#and that doesn't even consider john's murderous code baby

[pareidoliaonthemove]

@astranite, ah, yes, ‘Runaway’! I can generally turn off my ‘train-brain’ for any train episodes – unless of course our hero or villain is train surfing, traps the opposition on a carriage, and kicks at the coupler to separate the carriage from the engine, and speeds off into the sunset to await round 2. Then the entire neighbourhood has to endure me yelling general abuse, and "Couplers don’t work like that!"

While mag-levs are strictly outside my area of expertise, they do share a lot of infrastructure details and safety features with current diesel-electric, and electric trains, and when you take those into consideration, well, let’s just say the set up shown on screen is, um, lacking.

Brains, John and Virgil should all be having very strong words with the Japanese Rail Network.

First point is: why on god’s green earth are they testing a new locomotive design on a live line?! Especially one that operates passenger services? Even if it is a locomotive undergoing a post-overhaul mainline test, there should have at least been a qualified mechanic on board to test-ride it’s performance. Away from passenger trains.

Second problem: and speaking of the track, it’s all one track, one rail, so how do trains going on opposite directions pass each other? At the very least there should be what’s called ‘crossing loops’: a short section of track that forks off and then runs parallel to the main line, before rejoining it. One train goes into the loop, and pulls up, while the other train passes on the main line. If the crossing loop is long enough the train might not need to stop – this type of setup is more common in the United States than it is in Australia – we get to stop and stretch our legs.

Many crossing loops in my area are being upgraded to include catch points. These are a set of points (which is the junction where a train can change tracks, they can also be called ‘switches’, but the standard term here is ‘points’, so that’s what I’m sticking with) linked to the points on the mainline which are intended to prevent a train rejoining the main line without permission from the controller. Instead, the lead engine will be directed off the tracks to loose forward momentum in a specially constructed section of ballast (rocks, preferably granite, about the size of your fist). A mag-lev train would be able to be shunted to a de-energised section of track, and allowed to shed its momentum safely there. (There should be friction locks that deploy when power is lost, like in an elevator car – ‘it would be like hitting a brick wall’, eh, not so much, Brains.)

Third Problem: And this is the biggie! All modern locomotives have a safety system in place designed to prevent the driver falling asleep on the job. In Australia it is currently called the “Driver Vigilance System”, or ‘vigi’. Its job is to safely stop the train before it is stopped, should the driver fall asleep or be … otherwise incapacitated.

The technology has gone through a few iterations, the oldest being the ‘Dead Man’s Switch’, a footplate that drivers had to hold down while the train was in motion. Unfortunately, due to the fact that drivers can be on a train for up to 12 hours, and it required a degree of force to hold down, drivers were prone to wedging the footplate down with their lunch box, or an emergency flag. Sadly, the system was shown to be entirely ineffective on 31 January 2003 when the driver of the Tangara G7 passenger train suffered a heart attack enroute and slumped with his weight on the deadman’s switch, allowing the passenger train to enter a curve rated for 60km/h at 117km/h. It derailed, killing seven (including the driver), and injuring 40 people. It is commonly referred to as the Waterfall Train Disaster.

The current system has a light illuminated for 10sec, which then flashes for 7 sec, then a 5 sec high pitched beeping, if the ‘vigi’ button is not pressed in that time, the train brakes will deploy automatically, while simultaneously putting in an emergency call to the network controller. If the train crew doesn’t respond to the controller answering the call, emergency procedures are brought into play, and emergency services are sent to the train’s GPS location. (And if you weren’t incapacitated, you would wish you were.)

All the hapless engineer in ‘Runaway’ would have had to do was … not press the button.

And the thing that makes me laugh? John being able to reset the points the ‘instant’ that the passenger train clears the points. For safety’s sake, points are locked in position until the system detects the rail traffic has cleared a set point at a safe distance, and even then, there is ‘time out’ period between clearance, and points unlocking, and then a 120 second ‘time out’ between the points registering as being locked into position, and the signal clearing.

But hey, technology changes. Maybe they ‘improved’ the points system? Although their cyber security is seriously lacking ….

But it looks good on screen, and I don't suppose the series' target demographic really has a whole lot of practical experience in rail operations.

[bornfreediedcaged]

i think the original sin writers just do not like Brian because why has every part of Harry’s and Dexter’s lore changed to make Brian seem like the most evil child in the world before his mother died? why are we making it so that Laura loved Dexter more and wasn't just one of many informants that Harry slept with like it was very clear in the original series that she was? did we forget that Debra even said that she thought he picked out informants that he would want to fuck? are we forgetting that Harry literally calls Dexter a monster throughout his entire childhood and neglects Debra throughout the entirety of hers? Brian isn't a good person by any means but neither is Harry and that’s like a pretty big theme in the original series. also making the child the villain in that situation was so weird and distasteful considering that Laura was just murdered, he sat there for three days in her blood trying to get his baby brother not to go up and disturb her body. Brian has not only every right to be upset and a little out of control but every right to be upset with Harry because he’s the reason Laura confessed, he's the reason she went to Estrada and got followed and he’s the reason Estrada’s men suspected him because he grabbed Dexter because him, a grown ass man who hypocritically scolds his adopted son for this later on in life, doesn't know what impulse control is.

the complete change of Brian’s lore was just to make it seem like Harry tried, when he very clearly didn’t, and i don’t want to hear about “but the original story told was from Dexter’s perspective so it has flaws” like original sin isn’t? Sure you see a couple extra scenes but you see those in Dexter too. Brian literally says the story of how it happened himself and he is clearly old enough to remember that this was happening, it is just very clear retconning on their part considering it’s the first season they’ve decided to completely flip on it’s ass. Harry could have not cheated on his wife and banged multiple vulnerable women and strung out drug addicts but he didn’t, he could have not abandoned one child for being too traumatised for him and sent him to the mental hospital but he doesn’t, Harry is just a bad person, he’s not even a good father all he does that benefits Dexter is teach him the code and that was partially made by Dr Vogel so he didn’t even do it himself. the fact they age Brian up two years is also in bad taste, Brian would have been five or six when it happened considering his original birthday was 17th of June 1968, they only do it so they can make Brian bad and not have people turning their heads like “are they demonising this baby?” because that is, in fact, what they’re doing.

i wish the original show runners didn’t leave in season six, now we have no long remembered details that Dexter actually remembers because now he’s a fucking goldfish I guess, no references to anything else, Dexter liking child rapists and murderers despite saying in the original series that the one thing he can’t accept is killing or harming children, IN THE FIRST EPISODE. (Ted Bundy, BTK, nightstalker, John Wayne Gacy, etc. etc.). all the unnecessary retcons, age ups and timeline inconsistencies aren’t just annoying they make the show borderline unwatchable along with all that corny animorph to baby Brian shit they do. they try to acknowledge themes in the original show but they really just don’t get the way the original show treats these themes or even what most of the themes are. okay peace

[inktog]

I posted 632 times in 2021

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#obviously they're loyal to each other but are they also loyal to andrias? or are they just as shocked and horrified as everyone else?

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

John Gaius doesn't know anything except tell dad jokes, indulge in martyr complex, drink tea, murder dissenters with bare hands, and lie

134 notes • Posted 2021-01-22 02:45:18 GMT

#4

Here's something fun.

This is Bessie's history. Before touching a snail's reins, you gotta know them. Feel their heartbeat next to yours and become one.

When Anne finally reads the manual, she also starts munching on leaves—like a snail does. They have in fact become one: Anne is Bessie, and Bessie is Anne.

And Joe Sparrow mostly just follows Marcy's orders, yeah? So it's not a terrible stretch to treat him as an extension of Marcy herself.

What I'm saying is that this ridiculous scene of a bird flirting with a snail is actually Marcanne fodder.

177 notes • Posted 2021-06-06 15:06:30 GMT

#3

In trying to figure out whether Marcy fits Amphibia's pattern of psychological worldbuilding, I've considered two options: either Andrias is a manifestation of Marcy's abusive father, or he reflects something about Marcy herself—some hidden motive or repressed desire, or maybe the simple fact that she unintentionally hurt her friends.

Andrias-as-Dad strikes me as the likelier option: he's big, he's old, he makes robots (which are babies, as per Frobo), and he dabbles awkwardly in youth culture in a very dad-coded way. But I'm still bothered by some evidence in the other direction.

To start, in the Season 3 opening, Marcy is level with the many-eyed evil overlord and above Andrias himself. It's a curious role reversal if the king is supposed to be Mr. Wu—but it makes perfect sense if he's subservient to Marcy's dreaming self, born somehow of her unconscious mind. Linking Marcy to the eye creature suggests that Marcy is, somehow, the actual Big Bad of the series.

And Marcy and Andrias both have moments where they treat other people as literal flipwart pieces, suggesting that Marcy, like the king, is a scheming manipulator who plays god with other people's lives.

Now, these conclusions are laughable—Marcy just plain isn't a string-pulling villainous mastermind—but maybe they point to something more true.

It's not unusual for a person to internalize the idea that they're at fault for the abuse they suffer ("If only I hadn't acted in this particular way, maybe he wouldn't have…"). This is wrong, of course; no matter what you do, the game is stacked against you. But it's not out of the question that Marcy wrongly blames herself for her dad's actions. And if she thinks, in particular, that she's at fault for her parents' decision to move…

Then Andrias is a stand-in for both Marcy's dad and for her associated guilt. The symbolism points toward Marcy-as-evil-mastermind not because it's true, but because she thinks it is—she thinks everything is her fault. Which makes her teary apology even more tragic—and Andrias' "Now look what you've made me do" even worse.

This completes a pattern I hadn't even noticed until now:

Anne's gem is of the heart, and the frogs reflect her subconscious desire for moral guidance in the form of benevolent paternalism.

Sasha's gem is of the body, and the toads reflect the cold hard reality of her controlling, abusive behavior.

Marcy's gem is of the mind, and the newts reflect her warped perception of reality, the mistaken belief that she is somehow at fault for her father's behavior.

This is all very speculative, and I hope we meet Marcy's parents for real in season 3.

188 notes • Posted 2021-05-25 21:44:12 GMT

#2

Marcy, gesticulating wildly: I'm just saying, humans are inherently biased. We want to think that death isn't the end. We want to believe in a benevolent, all-powerful creator. Which makes sense! The alternatives are really scary! But we can't let that fear cloud our judgment. And if you actually step back and look at the evidence for intelligent design, or an afterlife, it's pretty flimsy.

Anne, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling: I dunno, Marbles, this doesn't seem like the kind of thing science can answer. You'll just run up against more questions. Like, why did the big bang happen? Why does gravity and matter and stuff follow this particular set of rules, and not some other rules? There's gotta be a greater purpose behind it all. Maybe not a god, but like…a plan. The universe's plan.

Sasha, not looking up from her phone: If God isn't dead yet, I'm gonna kill him myself.

243 notes • Posted 2021-05-23 17:03:34 GMT

#1

Even more Rule of 3 that I just now noticed: Each girl is associated with a secondary gem aspect, indicated by her amphibians' color.

Anne is primarily associated with the heart (blue), but she's no stranger to raw strength (pink—or at least loosley red-ish—as the Plantars).

Sasha is primarily of strength (pink), but she's also cunning, manipulative, and capable of long-term planning (mind/green as Grime).

Marcy is primarily of mind (green), but she's also well in touch with her desires: she knows what she wants and isn't afraid to chase after it (heart/blue as Andrias).

And each is sorely out of touch with her third and final aspect, to the point that her entire personal journey revolves around it. (Or at least Anne's and Sasha's do; it's hard to say what the exact shape of Marcy's arc is yet.)

Anne's inability or unwillingness to think through the consequences of her actions (mind) is one of her biggest flaws.

Sasha just doesn't know what she wants (heart), as the last couple episodes make clear.

Marcy is the physically weakest of the trio (strength), and in a broader sense, she's also the least in touch with reality.

739 notes • Posted 2021-05-26 20:23:41 GMT

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[barbara-stanwyck-1907-1990]

Barbara Stanwyck (born Ruby Catherine Stevens; July 16, 1907 – January 20, 1990) was an American actress, model and dancer. A stage, film and television star, she was known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional for her strong, realistic screen presence. A favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra, she made 85 films in 38 years before turning to television.

Stanwyck got her start on the stage in the chorus as a Ziegfeld girl in 1923 at age 16 and within a few years was acting in plays. She was then cast in her first lead role in Burlesque (1927), becoming a Broadway star. Soon after that, Stanwyck obtained film roles and got her major break when Frank Capra chose her for his romantic drama Ladies of Leisure (1930), which led to additional lead roles.

In 1937 she had the title role in Stella Dallas and received her first Academy Award nomination for best actress. In 1941 she starred in two successful screwball comedies: Ball of Fire with Gary Cooper, and The Lady Eve with Henry Fonda. She received her second Academy Award nomination for Ball of Fire, and in recent decades The Lady Eve has come to be regarded as a romantic comedy classic with Stanwyck's performance called one of the best in American comedy.

By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. She starred alongside Fred MacMurray in the seminal film noir Double Indemnity (1944), playing the smoldering wife who persuades MacMurray's insurance salesman to kill her husband. Described as one of the ultimate portrayals of villainy, it is widely thought that Stanwyck should have won the Academy Award for Best Actress rather than being just nominated. She received another Oscar nomination for her lead performance as an invalid wife overhearing her own murder plot in the thriller film noir, Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). After she moved into television in the 1960s, she won three Emmy Awards – for The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1961), the western series The Big Valley (1966), and miniseries The Thorn Birds (1983).

She received an Honorary Oscar in 1982, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986 and was the recipient of several other honorary lifetime awards. She was ranked as the 11th greatest female star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute. An orphan at the age of four, and partially raised in foster homes, she always worked; one of her directors, Jacques Tourneur, said of Stanwyck, "She only lives for two things, and both of them are work."

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the fifth – and youngest – child of Catherine Ann (née McPhee) (1870-1911) and Byron E. Stevens (1872-1919), working-class parents. Her father, of English descent, was a native of Lanesville, Massachusetts, and her mother, of Scottish descent, was an immigrant from Sydney, Nova Scotia. When Ruby was four, her mother died of complications from a miscarriage after she was knocked off a moving streetcar by a drunk. Two weeks after the funeral, her father joined a work crew digging the Panama Canal and was never seen again by his family. Ruby and her older brother, Malcolm Byron (later nicknamed "By") Stevens, were raised by their eldest sister Laura Mildred, (later Mildred Smith) (1886–1931), who died of a heart attack at age 45. When Mildred got a job as a showgirl, Ruby and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes (as many as four in a year), from which young Ruby often ran away.

"I knew that after fourteen I'd have to earn my own living, but I was willing to do that ... I've always been a little sorry for pampered people, and of course, they're 'very' sorry for me."

Ruby toured with Mildred during the summers of 1916 and 1917, and practiced her sister's routines backstage. Watching the movies of Pearl White, whom Ruby idolized, also influenced her drive to be a performer. At the age of 14, she dropped out of school, taking a package wrapping job at a Brooklyn department store. Ruby never attended high school, "although early biographical thumbnail sketches had her attending Brooklyn's famous Erasmus Hall High School."

Soon afterward, she took a filing job at the Brooklyn telephone office for $14 a week, which allowed her to become financially independent. She disliked the job; her real goal was to enter show business, even as her sister Mildred discouraged the idea. She then took a job cutting dress patterns for Vogue magazine, but customers complained about her work and she was fired. Ruby's next job was as a typist for the Jerome H. Remick Music Company; work she reportedly enjoyed, however her continuing ambition was in show business, and her sister finally gave up trying to dissuade her.

In 1923, a few months before her 16th birthday, Ruby auditioned for a place in the chorus at the Strand Roof, a nightclub over the Strand Theatre in Times Square. A few months later, she obtained a job as a dancer in the 1922 and 1923 seasons of the Ziegfeld Follies, dancing at the New Amsterdam Theater. "I just wanted to survive and eat and have a nice coat", Stanwyck said. For the next several years, she worked as a chorus girl, performing from midnight to seven a.m. at nightclubs owned by Texas Guinan. She also occasionally served as a dance instructor at a speakeasy for gays and lesbians owned by Guinan. One of her good friends during those years was pianist Oscar Levant, who described her as being "wary of sophisticates and phonies."

Billy LaHiff, who owned a popular pub frequented by showpeople, introduced Ruby in 1926 to impresario Willard Mack. Mack was casting his play The Noose, and LaHiff suggested that the part of the chorus girl be played by a real one. Mack agreed, and after a successful audition gave the part to Ruby. She co-starred with Rex Cherryman and Wilfred Lucas. As initially staged, the play was not a success. In an effort to improve it, Mack decided to expand Ruby's part to include more pathos. The Noose re-opened on October 20, 1926, and became one of the most successful plays of the season, running on Broadway for nine months and 197 performances. At the suggestion of David Belasco, Ruby changed her name to Barbara Stanwyck by combining the first name from the play Barbara Frietchie with the last name of the actress in the play, Jane Stanwyck; both were found on a 1906 theater program.

Stanwyck became a Broadway star soon afterward, when she was cast in her first leading role in Burlesque (1927). She received rave reviews, and it was a huge hit. Film actor Pat O'Brien would later say on a 1960s talk show, "The greatest Broadway show I ever saw was a play in the 1920s called 'Burlesque'." Arthur Hopkins described in his autobiography To a Lonely Boy, how he came to cast Stanwyck:

After some search for the girl, I interviewed a nightclub dancer who had just scored in a small emotional part in a play that did not run [The Noose]. She seemed to have the quality I wanted, a sort of rough poignancy. She at once displayed more sensitive, easily expressed emotion than I had encountered since Pauline Lord. She and Skelly were the perfect team, and they made the play a great success. I had great plans for her, but the Hollywood offers kept coming. There was no competing with them. She became a picture star. She is Barbara Stanwyck.

He also called Stanwyck "The greatest natural actress of our time", noting with sadness, "One of the theater's great potential actresses was embalmed in celluloid."

Around this time, Stanwyck was given a screen test by producer Bob Kane for his upcoming 1927 silent film Broadway Nights. She lost the lead role because she could not cry in the screen test, but was given a minor part as a fan dancer. This was Stanwyck's first film appearance.

While playing in Burlesque, Stanwyck was introduced to her future husband, actor Frank Fay, by Oscar Levant. Stanwyck and Fay were married on August 26, 1928, and soon moved to Hollywood.

Stanwyck's first sound film was The Locked Door (1929), followed by Mexicali Rose, released in the same year. Neither film was successful; nonetheless, Frank Capra chose Stanwyck for his film Ladies of Leisure (1930). Her work in that production established an enduring friendship with the director and led to future roles in his films. Other prominent roles followed, among them as a nurse who saves two little girls from being gradually starved to death by Clark Gable's vicious character in Night Nurse (1931). In Edna Ferber's novel brought to screen by William Wellman, she portrays small town teacher and valiant Midwest farm woman Selena in So Big! (1932). She followed with a performance as an ambitious woman "sleeping" her way to the top from "the wrong side of the tracks" in Baby Face (1933), a controversial pre-Code classic. In The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), another controversial pre-Code film by director Capra, Stanwyck portrays an idealistic Christian caught behind the lines of Chinese civil war kidnapped by warlord Nils Asther. A flop at the time, containing "mysterious-East mumbo jumbo", the lavish film is "dark stuff, and its difficult to imagine another actress handling this ... philosophical conversion as fearlessly as Ms. Stanwyck does. She doesn't make heavy weather of it."

In Stella Dallas (1937) she plays the self-sacrificing title character who eventually allows her teenage daughter to live a better life somewhere else. She landed her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress when she was able to portray her character as vulgar, yet sympathetic as required by the movie. Next, she played Molly Monahan in Union Pacific (1939) with Joel McCrea. Stanwyck was reportedly one of the many actresses considered for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), although she did not receive a screen test. In Meet John Doe she plays an ambitious newspaperwoman with Gary Cooper (1941).

In Preston Sturges's romantic comedy The Lady Eve (1941), she plays a slinky, sophisticated con-woman who falls for her intended victim, the guileless, wealthy snake-collector and scientist Henry Fonda, she "gives off an erotic charge that would straighten a boa constrictor." Film critic David Thomson described Stanwyck as "giving one of the best American comedy performances", and its reviewed as brilliantly versatile in "her bravura double performance" by The Guardian. The Lady Eve is among the top 100 movies of all time on Time and Entertainment Weekly's lists, and is considered to be both a great comedy and a great romantic film with its placement at #55 on the AFI's 100 Years ...100 Laughs list and #26 on its 100 Years ...100 Passions list.

Next, she was the extremely successful, independent doctor Helen Hunt in You Belong to Me (1941), also with Fonda. Stanwyck then played nightclub performer Sugerpuss O'Shea in the Howard Hawks directed, but Billy Wilder written comedy Ball of Fire (1941). In this update of the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs tale, she gives professor Gary Cooper a better understanding of "modern English" in the performance for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

In Double Indemnity, the seminal film noir thriller directed by Billy Wilder, she plays the sizzling, scheming wife/blonde tramp/"destiny in high heels" who lures an infatuated insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) into killing her husband. Stanwyck brings out the cruel nature of the "grim, unflinching murderess", marking her as the "most notorious femme" in the film noir genre. Her insolent, self-possessed wife is one of the screen's "definitive studies of villainy - and should (it is widely thought) have won the Oscar for Best Actress", not just been nominated. Double Indemnity is usually considered to be among the top 100 films of all time, though it did not win any of its seven Academy Award nominations. It is the #38 film of all time on the American Film Institute's list, as well as the #24 on its 100 Years ...100 Thrillers list and #84 on its 100 Years ...100 Passions list.

She plays the columnist caught up in white lies and a holiday romance in Christmas in Connecticut (1945). In 1946 she was "liquid nitrogen" as Martha, a manipulative murderess, costarring with Van Heflin and newcomer Kirk Douglas in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Stanwyck was also the vulnerable, invalid wife that overhears her own murder being plotted in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) and the doomed concert pianist in The Other Love (1947). In the latter film's soundtrack, the piano music is actually being performed by Ania Dorfmann, who drilled Stanwyck for three hours a day until the actress was able to synchronize the motion of her arms and hands to match the music's tempo, giving a convincing impression that it is Stanwyck playing the piano.

Pauline Kael, a longtime film critic for The New Yorker, admired the natural appearance of Stanwyck's acting style on screen, noting that she "seems to have an intuitive understanding of the fluid physical movements that work best on camera". In reference to the actress's film work during the early sound era, Kael observed that the "early talkies sentimentality...only emphasizes Stanwyck's remarkable modernism."

Many of her roles involve strong characters, yet Stanwyck was known for her accessibility and kindness to the backstage crew on any film set. She knew the names of their wives and children. Frank Capra said of Stanwyck: "She was destined to be beloved by all directors, actors, crews and extras. In a Hollywood popularity contest, she would win first prize, hands down." While working on 1954s Cattle Queen of Montana on location in Glacier National Park, she did some of her own stunts, including a swim in the icy lake.[49] A consummate professional, when aged 50, she performed a stunt in Forty Guns. Her character had to fall off her horse and, with her foot caught in the stirrup, be dragged by the galloping animal. This was so dangerous that the movie's professional stunt person refused to do it. Her professionalism on film sets led her to be named an Honorary Member of the Hollywood Stuntmen's Hall of Fame.

William Holden and Stanwyck were longtime friends and when Stanwyck and Holden were presenting the Best Sound Oscar for 1977, he paused to pay a special tribute to her for saving his career when Holden was cast in the lead for Golden Boy (1939). After a series of unsteady daily performances, he was about to be fired, but Stanwyck staunchly defended him, successfully standing up to the film producers. Shortly after Holden's death, Stanwyck recalled the moment when receiving her honorary Oscar: "A few years ago, I stood on this stage with William Holden as a presenter. I loved him very much, and I miss him. He always wished that I would get an Oscar. And so, tonight, my golden boy, you got your wish."

As Stanwyck's film career declined during the 1950s, she moved to television. In 1958 she guest-starred in "Trail to Nowhere", an episode of the Western anthology series Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, portraying a wife who pursues, overpowers, and kills the man who murdered her husband. Later, in 1961, her drama series The Barbara Stanwyck Show was not a ratings success, but it earned her an Emmy Award. The show ran for a total of thirty-six episodes. She also guest-starred in this period on other television series, such as The Untouchables with Robert Stack and in four episodes of Wagon Train.

She stepped back into film for the 1964 Elvis Presley film Roustabout, in which she plays a carnival owner.

The western television series, The Big Valley, which was broadcast on ABC from 1965 to 1969, made her one of the most popular actresses on television, winning her another Emmy. She was billed in the series' opening credits as "Miss Barbara Stanwyck" for her role as Victoria, the widowed matriarch of the wealthy Barkley family. In 1965, the plot of her 1940 movie Remember the Night was adapted and used to develop the teleplay for The Big Valley episode "Judgement in Heaven".

In 1983, Stanwyck earned her third Emmy for The Thorn Birds. In 1985 she made three guest appearances in the primetime soap opera Dynasty prior to the launch of its short-lived spin-off series, The Colbys, in which she starred alongside Charlton Heston, Stephanie Beacham and Katharine Ross. Unhappy with the experience, Stanwyck remained with the series for only the first season, and her role as "Constance Colby Patterson" would be her last. It was rumored Earl Hamner Jr., former producer of The Waltons, had initially wanted Stanwyck for the role of Angela Channing in the 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest, and she turned it down, with the role going to her friend, Jane Wyman; when asked Hamner assured Wyman it was a rumor.

Stanwyck's retirement years were active, with charity work outside the limelight. In 1981, she was awakened in the middle of the night, inside her home in the exclusive Trousdale section of Beverly Hills, by an intruder, who first hit her on the head with his flashlight, then forced her into a closet while he robbed her of $40,000 in jewels.

The following year, in 1982, while filming The Thorn Birds, the inhalation of special-effects smoke on the set may have caused her to contract bronchitis, which was compounded by her cigarette habit; she was a smoker from the age of nine until four years before her death.

Stanwyck died on January 20, 1990, aged 82, of congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. She had indicated that she wanted no funeral service. In accordance with her wishes, her remains were cremated and the ashes scattered from a helicopter over Lone Pine, California, where she had made some of her western films.