Hmm...is there any single bit of Dark Shadows that is universally hated? It seems as though everything and everybody on the show has some fan who'll defend it or her or him.
Salad, baked potato, steak. That's Burke Devlin's idea of a fancy meal. I realize that a good steak can be sublime (even though the very sublimity makes me ponder, while I'm chewing, on the whole phenomenon of eating meat), but "Salad, baked potato, steak" just makes me yawn. Couldn't we throw some mushrooms on the steak? Couldn't we have asparagus on toast instead of salad and baked potato? Or even some hot dish, as immortalized in Kathryn Leigh Scott's Dark Passages?
Thanks for the note about fountain pens, DarkLady. I don't think I've ever had the misfortune to have to use one. I tried a quill pen at the Hancock Shaker Village in western Massachusetts once, and immediately appreciated acquired a deep appreciation for modern writing utensils. But never a fountain pen. The silver filigree version looks very elegant on the outside, causing the innards, when revealed, to look deplorably utilitarian.
Sam says he has come to Collinwood "to save my soul" - a heartfelt phrase. And then he can't bring himself to do it. I like David Ford a lot, but I'm not quite seeing through his skin into the tortured soul in need of saving.