Idle Thoughts--Butt Monkey on Parade (Episodes 768-771)

Fashion notes first . . .

I really think this is my favorite of Judith's dresses. I speak, of course, of the china blue (satin?) dress with the green collar and facings. I like her hair (well, the wig anyway) like this too. Looks like Bennett went for a lighter brown color and it's a lot less harsh than the jet black.

Beth's got a new dress. Of course, it's peacock blue and seems to be in some sort of knitted material (serge? I'm not that good identifying fabrics I can't actually touch). It's too fitted and that collar is a bit droopy.

Hats on DS male actors never work. I don't know why. They had some very good looking men on the show. Hats just don't work. Three years into the show, you would think someone would have realized it and given it up as a lost cause.

Carl looked really cute in that spiffy checked frock coat.

And the incomparable Pansy Faye. Suitably tawdry outfit and she wore it, managing to convey the impression that she was barely dressed when in reality she was decently covered. The lace mitts are a really nice touch too.

Onto the shows . . .

I don't usually comment on the voiceovers. They tend to be a lot of the same thing. You all know the drill, "As darkness stretches over the great house on the hill, a beautiful and stupid young girl tries to put together obvious clues and realize who has been menacing her for the past six months, blah, blah, blah." Okay, not exactly like that, but you get the idea. So I'm preparing to write my notes and realize happily that Joan Bennett's going to be on and then I start listening to what she's saying.

Holy exposition, Batman! It's not a good thing when you've got to start having people go into very complicated explanations ad nauseum about plot developments. The whole thing brought back memories (bad ones) of the time many years ago when there was a writer's strike and they brought in scabs to write the soaps. The scabs hired for The Guiding Light took a relatively straightforward story about Josh's first wife (of whom, of course, he had never spoken to his girlfriend and fiancee, Reva Shayne) and plunged the helpless viewers into this convoluted mess involving identical twins, split personalities, crazed monks, and the entire cast of the show being in South America so bizarre and confusing that you needed a scorecard to follow it all.

For those of you who weren't suffering along with me through the Sonni/Solita storyline, it was about twenty times worse than watching Gosford Park for the first time

[Exhaling]Anyhow. All this talk about the silver bullet makes me think about syphilis (sorry, Connie

)

Well, you know Quentin's a Collins when his solution is once again, kill first, ask questions later. This works in the westerns, guys. Not in New England towns in which Lovecraft would feel at home.

And then there's Dirk. God, there's a lot of Dirk in two days. A lot of Dirk. I didn't drink anything either. I think I deserve some kind of award for that. Turn to the definition of "ham" in the dictionary and there's a picture of Roger Davis.

Quentin's been hanging around too much with Barnabas. His logic circuits are frying--Beth has a lot more to gain by sticking by Quentin than she does by killing him.

Why would it be such a mistake to tell Quentin about his kids? Someone want to explain that to me?

Oh good grief. So now Beth's not only working as a servant at Collinwood, playing messenger/nursemaid to the twins, she's also expected to spend her whole day watching over Barnabas too? Selfish much?

"Desk Set" is on AMC right now and it's killing me to sit through Roger Davis doing his salute to Dwight Frye (shout out to Rainey) when I could be watching Katharine Hepburn in my dream librarian job.

Jeez Louise, Dirk just shoved Beth down the stairs! And he's still talking . . . Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph, why won't he shut up already? Yeah, we got it, you're a whack job. They haven't had a character talk this much since Dennis Patrick was playing Jason McGuire. Unfortunately the dialogue is nowhere as good and Roger Davis isn't anywhere near the calibre of a performer that Patrick was.

I wonder if they've gotten to the part where Spencer Tracy takes Katharine Hepburn to lunch on the rooftop (it's December in the movie) and she blows his quiz out of the water. Damn, commercial break.

Oh, yeah, that'll work. Go and tell a child the truth. Probably the person with the least amount of power in that whole household.

Barnabas? You know what? You're in a time where you don't belong. Your psycho wife is there with you. Lives are disintegrating around you as you speak. You've got no frigging clue as to how to solve any of this. So wipe that smug smirk off your face and get real, okay? Beth may be impressed but she's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But wait! There's more . . . Roger Davis.

Gig Young leading Kate on. Damn. He's good in this movie, but it's really pretty much a throwaway part for him. Although he does have that nice scene later on when he walks in unexpectedly on Tracy and Hepburn in their pjs at her apartment . . .

And what's waiting for me back on the tape? Roger Davis

Now see, why couldn't we have gotten Ernest Thesiger instead of Dwight Frye? BTW, Thesiger's birthday would have been the other day--I just found out that he authored a book on embroidery and used to refer to himself as "the stitch bitch"

which I find hysterically funny. Of course, Davis could do an Ernest Thesiger imitation about as easily as he could fly, so I suppose we're lucky.

Oh, yay! the rooftop scene.

Back again. Commercials. AMC used to be a really good station before they started airing things like Poltergeist and stopped showing movies uncut.

Barnabas, do us all a favor and kill Dirk regardless of who or what he's told (Jamison, Judith, the hat stand, the fire, Dirk doesn't seem to discriminate). Better still, pull a Cassandra and strike him mute or something. Duct tape over the mouth, I don't care.

He can't even die quietly.

God, I love "Desk Set." Okay, much happier now. Librarians rock!

Heh. Kind of like the father/son dynamic of Edward and Jamison. David would never have confided in Roger. Roger wouldn't even have let David get beyond "Father, I have to talk to you!" (particularly if David was standing in the path of the brandy decanter), let alone gone to the Old House to investigate, or to demand to see the cellar. Kind of gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Oh, now there's a plan. Instead of just keeping your nose clean for like five minutes and letting a prepubescent boy's accusations die down, raise Dirk as a vampire. Never mind that he's stark raving mad and talks or that you couldn't control him in life. Let's turn him into a superhuman vampire. Yep, that'll work.

God, I love Carl. He goes away and he brings back souvenirs!!! And a girlfriend to boot. Heh. I actually prefer the real Pansy Faye (who wants a church wedding!--talk about God striking you down dead) to all other imitations. I love that she enters literally singing and dancing. She's such a kick. He's so sweetly clueless and yet, hopeful at the same time. You honestly get the sense that he believes Judith is going to melt when she sees the incomparable Miss Faye perform.

I love these throwaway lines. It's so easy to miss them, but when you don't, it's like finding a prize in your Cocoa Puffs. Carl apparently makes a habit of bringing back um, individuals of dubious distinction from his travels abroad. The meeting/performance thing was too too funny. Bennett, Frye and Karlen were in fine form. Wasn't as impressed with Terry Crawford and Frid, while doing a good job, didn't strike quite the right note here.

How many more days of Roger Davis?