Discuss - Ep #0884

Robservations #884

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

Re: Discuss - Ep #0884

Joan Bennett VO.  Barnabas searches through the ashes of Tate's house for signs of Petofi.  (Guess it wasn't going to become the Evans house after all.) 

Gregory, in a well written moment, thinks about the children he locked in the dark, and about how it will be dark for him, soon.  The realistic touch is the catharsis that happens the instant he remembers the students' crying out "Let me out!!", making him yell out the very same thing.  Judith is then thoughtful enough to call.  She leads him to the first of two presents, or Easter Eggs embedded in his slow death scenario:  Amanda's portrait. 

Then, Amanda and Quentin in NYC, the Enfield Hotel?  Can't tell but it seems lobby-like, because I think there's some hint of a frond of a plant.  It's in close-up.  I don't understand Quentin's intent.  He checks in with Amanda, makes it sound like a rejection, sort of (and after all, why not leave such unimportant matters hanging in mid-air?), and says he has to devote himself SO completely to portrait-searching that it's going to be the next worse thing to a total separation.  So his plan is...?  To go right back to Collinsport, where he just escaped from?!  Tate and Petofi were his only possibilities, or someone in Collinwood.  I suppose he might hope for Petofi to have been dealt with by Barnalique while he's away.  I guess Petofi IS gone, Quentin could come back.  Does he?  Why not stay in touch with Amanda?  Why separate? 

Judith to Tim: I think she's writing a letter to him about what must be done tomorrow.  Fast mail delivery.  She actually refers to Quentin's "anteroom". 

Kitty and Josette's portrait... who's Kitty talking to?  She's Josette's reincarnation.  So she's talking to herself.  Barnabas to the "rescue"... He's actually making himself the Jerimiah, in a new replay of the 1795 jilting, with Edward in the Barnabas role.  I'm sort of surprised that Barnabas isn't managing to drive Kitty to an immediate replay of the Widows Hill jump, with all his contradictory talk about (on the one hand) "Just let yourself be Josette" and (on the other hand) "I'm your friend, I'll help you fight this".  It ends up far too similar to Greg Trask's isolation/disempowerment tactic of "I'm your only friend" to Rachel.

Tate skips town, after having promised Barnabas he'd paint Quentin unwerewolfy (and immortal, no one talks about that part, do they even suspect?).  Does Barnabas search through the whole place thoroughly for the portrait?

Kitty pops into Josette's dress, then into her portrait, end.  By Violet Welles.

Maybe it's that over the past two weeks I've seen too many stories about 50 Shades of Grey (and by "too many" I mean way, way too many), but I just checked out the Robservations for this ep, and the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this graphic

was that it looks like Quentin is holding the handle of a riding crop up to Amanda!     

Another missed opportunity!

LOL, MB!!! And also Uncle Roger!!!

This one of the most dreamlike and nightmarish episodes ever, of course by Violet Welles.

At the burned-out studio, Barnabas finds a length of Blackwood's chain and Petofi's blue-tinted glasses, but no other trace of them. Charles tells him to come back later for Quentin's portrait.

In Quentin’s former room, Gregory Trask shuts the door to his prison to hide the bricks from his terrified eyes. He is haggard and very cold, and he is down to his last candle. When it goes, he realizes, there will be everlasting darkness. Is it day or night? I wish I could see. He recalls, I used to punish students by putting them in a dark closet. Some of them were afraid of the dark and would scream. Now he screams, Let me out! Please, let me out! I’ll be good, I promise! As if in answer to his plea, the phone rings. He grabs it and begs Judith, Please don’t hang up! You can’t commit murder! It’s evil! Smiling serenely, she replies, It was wrong for you to kill Minerva and Mrs. Curry. I didn’t kill them! he insists, unable to face his misdeeds even now. I’m not going to kill you either, or even come near you, Judith replies. Please let me out! he cries. Whatever I did to you wasn’t bad enough for you to do this to me! Thoroughly enjoying herself, she agrees and adds, Since you’re always right, I’ve left a surprise for you in the alcove behind the drapes, something that will brighten up your dark room. Then she hangs up. Trask checks the alcove--and finds the portrait of Amanda Harris. With an enraged scream, he smashes it to bits and stomps on it (though [spoiler]it will be whole again when Gerard Stiles’s zombies destroy Collinwood in 1970[/spoiler]).

I think that without actually having the portrait, Quentin has no way of knowing whether he might werewolf out at the next full moon. So he does have to look for it, and since the last place he saw it was in Collinsport, he does have to go back. So the only reason he goes to NYC is to say goodbye to Amanda in person. But I guess he has the money to make quick trips like that.

Judith's note to Tim--and her satisfaction in writing it--are equally chilling: At 4:20 p.m., Judith is in her room writing a note: Dear Tim Shaw: The plan I have been working on is coming along most satisfactorily and should be completed soon. Tomorrow I want you to come here, take down the bricks, and panel the anteroom so that it is completely cut off from prying eyes forever. She smiles with satisfaction.

Barnabas finds Kitty in Josette's room and tells her to stay there, promising that no harm will come to her. Oh yeah.

Trask’s final candle is just a stub. Soon it will be dark, he says. I don’t want to be alone in the dark. Minerva! Please come to me! I can’t come to you--I have no gun, no rope, no knife. _She_ took everything from me. When the phone rings again, he gasps, Minerva! Is that you? Let me come to you! Judith doesn’t bother to correct him. She says, You can come to me. All you have to do is go to the desk. Open the top right-hand drawer. There is something in it that is very valuable for you. Go find it, Gregory. Do what every you want with it. It is all yours. She hangs up. Nearly mad, Trask opens the drawer and finds a revolver. He takes it out and stares at it.

Judith is surprised but takes it in stride when Barn announces that he's going to marry Kitty, who is struggling not to let Josette take hold of her.

Barnabas has kept his ten o’clock appointment with Charles--but Charles has not. As Barnabas searches the ruins of the studio, he finds Charles has left a note: By the time you read this, Barnabas, I will be far from Collinsport. My work has not been going well here, and I suppose it is time to move on, to find new scenes and subjects. Sorry about Quentin's portrait. I know you will understand. I do understand, Barnabas mutters angrily as he crumples the note and throws it to the floor: You hated Quentin, and this is your revenge.

Judith makes one last phone call, but the phone in Quentin’s room rings and rings. Trask is slumped in the chair at the desk, the gun still clutched in his hand. At last he has made Judith a widow. No living eyes will see him again until 1969, when David and Amy find his skeleton. (Perhaps the ghostly Quentin only wanted them to clear away the clutter.)

Josette’s music box continues to play as Kitty paces around the room. [The last view of Josette's music box reveals that it is not the same as the music box we’ve seen before.] In Josette mode, she thinks of Barnabas as a stranger she’s about to marry. Why isn’t he back? she wonders. I must find a more suitable dress. She opens the trunk at the foot of the bed and takes out Josette’s wedding gown. She holds it up to herself, then becomes Kitty again. No! she screams. If I put this on, it will make me Josette duPres forever. Practically in tears, she calls to Barnabas once more. Walking in the woods toward the Old House, Barnabas hears Josette’s voice in his mind and hurries. We see that Kitty is now wearing Josette’s dress, but she is still fighting. As she tries to concentrate, she steps closer to the portrait, unaware of the danger. What’s happening? she asks, but it’s too late. Before she can say or do anything more, she is floating up and back, fading into the portrait. Barnabas hurries into the room, calling, Kitty! Kitty! He reaches up to take her hand, but she is already dissolving into the portrait. She reaches down to him, but he cannot stop her. He watches as she fades until only Josette’s portrait remains........

Another missed opportunity!

And considering the way some people feel about the character of Amanda, they'd probably like nothing more than to see her get a little discipline with the riding crop. But then again, maybe not because they (and you know who you are) might be afraid she'd bat her eyelashes too much while it's being administered.   

Oh man....it's been QUITE a while since I've seen these eps (a little too much crammed into a handful of eps).

Who is Tim? (I want to say, Tim Choate?) If that's correct, who is he (Chris' 1897 alter)?

Who is Mrs. _________ (I already forgot it). When Judith calls Trask and says, "....Minerva....and Mrs. ________"?

I forgot how delightful Judith was in this story arc....she gets ALOT in the beginning, some good stuff in middle, and the end

Garth Blackwood, the "  something of dartmoor?"  ?
 
Patti

I don't say this enough, DarkLady, very well written.  You make it alive and spontaneous, vital also. 

Mainly Q had to get out of range of the bodyswap, and I suppose Barnabas could have then called to say Petofi was "gone" (?), which I suppose was the plan, with Q then going back to Maine, but that call probably never came.  Charipansy could have called, but I can't see Angelique bothering, and would they even have told Ang about the Enfield Hotel, those two partners in Ang-avoidance?

It just occurred to me that there's a whole other Dark Shadows there, parallel to the onscreen version, in all the intersecting side details in a very complicated plot, that often had to be sped past because of pacing or budget.  I imagine right now two TV screens running side by side, with TV #2 showing, say, Q on his way back to Maine etc..  A lot of interesting scenes lie in those implied details that had to happen we realize, once we start to think about them.  Perhaps another missed series consists of them... maybe someone could film the parallel story, always just barely avoiding stepping on the heels of DS prime...

[spoiler]Maybe having gotten no word from anyone, Q didn't dare go back, because of Petofi, since he did lose track of the portrait, perhaps coming to terms at some point with the up-in-the-air quality of his life, never knowing where it was or if it was safe.  Then again, any number of other events could have separated him from it in all those years.[/spoiler]

Patti, Tim Shaw was (like Chris Jennings) a Don Briscoe character, who worked for Trask, and was used by him to murder Trask's wife, and was easy therefore for Judith to enlist for a revenge scheme against Trask, the bricking-up... (I've heard the name Tim Choate, but can't remember who that is.)

Mrs. Curry was only mentioned twice.  She was an offscreen victim of Rev. Greg Trask's in some city or town elsewhere.  While he was making eyes at Amanda at Collinwood, he was slipping off to romance Mrs. Curry too, who killed herself when she found out he was married.

Garth Blackwood was (in life, though he's at this moment a magical re-creation of a dead person)the "Master of Dartmoor", a British prison warden.  Aristede had killed him in an escape years earlier, and Petofi had had Tate draw him back into existence in order to kill Aristede (for trying to kill Petofi, though that was a stupid mistake and unintentional).

Patti, are you with the WP now?  Welcome!!  This is the point at which I jumped onboard, four or five years ago!

Thanks, MT, for your kind words, and thanks too for updating the story. I like the idea of a whole different DS continuing on another screen scomewhere--maybe in a parallel universe? 

Tim Choate is a fan who established the DS FAQ website (amongst other DS fan sites). The actor Tim Choate as far as I've researched has no direct connection to DS.

Someone correct me if I am wrong.

The actor Tim Choate as far as I've researched has no direct connection to DS.

Patti posted about seeing Ghost Story this past weekend.  Tim Choate (the actor) played the younger version of Fred Astaire in the movie.

 Oh.

....and the actor T. Choate passed away in 2006; weird that I was reading about him, while pausing the movie. It was the scene where all the actors were young, c. 1930.

MT...thank you for making me feel welcome

Patti

Oh.

Sweetie, how would you have know that??