I personally prefer Marlowe.  And John Webster... the Duchess of Malfi is a fabulous play, perhaps one of the very greatest plays in the English language.

Not to say that Willie the Shake is chopped liver, of course.

G.

Hi Sandor!  welcome to the Madhouse.

Maybe we can feed the Mysterious Benefactor some Belgian chocolate and persuade him to put Don's *hot* 16 magazine spread up here.

It's always good to have another Briscoe fan here!

Steve

Luciaphil, I've said it before but I'll say it again--I *love* what you did with the character of Edith in your Education of Judith Collins series.  Would love to see more of the series at some point.  I found it a wonderfully subtle work of literature--psychologically very complex.

I haven't seen the episode in which Edith is inducted into the coven by Gerard in many years.  I remember it as being a lot more off-the-cuff than I would have liked.  It should have been shocking and blasphemous, but it felt like Edith going for a roll in the hay with snaggle-toothed, well-hung Mr. G., followed by an invitation to join his canasta club the following Wednesday.

Like I said, it's been years, but that's how I remember it.

I was disappointed that Edith seemed to fall in love with Gerard.  I thought she should have been shown to have been enjoyed the cheap thrills he afforded in the sack, but I inferred her real interest to have been in the powers to which he gave her access.  Seems to make better sense with what we saw of Edith in 1897, but the writers seem to have been going on their usual assumption that we all had amnesia about that.  After all, it had been two years before, and as Ronnie Reagan once sputtered (in a scene that presumably will be snipped out of that troublesome docudrama), "who can remember what they were doing two years ago?"  or two hours ago, Ronnie.

G.

Gerard, you have a fiercely ruling, gloriously twisted sense of humor!

thanks for the Thursday morning chuckle.  It was sorely needed.

Steve

There is a line of dialogue in Cassandra's very first episode in 1968 where she is talking to Barn's portrait and she informs him that she would never have found out that he had escaped her curse, if it had not been for Victoria Winters' time trip to 1795.

That's really all the info we are given.  It seems to be implied that Ange is working through a noncorporeal form, first through her portrait, then possessing Roger, until she (we presume from dialogue many weeks later between Cass and Nicky) she makes a "bargain" with Nicholas and Diabolos/Balberith and is able to return in flesh form as Cassandra.  I also recall a line or two about how much Cassandra is enjoying being in a body again--it may have been one of Nicholas' comments about why she is so obviously dragging her feet.

FWIW, I recall that at the time of the original b'cast, I simply accepted that the Angelique who appeared in 1840 was somehow the "original" Angelique who lacked knowledge of the future because for her, it simply had not happened yet.  I was never one of those who kept DS diaries, so a lot of the inconsistencies I notice watching it on VHS as an adult went right over my head at the time.

G.

Thanks for that alert, Lovely One.  Agree that I would delete the entire mess on sight.  It boggles what's left of my mind that computer users STILL open random attachments like this.  I guess part of the problem is folks using email handling software that opens the attachments automatically--really not a good idea.

I was bemused by the widget "bh" in that text.  Was this supposed to be an inversion of "hb," a revolting shorthand for "husband" that's acquired a deplorably widespread currency on the Internet?

G.

Well, Vlad, last time I watched the episodes that involved the first spell we see Ange casting--on Barn's Rev War toy soldier--I'm afraid I laughed when the poor dear couldn't get the knot undone when she was trying to reverse the spell.

Tying knots is very much Craft 101.  Then there's her notorious difficulty with Basic Banishment.  She raises a ghost (Jeremiah) to perform a simple task and then can't rid of him?  In her defense, the ghost eventually goes away when the writers can't think of what to do next with him, but it reflects very badly on her skill level at this point.

I actually think it makes the story more interesting when Ange is barely competent and you see her trying hard to learn from her own mistakes.  Later on, when she becomes "Super Witch," it's not so interesting.  Of course, even at the height of her powers on the show, she was never capable of pulling some of the feats ascribed to her by some fan writers, such as the role Warren Oddson gives her in his articles in the DS Concordances published by Kathleen Resch.

In 1968, Cassandra seems a lot more powerful, confident, and assured in her Craft than 1795 did.  Her problem then is her tendency to indulge her own sadism--watch 'em twist in the wind when she could be getting the job done. That is what leads to her eventual downfall, although it could be argued as well that the Dream Curse was an unnecessarily clumsy, over-involved piece of spellcraft.  It's hard to tell with that whether she was motivated by the desire to see people like Maggie and Mrs. Johnson suffer on the way to achieving her goal, or whether she simply did not know any better, quicker way of getting the job done.

G.

Oh Gods, no wonder that one armed ghost's appendage looked so naggingly familiar.  I'd get a sort of familiar itch every time I played that episode. Same deal with the hunky hangman at Vicki's execution.

I always thought Groh was so delectably hairy and, well, generous on Rhoda.  (did you know she had a pagoda?)

beyond fried post Halloween G.