Discuss - Ep #0780

[MagnusTrask]

We're meant to know that Barnabas is acting rashly and irrationally, since it's clear that Carl had told the secret and Barnabas didn't even find out before acting.   I think all this was a combination of the fact that Barnabas's violent vampire nature was always a huge force that he could not always control, and the fact that we're all "human", and when our backs are up against the wall, often we behave out of blind panic.   An idea that has been helpful to me in different situations is that some moments in life fill our heads with exclamation points, crowding out everything else, including capacity for reason.   It's not that we forget to reason, we just can't.   Our heads are overloaded.

I'm not sure Barnabas ever realized that his vampire nature was acting upon him.   Almost always people assume that they have total free will.   And I'm talking about all of us!   Barnabas's larger ego from (1) being a vampire and (2) being from a priveleged background (though he was a decent example of that) would have made it even harder to perceive.   I'm sure that if Magda had explained to him how vampiric he actually came across, day to day, Barnabas would have been surprised.

Anyway, now that I see 1897 Barnabas in this way, a 1969 spirit deluding himself that he's in control of a cursed 1897 Barnabas whose soul he's over-riding consciously but who may actually be in control on a deeper, perhaps more important level, I see 1897 very differently than I did as a child.   It's more interesting this way, but I have to give up my heroic or sympathetic Barnabas figure.   Or maybe I don't.   I care more about conficted figures and did even as a child, I think, so maybe I got it back then more than I knew.   And I never liked heroes that much come to think of it!

[Pansity]

That is one heck of a great post, Magnus.  You covered a lot of the whys and wherefores covering Barnabas' behavior and brought up some things I never even thought of.    I really like the theory about the vampire nature of the 1897 vamp controlling the astral traveller Barnabas without him even knowing it.

Jeannie

[MagnusTrask]

Thanks Jeannie.   Other shows would have spoon-fed us this from the start (if they actually did mean for his vampire nature to be controlling him), explaining it to the viewer, and more subtle shows would have let us know in no uncertain terms eventually, but DS never comes out and tells us.  Barnabas himself passes all the way through 1897 and goes back home again, without suspecting that his judgment and impulses were being affected.

I like this sort of thing now.   It's like real life, we have to figure it out for ourselves.   It's also like real life in that we don't really find out what's behind our feelings and actions, or those of others in our lives, certainly not completely.    I've decided lately that my family were never really interested in having me know them, and I really don't know who they were.    Do I know who I am?  Not really.

[Pansity]

Thanks Jeannie.   Other shows would have spoon-fed us this from the start (if they actually did mean for his vampire nature to be controlling him), explaining it to the viewer, and more subtle shows would have let us know in no uncertain terms eventually, but DS never comes out and tells us.  Barnabas himself passes all the way through 1897 and goes back home again, without suspecting that his judgment and impulses were being affected.

You're quite welcome, Magnus.  We've discussed this delightful lack of  spoon feeding before. and we're definitely on the same page.  This way is just more fun, it makes you think and pay attention, and look for the throwaways and actions with many differnt interpretations.

That's how I feel about Quentin's reaction to Carl's murder.  They don't TELL us how Q is scared to pieces of Barn, but they sure set it up so the audience can pick up on things if they choose to think about it.  Same with this idea about the two sides of Barnabas.  It requires a deeper analysis than some people are willing to invest, but that's always the way.  No matter what the show, some people are into the analysis and delving deeply into characters and their reasons and motivations -- and some people aren't.

Jeannie

[Taeylor Collins]

I find myself being very delvy when it comes to shows I truly get into!   

[MagnusTrask]

I find myself being very delvy when it comes to shows I truly get into!   

Really, Taeylor, Blake's Seven.   See it somehow.   I'm done on that as of now!

[Midnite]

I'm done on that as of now!

Thanks!   

[Midnite]

In the redo of the opener, Carl kicked the step open before realizing that it was the solution he needed.  That was cheating.

Quentin to Barnabas:  "You're my only hope."
(Help me, Obi-Wan Barnabas...)
Seriously, I'm still not buying it.  Quentin should be focusing his energies on keeping Magda happy until the next full moon, because SHE is his only hope.

Barnabas:  "Tell me the truth, Carl!  Tell me the truth!"
Carl:  "aughurghgurgleghghgh"
How the heck was he supposed to answer while his airway was being crushed?  (A creature that can dispatch a coffin that quickly and bend bars does not strangle like normal people.)

We're meant to know that Barnabas is acting rashly and irrationally, since it's clear that Carl had told the secret and Barnabas didn't even find out before acting.   I think all this was a combination of the fact that Barnabas's violent vampire nature was always a huge force that he could not always control, and the fact that we're all "human", and when our backs are up against the wall, often we behave out of blind panic.

That is just wonderful, Magnus.

And I must admit that fanging Carl to learn what he needed to know (as he did with Dirk) before killing him would have denied us an exciting Friday cliffhanger.

If DC really saw Barnabas killing Carl in cold blood as just a practical move because of John Karlen's plans, then he truly was nuts.

Yes.  Yes, he was.

You don't have a protagonist kill a man for finding out his secret life, not if you want him to stay a protagonist.   Barnabas is acting as he did when he was the show's villain whom we were meant to despise.

Exactly.  Rachel Drummond's murder conspiracy came about recently so that KLS could go on safari with her boyfriend... and it had much less impact since one of her killers was insane/doomed and the other was under the thrall of a vampire.

He knows Carl is NOT going to trust him and is real unlikely to listen to him if he tries to keep him from talking.  My though t is that in the back of his mind hes thinking Barn has some power to make Carl forget without killing him – IF he chooses to. My guess is that that's the life ring he clings to to keep from facing the fact that he was willing to have his own brother killed to save his hide.

If one puts stock in the voiceover, it makes it clear ("knowing...the man will be killed") that Quentin expected his brother to die in the secret room.  So Quentin finding Carl and stopping him from talking would, I imagine, involve some sort of violence.

[EmeraldRose]

Major Milestones:

1. Barnabas killed Carl! IIRC, Carl was the 4th person who died because Barnabas was there. The others were Pansy Faye, Dirk, and Rachel.
2. Carl told Trask about Barnabas. Barnabas quickly moved the coffin before Carl and Trask went the Mausoleum, so Trask didn't believe Carl at first.
3. When Trask discovered that Carl was dead, he gave Barnabas an ultimatum that he should stay up after dawn!

I'm really angry that Barnabas killed Carl, before he even knew who Carl had told. I know, John Karlen was leaving the show for a while... But they could have explained his absence by sending him away to Europe or someplace. Also, Barnabas could have easily hypnotized Carl into telling him what he wanted to know and to make Carl forget all about his being a vampire. 

I noticed at the beginning that the step inside the secret room moved by itself, before Carl even touched it! At the end of the last episode, Carl was the one who moved it. It was amusing to watch Carl purposely not touch that huge cross in the beginning!

Barnabas certainly moved that coffin quickly! I wonder if one of his supernatural powers enables him to transport the coffin from one place to another, similar to his disappearing from one place and appearing someplace else. Kind of reminds me of the transporter on Star Trek!

----- Sally -----

[EmeraldRose]

Oops! I didn't notice this topic had two pages!    I just read what's on the second page, and had to comment on it!   I waited too long after the last post to change it, so I had to write this post.

Anyway, now that I see 1897 Barnabas in this way, a 1969 spirit deluding himself that he's in control of a cursed 1897 Barnabas whose soul he's over-riding consciously but who may actually be in control on a deeper, perhaps more important level, I see 1897 very differently than I did as a child.   It's more interesting this way, but I have to give up my heroic or sympathetic Barnabas figure.   Or maybe I don't.

Wow! I never thought of it that way before! That's a fascinating, very astute way of looking at it. Sheds a whole new light on the subject. But I still hate that Barnabas killed Carl!

----- Sally -----

[Midnite]

IIRC, Carl was the 4th person who died because Barnabas was there. The others were Pansy Faye, Dirk, and Rachel.

And poor, disposable Sophie.

Besides Charity and Beth, what WAS he doing in 1897 to satisfy his bloodlust, anyway?

[EmeraldRose]

Oh, yeah, I forgot about Sophie. Thanks for reminding me, Midnite.  Since you have a better memory than I do, I always know that you will gladly correct my mistakes.

That's a good question! I guess his 1969 spirit was able to squelch the 1897 vampire's excessive thirst!

----- Sally -----

[Pansity]

Quentin to Barnabas:  "You're my only hope."
(Help me, Obi-Wan Barnabas...)
Seriously, I'm still not buying it.  Quentin should be focusing his energies on keeping Magda happy until the next full moon, because SHE is his only hope.

"There is Another?"  I just got the weirdest mental image of Magda as Princess Leia.....

If one puts stock in the voiceover, it makes it clear ("knowing...the man will be killed") that Quentin expected his brother to die in the secret room.  So Quentin finding Carl and stopping him from talking would, I imagine, involve some sort of violence.

I thnk you're right.  To me, this would tie into that line he had (paraphrasing here) about no longer being able to believe his own lies.  He used to be able to lie to himself and do things, then do mental gymnastics to justify them.  If we take him at his word, he can't make himself believe these things anymore -- but I think he still TRIES to, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not.  I think if push had come to shove, he COULD have gone through with killing Carl -- but not without paying the emotional price of having done it.

Jeannie

[Lydia]

Barnabas:  "Tell me the truth, Carl!  Tell me the truth!"
Carl:  "aughurghgurgleghghgh"
How the heck was he supposed to answer while his airway was being crushed?  (A creature that can dispatch a coffin that quickly and bend bars does not strangle like normal people.)

Exactly.  Every time I see this episode, it appears to me that Barnabas did not intend to kill Carl when he did.  Maybe he planned to kill Carl after making sure Carl hadn't spilt the beans to anybody - but that's speculative.  Of course Barnabas wasn't about to admit to Quentin that he had just made a stupid mistake, so he let Quentin believe that Carl's death was deliberate.

I remember being thoroughly shocked by Carl's death back in 1969.  But it was because I liked seeing Carl on the show, not because I thought it was dreadful of Barnabas to murder his relative.  In fact, I was taken aback when Quentin expressed regret over Carl's death.

I'm trying to remember if Barnabas knew about the secret passageway off the living room, because that would have been the intelligent place to hide Carl.  It seems very unlikely to me that Barnabas would not know.  Maybe in the heat of the moment he just forgot.

I noticed that Trask, when nobody answered his knocking at the door of Collinwood today, didn't just barge right into the house the way did the other day.  An odd retreat into good manners, canceled out by his barging into the drawing room.  Incidentally, I was surprised when he said to himself in the mausoleum that he must help poor, deluded Carl.  It gave the impression that, contrary to what we have learned about Trask so far, there is some Christian charity in him.  Or maybe he just figured he would score points with Judith if he loosened Carl's strings.

Barnabas certainly moved that coffin quickly!

Forget the coffin, what about the pedestal?

I don't remember seeing previously the cross that Trask is sporting.  I daresay it was there, but that he wasn't making a point of it.

[MagnusTrask]

Incidentally, I was surprised when he said to himself in the mausoleum that he must help poor, deluded Carl.  It gave the impression that, contrary to what we have learned about Trask so far, there is some Christian charity in him.

Gregory believes with all his heart and soul that he is the most righteous and compassionate of human beings.   This isn't just some simple conscious lie that he uses to score big bucks for himself.   It's an unconscious lie, and those are more dangerous.   He is compelled to act in a manner which appears good and kind, as he sees it (and he doesn't see bellowing accusations at people to be unkind, it's the old cruel-to-be-kind thing).    He hates the Collinses, and shows it to them every day without showing it to himself.   You can tell yourself you are compassionate toward those you hate the most, and that every act of hatred is for their own good.   My father was this way.  

Trask really believes he can't leave the animals to run the zoo.   In no way does this constitute "good intentions" and in no way does this absolve him.   Liars just lie tpo others, but hypocrites also lie to themselves, and they believe their own lies about themselves far more than others believe them.   They lie to themselves to give them an easy, irresponsible way out of all moral dilemmas.   It's not conscious self-deception (that's contradictory), but it is intentional... on a somewhat lower level than consciousness.

Listen to him still defending himself, calling himself a savior of souls, when it's juszt him and Evan in the room, and he's just carried out a murder with Evan.   He wouldn't think Evan could be fooled by this.  He can only be saying it because he believes it.   He also thinks he's on this Earth to save people like Carl... and if he can get the family's money, what better reward for his spiritual services?   That's the kind of thing that's bouncing around in Trask's head all the time.