Discuss - Ep #0494

Robservations #494

There is a thread somewhere on this forum about how mean Julia was to Willie on today's episode.  I looked for it, but couldn't find it.  It is memorable for having the suggestion from someone that Barnabas was supposed to be in that episode but Jonathan Frid was sick, so Julia got his lines.  Anyway, the last time I watched the episode, I was in agreement with the posters: Julia was unnecessarily cruel.  Today I wasn't so sure.  Willie is behaving like a complete idiot about Adam.  It's got to be driving Julia crazy.  But why oh why is she leaving Willie alone with Adam in the first place?  He showed his lack of judgment the first time he was left alone with Adam.  Gosh, Willie was so much nicer when he was a vampire victim.
 
He's got a thing for jewels, hasn't he?  It was the rumors of jewels that lured him to the mausoleum when he unchained the coffin and let Barnabas out into the 20th century.  When Maggie was held captive at the Old House, he accepted her ring, even though anybody could have told him it was asking for trouble.  And now he's just got to give those earrings to Maggie.  Hmm...if Maggie had walked down the stairs of the Old House without any jewelry on, would he still have thought she was beautiful?

There is a thread somewhere on this forum about how mean Julia was to Willie on today's episode.  I looked for it, but couldn't find it.  It is memorable for having the suggestion from someone that Barnabas was supposed to be in that episode but Jonathan Frid was sick, so Julia got his lines.

So that's the answer! Aha! Now it makes sense that Julia was so harsh with Willie! Even so, it doesn't seem much of a stretch for Julia to act that way.

It was somewhat heartening that Willie found something in common with Adam - their love of shiny jewelry. Adam was so cute today! I loved it when he held up the jewelry and raved about it. 

It was fun to watch Willie sneak in and put the earrings in Maggie's purse. Willie was acting like a lovesick adolescent boy. 

Adam and Willie really were not that different at this point. They both were very immature, childlike, and dangerous in different ways. 

----- Sally -----

So true about Willie and Adam, except that out of the two Willie is the one who's capable of knowing better.


I never knew that about Jonathan Frid being sick for this episode and Grayson Hall doing his lines. Still, I concur that it isn't that unusual to see Julia lose her patience with Willie.

I like that scene between Adam and Willie too with Willie showing him the jewelry....I do believe it's the one and only time we see Willie being nice to Adam.

Adam was adorable, wasn't he?

I never knew that about Jonathan Frid being sick for this episode and Grayson Hall doing his lines.

That was (if I remember correctly) just a suggestion by somebody and not an assertion.  And given how Julia told Willie to "Stop sniveling!" in the previous episode, I don't think the suggestion was necessarily true.

An addendum to the my previous post: Having watched the half-dozen episodes after this one, I think that there was no unexpected change, and that it was originally intended that Julia should be cruel to Willie today.  It definitely contributes to the storyline.

Ah, Josette's mystical earrings - aka the plot that goes nowhere.  I still wonder what the writers had in mind with this potential storyline, but I guess we'll never know.

I like the specificity of Willie's line when he says about Adam, "He tore all the buttons off his coat and ONE OFF OF MINE."  That little added info. at the end makes the statement ring more true for some reason.

Are they paying Willie for his services?  If not, he really is nothing more than a slave and their use of psychological manipulation is nothing more than mental abuse.   

Ah, Josette's mystical earrings - aka the plot that goes nowhere.  I still wonder what the writers had in mind with this potential storyline, but I guess we'll never know.

I've never actually thought there was more intended to it other than as a device to get Maggie together with Willie and for her to realize he never meant to harm her and to smooth everything over so that Maggie no longer lives in constant fear of a character who was going to stick around on the canvas for some time to come. And as that, it succeeds quite well. 

Are they paying Willie for his services?  If not, he really is nothing more than a slave and their use of psychological manipulation is nothing more than mental abuse.

Indeed! (It's a situation many fans have lamented through the years.) 

Barnabas is certainly guilty of mentally abusing Willie on numerous occasions. But then, Barnabas (and, yes, even the human Barnabas) is guilty of mentally abusing so many characters whenever the mood strikes him - even the ones who are supposedly his closest friends and allies...

Since Maggie responds so hypnotically to the earrings, I have to imagine that the writers were planning on bringing Maggie back into that aspect of the story somehow (I believe there are a few more scenes later on in which the earrings are again casting a spell over her).  I just think that with Adam and the soon-to-come werewolf and Nicholas Blair subplots, the writers may have had too much on their plate to develop it further.

Perhaps. But I don't know - to me the fact that the possession incidents with the earrings disappear once Maggie's friendship with Willie is firmly established seems to indicate that goal was their sole intent. But with the DS writers (principally DC), I'll certainly concede that on occasion it can be dangerous to try to fathom the full extent of where any plot device might have been going - even when one would seem to have served its purpose well. 

I suspect that the writers had a certain place they wanted to go with the earrings, and that they did get to that place, but that they ended up taking a non-earring-dependent route.

And that place was...
[spoiler]Maggie remembering what Julia had hypnotized her to forget.[/spoiler]

But that's just a guess.  And I wish we had seen more of the earrings; I enjoyed the subplot while it lasted.

I am currently reviewing the episodes they were posted  before I hung out here so I can't wait to ressurect some of those threads.