Sometimes I think of Liz's personal powder room as being very dainty, French Regency, afloat in shades of lavender and blue.

with her wiglet carefully pinned on a block. 

i love most of the above mentioned actors and most of their characters to death. Joan, Grayson, Louis, and Nancy could do no wrong. Pennock's characters i was usually somewhat indifferent to...


the only character i ever really "hated" was Adam and his surrounding storyline. to me it was the show's absolute nadir.


all of the assorted and sundry "Trasks" and "Quentins" became dull and interchangebale to me after awhile. Trask was grating and obnoxious and Lacey played him with a broad cartoonish swath that hit high camp. but he served a certain narrative function and i didn't really "hate" him. Quentin was so boring i nearly fall asleep when he's onscreen but he's too dull to truly "hate".

suffice to say Roger Davis' entire oeuvre was fingers on a chalkboard but Ned Stuart took home the prize. mercifully his tenure was of a brevity that didn't leave too much damage.

New York was a much, much less expensive place to live in the 1960s...

one can imagine regular soap work, even "off contract", could have afforded an actor a modestly comfortable life.

i have an old 'Life' magazine from 1968 that has an article on what a sensation the show had become by that point owing largely to the Barnabas character...


i states that Alexandra, who had been the original "lead", was two years into her five year contract. we know how that worked out but it's notable that if she had not left under the circumstances she did, and simply fulfilled the obligations of her contract, she would have remained with the show for it's duration.

i think it's safe to assume Joan had a similar deal given her "name" value and how important she originally was to the structure of the show. 

1970PT and HoDS were shot simultaneously. so for several weeks most of the main cast were doing "double duty" and were seen on the series only sporadically or were absent almost entirely. in their absence David Selby and Lara Parker (and some of the lesser players), who did not appear in the film, headed up the cast during this period.

in terms of 1995 it was just a brief look into "the future". a time when most of the characters were dead. hence their absence. it was just a setup for Barnabas and Julia to stumble upon another "disaster" they had to try and prevent. only this time they were thrust into the future and not the past.

i'm not sure how the "on contract" players were compensated. if it was a standard "salary" or of if they were paid on a "per episode" basis.

for this reason these "best of" compilations have never had any draw for me.

my "best of" could be Julia removing a pair of gloves or Mrs. Johnson complaining about spoiled mayonnaise. they'd never make the cut. 

i don't have Showtime and have to wait til the dvd comes out...

how has it been?

i'm sure if i had been a viewer at the time i would have been devastated...


but as a contemporary viewer i have found the five year cycle to be more than satisfying. 1225 episodes of anything is a lot to get through. and towards the end it really started to feel played out.


i really don't think i could have slogged through "1864 parallel time" or whatever the next time period/storyline would have been and another round of generic "Trasks", "Quentins" and Nancy Barrett cockney "Fayes". Joanathan, Grayson and Joan in particular seemed like they were ready to collapse from exhaustion during the final months. the freshness and energy was gone.

all good things must come to an end.