Discuss - Ep #0491

[Watching Project]

Robservations #491

And if you'd care to look back, the first WP discussion topic for this ep:

Re: Discuss - Ep #0491

[DarkLady]

Barnabas and Julia are parents! Adam imprints on the first person he sees--Barnabas. But nothing could have prepared Barn and Julia for this large, clumsy, infantile creature. They notice that he seems to be very sensitive to their tones of voice, especially when they're arguing about him. They decide to sedate him, but he takes an instant dislike to both needles and Julia. Barnabas--who seems to have some kind of strange power over Adam--eventually persuades him to lie down and sleep.

It's only 5:00 a.m., and Barnabas is wondering if he's still a vampire when Elizabeth comes to the House by the Sea to ask Julia to examine the suddenly mute David. Barnabas frets about the time, but Julia assures him she can return in an hour. While Julia goes to get her medical bag, Elizabeth observes to Barnabas, You to have taken a sudden interest in science. That seems strange for one so fascinated with the past. Barnabas replies, I have no more interest in the past, only the future--the immediate future. Meanwhile, Adam explores Lang's lab, delighted with almost everything he sees though utterly ignorant of its purpose.

Julia returns to find Barnabas sitting in the dark, ready to die at sunrise rather than revert. Julia insists he won't die--and she turns out to be right. Barnabas rejoices in a particularly splendid sunrise, but he and Julia have little time to rejoice. Adam is attracted to a bright shiny scalpel and promptly cut his hand with it. Sobbing angrily in his first experience of pain, he has started wrecking the laboratory, smashing everything in sight and knocking Barnabas aside like a rag doll. Together Barnabas and Julia press the door closed, locking him inside.

Happy families are all alike. Unhappy families are unhappy each in its own way.....

[dom]

This episode was easier to watch than I expected. Somehow I was able to see it through the eyes of the ten-year-old fan in me. That said; it was riveting for the most part. It helped having no detailed memories of it. The rehash was boring; as it was last time I saw it, at yesterday’s close. This time Barn felt a lot less sorry for himself and marveled in Adam’s ‘birth’. As Barn screams for Julia to return to the lab, Adam breaks free. The three of them get acquainted as much as Adam’s innocence allows. The adults decide it’s best to put baby to sleep and Adam attacks Julia after she gives him the shot to sedate him. Barn stops the attack and it is here that it appears that Barn has some kind of ‘authority’ over Adam. Next, Barn discusses all the urgent matters at hand including his survival past dawn. There’s a knock on the front door and Barn goes down to answer it. It’s Liz looking for Julia to tend to David. Barn wants Julia to stay but she leaves and promises to return before dawn. Upon Julia’s return dawn breaks and Barnabas lives. Their brief moment of joy is interrupted by noises from the lab – Adam is awake and playing a game of discovery when he inadvertently cuts himself with a scalpel and goes berserk. Unable to control him, Julia & Barn run for their lives shutting Adam’s menacing arm in the lab door.

Afterthoughts: Right off the top, a big LOL for Julia’s hop over the ravaged equipment while Adam chased her around the lab. Barn’s living past dawn was somewhat anticlimactic because we know that Adam now carries Barn’s inert vampirism. That kind of made all of Barn’s speeches a little boring for me but I was still able to appreciate them in context. A recurring dream I’ve had since childhood: being chased by Frankenstein’s monster, so the ten-year-old fan in me was quite captivated by the premise of an uncontrollable Adam. Though I’d hate to be quoted, I must say that the Adam part of this episode was the best part of this episode – sans Julia’s gymnastics, that is. Adam’s arm stuck in the door was a fabulous closing for the episode – the kid in me loved it! It appears as though they can’t make a choice between rolling credits and flashing credits.

[MagnusTrask]

Non-verbal newborn Adam is actually well "written" and played.  As a kid I think I liked that they concentrated on his newness to the world and what it was all like for him, rather than Oooh, look out, monster.

They're just ad-libbing the redo!   None of the lines are the same.   This time, blue covering is off, to reveal Adam's Frankenstein ensemble.   Hey Liz, hi Liz!   I breathe sigh of relief, as if she is there to deliver some sanity to the proceedings.   And she tries.   Stupid Barn reveals to Liz that he had a servant named Ben... but he's decided to fry in the sunlight, what the hell, stop being careful with words I guess...

They go for a nice symmetry, in which Adam's first few moments of pondering and puzzling out the world on his own happen concurrently with Barnabas pondering his supposed last few minutes, also on his own.

[DarkLady]

They go for a nice symmetry, in which Adam's first few moments of pondering and puzzling out the world on his own happen concurrently with Barnabas pondering his supposed last few minutes, also on his own.

MT, what a brilliant observation!

I've always liked the way Adam is written and the sensitive job Robert Rodan does in portraying him. They could have written him as coarse and stupid, but I guess he does resemble his "dad" after all.

[MagnusTrask]

I thought you'd like that about cutting between Adam and Barnabas, DL!

[DarkLady]

 

[alwaysdavid]

This episode had a special warning about technical difficulties. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Adam has been fully dresses for some reason.  Elizabeth just walks on in and wants help with David. Adam goes berserk  over every little thing. Not what anyone had in mind I gather from prior talk.

[Roland]

The path between Collinwood and the late Dr. Lang's house is becoming pretty worn by this point. In a steady stream they come - first, Mrs. Johnson, followed quickly by Vicki, then Liz.

It's at this point that I begin to feel a little sorry for the actors who were there at the launch of the series - before it became The Barnabas and Julia Show. Perpetually in the dark about what exactly was going on - while the newbies took over the main storytelling duties - the original characters were essentially relegated to secondary figures in their own story.

It reminds me a little of "Lost in Space," where Will and Dr. Smith became more and more prominent while the rest of the Robinson family receded into the background. I wonder if there was any resentment on the part of the actors about this turn of events (I know there was, in the case of LIS).

[dom]

Yeah. I have to wonder if for them, a job was a job or if they cared enough about their characters to be put off by it. I don't get the feeling from anything I've seen, heard or read that there were big egos on set (except for Dan's. lol). And with everyone doing other projects at times, well, you know...

I might have been a little bitchy about the writer writing for his wife. Probably in the end they were grateful for the Barn & Julia show as it catapulted the show into the stratosphere which was good for everyone.

That's my best guess and I am usually wrong. 

[Roland]

That's a really good point, dom. The show probably would have quickly folded and then faded into oblivion had Barnabas and Julia not taken center stage (Barnabas, certainly). In addition, I think the fact that the actors were afforded different types of characters to portray in various time periods and dimensions may have kept some of their resentment at bay.

Plus, a steady paycheck never hurts either.

[MagnusTrask]

I was thinking between posts about the move to have a set of characters, the original ones, kept in the dark about the stuff their show is actually about.  Is it good or bad, unnececessary or inevitable?  It might be a better show without that, though it would fundamentally be different, with the Collinses battling the supernatural together and head-on every day.  Maybe secrets are crucial to a soap.  Maybe there must be lots of individual tensions and intrigues between a large number of people, each with different knowledge and agendas.

Watching the Collinses present a united front, seeing what they're all going to do against the monsters next, simplifies the show to us and them.  That may work for a weekly hour show, but not a daily continuing story.