I recall a scene in which Julia was smoking excessively, very nervous about something, and Vicki came into the drawing room and noted all the butts in the ashtray. She asked Julia about it.
After Carolyn runs from her mother's aborted wedding to Jason McGuire, Carolyn returns to assure her mother that they will fight her murder charge. Liz didn't really murder her husband, Paul Stoddard, and mother and daughter shared a wonderful moment of love and trust.
Vicki's stories about her orphanage experiences struck of normalcy, too,and even though they became a bit annoying after a while, they tended to be touching most of the time. I also remember scenes in which Vicki was teaching David; we saw actual lessons. He usually changed the conversation to other things, but these were very normal (and dull, IMHO) scenes.
Some of the early restaurant scenes seemed normal, with other patrons in the Collinsport Inn coffee shop or other restaurants. I especially remember a fancy restaurant in Bangor where Vicki dined with Frank, and, separately, Burke. Carolyn and Burke also had a dinner there.
Most of the "normal" scenes happened in the year before Barnabas joined the show. Once Curtis decided to go all out with the spook stuff, as he called it, normalcy went down the tubes.
Love, Robin
