Veteran cousins? / Wars on DS

[Patti Feinberg]

I'd like to know how many of our cousins are Veterans.

Also, was 'Nam or WWI ever mentioned on DS? The Revolutionary War was....was Barn or someone else in that war??

Thanks,

Patti

(edited by admin)

[IluvBarnabas]

I don't recall Vietnam ever being mentioned on the show...I think one of the World Wars was mentioned, I forgot which one though.

[Lydia]

In episode 214, when Roger and Barnabas talked in the study, Roger mentioned that a vineyard in Spain that had belonged to Jeremiah Collins was sold not long before World War II - or something like that.

And Natalie was bored to death by Joshua's nightly reminiscences of the Revolution.

[markyboo]

Wasn't it mentioned that Roger served during World War II?

Most television shows of the late 60's avoided mention of the Vietnam War - remember what happened to the Smothers Brothers?

I would have loved to have seen a DS storyline set during the Civil War and a Southern branch of the Collins family introduced.

[michael c]

one of the things that gives the series it's naive charm it's that it exists as something of a world apart.

there is something of a sense of isolation.of remove.

given the tumultuous years in which it ran it's absence of references to pop cultural or current events it's somewhat remarkable.

while our friends stewed in gothic mystery in collinsport,maine a war raged on.robert kennedy and martin luther king were assassinated.the manson family waged helter skelter.stonewall happened.woodstock came and went a few miles from the studio where the program was filmed without a single nod(could we read into willie loomis's shiftlessness as draft dodging perhaps?).

so it's not surprising vietnam wasn't brought up remotely.the revolutionary was seemed like safe territory and thus was mentioned rather frequently during the 1795 sequence(wasn't the mausoleum built to store ammunitions?).however the topic of slavery must have been touchbutton as i can't recall a single mention of the civil war during the 1897 storyline.

very little of the spirit of the times crept onto the screen.as outrageous as the plots were the group was rather "square".the most "revolutionary" thing happening when carolyn and maggie dropped from minis to maxis in 1970.the closest thing we get to the counterculture generating at the time was christopher pennock's absurd "hippie" characters(a bike riding photographer and an astrologer!)in 1970.

soap operas in general...and particularly forty years ago...remained politically neutral,removed from world affairs and somewhat socially conservative(given their advertisers were primarily manufacturers of housewife friendly products like laundry detergent)and dark shadows perhaps even more so given the outlandishness of the plots.an air of respectability was essential.

but again i think that remove is what lends the series much of it's charm.

[Gothick]

Counter-culture?  Don't forget Buzz, Collinsport's very own answer to the Beats, Hell's Angels and Easy Rider:

"If ya feel it ... SIT IT!"

G.

[Nancy]

A couple of the actors are/were vets.  Jonathan Frid during WWII (acknowledges the Nov 11th holiday on his website) and John Karlen during, I think, the Korean war?

Any others?

nancy

[borgosi]

Being a vet. (desert shield) myself I have to say that a show that stays away from such things does draw me to it. It's nice to be able to get away from such things. I wasn't part of desert storm because my brother was killed and I wasleft the last of 4 sons. It's hard to watch a show that brings up those issues and not think about my brother. DS was and is fantasy, when you stick something real into it, it takes you out of the fantasy and puts you in the middle of the real world. And to be frank...sometimes the real world sucks.

[Taeylor Collins]

Amen to the real world sucking and thanks for your service.  I remember you telling me DS 91 just reminds you of the Gulf War which is horrid!

[Lydia]

borgosi, it's good to hear from you!  I'm sorry to learn about your brothers, and I know what you mean about not wanting to see the real world on the screen.  There was a certain movie I should have walked out of 25 years ago - too relevant to my own life at the time.

Sam Hall was in the Army in World War II.

[Patti Feinberg]

Borgosi...thanks for replying...as I wanted to say

Happy Veterans Day!

Patti

[Joeytrom]

At the beginning of the Leviathan story, Phillip Todd mentions about the Moon landing.

[Midnite]

At the very start of the setup to 1897, reference is made to a Collins who lived during the Civil War.

Ben Stokes was also a war veteran.

[michael c]

Counter-culture?  Don't forget Buzz, Collinsport's very own answer to the Beats, Hell's Angels and Easy Rider:

"If ya feel it ... SIT IT!"

i couldn't for a minute forget about dear buzz but for me he always reads as something of a throwback. more of a late 1950's type of character. a beatnik.

i'm thinking more "rebel without a clue" than "easy rider".

[quentincollins]

I could have sworn that Barnabas was a Revolutionary War vet. He did have that big gaudy medal in the portrait. Maybe I'm thinking of fan fiction though.
I think there was reference to Thaddeus Collins dying in the Civil War, presumably this was Tad, which explains why the Collins fortune passed to Edith after Quentin's death ( there's a huge story there, the gap between 1840 and 1897, and I've read two very good and different fan fics about the 1870s)