Science & Sorcery

EPISODES 476-490

Whoa! I think the show's never been this complicated in the sense of richness in mystery and intrigue; I'm wondering how the hell I'm gonna get out of reviewing them properly. So lemme try and divide these perky little sideplots.

THE DREAM CURSE 

Dream Curse unleashed!

Angelique Cassandra must have been feeling so lonely when nobody in Collinwood welcomed her unexpected arrival with hugs and kisses that she had to resort to her true love for comfort: witchcraft! Thinking "Hmm, it's been more than a century since I destroyed a Collins family" she unleashed a brand new and imo very creative curse on..well..pretty much everybody. All jokes aside, the actual purpose of this curse is of course to make Barnabas what he was again, a vampire, against Dr. Lang's "treatments".

So the curse works like this:

Darkness and fog..

In the dream, the victim is lead by someone they know (or will meet the next day) and they encounter unbearable terror and all that shit. The next day, they feel an unstopable urge to tell the dream to that person in the dream. They're safe once they do but the curse is passed on so that person goes through this process until the curse ends with a sudden dead, which we suppose will be Barnabas'.

When Cassandra first met Maggie Evans, she was struck by her resemblance to Josette -her arch nemesis- and used her as the starting point of the curse, thanks to her wicked sense of humour. 

I'm assuming the readers of this blog have watched these episodes already so I don't have to be reciting the dreams, which are pretty much the same anyway except for the lil additions at the end. I just wanna take note of the cryptic rhyme which will be important in the future I think:

..doors and terrors!

"Through sight and sound and faceless terror;

Through endless corridors by trial and error;

Ahead a blazing light does burn;

And one door leads to the point of return."

I'm lovin' the way the dreams start: as if part of reality with the victims standing up from wherever they were sleeping and literally stepping into the nightmare. I'm a sucker for and a huge fan of the Elm Street series so I welcome this storyline with open arms. I just wish there were diversity in the content of the dreams but the doors at the end have to do. I'm also trying to figure out whether there're specific meanings of the doors to the people which open them; I consider each new door that character's door.

This is the course of the curse so far:

L to R: Maggie>Jeff>Lang>Julia

Maggie's door had a skull behind it. Jeff's had guillotine. Dr. Lang saw his headless creation and Julia saw a skeleton in a wedding dress.

There's an obvious albeit out of order connection between a guillotine-a skull and a headless figure but where the skeletal bride stands in this I am not sure yet. We will need more open doors to make the ultimate connection and decide if each door has a specific meaning in connection with its opener. Boy, I have some far fetched theories but I'll let them brew for a while. There may even be a time where I'd do an in-depth analysis of the whole thing. But anyway,

Can Prof. Stokes be trusted?

It didn't take too long for people to realize they were under a curse. Julia though was the toughest of them all and went for a while without telling the dream to it's next victim: Mrs. Johnson (who by the way is too practical to have dreams according to herself. We'll see how you'll like this one missy!!). She also went to see Prof. Stokes since he's an expert on occult and all and he did diagnose it as a "curse". It seems he will play a capital part solving this mystery but there are some things about him that is not quite clear. Cassandra is said to be his ex student. Was it a spell (I mean yeah surely it's a spell, it's not like Angelique would crawl out of the grave and go to college while waiting for Barnabas) or are they in this together? Roger also met Cassandra at Prof. Stokes' place!! And Stokes totally freaked out and left when Barnabas told him the identity of the bitch witch! Let's not forget he is Ben Stokes' descendant!! You can take the man out of the servants' quarters but can you take the servants' quarters out of the man??? Guess, we'll wait and see..

Speaking of manbitches, Cassandra found herself another one: Tony Peterson aka the fiery lawyer that loves to dress like a dick (there must be a pun somewhere in there). She doesn't have the power over him like she did with Ben yet but he sure comes in handy. She used him to steal the anti-witchcraft medallion from Dr. Lang meanwhile letting him think he's falling in love with her!!! At the risk of sounding mean, I can actually see why she didn't use that last one on Ben.

I saw the smoochin'

To complicate things further as if they weren't already enough, David comes back from Boston right on cue. Cassandra is introduced as his new mommy but expectedly didn't recieve any hugs or marshmellows. Then right after that, he saw Cassandra and Tony kiss at the gazebo (don't you love saying the word "gazebo"?). When he threatened to tell on her, Cassandra gave him an itsy bitsy curse that prevented him from speaking and I think writing too. David is urgently taken to the doctor. All this happened in one episode where David came back. Writers sure aren't taking it slow, are they? But I'm more concerned about David, can you imagine the mommy issues the boy will have in the future? His biological mother tried to burn him alive, this one muted him the day they met? I'm thinking future Norman Bates.

DOCTOR LANG'S EXPERIMENT

Jeff's narrow escape

Ok so the last time we checked, Dr Lang was stitching a man together from dead body parts so he could pour Barnabas' precious essence into it. What it was lacking was a head and they were gonna go for Jeff Clark's handsomely features. And they did. They were this close to cut Jeff's pretty face up when Barnabas, realizing how upset Vicki would be without her Jeff, stopped Lang. They had to call in Julia to hypnotize Jeff, who on the side of doing the job found out about Lang's experiment.

Julia reacts!

Now, we all know and love Julia for a many reasons and among these reasons is her neurotic over reaction to things. Even simple things can find very expressive meanings on her expressive face. Now imagine her shock when she leaked into the lab and found the Frankenstein's monster lying on the table. Her scream (a mutant mix of a goat and a crow's cry) was heard from the Widow's Hill so the doc and the ex-vampire had to let her in on the whole thing. She opposed the whole ordeal but we all know deep down she's delighted that she's allowed to play doctor (although Lang mostly uses her as a nurse. Ouch).

The Return of Willie Loomis

Ahh, I almost forgot. After Jeff was hypnotized and sent on his way and before Julia became part of the team, they needed an assistant to help Lang with the experiment. Barnabas suggested someone, Julia pulled some strings and WILLIE LOOMIS WAS RELEASED FROM THE SANITARIUM! The last we saw of him was when he got shot while trying to warn Maggie about Barnabas. He was then thought to be the Collinsport Assailant and sent to the Windcliff Sanitarium. So anyway, he's back..not quite sane.. but was he ever? His return caused slight disturbance in town but Barnabas promised to keep him under his control (human Barnabas isn't as mean as the vampire Barnabas). But before Willie could work as the assistant, Julia got picked which renders Willie's return quite pointless actually. I expected it to be more grand, like him coming back as a badass to take revenge on Barnabas for treating him like a doormat. Oh well~

Willie's back and he does Barnabas' dirty deeds again.

Science vs Sorcery

Anyway, so another handsome face is found for the monster who/what is now named Adam, which must be a popular name for the reanimated monsters (see also Buffy's Adam). But Dr Lang is killed during the operation when Cassandra accidentally sticks the pin too deep into the clay voodoo figure (raise your hand if you think Mrs Johnson is partly responsible for startling Cassandra. Oh no Mrs Johnson, you have blood on your hands!!). Before he dies, he spends his last energy to record a warning for Julia and Barnabas to hear: In case both Barnabas and Adam come out of the operation alive, Adam has to be kept alive. If not, Barnabas will be a vampire again (which by the way, was totally missed by Julia and Barnabas). Well, it's been pointed far too much that a simpleton would know that is what's gonna happen at the end of the operation. So, Julia and Barnabas go through with it again and some electrical sounds and flickering lights later, the transfer fails. Barnabas is still inside his body, feeling gloomy that his last chance with Vicki flew out the chimney.

Rise and shine Adam!

Then, Adam opens his eyes on the operating table!!!!! Oh no!!

And instead of the classic line "It's Aliiiiveeee", Barnabas matter-of-factly goes "Your alive; We're both alive!" Gotta love the man for the originality.

So we got a dream curse on our hands, as well as a Frankenstein style monster.

Ex lunatic out of the hospital.

A mysterious man named Jeff Clark who may or may not be the time travelling Peter Bradford.

A professor of occult, who may be working with the witch.

And we have a witch, going round cutting tongues of little boys and making men fall in love with her.

Ain't that some drama!!!

*Yaay @ Maggie's reappearance. I've missed her so. As I've stated many times before, I especially love her scenes with Vicki. I wish there'd be many many more of them.

*Barnabas and Julia are finally and openly friends. Only a little time ago he was trying to strangle her with his bare hands. Aww, good ol' times.

*What's with the recent experimental, odd camera angles? And is it coincidence that they all have Julia in them?

*They finally sorted out Cassandra's wig. It doesn't look like a possum crawled and died in her hair anymore.

*I'm lovin' the soap aspects of the show. You know the little things such as Tony and Cassandra's kiss. Or Mrs Johnson's mystery son who by the way showed up in one episode and gone missing since. I'd be watching the silverware if I were them.

*