Discuss - Ep #0032

[Watching Project]

Robservations #32

[MagnusTrask]

Roger and Liz refer once again to morphing Matthew.   Jonas suspects David.   Good Roger dialogue in scene where he's processing his past family life in Augusta, all leading up to the valve he holds in his hand.   

Carter says Burke was too smart to go ahead with the car tampering after having been discovered by Vicki.  What if the job was finished by then?   Would Vicki go and leave him there in peace, so he could undo his work?

Good Liz/Roger scene where she says she won't send him away.   Liz especially.   It does seem that Roger and David made each other.

Carter at one point begins to turn his back on Roger, and talk exclusively to Liz.   He really ought to be focusing on Roger, who's a millimeter away from spilling everything... well, almost everything...

[Lydia]

Louis Edmonds did an excellent job today, making this the first episode of the series that I'd be interested in watching again for its own sake, and not because of the context.

Elizabeth's living in Cloud Cuckoo Land when it comes to David.  The only regret he had about causing his father's accident was that he might be thrown in jail.  Once he knows that won't happen, he could well decide that murder is a useful solution to any and all problems he has.

Elizabeth had no trouble getting Carter to abandon the bleeder valve case.  Previously Carter looked pretty incorruptible, but now I'm not so sure.

[DarkLady]

It's so inconvenient that the Mistress of Collinwood has to walk to Matthew's cottage whenever she wants to tell or ask him something. Couldn't they have installed a couple of tin cans on a string or something?

Here endeth the Tale of the Bleeder Valve--at fewer than thirty episodes, surely the briefest story line in the whole series. I suppose Carter agreed to drop the case because it would have degenerated into a "He said, he said" situation and was essentially unprovable one way or the other. And this way, he gets to take his wife to the movies. 

Wonderful performance by Louis Edmonds as Roger fiills in his back story--including that interesting detail of the timing of David's birth.

"He's a monster, Liz! He's been nothing but trouble to me since the day he was born. David and his mother, my loving wife and my adoring son, Laura and David, love and respect. Liz, it was hell!" Regardless of Roger's own faults, that's still a bitter, bitter assessment. I'll bet that duo shut him out almost all the time. Who knows how Laura poisoned David against him. And now he's stuck at Collinwood with the son who tried to kill him.

It would have been interesting to see the story of how Isaac, Jeremiah and Benjamin stood together.

[alwaysdavid]

Dark Lady there is a phone in the cottage.  Mrs. Stoddard called when Vickie was lying to Matthew and she told him so over the phone in an earlier episode.
The Statue is back.  I guess Elizabeth has that furniture rearrainging bug after being on the estate for so many years.
It's great how his sister glares at Roger.  He should be worried more about her than David.

[DarkLady]

You are correct! Well, at least Elizabeth gets some exercise once in a while.

[Midnite]

Sheriff Carter to Bill:  "I'm just about ready to turn in my badge."
True dat.  Farewell to Michael Currie.  (He makes a deal about Malloy's visit saving the town a phone call but has no qualms about using the phone to instruct Harry in the next room to contact him?)

Roger to Liz:  "What happens next? A loose rock? Some rat poison in my coffee?"
[spoiler]A wire stretched across the staircase?[/spoiler]

It does seem that Roger and David made each other.

I'm with Liz on that one.  Roger made up his mind to despise his son since infancy, leaving David with no choice but to both fear him and wonder what he did to inspire that hatred.  Roger made David the way he is, but David is merely a victim of the timing of his own birth.

It would have been interesting to see the story of how Isaac, Jeremiah and Benjamin stood together.

I think Liz was making the point that David is as much a Collins as they are, and that the living Collinses must stand together, as they always have, for his sake.  As for the ancestors physically doing the same, I think it's unlikely that the lives of Isaac and Jeremiah overlapped much, if at all; can't say I know a darn thing about Benjamin, though.

Just after Liz sees Carter out, my DVD fades to black and the rest is missing.  That's the 3rd incident of this in the Beginning Series and we're only up to #30.  All of you who did not receive the earliest release of these discs lucked out for not having to put up with this crap.