Tag Archives: warner bros

Episode 1064: Here Comes the Hotstepper

Joe Caldwell, July 1970, , , , , ,

“A shadow, yes — a shadow that fell over all of our lives!”

Barnabas and Julia have been thrust into the far-off space year of 1995, which means they’ve already missed three seasons of Melrose Place and they’re not going to understand what anybody at the office is talking about. They’d better stay away from watercoolers altogether; you can’t be too careful.

But the time-tossed twosome have other things on their minds, like for example that their house got destroyed twenty-five years ago, killing most of their friends and driving the survivors out of their everloving minds. So Barnabas and Julia are snooping around, trying to find out what caused the catastrophe. I’d suggest taking a close look at Dr. Kimberley Shaw, who’s recently developed an interest in detonating apartment complexes, but they wouldn’t have any idea what I mean. You see what happens when you don’t watch Melrose Place? Let this be a lesson.

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Episode 968: The Only Weakness

March 1970, Violet Welles, , , ,

“When the cairn blew up and the room burned, that should have been the end of you, too.”

So here we are at the tippy top of Widow’s Hill, waiting for teen gang leader Jeb Hawkes to drown his sorrows, and ours. Jeb is a Leviathan, which is a word you use when you’re not really sure what your monster is supposed to be. He used to be a hundred feet tall, with glittering teeth and eyes like opals, but he’s given it all up for love. And now we’re here, potentially ending it all.

The spirit of Peter Bradford blew into town yesterday, with a king-sized kick against Jeb that he’s been bottling up for a hundred and seventy-three years and counting. You remember young barrister Bradford, of course; he’s the lawyer who couldn’t win a witch trial, a hundred years after they’d stopped having witch trials.

But somehow — by luck or inspiration or lunatic plot contrivance — Peter Bradford figured out the Leviathans’ only weakness, which is drowning, and he figured it out by pushing a Leviathan off Widow’s Hill and into the water, where it drowned. Or maybe he found out some other way, like reading the Book, which has a whole chapter on what the Leviathans’ only weakness is. The Leviathans would apparently write down their only weakness in a handy reference guide and then leave it on display in an antiques store, because they’re a secret society that isn’t really very good at keeping secrets. They also wear jewelry with a four-headed snake on it, so you know who to drown.

The only way that Jeb can die is to fall from the top of Widow’s Hill to a messy death on the rocks below, like Josette and Beth did, which I believe means that they were both secret Leviathans the whole time. And then there’s the three widows from the old legend that Elizabeth got all worked up about; they were probably Leviathans too.

Oh, and then there was the other Jeb, the impossible Jeb, who lived in 1797 somehow, and died right here, impossibly, at Peter’s hand. Peter was annoyed with Jeb at the time because he’d lured Victoria Winters to these cliffs, and made her jump to her death, so I guess she was a Leviathan, too. Oh my god, you guys, I think Vicki was a Leviathan.

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Episode 961: Protagonizing

Gordon Russell, March 1970, , , , , , , , ,

“I want you to get good and mad — mad enough to rip a man to shreds!”

“My, my, Mr. Jennings,” Bruno says, splitting his face with a lunatic’s grin. “How you’ve changed!” He’s sneering at the snarling werewolf that’s currently chained to the wall of this desolate crypt, and he’s staying just outside the creature’s reach, like Foghorn Leghorn standing at the dog’s leash limit.

“Does the tone of my voice anger you?” Bruno jeers. “Good! I want you to get good and mad — mad enough to rip a man to shreds!”

This is not typically a problem for werewolf handlers, because the entire point of werewolves is to be a metaphor for unchecked fury and explosive violence. You don’t need to rile up a werewolf. They come pre-riled.

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Episode 815: The Time Television

August 1969, Sam Hall, , , , , , ,

“Count Petofi, do you think this is some sort of a carriage ride?”

Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a mad god, an assassin and a vampire walk into a basement. The mad god says, “Look into that cupboard, Mr. Collins! What do you see?” And the vampire says, “I see the inside of the cupboard.”

All right, it’s not that funny, but you have to admit you haven’t heard it before. It’s kind of hard to believe that we’re hearing it now.

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Episode 787: The Dog Pound

Gordon Russell, July 1969, , , , , , , , ,

“I don’t think that two supernatural creatures appearing simultaneously at Collinwood could be just a coincidence.”

A metaphor for masculine hunger and violence is loose in the dark forest, a bottomless appetite for carnal destruction preying on the weak. Faced with this upsetting symbolic rejection of civilized cultural norms, Collinsport Animal Control sets up a traffic stop and hopes for the best.

And now we’ve got a new kind of juvenile in detention, a crossbreed nightmare on two legs dressed in grown-up clothes, snarling and clawing at anyone foolish enough to approach its cage. So here’s my question: How do you think they got him out of the bear trap and into a jail cell?

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Episode 747: Die Laughing

May 1969, Sam Hall, , , , , , ,

“And Barnabas will grab her, and carry her off to a triumphant life behind a locked door!”

Rascal-in-chief Quentin Collins has spent the better part of a week hunting for his lunatic soon-to-be ex-wife Jenny, vowing to kill her before she kills him. But it hasn’t happened yet, and he’s starting to get bored, so he settles in for a quiet evening of drinking sherry, propositioning the domestics, and not giving a shit.

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