Discuss - Ep #0245

Robservations - #245

Good show, you see the roller coaster of Barnabas being a little bit unstable. He doesn't like the way that he is. You see some regret. He doesn't like that Willie didn't trust him.  But then maybe Barnabas should have been a little bit more upfront with him.  He seemed like he is smarter than most people think. At least in things other than the ladies.

By the way at the beginning to the show there was that oblong thing in front of  the light, is this something that had to do with the camera?? Also there was a standing ash tray that you will never see in a Dr's Office. Good show.

I can't help but feel sorry for Barnabas when Woodard mentioned him almost pitying the madman. Barnabas says "no, the truth is I loathe him, I loathe him very much." I don't doubt he meant every word. He didn't choose to be what he was but that doesn't change the fact he is what he is and he can't do anything about it and he knows it.

Maybe Barnabas wasn't upfront with Willie because he still remembers Willie betrayed him, what with tipping off Vicki about Maggie's whereabouts at Eagle Hill. To see it the way Barnabas saw it, Willie betrayed him and I think Barnabas wanted a bit payback for that by implying to Willie he may very well return the favor one day. Very cruel of Barnabas, I might add, but not really a shock.

Barnabas tells Willie he has to keep his promise to Dr. Woodard to let him take a blood sample from Willie. He had to do this to remove suspicion from himself. Poor Willie. We know what Barn plans to do, would it have killed him to just tell Willie, "Don't worry, Willie, I will fix everything, he'll never see anything in that blood sample"? but no he wants to keep Willie in torment. If this relationship had not improved at some point, I fear my sweet Willie would have perished before the age of 30 from stress!

I still fail to see how Barnabas as merely Willie's employer (to the outside world) can order him to allow the doctor to take a sample of his blood. Burke and the doctor both think Barn should have this much authority over him as though Willie were his son, not his employee.

If Willie's blood sample and Maggie's have the same impurity, in my mind that would mean they had both been attacked by the same madman/animal/whatever, not that Willie is the one who caused Maggie's suffering. Why must they assume that he is the one who's kidnapped her? I know it's partly based on his past, but again, if this were true, where is he hiding her? Barnabas lives in the house too, and they don't know his secret so...??

Burke asks Dr. Woodard if Maggie's attack could have been by a wild dog, he recalls what happened the night Vicki sat with Maggie. Dr. Woodard says no. I think if anyone had heard that pack of wild dogs at Maggie's window that night, they'd know that if they'd have gotten to her they'd have torn her to shreds, not merely left a couple holes in her neck. Dr. Woodard reminds Burke of the fact that his office was trashed, and Maggie's blood samples were stolen. No animal did that. Burke then comes right out and accuses Willie Loomis and the doctor reminds him that Willie isn't strong enough to have done this (he didn't mention the bars on the window but that's what he means) I wanted to remind Burke that he himself had bested Willie in a fight at the Blue Whale and if Willie had possessed the strength necessary to have done what was done in the doctor's office, he'd have flattened Burke with one punch. Burke is afraid something might happen to Vicki. It's clear that by now he has developed strong feelings for her.

When Dr. Woodard comes to take Willie's blood sample, Barnabas is again in his polite, gentlemanly mode and makes excuses for Willie's reluctance to give up his blood saying he's squeemish. He waxes eloquent about how it must be awful to give up even a drop of blood, since that is like surrendering part of your own self. I thought about how the vampire bites someone and drinks their blood, forcing them to surrender their will to him, how much that happens in this show and it seems his words have merit, at least supernaturally. When I've had to have blood drawn for a doctor or given blood, I never felt that I was surrendering part of myself.

After Willie leaves and the doctor is fixing to leave, Barn asks to see the blood sample. Dummy doctor gave it to him. It seems that in these extreme circumstances, the doctor would apologize and say no, but he casually handed it over. Barn looks at it in the candlelight and we do not see him switch slides, I looked carefully. The camera removes from him and focuses on Dr. Woodard who has turned his back to pack up his stuff. This must be when he did it.

Both men fear yet hope that there is some connection between Willie and Maggie (Barn lying of course) not that they want Willie to be guilty of anything, but at least it would provide some answers. They talk of the perpetrator and Barn says he is both more than a man and less than a man. Interesting analogy. When Dr. Woodard says he sounds as though he sympathizes with him, Barn says he loathes him very much. I wonder why if he loathes him (at least the vampire part of him) he [spoiler]wants Maggie to become what he is and when she refuses, he wants to torment and kill her for it.[/spoiler] Dr. Woodard asks Barn to keep Willie at home until he learns anything. He should have asked Willie this, not Barn, why does he think Barn is Willie's keeper? Do they sense something in this relationship that goes beyond the usual employer/employee relationship and if so, why are they not questioning it? Maybe they think because Willie lives in the same house as his boss, that gives his boss more rights than he otherwise would have had? Possibly...

In the scene with Vicki and Burke at the bar, I recall reading either here or on one of groups that Alexandra Moltke was only 19 when she first began to play Vicki. Yet if I'm not mistaken she does go to the Blue Whale every now and then and has a drink. Since the legal age was 21 at this time, the actress would not have been able to go to a bar and have a drink, so Vicki must have been being portrayed as at least 21.

Willie begs Barn to let him run away and Barn refuses, even mocks him, "Are you lost?" If they come for him and start interrogating him, what will he tell them? He's sure Willie will betray him due to his sympathy for the girl and the fact that he can't bear physical pain (my poor sweet Willie!) Barn grabs Willie's shirt and pushes him to the floor. THEN he finally tells him that switched the slides and that Willie is safe. It turns out that when he stole Maggie's slides, he took some others as well and the one he gave Dr. Woodard belonged to someone else. I thought the doctor had said that only Maggie's slides were taken but I could be mistaken.

I hate how Barn kept Willie off balance, wondering if he'd protect him from liability for Barn's crimes. Willie then says he knew Barn would protect him, and Barn says you knew nothing of the kind, I protected you this time but I might not always. We see that later on [spoiler]after Willie was shot, Barn and Julia frame Willie for Barn's crime![/spoiler]

Dr. Woodard reports to Burke and Vicki that he found nothing in Willie's blood, and they ask what he found in Maggie's blood. He tells them in detail that Maggie's blood had a substance that should have been rejected but wasn't, it was like an unholy union, as if Maggie had accepted into her blood something inhuman.

WOW!!

Alondra

That phrase, about the "unholy union" going on in Maggie's blood, really gave me the creeps back when I first saw the show in the 1976 syndication.

The cool, calculated cruelty with which Frid says the line "You knew nothing of the kind" contrasts brilliantly with the facade he puts on for the good dr.

To Alondra--hard to believe it because he looked so youthful, but I believe that John Karlen was 34 when he did these shows.

And to Lori--I was around back in the Sixties and some doctors did have ashtrays like that in their offices.  It's hard to believe just how casually people would light up in almost any setting back then.

G.

Dr. Woodard says there is some sort of unholy union taking place in Maggie's blood, so does that mean when someone is bitten by a vampire, it leaves traces of some sort of substance in the blood? What might that substance be? 

I can't help but feel sorry for Barnabas when Woodard mentioned him almost pitying the madman. Barnabas says "no, the truth is I loathe him, I loathe him very much." I don't doubt he meant every word. He didn't choose to be what he was but that doesn't change the fact he is what he is and he can't do anything about it and he knows it.

Yes, could this mean some minuscule portion of his sanity is returning?

To Alondra--hard to believe it because he looked so youthful, but I believe that John Karlen was 34 when he did these shows.

Yes you're right. JK was born in 1933 so he'd be 33-37 during the run of DS, but I think of Willie as being about 25 or so. Sometimes it's funny when you consider the real age of the actor as opposed to the character, like my comment the other day that Dana Elcar (Sheriff Patterson) was only 5 1/2 years older than John Karlen, yet in the scene when he badgers Willie, he seems like a father badgering his son.

This reminds me, once my husband was highly ticked when someone asked him if his friend Doug was his son, it turned out that Doug was a month older than my husband! LOL!

Alondra

Back to the B-plot, giving Elizabeth time to stew about her impending marriage.

I keep wondering if Dr. Woodard should have been dealing with the Centers For Disease Control, so I checked their web site to make sure they were around then, and found that the Communicable Disease Center came into being in 1946.  Its principle focus at that time was malaria, but by 1967 I imagine their horizons had widened (and maybe they had changed what CDC stood for).  They might have been persuaded to take a look at a blood sample featuring an unholy union, or perhaps they would have said they dealt only with traditional unions.

Meanwhile, I see Dr. Woodard looking through that two-holer microscope without his glasses on, and think to myself: "I couldn't do that!"

As for Barnabas's cruelty to Willie - doesn't Willie just ask for it?  He quivers and cringes and squeaks, and the gossips at the Collinsport laundromat are surely talking about how Willie goes through thirty pairs of underpants in a week.  (If Dr. Woodard hears about that, he'll be asking Sam Evans some interesting questions about Maggie.)  When somebody reacts in such a supremely satisfying way, how can a vampire resist the temptation to be cruel?

Is Willie's hair particularly beautiful these days, or is it that the beauty has always been there and is finally percolating into my thick brain, or am I imagining things?

Be sure to check out these (hopefully  ) humorous topics related to this episode:

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Yes, Lydia, I also believe Willie's hair looked beautiful.  It's not your imagination. 

Pretty crafty of Barnabas to switch the slides.  But it was cruel of Barnabas not to tell Willie his intentions right away.  Poor Willie!

I don't blame Vicki for being jumpy at the sound of dogs.  I would have been, too.  I really noticed the difference in age between Vicki and Burke.  Burke's got some wrinkles and dark circles going for him nowadays. 

----- Sally -----