I'd recommend waiting for the DVDs, as HBO (unsurprisingly) has no free online instant viewing service, and the methods joe integlia shared are a bit less than legal... aside from that, I got a damaged disk from Netflix once, and I tried one of the sites that Surfthechannel.com uses for videos, and received a lovely Trojan on my PC.

Oh, yes, it is something to look into. And I agree that The Graysons doesn't sound like a very good idea.

You didn't like 7th Heaven? That surprises me, since you said that you were a big fan of all the Aaron Spelling shows.

I just didn't like the last three seasons for several reasons, primarily the fact that they turned everyone into a partial or complete idiot. I didn't like Chris much, and positively despised Magic School. Seriously. I would have tolerated it if they had done it in a way that reflected Californian culture, like using Spanish and Native American influences in its decoration, but it was an old, very British castle that just popped into their lives out of nowhere after no mention for the first five seasons. If you're going to rip off something (in this case Harry Potter), at least change it to fit better into your universe, like a certain show that we all watch did.

I only watched Smallville during the first Brainiac arc to see James Marsters in something besides Buffy, but it seemed like a good show. I may start watching it from the beginning some day, I dunno.

I completely agree with you. I didn't love Reba, but it was one of the few recent sitcoms that made me laugh at all. The only post-2000 sitcoms I've enjoyed are Frasier and Friends, and even those took a downhill turn after the new millennium, Friends in particular.

Does it look to anyone else like Julia got stabbed in the head with something?  That would certainly explain the uncomfortable-looking expression on her face.

One of the truly vivid examples of that in fanfiction is the startling number of people who seem to see Hermione and Snape as a couple in Harry Potter (which includes a very well-done and hilarious music video on YouTube called "Buttons").

Just watched it, and eek. I'm pretty sure that's illegal. Most of the fanfics that pair them have Hermione at legal age, though, unlike that video.

But yeah, Carolyn had some issues, all right...

The new actor, whoever he may be, should deviate from Frid somewhat. As I said, he needs to be a worthy successor, but he'll never stand up against Frid; therefore, exactly regurgitating Frid's version of the character would be a huge mistake.

Actually, what I'm saying is that, in my mind, there can be no new incarnation of Dark Shadows. For allegory, the famous "original" glazed variety of Krispy Kreme donuts is the Krispy Kreme donut, and all the others are just Krispy Kreme-branded donuts. (Did that make sense?) I'm not against another show or movie, but I don't see them as true revivals of the original show, just new media released under the brand name of the original show.

Forgive me, "uncreative" was the term I meant to use, not "unimaginative." As I said, Dark Shadows is a great show, and I find the fact that it openly borrowed from so many horror stories to create a very large portion of its storylines strangely endearing. Aside from that, when the Revival popped up, they didn't do enough to differentiate it from the original series, which is probably due to Dan Curtis. Sure, different cast and a few plot changes, but it was essentially the same story. But what you read about the writing staff on the internet, as well as somewhat in the PomPress books, indicates that Dan Curtis was having the writers speed-read various horror stories, and then rewriting those stories into the DS universe; not exactly an enormous sign of creativity. And let's not forget that if Dan Curtis had gotten his way and made Barnabas an all-evil vampire instead of giving into Frid and the writers, Dark Shadows likely would have gotten canceled instead of being saved by Barnabas. I'm not denying that DS had some really creative stuff in it - but I think it more had to do with other writers than with DC himself. Just my opinion.

I'm ambivalent about Burton directing, primarily because I loved how natural the setting of HoDS felt, and I'd much rather see a Dark Shadows movie filmed on-location on some old New England estates than CGI'ing it over at Pinewood, which is what he'll probably do. The only current exception that I can think of is Big Fish, which was filmed in Alabama, though that may have something to do with Steven Spielberg originally being set up to direct that one. I also think that Johnny Depp is a great actor, but I'm not sure he would have been my first choice for Barnabas, either.

As for HBC, I admit that I thought, "Barnabas and Julia!" during Mrs. Lovett's wedding fantasy in Sweeney Todd, but I'd still rather see someone else - as I've said before, Juliet Landau, who's kind of in the middle of Hall and Steele, would be my ideal pick.