fish and hash

[michael c]

i thought i had seen all of the 1966 episodes but i must have missed a few because last night i watched one i hadn't seen that contained a real gem of a scene...

roger and vicki stop into the blue whale(yes,an odd couple,but it's all part of a ruse)and encounter joe and maggie on their first unofficial "date".

vicki joins them while roger and sam,at another table,get into their usual unpleasantries(pens,manslaughter,bill malloy,blah,blah...).

maggie and joe coo and flirt while vicki,suddenly getting wise to the situation(remember that 1966 vicki was wiser than 1967 and 1968 vicki),gives them both a 2+2=4 glance that's priceless.

anyways roger,left peevish by his run in with evans,returns to the group and abruptly tells vicki that they are leaving he has a headache...but as a parting barb to his niece's betrothed and his date inquires as to whether they had been discussing "the price of fish...or the price of hash?".OUCH!

"mr.collins" really kicks these two lovebirds "downstairs" if you know what i mean!it's quite a loaded exchange.

funny but in later years roger become one of the stalwart "beloved" characters but for the first year he was a douchebag of the highest order.

having recently watched maggie and joe's sour 1968 denouement(orchestrated by a vampire witch and satan's emissary)it's quite bittersweet to see this relationship in it's infancy.what becomes of all of these people!

i've said this before but as much as i adore the supernatural years because the plots become so outrageous the characters become hard to sympathise with.here they seem more like real people and thus are easier to relate to.

[Gothick]

Thanks for sharing that MSC!  I vaguely recall that scene, but not the specifics--time to revisit!  Any idea around which episode or week?

Oh yeah--was '66 Roger ever a "douchebag"!  I'm glad, though, that Art Wallace's original outline for Roger's fate wasn't followed in the show's evolution.

Sam Hall's notes did have Maggie and Joe reuniting and getting married at the very end of the series, which perhaps was a recognition on his part of how popular the couple had been with fans.  I'm not that much of a Maggie fan, but I do enjoy the early courting scenes--1966 Maggie, like Vicki, had a LOT more on the go than the caricature to which she was later reduced.

G.

[Taeylor Collins]

I am curious to know what Rogers fate was with Wallace??  Care to enlighten me??  I have only watched the "Collectors" episodes the first time around when I acquired them this past winter.  I really enjoyed early DS.  I firmly believe if traditional soap opera plots were mixed in with supernatural ones DS may have ran a good ten years or perhaps longer...but I guess that wasn't in the fates.  Plus   I do remember this scene very well though! Thanks for the thoughts M!

[Cassandra Blair]

I've been watching an episode each weekday evening since last June, kind of trying to approximate the original run. So I just saw this one a few months back and it was priceless! Roger was a total douchebag all of the time, I wouldn't be surprised if Art Wallace's original plan for the character was to have him murdered - pretty much everyone in Collinsport found him insufferable!

I'm in agreement that Maggie and Joe were really cute together at the start of their relationship. I'm glad the writers sort of took their time in getting them together - it sort of just blossomed between them organically. Joe was never really right for Carolyn and vice-versa, so Maggie was a great choice for him - kind of sassy and sharp witted. Definitely a different creature from the sort of stock ingenue-in-peril she later became in service to the supernatural storylines.

If you're looking for the specific episode number, Gothick, it looks like that was episode #78, which originally aired on October 12, 1966.

[Gothick]

Thanks, Cassandra, for that episode number.  Hope I have time to check it out!  I agree that the Maggie/Joe courtship took shape in a beautifully paced way.  I also enjoyed how the Carolyn-going-after-Burke story was written and played, especially with Nancy Barrett acting Carolyn's emotions and need for attention in such a plausible way.

To Taeylor, the original storyline [spoiler] had Roger Collins going totally crazy at some point and admitting to having killed Bill Malloy, plus some other murders I believe.  If I recall, the final episode was going to involve a clifftop confrontation in which Roger had lured Vicki to the cliffs and intended to push her to her death on the rocks.  Instead, Roger himself ended up going literally over the edge and finding the death he had planned for the innocent Miss Winters.  I can't recall how in the original outline the issue of Vicki's parentage was resolved.[/spoiler]

  I never owned the Shadows on the Wall book--have thought about purchasing it, if it is still available.  I should check.

Best,

G.

[Pansity]

I never owned the Shadows on the Wall book--have thought about purchasing it, if it is still available.  I should check.

If it's not, there's always Ebay.  That's where I've managed to get a lot of the stuff I missed out on by not getting hooked on THIS fandom till 2002.  And believe, me, I don't have the money to bid the moon and stars on stuff as I've seen some people do, so mine must have cost something realistic.  It was apparently published by DCP, so anyone's guess whether it's still being reprinted.

Jeannie

[Gerard]

I do have the Shadows on the Wall original bible, so I'll look up what it said about Roger and how his character was "resolved," along with what it said (if anything) about Vicki's original parentage.  I haven't looked at it in years, but it's a good read from what I recall.

Gerard

[Joeytrom]

I believe Art Wallace had Roger about to throw Vicky over Widows Hill but David hits Roger with a rock and he falls to his death.  There was no murder of Bill Malloy though, the story was the investigation of Burke's hit and run which sent him to prison.  Roger admitted to killing the man with his car and framing Burke for it ten years earlier.

What was also interesting is that Shadows on the Wall has a scene in New Orleans just prior to this, showing “Walt Cummings” (Jason McGuire’s original name) boarding a tramp steamer heading to Maine.