Heather, you are a GEM!  I love coming here and seeing those snapshots from Gargoyles.  Thank you so much for including the scene where she rushes into the sheriff's office, goes STRAIGHT for the drawer where he keeps the "emergency liquor supply," grabs the bottle and takes a few good strong slugs.  I think as she's grabbing the bottle the deputy is about to say something like "Take it EASY, Mrs. Parks!"  Great stuff.

Thank you for a bright spot of my week!  Now, if only some good samaritan could add some snapshots of Hoffman at her most sinister and smug... I love the scene where, with gritted teeth, [spoiler]Hoffman complains to Angel/Exis, a propos of Maggie:  "I HATE taking ORDERS from her!"  ANY scene involving Hoffman in PT is truly better than Heroin![/spoiler]

A lifelong Hall-o-holic,

G.

Forget the hemlines, what about Sebastian Shaw's utterly sexxxalicious leather trousers, seemingly sprayed on!  EEEEEEE-YOWWWWW!

Talk about sights that can cause a strong man to slither in a gelatinous puddle to the floor...

G.

(For those who don't get the reference, the title of this topic is inspired by an old Saturday Night Live skit, "Coffee Talk," featuring Michael Myers as talk maven Linda Richman "filling in for my dear friend Paul Baldwin, who is STILL in Boca Raton with shpilkis in his genechtigezoink."  In this skit, Linda and two of her dear friends, played by Madonna and Rosanne Barr, were discussing "Barbra Joan Streisand" and the movie "Prince of Tides," which they kept saying was "like BUTTAH."  Madonna said "It's better than HEROIN, not that I would ever know what heroin is like!")

In honor of the imminent publication of "Grayson Hall: a Hard Act to Follow," by R. J. Jamison, the new full-length biography of our very own Dr. Julia Hoffman, I am starting this thread to discuss favorite scenes by the Divine One on our show.  Her own favorite role on the series was that of Magda--after 1969 she mentioned in several magazine interviews that Magda was "still alive" and hinted that she would enjoy playing her again.  One of my favorite Magda moments was featured in the board slide show a couple of days ago:  [spoiler]after Sandor's death, Magda tells Barnabas to bite her, so she can know what Sandor went through during his last months of life.  Even better, perhaps, is the scene where Magda takes an axe (at the end of this show) and chops the Hand of Count Petofi in two--I just love the look on her face in this scene![/spoiler]

This highlights how so many of Grayson's great moments on the show were entirely (or almost entirely) non-verbal.  I loved the scene (used by Claude North in one of his videos available on You Tube) where Julia comes to the Old House in the 1967 storyline and [spoiler]informs Barnabas that she's wiped Maggie's memory through hypnosis--and Barnabas is now going to have accept that Dr. Hoffman is in charge.  While she makes this statement, she lights her cigarette off of one of Barn's cherished candelabras, inserts it into a long holder, and casually blows smoke around the room, while he glares at her in outrageous.  It's a FABULOUS moment.[/spoiler]

I do think that in some ways, Grayson's finest acting was as Hoffman, the housekeeper in Parallel Time 1970.  You get to see her toning things way down and working with a degree of restraint not seen in her other work on DS.  I love how subtly she intimidates and condescends to Maggie in the initial days of the storyline.  One of my favorite moments is when she is talking about Quentin and says (clearly thinking of his sexual relationship with late wife Angelique, whom Hoffman idolized) "He had EVERYTHING."  The way she says the line makes it clear, with devastating finality, that in Hoffman's eyes, Quentin deserved NONE of what he had.  And then there's the great moment when Hoffman comes into the drawing room and [spoiler]sees Alexis for the first time, believing her to be Angelique back from the dead.  Her reaction is beautifully played and very realistic.[/spoiler]

I encourage other fans to share their favorite Grayson moments in this thread.

Can't wait to see the new book!  Big congratulations to RJ!

Best, G. 

Well, as Luciaphil has stated, Vicki's initial story took up a little over five months of air time which seemed to represent a little under 3 weeks of "real" C'port time.  Nevertheless, when Vicki arrives in town, it's summer, but by the time Laura arrives (towards the end of the Matthew story) it's close to Xmas.  If that doesn't tell you that they were all living in the middle of a big ol' time-warp, well, I'll buy you a scotch at the High Hat Lounge.

Another thing that is hilarious is that when the night of the seance begins, it is 1967, but after being in "the Pahst" for a few months, suddenly Vicki is talking about returning to 1968.  A firm date for her return is provided in the script when she visits the cemetery and mentions that it is April 2, 1968.   From this point on, the passage of time becomes VERY vague, although I believe in the scripts they included information about how much time was supposed to have passed from one episode to another.

G.

I thought there was a line or two in there about Liz inviting Quentin to live at Collinwood after the Leviathan catastrophe.  He had done a lot for the family at that point, and he WAS a relative.  If the dialogue wasn't there, well, it should have been!

I definitely agree with you that the idea of Quentin living in that room in 1970 is beyond bizarre.  It almost feels like somebody's idea of an in-joke.  Apart from anything else, given what had happened in that room (in the REVISED history of 1897) who on Earth would want to live there?  At the very least, the walls should have been stripped and the decor completely changed from the 1890s look.  [spoiler]I mean, a corpse was ROTTING in there for decades![/spoiler]

But, that's DS--sometimes any pretense of logic or plausibility just goes right out the window!

G.

During the period of the "missing episode," the series was being repeated on one of the Washington D. C. stations (I believe) in the evenings (I think this would have been Channel 7? Channel 13 was ABC's Baltimore based station which was where I watched DS from 1968 through the end in '71).  IIRC, they ran it at 11:30 at night.  I seem to recall some of the shows being repeated on Sunday nights as well.  It stands out in my memory because until the 1990s, this was my only opportunity to see any of the episodes more than once (I did videotape one on a visit at my parents' home in the 1980s, I think).  The shows I saw in the first 1976 syndication were brand new to me--from 1967.

Anyhow, since those shows were being re-shown in other markets, it's possible that extra copies were made of those final weeks of the PT 1841 storyline. So, yeah, one could show up one day.  It seems unlikely at this stage of the game, but who knows.

The one I want the original color master of is the debut episode of Countess du Pres and Angelique from 1795.  I hadn't heard about the recovery of a color master from the 1970 sequence.

G.

I've posted here so many times about my fondness for Leviathan, but I'm almost as fond of PT 1970.  I particularly like the set-up of PT 1970 with the beautifully re-dressed sets and the crisp, fruity dialogue (hmmm makes it sound like granola--aaaanyway), and "Ode to Angelique" makes a great theme for the storyline.  I have mixed feelings about the Cyrus/Yeagar storyline, and the haunting of Damian Edwards subplot also does not seem to come off very successfully.  But Aunt Hannah makes a great partner in crime for Ange/Lexis when the rest of the gang is out partying at T'town (haha).

When everybody comes back it turns into a wild ride and some of the best episodes in the series, as MB has commented.  I really liked the English actor who played the Inspector (although why C'port should have an English police inspector right out of the pages of Aggie Christie is beyond me).  Too bad they did not bring him back later on.  Probably the weakest elements of the conclusion of the story is the fact that neither Quentin nor Maggie come off as a very attractive characters, nor is Barnabas' motivation in helping them at all well established.  But, if you want to watch Dark Shadows, sometimes you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride, and there's certainly plenty of great sights along the way on this one.

G.