Discuss - Ep #0980

[Watching Project]

Robservations #980

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

Re: Discuss - Ep #0980

[alwaysdavid]

Barnabas thinks he might be normal in PT.  a logical conclusion would be that if he does exist at all he would still be the same person he is in his own time.
I had to laugh at Carolyn adamantly refusing the sedative. I think it was a first.
And Julia is on one side of the room and Barnabas inside.

[Uncle Roger]

Carolyn really gets put the wringer here and Nancy Barrett does some of her best work ever here. Joan Bennett is quite good as well, doing good, subtle work as a concerned but largely helpless Elizabeth.
Two more characters bite the dust today. Jeb does score points for saving Carolyn but I honestly don't know if his character could ever be redeemed. Is Jeb truly dead? No body was found and on daytime TV that usually means an eventual return. Was Carolyn's dream about Jeb a preview of things to come? Some bizarre revenge plot from Nicholas? Or just a dream? Well, dreams are seldom merely dreams on Dark Shadows.
I noticed that with the exception of Quentin, [spoiler]all the characters that we were introduced to in this storyline were killed off. DS always had a high body count but this seemed higher than usual.[/spoiler]
Barnabas gets through the wringer here to. He seems genuinely ashamed of what he has done to Sabrina. He's extremely defensive with Julia. And he behaves like a Mafia hit man manipulating Sky Rumson into shooting himself. I have no idea where he came up with the notion that he might not be a vampire in parallel time. That just defies all logic whatsoever and is so typically Barnabas.

[MagnusTrask]

ad-- I think Carolyn refused sedatives angrily when her father died, too.

Frid VO!  Sky chokes Carolyn at Widows' Hill.  We learn that Nancy Barrett had silver-mercury amalgam fillings in her upper molars, when her head's tilted upward from the strangling.  Jeb runs up, gets hurled off cliff FAST by Sky. 

So far, Barnabas's stated reasons for going to PT make no sense, though I can understand desperation making him grab for any remotely possible lifeboat, just in case.  One good reason not stated yet... maybe Sabrina will benefit from his no longer existing in her reality... there would be no vampire to be connected to.  I have a theory as to why he really wants to go, but I'll save that for next time.

Nancy Barrett plays grief VERY well.  When she tells about Sky, Barnabas gets to indulge in the only activity he really seems to enjoy: revenge murder.  We're with him, too.  The fact that a pointless dufus like him make Carolyn suffer actually makes it more intolerable.  Get 'im Barnabas.  I love how Barnabas points out that Blair wasn't even doing anything for Sky anymore, and it came out that he was killing for Nick out of "duty"!  It sounds almost like he was grateful and wanted to pay Nick back for all his help over the years, but really it's just Rumson's unimaginativeness.  He murdered because an evil guy who can't benefit him said to.  And Barnabas had no problem resisting Rumson's blood!

Seems action has been taking place at "Bruno's house".  Now dead Jeb induces a Carolyn dream!  When I'm a ghost, I'll have to remember to prank the living with crazy dreams, since it's a ghost superpower apparently.  Don't be alarmed by the psychadelic green glowy stuff in my nose and mouth!  ... Jeb doesn't say.   Big LOL, when ghost Jeb in the dream casually falls off the cliff again, to say goodbye to Carolyn!!  I'm told the Disney character Goofy used to jump from great heights shouting "Ya hoo hoo hooey!!!!" as he fell and dopplered downward.  Maybe Jeb should have.

Barnabas crosses to PT!  Was this trip really necessary?

[DarkLady]

Poor Carolyn! And poor Elizabeth, with her mother's heart, having to watch her only child suffer.

Now Carolyn will never learn that Jeb killed her father. But she'll never have those dreams again, so I suppose that somewhere in the afterlife, Paul has decided that Jeb has made up for it.

I have to say that I enjoyed watching Barn doing revenge killing. He's probably the most frightening winner ever. This case is particularly good. But Barn has to drop everything when the urge for blood overtakes him. In PT, won't it bother him that he'll be drinking the blood of people who look just like those he loves in RT? Or maybe he was hoping that he could find random strangers in PT.

Jeb's last dream message to Carolyn is sad but enough already. Here endeth the tale of the Leviathans.

In the East Wing, Barnabas is standing in the parallel time room, with The Life and Death of Barnabas Collins in his hands. (In the closeup, we can see he wears a small gold pinky ring on his left hand--did Jonathan forget to take off his own ring?) Why do I feel I belong in that other time? he wonders. Perhaps because my life was so different there? I must talk to you, Julia calls to him as she hurries down the hallway to the double doors. In dismay he covers his eyes. You shouldn’t have followed me, he tells her. When he looks up again to tell her to leave, the room has changed, and the music-box version of Ode to Angelique starts to play. Julia arrives just in time to see Barnabas in the parallel world. She tries unsuccessfully to break through the invisible boundary. Barnabas calls to her, and she can hear him, but he calls again, apparently unable to hear her as the bridge between the time bands starts to close. Once more she tries to breach the barrier, but she can’t. Almost in tears, she realizes he may be lost to her forever. No longer able to see or hear her, Barnabas turns away from the door and looks around him. How did it happen? he wonders. Why did the room suddenly appear? And what am I going to do now? Suddenly Carolyn Loomis asks him harshly, Who are you? And what are you doing in this room? He has no explanation.....