Right on the nosey!

Willie's not an oaf.    JK and Clarice Blackburn brought a reality to DS when everything else was leaving the ground and flying into never-never land... when the lines permitted it.    CB reacting to Barnabas getting strangled was great.    Willie was the worst overactor in the Dream, but I guess he saw how awful it was, and that it was up to the actors to convince people it was scary when the hospital vending machine would have been scarier.    He was trying to do the impoissible so no wonder he failed.

Willie is not an oaf. He is portrayed as one. As he is in the audio dramas. That bugs me.
My thoughts on the dream curse/Willie is that they gave Mr. Karlen the script and he had fun with it. I love it. I laugh my butt off every time I see it. I have a feeling JK had a ball with it.

Willie had amnesia, that was the reason for the commitment I think.

As for mental 'hospitals', Willie was lucky.    In real life, he would have experienced damage to the brain from forced anti-psychotic drugs.    He would have been considered 'improved' after that, but disconnectedness and apathy from the drugs look like improvement to psychiatrists, who judge sanity by whether the subject is agitated, or instead, "manageable".    In extreme cases the results can be a sort of zombification... certainly "manageable" but not beneficial.   

It's a complicated subject, which is hardly ever talked about in public.    Perfectly in keeping with a horror TV show, actually.    It's not that psychiatry fails with all patients... it's just that the proportion of failure and damage to patients' lives is very high.

Agreed.
What I hate about this storyline is that Willie comes back as a sort of baffoon. He's lost all of his street-sense smarts and cow tows to Barnabas and Julia's demands. He is aware of right and wrong, but cannot positively connect with what he should do.
"Hey, dig up a coffin for me."
It's just like the audio dramas. I can't stand the way they portray Willie. He's an oaf and a loser. No. He is not. He's a complicated man with a bad history. So why did DC make him out to be a bafoon?
As far as Wyndecliffe is concerned, I suppose they were doing their best at the time; with what they had to work with back then.
I dunno. Somebody said earlier that Willie seemed to come out of it for the worse and I think they are right. He was not rehabilitated properly. But that's a soap for you.

Josette wanna-be photos. "I'll kick your ass, Miss Hoffman!"

"D...Doctor.. Hoffman! Ugh!"

 

Sigh...  I may be in the minority on this, but I much prefer "Return to Collinwood" to the  Big Finish audio dramas.

RtC has fun with the characters (who have aged along with the audience) and doesn't take itself too seriously.  When you're 40 years past a show's prime, a healthy dose of humor goes a long way.

The subsequent Big Finish productions (up to and including "The Rage Beneath") take themselves too seriously IMO and are a bit too formulaic for my tastes.

Just my .02...

Is that available on DVD or CD? I saw the actors perform this epic on stage and was just wowed by it.

If you're in need of humor, watch Laurel and Hardy. Does the trick for me.

...Carolyn would never marry and eventually end up playing all night cribbage games with Cousin Quentin at Stormcrest Sanitarium.