Discuss - Ep #0658

[Watching Project]

Robservations #658

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

Re: Discuss - Ep #0658

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
1969

[DarkLady]

Joel Crothers gives a bravura performance in his last appearance as Joe Haskell. Don Briscoe gives another as both Tom and Chris Jennings--and renders individual portrayals of each. Plus the writing for the crucial scenes is terrific. One of the scariest episodes ever.

Vince O'Brien reads the voiceover and returns as sheriff after a long time away.

Joe has nightmares about his cousins, first Chris the werewolf. Joe runs away and finds himself at the mausoleum, where his is joined by his cousin. You never could tell us apart, his cousin jokes--and suddenly we realize it's Tom, fangs bared and ready to strike.

Trapped between the werewolf ready to slash him to ribbons and the vampire with fangs bared, Joe shouts, No! No! No! He screams over and over again, eventually screaming himself awake--only to find that he’s now in a straitjacket. Julia has returned and frets, I don’t understand why the shot didn’t keep Joe asleep all night. The dream he had was more powerful than the drug. What are you going to do now? asks the sheriff. Julia tells him she has called Windcliff and will take him there herself in the morning. She kindly tells the distraught Chris, Go home--you don’t have to stay. No, Chris insists, I’ll stay with him till you have to take him away. Don’t take it so hard, Julia tells him gently. There was nothing you could have done.

But Chris, devastated with guilt and remorse, knows better. As he turns away from Julia to stare at his cousin, the camera focuses on Joe’s face, distorted in a rictus of horror. He is far beyond reason, alone in a nightmare of insanity that no one can share, much less believe. And here endeth the positively last appearance of Joe Haskell, but not of Joel Crothers.....

[MagnusTrask]

What?  This is the end for Joe Haskell?  I'd never have suspected.  It seems as if we're just getting started with his part of the story.  He gave it his all, and gave credibility to what could have been ridiculous, that final scene with a vampire and a werewolf attacking from both sides.  I'd thought he really did quietly leave Collinsport eventually, as he was going to.  My word to learn for today, DL, is "rictus"...

Maybe the transformation to werewolf involves more than we see, and more than just sprouting hair and a snout.  That's what I started to think, seeing how badly it all affected Joe.  When we hear about Medusa turning people to stone with the sight of her, we assume more is going on than just looking at a woman with snakes for hair, I think.  Maybe part of it is on a level other than visual, and maybe the visual part looks very different than DS's effects were able to show us, or even what modern CGI versions do.  I'm failing to imagine what it would have to look or feel like, though, to explain Joe's total shock.

I liked the "hesitant" music used in the scene in Joe's cell, where Joe tries to bring into focus what danger it is he needs to warn the world about.  Some old, familiar music (I think it's familiar by this point) keeps stopping and starting, as Joe pauses to try to remember.

Scissors can wound a werewolf, but ordinary bullets can't?  While the whole recurring trauma thing is done really well, with Joe cycling around and around, reliving the moment (both Briscoe and Crothers are great)... Joe dreams about Barnabas's mausoleum and refers to it as "The Mausoleum", as if it's as important to Collinsport as it is to viewers.  He asks Tom what he's doing there... he should talk!  Alex gets to do his cool stunt for the first time, jumping down to the foyer floor as the wertewolf...

[DarkLady]

Not only does Joe see what he sees, he's also watching his own cousin transforming in what apparently is extreme agony. They probably knew each other their whole lives. And Joe can't do anything to prevent it or help Chris. That would be enough to send me off the deep end, too.

[michael c]

as I recall this was when Joel Crothers left to do 'the secret storm'. so perhaps his storyline was wrapped up quickly?


like the rest of the original cast his role had been deteriorating across 1968 so maybe he just wanted out. I always felt very bad by this development. the breakdown of Joe and Maggie's relationship was one of the series' great "human" tragedies.

[MagnusTrask]

I think it would be traumatic in a different way, if the main element was that Joe felt so much for what Chris was going through.  There wouldn't have been this manic agitation.  His sense of reality wouldn't be shattered.  It would be more like depression.

[DarkLady]

Did Joe actually see Tom the vampire? I don't remember.

And yes, I think this must have been when JC switched jobs and went over to Secret Storm.

I always thought it was too bad that Maggie and Joe never got back together. [spoiler]Although when the series ended, one of the writers had an article in TV Guide that described the fates of the various characters, and he claimed that Maggie and Joe (who remembered nothing of his ordeal) did get back together.[/spoiler]

[dom]

That would be Sam Hall's TV Guide article.

[MagnusTrask]

DL, I think Julia had to tell Joe about Tom's having been a vampire in the hospital.  I think it actually shows in the dream that Joe never dealt with Tom as a vampire because Tom was not at all his vampire self.  He chatted in a normal way, when he wasn't very verbal or human-seeming as a vampire.

[DarkLady]

Thanks, MT--that sounds right to me.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Things worked the other way around as far as Joel Crothers moving to The Secret Storm goes - he didn't get the part of Ken Stevens on that soap until after he'd been written out as Joe Haskell (and Nathan Forbes) - in fact, he was a recast for the Stevens role. Though in interviews in later years he'd said that he wasn't exactly upset to see Joe written out of DS because, even though he'd gotten some great material to play at the end, like Alexandra Moltke and Vicki, he'd grown weary of playing Joe as he was mostly written. He thought that for the most part Joe was a pretty blah role (he once described him as "just a boy"). He would have preferred to have played a character like the 1897 Quentin. And one does have to wonder if Crothers hadn't moved to The Secret Storm, would DS have created an 1897 role for him - and if so, would it have been closer to Nathan (who Crothers loved playing) or closer to Joe? No such potential role has ever been mentioned, though. But then, Crothers was already on The Secret Storm before the 1897 storyline began, so when they planned the 1897 characters, DS may have already known Crothers wouldn't be available. And unlike how Marie Wallace was summarily dropped from hoDS simply because she dared to get a part on the soap Somerset, Crothers most probably didn't miss out on any DS roles because he continued to do back-to-back-to-back-to-back soap roles after leaving DS and right up until his passing.

[dom]

Fortuitous in my opinion because, also in my opinion, Crothers never really pulled off Nathan Forbes, I can't even fathom him as Quentin or anyone evil or menacing. I wish I'd seen him in his other roles so I wouldn't have to judge him on his two DS characters alone. I should look for him on youtube, maybe I'd change my opinion.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I never saw Crothers on The Secret Storm so I can't say what that character was like (I should probably go back into my DS stuff to reread whatever I have of him from the time he was on that soap) - but his roles as Julian Cannell on Somerset (yes, he was reunited with Marie Wallace on that soap) and Dr. Miles Cavanaugh on The Edge of Night were both good guys, albeit with more depth than Joe.

The one post-DS soap character of his that certainly had a dark side was Jack Stanfield Lee on Santa Barbara. Though, unfortunately, he wasn't on that soap for long before he passed away.

[MagnusTrask]

I completely buy Crothers as Forbes, as a character more realistic than a plain villain, who was always teering on the edge of morality and could go either way.  Once he went into total villainy, it did seem too much, but I didn't think he played it badly.  Actually, it was 1968 "good" Joe whom I didn't buy.  He seemed like a jerk we were supposed to like.  It was only during his suffering crazy periods that it was possible to identify and feel for him.

[DarkLady]

I agree with you, MT. It was fun to see Forbes start out as Barn's close friend but even then with a weakness for the ladies (he made a pass at Vicki in her short 1968 dress). His opportunistic streak was perfectly plausible and helped to explain his slide into real villainy, however over the top the writers made it for the sake of the story.

I also remember that in PT 1970, [spoiler]somebody wants to consult Dr. Forbes. I suppose that in parallel time, Nathan settled in Collinsport, married a local girl, and begat at least one successful descendant. Who knows, he could have married a sane, parallel Millicent.[/spoiler]