponsible way out of all moral dilemmas. It's not conscious self-deception (that's contradictory), but it is intentional... on a somewhat lower level than consciousness.
Listen to him still defending himself, calling himself a savior of souls, when it's juszt him and Evan in the room, and he's just carried out a murder with Evan. He wouldn't think Evan could be fooled by this. He can only be saying it because he believes it. He also thinks he's on this Earth to save people like Carl... and if he can get the family's money, what better reward for his spiritual services? That's the kind of thing that's bouncing around in Trask's head all the time.
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Excellent, excellent post, Magnus. Really perceptive on how Trask's hypocracy and viewof himself and his actions actually function.
Every time I see this episode, it appears to me that Barnabas did not intend to kill Carl when he did. Maybe he planned to kill Carl after making sure Carl hadn't spilt the beans to anybody - but that's speculative. Of course Barnabas wasn't about to admit to Quentin that he had just made a stupid mistake, so he let Quentin believe that Carl's death was deliberate.
I really like this idea, Lydia. I don't remember ever considering it in that light, but it works well to explain Barnabas' action without him having to be a complete fool. As has been pointed out, it was a foolish thing to do before finding out who, if anyone else now knew.
Jeannie
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That is a good idea, Lydia. Also the protracted inaction and tension and danger of someday being found out (from 1967 and 1897) might have been building up to something, and it was like a spring being let out of a box. Thanks, Jeannie.
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Also the protracted inaction and tension and danger of someday being found out (from 1967 and 1897) might have been building up to something, and it was like a spring being let out of a box.
I like this idea a lot, Magnus.
As for Trask's inner hypocrisy in his desire to help Carl...I'm less convinced than you are. The tone of Trask's inner voice (as I remember it two days later) just wasn't the standard Trask that we know and hate.
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I'm continually stunned by what good actors people in everyday life are, especially when they don't believe they're playing a part but believe in the images they're trying to project to others. Compassion is a [crucial pasrt of GT's self-image. Without it, his legitimacy falls apart, interanally as well as externally, and all his actions would come racing at him without his usual rightous insulation from them.
Also, I think this area is just a personal interest for him. It's his version of tinkering at the workbench in the basement. He doesn't need to care abouyt the people involved, battling evil is fun.