Pre-emption blues

[Cassandra Blair]

Let me tell you, these next couple weeks are going to be rough for this Dark Shadows junkie!  Just when I was getting into the 1840 storyline, and looking forward to the return of Angelique, SciFi decides to pre-empt the show.  Oh well.

Guess I just didn't realize how addicted to our show I had become until I started freaking out Wednesday night when I came home to find The Outer Limits recorded on what I thought held that day's Dark Shadows episodes.

Thank goodness I have the tapes I started making at the beginning of the current run.  They provide some solace when I need my DS fix.  Decided to start watching the beginning of the 1897 storyline, and let me tell you I am enjoying it!  Magda and Sandor are too much fun, and I just love the interplay between all the Collins siblings early on in that story.

Was wondering how the rest of you are coping.  With DS off the air for the time being, are you just going 'cold turkey,' or are you watching DVDs or video tapes of old episodes?  (I know some of you don't follow the SciFi run).  Anyway, just wanted to know if anyone besides me was going through withdrawal.

[Gothick]

Hi Cassandra, as I've mentioned before, I've been watching my tapes of the previous Sci Fi broadcast of the Laura storyline (from 1967).   Last night's shows were really great.  Roger threw the painting of Laura and David into the fire to the sound of piercing off-camera shrieks!  Diana's performance in the role of Laura just keeps getting creepier and creepier.

I think the first weeks of 1897 is an excellent choice for hiatus viewing.  Those have to be some of the best episodes the series ever did.  I actually prefer it to the start of 1795, which I know many fans rate as DS' finest moments.

Isn't Magda a hoot?  I love her cackling over "jeeep-seeee carrrds--older than theee Tarot!"  And Sandor is such a wonderful mix of grubbiness, sly absconding and genuine kindliness.

G.

[Bob_the_Bartender]

Dear Ms. Blair,

Well, since Dark Shadows is now on "hiatus," I'v set my vcr (at ep speed, of course!) to record some of the other new daytime shows.

And, let me tell you how much I'm enjoying watching Regis Philpin's new competitors, Alexandra Wentworth and Jack Ford on "Living It Up!"  (Although, by the ratings, it would appear that I'm one of the few people people in the United States actually "living it up" with Mrs. George Stepanopoulos and the former Fordham Law School professor!)

By the way, how do you think that the host of the highly prestigious ABC Sunday morning national public affairs program really feels about his comely wife shaking her booty and trying to act like the second coming of Lucy Ricardo on a nationally syndicated talk show?  (Me-thinks, that the former Clinton White House advisor is none-too-pleased about his wife's "kvelling" on television.)

I do hope that "Living It Up" does remain on the air.  In a quick ratings grabber, maybe Ali and Jack could have Jonathan Frid, KLS, David Selby, Lara Parker, John Karlen, etc., as guests on the show?  Heck, I know for sure that they'd get Raineypark, Gerard, CastleBee, RobinV, Birdie and yours truly (among so many others), as regular viewers for as long as they strolled down Dark Shadows memory lane!  (Who knows?  Maybe Jack Ford watched Dark Shadows religiously while he was in college?)

Well, please excuse me now.  There's a particularly exciting episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger" coming on, and I have to set my vcr , so I don't miss a single minute of this truly compelling and important TV show!

Bob the Bartender, TV-Land addict!!!   

[Raineypark]

Sorry to disappoint, Bob.....but unless the gang shows up on an episode of "If Walls Could Talk" or perhaps "Divine Design" on the Home and Garden Channel, the chances of me catching them is slim to none.....

Barnabas: Heliotrope, damn it!! I said Heliotrope!!! Can't you tell the difference between Heliotrope and Lavender?

Quentin: Perhaps not, but I can tell the difference between Art Noveau and Arts and Crafts, you dilettant!!

 

[murph]

Actually with this break I might be able to catch up a little more.  The episodes I'm watching were taped the last week of June.  Alexis is still alive and Angelique hasn't come back yet in PT so that gives you an idea of how far behind I am.  I used to be caught up and then one thing led to another and all of a sudden I'm more than three months behind.  Hopefully, I'll be able to watch some this and next weekend so I won't be as far behind.

Murph

[Bob_the_Bartender]

Sorry to disappoint, Bob.....but unless the gang shows up on an episode of "If Walls Could Talk" or perhaps "Divine Design" on the Home and Garden Channel, the chances of me catching them is slim to none.....

Barnabas: Heliotrope, damn it!! I said Heliotrope!!! Can't you tell the difference between Heliotrope and Lavender?

Quentin: Perhaps not, but I can tell the difference between Art Noveau and Arts and Crafts, you dilettant!!

 

Raineypark,

Well, when I'm not enjoying the latest eisode of "The Division" on the Lifetime Channel, I must admit that I enjoy watching "You're Home!," on the H & G Channel.

In fact, I would have liked to have seen the show's wonderful host, Kitty Bartholomew (sp?), (who's, always sporting that lovely and lustrous Lily Munster-like black and grey streaked hair of hers,) take a tour of the late PT Timothy Stokes house on her show.

Just consider how Kitty would have been greatly impressed by Mr. Stokes' eclectic collection of such intriguing curios as that American Indian figure, affixed to the door leading into Roxanne Drew's secret "sleeping" chamber?  (Where the heck do you think Timothy got that thing?  Probably at one of those tacky gift shops on the Atlantic City boardwalk, IMHO.)

Or, how about that truly ugly-arsed, chimerical gargoyle that Timothy had displayed so prominently on his living room table?  I tell you, if I woke up in the middle of the night to make a "pit stop," and saw that darned thing in the middle of the room immediately after flicking the light on, I might not safely make it into the "water closet," if you get my drift!

Bob the Bartender, President of the Cindy Piccoli Fan Club! 

[Raineypark]

In fact, I would have liked to have seen the show's wonderful host, Kitty Bartholomew (sp?), (who's, always sporting that lovely and lustrous Lily Munster-like black and grey streaked hair of hers,).......

.....My husband thinks she's the scariest-looking woman on television.

Or, how about that truly ugly-arsed, chimerical gargoyle that Timothy had displayed so prominently on his living room table?

But Bob.....they have gargoyles just like those on the roof of La Cathedrale De Dame de Notre......and people stand in the streets of Paris, staring upward, open-mouthed with awe at the sight of them......uh, you don't suppose the good professor stole one of THOSE, do you? 

[Birdie]

My Family keeps asking me "If I am caught up" in my viewing.  They have not noticed the mad woman who runs around the house in the morning screaming "No one touch the TV or the VCR" is oddly silent.  Think my family has stopped paying attention to me?  The tapes are going to come out soon,

Birdie

[A.I.Collins]

Hey Cassandra!


  I've been watching some of my MPI tapes of Dark Shadows...right now I have been watching tapes of the episodes that occured right before the 1795 storyline began.

Adra

[Cassandra]

If you think Im taking it bad you should see my parents who live downstairs from me!!  If my Dad asks me one more time "why it isn't on?"  I think I'll scream here!   

I have most of the MPI video tapes but of course wouldn't you know that the 1840 storyline isn't one of them.  I think by the time it comes on I'll forget where where we left off.

Thank goodness for this board!!!  At least we can still come and talk about DS!!


Cassandra

[TERRY308]

How well am I getting along??? Not to good.  Now I know why Elvis shot the scene out of his t.v.  (Different reasons, same effect)

Now that we're on week two, two mind you, I guess I'm going to have to drag my mpi tapes and DVD.  It will be on soon...right?

[Bob_the_Bartender]

In fact, I would have liked to have seen the show's wonderful host, Kitty Bartholomew (sp?), (who's, always sporting that lovely and lustrous Lily Munster-like black and grey streaked hair of hers,).......

.....My husband thinks she's the scariest-looking woman on television.

Or, how about that truly ugly-arsed, chimerical gargoyle that Timothy had displayed so prominently on his living room table?

But Bob.....they have gargoyles just like those on the roof of La Cathedrale De Dame de Notre......and people stand in the streets of Paris, staring upward, open-mouthed with awe at the sight of them......uh, you don't suppose the good professor stole one of THOSE, do you? 

Raineypark,

Wow, Kitty Batholomew as the scariest looking woman on television!  Gee, there's that one humongous woman, one of the few young people on "Last of the Summer Wine," who looks as if she could hold her own against Hulk Hogan in a no-holds-barred WWF match.  I mean, she looks as big as former NY Giants lineman Rosey Grier.  What shoulders!  Don't mess with that big mama!

Can you imagine Kitty Bartholomew taking a tour of Timothy's home on her show?:  "Why, Mr. Stokes, what lovely decor you have in your home."  Yeah, like that chintzy astrolgical chart with all the symbols of the zodiac hanging over Stokes' fireplace!

And, as far as Parallel Time's T. Elliott Stokes clipping those Parisian gargoyles, I have to believe that there has to be some shred of Real Time's Prof. Stokes deep-seated sense of moral probity in PT Angelique's daddy somewhere.  Of course, the very name of Stokes itself denotes integrity!  (Then again, I originally thought that 1797's Nathan Forbes was a good guy, and we all know how he turned out, don't we?)

Bob the Bartender, who believes that the late, great Will Rogers, who said: "I've never met a man that I didn't like," apparently, never met either Gregory Trask of Jerry Springer. 

[Misty]

 :-  Well, it's QVC for me. Hopefully I won't do too much damage to my credit card before DS is back. Oops! Gotta go. It's "fashion Day" !!.
                                                        Misty

[Gerard]

Well, for me, the hiatus is a blessing-in-disguise (I'm trying to make lemonade out of a lemon here).  I'm a bit more hectic with work, doing substitute teaching (now called "reserved" teaching in a politically-correct sorta way), including in special ed with kids who not only have reading comprehension problems, but behavioral problems as well.  That can be a bit exhausting.  Plus, I'm giving a lecture at a university here, so I hafta do lotsa prep work for that.  So, at night, I don't have to suddenly say:  "Dang it!  I still have to watch today's taped episodes!"  And I still hafta find time to go to the gym every day.  Oh, and somehow, I need to squeeze the plumbers in to do some work.

Gerard

[Barnabas]

Thank goodness I went to the DS convention. I got enough tchotchkes to get me through this TV Dark Shadows dry spell. I don't really understand TV executives decision making processes. They know theres an audience for DS, do they think we're gonna watch just any cr*p they put in it's time slot?