boys club vs. girls club

[michael c]

another topic got me thinking.

barnabas inarguably became the show's trademark character.the juggernaut behind how this whole thing has been packaged and marketed since his introduction to the world in 1967.

he's the focus character.but not necessarily the focus for everyone who watches the show.as was discussed on another topic some here like the show equally when barnabas isn't a vampire,or when the character disappears for periods of time,or even when he's not around at all.the other characters are of equal importance.

quentin eventually joins barnabas in "icon status" and the whole show revolves around them in some way.
now i like barnabas and he becomes the glue that holds this whole unweildy thing together but he's not the be-all-and-end-all for me.the same thing goes for quentin.

in fact i think i always watch the show with the female characters as my focus.i'm not sure why but i find them more compelling.am i in the minority totally here?

not that i can't appreciate the considerable charms of joe haskell or chris jennings or willie loomis but...

...vicki,elizabeth,carolyn,maggie,mrs.johnson,julia,laura,angelique.those are the girls that really pique my attention.when they're onscreen i'm usually riveted.even relatively minor characters like buffie harrington and hannah stokes hold my attention(those wild orhbach's rags don't hurt either).

i remember when i was watching the 1897 storyline and when jenny and laura were gone and joan bennett and kathryn leigh scott went on their extended vacations for awhile the story focused primarily on barnabas,quentin,aristede and petofi.i think in a few episodes only male characters appeared.this got really boring for me.

as soon as joan or alexandra or nancy or clarice walk into a scene i get the warm and fuzzies.

does anyone else have any preference for the male or female characters?or are all of them of equal importance?

[Barnabas'sBride]

Well, it's probably obvious that Barnabas is my favorite character , and that he's the one that drew me into the show. Not only because he was vampire....it was his entire story that hooked me.

That said, if I sat down and came up with a list of favorite DS characters the female characters would probably make up %75 of it. In some ways, I feel that's kind of odd because I don't care for what was done to some of them. Just for example, favorites that spring to my mind: Elizabeth, Carolyn, Josette, Kitty, Victoria, Beth, Pansy, Judith, Maggie (when she wasn't playing Victoria's role)..... Compared to the men: Barnabas, Willie, Quentin and Roger.

I like Chris, Tony, Joe, Stokes, and others.....but on the whole, there are more female characters that I would consider favorites.

[jennifer]

i don't know i like them all as a young girl i wanted to be vicki or maggie(never marcia brady)
but i have to say if i get the warm and fuzzies it is when chris or quentin lights up the screen


jennifer
the first time we get to hear quentin talk in 1896 WOW

[Willie]

For me it's mostly about the plot.  I can really like any charcter if they're at the heart of an interesting plot.  Or I can not really care for them much if they're in an uninteresting plot.  I love Angelique, but never cared for her much as Cassandra.  Barnabas is great, but if the story isn't interesting, he isn't either.  I even liked Adam in a few scenes, here and there.  A couple of exceptions are Nicolas Blair and Professor Stokes, they're almost always interesting.

[Barnabas'sBride]

I suppose I'm the opposite. I got through the Adam storyline and the Leviathan storyline because of Barnabas and my other favorites. If I didn't have my love of certain characters....there are probably points in the series that I wouldn't care to watch at all.

I love a good plot, but I can get through one that doesn't interest me if my faves are in it - for the most part.

[AndreDuPres]

I usually like the female characters better than the male characters, too, ESPECIALLY Angelique.  Whenever she's on, I'm never bored, since she's always so entertaining (and beautiful).  The same can be said of Dr. Hoffman.  Even if the story's crappy, it's fun to watch Julia smoke, administer sedatives, sniff, cough, fiddle with her gloves, gasp, forget her lines, say "Barnabas!" way too much, say "I don't know!  I only know..." in response to virtually every question, etc.  I agree that 1897 had a bit of a lull when the prime members of the female cast left, but they came back with a bang, I must say.

[petofi]

I  must admit, I grew up identifying with many of the male characters, being a young boy at the time of the first run.  David's plights and his point of view were strong for me in the '67 storylines, coz I was a kid, too.  Barnabas was a great favorite at this time for the excitement and novelty value of a vampire.  I owned the Barnabas halloween mask as a kid, and wore it for Halloween '68 or '69.  Barnabas had powers over his environment that a young kid like myself might like to have, being that kids had so little power over their circumstances.  Willie, on the other hand, was a lot like a kid, and I identified with his problems.  He was scared of the unknown and didn't always know what to do.  For female characters, Hoffman and Angelique played on my imagination a great deal.  They were strong players in the story, and important to the unfolding of exciting events.  My friends and I always had a "thing" for werewolf characters - we were wild little boys, you see.  Anything and anyone supernaturally inclined held my interest, but the male characters definitely took precedence in the mind of a 7-10-year-old boy!


Petofi

[BuzzH]

I love a good plot, but I can get through one that doesn't interest me if my faves are in it - for the most part.

I'm the opposite I guess.  I loved everyone involved in the Adam plotline (especially Nicholas Blair) w/the glaring exception of Adam of course, who I HATED, but will never watch that plotline again, well not the end anyway.  I like the Dream Curse stuff.

Even if the story's crappy, it's fun to watch Julia smoke, administer sedatives, sniff, cough, fiddle with her gloves, gasp, forget her lines, say "Barnabas!" way too much, say "I don't know!  I only know..." in response to virtually every question, etc. 

Ah yes, very true.  As Gothick would say, and I'd agree wholeheartedly with it, it's always a hoot to watch the DIVINE one!    That said, I love ALL of Grayson's characters, well, maybe not Hoffman, but the rest I simply adore.  Natalie is funny and Magda just makes me wet my pants w/laughter!     "Oh, Meester Bahnabas!" or "What's wrrrong Quenteen?  Tell me, tell Magda!"  True genious! 

[arashi]

It depends on the storyline for me as well. There are certain characters per storyline that have me riveted to the screen, yet the same actor/actress could play another role in another storyline that I could totally give or take.

Even David Selby, whose appearance on screen almost ALWAYS elicits a smile to my face, has a character I was bored to tears with. I could care a rat's ass about the character of PT Quentin and was actually hoping Barnabas would have an accident with his car again.

From what I've seen, I guess I can run it down by storyline.

Pre-Barnabas: I haven't seen much of these, but the two characters whose storylines I enjoy the most are Burke and Jason.

Barnabas to 1795: Definitely Barnabas. I absolutely adore JF here as he is quite masterful at portraying evil. Barnabas is quite the monster here and is a riot to watch.

1795: I would have to say Angelique here, and Barnabas. Honestly I really didn't care for Josette at all. Angelique I don't even love to hate, I can't really describe how I feel about her in this storyline, she's just so damn evil! Barnabas is fascinating because he's a total 180 from what we'd seen prior.

ADAM: Nicholas Blair and Professor Stokes. Hands down, the only two characters that got me through this storyline. Willie and Julia as well.

Quentin & Beth's ghosts: This storyline really tops them all for me, except for the later addition of Ned Stuart and his vegetable sister Sabrina I can't find a single character I could do without. Fantastic stuff.

1897: There were so many characters in this storyline it's hard to choose, Quentin and Beth top the list. I love Beth, she's so sweet and tragic. I LOOOOOOVE Angelique in this storyline, she's fantastic. Too many to name! Barnabas I love through most of this, save his later obsession with Kitty Hampshire. Petofi and Aristede round out the very top of my list of Dark Shadows villans. Magda! Probably my favorite of all Grayson's characters.

Those are all the plotlines I have on DVD so far and I'm reserving judgement until I can see the others again, remembering very little about them.

[MagnusTrask]

I think the male characters generally have more going on within them, and a lot of the female characters are just sort of "nice".    KLS's characters are usually fretting and in danger.    Carolyn after Jason is sort of neutral.    ECS is just rich and dignified.    Victoria is earnest and pure of heart.    Megan Todd before the snake is SO nice and good-natured that it's hard to take.    But to be fair, so is her husband.    Get those two and Carolyn in the same room and it's more "nice" than humans were built to stand.

On the other hand, Barnabas has layers, conflicting motivations, a unique point of view.....  we don't wonder what's going on within Carolyn, but we do with BC, Quentin, Petofi...

Angelique, Julia, and Beth are exceptions I guess.   

[michael c]

i agree that barnabas is a much more "well developed" character than most of the female characters.

after a certain point he's sort of the only character that really gets any development.the others remain pretty one-note.they sort of have this established persona that can then function as a "blank slate" according to the plot at the time.even as julia gravitates from secondary character into the lead we still know almost nothing about her.she's in love with barnabas and will do almost anything to help him.it doesn't really go much further than that.

i guess that quentin was a very well developed character in 1897.after that not so much.angelique and carolyn also change over time to some extent.

so in prefering the female characters i think i just find them all very visually arresting.it was a very striking group of actresses on the show that really appeal to my eye.

[ProfStokes]

I never found the female characters to be particularly appealing.  In general, they tended to be either evil bitches or passive doormats.  (There are a handful of exceptions--Countess Natalie, Judith, Magda, Pansy--who were pretty independent and likable for the most part, but I see these few as exceptions who prove the rule). I really think the tendency to victimize the heroine was a symptom of the times (and the mostly male writing staff).  The male characters tended to have more to do, were more in control, and were more interesting or at least more dynamic.  I guess that's partly why I chose a male character for my handle; I had such a hard time identifying with any of the ladies of DS.  Besides Prof. Stokes, I also enjoy watching Ben Stokes, Count Petofi, Nicholas Blair, the first Burke Devlin, and all of John Karlen's characters.  I never much cared for either Barnabas or Quentin though.  For some reason, in any ensemble TV show (DS, Lost) I tend to be more interested in the supporting than the main characters (female or male).  Perhaps it's because the central characters are overexposed or because their personalities tend to become too fixed after a time while the peripheral players remain more mysterious.  Has this happened to anyone else?

ProfStokes

[Barnabas'sBride]

I never found the female characters to be particularly appealing.  In general, they tended to be either evil bitches or passive doormats. 

That's definitely true. And as someone who's around the same age as a lot of the younger actresses that were on the show then, that bothers me sometimes when I watch it. The constant damsel in distress thing gets old. Still I ended up liking more of the female characters.... Why? I'm not sure I can give a definitive answer. Maybe it's the actresses. Or maybe it's because I think a lot of them had more potential than was given to them.

I don't reallly fall into any pattern when it comes to my favorite characters being the main or supporting roles.With DS my favorite character is the main character, but that's not always the case. For example - on Buffy, my favorites were Faith, Angel & Giles - with Harry Potter, I'm actually not interested in Harry and Ron and Hermione, but in the adults like Snape and Lupin.

[Gothick]

It cuts across gender for me.  In general, I'm in the girls club, in that when Grayson, or Joan, or Clarice, or Nancy are on screen, they rivet my attention.  But the same goes for Thayer, Louis (I've become a HUGE fan of 1966 Roger), Humbert (especially Nicholas--I find Charles Dawson a crashing bore by and large), and, to a degree, Frid and Selby.  I tend to watch Briscoe, Crothers and any other male SYT onscreen more as a sex object but every once in awhile one of the boys will get some juicy bit of business (or take his shirt off--LOL!  I think DS must have been the very first soap that had its male ingenues shedding their shirts.  A pioneer in beefcake, too!)  I do wish Buzz had become a regular.  I can see Julia hiring Buzz to ferry her between Wyndcliffe, the Old House, and Points West.  "Oh, Buzz, Buzz, you mad, incorrigible boy, Buzz!" "Aw, Doc, shucks!  If ya feel it, SIT IT!"  I would crawl across broken glass...

And then, of course, in a class all his own comes Craig Slocum!! Isn't he divine?  *sigh*

Cheers, G.

[arashi]

I don't reallly fall into any pattern when it comes to my favorite characters being the main or supporting roles.With DS my favorite character is the main character, but that's not always the case. For example - on Buffy, my favorites were Faith, Angel & Giles - with Harry Potter, I'm actually not interested in Harry and Ron and Hermione, but in the adults like Snape and Lupin.

Oh I am so with you there on the HP characters, but that's kind of off topic so I will say no more!