DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '26 I => Current Talk '09 I => Topic started by: Watching Project on January 12, 2009, 11:00:32 PM
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Robservations #706
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Now we've seen all four of the Collinses of Quentin's generation: Edward, Judith, Quentin, and Carl. If I remember correctly, there's been some discussion elsewhere in the Forum as to which was the youngest - Quentin or Carl. I always feel that Carl is the youngest because he seems so young, but that's not sensible of me, because if Carl lives to be a hundred and eight he'll still seem immature. It doesn't matter, though; I can't change how I feel.
What tense for moments Barnabas endured, before Edith died! If she had told the secret just she before she died, when Barnabas and Edward were in the room with her, would he have bitten Edward and suffocated Edith? Or would he have just blustered it out by saying that Edith was obviously off her rocker? I think he would have had to bite Edward, because otherwise somebody would have checked a mirror. I keep imagining Edward's mustache getting tangled around Barnabas's fangs.
Looking at Carl, I'm wondering: whose idea was he? He's like nobody else on Dark Shadows. He's a little bit like Millicent in that he's got a charmingly clueless view of reality, but he's more active in his cluelessness than Millicent was. Basically, Barnabas got a pie thrown in his face today. Where did that come from? Not that I'm objecting, mind you. I was sort of surprised to see that when Carl left, there was no trace of amusement in Barnabas's face. Barnabas is such a fuddy-duddy! And I love having that thought.
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Edith's babbling brings up a lot of interesting theories:
Even at this point it's stated Daniel wasn't exactly "father of the year". He really held people by the strings didn't he, perhaps his knowledge of the secret made him that way.
When Edith mentioned about them dancing downstairs while her husband was dying, was she referring to Judith & Edward or her son & his wife?
Edith's mentioning of "mother" was about her mother or mother-in-law? Could she have been remembering when Gabriel told her the "secret" that his mother warned him (when she informed him of the "secret"), not to do so as she couldn't keep secrets?
I like the way the writers connected 1796 to 1897 with the information about the generation in between.
So, the secret went from Joshua-Daniel-Harriet-Gabriel-Edith. Edith's reaction to Barnabas makes me wonder if she really did get to tell Edward originally, perhaps her nerves got to her in a similar way originally.
This reinforces my own idea that 1840 was an alternate timeline.
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Daniel would have been the last person to learn The Secret who had personally known Barnabas. The Secret must have come as quite a shock to him. Very likely he would have remembered Barnabas chiefly as a loving older brother to Sarah.
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I always thought that Carl was a bit sharper than Millicent was. True he wasn't any Einstein by any means, but it seemed to me he could read people pretty well. Which is more than you can say about Millicent.
I must confess that Carl isn't my favorite JK character...that would be Willie or Desmond. However, I definitely can't stand what happens to him later on. [spoiler] Barnabas killing him in cold blood was just deplorable. [snow_mad] [/spoiler] I know JK was moving on to other projects, but Carl's departure could have been handled better.
Barnabas lucked out that Edith passed away before telling Edward the secret. If Barnabas had known Edith had known about him, would he have tried to have passed himself under a different name....Bramwell, perhaps? [snow_wink]
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If ever a family needed a backup plan for insuring that an important family secret gets passed to subsequent generations, this one did. Particularly with its history of sudden and mysterious deaths.
I've witnessed incidents of people seeing ghosts while on their own deathbed. It's interesting that the writers had Daniel coming for Edith instead of Gabriel.
Edith's mentioning of "mother" was about her mother or mother-in-law? Could she have been remembering when Gabriel told her the "secret" that his mother warned him (when she informed him of the "secret"), not to do so as she couldn't keep secrets?
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So, the secret went from Joshua-Daniel-Harriet-Gabriel-Edith.
Well, Edith didn't call Daniel "father" (she was clear that he was Gabriel's, however) so when she talked about her mother's warning to her future husband concerning her inability to keep secrets, she probably was talking about her own mother. And how would her mother-in-law know this about her before the wedding anyway? I'm thinking there's more evidence that the secret wasn't passed by Harriet. In 1840 we learn [spoiler]that Daniel not only outlived Harriet by 10 years, but he hated, mistrusted and even murdered her,[/spoiler] so it seems unlikely that he would have told the family secret to her instead of his oldest son.
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[spoiler]Daniel was also very conflicted about having offed her, so it may have been a thin line between love and hate thing. Plus he was irrational.[/spoiler]
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I'm not completely convinced that the 1840 spoilers are relevant. We don't get to 1840 until nearly two years from now, and at this point the writers hadn't dreamed the 1840 stuff up yet, so maybe the 1840 stuff hadn't taken place yet in the Dark Shadows universe, even as it originally happened before Barnabas and Julia went back and scrambled it. After all, time does some very weird things in the Dark Shadows universe.
Anyway, my impression is that Daniel passed the secret on to Gabriel, and that Gabriel, as he lay dying while others danced in 1863, passed the secret on to Edith. This is surprising to me, because the son of Gabriel and Edith would surely have been alive in 1863, since Quentin was born in 1870. Either the son was away - fighting in the Civil War, perhaps - or else he was considered not reliable enough to be entrusted with the secret.
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They should have had a sealed envelope in their lawyers office just in case.
If ever a family needed a backup plan for insuring that an important family secret gets passed to subsequent generations, this one did. Particularly with its history of sudden and mysterious deaths.
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They should have had a sealed envelope in their lawyers office just in case.
Along with this note from the Collins family: If you are reading this before you're supposed to, you are definitely our kind of lawyer.
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Good one...
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Magda and Sandor sure got the old house cleaned up fast after apparently living in squalor for the length of their stay.
I wonder from where the character of Carl was adapted? He certainly is odd. We learn that Edith never could keep a secret according to her mother. It's too bad they didn't keep Edith around longer.
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This episode has the first appearance of Carl, who was the second character that JK played on DS. [milestone] Finally, JK got to play a character other than Willie! [snow_cheesy] It was cute how Carl played that joke on Barnabas. Barnabas sure wasn't a very good sport, and he had no sense of humor! [snow_strange]
It was thrilling to watch Edith become more and more senile, and Barnabas worrying that his secret would come out. [snow_shocked] Somewhere along the way, though, the secret must have been lost in the original timeline, because the present-day Collins family had no knowledge of it and Barnabas was able to fool them with the "English branch of the family" story. [snow_lipsrsealed]
----- Sally -----
[snow_bigglass] [hippy2]
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The secret could have been lost in the 20th century sometime.
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I think he would have had to bite Edward, because otherwise somebody would have checked a mirror. I keep imagining Edward's mustache getting tangled around Barnabas's fangs.
I love it! [laughing4] [stfl] I get these demented mental images of Oil Can Harry or Dishonest John.
He's a little bit like Millicent in that he's got a charmingly clueless view of reality, but he's more active in his cluelessness than Millicent was. Basically, Barnabas got a pie thrown in his face today. Where did that come from? Not that I'm objecting, mind you. I was sort of surprised to see that when Carl left, there was no trace of amusement in Barnabas's face. Barnabas is such a fuddy-duddy! And I love having that thought.
Barnabas REALLY needs a sense of humor transplant. Come to think of it, that might be a reason the character never really "grabbed" me. The thing I've noticed in common in most fandom's I've been involved with is that either the show or movie (Trek, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the SW movies, Blake's 7 and Babylon 5, amongst others) has an off center snarky sense of humor. Quentin and Magda fit that pattern too.
As to Carl, I'm of two minds about him. Yes, he's clueless about a lot of things, and he's at least as immature as Quentin, though in a totally different way. However, how much of this is HIS false face he shows the world as a defense mechanism. When he was trapped in the mausoleum, he figures out how to solve the puzzle of the opening mechanism. If I remember right, he's the ONLY one ever figured it out from the inside, which implies a certain level of intelligence. As has been pointed out, he also seems to read people pretty well (Let's leave out the original Pansy on that one though.)
He makes me think of Claudius, in I Claudius. In a family full of homicidal power hungry sociopaths, he plays down his intelligence and capability and is therefore ignored (and stays alive) as being no threat to anyone. Harmlessness and foolishness can be a very effective protective cover.
Jeannie
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Anyone who brings up Claudius, Trek, Babylon Five, Blake's Seven and Dark Shadows in the same post is okay in my book, Jeannie.
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Jeannie,
Once you provide a link to a post you're quoting, you don't have to keep linking to that post in your same message. As long as subsequent quotes come from the same post, using simple quote tags around them is enough. You can see an example of this now in your Reply #14.
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OOPS! Sorry about that. [snow_blush]. I was thinking I was saving bandwidth quoting that way. I'll remember that next time (though I probably made the same mistake again in the flurry of posts I did yesterday).
Jeannie
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Anyone who brings up Claudius, Trek, Babylon Five, Blake's Seven and Dark Shadows in the same post is okay in my book, Jeannie.
I've always liked your posts too Magnus. It's a lot less common than I would have expected to encounter Science Fiction fans in this fandom.
Jeannie
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No problem, Pansity, and thanks!