not really a room so much as the location of a room.

during the adam plot there is an episode where he breaks into vicki's room to strangle her.they show him standing outside vicki's window peering in before he enters.

but unless vicki was suddenly demoted to downstairs servants quarters it had been very clearly established that her room was on the second floor with the rest of the family bedrooms.

sloppy!

perhaps i should clarify what i meant.

true the show did feature violent and often gorry elements but the fact that all of this took place on the estate of a respectable dowager gave the whole thing an air of propriety that made it past the censors.i don't think the same story could have been told about a poor rural communtiy at the time.for good or bad these were a very genteel group of people for the most part.

and they were very careful about the appearance of sexual impropriety among the leads.

for instance there were several occasions where joe thought it best that he spend the night at the evans cottage rather than leaving maggie there alone.however they made a very big deal of mentioning that joe would be crashing on the couch lest the viewer get the impression that he was sleeping with his girlfriend.this mattered.

a similar thing happens when the storyline returns to the present after 1795.vicki asks maggie if she would ask her father if it's o.k. for jeff to stay in a previously unmentioned "spare room" at the evans cottage.having jeff stay in what was basically a two room shack versus having him stay at collinwood,a house with forty rooms,makes little sense until you consider that having jeff and vicki,unmarried yet romantically involved,living in the same house was not proper at the time.when sam dies jeff instictively offers to move out post haste saying it wouldn't be "right" for him to stay there any longer and maggie immediately agrees.it mattered.

and as i said no matter how late and how long julia was at the old house they almost always showed us julia...dressed,coiffed and gloved...leaving to return to collinwood at some point.it mattered.

this is all coded stuff but it mattered.the show could show decapitated bodies,blood and rotting corpses but it could not have unmarried characters of the opposite sex(at least in terms of the leads)living in the same house.

again i think that this made the outrageous plots acceptable to censors and advertisers.

one book that never leaves my night table is "AMY VANDERBILT'S COPMPLETE BOOK OF ETIQUETTE.A GUIDE TO GRACIOUS LIVING" published in 1952.i read it just for fun.

it outlines the byzantine rituals of upper-class life at the time.included are chapters devoted to such indespensable information as what type of clothes to pack for hunting and shooting,how to properly eat birds and frogs legs,when to applaud at the opera,how to address a letter to a marchioness("to the most honourable the marchioness of remington...")and how to properly greet household servants.

dark shadows usually got it right.a governess,tutor or companion is "miss"(miss winters)and housekeepers "miss" or "mrs."(mrs.johnson).chinese men sevants by the way are to be called by their last names,which,"chinese fashion"are given first(fu wang expects to be called "fu").

so anyways by the standards of the day it's not outrageous that it was expected that vicki would leave her job as governess once she got married.it was a postion intended for a young unmarried girl.once married it was expected that she would have her own home and children to care for.

even by 1967 standards this thinking was already a bit behing the times but d.s. opperated that way in terms of it's social mores.in some ways it's more a product of the 1950's more than the late 1960's.it being a daytime soap opera it needed to be nonoffensive to housewife friendly advertisers of products like floor wax and laundry detergent.so as outrageous as the plot was there needed to be a general air of propriety.

hence as much time as julia spent at the old house,sometimes till all hours of course,she needed to be at collinwood as the guest of elizabeth,not barnabas.it would not have been "appropriate" at the time for an unmarried lady to be living under the same roof as two men.

i'm never 100% sure of the timeline here.so barnabas had his dalliance with angelique before he actively began to court josette?

at the very least he was quite foolish never to think that perhaps the scorned servant in a moment of jealous pique might not say to her lady "guess what sister?i've been with your man!".

i watched the confrontational scene between abigail and barnabas("what are you doing here!?!")

talk about some bravura work from both jonathan frid and clarice blackburn.one of the best scenes ever i think.

i've kvetched about this endlessly but one of things i liked the most about this storyline is that all of the original actors were given interesting things to do along with jonathan,grayson and lara.

sadly after this storyline they get sidelined in favor of the "monster-of-the-week" situation.given the show's expansive premise they could have found new and interesting ways to use these characters but the writers seemed unsure of what to do with them.

interesting about seaview.

it and the subsequent plan for vicki and burke to move into the west wing were given alot of buildup for plot developments that never actually went anywhere.

and burke's plane crash in brazil seems like a rather abrupt and random way to kill-off a major character.

they obviously decided to go for bigger fish with 1795.

quite o.t. however...

tonight t.c.m. aired the film "topper" starring joan's sister constance bennett.i sort of expected a blond joan but she looked and sounded very different.