Discuss - Ep #1233

Robservations #1233

Kathy Cody really looks as if she's seeing these things in her mind.   They should have had her play a medium or psychic from the beginning, not Miss "Oh David I'm Scared"...   Good acting from Mr. Frid.

Magnus, one of the things I like about parallel time 1841 is that I feel the writers have gotten to know the capabilities of so many of the actors, and are giving them stuff that they know the actors can excel at.

The Daphne's Dying business irritates me.  Bramwell and Catherine are being so mawkishly sincere about it!  They should be still trying to fight their incredible attraction to each other even as they sincerely protest their love for Daphne and the guilt they feel about her.  And Catherine should feel the baby kicking (we don't have to worry about timing in parallel time) and, being Catherine, she should tell Bramwell all about it.  But I suppose this is the section of the storyline where Bramwell and Catherine walk through the fiery furnace and are redeemed so that we can cheer for them instead of saying disparagingly, as Magda said about Barnabas and Angelique, "They deserve each other."  And maybe they can, in the end, make me buy it.  But they didn't succeed today.

Oh, gosh, Catherine crying at Daphne's bedside.  That at least was typical.  Catherine just doesn't know when to shut up.  And unlike Daphne, she didn't bother to learn much from her father.  "He's a doctor!  He must know!"

Suddenly everybody wants to use Carrie's psychic powers.  And she just can't say no.  Her father needs to send her away.  And dearie me, what a sad day it is for Dark Shadows when two people are snooping in a third person's room and nobody catches them at it!  I know, I know, it's happened before, but it shouldn't have happened today.

Very thoughtful comment about the writers, Lydia!

I love Kendrick and Melanie playing detective and hunting for clues in Justin's study. They are very sweet together. If I remember, we will have two more incidents of two people snooping around a third person's room.

Carrie is getting to be quite an expert psychic, isn't she.

Nice bit by JF when Bramwell holds out his arms to the weeping (oy oy oy!) Catherine, then slowly and guiltily lowers them. I think JF does the guilt and remorse thing better than LP, but they are both good. Maybe it's just the script that calls for her to be so weepy. Too bad Daphne couldn't have studied medicine, even as a sort of apprentice to her father. But I guess even in PT 1840, it wouldn't have been allowed.

The lightning speed at which all the threads are being resolved makes me wistful for what might have been.

I've started wondering if they intended to do a full-blown 1680 storyline, with another time travel method found for Q or someone to go back there, and if all that was cut short by, well, you know....   I noticed that Bram/Cath moment too DL, where Bramwell decides that his comforting Catherine just can't happen.   I wonder if that was in the script.  Nice adult moment.

I've started wondering if they intended to do a full-blown 1680 storyline, with another time travel method found for Q or someone to go back there

Wow, MT, you've started my brain spinning! That could have been very cool! And 1680 was mostly unexplored territory in both RT and PT. *sigh*

A full-blown 1680 storyline would have been very cool, but I'd be surprised if they had it in mind, for two reasons.  Firstly, it seems to me that MB said they were already making plans for the next 1970s storyline, with Kate Jackson, if I remember correctly, to be playing somebody named Tracy.  And secondly...because I just don't think so.  The 1841 parallel time storyline seems to me to be such a departure from all the recent storylines that I can't believe they were planning revert to the tried and true formula of time travel.

But then again, it was a tried and true formula.

Firstly, it seems to me that MB said they were already making plans for the next 1970s storyline...
The 1841 parallel time storyline seems to me to be such a departure from all the recent storylines that I can't believe they were planning to revert to the tried and true formula of time travel.

I'd like to hear more about any plans for 1971, but I did think they were thinking about this.   Who knows how long they had originally planned on taking to get back to RT present-day, though?   

I'd also have been disappointed if they'd followed the usual time-travel-to-fix-a-ghost-problem pattern, but DS had been resorting to repeating familiar plot elements for a long time.

I'd also have been disappointed

Hey, I didn't say I'd have been disappointed!  I said:

A full-blown 1680 storyline would have been very cool

Hey, I didn't say I'd have been disappointed!  I said:

A full-blown 1680 storyline would have been very cool

Well, I'd have loved a 1680 storyline that managed to avoid seeming like a retread of RT 1897 and 1840...  that would take some doing, when it was set that the 1841 problem (presumably to be solved in 1680) was a hostile ghost.

Judging from what we saw of parallel time 1841, I think it definitely could have been done, Magnus.  I just spent a little while wondering whom from 1841 they would have sent back, and decided it would have to be Quentin - and that possibility makes me seriously regret that it wasn't done.  The Quentin in this storyline is such an interesting character!

I remember hearing Diana Millay say that if the show had continued, she was going to return as Laura

I've read that here, Uncle Roger, but it would have been very weird if Laura had appeared as a phoenix in this storyline.  Parallel time's supernatural phenomena are all directly related to the Room, so Phoenix Laura would have been out of place.  On the other hand, if Quentin (or somebody else) traveled back to 1680, maybe we would have learned that Laura had something to do with Brutus going round the bend.

Or else, since this was parallel time, maybe Laura would have been a different character altogether – but my impression is that Diana Millay liked playing the phoenix.