DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '08 I => Topic started by: Roland on June 25, 2008, 05:25:59 AM
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When Julia first moved into Collinwood, she at least had a false cover - that she was writing a history of the Collins family - as a justification. But once that cover was blown (after the seance), what reason did she still have for staying? And, why didn't Roger, in particular (who never took too kindly to outsiders in the first place) not eventually throw her out on her keester? I mean it takes a lot of chutzpah for someone to just worm her way into a permanent place in the area's most lavish and impressive mansion with, one assumes, free board as well (unless she was slipping Mrs. Johnson a weekly stipend for her meals). Maybe they kept her around for all those sedatives she was so generous about passing around. [ghost_wink]
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Elizabeth was the one who had the last word, and I find it very easy to imagine a friendship developing between Elizabeth and Julia. I haven't specifically looked for that friendship when I've been watching, but they had a lot in common. They were both intelligent women with experience running a business in a world in which the businesses were usually run by men, and I think each of them had spent much of their adult lives with very few - if any - women friends. I suppose the sedatives were convenient, but Elizabeth had some little pink pills or some such thing before Julia come along - I think I remember remarking on them in a Watching Project post once. So I think the deciding factor for Elizabeth was that she just liked having Julia around. But I haven't any specific scenes to back that up.
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Someone who's rich and lonely and has an inconceivably big mansion that she's paying a fortune to maintain might just let people stay because she needs the company. It seems odd but their situation is very different from ours.
There was always a perfect justification waiting for DS to use: Julia is their new family in-house physician.
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I don't find it unusual for Elizabeth to invite Dr Hofman to stay indefinitely. Elizabeth strikes me as a very cordial individual who was raised to be gracious to others. The rich do live differently than the rest of us. I've read many books where wealthy folks open up their homes to guests. It makes me wonder about Paul Stoddard and how a man like that may have been welcomed into her home and who eventually ended up abusing his host.
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There was always a perfect justification waiting for DS to use: Julia is their new family in-house physician.
Exactly - similar to the royal courts of Europe. [ghost_grin] But there may also be another justification because, even after Julia admitted she was a doctor, she claimed she really was writing a book (even though so far as the audience knew that cover story was a complete sham). So, maybe Liz simply assumed the book was taking a VERY long time to write, but at the same time she was in no hurry to get rid of Julia because of, as others have pointed out, all the services and companionship she provided.
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It's interesting how in HODS the same premise was given as to why Julia was staying at Collinwood - doing research on the history of the Collins family. The only difference was in the movie she was REALLY doing it - it wasn't a cover story.
Sally
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one thing i love about the show is it's time capsule element.it was very much a product of it's times in terms of it's social mores despite the outrageousness of the plots.
hence we have julia as perpetual collinwood houseguest.even though julia spent most of her time at the old house,often until all hours,she never officially "moved in" because it would not have been "proper" at the time for an unmarried lady to live under the same roof as two men.she might be there until nearly dawn but there's usually a point when she puts on her coat and gloves and returns to collinwood.did she ever actually "sleep over"?
for proprieties sake,and respectabilities sake,she needed to be there as the guest of elizabeth stoddard.because julia compromised her integrity in so may other ways for the character to remain a "respectable" lady this detail was important.things like that still mattered then.especially on an afternoon drama.
i always notice too that when the situation at hand requires joe to spend the night at the evans' cottage so that maggie won't have to stay there alone they make a big point of joe announcing that he'll "just stretch out on the couch" so that the impression is not left to the audience that joe and maggie slept together.again these things mattered in a more genteel time.
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did she ever actually "sleep over"?
One time comes to mind -[spoiler]when she was taking care of Joe.[/spoiler] But Barnabas wasn't even home for much of that time because [spoiler]he was off being instructed on how he was to kill Joe by dispensing the poisoned medicine.[/spoiler]And I don't think Willie was supposed to be home either - though I have no recollection of where he was supposed to be or even if we were told. Though even at all that, thankfully Julia slept in a chair in the drawing room. ;)
so that the impression is not left to the audience that joe and maggie slept together
Joe and Maggie actually sleeping together?! [yikes] The shock!! The scandal!! The scene of the townsfolk dragging Joe out into the town square for an immediate tar and feathering - and then running him out of town on a rail!!! Not to mention the shunning of Maggie by all "good and decent" people from that point onward - even without a scarlet letter sewn onto her Junior Sophisticates.
[b003]
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Joe and Maggie actually sleeping together?! [yikes] The shock!! The scandal!!
You're so right, MB! Maggie would never do something like that! Never! Just like my parents. There mere thought.....
Gerard
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Though presumably your parents had benefit of marriage. ;) Joe and Maggie would have been vile fornicators!!! :o
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i think you guys know what i mean...
maggie was a "good girl" and in 1968 "does she or doesn't she?" wasn't just about haircoloring(although maggie's reds sometimes do look a bit enhanced).
hence we have joe's big show of sleeping on the couch.impressions are important...and good soap girls in 1968 needed to maintain a squeaky clean reputation.
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impressions are important...and good soap girls in 1968 needed to maintain a squeaky clean reputation.
Exactly! [wink2] Though soap girls now aren't considered tried and true of the genre until they've slept with at least three guys, preferably all without benefit of marriage! And even at that they're still considered "good girls" under most circumstances. [b003]
And I wasn't in any way ragging on your comment, mscbryk - I was just jokingly taking the situation, if it had happened, to its Small-New-England-Town-Not-Yet-On-The-Cusp-Of-The-Sexual-Revolution extreme. Thankfully we saw the end of that sort of scenario a long time ago! [lghy]
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Considering all she did for the Collins family (especially Barnabas [luv]), she EARNED her residency at Collinwood!
Besides, she didn't spend all of her time there, she did have Wyndecliffe to run, and I think she probably had her own apartment there on the grounds.
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Though presumably your parents had benefit of marriage. ;) Joe and Maggie would have been vile fornicators!!! :o
Even when my parents were married they never did that, MB! And don't ask me where I came from - I'm not listening! Mmmmhhmmmhhhmmm...........
Gerard
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When Julia first arrived at Collinwood, claiming she is there to study the history of the Collins family
and write a book. But Elizabeth and Roger did'nt check her background and her credentials to see
if she has a college degree in history, also did'nt check if Julia wrote history books in the past.
Elizabeth, Roger and Carolyn can't be that naive.
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I love it when Joe (Young Haskell), and Sam knock on the door of the Old House and Julia answers. They're like, "What the heck are YOU doing here?"
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But Elizabeth and Roger did'nt check her background and her credentials to see
if she has a college degree in history, also did'nt check if Julia wrote history books in the past.
Elizabeth, Roger and Carolyn can't be that naive.
Well, Julia had the good and trusted Dr. Woodard to vouch for her, and he was apparently the only background check they needed to accept her. Foolish? Obviously - because he was lying. But that's one of the advantages to being seen as good and trusted - you can get away with almost anything when situations demand it for the greater good because people always assume you're being truthful. [ghost_wink] [ghost_cheesy]
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Julia turned into a pretty crappy doctor, if you ask me. She went from raising the dead to pronouncing Elizabeth dead repeatedly. [ghost_azn]
On the subject of the indecency of Julia spending most of her time at the Old House, I've always thought Roger and Elizabeth gossiped about that a lot. "Oh, Liz, Julia is over at Barnabas's house working on that book again." "Yes, those two spend a lot of time alone together, just the two of them, working on the book." Of course, if Julia heard all that, her first thought would probably be, "If only!" [ghost_tongue2]
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Julia turned into a pretty crappy doctor, if you ask me. She went from raising the dead to pronouncing Elizabeth dead repeatedly. [ghost_azn]
True. But I don't know if we can fault Julia too much on that because Liz was in a supernaturally induced coma. Not exactly the type of thing doctors learn to differentiate from real death in medical school. [ghost_wink]
Of course, if Julia heard all that, her first thought would probably be, "If only!" [ghost_tongue2]
Exactly! [ghost_cheesy]
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Well, Julia had the good and trusted Dr. Woodard to vouch for her, and he was apparently the only background check they needed to accept her. Foolish? Obviously - because he was lying. But that's one of the advantages to being seen as good and trusted - you can get away with almost anything when situations demand it for the greater good because people always assume you're being truthful. [ghost_wink] [ghost_cheesy]
Yeah I was watching that episode, I think it is either # 283 or 284. But I forgot about Woodard vouching for Julia
to be a family historian to the Collins family.
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Yes, the coma was supernaturally induced, and so Julia probably shouldn't be at fault there. But she did stop being Super Doctor. At first she was just a blood specialist, then she was a psychologist running an insane asylum (and a psychologist running a funny farm as opposed to a psychiatrist doing it is about as likely as Willie's arm actually being "totally drained of blood" is in the real world! [ghost_rolleyes]), then she was Dr. Julia Hoffman, M.D., D.D.S., OBGYN... everything under the sun. And then her mad scientist phase where she raised the dead not once, but twice! And all that just disappeared suddenly. [ghost_tongue2]
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What bothered me about Julia pronouncing Elizabeth "dead," was that Elizabeth kept telling everyone that that's what would happen. While they didn't believe her, there was a previous episode when she appeared to be dead and then revived. So, one would certainly think that Julia would have taken a bit more time and perhaps do some tests to determine whether she really was or not.
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I think that Elizabeth really was dead when Julia pronounced her dead. Granted, at some point during all this we heard Elizabeth's thoughts when she was supposedly dead - but her spirit was a separate entity from her body at that point. It was in the same place, but it could not have dependent on the body, because there was no way for the body to support it. All tests on Elizabeth would have come up negative except for one: time, which showed that the body did not decompose. But the non-decomposition angle was saved for another storyline.
Looking over this post, I'm thinking that it was out of character for Julia just to forget the whole business when Elizabeth eventually came back to life. She told Barnabas in episode 291 that she was interested in the line between life and death. Or something like that. It's conceivable that (contradicting my earlier assertion) during all the time that Elizabeth was believed to be dead and was not breathing, eating, or eliminating matter, there was something in Elizabeth's body that was alive - but what could that something have been? Julia should have been eager to investigate the mechanics of Elizabeth's experience.
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Somehow, though, I doubt the family would have looked kindly on Julia conducting an investigation by poking and prodding what they believed to be Liz' corpse, which they would have no doubt felt should be left alone to "rest." Though that said, nothing ever seemed to stop Julia from doing her little experiments in secret. ... OK. Never mind. :) And who knows, maybe she did. In fact, perhaps she was so secret that not even the audience knew. ;)
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I couldn't believe that when this happerned, the family didn't instantly say, "She was right! We should have listened to her! In fact, despite the examination, she must still be alive right now! Let's not bury her!" They just reacted as if no one had seen this coming.
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Elizabeth had been having mental problems even before she decided she was going to be buried alive, so it's not entirely surprising that the family and Julia assumed that she was dead when she seemed to be dead. And, going back to my previous theme: what physical evidence was there that Elizabeth was not dead?
Straying still further from the original topic...the word "bury" takes on a new meaning in Dark Shadows. Coffins in a mausoleum are not buried in the non-Dark Shadows sense of the word, but on Dark Shadows, people in those coffins are occasionally referred to as having been buried. I can't think of any specific examples off-hand - but it always surprises me.
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Elizabeth had been having mental problems even before she decided she was going to be buried alive
What were they? I've forgotten.
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I'd say not leaving her property for 18 years qualifies.
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Literal LOL, Goober, though I was referring to Elizabeth's belief that she was Naomi Collins and her attempted suicide, which happened before she got the notion that she was going to be buried alive.
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That may not be true. Cassandra told Liz she would think of nothing but death in Ep #513 and already in Ep #514 Liz exhibited signs of being terrified at the thought of being buried alive when she heard sounds coming from behind the wall in the Old House's basement and flipped out, so it could be argued that her obsession with being buried alive was touched off there and then. But regardless of whether it was or not, when Liz attempted suicide with the belief that she was Naomi in Ep #520, that was due to Cassandra's shenanigans - and Barnabas realized that and insisted to Julia that it was the case. Julia was skeptical at first, but she soon came around to believing it too due to Roger's remarks about how Liz had been behaving peculiarly. So, Julia wouldn't have seen Liz' behavior then as a real mental problem but as a supernatural one. And so, while it probably would have clouded the family's judgment when it came to Liz' belief that she would be buried alive, that incident shouldn't have clouded Julia's judgment in the matter.
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MB, I read your post, and I thought, “Huh? Julia? When did I lose track?” And checking back, I find that the post I was originally answering was:
I couldn't believe that when this happerned, the family didn't instantly say, "She was right! We should have listened to her! In fact, despite the examination, she must still be alive right now! Let's not bury her!" They just reacted as if no one had seen this coming.
The family didn't know that the cause of Elizabeth's problem was supernatural.
As for Julia, I agree she should have been suspicious, but what could she have done? All the signs told her that Elizabeth was dead. Should she have held a voodoo ceremony to bring Liz back to life? I'm betting it wouldn't have worked, even if the family had given their consent to it. What else was possible?
Suddenly I'm thinking about fugu fish. Surely somebody on this forum knows more about that than I do.
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I may be missing things.
The supernatural is always lurking around the corner as a possible explanation for very unusual events for us, no matter how skeptical we are. We dismiss that possibility very quickly, most of us, but if we saw something white and shimmering for a moment in a dark old house when a cold wind is coming through the window and creaking noises are going on, first thought, ghost. In fact I think they bend over backwards a little too far on supernatural shows to depict all (uninformed) characters as total skeptics.
In any group the size of the Collins family, someone will consider a story like Elizabeth's I think, at least if it appears to be coming true at least partly in front of their eyes, and even if no one mentioned the supernatural.
I'm not sure what else they could do, myself.... I'd expect them to start considering that her fear might have been genuine, though. I would have.
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As for Julia, I agree she should have been suspicious, but what could she have done? All the signs told her that Elizabeth was dead. Should she have held a voodoo ceremony to bring Liz back to life? I'm betting it wouldn't have worked, even if the family had given their consent to it. What else was possible?
It just always seemed to me that with the previous incident when she revived, that Julia would have waited somewhat. It probably wouldn't have mattered, given how long the spell lasted, but it would have made more sense for her to be cautious and not immediately state that she was dead. I suppose for the purposes of the show they couldn't really extend it, but there could have been something to indicate a delay.
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If I remember correctly, wanted air vents in the coffin and you would think that after some time the family would have noticed that the body had not decomposed. The Collins family seemed to have many apparently unpaying guests over the centruries so perhaps Liz was just carrying on another family tradition with Julia. I would think that Liz's sense of family pride would incline her to let Julia stay on to write a book without paying lodging.
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My initial response to this topic is "Are you kidding? Julia worked her ASS off at Collinwood!" The favorite episode that comes to mind is the one towards the end of December of '68 when Carolyn is having an emotional meltdown over her mother's precipitous decline in health, Liz is on the brink of total catatonia and a deranged Joe Haskell is roaming the corridors plotting to kidnap Amy.
At one point, practically everyone in the house is whining for Julia, and the poor woman obviously doesn't know who to try to bitch-slap back to reality first!
There's also the fact that she kept Barnabas on course everytime they were struggling to save the whole family from the latest supernatural menace and Barn kept going googly eyed over the latest faux-Josette ingenue... Julia really did have her work cut out for her!
G.
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Well, Julia had the good and trusted Dr. Woodard to vouch for her, and he was apparently the only background check they needed to accept her. Foolish? Obviously - because he was lying. But that's one of the advantages to being seen as good and trusted - you can get away with almost anything when situations demand it for the greater good because people always assume you're being truthful. [ghost_wink] [ghost_cheesy]
I was watching Ep. 302 where Elizabeth and Julia were sitting in the Drawing Room talking. Elizabeth did asked
Julia about her background and what books she has written.
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Though considering that by that point Julia had supposedly been working on her book for almost a month, it comes across more as polite conversation and simple curiosity at how the book is progressing more than it does a probe into Julia's background (which would certainly be coming more than a bit late at that point [ghost_wink]). And, of course, Liz doesn't exactly get much info. I love how Liz remarks that if Julia is as nimble with the written word as she is the spoken word, she must be an interesting writer because their conversation started out being about Julia but Julia abruptly turned the subject around to Liz. Classic Julia when she wants to avoid something. [ghost_grin]
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I should watch that scene again. My memory of it is that Liz came across as one-upping and slightly threatening to Julia in her summing up of the conversation, but perhaps she was amused as well, and figured at that point that Julia was worth keeping around for her entertainment value.
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but perhaps she was amused as well
Oh, Liz is definitely amused. And her remark is sort of a backhanded compliment - congratulating Julia's nimbleness while also calling her on the fact that she changed the subject. But it's not threatening.
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We all kid (myself included) about how Julia mootches off the Collins family, but truthfully, I think she was very helpful to them when the time called for it (other than mistakenly pronouncing the mistress of the house dead). And as others have said, I think a warm friendship developed between Elizabeth and Julia, and Julia grew close to the other members of the family there. So the family may have just have said "Oh the hell with she's not really writing a history of the Collins family! She's a great friend and doctor!" (Again forget her boo-boo with Elizabeth).
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Still one line about how JH was now the family physician would have helped.
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I wouldn't get too upset at Dr Hoffman pronouncing Elizabeth dead. Mistakes can happen under unusual circumstances. I was recently watching an episode of Poldark when they pronounced Poldark's servant dead after a thrashing he received in the woods on the way home from a tavern. It was hilarious when he turned up very much alive at the drunken 'send off party' held in his honor. [ghost_tongue2]
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Yes, but Poldark is set a couple centuries ago, right?
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Poldark took place just after the American Revolutionary War. The setting is in Wales. An excellent series with a great cast of characters.
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I'm just saying that the medical field has been improved by leaps and bounds since the 1700s, so Julia would have had access to more modern medical techniques.
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A question that was never answered. Julia spent the night at the Old House when she was attacked by Tom Jennings, in Josettes room.
I do think that everyone thought that Julia was having an affair with Barnabas or something else. She was at the Old House more than when she was at Collinwood.
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I'm not sure Elizabeth would allowed Julia to stay at Collinwood if she had thought there was an affair going on between Julia and Barnabas. She might have been broadminded enough not to object to the affair, but she wouldn't have liked the image of Collinwood that it would have conveyed.
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I do think that Liz wouldn't have said a word even if she thought something was going on between Barnabas and Julia. We know that Victoria spent the night during a rain storm and there weren't any reprisals. Dr. Woodard, Sam Evans and Burke Devlin were the only ones the seemed to express disapproval to what they thought might have been happening at the Old House.
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And that's probably because they weren't getting any in their own lives. [b003]
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Julia was a bigger quack than the AFFLACK duck, and was a bigger freeloader at collinwood than Jason McGuire ever hoped to be [ghost_tongue2]
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Hey, at least Julia never tried to squeeze as much money as she could out of Elizabeth. You can't say that about Jason.
[spoiler] I mean, he wasn't satisified with the swiss bank account he forced Elizabeth to set up for him. He intended to get his hands on the whole Collins fortune of Collinsport through marriage. When that failed, he resorted to grand larceny by breaking into the Old House and and trying to get his hands on the jewels he saw Barnabas showing Willie. [/spoiler]
Jason was too greedy for his own good, and it was his undoing in the end.
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I'm not sure Elizabeth would allowed Julia to stay at Collinwood if she had thought there was an affair going on between Julia and Barnabas. She might have been broadminded enough not to object to the affair, but she wouldn't have liked the image of Collinwood that it would have conveyed.
Umm .. . Elizabeth lived a secucluded life at Collinwood under the assumption she murdered her husband and his rotting body was in the basement. .I don't think the character of Elizabeth passed judgment. I too think it was the writers and actors sly inside joke that everyone else believed there was hanky panky between B & J--there was innuendo planted by enough characters over the years.
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Jason was too greedy for his own good, and it was his undoing in the end.
Exactly. Julia was nothing like him. Though she could have certainly given Jason pointers on how to be more subtle about extending ones welcome. [ghost_cheesy]
Great new avatar, J99! [thumb]
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Great new avatar, J99!
Gorgeous.
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Julia probably provided them with some medical care we didn't get to see, as well.
And I agree that everyone else thought that Barnabas and Julia were having quite a lot of fun *cough* working on that book.
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That damn book was there excuse for everything! :) LOL
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Evenyually they probably let Julia off the hook on the book, thinking "We don't really want our family's story told anymore, do we?"
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Yeah but they also claimed to be working on a book about ERIC LANG and then something else (I think) as an excuse. Or maybe I am thinking of Barney saying he was [spoiler]"experimenting with electronics" when (to Carolyns) when he was punshing Phillip[/spoiler]