Discuss - Ep #0739

[Watching Project]

Robservations #739

[Pansity]

Guess I've gotten a bit ahead here, and I'm making the first comments. 

Ooh Angie goes right for the blood after Charity runs upstairs.  Referring to Barnabas' taste not changing after "all these years" and Charity as "thickwitted".  (That's our Angie; NO patience for fools.  She also strikes me as brighter than Barnabas, so that's an interesting tack for her to take.)  Interesting how once again she tries to get Barnabas on track for what he's SUPPOSED to be there to do.  Left to his own devices, he'd be haring off after Josette clones, Minister's daughters and "taking care of" Trasks. Barnabas as poster child for ADHD.

Yet another funky dream.  Funeral ceremony for Charity's wedding. LOL our old friend the spooky skull, but with fangs.
 . Wonder why no one heard Charity screaming. It seems it's hours later that Judith (wearing a frock that;s should be one of Rachel's with the blue and green color scheme  - but the style is pure Judith) comes in and tells her it's 4PM.

Angelique is no slouch at the bullshit (maybe she and Quentin should have a contest -- outrageous suck up lying at twenty paces).  She certainly pours it on when she meets the right Reverand Trask.  And of course the way he pours it on for Judith means we're hip deep in it.

Hmm. Charity comes in from her rendezvous with Barnabas, wearing what looks like the same shawl she refused so vehemently when Judith tried to give it to her in bed.  And coming in from outside, in her nightdress with her hair down?  Trask actually has a reason to be suspicious.  Grown women didn't go out in public with their hair down, and for certain NOT out of their room in their nightclothes. No wonder she fainted -- way too many questions she can never answer, Barnabas not withstanding.

Jeannie

[Midnite]

Voiceover first:  "He has met Laura Collins and seen, to his horror, that beyond this past lies another past containing even more terror than he has yet dreamed of."
Really!?!  The truth about Laura is more horrifying than being cursed as a vampire, losing Josette and his little sis, destroying his mother, killing Jeremiah, being married to Angelique??!!!

I keep going back and forth over Barn's line to Charity:  "I sense this woman is more than she seems.  Much more."  Did he sense that Laura wasn't human, I wonder, like a vampiric version of the spidey sense.  Then I think I'm probably reading too much into it.  But if he's going on appearance and name alone, then you'd think Barnabas would have seen a photo of David's mother at some point; I'm pretty sure there's a scene where he learns her name.  So all that leaves are her voice and mannerism, and their meeting wasn't long enough for that.  Okay, I'll shut up about this now.

Guess I've gotten a bit ahead here, and I'm making the first comments. 

You're not ahead.  The rest of us are just behind.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I like that Angelique called her thick-witted.  Here's a vampire victim who can't fathom that Laura is dead but still walking around.  And right after Ang introduced herself to her, she showed up in her dream and Charity had to ask who she was.  D'oh.

I LOVED the dream.  No credits for this ep, but I don't have to look up the writer.  That was a Violet Welles dream if ever there was one (and there are some doozies).  "I'm being married."  "No, my dear, you're being buried.  That's how it is when you're dead."  Brrr.  The black wedding veil was the best, cuz if ever there was a virgin on DS, it's Charity.

Good point about no one in the house hearing Charity when she woke up.  I bet the scream could be heard during filming over in Hell's Kitchen.

But I'm pretty sure that Judith's shawl was different.  It didn't have the all-over pattern that Charity's did.

Is it me, or was Judith acting flirty with Gregory?  Yikes, her body language on the staircase.  "All I'm offering is money;" yeah right.

Grown women didn't go out in public with their hair down, and for certain NOT out of their room in their nightclothes.

I think DS is taking advantage of the fact that this storyline takes place in the same year as the publication of Stoker's novel by portraying the changes in the once-pious Charity as in the corrupted Mina (also engaged to be married at the beginning of Dracula).

[MagnusTrask]

'On this night, Barnabas will encounter a voiceover with more hyperbole than he has ever dared to imagine in his most fear-riddled imaginings!!!!!!'

[arashi]

LOL Magnus!

I read somewhere that Diana Millay was a pin-up model back in the 40s and 50s. Anyone seen these?

[michael c]

arashi,

at the festival a few years ago i bought a picture of diana in a very late-1950's "pin-up" jungle get up posing with,i think,a stuffed tiger(i'll have to dig it up).

diana autographed it.

i always thought she was quite pretty...and is without question one of my absolute favorite d.s. characters/actors.

[Pansity]

Voiceover first:  "He has met Laura Collins and seen, to his horror, that beyond this past lies another past containing even more terror than he has yet dreamed of."
Really!?!  The truth about Laura is more horrifying than being cursed as a vampire, losing Josette and his little sis, destroying his mother, killing Jeremiah, being married to Angelique??!!!

   Ain't purple prose grand?

You're not ahead.  The rest of us are just behind.

Not anymore.....

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I like that Angelique called her thick-witted.  Here's a vampire victim who can't fathom that Laura is dead but still walking around.  And right after Ang introduced herself to her, she showed up in her dream and Charity had to ask who she was.

Brain and brain, what is brain?

Good point about no one in the house hearing Charity when she woke up.  I bet the scream could be heard during filming over in Hell's Kitchen.

ONLY as far as Hell's Kitchen?  I'm thinking it made it north of the Dakota. 

I think DS is taking advantage of the fact that this storyline takes place in the same year as the publication of Stoker's novel by portraying the changes in the once-pious Charity as in the corrupted Mina (also engaged to be married at the beginning of Dracula).

Oh I think you're absolutely right about Dracula. I probably should have made it clearer when I made the comment on Charity.  The way she was dressed, etc gave her absolutely NO answer of any kind to the inevitable questions.  It was totally off for the respectable Reverend's daughter, but does show the changes as you point out. Awakening of her sensuality, corruption, there's a lot of ways to describe it.  The whole scene with Barn in an earlier ep seemed to be leaning that way, too. The bite from Barnabas was played (esp by Nancy Barrett) as a sexual awakening. 

 And not only Stoker's book, but (even though it was ten years or more later than this) I think of the heavy sexual innuendo attached to Dracula's bite in the stage play. LOL of course, with FRANK LANGELLA.   

Jeannie

[arashi]

Thanks mscbryk, I'd love to see it if you can find it.

[EmeraldRose]

I love this exchange: Angelique: "Oh, there you are." Barnabas: "There you are." Angelique: "And there she is. Quite a cozy little threesome." Sexual overtones galore! Poor Charity was ashamed and ran away when she found out that Angelique and Barnabas were "engaged." I also enjoyed the conversation between Angelique and Barnabas which followed. It was quite amusing to hear Angelique express gratitude and praise to Barnabas for walling-up Trask.

Barnabas knew Laura previously, when he was a 10-year old boy.  Now, that means there is more of an age difference between Jeremiah and Barnabas than we were led to believe.  At what age could Jeremiah have married Laura?  15?  16?  Yet another seeming discrepancy pops up in DS lore!

I wondered about that, too.  I thought Barnabas and Jeremiah were supposed to be the same age; I guess I was wrong. It's not inconceivable, though, that Jeremiah would marry at 15 or 16. 

Charity had a wonderfully ominous and scary nightmare. Maybe Angelique caused it. I found it quite curious when Charity wanted to leave Barnabas - it was quite different from how she acted the last time she was with him. I guess it was because of the dream. I just love it when Barnabas has those sexy scenes! This time, he didn't bite Charity, he mesmerized her with his eyes. It was great when he said, "Do you still want to go?" and she said "No." Hot! 

It was only a matter of time before Charity's bite marks would be discovered. Barnabas was quenching his thirst a little too often. Poor Charity was so weak, she couldn't help herself when she fainted.

I was thrilled to hear the echo during the beginning voice-over and the end. Joan Bennett sounded like she was talking in a large, empty room. Really loved the "Bum...bum...bum..." music at the end which echoed. Ooh! Gave me goosebumps! 

----- Sally -----

[Lydia]

Clearly the writers view my wish as their command.  Yesterday I requested a jealous fit from Angelique over Charity, and today I got one - of sorts, anyway.  There was little too much common sense in it for it to be a fully satisfactory jealous fit.  Gosh, it's strange to hear common sense coming from Angelique!

I like the voice that Nancy Barrett adopts for Charity.  One of the reasons I don't like Carolyn much is that her voice doesn't appeal to me - it's very unresonant.  Millicent's voice is made-for-caricature, and suits her perfectly even when Millicent becomes more than a caricature.  And Charity's voice has music in it, and makes me wish I could have seen Nancy Barrett's cabaret act.

Voiceover first:  "He has met Laura Collins and seen, to his horror, that beyond this past lies another past containing even more terror than he has yet dreamed of."
Really!?!  The truth about Laura is more horrifying than being cursed as a vampire, losing Josette and his little sis, destroying his mother, killing Jeremiah, being married to Angelique??!!!

I didn't pay attention to the "more terror" part because that's a standard feature of opening voice overs.  If you listened to the voiceovers and nothing but the voiceovers from start to finish of the series, and then made a chart showing the progression of terror, it would always go up, never down, and somewhere around 1970 you would run out of room on your piece of paper.  What caught my attention in the voiceover was "beyond this past lies another past" - a nice stimulus to the imagination.  Layers of past, like in baklava.  And even though Barnabas lived through the 1700s Laura layer (the layer that repeats, like phyllo dough), he wasn't aware of it.

[EmeraldRose]

I love your food analogies, Lydia!

----- Sally -----