Which Was More Tedious....

[McTrooper]

Bob_the_Bartender
I’m glad your lengthy well thought out post has gotten quite a bit of attention. 

I was a bit stumped trying to figure out my thoughts on it. 
I read through the Dream Curse with Robservations, so I didn’t see it acted.  I found curse interesting though because I hadn’t heard of things like that before (or maybe not often ).  It seemed pretty original.  Wonder if it inspired something related to Fredy Kruger (I vaguely remember something about him and dreams from tv ads).

I think I’m coming up on the playroom storyline stuff soon, but I think I remember seeing parts and / or reading summaries.  It’s pretty lackluster for sure and thinking on it reminded me of the Quentin possession of David so it’s less original. 

I can’t really disagree with your conclusion.

Honestly the part I didn’t care about the most in the Cassandra storyline was Elisabeth’s death thing.  The conclusion sounded pretty good even though the spell shouldn’t have still been active (I think) but it was so dragged out that I’m sure watching it would be just as frustrating. 

[Bob_the_Bartender]

McTrooper,

Thanks for the kind words. That’s an interesting point you make about Freddy Kruger and the dreams that kill. If those Freddy Kruger films had been made during the late 1960s, I think the late, great Dan Curtis might have “borrowed” that original idea for DS. 

When you get to the DS episodes covering the summer of 1970 and the appearance of Gerard and Daphne, the two ghosts (sort of like Quentin and Beth previously), be sure to have some No-Doze ready to help you get through those somewhat soporific episodes.

As to Cassandra’s spell on poor Mrs. Stoddard, even after Nicholas Blair had been summoned back “down
below” for messing up the Adam and Eve super race for Satan scheme and Cassandra/Angelique had also been sent somewhere (Hades or the past?), I couldn’t understand why Mrs. Stoddard was still under that dreadful spell?

You would think that Mrs. Stoddard would have no longer been under that awful spell. In fact, the terrible,
unrelenting fear that Mrs: Stoddard  was experiencing,  reminded me of someone suffering from depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

I know that Dr. Hoffman was trying to alleviate Mrs. Stoddard’s unrelenting angst, but I guess Dr. Hoffman never had any medical school trading in trying to treat someone suffering from extreme anxiety as a result of a witch’s curse.  In fact, I’ve always thought that Julia Hoffman was far more successful in treating gunshot and stabbing wounds, and also in conducting mad scientist experiments, than she ever was in treating people with serious emotional/mental problems as a trained psychiatrist.

It’s almost too painful to watch Mrs. Stoddard continue to suffer with that black emotional cloud over her
head. Casssndra must have been one particularly nasty harridan to make Mrs. Stoddard suffer
for so long. I was glad to see aMrs. Stoddard finally snap out of that blue funk, when Carolyn was being threatened by the werewolf.

[KMR]

Very interesting thoughts, Bob_the_Bartender! As for the unfulfilled (dropped) plot elements in the 1995/1970/1840 storylines, I tend to fall back on my theory regarding time travel. The idea of going *backward* in time has always presented great logical problems for me, until I realized that there is a connection with *parallel time*. When one jumps into another time, that moment of entrance begins a branching off of the timeline into a new timeline (which is parallel to the "original" timeline--or is at least parallel in details at its start; we see in DS' own parallel time stories how drastically things can change). So, perhaps when 1840 was entered, things developed in that new timeline in a way that some of the things that seemed so significant during the 1970/1995 episodes just never came to pass.

[McTrooper]

welcome Bob_the_Bartender


If I have to I might fast forward some of the playroom scenes. 
I did that for a few early parts of PT Dr. Longworth’s misadventures. 
I did enjoy some of the later parts of that story and acting quite a bit though.

Good point about Dr. Hoffman’s doctor skills vs. psychiatrist that thought hasn’t really hit home for me until more recently since 1991 series Julia was some kind of blood expert.  And I’ve only gone through more detailed summaries of earlier Dark Shadows within two years or less. 

And it’s interesting to think about magic having non magic consequences, but I’m pretty sure that thought was a misinterpretation of what you said about “ anxiety as a result of a witch’s curse”.
——

KMR
I really like that theory about time.
Particularly comforting for certain story lines.