Discuss - Ep #1012

[Watching Project]

Robservations #1012

[MagnusTrask]

I seem to have as many notes for ep # 1012 as Will had for his New Adventures of Old Barnabas Book.   I looked at the tape and it looks like one ep's worth of tape.   Someone please discipline me if I'm doing 1012 and 1013.


Lara VO.   It occurred to me that Lara gets away with that small "choke" in her voice as if she's about to cry amazingly often.   It happens early in the VO, and she does it in all contexts I think, often when a scene isn't especially emotional, or at least when her character isn't supposed to be vulnerable or hurt or "all choked up".   Maybe that's why it's interesting.   It always works, I think.   She adds feeling and weight to otherwise questionable storylines.

BC can bite people from across the room (Will).   Wow... BC might put Will in the coffin!   Everyone should keep ascots by the front door to grab, just in case...  So Bramwell had a brother who was lost in South America.   

Barnabas is actually having fun presenting yet another intro/origin story to yet another bunch of Collinses who, as much as they may want to disbelieve every word, can't (tentatively), not yet.   His position is strong, he knows it, and he enjoys it.   He feels total control right now.   He has his lines down.   Will should write the great fake life story Barnabas is spewing right now!

Barnabas is unafraid to raise all sorts of questions in Quentin's mind, like when he volunteers that Will just burned his book, in a very abrupt, suspicious way.   I think Barnabas feels the after-effects of weeks of confinement, then release.   He's energized by freedom, fresh blood, and revenge (which always makes him happy!).   He's charging right into Parallel Time fearlessly, after a long stretch as a worrier and victim.   He feels bulletproof... which of course, he is!

Classic sort of DS moment we'd never see elsewhere:  RT Barnabas approaching PT Barnabas at his grave!


Pre-Heatvamp Ang was (is) a worship-vampire.   Just look at her face, soaking it in from Roger!   [spoiler]I think we're supposed to see Roger's deflection of suspicion as sexual tension between them.[/spoiler]   Ang is apoplectic about Barnabas!   I'll bet she doesn't know why...   

BC: 1770-1830.   Barnabas talks about how that grave should be his...!   Joshua is a veritable backlighting maniac, at least until he comes back from commercial breaks.    JF is great now!   Good speech at grave.   Joshua is clueless, and flummoxed by unusualness, as usual!   I like his role as protector of the family even in death, though did he really do that in life?

We're denied the Barnabas-PT Trask first meeting.   Written by Joe Caldwell, maybe he is a replacement for Violet Welles, a proper one.    Is RT Julia sleeping in the Room's back bedroom?

This ep seemed to last forever.  That's good.   Unless it was two ep's.

[loril54]

I had to watch this a couple times. I do think that Jonathan did a great job.

I really liked what Jonathan did, there were so many different emotions that came
out. Why did the writers not give BC  a way to get home.  But of course they had to
draw out the story.  It is true that Barnabas did a great job to create a back story.

[spoiler]I don't remember Bramwell mentioning any siblings, is this where the writers
messed up again.[/spoiler]

But I do know how Barnabas made all his money. It not from selling Jewelry
or furniture, it sell the game show millionaire and the main line. Is that your final
answer. I wonder if Regis was a DS fan.

[Lydia]

As Barnabas told his Andean fairy tale, I was happily looking for signs of Hispanic ancestry in his face.  And shouldn't he have faked a slight Spanish accent?  I like the superfluity of four sons for the goldseeking son of Barnabas Collins. If you're going to lie, you might as well do it on a grand scale.  Sometime or other I hope to hear that there were four daughters, too - all of them beautiful, of course.

So Bramwell had a brother who was lost in South America.

I think it has been suggested elsewhere that 1970 parallel time is a different time band from 1841 parallel time.  In 1841 parallel time, Bramwell had been away for quite some time making his fortune.  Maybe in the time band that led to the 1970 we're seeing, Bramwell was the brother who was lost in South America.

Barnabas is unafraid to raise all sorts of questions in Quentin's mind, like when he volunteers that Will just burned his book, in a very abrupt, suspicious way.   I think Barnabas feels the after-effects of weeks of confinement, then release.   He's energized by freedom, fresh blood, and revenge (which always makes him happy!).   He's charging right into Parallel Time fearlessly, after a long stretch as a worrier and victim.   He feels bulletproof... which of course, he is!

Alternatively, Barnabas is just being Barnabas as usual and figures he'll be out of parallel time and back into his own time so fast that it doesn't really matter what he says.

Joshua is clueless, and flummoxed by unusualness, as usual!   I like his role as protector of the family even in death, though did he really do that in life?

Whether or not Joshua protected the family in life, he certainly thought of himself as their protector - especially in parallel time where his son didn't become a vampire.  I think that beneath the role of feminine submissiveness and respect that Josette assumed, she had quite a strong will, and I'm imagining her working hard over the years to avoid clashing with her father-in-law.

It must have felt wonderful to Barnabas to be able to see somebody from home, and to know that Julia hadn't just given up on him and gone back to Windcliff.  Of course he'd know that she wouldn't do that - but it still had to feel good to see that she hadn't.

This ep seemed to last forever.

I felt that way too, though it may have due to the phone call I got in the middle.

[Janet the Wicked]

Wicked nice bite shot there. Zowee!

"Write what I told you to write." Um, Barn, that's what bio writers do. And you ought to be quite familiar with this concept since you are an avid reader.

Ah, the familiar glass-throwing Quentin is back. I started a drawing once that has Quentin knealing before the fireplace, strewn with broken glasses that he had deposited in his fits of... well, his fits.

Mr. Frid is outstanding in this episode. How he remembered all the dialogue is beside me. But he's great! There's a little blip where he should have used "whom" instead of "who", but other than that (and nobody on the planet understands who and whom), he is great!
Actually, the secret in grammar land is if you can replace "him" with "whom", you're good to go. But who cares?

I am so in tune to the creepy music and the creepy seance business. Eenie meenie, chili beanie...the spirits are about to speak!!!

[Taeylor Collins]

Directed by: Henry Kaplan

One can tell Jf has his fangs in but it works!  Who could imagine 40 years later a young man (me) from KY would be watching Dark Shadows before he watched it's great grandchild The Vampire Diaries!  A interesting though indeed!  

Lord Quentin is a mess and being a total bastard!  I don't like this Quentin although is he nice to look at.

Great story about one of his sons going in search of Andean gold! And I am very glad he came up with another story this time.

Poor JF is forgetting his lines but man does he have a lot but I concur with everyone else that he did an amazing job in this episode regardless of flubbing a few lines! And that this is a great episode much like Barnabas first arrival in RT!

Interesting that Barnabas wants to go to his counterpart's grave.  There is a thread concerning Barnabas age on this site but here it is confirmed that he was only 25 as he was born in 1770 and died in 1795 in RT. In this time he lived to be 60 although that isn't old.  But people didn't live as long in those days. It seems to be that Barnabas would have been buried in a Mausoleum and not just a common grave?

Has Angelique been in Mrs. Roper's closet!?  

At his counterpart's grave perhaps Barnabas was trying to summon the spirits to get himself back to RT like he did when he somehow convinced them to send him back to 1796 in RT.

It's really great to have all the vets back as the storyline was growing quite thin!

[MagnusTrask]

Maybe PT Joshua banished PTBC from the family crypt.  [spoiler]According to PT1841, Barnabas wasn't treated too well by the rest of the family as with RT.  RT Joshua went soft on Barnabas at the end (in his own way) by not destroying him, "just" chaining him "alive", so burying him outside wasn't in keeping with that.   PT Joshua was already dead when PTBC bought it, or else dealing with a clearly completely dead, disappointing son whom he felt no need to pity, and could bury anyplace, I guess...[/spoiler]   

[Taeylor Collins]

Interesting theory but very good one Magnus!  

[loril54]

But do we ever see the mausoleum in PT now? Wait, I think we do. But what names are listed on the placks?

[MagnusTrask]

loril, wasn't Angelique in the mausoleum?   I remember Q and Bruno walking in and A was in the front room.   No sign of a secret room.    She has a plaque.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Angelique's mausoleum was a totally different mausoleum than the one Joshua, Naomi and Sarah (and Barn) were buried in in RT.

[Taeylor Collins]

It was a totally different Mausoleum but was it a redress??  Did they take out the boxes, change the door, move the lion's head, and the headstones and make it look different?  Or was it a totally new constructed mausoleum?

[MagnusTrask]

When we first see PT Angelique's resting place, it looked just like the familiar mausoleum to me.  Every later scene with it didn't look like it.

[Midnite]

Barnabas (at the end of #1011):  "I will no longer bow to fate."
Barnabas (at the end of #1012):  "I will not bow to fate any longer."
The first one sounds better, but I'm not sure why.  The scene was also much better lit the first time.  And in this ep, Will choked before Barnabas got the cord around his neck.

We learn why Joshua was the one to show up at Quentin's seance-- the ghost describes himself here as "dedicated to the protection of his family, both the living and the dead."

This ep seemed to last forever.  That's good.   Unless it was two ep's.

Just one.  Nice comments, btw.

Ah, the familiar glass-throwing Quentin is back. I started a drawing once that has Quentin knealing before the fireplace, strewn with broken glasses that he had deposited in his fits of... well, his fits.

Heh, heh.  I wish you'd finished it.

Has Angelique been in Mrs. Roper's closet!?

Ha!  Her long caftan is hideous.  (MB added a screen grab of it to the Robservation.)  The credits list Stanley Simmons as costume designer.  I'm not impressed.

It was a totally different Mausoleum but was it a redress??  Did they take out the boxes, change the door, move the lion's head, and the headstones and make it look different?  Or was it a totally new constructed mausoleum?

IIRC, different door, no coffins or lion's head, and walls were set pieces from both Collins and Stockbridge crypts

The hall outside the PT room got yet another look-- the pink faux marble now spills out into the hallway too.

[Janet the Wicked]

Dig it.