thoughts on betsy

[michael c]

when i first watched the show through a few years ago i skipped ahead of the late 1968 fake-vicki episodes.
being extremely fond of alexandra moltke(as if you guys needed reminding)i just couldn't take them and i didn't care enough about the adam storyline to watch it's conclusion.

so now i'm finally watching this part of the series and needless to say i have some thoughts on besty durkin's take on victoria winters...

i don't mean to be unkind but as vicki ms. durkin crashed and burned spectacularly.

it's not entirely her fault.the scripts written for her were for the most part preposterous.

for starters why did they give besty such a stiff,dated hairdo?it's very 1966.by 1968 the hairstyles were longer and looser(witness carolyn's groovy new center part)so she's already starting at a disadvantage.

funny but i had always thought that by the time the quentin storyline got underway that maggie had already been ensconced at collinwood so i was surprised to see that the plot was well underway with vicki in the governess role.vicki and quentin in the same episodes? far out.

but really under betsy's shrill acting style the character comes across not as naive,or even "clueless" as alexandra's take is often described,but rather as completely insane.again it's not entirely her fault given the scripts she was handed.but i wonder if alexandra's placid,even somewhat flat,acting style would have left a different impression given the same material?the character's just too hysterical under betsy even considering what she was going through at the time.despite the ever present "dumb" lable alexandra's vicki actually kept a pretty level head most of the time.

still the betsy episodes are weird.i didn't get the impression that they were winding the character down at first.she was given new storyline openings and lots of screen time.more in fact than vicki had had for much of 1968.so her final departure is sort of abrupt.

and alexandra's rather aristocratic bearing gave the character a complexity(yes,i said complexity)and presence she lacked under the one-note betsy.

other thoughts on this period...where were barnabas and julia for this part of the show?the story is heavy with the other characters for a change(were frid and hall on vacation?).it's weird how easily roger can be written out of the proceedings(all those pesky trips to boston and london).he's one of the "core" characters at collinwood right?i had hated carolyn for much of 1968 and the adam plot so it's nice to like her again.i had forgotten she was once a favorite character.liz's tedious fear of death/being buried alive takes a strange pause here and doesn't come up at all for several weeks.it must have been strange for joan bennett to play her "maternal" vicki scenes with someone other than alexandra.the chemistry's just not there.but liz does get a nice quilted black coat here and i love seeing her on the front burner again.nice to see david hennesy too...where the heck had he been for most of 1968?didn't he have a contract?

so anyways even though i was never a fan of the "magtoria" compromise(i like maggie as a seperate character with a seperate storyline)i suppose it's for the best that a familiar and well-liked face was brought into the fold at collinwood and poor besty sent into the ether.

funny but ever since ms. durkin started attending fests a few years ago and turned out to be such a sweetheart public opionion about her time on the show seems to have softened a bit.i don't see "betsy wetsy" or the "icky vicki ' quite so much as i used to.she's nice.she's pretty.but she was wrong as vicki.

[michael c]

i just realized that i spelled betsy's name wrong in the topic starter...could one of our kind mods fix that?

[MagnusTrask]

I agree that no matter how inadequate the writing sometimes was for AM's character, the actress managed to compensate, and made the character dignified and intelligent.   Perhaps she came across as someone intelligent who was stressed and having an "off" month....

I can't imagine anyone replacing AM and actually coming across as Victoria since that was such an individual charaterization, so I never expected much of BD.   I was impressed that they'd found someone who could do a fair vocal impression of Moltke.

I think Victoria Winters was transformed just as Betsy Durkin took over.   She became fully aware and accepting of the supernatural.   She walked right up to Blair and told him off.    It still would have been better with AM, but the recasting did come at an interesting moment in the story.

[Gothick]

I found Durkin's work in the role almost physically painful--nails on a chalkboard.  I thought she seemed competent--it was simply a case of excruciating miscasting.  I did think that Carolyn Groves could have carried the role better since she seemed to have an inner gravitas that Durkin lacked.  It is also the case however that Durkin got thrown in at the deep end of the pool in terms of what the scripts required of her.  Stuff that Lee Strasberg and the proponents of "the Method" failed to cover in their classes.

Betsy Wetsy.  Never heard that one before.  LOVE it.

G.

[Gothick]

btw, Grayson was away for a couple of weeks in the autumn of '68 because I believe that that was when the "End of the Road" shoot took place out in Great Barrington, Mass.  I'm not sure about Jonathan.  They made him tour an awful lot that year, but the PR appearances and parades mostly happened on the weekends, I think.

G.

[Gerard]

Gothic makes a very good point about what Durkin was thrown into.  She probably had little familiarity with the show and its by-now very twisted plots.  Imagine, if she wanted to method act, asking the producers what her motivation was, and she's told:  "Well, you're living in this spooky house and work for this woman who thinks she's dying because her sister-in-law is a witch who hexed her but her sister-in-law actually has it for her great-great-great-great cousin and meanwhile you're in love with your boyfriend but you actually love him as a previous boyfriend but your boyfriend loves you as the current boyfriend and doesn't know he's the former boyfriend you love and this creature made up of bodies wants to use you to bring this skeleton to life that's suppose to be his girlfriend but she actually had it for your previous boyfriend and is trying to make your current boyfriend think......oh, never mind.  Here, just memorize the scripts and report to makeup."

Gerard

[michael c]

true,

like i said betsy was handed some preposterous scripts to work with so it's not all her fault.

still alexandra was given simliar material and,like the show's best actors,still created a character we could care about.betsy was just too shrill.

but yeah,she was thrown off the deep end plotwise as someone said.

[MagnusTrask]

(A little pointless pop history... "Betsy Wetsy" was a popular doll for awhile in the 60s, that you filled with water so that you could have your doll pee on you as you played with it!)

[Lydia]

I know someone named Betsy who changed herself to Liz when the Betsy Wetsy doll came out.

Did they ever try to match actor to character when they were recasting?  The three Dr. Woodards were all different from each other, and Burke #2 was different from Burke #1.  I've concluded that there's not much point in complaining that a recast is not like the original.  All you can do is to take each actor individually.

Of course that's easy for me to say, because I didn't much like Alexandra Moltke’s Vicky.  Betsy Durkin’s Vicky could be shrill, but she had more energy.  In her last episode, she had a much more becoming hairdo. I figure clothes and dialog would also, in time, have been altered for her as she settled in.  She would have been a very different Vicky, but she still could have developed into a viable character.

What Gothick sees as inner gravitas in Carolyn Groves I saw as utter dullness.  Her best moments were when she was under Angelique's spell.  I don't see a viable character developing there; I just see her melting into the paneling.

[IluvBarnabas]

I honestly tried to give Betsy a chance, really I did. In some areas she did well...like her showdown with Nicholas for example. Also liked her little chat with Amy. And boy did she know how to scream when the scene called for it. However, in the long run, I just couldn't accept her as Vicki. It's not that I couldn't accept another actress as Vicki, I did like Carolyn Groves...it's just that I felt that Betsy was just too different from Alexandra as Vicki. Miss Groves had a similar style to the take of Vicki that reminded me of Alexandra.

Again, I have nothing against Betsy Durkin personally. I just feel that she took over a role that really wasn't cut out for her.

[Maggie Babe]

btw, Grayson was away for a couple of weeks in the autumn of '68 because I believe that that was when the "End of the Road" shoot took place out in Great Barrington, Mass.

I never knew that about Great Barrington. I live 5 miles away. I would love to find that movie. I thought I knew a lot about DS trivia. Guess I was wrong.

[Lydia]

There's always more Dark Shadows trivia to learn.  The only way you'd have enough time to learn it all would be to become a vampire and live forever.

[arashi]

Said mscbryk "....but rather as completely insane."

This got a good chuckle out of me. Out of all the actresses on DS, I think she was the most hysterical. (Emotionally speaking - not comedic).

Gerard - that made me laugh, I never thought before what explaining this plot line would be like to an uninformed individual.

[michael c]

it's interesting how two different actresses approach to the same material yielded such different results.

can you imagine betsy's vicki finding herself thrust two hundred years into the past?talk about hysterical.alexandra's somewhat bland acting style ended up giving the character some nice levity.

over the weekend i watched the final betsy episode.under the circumstances i found barnabas' marriage proposal to not only be clumsy and inappropriate but also unnecessary plotwise.why bother if the vicki character was leaving anyways?

i also thought that the scene lacked emotional impact.not only because it was not alexandra(who had nice chemistry with frid)but also because the two characters had not been on the same page storywise for months.it seemed sort of random.

vicki #3 is coming up...

[MagnusTrask]

The proposal was needed because when it works, DS is about human beings and not just plot (what physically happens next).   Victoria leaving was bound to strike Barnabas as the very last chance he'd have with her, or with anyone since he had idealized her as he had Josette.  (He does that too easily, but he doesn't know that.)

I'm never sure if we're really seeing the character of Barnabas develop, or if we're just reading that into it, but this seems like a pivotal moment.   It brings out just where Barnabas is in his head at this point.   He's a bit like a child rediiscovering the world now that he's alive, and he presses Vicki at exactly the wrong moment for her.  Obviously she wouldn't be thinking of leaving in the first place, if she thought that way about Barnabas at all.   He makes things about him, and when she rejects him, he's probably surprised to find himself adjusting and being big about it (eventually).   This is a change.   It paves the way for him rescuing her only to let her go with Bradford, later.

I agree, AM could always have done the character better.  (And the proposal would have meant more.)  I do think, though, that the semi-hysteria was in the script and was a reaction to overwhelming loss (we don't think much of Clark but she does).   Moltke would have had to play it the same way... she couldn't just choose not to be so upset.  It was written that way.   

BD's Victoria was living a different situation than AM's was, so she's bound to come across differently.  We all do when faced with new situations we're unprepared for.