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« on: February 27, 2007, 03:55:55 PM »
Hey Taeylor,
I'm a HUGE fan of Leviathan. It is my second favorite storyline (second only to the Cassandra Collins story in 1968 which was when I started watching, so it will always have pride of place in my heart). I'm a major Julia Hoffman fan and I love all the fun stuff they gave Grayson to do in this, especially in the first two months of it. It kind of went downhill rapidly after that, I think because Dan Curtis ordered them to wrap it up in a hurry because of all the hate mail the studio was receiving about it.
In my opinion the real reason why fans back then hated this storyline was because people could not accept Barnabas as a bad guy. Fans also complained that there were two many scenes "down at that weird antique shop" but IMO the scenes at the shop are among the highlights of the story because Sy created such a wonderful atmosphere in there.
I think DC kept wanting to "push the envelope" with the show. The original Barnabas storyline in '67 was quite outrageous by the standards of daytime television back then. I believe that DS was the first soap opera as well to feature shirtless male stars (Don Briscoe, Joel Crothers, David Selby). With Leviathan and its Lovecraftian overtones (really far more Gothic than sci-fi, despite what some critics and fan commentators have written), there was a perception that the series had gone too far and alienated its fan base. You will notice that the PT 1970 story which followed it was much more "traditional" in certain ways (I'm a huge fan of that one, as well, btw).
cheers, G.