Strong Friday episode with a cliffhanger sure to bring back the audience on Monday. Tremendous credit is due Kathryn Leigh Scott, who's acting talents have come out from under the bushel and been allowed to shine brightly since falling sway to Barnabas.
The same shoutout to David Ford as frantic father Sam Evans, who demonstrates an incredible range in this episode alone. I really believed he was Maggie's father and not just an actor playing his role. Ford immersed himself in the part and delivered his lines as if from the heart. There was no obvious reading cold off cue cards as is too often the case with an unnamed Collins matriarch.
Acting aside and considering characters, I'm feeling the tension and the push-pull with Maggie. I've gone from sympathy to anger to finally she'll get what she deserves. In today's show she was especially manipulative in coercing with melodramatic play-acting the nurse to open the window. I intensely disliked her character in the second half of the show.
As an aside, for the open-window fiasco I blame Dr. Woodard, suffering from an acute and chronic case of the God-complex, which is an occupational hazard of doctors. He gives orders to the nurse, such as keep the window closed and locked, and acts affronted when she dares ask why. Had he given her a reason, she likely would not have opened it. I'm sure, considering Maggie's hammy choking and gasping for fresh air, she assumed Woodard's dictate was just an arbitrary decree from which no real harm could come from ignoring. Oops.
The question we must pose to Maggie is what did you know and when did you know it? She appears in her right mind but stubbornly refuses to reveal what happened to her, and more importantly by whom. I grew impatient with her and admit my sympathy for the character is fast ebbing after tonight's manipulations. I suspect her amnesia is feigned, and she deflects questioning by flailing around like a flounder on the dock. She refuses to name Barnabas out of fear, like the cowed into submission Willie Loomis.
Here's the question I keep asking when Dr. Woodard, Sam, Joe, Burke, and Vicky are continually mind boggled and baffled by the two punctures on Maggie's neck: Hey, hasn't even one of you caught a Dracula flick on the late, late show? C'mon!
The same shoutout to David Ford as frantic father Sam Evans, who demonstrates an incredible range in this episode alone. I really believed he was Maggie's father and not just an actor playing his role. Ford immersed himself in the part and delivered his lines as if from the heart. There was no obvious reading cold off cue cards as is too often the case with an unnamed Collins matriarch.
Acting aside and considering characters, I'm feeling the tension and the push-pull with Maggie. I've gone from sympathy to anger to finally she'll get what she deserves. In today's show she was especially manipulative in coercing with melodramatic play-acting the nurse to open the window. I intensely disliked her character in the second half of the show.
As an aside, for the open-window fiasco I blame Dr. Woodard, suffering from an acute and chronic case of the God-complex, which is an occupational hazard of doctors. He gives orders to the nurse, such as keep the window closed and locked, and acts affronted when she dares ask why. Had he given her a reason, she likely would not have opened it. I'm sure, considering Maggie's hammy choking and gasping for fresh air, she assumed Woodard's dictate was just an arbitrary decree from which no real harm could come from ignoring. Oops.
The question we must pose to Maggie is what did you know and when did you know it? She appears in her right mind but stubbornly refuses to reveal what happened to her, and more importantly by whom. I grew impatient with her and admit my sympathy for the character is fast ebbing after tonight's manipulations. I suspect her amnesia is feigned, and she deflects questioning by flailing around like a flounder on the dock. She refuses to name Barnabas out of fear, like the cowed into submission Willie Loomis.
Here's the question I keep asking when Dr. Woodard, Sam, Joe, Burke, and Vicky are continually mind boggled and baffled by the two punctures on Maggie's neck: Hey, hasn't even one of you caught a Dracula flick on the late, late show? C'mon!
