Most disturbing DS moments

[ShadowsAtlanta]

I would like to expand upon a post I entered under a separate topic by posing the following question:

What do you consider the two most disturbing events during the entire run of Dark Shadows?

The moments may bother you because they contained actions you found objectionable or out of character for one or more of the players, or perhaps they irk you because they seem to not flow with the overall story.  

Here are my picks, which contains spoilers for the early Barnabas and Leviathan storylines:

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1)  Barnabas murdering Dr. Woodard (and forcing Julia to help him) during the early Barnabas storyline.  This was totally cold-blooded and horrific, and it is made worse by the fact the Barn forced Julia to actually inject Woodard with the letal poison.  It just doesn't get much worse in my book.

2)  The totally unnecessary and ludicrous revelation during the Leviathan storyline that Vickie Winters had been killed in 1796.  Jeb Hawkes wasn't even in human form before the succession of little brats grew up to be him, so how the heck was he around in that form back in the 1700's??  Plus, Vickie hadn't even been on the show in years!  Why throw in such a gratuitious and illogical death for a character that had been such a cornerstone of the show's earlier storylines?  Personally, I like to pretend this episode never really happened, along with the rest of the Leviathan storyline.  

Okay, stepping off my soapbox...  which DS moments distress you folks?  

[WileyS]

I think I agree with Woodard's murder as being one of the most disturbing DS moments.

I have not been watching DS on the Sci Fi so don't know if this has happened yet, but another plot point really bothered me. It's in this Adam storyline but just in case I will put spoiler alerts.
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I was really disturbed when Angelique/Cassandra blinded Sam Evans.......that part really bothered me. I guess it's because I'm extremely nearsighted myself. I have to fastforward through those scenes when I watch because I hate seeing Sam and Maggie's reactions.

[Nicole]

Here we go

**Spoilers**









1) John Yaeger and Buffie Harrington in 1970PT.  Man creeped me out in the first place, but his thinly vieled rape of Ms Harrington sealed the deal.  

2) Edith's death in 1840 baffled me to no end.  With just one little plot point, the writers obliterated an entire storyline (1897).  Would it have killed them to check back to see what they had done earlier?  Very bothersome.

[WileyS]

1840/1970 PT spoilers
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I'm in the minority but the Edith thing never bothered me.....I've always just assumed that the first time around nothing happened to Edith and she lived until 1897....and the events were altered when Barnabas/Julia went back to 1840. The series didn't spend very much time in the regular storyline after 1840 flashback ended so we never got to see how Edith's death in 1840 affected everything else. The reason the Collins family continued was because Edith and Gabriel already had children..... This is just how I see it so I can pretend the writers didn't make another error.

re: 1970 PT. I thought Elizabeth Eis' Buffie was the most interesting character of this storyline.....that implied rape scene was very powerful. Wish Eis would have had a longer stints on the show.

[lurkerintheshadows]

1)Barnabas making Julia kill Dr. Woodard
2)Implied rape of Carolyn by Adam

[Maria_Merriweather]

1.  I agree the most disturbing moment is the death of Dr. Woodard at the hands of Julia (coerced by Barnabas)

2.  Many of the early scenes between David and Roger.  David is so obviously troubled and Roger is so lacking  in parenting skills.

3.  The shooting of Willie by the sheriff and several of his deputies.  Violence was common on TV then but this still doesn't fit--very unnecessary and contrived.

[ProfStokes]

Very interesting discussion, ShadowsAtlanta!

2)  The totally unnecessary and ludicrous revelation during the Leviathan storyline that Vickie Winters had been killed in 1796.  Jeb Hawkes wasn't even in human form before the succession of little brats grew up to be him, so how the heck was he around in that form back in the 1700's??  Plus, Vickie hadn't even been on the show in years!  Why throw in such a gratuitious and illogical death for a character that had been such a cornerstone of the show's earlier storylines?  Personally, I like to pretend this episode never really happened, along with the rest of the Leviathan storyline.  

I'm with you completely on this one!  The claim that Jeb had killed Vicki made no sense to me whatsoever. If anything it confused an already complicated plot.  What was Jeb's motive supposed to be anyway?  

There are several other points in the show that troubled me: Naomi's suicide, Sam's blindness, Joe's madness.  However, I think Disturbing Moment #2 is a tie between Ben Stokes's death and Barnabas's declaration of love for Angelique, both of the 1840 storyline.
 
Ben Stokes was one of the most memorable and admirable characters not only of 1795 but the entire DS run.  His loyalty to Barnabas and desire to be helpful was deeply touching.  So it was enlightening to learn in 1968 that Ben went on to live a good, full life and die peacefully of natural causes; however, on traveling back to 1840, history changes and old Ben dies violently, a victim of the supernatural. The killing of this great character, and in such a gruesome way (Judah Zachary's spirit causes Ben to behead himself) disgusted me.  I think it was callous and tacky of the writers.  

After all of the misery that Angelique caused Barnabas, and all of the lives her spells and machinations took either directly or indirectly, I just cannot believe that Barnabas would be able to forgive her, let alone decide he loves her. (sorry, VAM, Lindsey, and other Angelique fans).  Even the cure itself seems ridiculous.  Suddenly she has the power to simply reverse the curse when, in every other timeline, she'd tried to do the same and failed?  IMHO, none of it rang true.

Near the end of MST3K's "Hobgoblins" episode, (a truly wretched movie, BTW) the robots conduct a mock interview with the film's writer/director/producer.  Crow T. Robot turns to 'Rick Sloan' and asks, "Were you on drugs when you wrote this script?  Did somebody open your skull and replace your brain with rat droppings?"  It doesn't happen very often, but there are times when I wonder the same thing about the DS writers.  The above occasions represent those times.  

ProfStokes  

[VictoriaWintersRox]

Spoilers.....










1. The murder of Dr. Woodard. I don't see why Barnabas had Julia come down there..Dave was one of her friends, and even if she knew he had to die, she didn't have to witness it.

For #2..It's sorta tie for me. I don't like what Cassandra/Angelique did to poor Sam Evans. She did entirely to much to him. I don't like how they killed off Ben Stokes, like ProfStokes said.

I don't know of another one that I would say was 'very disturbing' but I don't like how they killed Vicki off in the Levithan storyline because she hasn't been on the show for a year by then. I think it was just a way for them to get Roger Davis in an episode as the ghost of Peter Bradford, so I think it was done in desperation and usually ignore that fact.

[matthew789]

SPOILERS...



The most disturbing moment for me was Barnabas' brief return to 1795 to save Vickie. The original 1795 storyline was terrific and this short flasback changed everything. Joshua was in Boston, Ben strangled Natalie DuPres and Barnabas let Nathan off the hook, then killed him anyway.
Alexandra Molke was pregnant at the time and the writers try to quikly get rid of her. Certainly they could have had her and Jeff (Peter) move to California or something. The writers must have been smoking pot in 1968.

[tripwire]

SPOILERS...




i didnt particularly like the whole leviathan stuff anyway, and then to bring peter bradford back as a ghost, to haunt jeb, declaring he caused vicki winters death was totally absurd, cant believe they went that direction...And for Barnabas to even consider killing David because he may or may not know his "secret" i thought was out of context too...such devotion to the collins family..yeah, right....and then for him to go back to 1897, because david and chris jennings were in great danger, well, jennings was practically a stranger...i know that barnabas did most of the evil things as a vampire..(killing of woodard, carl collins) but yet, in 1897, as a vampire, he does what he can for the 2, then kills carl....maybe when vicki mutters "i dont understand" she was really talking about the scripts she was being handed.

[Maggie Evans]

I think the most disturbing for me was when Angelique killed little sarah  

[Linda]

Here we go

**Spoilers**









1) John Yaeger and Buffy Harrington in 1970PT.  Man creeped me out in the first place, but his thinly vieled rape of Ms Harrington sealed the deal.  

I agree, that was the most disturbing to me, too, because the sexual brutality was really overt.  However, there were a couple of scenes between Barnabas and Maggie in the early Barnabas episodes, during the kidnapping sequence, that also implied some serious violence.

2) Edith's death in 1840 baffled me to no end.  With just one little plot point, the writers obliterated an entire storyline (1897).  Would it have killed them to check back to see what they had done earlier?  Very bothersome.

She seemed to have some leanings toward the dark side -- it's entirely possible that she was actually a part of a coven, and was resurrected somehow.

If you want to read a great story about Edith, check out Luciaphil's "The Education of Judith Collins."  What she has completed is posted to ShadowsAfterDark on YahooGroups.  

http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/shadowsafterdark

Note:  The group IS age-restricted, so you have to sign on and click the link accepting the disclaimer before you can subscribe.

The story is superbly written and in addition to creating a really plausible background that explains why Judith was the way she was, it offers some implied solutions to the Edith paradox.  

Cheers,

Linda

[Nicole]

Goodness, you've all thought of a few things I hadn't thought of initially.  

Ben's death was needlessly gruesome and Carl's was just unwarrented.  

Admittedly, I've yet to see Dr. Woodward's death (no one changed my tape out at home   ) but I can imagine that it was bad, seeing as it proves to be Juia's point of no return.  

Barn forgiving Angelique: a crowd pleaser for some but baffling nonetheless.  

PS: I'll have to check out Luciaphil's story.  I've been reading everything in sight over the last few days (so as not to write myself) so I'll get to it quickly.

[MsCriseyde]

Two words: Amanda Harris.  

[Connie]

Two words: Amanda Harris.  

ROFLMAO!