Discuss - Ep #0886

[Watching Project]

Robservations #886

[Lydia]

How was Barnabas planning to use the portrait to get back to 1897?  He had no idea of how it had brought him to 1795, and I strongly suspect that it was set up to give him only a one-way trip.  But if one had to make a list of the times when Barnabas believed he could manage something in defiance of all sense, it would fill up a volume twice as big as the Collins Family History.

Poor, poor Natalie, forced to betray the niece whom she loves so dearly.

Where was Angelique in today's proceedings?  She wasn't at the Old House, egging Josette on to take the poison.  She apparently wasn't keeping an eye on Barnabas as he fell victim to the mysterious strangers.  I don't think she would have been able to help Barnabas - but where was she?  She still had quite a few more nasty deeds to commit in this time period, so it wasn't that Diabolos had chosen that moment to gather her to his less-than-loving bosom.  I suppose that, since we later learn that[spoiler]Nicholas Blair was involved in the whole Leviathan thing, it must be that Diabolos had sent her off on an errand to keep her busy for a while[/spoiler]but my impression is that the spoilerized information was not dreamed up until later, so that right at the time of this episode, that information wasn't in any writer's mind, which means that, strictly speaking, another answer is needed.  I'm sure the answer exists, but I don't know it yet.

[MagnusTrask]

It seems as if Natalie is begging Josette not to jump into the stock daytime footage of waves crashing.... this is immediately followed by the much better night-time waves crashing in the DS title sequence, so they could have just gone straight to that I suppose.   

Petofi box in Millicent's room?   Isn't it odd for them to go back to using it as a random prop again suddenly, after it's been so important for the viewer for so long?   Or am I mistaking the Box That I Keep Mistaking For the Petofi Box for the Petofi Box once again?

KLH really makes her scenes "real", something I always notice about D Selby too.

Ah!!   Snake altar!!   There it is!!   

Oberhaza almost do the Wayne's World "we're not worthy" thing.

Natalie: "Many have died for love."  Be more French, why don't you.

I fail to see how standing Josette up at the Old House proves to her that Barnabas wants to make her a vampire.

I want a poison vial like that.   What was that made for I wonder?   I doubt they made nice receptacles like that for poison.

Oberon I think: "Earth, the mother Earth..."   (They're environmentalists, that's nice!)   Then he makes Barnabas prostrate himself strangely on the cairn, head down, arms outstretched.   Then Barnabas says "No!", strangely.   Next shot, he's stretched out on it.

What are Oberhaza?  Are they Leviathans themselves, not human but just in human form?  If they're not, what are they? 

[Lydia]

I fail to see how standing Josette up at the Old House proves to her that Barnabas wants to make her a vampire.

I agree.  On the other hand, the fact that Josette has the poison in the first place indicates that this wasn't a completely sudden impulse.  Maybe the only reason she had been able to bear all that had happened to her was that she knew she had the poison as a fallback.  I have trouble with this idea.  In particular I have trouble with the idea of her acquiring the poison at all.  It doesn't seem like Josette to me.  As Natalie said when Barnabas died, Josette was strong.  But maybe she was under Angelique's influence when she acquired it - or maybe reading about her own suicide in the Collins Family History made poison seem acceptable.  Anyway, when Barnabas didn't show up - and by the time she took the poison, he was an hour and a half late - after all that had happened to her already, especially that night, it just seemed like the end of all hope, and the poison was there.

And I agree, the vial was beautiful.  It looks to me as though it would have been used for perfume.

[alwaysdavid]

Barnabas finally has some romantic scenes in with both participants are willing.  Star-crossed once again. 
Now onto the the story that Dan Curtis says he hated from the beginning as much as the audience did. 

[MagnusTrask]

Wasn't it his idea?

[Midnite]

It would be very odd if DC said he hated the story idea since Lovecraftian themes and threads showed up in his later works, such as NoDS, The Norliss Tapes, and even a couple of the stories in his second Trilogy of Terror.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Wasn't it his idea?

It was indeed. And one that he bulldozed through over the writers' objections. 

[Gothick]

Ah, and so it begins--Love of LeviaLife!

From the point of metanarrative, this episode is very cool (or maybe it was the one before?) because we finally get a Jonathan-on-Grayson fanging sequence.  Love how the actors played it, even though I'm sure Frid, at least, was squirming (given his oft-stated objection to the fanging scenes on principle--and the outrageousness of this particular setpiece in specific).

I would LOVE to know where and when DC claimed to have "hated Leviathans from the beginning just as much as the fans did."  Even for him, that's EXTREME revisionism of established DS history.  About on the level of Mao having Liu Shao-ch'i erased after his fall from various group photographs recording certain Party functions.  But then, there never seemed any limits to DC's personal megalomania, particularly in the sphere of DS.

I love the design elements in our introduction to Haza, Oberon, and the Leviathan altar.  (or the "cairn," as Julia always, rather oddly to my mind, called it.)  Thinking of them now, I wonder whether Haza and Oberon were the actual ancestors of Uncle Fester Addams.  I'd know that pasty skin, those sunken eyes, that crazed leer, and those long snake-like robes anywhere.

The aesthetic atmosphere here always makes me think of the drawings of Edward Gorey.  Particularly in this scene with Barn in that gorgeous 1790s cape.

Angelique has a line in a later episode in which she describes the Leviathans as "creatures of the Underworld."  That element is certainly present in how Haza and Oberon are depicted here.  Their makeup may also hint at an episode in Lovecraft's tale, The Whisperer in Darkness.  I think the main story that DC read to help fill in the elements of the Leviathan narrative must have been the Dunwich Horror.

vile serpentine hissing,

G.

[alwaysdavid]

Wasn't it his idea?

It's on one of the DvD interviews probably on volume 16.  He was very emphaptic that he had nothing to do with the storyline and everything else that was successful was his idea.  I wish the interviewer had asked him why he let it happen if he was in control of everything and knew it was going to fail.

[Midnite]

It's on one of the DvD interviews probably on volume 16.  He was very emphaptic that he had nothing to do with the storyline and everything else that was successful was his idea.  I wish the interviewer had asked him why he let it happen if he was in control of everything and knew it was going to fail.

Actually, what he says in that interview, after talking about how much he enjoyed doing a DS version of Frankenstein and how great the first Turn of the Screw tale was, and about the popularity of Parallel Time (which he implies came before the Leviathans story) that temporarily saved him during a time when he was running out of ideas (to "rip off"), DC says:

Then we started getting into things like the Leviathan and stuff like that, and I was becoming disenchanted right along with the audience...

and then he talks about how his input waned during the last 6 months of the show, when I couldn't squeeze my brain any harder to come up with one more story...  So he does claim credit for several story ideas but he does not say that

he had nothing to do with the [Leviathans] storyline

But also, I think one should take Curtis' claims, especially in these later interviews, with a grain of salt.  Another segment of the same interview that's on Coll. 11 provides a WTH moment when Curtis takes full credit for selecting Frid and hiring him to play Barnabas, admittedly while working in Europe.  A quote from the Coll. 16 interview that unintentionally sums it up for me:  I've got a pretty good imagination.  You said it, Dan.

[Gothick]

Midnite darling, thanks so much for doing the detective work of going back to those video interviews.  I don't think I"ve even played them yet.

That's pretty outrageous about Frid, since it is documented from multiple sources that not only was DC in England at the time of the casting and set-up for Barnabas, but when he came back, he actually thought they had "cast the wrong guy" since he had supposedly sent a different head shot back for the guy he wanted. (I've always wondered whether they did a reading with that guy and found out he just did not have the goods, at all.)

I've been watching Mad Men, season one, over the past couple of weeks, and a lot of DC's behavior seems rooted in the "executive culture" of the Sixties.  But he obviously was quite the maverick and had his own very strong personality... I am definitely of the school of thought that DS turned out to be an underground classic *despite* DC's input!

Thanks again!

G.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Ah, and so it begins--Love of LeviaLife!

I love this beginning portion of Leviathans. It's extremely atmospheric and layered. It's a shame the storyline was never allowed to play out the way it was intended. But that's for a future discussion in these topics...

we finally get a Jonathan-on-Grayson fanging sequence.  Love how the actors played it

Definitely.

I am definitely of the school of thought that DS turned out to be an underground classic *despite* DC's input!

Indeed.


And as a side note, the captures for this ep have finally been added to Robservations. The easiest way to access them is by clicking the link in the first post.

[Nancy]

I love this Grayson and Jonathan capture!  Great stuff!

[Nancy]

I've always thought the "they cast the wrong guy" is part of the DS mythology as in it's a great story but not true.  Fits the whole "it was fate" thing.  

Frid wrote on his website a few days ago when remembering Ron Sproat that he met with the writers prior to actually going on the show to talk about how to develop the character of Barnabas.  Curtis wasn't there and as we know, the writers went in another direction entirely than what Curtis intended for the short-term ratings injector.  Frid and the DS writers were responsible for what Barnabas became.  

Remember, the short-term role was just that - a short term role.  Curtis would have been interested and kept informed only to a point; he had other fish to fry.  No one had any idea the short-term role would turn into what it ultimately did.  The writers being writers would want to make the character interesting since it was certainly a different kind of character to daytime TV.  I think too much of the ambition to do more with the character was due to the fact Ron Sproat knew Frid from Yale and had worked with him.  Frid was a directing major but also a more experienced actor than many of his acting colleagues and cast in many Yale stage productions.  Even though, according to Frid, he liked to play characters against two poles - good and evil.  Sproat certainly knew that which is why ultimately more attention was paid to bringing Frid into the discussion about how to develop Barnabas.  Dan Curtis had nothing to do with it other than have the brilliant idea and guts to bring on a vampire.

Nancy

That's pretty outrageous about Frid, since it is documented from multiple sources that not only was DC in England at the time of the casting and set-up for Barnabas, but when he came back, he actually thought they had "cast the wrong guy" since he had supposedly sent a different head shot back for the guy he wanted. (I've always wondered whether they did a reading with that guy and found out he just did not have the goods, at all.)