i'm a bit a day late and a dollar short here too.i tend to spend alot of time down in current talk and don't visit calendar events as much as i should.

but welcome to new members!i'm sure you'll like it here.

the further one progresses into the series the further one gets away from dr.julia hoffman's ruse about being an historian researching the history of the collins family being exposed.
and since this was ostensibly the reason she was staying at collinwood the less and less sense her continued presence there makes over time.

vicki,maggie and mrs.johnson worked for the family so thier presence make sense.but julia?

so i was wondering why the desicion was made to keep julia at collinwood rather than explore numerous other options that might have made more sense.
now she could have returned to wyndcliff but would that have removed her from the main action too much?or how about being offered matthrew morgan's cottage or one of the other properties on the estate?since she spent most of her time with barnabas anyways could she have moved into the old house or would it have been considered "improper" for an unmarried lady to be living under the same roof as two men(and julia was a "proper lady")?

couldn't they just have built a new set as a house for julia like they did when other characters took up residency in collinsport?from a budgetary standpoint was it simply cheaper and easier to keep julia at collinwood?or was it a deliberate plot device to keep her in the thick of things?

o.k. just a few more final words then i'll stop...promise .

having completed this collection i've been thinking about it.perhaps i'm looking for a dose of reality where i'm just not going to find it but there are a few implausiblities here that stand out for me(aside from the obvious like werewolves).

elizabeth collins stoddard is the town's queen bee.the company she runs probably employs half the townspeople and you know how small town gossip is.here she "dies" and no one knows anything about it.
there is no reading of a will,talk of inheritance,etc. that i caught.and remember that everyone besides carolyn really believed her to be dead.even an undertaker shows up.

now i know that this show didn't focus on such mundane realities such as this at this point but that doesn't make alot of sense to me.

much stranger is that when liz returns from the "dead" no one so much as raised an eyebrow.barnabas,julia and carolyn knew the real story behind her "death" but no one else did from what i could tell.then in the next episode it's just business as usual.didn't maggie and mrs.johnson find it odd to say the least when thier supposedly dead employer shows up and starts issuing orders?

now this was a secondary storyline and goodness knows i was glad to have liz back and no longer under that tedious spell but this was some sloppy writing.

on a lesser note even though the usual suspects(barnabas,julia)know what really happened to vicki to everone else the pat explanation was that she "had to go away" was going to suffice and no one was going to say "well,where the hell did she go?".

that's exactly how i felt about it barnabas' bride.

during the adam and nicholas stuff my attention definitely lagged.here it was renewed.
one thing that l liked about it was that like the laura collins story and the early barnabas story here it was a single threat(quentin)rather than a bunch of monsters that put the family in jeopardy.there was also chris jennings but that was sort of an extention of quentin.

as far as ned stuart goes i didn't dislike him any more than jeff clark.mercifully he wasn't that big a presence.
and i don't want to say that i disliked maggie in vicki's role but i definitely wish that alexandra moltke had stuck around a few more months and played this storyline.it would have been nice to see her relationship with david being renewed(however menacingly)after being abandoned during her final months on the show.

because maggie essentially becomes a substitution for vicki we sort of lose maggie as a seperate character.what would maggie have done her if she stayed her own character?would she be dealing with joe's hospitalization?would she be dating someone new?the writers would have had to create a whole seperate storyline for maggie had she not replaced vicki as collinwood governess.

johnny karlen:"...whosays alcohol makes you look bloated...hic..."

just a few more tid-bits to my collection 12 blow by blow.

what's up with the ned stuart character?he looks and acts exactly like jeff clark.they couldn't do anything to differentiate these two characters?and since jeff clark had only been out if the picture a few weeks at this point why the need to bring roger davis back?was he under contract?

and since the governess character is featured so prominently here you know i can't help but wish it was vicki.
i think her and david selby would have looked good opposite one another.obsessive...maybe just a little?

i've been watching this dvd all week and i'm really enjoying it.

i'm stunned at how different this storyline feels than the months that preceded it when everything took place within the shadow of the adam storyline.here that's all spept away like so many cobwebs.

during the preceding story much of the action took place at nicholas blair's house and the collins family wasn't that prominent much of the time.here collinwood is re-established as the main location and the family returned to front-burner status.it has a whole diffrent "feel".

with victoria gone and roger and elizabeth "away" for part of these episodes barnabas is now squarely the show's "moral center"(which is really bizzare if you think about it).he and julia almost seem to be the master and mistess of the house.

it was great to have elizabeth return(with a chic new pageboy hairdo)and finally be done with her tedious buried alive obssession.here she's imperious liz and i love it.mrs. johnson is also featured prominently in several episodes and i can't love that enough either.
even though david is under a "dark influence" it's interesting that he has the type of relationship with maggie here that he had with vicki early on.sort of playing nasty tricks on her and a very "i'll get even with you" attitude.although he does now seem a bit too old for a governess.

where as the adam/eve/nicholas storyline has a more scifi/camp( )feel this is much more rooted in the gothic tradition.

the only part of this collection of episodes that i didn't really care for was barnabas' return to the year 1796(or whatever the heck year they decided it was)to save vicki.it seemed sort of pointless.it didn't really change anything within the context of the rest of the story.vicki was tucked safely away in the past and if they couldn't get alexandra back i don't see why they bothered to do this with another actress.

i've met david selby and terryane crawford at the fests before but didn't really have a context to put them in.i thought beth was quite beautiful.

the longer i watch the show the more i realize that each storyline needs to be treated as it's own seperate entity and not look for too much connection to what happened before it because it just won't be there and you have to accept it on it's own terms.so far i think this is quite good.