DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '25 I => Current Talk '07 II => Topic started by: Watching Project on July 19, 2007, 06:38:38 PM
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Robservations - #344
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I'll just say that this show really got to me. It is a classic in it's spookyness.
The wailing of the widows with Vickie and Burke is great. The goodbye to Burke was very, very spooky. Burke doesn't handle it as a premontion. He said that he would be back. This show gave shivers.
Everyone did a great job.
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Hearing the Widows' wailing was kinda spooky. It's too bad Burke didn't take David's premonition a bit more seriously.
I feel sorry for David....Burke was his first friend (perhaps even his BEST friend at this point, though I feel this was better demonstrated between David Henesy and MR's Burke more than David and AG's Burke) and you really know that David knows it really was goodbye forever. It really was a sad scene.
Great episode.
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I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere of today's episode. When Elizabeth was looking for word to describe David's mood, I thought: "Despair." And lo and behold, Liz said, "Despair." David Henesy did a beautiful job of evoking it.
And I loved Carolyn's story of her childhood friend Randy, and how we don't know if Randy was real or not.
But I did have trouble with some details. Why did Sarah take it upon herself to tell David that Dr. Woodward was dead? She's starting to act like his mother, not his playmate. More and more, Sarah comes across to me as a tool that the writers use to push the plot when they can't think of another way to do the job. Of course there are lots of characters like that, both in Dark Shadows and in all fiction since the beginning of time. But Sarah's a little too obvious for me.
And another detail: somebody said today that Burke was only going away for a few days. So (repeating a question that I already asked - yesterday, I think) why was everybody making such a fuss about it?
And finally: does the fact that Randy's sweater was red mean that he was a fugitive from The Sixth Sense?
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This episode personified "gothic". The tenor of the voices, the wailing, every mannerism of the actors. Henesy was brilliant. I have to wonder what really is Sarah's mission. She seems hell-bent on exposing Barnabas, yet stops short of doing just that. She indicates that Dr. Woodard was murdered; she might have just as well come right out and proclaimed it. Her answer to David's direct question; "I don't want to tell you" seemed to say, " of course he was, but you didn't hear it from me!" :-X I really enjoyed this episode.
Misty
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Poor David! It's like he's completely given up on everything. Nobody will believe him, so he's stopped trying to convince them.
The widows' wailing is creepy too.
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That scene when David was saying goodbye to Burke brought tears to my eyes. [cryb] I really felt sorry for David's plight... as was said before, Burke was David's first real friend - when MR was playing the role. I felt more sad than I did the last time I saw this episode, because my mother just died 50 days (7 weeks and 1 day) ago, and I was thinking about how I felt about her being gone. [bawl]
The wailing widows were really spooky! [shkdg] I agree, it was too bad that Burke didn't heed David's warning. [sadg] Another great show! [bigok]
----- Sally -----
[coolg] [hippy2]
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Sorry to hear about your mother, Sally... that does affect and color everything you watch or experience for a long time, after.
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Sorry to hear about your mother, Sally... that does affect and color everything you watch or experience for a long time, after.
Thanks, Magnus.
----- Sally -----
[coolg] [hippy2]
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I still work nights Rose and i had 3 thoughts about this thread as i am sitting here taking a break...
1/ My mom passed at 57 (i was 18) back in 1973 on this very evening/morning and the loss never leaves us. We are lonely without them even with the great passage of time.
2/ It was my mom who back in 1966 told me as a kid of 11 that if i wanted to see how a professional actress looked on daytime TV i should watch DS and Joan Bennett and i never looked back. She enjoyed the series as much as i did as she was a homemaker and plenty of time it seemed to watch the series.
3/ I recall her saying this about David Collins....."I know this kid seems messed up, but look at that horses $#@ of a father he has---and that i should feel fortunate that i did not have to grow up in that environment.
Take care Rose, and I hope i see you in Burbank next year!
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Awww... Thank you so much, Devlin, for sharing your thoughts about your mother. I'm so sorry you lost her so many years ago. [cryg] My father died a long time ago, too... in 1974, at age 87 [shkdg] - it was 3 weeks before I turned 19. I still miss my dad, too... but it's different with my mom. I think your mom was just 1 year younger than my mom, who was 92 when she died. My mom was very special, and we used to play games together. I felt sad when I got home from Tarrytown this year because I couldn't call her... she always wanted me to call her right away because she worried about me so much. [bawl]
Yes, indeed, I hope to finally be able to meet you next year in Burbank. [cheesyg]
----- Sally -----
[coolg] [hippy2]
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This has to be one of the great DS episodes of all time, utterly perfect in its tone and mood - and DH is phenomenal in his poised, understated performance. He makes the whole thing work.
Interesting, too, that all of the characters in this episode (except Sarah) were around at the start of the series.
As to Sarah, I think her telling David about Dr. Woodard's death actually added to the overall spooky nature of the episode. It gave David information he could have gotten in no other way except through the supernatural, since no human saw fit to inform him of the fact.
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i agree that this is one of those "goosebump" episodes.perfection!
this and the episode(from this same period)where barnabas and julia kill dave woodard are two of the most emotionally powerful ever on the series.it's interesting that they are both black and white kinescope episodes.this used to bother me but now i wonder if perhaps that adds to the bleakness and profound sense of despair of both shows.
what the show has going for it here is something that never again really happens.most of the characters that populate the series here had been with the show from the begining.so the audience had over a year to get to "know" them.that to me added a tremendous amount of suspense to these episodes because i felt in "knew" and "cared" about these people.it was a very emotionally involving time for me.
later on when the show begins to yo-yo back and forth in time and characters come and go one doesn't get the opportunity to build emotional bonds with the characters in the same way.please don't get me wrong...i got a kick out of marie wallace as eve but i didn't "care" about what happened to her in the same way i did about a sweet apple-cheeked waitress who loved her father and her handsome boyfriend and so on...
just my personal two-cents.
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Good point.
I forget if they were planning to make BC and JH protagonists at this point. MB may have set me straight on this long ago but I can't remember. Anyway, if they were planning this at that point, what a very strange choice, to have them kill a beloved character in cold blood...
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