“I mean, the very idea of people cavorting in and out in time periods would be amusing, if it weren’t so preposterous.”
Sometimes I see a big event on a daytime soap opera — a wedding, or a black-tie charity fundraiser, or a serial killer holding a group of teens hostage in a police station during an earthquake while one of them is having a baby — and I think, it is seriously unbelievable that this is the same genre, the same medium and the same timeslot as Dark Shadows. It’s the budgets — I just can’t get my head around where all that money is coming from.
I understand that the technology has advanced — filming and editing and effects are easier than they used to be. But how can they afford all those people? When modern soaps do those big episodes, they just throw dozens of people at the screen — main cast, recurring players, guest roles, plus all those extras standing around in the background, pretending to dance or eat or tend to the wounded.
Dark Shadows could afford five and a half people a day. That’s it. If you’re lucky, we’ll get a guy to wrap some bandages around his head, and we’ll call him an ancestor. I mean, it’s not like people suddenly got less expensive. There can’t be that many out-of-work waiters willing to appear on a television show while they wait for something to open up at a restaurant.
But here we are in 1968, and Roger Collins is falling in love with a portrait. That’s how bad it was back then. Imagine showing up to work, and they tell you that they can’t afford a co-star for the day, so you have to stand there and strike up a conversation with the decor.
Still, if anyone can pull it off, I suppose Louis Edmonds is your guy. As far as I’m concerned, he can do anything. Just look at the way he’s standing here. He was playing the tragic, flint-hearted patriarch a week ago.
But something unearthly is going on here; we’re getting some weird echoes of the Collins family’s past.
Roger: Have you ever seen a more beautiful face?
Julia: She’s very pretty.
Roger: Ah, pretty — too many women are described as being pretty. The beauty of that face is unique! I should think that you, being French, would be only too glad to acknowledge such beauty, Countess Du Prés.
So that’s a thing. One thing that’s nice about Dark Shadows these days is that they really don’t have the time for a lot of vague foreshadowing. If they want you to worry about something, they don’t beat around the bush. They just go ahead and do the weird thing they’re planning to do.
And speaking of weird things, guess who shows up at the door. It’s the lovely and adorable Ben Stokes, the downtrodden 18th century servant.
But this is actually the latest model, Professor Timothy Stokes. Vicki’s taken aback when she sees him, and she has to explain, “You look rather like someone I once knew.” Luckily, the professor is too well-bred to call her out on this obvious lie. Stokes doesn’t look like anything in the world except Stokes. The world doesn’t make a matching set of faces like this; it’s one to a customer.
If you’re lucky enough to find a Stokes, then you need to lock that down, because there isn’t going to be another one coming by any time soon. Happily, Dark Shadows is now a good enough show to recognize value like this when they see it.
So here he is, another member of the menagerie. Other soaps are issuing desperate casting calls for handsome, dynamic and charming late 20s bad boys, and good luck to them; I’m sure they’ll find one sooner or later.
Dark Shadows has no interest in that sort of thing. Give us eccentrics, they say. Give us your quirky, your odd, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. You’d have a hard time finding a mass more huddled than this.
Stokes is here — and he’s always Stokes, by the way; he eventually acquires a different first name because everyone forgot that he already had one — because the antique shop owner told him that Vicki had bought the portrait.
Stokes is researching the life of his ancestor Ben, who worked at Collinwood in the late 18th century, and he has reason to believe that the woman in the portrait was also living at Collinwood at that time. Stokes has been reading the memoir that Ben wrote in his old age.
There are so many improbable things going on in this scene that it’s hard to tell which one is the more puzzling — that Ben took up a literary career, that Ben had descendants, or that it takes Stokes a full sixty seconds before he pulls a monocle out of his vest pocket and sticks it in his eye. The man is clearly a monocle waiting to happen.
It doesn’t take long before the art appreciation salon gets into full swing, and just look at this gathering of lunatics. It doesn’t even matter what they’re talking about at this point; I would watch these three guys do absolutely anything. They could do a spinoff where they live together in a New York townhouse and raise a pair of adopted kids from Harlem, and call it Diff’rent Stokes.
Yes, I admit that was kind of a long walk to get to a stupid joke, but who cares. I’m just in a really good mood this week.
Because the last four days have seen a positive shift in the show’s development. Things were starting to feel a bit claustrophobic towards the end of the 1795 trip, as the cast dwindled down to about six people and a bat puppet. But the return to 1968 has been a dream so far, and even the dreams have zombie guardian angels in them, bellowing and rolling their eyes with a feverish intensity. They’re having fun. The show is fun again.
It won’t last; I say that every time we hit a happy groove like this. There are some slow times coming up that will test our patience like nothing ever has before. But we have Stokes now, and a mean painting, and that has to count for something.
There’s a rising tide of creative eccentricity on Dark Shadows, and the baseline for quality has noticeably improved. The average episode in 1968 is way more interesting than the average 1967 episode. It doesn’t always sparkle, but keep your eye on that monocle, and vice versa.
They didn’t have to keep Stokes on the show. Their decision to backfill Dr. Woodard’s spot in the cast with another unpredictable eccentric means that they’re starting to get a handle on what kind of show Dark Shadows should be.
Tomorrow: The Best of All Possible Worlds.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
In the teaser, a fly crosses Angelique’s portrait just before Barnabas slices it with a knife.
Vicki is wearing a sleeveless dress; apparently the bullet wound in her shoulder healed right up.
And this isn’t a blooper yet, but it will be — Stokes says that Ben died at the age of 75. We’ll see Ben’s tombstone in episode 756, and it’ll say 1756-1816 — putting Ben’s age at 60 when he died. Then in episode 1119, we’ll actually see Ben die onscreen, in 1840 — which would make him 84.
Tomorrow: The Best of All Possible Worlds.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Someone has mentioned that they believe that Vicky’s presence in 1795 has signaled to Angelique that Barnabas is alive in the future and that she finds a way to travel through time so that he will not be free of her. But in 1840, after making her annual pilgrimage to the secret room of the mausoleum to celebrate his demise she is surprised to find that he has been let out of his coffin. And when posing in Collinwood as Valerie, after she discovers Julia’s true identity, she is amazed to discover from Julia’s appointment book that Barnabas will still be alive and active in 1970 and is further surprised when Julia tells her that she, too, will exist in Collinwood in 1968 as Cassandra. But perhaps by this time the writers were overlooking this inconsistency, since after Alexandre Moltke leaves the show none of the characters mention Vicky again, as if she never even existed.
Still, it is uncanny that just after Vicky arrives back to the present she feels strangely compelled to purchase the portrait of Angelique, which has an even more mystifying effect on Roger, who as an eligible male will be able to allow the physical manifestation of the portrait a full-time presence in Collinwood as Cassandra.
Great to see the arrival of one of my favorite Thayer David characters, Professor Stokes, or as Barnabas will, in one scene up ahead, say his name in Fridspeak as Professor Strokes. Thayer David, in turn, around the same time will in conversation refer to a Barnabas Columns. Sometimes on this show the bloopers provide the best and most memorable lines of all.
The Angelique of 1840 is the Angelique who saw Phyllis Wicke (not Vicki) go to the gallows.
These and other inconsistencies are what made me think that 1840 was in another Parallel Time, that Quentin’s staircase through time also went through different dimensions and dropped that Parallel time issues on our own.
At the end of the Leviathan sequence, the ghost of Peter Bradford haunted Jeb Hawkes because he had killed Victoria Winters in 1797.
A prime example of a bigger budget comes from comparing the ‘costume party’ Barnabas threw at the Old House (way back around Episode #280). The TV version had 6 guests (+Willie filling in as hatcheck boy, bartender, caterer…) – of the 6 guests all were family with the exception of Burke (who may actually be a distant relative himself owing to his strong resemblance to Jeremiah) and Vicki who may or may not be a family member, she’s not at this point. Then when they recreate this scene in HODS the party the Collins family throws FOR (not by) Barnabas there is music dancing, real refreshments, and about 100 guests. I actually prefer the TV version. It seems much more intense having a seance with 6 people than watching 100 people dancing the minuet. Also no one (particularly Vicki) mentions Professor and Ben Stokes resemblance to the Collins former brutish servant Matthew Morgan, who tried to kill Vicki multiple times and held her hostage for over a week.
Vicki reacts pretty severely (but understandably) when she first met Ben in 1795 – she’s probably just used to it by now. (I think there was also a nice, subtle reaction when Ben suggested hiding her in the old house drawing room’s secret room after she’d been shot, but I might have been projecting that, since ‘nice’ and ‘subtle’ are not commonly used words when describing Moltke’s performance…)
I agree that smaller, more intimate gatherings involved in something like a seance are more effective than larger ones, which seem more impersonal.
IIR when soaps started out, they were pretty much viewed as cash cows by the network. They had small budgets, but brought in tons of revenue. For years I heard that the networks made up the money they lost on prime time TV with the money soaps brought in. The nature of them was that they had intimate settings, required few sets and since so much of the story was about the emotional lives of the characters, you didn’t need a lot of characters on in a day. Also, the actors were only paid for when they appeared on screen, so if Barnabas was off on the farm attacking cows, they didn’t pay Jonathan Frid. I don’t know a lot about the pay structure, but today, the actors are guaranteed a certain number of appearances in a set amount of time, and extra if they have more appearances. That may not have been true back in the 60’s and 70s.
Eventually soap operas went from a nice, stable source of income to a phenomenon. The Luke/Laura Mikos Cassadine story was expensive, and a huge hit. Other soaps followed suit and people started to expect it. Plus soaps expanded to one hour, meaning more budget and more actors had to be in an episode to fill the time. In the end, it contributed to the decline of soaps. Suddenly they needed to be bigger, better and they no longer were the financial support of the network. I actually liked the older smaller soaps, but the did move slow as molasses going uphill in January.
Looking at this first week back in 1968 it’s really quite astonishing how much they crammed into it: Vicki’s return, Carolyn and Tony, Angelique’s portrait and Roger’s fascination, Professor Stokes, Barnabas finally biting Vicki and their subsequent elopement, Peter’s unexpected reappearance, Julia’s new haircut, and Vicki’s new eye makeup! That’s about six months worth of storylines back in 1966 all crammed in five days.
Yes – I see Vicki is also wearing a fashionable print scarf around her neck, this season’s new ‘must have’ wardrobe essential for total, discreet vampire bite mark coverage..
I’m sure she’ll stop wearing them next week : )
Wouldn’t she have noticed the bite marks on her neck when looking into the mirror? Wouldn’t she have been surprised by them, or have wondered about them?
AM was STUNNING in the scene at the front door with Joe Haskell.
Even her shoulders were.
It made me instantly forget 1795/6.
For sure! It’s clear that the 1795 experiment has lasting effects. If anything, “the present” is going down the autobahn even faster the 1795.
About Vicki’s new eye makeup. I think it looks really strange, like she has two black eyes on the outer most corners of her eyes… I dislike it intensely. But, I love her new hair do. The cute low ponytail with the extreme side part works great!
Great comments here about soaps’ humble low-budget beginnings. In my opinion, while soaps were, at one point, cash cows for the network (particularly with Luke/Laura leading the way in the late 70’s and early 80’s) and then the soaps themselves got bigger and bigger budgets too (more location shots and bigger casts), it was the OJ trial, cable proliferation, more women in the workplace, the internet and then finally the crash of 2008-09, and the big old soaps like Guiding Light, As The World Turns, All My Children all unfortunately bit the dust, with only All My Children ending with even better writing/storylines and a bigger cliffhanger. The genie was apparently out of the bottle, and the powers that be thought that the soaps could not go back to low budget, smaller casts, fewer extras, shorter shows (maybe half-hour, maybe 15 minutes as it was in the early 50’s and on radio). The ratings could not justify the expense of doing the bloated 5-day-a-week hour-long soap. I have been amazed as I enjoy DS to see that it had the same complexities of storytelling of any modern-day soap (in my opinion) — jealousies, love triangles, romance, marriages, etc., unrequited love, etc. and instead of doctors, nurses and lawyers, the characters just happened to be vampires, werewolves, mad scientists, ghosts, witches, warlocks, etc. And I am more than willing to forgive the bloopers and even the logical inconsistencies for the sentimental and honestly expressed emotion. Anyone wanting to do some kind of short small-scale internet-based soap today (are you listening Prospect Park?) would do well to look at the inherent lessons that could be learned by taking a closer look at DS.
I agree in large part with everything you’re saying. For instance, I think both AMC and OLTL might have been saved had they been cut back to 30 minutes. But for any smart person looking at soap, there remains one shining example of a show that is rather similar to DS in many ways: Bold & Beautiful. It has an incredibly small cast, tells one or two stories at a time, and is only 30 minutes long. It’s also wildly successful not only in the US, but around the world. (That latter fact, however, has more to do with when it was launched and what was, at the time, the international hunger for programming… and B&B, set in California and starring beautiful people, sort of represented, in those foreign markets, a daily vision of the “American Dream”).
Sales to foreign markets are very important for current day soaps to thrive. I’m glad B&B is thriving both domestically and overseas. I can’t bring myself to get into B&B however, given I’m still grieving about AMC’s network and it’s internet reboot cancellations. At one point, old reruns of AMC (several years behind) were popular in Italy under the name “La Valley di Pini” (or the Italian for where AMC took place, Pine Valley). Unfortunately, AMC’s run overseas ended several years before ABC canceled AMC.
Yeah, I’ve often thought the main thing that saved “B&B” was the 30-minute format. They have more cast members per day than “DS” and they certainly have some “big party” moments, but day in and out, it very much has a “DS” pacing.
Wonderful point about soaps like B and B reflecting an idealized, glamorous version of the American Dream, both here and abroad.
Great post, Tim!
“Also, the actors were only paid for when they appeared on screen, so if Barnabas was off on the farm attacking cows, they didn’t pay Jonathan Frid.” That was true for the majority of actors on DS but not all. From the beginning, Joan Bennett had a contract to be paid a set amount no matter how many episodes she appeared in. Eventually Jonathan Frid got the same deal. I’m not sure which other actors, if any, had such an arrangement.
Its a strong spell, neither Roger or Joshua who Roger thinks he is sometimes now were that interested in a painting of Angelique.
Stokes is as close to a true “hero” as the 1968 storyline gets. Barnabas acts only in his own interests — he’s not “evil” any more but he’s selfish and by the end of the year, the lives destroyed on the altar of Barnabas’s own happiness is shocking (Joe, Sam Evans chief among them). Remove Barnabas and there’s no Cassandra, no Nicholas Blair and a lot of happier people. In every storyline after this, you’ll note that Barnabas himself is not the root of the trauma — he doesn’t cause Quentin to haunt Collinwood, he’s not responsible for Yaeger or Angelique in parallel time, and so on.
However, in 1968, Stokes is the one who investigates problems and offers solutions, often at great risk to himself and for no personal gain.
True
Hey, becoming a hero is a slow process.
Actually Barnabas had to be cured out of being an entitled rich kid, and there are no injections for that. It takes a lot of kicks in the butt for that to happen.
Stokes gets a bit more problematic once Adam comes along though and he pretty much stops caring about the Dream Curse. There’s an episode where Vicki goes to him for help and he pretty much throws her out saying, “Well, nothing I can do, sorry, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Despite having sworn to defeat Angelique and protect those under the Curse. But I’ll complain about this when the time comes : )
Stokes is a potentially narrative disaster. He is smart, he can solve problems, and quickly. Which means that he can solve two months worth of narrative in two days. That cannot be allowed to happen. So he is still smart, and resourceful, and deterniend, but VERY ineffective…
It took the invention of narrative arcs in primetime series to tackle this contradiction. People do have inmediate problems which they solve quickly, and a looming threat of which they have little inlling at first, not enough information and some of it contradictory. So the situation does not get resolved quickly, but smart, resourceful and determined people keep solving problems as they pop up.
I totally agree that Stokes could have been a narrative disaster. Instead he becomes the equivalent of Wikipedia, explaining parallel time and the I-ching to us. He has book-knowledge but not street-knowledge. Great at theory, but not execution.
Absolutely, Stephen!
It really needs to be said: Your attention to detail is incredible. The fact that you know the episode numbers and dates which create discrepancies in Ben’s history blows me away. It happens every time you pull something like that out. Bravo, Danny. Bravo.
“Stokes doesn’t look like anything in the world except Stokes. The world doesn’t make a matching set of faces like this; it’s one to a customer.”
Oh, I don’t know. There is a vague resemblance to one Matthew Morgan. 🙂
My history with “DS”:
I remember vague snippets here and there from the first run (including the giant spider scene with Quentin). But it was mostly just impressions — I was too young to fully comprehend it and wasn’t always home in time to watch it. Plus, it terrified me as a child and I was forbidden to watch it, so it was only once in awhile.
Then around 1978 when I was in high school, I saw reruns from Willie opening the coffin to Dr. Lang opening the curtains.
Then in the late ’90s, I saw reruns of 1897 and most of the Leviathan storyline. Anything else I knew, I learned from reading compendiums or online stuff.
That’s until this past summer when I decided to watch the series from start to finish. I’ve had several nice surprises and a few disappointments, but one of my best surprises: Thayer David.
I never saw Matthew Morgan (underrated character because of the early timing), and I just never appreciated the art and craft he brought to Ben Stokes or Sandor or Petofi.
But I’m thrilled with Professor Stokes after one episode. In my personal DS world, Thayer David is a crucial part of the fabric.
It really is amazing the difference in the show from “Before 1795” to “After 1795.” I guess once they had Angelique on — and the wild range of things she did — the sky was the limit. I think turning Joshua into a cat was the moment when anything was possible.
I think that was both a good thing and bad thing, depending on what’s going on. Part of me did like the black and white melancholy of the first 250 episodes or so, particularly with Laura, the Maggie kidnapping and Liz’s blackmail. But this faster pace and more going on has me watching the show with more frequency. That says something too.
Even though only a few days on the show have passed from the seance to now, it’s such a different pace and feel. I look forward to seeing how this plays out, though I admit I’m dreading the Dream Curse (which sounds good in theory and bad in execution) and Adam (bad in both).
I thought Barnabas looked really spooky in the black and white scenes. And one of them he looked particularly scary. He was trying to get his bite on with somebody and he looked awful…lol.
Why are we not spending more time discussing how Louis Edmonds is reciting “Dover Beach” to a portrait of Angelique? If anything represents the show’s new found commitment to the odd, it is that. And Louis Edmonds is almost trying to stifle a smile, despite reciting one of the most dour poems in the English language. I just assume he’s having a great time. I am.
And the “Dover Beach” Wikipedia page makes no mention of Mr. Edmonds’s sonorous recitation here. Glaring omission!
I love that scene!
I am pleased that Thayer David will now be given the chance to expand his acting range beyond “gruff, poorly-educated menial” (Matthew, Ben).
“But here we are in 1968, and Roger Collins is falling in love with a portrait. That’s how bad it was back then. Imagine showing up to work, and they tell you that they can’t afford a co-star for the day, so you have to stand there and strike up a conversation with the decor. . . . Still, if anyone can pull it off, I suppose Louis Edmonds is your guy. As far as I’m concerned, he can do anything. Just look at the way he’s standing here.”
Funny y’all should mention the name Laura, because “clever intellectual awesome gay guy without a lot of hair who falls in love with a woman (or with the idea that he could ever be with that woman, anyway) whom we know as a portrait but who (spoiler alert) comes back from what we thought was her being dead” is the plot of the film LAURA (with Clifton Webb), with Louis Edmonds doing the quasi-Clifton-Webb character that he did– no, that he LIVED– every day of his life.
I can’t take the credit, my wife spotted this possible narrative collision.
Congratulations to your wife: great comparison!
I guess the writers saw this, too. Wait until you get to 1970PT!
Right, but the clever gay guy was in love with the real woman, while the hard boiled detective, played by Dana Andrews, fell in love with the portrait….so maybe the narrative collision includes Tony Peterson?
So nobody, and Im talking about the original 3, Vicki, Roger and I am sure Liz, is going to acknowledge the resemblance of Prof Stokes to Matthew? Maybe they only remember the original Matthew, blocking out Matthew 2.0 because he brought shame to the family.
Or maybe, stick with me here, the Matthew that looks like Stokes was actually Ben who time travelled into the future to kill Bill Malloy to protect the Collins family because he was paying back Barnabas’ favor of getting him set free. Then he didn’t really die of fright, he just hopped a ride back to the 18th century with those women yelling his name after he kidnapped Vicki. Cut, print, next scene.
Yay for Professor Stokes! I was sad thinking that was the last we’d see of Thayer David.
I also wanted to mention that this episode aired the afternoon of the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was shot 😦
And because I’m a “Bewitched” nerd, I’m going to start for my own purposes mentioning what episode aired the same day as a DS ep. In this case, it was Season Four’s Episode #135 (or the 28th episode of the season)”I Confess” where Samantha shows Darrin what their life would be like if the whole world knew she was a witch. The episode was actually interrupted with the news of Dr. King’s death.
Prof. Stokes – beautifully played by Thayer David – states that his ancestor Ben was given (by Joshua Collins) title to a piece of land north of the village. But didn’t Joshua want Ben to go far away? Isn’t that why he gave him the $100?
I see I’m not the only one who picked up on Vicki’s sleeveless dress. That’s really sloppy, even for a show that that’s very casual about continuity.
Thayer David was one of my favorite actors on the show. He was talented and versatile, easily swerving from the uneducated but loyal and considerate Ben to the articulate and quirky Eliott Stokes, not to mention Petofi and Sandor. For those of you like me that are also comic book aficionados David was the voice actor on the 1972 Spider-Man Rockcomic Album, where he played Spider-Man’s famous foe, the Kingpin: .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XMwJcdN6Wk
I should add that being both a comic book fan (particularly of the Marvel Comics of the period and especially Spider-Man) and someone who had been avidly watching Dark Shadows along with my older brother John from around 1967 until it was cancelled, I begged my Mom to pick up the Spider-Man album (she worked at Korvette’s Department story which sold tons of records). When I was listening to it I soon recognized the voice of Thayer David from DS.
For my part, I remember my astonishment upon first having seen Thayer David in ROCKY.
Thayer David had a nice, steady career as a supporting player in big feature films after DARK SHADOWS. Besides ROCKY, he appeared in LITTLE BIG MAN, SAVE THE TIGER (which also featured his fellow D S colleague Lara Parker, who played a call girl in the film), and THE EIGER SANCTION. He also starred as the detective Nero Wolfe in a TV movie if the same name. This was supposed to have been the pilot for a series starring David, but, unfortunately, David died of a heart attack, and it had to be recast, with William Conrad replacing David.
Incidentally, the first film I saw David in was JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, in which he committed the unforgivable sin of killing and eating Gertrude the goose! Also, he was married to actress Valerie French (who was in the horror film THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE, as well as a very underrated sci-fi film, THE 27TH DAY, opposite Gene Barry). They then divorced, but remarried each other several years later.
I meant, of course, that David’s character, not David himself, had killed and eaten Gertrude.
Damn, I just watched THE 27TH DAY and didn’t even notice him. I can’t believe I missed him.
Oh, now I remember! He wasn’t in THE 27TH DAY; Valerie French, who later became his wife, was. Phew. I feel better. I honestly couldn’t imagine having overlooked him.
One more Thayer David film appearance was in 1958’S A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME TO DIE, starring John Gavin.
That should have been A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE.
Dale, I was also quite surprised and delighted to see David in Rocky. I’ve seen him in most of the movies you mentioned. A wonderful character actor who passed away far too early.
Nicholas: Thanks so much for your response! It’s always a trip to find out that I’m not the only one in the year 2020 who is still following and contributing to this blog.
Your Different Strokes joke reminded me that Conrad Bain appeared in the very early episodes of DS as the front desk worker at the Collinsport Inn.
Yes, and Bain reprised his role when he was later killed by werewolf Chris Jennings in .
Yes, and Bain later reprised his role when he was killed by werewolf Chris Jennings.
I’m enjoying the faster pace of these post-1795 episodes. There was a time when Professor Stokes would have spent at least a week at the coffee shop with everyone wondering who he was before he even made it to Collinwood!
A simple voice job but a nice surprise for me back in 2000 was hearing Thayer David narrating (uncredited!!!) “The Missiles of October” about the Bay of Pigs with a very young William Divane as JFK and Frank DaSilva as Niketa Khrushchev.
Cool! I had never known that!
Why doesn’t Vicki recognize Angelique? She’s seen her and talked to her, why can’t she remember her?
Yes, Margaret, you and I have the same question. It is strange to me, and especially because Vicki finds out in jail that Angelique is the witch (right?) so wouldn’t she be really scared of Angelique, and the portrait??
“Why doesn’t Vicki recognize Angelique? She’s seen her and talked to her, why can’t she remember her?” Since Vicky’s return from 1795, we’ve seen each day that she doesn’t remember much from her strange and frightening journey into the past, but she remembers bits and pieces (at convenient times–or inconvenient for Barnabas). The whole Barnabas/Vicky plot at this point is Barnabas’s fear that Vicky is remembering her experience in the past. (And in this episode, Vicky DOES start to remember who Angelique is–she even says her name and says she practiced witchcraft.)
I’m really confused about the vampire biting, and how many bites does it take to turn someone into a vampire. There really isn’t any rhyme or reason. I know, it’s been discussed and we all just accept it, but I can’t figure it out, so I can’t project what I think is going to happen to these people. I mean, Vicki doesn’t even feel bad,, and poor Willie looked like death warmed over, and Carolyn started acting all weird, and poor Maggie was all over the map.
But, I don’t mind really. I can’t wait to find out what happens next, and I also really love Prof. Stokes! David looks so handsome in his double breasted suit and his hair all combed and pomaded! And the monocle!!
“There really isn’t any rhyme or reason. I know, it’s been discussed and we all just accept it, but I can’t figure it out…” Well, I think you answered your own question–there’s no rhyme or reasons, so there’s nothing really to figure out.
Also, I remember when we first went back to 1795, Danny made a joke about how the past is pink. That was when the Old House was the only house, and it was fresh and well kept, and we were all shocked that the inside was painted pink!
Well, now that we are back, the Old House is still pink. I can’t remember what it looked like before, but it’s not as dingy and it was, and the big tear in the wall paper is gone. I thought they would put the set back to how it was before we flash backed. oh well….
The first couple of episodes after returning to 1968, I have to admit to feeling a little disappointed or something; everything seemed kind of, oh, I don’t know, mundane, and staid, after the excitement of witches and trials and men wearing breeches. A post-time-travel vaycay letdown. But today was a quickening of the blood for me; today offered portraiture witchcraft, Barnabas in vampire mode, and the wonderfully weird intensity of Professor Stokes. Also, the dialogue was fun, full of pointed references to events and people that the current batch of Collinses and associates are hazy on, but that WE are very familiar with; one of those instances in which the audience knows more about the play than the players. Just think how much more delicious it is for us to listen to conversation about the Countess and Angelique than it would be for a first-time or even occasional viewer coming to it kind of cold; WE know all the obscure, past drama, ’cause we just endured it! I mean watched it!