Monday, September 19, 2011

O Sister, Where Art Thou?

EPISODES 301-315

Burke's investigation of Barnabas controverts everything Barnabas has been claiming about his origin. However, Burke's forced to drop the case when Vicki scowls him about it.

It seems everybody in town is looking for the mysterious Sarah: Sam Evans and his party think she'll help uncover the secret of Maggie's disappearance meanwhile Barnabas and Julia speculate why she is here.

Julia still poses as the family historian to everyone but the people closely involved with Maggie's case. They too begin to doubt her intentions.

Sarah takes David to the secret room in the Collins Tomb where he gets locked up. The search party can't find him and Barnabas will kill him if David finds out about his "condition". After a couple of days of lock in and with Sarah's help, David finally gets out but right into Barnabas' arms.


The Burke vs Barnabas Round I: The Pissing Contest was fun to watch with both men stating their mutual dislike which Burken likens to a game of cards and Barnabas to a duel. Burke'd finally started to put the pieces together (the music box, Barnabas' fake past in England etc.) and he was close to uncover the secret when Barnabas found out about it and did the coyest thing possible: Complain to Vicki. Actually it was a one stone two birds move that'd remove Burke as a threat and disrupt his relationship with Vicki, so it was actually more smart than coy. But what the heck, I was supporting Team Burke
A forced truce
And what Vicki did afterwards was more painful to watch. She, not unpredictably, got offended by Burke's prying into a gentleman like Barnabas' life and got as sour as Nicole Kidman's post-op face. She then shamelessly used the marriage card to make Burke frakkin' apologize to Barnabas which he did at the end (but not without biting his tongue). There appears to be a truce between them but Burke's lost this round! Raise your hand if you too have found Vicki's naivety a little too much to swallow. And I'd never thought I'd say this about her but what a bitch for threatening to call off the marriage when she barely accepted his proposal. You'll feel sorry if Barnabas snaps Burke's neck like a twig my dear Vicki.

My, isn't Sarah highly popular for a ghost (Josette must be turning over in her grave with envy).. The whole town is practically after her. Personally I find her overrated and annoying with her random showing-ups and her ball games and musical performances and the objects she leaves behind. Cross over already!
What's so special about her really?
But then I'm satisfied with Julia's theory that she's here because Barnabas has willed so and she represents everything innocent and sunshiney, you know the things Barnabas had lost! It also seems Barnabas himself is very sentimental about his sister, confirming my theories about her being the antidote for his evilism. Their reunion is yet to occur. I've a feeling it's gonna happen at a crucial point.

Meanwhile Julia and Barnabas' relationship is getting interesting. She's conducting her experiments while trying to suppress his murderous instincts, mostly to save her own neck quite literally as Barnabas tends to choke her with his bare hands when he's not happy. But they get along one way or another, it's quite symbiotic really. Barnabas openly voices his dislike of Julia's domineering characteristics because he's an old fart. He obviously feels threatened since he ain't the only scary thing around cause he knows Julia looks equally scary in candle light, if not more. But I wonder if the injections she regularly gives him are the real deal or she's just stalling him. Afterall, can vampirism be cured?
Julia gets her daily dose of choking
However, Barnabas isn't the only thing Julia is worried about as she's facing exposition. She's the true meaning of a double agent: Only Maggie, Joe, Sam and Doc Woodard knows that she is a doctor but what they don't know is, she knows about Barnabas' true face and works her ass off to cover his tracks. It's proper to say her true loyalty lies with Barnabas but that doesn't mean she agrees with his method of handling things, namely her throat for instance.
One way or another, Maggie and the others begin to get suspicious as to why she isn't treating her and instead living the luxury life in Collinwood under the disguise of a historian. Dr. Woodard rightfully thinks Julia has come across to something supernatural and isn't sharing. Also on that note, almost everyone in town is convinced there's a supernatural force at work in Collinsport due to the number of unexplainable happenings. I'm getting a Twin Peaksy vibe and lovin' it!

If these walls could talk..
Everybody's looking for Sarah but she chooses David as the lucky contestant to take to her secret playground that is the secret room in the Collins' Tomb. Obviously it wouldn't be a soap if there wasn't a captivity or immobility involved in every 10 episodes or so and thankfully, David fills that hole when he accidentally locks himself in there. You know what I hate more than those captivity plots? It's those scenes when some characters, Roger and Joe in this case, show up at that exact location but fail to find the missing person. It happened before with Vicki when Matthew had her and many other times with Maggie recently. This time, David falls asleep with fatigue just moments before they arrive and misses them with mere seconds when they leave. It. is. just. cruel.

Roger in multicolor learns
 the news about David
Speaking of Roger, he'd been missing for like 20 episodes and he finally made his in-color debut. Can't really  say he looks better or less cunning. His absence is explained away as a trip to Boston where Liz also is right now. Understandably after 18 years of self-imprisonment that woman deserves a shopping spree. It's also a good thing she is finally out and about just in time for the upcoming hippie movement.

Anyways, when the kids entered that room and saw the coffin, I thought they were gonna find Jason McGuire's body as we last saw it being hidden there. However the coffin was empty and there is no trace of Jason's body. I wonder if they're ever gonna explain what happened to it.

Always an opportunist
The scene where Barnabas comforted a worried and crying Vicki in his arms was interesting when Barnabas suddenly got all worked up and excited and bared his fangs unexpectedly to bite the poor girl. His performance of course got interrupted when Carolyn walked in but the whole thing was so random that I kind of chuckled. This also falls in the same league as the classical vampire mythology where "biting" ritual symbolizes the sexual intercourse compared to today's modern and openly sexualized vampire stereotype. It's also interesting to note Barnabas only bared his fangs to Maggie and Vicki; the objects of his desire. His usual method of violence is by strangulation (Jason, Willie, Julia to name a few) and the biting is reserved only for special events.

That's why children shouldn't
play at cemeteries.
After some time of imprisonment (was it one full day or two days, I dunno I lost the track of it) and with many worried people around, the question of why Sarah waited all this time to reappear and show David the secret mechanism that opens the door from inside is beyond me. But with Barnabas onto him with the intention of murder (despite Julia and Willie's tries at discourement), David is hardly free and faces a greater danger than just starvation. I mean we know that David doesn't know anything about Barnabas being a vampire but he does know that he and Willie are aware of the secret room in the tomb. Will David be able to figure it all out as he's caught in Barnabas grip? Ok Sarah, now would be a great time to make your grand enterance.


I haven't really had time to update the blog lately as so much is going on right now, one of which is my sister recently gave birth to a son and made me an uncle for the 2nd time. Believe me it never gets old :)


Also, has everyone seen the first glimpses of Johnny Depp as Barnabas from the set of the movie? It's too early to judge but from the looks of it, Tim Burton is indeed going for a cartoony adaptation. Seriously, how many more times do we have to see Johnny Depp in a pale make-up!! And the young woman next to him is Bella Heathcote as Vicki Winters and they're strolling during the day???

3 comments:

balance776 said...

I hope that what we're seeing in that picture of Depp is that they are filming partially in Black and White, and the makeup is meant to help with the black and white contrasts...

since Depp is such a huge fan of the original show, im hoping that he'll help keep the cartoony stuff out of this movie.

my favorite scene in this last few episodes is where David accidentally open the hidden brick while trapped. what a great actor he was at that age, he managed to recover from the mess up very smoothly, and didnt break the scene at all.

Torchy Todd said...

One of my favorite scenes in the last few episodes was when Julia and Barnabas are in front of the Old House and Julia says something like "I warn you, if you harm David, you'll be issuing your own death warrant", and Barnabas replies with something like "There may be one or two death warrants issued around here regardless of what happens to David, and you can pass that on to Willie when you see him". Classic!

I thought some of the Sarah stuff was a bit dull, but the Barnabas and Burke pissing contest was another classic bit.

I'll just keep hoping the upcoming movie is not cartoony or too campy.

Efe X said...

balance776, that accident with David was a great save.. At first I thought it was intentional but yeah he delivered that last bit of the scene very professionally.

Torchy Todd, I love the interactions between Barnabas and his companions. Even they manage to put him in his place when it's necessary so he hardly has power over them. That dialogue was cool though, especially the various expressions on Julia's face afterwards :)

I can only count on J. Depp being a big fan of the show that they'll do it justice. Tim Burton's recent films weren't all that good but I'm very curious about his take on DS.

Nevertheless, we'll always have the show and no matter how sucky it turns out, it'll never change that. Actually I believe more people will start to wonder about the original series and maybe even begin to watch it.