#raxl knows best

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 5 Review: In Which the Horror Begins (+ A Lesson on Irony)

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

We have reached the end of the first week of Strange Paradise and the real beginning of the fun. I hoped to get to this post a week or two earlier, but I kept having to postpone writing entries for this blog because life kept getting in the way. I’ve also been re-watching episodes from later in the Maljardin arc, because I actually re-watch, screencap, and write commentary on each episode twice before I review.

In the last episode, THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES, while possessing his descendant Jean Paul Desmond, brought Jean Paul’s sister-in-law Dr. Alison Carr to his private island Maljardin. (I find it amusing how these soaps introduce almost everyone with their full names each episode and include so much exposition about earlier events. I know that it was necessary at the time because most soap opera episodes only aired once and DVRs weren’t invented yet, but it still sounds silly.) In this episode, Alison discovers to her horror what we the audience already know: that her sister Erica is dead and sealed in the cryonics capsule.

The first half of this episode and the way it is written is a good example of dramatic irony. Nowadays, the concept of irony is often misunderstood because of the way certain hipsters in recent years have abused the word, to the extent that few people now know what it really means. The term “irony” actually refers to several distinct devices used in fiction, rhetoric, etc. which all involve a difference between the appearance of or one’s expectations for a situation and the reality:

There’s verbal irony, when someone says the opposite of what they mean: for instance, if Raxl were to sarcastically call Jacques an angel or I were to say that this show is as subtle as a neon pink sledgehammer to the skull.

There’s situational irony, when something goes differently to what we the audience expect: say, Jacques signing his name instead of Jean Paul’s on Dan’s documents while impersonating him, or no one but Raxl and Quito knowing about the temple despite its incredibly obvious “hidden” door. (Had it ever happened, Raxl calling Jacques an angel would also qualify, because she is always so upfront about how she feels about him.)

There’s historical irony, when history turns out to be the opposite of what one predicts: take this early ad for the show that boasts, “Don’t laugh. Wait until you see the ratings.”

There’s cosmic irony, when a character’s fate turns out the opposite to their expectations. This is what happens to the protagonists in the majority of deal-with-the-Devil stories, who are manipulated into signing pacts for things like unlimited wealth or magical knowledge and who trick themselves into thinking that their good fortune will last forever, but who end up damned to Hell when the Devil comes to collect their souls.

There’s Socratic irony, which means feigning ignorance to trick an enemy. This is Jacques’ usual modus operandi when someone tries to unmask him.

There’s romantic irony or metafiction, which is not present in this show at all. Strange Paradise is not meta; it takes itself too seriously.

And then there’s dramatic irony, which applies to the plot of the first half of this episode. Dramatic irony is when we the audience know something that a character does not, but which will influence their ultimate fate.

 Alison came to the island to visit Erica, to ensure that she was alive and well. Jacques disguised as Jean Paul convinced her that Erica was OK and then repeatedly changed the subject and took her on a tour of Maljardin to distract her. Thinking that she must be somewhere upstairs, Alison starts to climb the steps and says, “I’m going to see her. Where is she?”

“She’s not upstairs,” Jacques replies, making Bissits Face™ as a mike shadow passes along the wall. “She’s”--dramatic pause--”below. In the family crypt.”

He looks so sincere. Not.

At first, Alison does not understand and laughs. “What on Earth is she doing in the-” she asks, but then it hits her. Then she realizes that he means that her sister is dead. “No, no, she’s not!” she cries.

“Only temporarily,” says the handsome devil.

“What kind of a man are you? Take me to her!”

He gives her directions to the crypt and then de-possesses Jean Paul, who blacked out while he was possessed and is therefore confused about what is going on. Alison calls for him and he joins her in the crypt. This is Part Two of the big reveal of the ironic twist to Alison, when she discovers the Cryonics Capsule. “You didn’t! You couldn’t!” she screams, thinking that her brother-in-law has frozen Erica alive.

"I love her too much to just allow her to die,” Jean Paul replies, but that does not reassure her. She accuses him of freezing her alive, but he denies it and reassures her that she was already dead. She starts crying and we get the first of many scenes throughout the Maljardin arc where these characters display affection for one another. And with that come even more feels.

Jean Paul/Alison is my OTP.

Jean Paul confesses that he no longer has complete control over himself. “I don't know what I believe, what I accept these strange days,” he says. “Sometimes I don't even realize what I am doing. Something drives me on, some power stronger than me. Some…evil force.” Cut to Jacques’ coffin in the crypt followed by his portrait, because this show’s directors don’t know the meaning of subtlety. “Raxl claims it’s the devil.”

Following this, we get some background information, first from Jean Paul about Erica’s death and then from Raxl about Jacques. I will probably end up referencing the former again in later posts, so I will quote it:

Erica hadn't been feeling well, so Dr. Menkin took some blood samples to the Mainland for tests. She was sitting on that couch just as you are now, when the first attack came. It was devastating. I have never known such fear. Dr. Menkin called it an eclamptic convulsion...Well, I got her up to her room and put her to bed. Dr. Menkin took over but there was very little he could do to ease her suffering...We lost [the baby]. But I couldn't care in that moment. About an hour later, when I was holding her in my arms, she cried out, "no, Jean Paul, no, don't let me go.” Her body felt like a steel spring under compression. It felt like it was almost ready to explode. When the spasm hit her, she arched. There was nothing I could do. Nothing!...All that beauty, all that life. My life, snuffed out as easily as a candle. How I loved her. How I still love her. My darling Erica, gone.

The latter is longer and contains some tangents, so I will summarize. That evening, Raxl reveals that, after Jacques’ wife gave birth to his son, he murdered her. Raxl and some unspecified others (she says “we”) avenged the death of Madame des Mondes by making the Conjure Doll and piercing its head with the silver pin, which she says “destroys all hope for salvation.” Then she tells Alison about how Jean Paul set him free and that Jacques possesses him. Alison refuses to believe her, saying that such things don’t happen “in this day and age.” That she doesn’t believe Raxl creates more dramatic irony, because, in case you haven’t already figured it out, Raxl and possibly Quito are the only good characters so far who understand what is going on. But Quito is mute and a zombie--meaning that he can’t say what he knows--and almost no one believes Raxl.

She is probably thinking something like, “Oh, Dr. Carr, you sweet summer child.”

Then they hear a scream outside and open the front door. Because this show had neither the time nor the budget to film more outdoor scenes, they stay in the Great Hall and watch as Quito carries the corpse of an old man inside.

Hmmm...I wonder who did it? Do you think there’s a slight chance it may have been that smirking man right there?

Raxl identifies the dead man immediately as Dr. Menkin, and rightly suspects Jacques. He, of course, feigns innocence, complete with more Bissits Face™ and barely disguised smirking, because apparently he thinks Raxl is stupid enough to fall for that. Here is his alibi, which is thoroughly unconvincing:

But she sees through this, because Dr. Menkin doesn’t drink, and gives him the lie. He makes her swear to keep his implied murder a secret, then orders her to leave. And then Jacques de-possesses Jean Paul, but not before plying him with booze.

I said back in my first review that this would become a common theme.

He has a fever dream that consists of Raxl shouting at him while making some seriously frightening facial expressions. Had I watched this as a kid, the faces she makes in this dream sequence would have given me nightmares.

Raxl: "Don't look! Otherwise, you may see the very man you are…the very man you might have been!"

This line--a paraphrase of one from the first episode--implies that Jean Paul and Jacques are reincarnations of the same person. If this is indeed the case, does Raxl know? Is that one of the messages she intends to communicate to her master in this bizarre sequence? That Jacques and Jean Paul are the same character is something that Ian Martin implies repeatedly but never confirms, and one of many plot points that later writers forget to explore or explain. I’m not one hundred percent certain he was planning to reveal that (I don’t have access to his notes or original outline), but it seems likely.

Anyway, Jean Paul, who does not yet know of Dr. Menkin’s death, wakes up and confronts Jacques’ portrait. He, too, has begun to see the reality and cosmic irony of his situation: that, by setting Jacques free, he may have condemned himself to eternal suffering:

Jean Paul: "You are the nightmare! Must I restore your evil life to have my darling Erica's life back? Damn you!"

“Or am I the one that’s damned? Must I be lost in Hell with you!”

This episode is the first episode of Strange Paradise to successfully invoke the feelings of terror that one expects from a horror show. Although I love this program, I have to admit that, when they try to make it scary, they often fail and end up making it unintentionally funny instead. They tried before in the pilot in the scene where Jean Paul announces “on this island...I am God,” but the drum-roll, dramatic music, and Fox and Lee’s overacting make it instead laugh-out-loud funny. Likewise, the suspense of the scene where he frees Jacques is ruined by ridiculous screechy sound effects and intersplicing with a bad cover of a jazz standard. I think that the Jacques scenes in Episodes 2 and 4 were intended to be funny and, if so, they succeeded. While Episode 3 is scary, it’s a different kind of scary than the classic horror sense, being about two powerful authority figures trying to prey on a helpless young woman: still a common theme in the Gothic genre, yes, but not what most people watch spook-shows for. No, Episode 5 is genuinely frightening and compelling in its Gothic horror, making it a good conclusion to the first week of this soap opera.

Stay tuned for a Bad Subtitles Special on Friday and join us again next week as we review Episode 6, including a detailed recap and analysis (with a side of bad costume roast) of the second flashback about the life of Jacques. I look forward to it, and I hope you do, too.

( <-- Previous: Episode 4   ||   Next: Episode 6, Part I --> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 45 Review: Bob Costello’s First Episode

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

At long last, welcome back to my review series for Strange Paradise, a show increasingly living up to its name. In 1969 PT, the audience for this episode--primarily young people and housewives smitten with Colin Fox--is watching Jacques threaten Alison’s life if Vangie tells anyone about the events on Maljardin after leaving. Meanwhile in our timeline, the story takes a different, more bizarre direction, featuring an allegedly evil rabbit, a bloodied locket that once belonged to Erica Desmond, and an emergency séance that ends in a poisoning.

Now that former Dark Shadows staff member Robert Costello has taken the helm as producer, there will be many changes to the show, including a change in writers. Co-creator and former headwriter Ian Martin is gone now, and in his place we have George Salverson and Ron Chudley. Salverson was a prolific writer for Canadian radio and television, writing (among many other works) a 1949 radio adaptation of Dracula that’s very good and at least four scripts for the 1967 historical comedy TV series Hatch’s Mill[1], which also starred Cosette Lee and Sylvia Feigel and featured Kurt Schiegl as Big Kurt. Chudley was an up-and-coming writer who, like fellow SP writers Ian Martin and Harding Lemay, became better-known for his later work. He is still alive as far as I can tell and works as a novelist and playwright. The resume on his personal website lists a wide variety of works, including a series of mystery novels, one published play (After Abraham), and many scripts for different media, including “over one hundred [TV] scripts, for CBC and independents.” Salverson and Chudley will only write the next five episodes, but one of these (Episode 47) will be among the best of Maljardin.

From now until Episode 149, all episodes will open with new, Dark Shadows-style narrations delivered by cast members. The first, read by Angela Roland (Vangie), is rather vague and--surprisingly--doesn’t recap Holly’s poisoning:

Death lives in this great house on Maljardin, striking as swiftly as a bolt of lightning. Legend says it is caused by the evil of this man [Jacques Eloi des Mondes], three hundred years dead:

But others believe it is something more, like the Reverend Matthew Dawson.

The reason why she mentions Matt of all characters is because he appears first in this episode, lamenting the fact that Alison hasn’t yet verified whether or not his twenty-year-old stalkee Holly survived the poisoning attempt at the end of last episode. “Murder is a three-hundred-year-old tradition here on Maljardin,” he comments, speaking to the portrait which he refuses to believe is animate. “Do traditions ever die?”

“Murder, Reverend Dawson?” Vangie asks, which triggers a discussion of who could have poisoned the wine that Holly drank. Was the culprit her mother who poured it (and whom Vangie and Raxl have identified as a dangerous witch)? Was it Raxl, who filled the decanter? And could Holly have drank the cyanide that Jean Paul took from the lab in Episode 23, which has been missing since? We soon get an answer to the third question, courtesy of Holly’s mother Elizabeth:

Well, that was quick.

“They tried to murder my daughter,” she accuses. “What will they do to the rest of us?”

“They?” Matt asks, confused. “Who?”

“I filled the glass, Raxl filled the decanter, and where was Jean Paul?” She asks about the master of Maljardin with a tone of accusation, evidently suspecting him of playing some role in the attempted murder. This is the first time on this show that one of Colin Fox’s contractually obligated absences has been worked into the plot in a way that makes sense, and I think it’s brilliant. His absence from the second séance provides her with a realistic and believable reason to accuse him of having something to do with the poisoning.

As for what Jean Paul was doing during the events of last episode...

Less realistic or believable, IMO.

He appears to have spent the night rabbit-sitting in his bedroom the whole time while trying unsuccessfully to interrogate it. “What are you?” he asks the Rabbit of Evil, who ignores him because it knows which of them is really in control of the island now. “A creature that cannot exist on this island and yet does exist! My...Erica...”

Raxl cuts him off when she enters the room, bringing tea as a pretext. “The master is not safe with a devil spirit in the room,” she tells him, no doubt wanting the fluffy devil spirit back so she can sacrifice it.

Jean Paul must see through Raxl’s flimsy pretext, given how dramatically he refuses the refreshments she brought. “Leave me, Raxl,” he hisses, mugging for the camera. “I do not want your tea!” Even after she offers to taste it first, he refuses.

Raxl leaves to visit the Great Hall, where she arrives just in time to overhear Elizabeth accusing her of poisoning Holly. After pissing off Elizabeth by giving her the stink-eye, Raxl sends Vangie upstairs to report to Jean Paul with the locket.

Raxl giving Elizabeth the stink-eye.

Elizabeth tries using the look as evidence that Raxl is working against them. Vangie doesn’t buy it.

While ranting to Quito in the crypt, Raxl recaps what she knows about Erica, the locket, and the Rabbit of Evil. She speaks of herself in the third person: “Raxl cannot tell them because they are fools!” This is a new thing, which Ian Martin’s Raxl never did. It’s also the second time this happens in the episode; the first instance occurs in the tea scene. where she asks, “Does the master wish Raxl to taste the tea before he drinks?” I don’t like it. I think referring to herself in the third person makes Raxl sound less intelligent than she’s proven herself to be.

Meanwhile, in Jean Paul’s room, Vangie dangles the sparkling locket like a pendulum before Jean Paul’s eyes:

Vangie: "Jean Paul Desmond…look at the locket…focus on the locket…focus as I swing it back and forth like a pendulum…you are now getting very relaxed…now, Jean Paul Desmond…now you will stop being mean and grumpy as you have been since the capsule malfunctioned…you will go back to being polite and charming like before and stop breaking everybody’s hearts…you will confess your love to Dr. Alison Carr…you will also stop looking constipated…Jean Paul Desmond…Jean Paul Desmond…"

I wish. No, she isn’t actually using it to hypnotize Jean Paul, just showing it to him so that he can inspect it. He verifies that it belonged to her and claims that he “put [it] on Erica’s throat with [his] own hands. I saw it sealed into the capsule with her, with these same eyes that see it now.”

The line above is a retcon. In Episode 4, Erica was not wearing any visible locket when the men from the Cryonics Society insert her body into the cryocapsule. Jean Paul entered the crypt to see her after they had already sealed her in.

“Now, take it, Jean Paul,” Vangie orders. “Feel it. It is real!” She says this as though Jean Paul had just denied it being Erica’s, which is the opposite of his reaction. “I can touch it no more! Take it back!”

She hands it to him and he takes it. Even though he says it’s real and so does she, he still wants confirmation. “Touch it, Vangie!” he begs. “You must! How am I to save my mind? How else am I to know if it is true and real, what I am seeing?”

“Do you doubt your mind, Jean Paul?” Vangie asks, although it’s obvious that’s the only explanation for his command.

“This is the mystery,” he says. “This is the terrible fact I must find out, without this.” It’s not clear what specifically he means by this in either of those sentences. “Vangie, how can you make a contact?”

Not wanting to subject herself to a third dangerous séance on the island, Vangie tells him, “I’m sorry, Jean Paul. The séance is impossible. The angry spirit that came into this house with the locket and the black rabbit is still here, waiting. It can seize any one of us as it seized Holly. I will not do it!”

But Jean Paul insists that she must, or else “how will [he] be able to save [his] mind?”

“How much are you asking?” Vangie demands. “What are you doing to me? What are you doing to all of us?”

Speechless, Jean Paul doesn’t respond. After Vangie leaves the room, he clutches the locket to his chest. “How am I to save myself and my Erica?” he ponders, his eyes wide with terror.

Down in the Great Hall, Vangie vents to Matt and Elizabeth about how she doesn’t want to put them in danger by holding another séance, throwing the box that was on top of the séance table in anger. Elizabeth, remembering that Jean Paul had once seemed “such a reasonable man,” speculates that one of them may be able to reason with him.

Meanwhile, Jean Paul begins to speculate that someone has opened the capsule and continues his attempted interrogation of the very bored-looking rabbit:

Jean Paul: “Who are you? What are you? If I gave you the poisonous leaves here on Maljardin where nothing lives, would you die, or have you lived and dined on this vile island on poison?” Rabbit of Evil: “...”

Jean Paul: *obviously reading Teleprompter* "Or are you innocent? And if you are, then you would die blameless. Or is Raxl right? Was it evil that brought me the locket or good?"

Jean Paul: *unable to suppress a smile at the ridiculous monologue about the cute animal* "And which are you: good or evil?" Rabbit of Evil: *twitches nose cutely*

This scene is the crowning moment of cute on Maljardin, between Colin Fox’s unsuccessfully suppressed smile and the adorable rabbit twitching its nose at him. Eventually giving up on questioning the animal, he sets it back down in the picnic basket and returns to the matter of the locket.

“Yes!” he declares. “I can find these answers if the capsule is opened. And if there’s nothing there or the locket is there,”--he reads the Teleprompter some more--”then this is false!”

After a brief filler scene between Raxl and Quito--in which she, thankfully, is back to referring to herself in the first person--Matt visits Jean Paul in his room. Attempting to reason with him, the Reverend begs Jean Paul to confess if he is responsible for the things that have happened to Holly, between her being pushed down the stairs, the slashed portrait, and last episode’s poisoning. Jean Paul accuses him of plotting with the others on the island to gaslight him, then describes his new, bizarre theory about Dan removing the locket from the cryocapsule when it allegedly failed and dipping it in blood as part of their plot. But how did Dan get the blood? The only possibility, he believes, is that there was blood on Erica. This provides him with yet another reason to open the capsule: to see where and how Erica was bleeding, which he now claims he remembers happening.

Meanwhile, Raxl and Quito meet in their bedroom to discuss the necessity of finding the conjure doll and the silver pin. And the fact that they’re meeting in their room means...

There he is, again: our mascot!

They leave to search in the Temple of the Serpent shortly after, and we get this well-lit shot of the passageway between the crypt and the temple.

Matt returns to the Great Hall and recaps his conversation with Jean Paul to Vangie, who comes to the conclusion that the situation on Maljardin is hopeless because Jean Paul doesn’t know the truth. At the same time, Raxl prays to the Serpent in the temple to tell her if the “woman-child” Holly should die, to which the answer is “yes.” She then orders Quito to “search” (for the doll and pin) and he screams!

Quito screaming, with the moment’s location in the video of Part 3. Even though it’s not technically a line, I’m going to count this as a line flub because Quito is supposed to be mute.

Later in the Great Hall, Jacques speaks to Jean Paul through the portrait, telling him not to open the capsule. “You will learn nothing,” he argues. “You will finish off Erica for nothing. Don’t you think so? All you can learn is whether that machine works. Is Erica’s body perfectly preserved, or is Erica now something else?”

Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.

Ignoring him, Jean Paul retreats to the crypt, where he grips the capsule and cries, believing he must open it but fearing for Erica’s safety. Raxl finds him there and begs him to open it and let her die naturally, not just so he gets his answers, but also “so that she may have eternal peace with the god that you denied.”

“Are you, too, suggesting that I am mad?” Jean Paul asks.

“Open the capsule, do not open the capsule. If madness is to come, it may come right away," is her cryptic reply.

Jean Paul crying on the capsule from the episode’s final scene.

While not as good as the other Salverson and Chudley episodes to come, Episode 45 shows promise in its focus on Jean Paul’s descent into insanity. Once he realizes that the locket was Erica’s, he constructs a ridiculous conspiracy theory involving his enemy Dan removing it while tampering with the capsule and somehow getting blood on it. He feels tempted to open the capsule despite the danger to her frozen body, and now must choose between risking her permanent death by opening (what Raxl wants) and keeping it shut despite his mounting fears that the uncertainty will drive him mad, so that Jacques can resurrect Erica. The script has its issues and there are some amusing bloopers, but the first episode produced by Robert Costello is engaging and suspenseful, leaving the viewer with questions about what will happen and be revealed in Week 10.

Coming up next: The Bad Subtitle Special for Week 9, followed by two theories about Jean Paul’s new fears regarding Erica and the locket.

{<-- Previous: Episode 44   ||   Next: Episode 46 -->}

Notes

[1] Hatch’s Mill makes for an interesting footnote in SP history. In addition to sharing one writer and three actors in major roles, Peg McNamara (aka Peg Dixon, the first Ada Thaxton) and Patricia Collins (the first Huaco des Mondes) played minor roles in one episode. A scathing 1968 review by critic Douglas Marshall provides the most detailed description of Hatch’s Mill available for free online.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise, Part II: The Top 5 Worst Things

Last week, I listed my top five favorite things about the first 44 episodes of Strange Paradise, when Ian Martin was headwriter and when the show had a very different feel to it than in the final four weeks of the Maljardin arc. But no creative work is perfect, and, despite my fondness for this show, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think that the writing for early Maljardin had several glaring flaws. Unlike Danny Horn, I don’t think that Ron Sproat was a better writer than Martin (actually, I consider Sproat the worst writer on SP), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t also feel that his writing needed some improvement. Note that this entry is specifically about the writing during this period, so things outside his creative control (e.g. the Conjure Man’s questionable casting) will be excluded from the list.

That said, here are my top five least favorite things about the writing in the first nine weeks of Strange Paradise:

5. Cheesy dialogue

More specifically, (1) bad jokes and (2) slang that was already outdated when these episodes originally aired in 1969. This one is #5 because, while these lines are cheesy, I can’t hate them because most of them make me laugh. Even my personal least favorite of Jacques’ jokes, the “pose” line from Episode 18, is kind of funny in an ironic, anti-humor sort of way, like the dad jokes that have become fashionable in recent years. While there are some jokes in this show that I find genuinely funny--Elizabeth’s Song of Solomon joke, for instance, or “the lady doth detest too much”--most others are the epitome of cornball. Sometimes you hear both in the same episode: Episode 21 is loaded with Devil jokes/puns that would be unforgivably corny if Colin Fox didn’t possess enough charisma to sell them, and yet the same episode also features a genuinely hilarious double entendre. The good jokes sneak up on you, sometimes amidst a hurricane of bad ones.

As for the slang, some comments that I’ve read mention that it was largely out of date even in the late sixties. My good friend Steve (with whom I often discuss SP) has told me that “you might not be aware of how campy that slang sounded in 1969 since you obviously did not live through the Sixties--this happened with a lot of TV shows during that period, the most egregious examples being the various ‘evil druggie Hippie’ episodes of DRAGNET.” Apparently Martin became infamous for using outdated slang later on when he wrote for CBS Radio Mystery Theater, putting lines like “I dig a man who’s far-out!” and “I think bein’ around here’s gonna be kicks!” in the mouths of some of his younger characters. Even if he had used up-to-date slang, it most likely would have still aged poorly (as slang typically does), especially for generations born after phrases like “the most” and “making the ___ scene” fell out of use.

4. Slow pace and excessive repetition

This one is also low on the list, because slow pace and repetition weren’t flaws when the show originally aired, but instead have aged poorly because of advances in technology that made them unnecessary. Before the advent of the programmable VCR, you had to be able to catch the program you wanted to watch on time or have someone you knew catch it on time and record it--which, in 1969, would have meant an audio-only tape recording. This meant that only the most fortunate and/or most loyal viewers would have been able to watch Strange Paradise every day, making it necessary to recap all the major events in subsequent episodes for those who missed out. This is also likely the reason why early SP (like most soaps of the time) has a relatively slow pace: if too much happens in one episode, you have to recap more and the people who missed the big episode are more disappointed.

Nowadays, with DVRs, video streaming, and DVD sets--not to mention certain legally-questionable means--it’s nearly impossible to miss an episode of your favorite show (with few exceptions), making extensive recap largely obsolete. Screenwriters can cram as many plot points as they want into one episode and no longer have to write five episodes of the other characters reacting to the news if they don’t want to.

Even so, just because the constant recap served a function at the time doesn’t mean I have to like it. It gets annoying hearing the same plot points reiterated episode after episode. Like I said while reviewing Episode 21, “if someone were to remake this show for Netflix or another streaming service, they could safely ignore about 75 percent of the original scripts and condense the remaining 25 percent quite a bit without omitting anything important.”

And don’t even get me started on the lampshading of absent cast members, like in Episode 9 when Jean Paul and Quito wasted two minutes searching for Raxl just to slow the plot down. It’s nothing compared to Ron Sproat’s “we must search for Quito” filler episode in Desmond Hall (Episode 78), but still, those scenes were pointless.

3. Extreme artistic license with certain historical/cultural details

Although Ian Martin did a surprising amount of research on certain subjects for Strange Paradise, there are some subjects where he either didn’t do enough research, or (more likely) made extensive use of artistic license. The first one is his portrayal of Jacques’ wife Huaco as an Inca princess despite their marriage occurring over a century after the fall of the Inca Empire. I discussed this all the way back in Part II of my review of the pilot, where I invented the theory of Jacques traveling back in time to marry her, but other possible explanations include Huaco being a 17th-century descendant of Inca royalty (as the Quechua people are still alive today), extreme artistic license, and/or critical research failure. I don’t know if we would have eventually gotten a good explanation if Martin had continued writing the series, but we would need a damn good one for the approximate equivalent of having a 21st-century character marry the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and accept it considering that this is a fantasy series, but it still creates a lot of plot holes that need to be filled.[1]

Another example of artistic license about which I feel more ambivalent is the conflation of voodoo with the Aztec-inspired indigenous religion of Maljardin, which I’ve discussed before both in my Episode 23 review and Part I of this post series. I’m not sure if this is genius--religious syncretism is a real phenomenon throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, and some people today do syncretize the vodou Serpent God with Quetzalcoatl--or just an instance of Martin playing fast and loose with facts. I would like to think it’s the former, but it could just as easily be the latter (hence why I referenced it on both lists--I have mixed feelings about it).

2. Annoying inconsistencies

Does Raxl know that Jean Paul is possessed by Jacques Eloi des Mondes? Does Vangie? Why does Jacques’ portrait disappear in some episodes after he possesses Jean Paul, but not in others? All three of these things vary from episode to episode, and change annoyingly often as the plot demands. Steve and I have also discussed this subject in the past, and he believes that Martin used this device to make the story easier to follow; if that’s the case, it appears that he used Raxl and Vangie as audience surrogates, especially for new viewers or people who didn’t tune in every day. But surely there were other ways to do that without creating continuity errors? It may have served a function, but that doesn’t make it good writing. What Martin is essentially doing is filling and reopening the same plothole, episode after episode.

Regarding the portrait, I don’t know how much to blame Martin’s scripts for this inconsistency and how much to blame the directors, as I don’t have access to any SP scripts beyond the pilot script and the Vignettes. However, I’m going to assume that he’s at least partially to blame, because at least the pilot script mentions the disappearing portrait (which literally disappears in all three of the Paperback Library novels), Also, while none of the characters ever mention the portrait vanishing (unlike in the tie-in novels), some of his episodes have characters looking at it while Jacques is controlling Jean Paul and commenting on the uncanny resemblance. See also the diegesis tag for more discussion and analysis of the disappearing portrait.

1. Tim’s subplot

It should surprise none of my regular readers that Tim’s subplot is my #1 least favorite thing about the first nine weeks of Maljardin. I’ve already written an entire post about why I dislike this subplot, so I’ll keep my discussion of it here brief. Jean Paul saves the life of artist Tim Stanton when he hires him to paint Erica’s portrait, but then does nothing to make the commission easy for him--which is not a bad set-up for a plot in and of itself, but the execution is terrible. Tim chooses to use Holly as his model despite her barely resembling Erica, and Martin mostly uses their subsequent interactions to drive the old, tired, clichéd plot where two people who bicker and hate each other at first eventually fall in love (or at least he appears to be setting that up[2]). The payoff for the Holly portrait subplot finally occurs in Episode 33, but it’s underwhelming (not to mention barely recapped) and the already bland Tim quickly becomes a background character. In short, his subplot is a boring waste of time and should have either had more payoff or--preferably--been scrapped altogether.

That concludes my list of the worst things about Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise. Stay tuned for my review of Episode 45 within the next two weeks.

{<- Previous: The Top 5 Best Things }

Note

[1] Interestingly, there is a possible (if unlikely) historical explanation for Huaco’s sister Rahua having “skin as white as goat’s milk” and “hair like ripened wheat.” An early Spanish account of the Chachapoya people (aka Cloud People) of the Northern Andes describe them as “the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen, and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas’ wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.” Assuming the Spanish account isn’t made up, this proves that reality is sometimes unrealistic.

[2] Thankfully, given the soap opera genre, it’s unlikely that Tim and Holly would have stayed together forever, even if they had eventually fallen in love during their painting-and-bickering sessions. Even so, that doesn’t make it a good subplot.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 43 Review: Curiouser and Curiouser

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

Maljardin, an isle of mystery. Much remains unknown on Jean Paul Desmond’s isolated island, including the locations of the conjure doll, silver pin, and the missing cyanide, the contents of the final week of Dr. Menkin’s missing notes, and the true cause of death of Jean Paul’s beloved wife Erica. Now that a mysterious black rabbit has appeared on the island which has known no wildlife for three hundred years, new mysteries arise, including one that literally surrounds that rabbit’s neck.

In Ian Martin’s original timeline, this would be the point where the Reverend Matt Dawson exorcised Raxl and Quito’s writing box (although whether that would have revealed the Conjure Man’s also mysterious original message is anyone’s guess), but executive meddling required him to negate that timeline and write about the Rabbit of Evil instead. Come, let’s follow the black rabbit into the increasingly bizarre rabbit hole that is mid-Maljardin-era Strange Paradise.

A minute and a half in, and Cosette Lee is already in top form. Chew that scenery, Cosy!

We open with a recap of the séance from a week and a half ago, courtesy of Raxl and Jean Paul. Raxl gives us the great line above comparing the falling chandelier to “a fist of the devil,” which she delivers beautifully. She connects the falling chandelier to the rabbit who just appeared--or, as she calls it, "this THING that mocks the problem!"

This is Jean Paul’s concerned face.

When she reminds him that the black rabbit appeared out of nowhere on the island which previously harbored no wild animals, he looks increasingly concerned. Whereas in yesterday's episode, he dismissed her claims as superstition and the rabbit as a harmless animal that probably came over on the boat, now he appears willing to think them over. At least that’s how it appears in this part of the scene, although it’s also possible that he’s just worried about Raxl’s sanity. Raxl may be melodramatic and she may sometimes go to extremes in her efforts to protect her home from THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES, but she is arguably saner than you are, Jean Paul.

"Oh, master, believe me!" she begs. "This…thing, this…thing in the form of an animal is a manifestation of evil!"

“Evil, in your eyes, Raxl,” corrects Jean Paul, or so he thinks.

“Not only mine. Look at Quito. He has eyes, too. He knows. Oh, master, believe me! This black rabbit is an emissary of DEATH!”

Jean Paul continues his mansplaining.

Oh, Jean Paul! To think, I had so much hope for you! I guess that, even after repeated possessions, Dr. Menkin's mysterious death, a leaking capsule, a falling chandelier, and all the things that have happened to Holly, you still refuse to believe in "superstition." You know that, down in Hell, Jacques is kicking back in his peacock chair, gloating about this again:

Jacques: “Jean Paul, what was that again about your IQ of 187?” *evil laugh*

"Then how could it be on Maljardin?" she asks.

"The supply boat, perhaps," he repeats from last episode. "Holly Marshall had no trouble in hiding herself in order to get over here. Surely a small animal like this would be even less likely to be noticed." It sounds plausible, but it’s still doubtful that the rabbit would have lasted so long after the supply boat returned to Maljardin without eating some poisonous plant and dying. I doubt that Quito leaves fresh produce just lying around on the boat.

"If you want to, believe that," replies Raxl, "but I believe it is possessed by EVIL!"

"Raxl, it seems that you are the one who is possessed by fear.”

"It seems the Devil is possessing us all, quietly, cunningly, and each day just a little more," she says, before leaving for the crypt. Quito follows behind, carrying the rabbit, who is just as enthusiastic as it was last episode about being part of one of Canada's first domestically-produced soaps. The way it squirms trying to escape from Quito’s arms in the crypt scene is priceless:

ROFLMAO

Meanwhile, Jean Paul argues with Jacques about the rabbit. Jacques agrees with Raxl on the rabbit's supernatural origins, which further angers Jean Paul. He asks him why he wants to convince him of that, and Jacques gives this cryptic reply: "Big beings have little beings on their backs to spite them, and little beings have smaller beings, and so on, ad infinitum."

"Now, perhaps Raxl is right," Jean Paul muses. "Now just what is in your mind?"

"Perhaps you'll find out at the séance," Jacques teases. He goes on to suggest to him that perhaps Erica did not want to be frozen in the "ridiculous" cryonics capsule. Jean Paul gets all defensive in response and accuses him of trying to break their pact. "Isn't it about time that you delivered her back to me?" he demands.

"We'll find out at the next séance," says Jacques, and Jean Paul demands that he not attend. Jacques implies that there may not be another séance (but why not?), and Jean Paul flips out on him:

FEAR the finger of DOOM!

The acting from both Colin and Cosette in this episode is so over-the-top that it’s somewhere in outer space.

And then...

The Reverend Matt Dawson walks in on him arguing with Jacques and thinks that he was talking to himself.

How does Jean Paul respond? Why, by gaslighting him, of course! “It’s hard to imagine that a man of the cloth would lose control so easily,” he says as though Matt were the one with a screw loose. Now, isn’t that charming?

Matt warns Jean Paul that the people on Maljardin--himself included--are looking for an escape. "We are not children, and we are not completely powerless," he tells Jean Paul. "We will find a way to cut the knots that bind us here."

He also says that his faith, which was challenged when he arrived on the island, is returning. Jean Paul uses this as another opportunity to gaslight him: “You are not regaining your faith. You are merely losing your faculties.” One would think that was a Jacques line, but it’s not. There’s neither a shot of the portrait disappearing, nor any Jean Paul headache faces followed by Jacques’ beringed hand grabbing his face, nor is Fox-C grinning psychotically like Jacques would probably do while saying that. It’s Jean Paul at his most unpleasant.

“On Maljardin, only I speak,” he continues. “Others listen.” It’s like he’s determined to be as much of an asshole as possible in this episode. Bless his heart.

But all the despotic orders in the world won’t shut the Reverend up. “Now I know why I came to Maljardin,” he replies, and it’s not to stalk a twenty-year-old teenager. “It was my destiny to be a force of good among all the evil here.”

“A savior?” Jean Paul asks.

“Perhaps,” he replies. “Is there one here who needs saving from himself?”

Sometimes I wonder if Reverend Dawson was intended to be the real hero of SP.

Raxl and Quito enter the Not-So-Hidden Temple of the Serpent with the rabbit. She pleads and begs for the Serpent to give her answers about the Rabbit of Evil, calling the adorable animal a “monster.” This scene is classic Raxl and belongs on any list of Raxl’s best scenes. Here are my two favorite lines from it:

Raxl: "Speak to me, Great One, for the sake of my master and his beloved visitors and for all the spirits in this house who are roasting on the spit of the fire of evil. OPEN YOUR SPEECH TO MY UNDERSTANDING!"

"Quito, TAKE THIS EVIL THING! Its foulness has stilled temporarily the voice of the Great Serpent!"

But it doesn’t stilt the Serpent for long. The mysterious locket at the beginning of this review appears around its neck, where it wasn’t before. When Raxl touches it, it stains her hand with blood.

Meanwhile, in Jean Paul’s hidden monitor room...

Jean Paul: "Erica, my darling, I wonder how you will find me when at last we are together again? I fear the strain of all this has made me hard and cynical. The Reverend is good, twice the man he was when he first arrived. If only he could see the rightness of my cause, he would make such an ally for my purposes." [You’re deluding yourself, Jean Paul. You have zero chance of convincing Matt that your cryonics scheme is anything but blasphemy.]

"Some serve me, to their honor and reward. Some cross me--to their death!"

*reading Teleprompter* "No one understands. There is an inner circle, my love, and it is big enough for just the two of us."

Jean Paul: "My darling, the second séance is very close at hand. The Conjure Woman recovers and this time nothing will stop us!"

*more obvious Teleprompter reading* "You will come, you will speak, and at last for the first time, for just a little while, you and I will be together."

He’s so cute! <3

Like the previous episode, it’s obvious that they rushed this one even in comparison to the others, because of how often Fox-C reads the Teleprompter. I’ve noticed that he does so more often starting during this week of the show and increasingly until Cornelius Crane takes over writing the show--which won’t be for another two weeks--before slowly petering out until Desmond Hall. I see this as a measure of how hastily an episode was slapped together, although I could be making assumptions.

Anyway, Raxl asks Quito if he noticed the bloody locket before, and he shakes his head. “I am right!” exclaims Raxl about her belief that the rabbit was a demon. She follows this up by asking the Serpent, “Where did it come from?” and we cut to the camera panning over the cryonics capsule:

Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.

Quito leaves the temple to find Matt and Holly sneaking into the crypt, and chases them back up to the Great Hall. Holly demands to know where the rabbit is and Raxl (who enters just then) announces that it ran away!

“Discovered something, didn’t you?” Matt asks Raxl. He asks if she found the doll and pin or the week of missing notes, to which she answers no and no. “For Heaven’s sake, what? Another demon?”

Just as baffled as I am that a Christian minister like him doesn’t believe in demons, she accuses him of mocking her. He accuses her of turning irrational, which means that Jean Paul’s “everyone is irrational but me” delusion must be rubbing off on him. Holly accuses Raxl of having already killed the rabbit.

“Foolishness! Madness!” Raxl shouts. “I tell you that-”

Matt interrupts to point to the rabbit, who, despite its tall ears, is somehow able to sleep through this argument. Must have selective hearing.

Holly grabs the rabbit and Raxl starts screaming for her to hand it over. “IT IS EVIL! IT MUST BE KILLED!” she cries as Matt restrains her. “IT MUST BE DESTROYED BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!” Fortunately for Holly (but unfortunately for Raxl), Jean Paul hears the commotion and comes downstairs to take the rabbit from them.

When he does, we hear the sound of a small object dropping. He leans over to pick it up and reveals the strangest detail so far in this mystery:

Jean Paul: "This locket…" Raxl: "Yes, master, I-" Jean Paul: *more pained* "This locket…was…Erica's!"

Everyone’s jaw drops--which we see in a series of close-ups of all five human actors in this episode--and the music swells. After commercial, Raxl tearfully reveals that Jean Paul gave Erica the locket on her birthday, and tells Jean Paul and the others that she knows that the locket was not around the rabbit’s neck until after she called upon the Serpent. Holly accuses her of being superstitious, and they get into a fight where Raxl tells Holly that she and her fellow Christians don’t understand the spirit world and Holly calls Raxl’s beliefs “mumbo-jumbo.” Matt also accuses Raxl of lying about how the locket appeared “so that we would believe in spirits and demons.” I know that not all Christian denominations believe in the literal existence of spirits and demons, but it’s still odd hearing the Reverend deny their existence.

Raxl calls him a fool, too, and says once again that the rabbit must be killed. She and Holly are about to go back to arguing when Jean Paul cries out, “YOU ARE ALL WRONG!” And then we have yet another shocking revelation: Erica was wearing the locket upon her death, and still when she was entombed in the cryonics capsule!

Somehow he’s able to get the rabbit to hold still for a few minutes, even with all the shouting in the final scene.

In case anyone’s wondering why this entry took so long, it’s because I’ve also been working on a couple posts reviewing Ian Martin’s entire period headwriting this show. That’s what I plan to do at the end of each arc or at the end of each writer’s stint on the show (with the exception of those writers who only wrote a few episodes, like James Elward, Joe Caldwell, and the team of Ron Chudley and George Salverson). You can expect my two-part review of Ian Martin’s SP shortly after my review of Episode 44, which may also be slightly delayed because of it.

Coming up next: Ian Martin’s final episode, the much-anticipated second séance and its shocking conclusion.

{<- Previous: Episode 42   ||   Next: Episode 44 ->}

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise, Part I: The Top 5 Best Things

SPOILERS FOR LATE MALJARDIN AND BOTH DESMOND HALL ARCS

Hello and welcome again to my Garden of Evil, where this week I’m doing something a little different. Episode 44 having marked the departure of co-creator and original headwriter Ian Martin, we have officially reached the end of an era of Strange Paradise history. No longer will discussions and speculation on Martin’s authorial intent be relevant to the happenings on this show (although I will continue to give my thoughts on the Lost Episode summaries), now that Bob Costello is running the show with a different authorial intent.

Ian Martin’s episodes contrast with the second half of Maljardin in many ways. The pace is slower, the structure and characterizations more like those of a standard soap, and the tone at times borders on comedy. He also appears to have put more thought into the characters’ backstories than any of the other writers, much of which he never got the chance to show on screen. Moreover, of all the show’s writers, he seems to have put the most of his own heart and soul into it, if the death of his first wife six years earlier and his reuse of elements from the series in his later works are any indication.

That brings me to my plans for this week in my Garden of Evil. Before moving on to review Episode 45, I will post my final thoughts on his episodes, first listing what I consider the top five best things about his period headwriting the show. Next, I will make another of the top five worst things about the first 8.8 weeks of Maljardin (because no creative work is perfect). So without further ado, here are (in my not-so-humble opinion) the top five best things about Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise:

5. Clever, memorable dialogue and (sometimes) clever wordplay 

I say “sometimes,” because (as we all know) Jacques loves his puns and Devil jokes, which tend to be as cornball as they come. The (intentional) humor in Ian Martin’s dialogue tends to be hit or miss, but when it hits, it hits harder than the chandelier hit the séance table. Even when the jokes miss, it’s clear that he tried hard to make the show both funny and scary, and some of the worse ones still amuse me in a dad-joke sort of way.

Some jokes from SP that I find genuinely funny:

Jacques: “‘Prisoners’ is such a harsh word, Alison. Now, actually, I prefer the [terminology] ‘detained guests.’“ (Episode 14)

Alison: “I find you and everything you’ve done distasteful and revolting." Jacques: "Methinks the lady doth detest too much." (same)

"I wish my mother was on canvas instead of always on my back.” (Holly, Episode 18)

Dan: "Knowing how much you loved Erica, I can appreciate your display of courage." Jacques: "It was either that or letting myself go to the Devil!" (same)

Jacques: “Such a delightful bedside manner. Why not let her operate?” (Episode 21)

Jacques: “If your room is a prison cell and you are a prisoner, well, I invite you to your last hearty meal.” (same)

Holly: "Would you like to see my scars?" Jacques: "Well, lead us not into temptation...now, that isn't from Shakespeare, is it?" (Episode 25)

Elizabeth: “It seems to be your opportunity to entertain, Reverend. May I suggest Song of Solomon?” (Episode 40)

Also, some things that aren’t jokes per se, but still clever wordplay:

Matt’s name, a reference to the Tarot card The Fool, or Le Mat in French.

Jacques: "Well, Dan, are you going to join me in some kippers this morning, or haven't you finished fishing for the day?" Dan: "Just lowering the line, and I'm afraid you're going to get hooked." (Episode 26)

The whole kippers thing from the same episode.

The scene transition lines.

Two things that Curt pointed out to me a while back: the recurring “little bird” motif and the fact that Jacques, who was “shackled to the Temple” for three centuries was also shackled through the temples with the silver pin. (Thanks!)

Of the later writers, Cornelius Crane (who will write the last two weeks of Maljardin and most of Desmond Hall Arc I) will be the only other to consistently use humor in his SP scripts. His will be a different style of humor, lighter on wordplay and heavier on wit, satire, and snark between characters, in many ways reminiscent of my favorite Dark Shadows writer Violet Welles. While the style of humor in Crane’s episodes has generally aged better, I can’t deny the cleverness and charm in the lines quoted above.

4. A more complex story than later arcs

Compared to all other arcs of the show, early Maljardin has, by far, the most subplots. You have (1) the main plot that revolves around Jean Paul’s attempts to preserve and resurrect Erica, which leads to his desperate attempts to protect the cryonics capsule, Jacques’ freedom and repeated possessions, and Raxl and Quito’s search for the conjure doll and silver pin. Directly connected to this are (2) Jacques’ murder of Dr. Menkin, (3) Alison and Dan’s search for the true cause of Erica’s death and for Dr. Menkin’s missing notes, and (4) the love triangle/square between Dan, Alison, and Jean Paul/Jacques. Then you have the four interconnected plots directly involving Holly, including (5) her romantic pursuit by Matt, Tim, Jacques, and Quito; (6) her conflicts with Elizabeth including direct competition over Jean Paul/Jacques; (7) her torment by Erica’s spirit; and (8) Tim’s subplot about the damned Holly portrait. Then there are (9) the saga of the missing cyanide and (10) the guests’ resistance to Jean Paul’s imprisonment of them on the island. In addition to these, we have (11) the history of Jacques, which may have included innumerable subplots of its own had Ian Martin been allowed to explore it thoroughly. We know that Jacques’ pursuit of Alison and Elizabeth would have connected to this, given their previous incarnations as Rahua and Tarasca, and that Martin originally planned for Tarasca to have her own storyline. If we include the aborted arc about Elizabeth’s possession by Tarasca, that would have made a whopping twelve subplots(!), unless I’m forgetting about something.

For comparison, here are the major subplots from Desmond Hall, during the period when Cornelius Crane did most of the writing: (1) Jean Paul’s possession by the Mark of Death; (2) the coven’s schemes to undermine the Desmond family, which led to the disappearance of Philip Desmond; (3) the Evil Serpent plotline; (4) the Hamlet subplot involving Cort’s conflicts with his mother and dear stepfather; (5) the love triangle of Cort, Holly, and Philip’s ghost; (6) the second love triangle of Ada, Laslo, and Irene; (7) all of Jean Paul’s romantic entanglements; and (8) the attempted possession of his fiancée Helena by Erica. That’s still a lot of intersecting plots, but not quite as many as in early Maljardin.

I know I’ve complained in the past about the recap that makes up about half the dialogue in early Maljardin, but the sheer number of plots may have required it to ensure that returning viewers remembered everything and new viewers weren’t completely lost. I don’t have to like the constant recap, but I must admit that it was probably necessary even for the fans who managed to catch every episode during its original run.

3. Stronger characterizations than under the writers of late Maljardin

Like a traditional soap opera, the first half of the Maljardin arc is character-driven. Most important plot points occur on Mondays and Fridays, leaving the mid-week episodes for (mostly) minor plot points, subplots, and character development. We see Alison’s relationship with Jean Paul evolve from friendly in-laws to potential lovers, only for her to tire of his constant mood changes and withdraw from him. We see Reverend Matt Dawson’s crisis of faith, from his stalking Holly out of an allegedly spiritual love to his questioning his disbelief in demons while trapped on Maljardin. We see Dan lose all respect for Jean Paul as he becomes convinced that his employer murdered Erica and Dr. Menkin. We also see Jean Paul grow increasingly volatile even when Jacques isn’t possessing him, making his prisoners try harder to escape and creating a vicious cycle of repression and paranoia on the island.

After Robert Costello becomes producer, the arc shifts to a more plot-driven narrative. In a span of just four weeks, Erica will be resurrected and proceed to murder most of the characters. Character development will lose its importance in late Maljardin, and the characters of Elizabeth and Holly (and later Jean Paul) will become almost unrecognizable. Although Cornelius Crane was a competent writer who gave strong characterizations to the characters he created, he makes it clear that he didn’t care much for Martin’s creations through how quickly he kills off most of them and alters the personalities of two of the ones left.

2. Actual research

This one is most noticeable in two areas: the scientific subjects discussed and the way that Martin uses the Tarot. Before writing for SP, he worked on The Doctors and The Nurses, both early medical dramas with soap opera elements. Little survives from either The Nurses or the 1960s era of The Doctors[1], but one can imagine that he got into the habit of researching medical topics then--perhaps not including subjects as far-out as cryonics, but maybe some of the others discussed on SP like cellular reconstruction, organ transplants, and eclampsia. Here on SP, he’s referenced specific scientific studies, including Miroslava Pavlović’s study of brain transplants in quail embryos, Kenneth B. Wolfe’s “Effects of Hypothermia on Cerebral Damage Resulting from Cardiac Arrest,” and--most fascinating of all--W. Grey Walter’s robotics article “An Imitation of Life,” whose potential significance to Erica’s backstory I discussed in the final part of my Shadow Over Seventh Heaven review series.

His penchant for research becomes even more obvious when we explore his use of the Tarot and compare it to the way the cards were used on the show’s inspiration Dark Shadows. Despite also having done research on various occult matters--the most obscure being the use of I Ching wands for time travel[2]--DS’s writers were notably lazy in their use of Tarot symbolism, sticking mostly to the Major Arcana, often interpreting their names literally, and using the Tower of Destruction so often that one would think that copies of the Tower comprised half the deck. Not so on SP. Although he did have tarot reader Vangie Abbott use Death literally in Episode 7, and he does portray the Nine of Swords as “the card of death” when it typically means nightmares, suffering because of loss, and inner torment, his use of the Tarot typically shows careful research into the meanings of mostly cards from the Minor Arcana (the suits of wands, cups, swords, and pentacles). He uses it both as a means of giving character profiles and for foreshadowing, although the cards often foreshadow planned events that never took place because of script rewrites.

He did, however, take some artistic liberties with other subjects that he must have researched while writing the serial. I mean to write a detailed analysis someday comparing and contrasting the show’s portrayal of vodou with the reality, but I’m not satisfied with the scanty amount of research that I’ve done so far. I have already written about the Great Serpent and how Raxl appears to syncretize the loa Damballah with the Aztec feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, but there are other related subjects I want to discuss someday in other posts. The short version: the “voodoo” portrayed on the show is a mixture of elements of genuine Afro-Caribbean religions (worship of a Serpent God, belief in zombies, use of drums in rituals, the titles “Conjure Man” and “Conjure Woman”) and traditional Mesoamerican religious practices (Quetzalcoatl, Aztec human sacrifice, Raxl’s mention of curanderos). The evidence suggests that he picked and chose elements from these traditions for Maljardin’s “Conjure Faith” in a way reminiscent of the real-life phenomenon of religious syncretism. While somewhat problematic, the obscurity of some of the things he picked and chose shows that he must have conducted some research even on these subjects.

1. The best Jacques

Jean Paul Desmond may be the protagonist, but, in the first seven weeks of the show, it’s his devilish ancestor Jacques who truly steals the show. From his evil laugh to his snarky commentary on the happenings on Maljardin to the hilarious and adorable expressions he makes as he plays with his detained guests, there’s no denying that Jacques is the star of Martin’s SP. When he’s absent, the whole show suffers from a lack of his mischief, not to mention that smile that stirs up desires in me that can never be righteously fulfilled. If there’s a Devil, I bet he resembles THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES in looks, voice, and demeanor--the better to seduce you with (and by you, I mean me). Horns and a pointy tail, after all, don’t tempt half as well as a beautiful black cape and Bissits Face™.

The Jacques of late Maljardin will be a far flatter character, more outwardly evil but less charming and consequently less entertaining. In Desmond Hall, his role will be reduced significantly and he will have very little dialogue, mostly just the same clip of his laughter repeated. He will have a few fun scenes in the second Desmond Hall arc, but the post-Martin Jacques is no devil, just an ordinary man with a slightly different personality, led over to the dark side. This is understandable--the thought of the supernatural embodiment of evil remaining imprisoned for three centuries is quite far-fetched, and Desmond Hall Arc II writer Harding Lemay wasn’t fond of all-evil characters[3]--but I still find the original Jacquet the most fun by far.

That concludes this post on my favorite things about Ian Martin’s Strange Paradise. Stay tuned for my list of some things about his writing that needed improvement.

{ Next: The Top 5 Worst Things -> }

Notes

[1] The Thousand Oaks Library in Thousand Oaks, California has ten of Martin’s scripts from The Doctors from shortly after the series switched from its original experimental anthology format to a traditional continuing soap.

[2] The portrayal of the I Ching as a means of time travel on Dark Shadows almost certainly came from William Seabrook’s book Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today, where he describes the 49th ko hexagram’s use in a form of past-life regression in New York magick circles in the early 20th century. See Seabrook, “Werewolf in Washington Square,” Witchcraft (New York: Ishi Press, 2015), pp. 164-175.

[3] Harding Lemay, Eight Years in Another World, chap. 3, Kindle edition. In this chapter, Lemay discusses his conflicts with Irna Phillips, the creator of Another World, over how to portray soap opera characters. According to him, Phillips believed that characters should be depicted as either “Saints” or “Sinners,” the only permitted nuance being that female Sinners had to love their children if they had any. Lemay disagreed with such black-and-white characterizations, finding them unrealistic, and made the serial’s characters more morally gray.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Quiz: Which Desmond Hall Character Are You?

SPOILER WARNING FOR DESMOND HALL ARCS I AND II

Last week, I was going to work on finishing my next review, but then my muse pulled me aside and ordered me to write a Desmond Hall personality quiz while threatening me with a conjure doll and silver pin. Not every Desmond Hall character is in this quiz, only the ones that I thought would be the funniest to write. Enjoy!

1. You have just arrived at an ancient manor house enveloped in darkness that rests atop a sinister network of haunted caves. When you learn this, how do you react? A. Lie in bed for several days while writhing in agony. B. Accept it and keep myself busy while pining for my voodoo island home. C. Act insufferably smug, because soon the house will belong to me. D. Go search for creatures in the caves to alleviate my boredom and satisfy my compulsion to do random disturbing things. E. Barely react at all because the writers have forgotten that I have a personality. F. Swan around while talking to myself about how the manor looks like something out of a storybook. G. Wish that I could live there again, because I've been trapped in a trippy magical closet for months.

2. The daily newspaper arrives and the headline reads, "GIRL BRUTALLY MURDERED.” What is your response? A. Retreat to my bedchamber and panic loudly about how I hope no one discovers that I’m the murderer. B. Get the body buried and all evidence concealed. C. Observe a moment of silence for my former doxy, then promptly forget she ever existed. D. Cut out the photo of the victim's face, suspend it from a papier-mâché gallows tree, and display it prominently in the foyer. E. Feel moderately concerned for my safety, but not too much. My ghost boyfriend will protect me...maybe. F. Scheme to blackmail the killer into marrying me. G. Wonder, "Was that my brother again?"

3. Your hobbies include: A. Moping around the manor house in fancy suits and contorting my face as though trying unsuccessfully to relieve myself. B. Reciting dramatic monologues with bits of scenery caught between my teeth! C. Plotting murder, robbery, and the corruption of young maidens while sipping sherry. D. I wander. I visit. I'm here and there. I'm a kind of ghost of Desmond Hall. E. I used to enjoy rebelling, flouncing, and bickering, but I've lost my taste for those. Now I prefer hanging out with old people in a cottage that smells of strange spices. F. Talking to and stroking my sweet little snake. (By which I mean "reptile with no legs and a forked tongue." Get your mind out of the gutter.) G. Necromancy.

4. Your favorite foods include: A. Bubbly eggs cooked in champagne. Definitely not kippers. B. The cuisine of my native island, before the evil of THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES made all the plants poisonous and killed all the animals! C. My spouse's hors d'oeuvres--but only when I don't have to eat them off the floor. D. Sugar, strawberries and cream, and the very best...*checks Teleprompter*...butter. E. Muffins laced with magical herbs. F. The delicious misery of the man who tried to strangle me and of all the other women who want him. G. I don't eat anymore. I'm a ghost. Food passes right through me--literally.

5. What turns you on? A. A lover who is unpredictable but not murderously crazy, and who likes to wear lacy nighties. B. I would not know! I have not felt those urges in three hundred years! C. Money. D. Anyone from my preferred gender who actually wants to spend time with me. E. A ghost who behaves like Edward Cullen. F. Jean Paul Desmond! He is the sexiest male character in the history of television. G. Submission and unquestioning devotion. Also, lesbians.

6. What is your signature look? A. Highly flattering mod suits combined with an unflattering combover. B. A long black Victorian dress. C. A stodgy gray/green suit, which is probably in desperate need of Febreze after being worn three days in a row. D. Turtlenecks. E. Bleached blonde hair and faddish early ‘70s fashions. F. Long pointed fingernails, false eyelashes, and a creepy grin. G. I once hung from the ceiling with my shirt torn open. Does that count?

7. Everyone has a skeleton in their closet. What is yours? A. Although I want to reach out and help the beautiful young women who come to me, instead my hands reach out to kill! B. I single-handedly cursed my employer's family by signing his grandfather’s (misspelled) name on a pledge to the Dark Lord. C. I am a black widower. D. I used to participate in necromancy rituals with my dear cousin. E. I stole a piece of my mother's jewelry and sold it at a pawn shop. F. I am a priestess of the Serpent God. G. Funny you should mention skeletons. My closet has a literal one hanging in it.

8. If you had to guess, which of these personages were you most likely in a past life? A. A freebooter possessed by the Devil. B. Myself. C. Henry Seewald--who looks exactly like a toddler version of me--transported back in time via the 49th hexagram. D. Someone named Claude. E. A young girl sacrificed by a priestess who looked like my mother. F. Ophelia, if she were real. G. My great-uncle with the same first name as me, who was allegedly disowned for being a poet.

9. Your favorite Dark Shadows character is: A. Barnabas Collins. B. Magda Rakosi. C. Nicholas Blair. D. David Collins. E. Carolyn Stoddard. F. Angelique Bouchard. G. Quentin Collins.

10. What from 1970 Dark Shadows do you believe was most likely inspired by Strange Paradise? A. The character of Judah Zachery, who is highly reminiscent of THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES. B. The use of a retcon to completely change Angelique's backstory. C. The name Desmond Collins. D. The implied reincarnation in the Summer of '70 arc that (sadly) never got explored as much as it should have been. E. The subplot about Quentin falling in love with Daphne's ghost. F. The Leviathan cult's use of snake iconography. G. The carousel in Tad and Carrie's playroom.

If you answered mostly A, you are Jean Paul Desmond, richest man in the world and master of Desmond Hall. Tall, dark, and incredibly handsome in spite of his receding hairline, Jean Paul is the victim of two self-imposed curses, one of which causes him to strangle people when the Mark of Death appears on his hand (which is totally not a reflection of some repressed or hidden part of his personality, having formerly displayed megalomania and control freak tendencies on his island). When not under the effects of this curse, he is the living embodiment of charm and sweetness and attracts would-be partners like moths to a flame. Logically, the same must be true about you, because online personality quizzes are never wrong. ;)

If you answered mostly B, you are Raxl, daughter of the Priestess of the Serpent and winner of the Canadian 1969 and 1970 scenery-chewing contests. Far older than she looks, the Desmond family’s housekeeper may not be as loyal as she appears, depending on the whims of whomever wrote the plot outline for the final arc. She is an expert on all things occult and supernatural, from tarot cards to the Egyptian Key. Even after her retcon, she is awesome.

If you answered mostly C, you are Laslo Thaxton, husband of Ada (Desmond) Thaxton and master of Desmond Hall in the absence of Jean Paul and Philip. I would say that you are an unscrupulous, greedy Devil-worshiper like Laslo, but I’ve always hated those personality quizzes that make moral judgments about people just because they share some traits in common with the villain. Therefore, I’m just going to assume that you are most likely a decent person who only got Laslo because you happen to love money and Nicholas Blair.

If you answered mostly D, you are Cort Desmond, twenty-something cousin of Jean Paul and Philip. Eccentric and erratic but oh-so-adorable, Cort is a polarizing character loved by some fans for his good looks and (often unintentionally) funny lines, but hated by others for being somewhat of a spoiled brat. Like Hamlet whom he idolizes, he seeks justice for the death of his father, along with the inheritance his Dear Stepfather Laslo wants to steal from him.

If you answered mostly E, you are Holly Marshall--or, rather, what Holly has become since her creator Ian Martin left the show. Formerly a spitfire with a high IQ, a low boiling point, and a love for outdated slang, Holly has become a shell of her former self under the new writers. She spends more time unconscious and hypnotized than not; when she is conscious, she wastes her time pining after an unsuitable love interest who treats her like Edward treats Bella in Twilight. I hope this doesn’t describe you, because, if it does, you should seek help. Don’t be like Desmond Hall-era Holly!

If you answered mostly F, you are Agatha Pruitt, a young seamstress obsessed with Jean Paul. While the master of Desmond Hall has attracted many suitors, none are as strange or disturbing as Agatha, who blackmails him into letting her live at Desmond Hall after his failed murder attempt and proceeds to wreak havoc there along with the Serpent God (who may or may not be Raxl’s Great Serpent) whom she worships.

Finally, if you answered mostly G, you are Jean Paul’s brother, Philip Desmond (not to be confused with his cousin Philip Desmond, or either of the two Philippes des Mondes). A secretive figure largely mysterious even to his own brother, the handsome Philip dabbles in the dark arts and other mysteries, which ultimately leads to his disappearance into the caves beneath Desmondton and reappearance as a ghost. His character alignment is unclear--he may be evil, or just chaotic neutral--but one thing is clear: whoever messes with Philip has the Devil to pay.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 40 Review: In Which Matt Calls Out Jean Paul (Redux)

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

Welcome back to my Garden of Evil, the blog where I review and affectionately snark on Canada’s own all-American TV series, Strange Paradise. To my shock, Danny Horn of Dark Shadows Every Day (who introduced me to this delightfully crazy soap with his far more critical reviews) is back to posting more frequently than I do, which isn’t really relevant to this post save that I would not have expected it a year ago. (But then, there are many, many things that happened over this past year that I did not expect.) I would have posted this one sooner, but some urgent matters came up last week and I had to postpone.

Four episodes have passed since eccentric billionaire Jean Paul Desmond’s disastrous failed séance to contact his beloved late wife Erica. Medium and Conjure Woman Vangie Abbott has recovered from her injury, she and Raxl have tried (unsuccessfully) to decode the message in the sand writing box, and now Jean Paul insists on holding another séance! The other characters are trying to figure out how and why the ceremony was disrupted: most accuse Jean Paul of trying to murder them with the falling chandelier, while Vangie announces during the opening recap that she suspects the Reverend Matt Dawson of being a disruptive influence because of his disbelief in voodoo. Now sparks fly once again as another argument erupts between the Reverend and Jean Paul at an emergency meeting in the Great Hall.

Now, let’s begin.

We open with Jean Paul’s first tape recorder journal entry in a while, which is an exposition device that I had been missing mostly because I like mooning over Colin Fox while listening to his gorgeous voice:

Jean Paul: "Erica, my sweet wife, until the day comes when science can restore you to me, can release you from the cryonic suspension colder than ice, as cold as my empty life, I will continue trying to contact you through a séance. You must know the great effort I am making to protect you! But was the evil of Jacques Eloi des Mondes enough to prevent us from making contact at the séance that failed? Erica, believe me! I fought him with all my strength! I held him at bay, but he could not have got through unaided! These people in this house, Erica, I have been thinking about them: are they in consort with the Devil? Which one prevented me from hearing your sweet voice again, my Erica? Which one? If I knew-"

Caught him reading the Teleprompter! (That happens a lot in this episode, by the way.) Also, have I ever mentioned how much I love the lighting in his monitor room?

He stops recording when he sees Holly on the monitor, searching once again for that sweet secret passage in the crypt that she overheard the Reverend mention several episodes ago. Freaking out again over the possibility of danger to Erica’s cryonics capsule, he rushes down to the Great Hall and declares an emergency meeting:

Jean Paul shouting at his detained guests.

"Reverend Dawson, Mr. Stanton, I'm beginning to realize that you have not fully grasped my ruling!" Jean Paul shouts in his most pompous tone. "Now, to each and every one of you, this is most important, and how important it is you will all find out!"

Matt having a scared. I don’t usually find Dan MacDonald cute, but I think he is in this shot.

Quito guarding Holly as she hides in the crypt.

"EVERYBODY!” the Master of Maljardin shouts. “EVERYONE WITHIN THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!" [Line flub? His wording is odd.] "EVERYONE! COME TO THE GREAT HALL! DO YOU HEAR ME? EVERYONE IN THIS HOUSE! THIS IS JEAN PAUL DESMOND CALLING! COME TO THE GREAT HALL AT ONCE! YOU TOO, HOLLY MARSHALL! NOW, ONCE AND FOR ALL, YOU WILL ALL GET THE MESSAGE!"

Jean Paul’s crazy eyes in this scene indicate that he means business.

Everyone gathers in the Great Hall, save Holly and Quito (who are hiding in the basement), Dan Forrest (who is probably in the tub), and Raxl (who isn’t there because Cosette Lee had the day off). Dr. Alison Carr is particularly annoyed, because she could be spending this time researching how to resurrect Erica, but instead is stuck listening to her brother-in-law’s latest hissy fit. Oddly enough, even though Jean Paul acts like a complete ass in this episode, Fox-C looks even more stunning than usual. I can’t explain why, but to me he looks especially handsome during Weeks 8 through 11 of the show. That certain je ne sais quoi of his just comes out particularly strongly during this period.

Jean Paul is so angry that you can see his jaw tensing.

Of all the detained guests in the room, he chooses to pick a fight with Matt, because that worked out so well for him five episodes ago. Elizabeth finds this highly amusing and comments with one of her best lines:

Elizabeth: "It seems to be your opportunity to entertain, Reverend. May I suggest Song of Solomon?"

Jean Paul doesn’t laugh, despite it being arguably the funniest joke anyone other than Jacques has made so far. I, too, want to hear Matt read from the Song of Solomon. Perhaps he has recorded a sermon about it for his album:

Matt’s album, You Can’t Fake Fruit, featuring his sermon “Wherever God Builds a House of Prayer, the Devil Builds a Chapel There” and selections from the Song of Solomon.

I’m not going to recap or quote their entire fight blow by blow, because I just don’t feel like it--and besides, these kinds of overly dramatic yelling matches are more fun to watch for yourself. However, I will note some highlights: 

Matt suspects Jean Paul of murdering Dr. Menkin because of how soon he died after Erica. “Who can say how he died?” he asks as a rhetorical question before proclaiming overconfidently, “There, your control over this island begins to disintegrate!”

He also continues to oppose the notion that the Devil caused any of the events on the island, including the chandelier falling: “The chandelier falls, and it’s blamed on the Devil. And you accept these...superstitious reactions of a few, which are driving all of us beyond the bounds of reason!”

There’s a lot of focus on Holly, as you might expect, given that she‘s been searching in the crypt and also given Matt’s obsession with her. I’m glad he’s trying to protect her from Jean Paul now, even though I will always ship him with his right hand.

Alison stands up to Jean Paul and leaves in the middle of the argument. Good for her! Of course, after she leaves, Jean Paul has to passive-aggressively announce to everyone else that she will regret it.

Vangie tells Jean Paul and Matt that “when a devil works through a man, what he does is not an accident,” referring to the time that Dan allegedly damaged the cryocapsule. Jean Paul latches onto this idea, which Matt objects to because he believes it’s a ploy to turn everyone on the island against each other. So Jean Paul accuses Matt next of evil, which is not a question that most people will answer honestly. Ask Jacques if he’s evil and he will openly admit to it; ask someone like Elizabeth, on the other hand, and she will deny it.

Matt being what the kids today would call “a mood.”

Vangie on Matt: “Because he is a man of the cloth--a religious man--he made the contact [with Erica], but because of his disbelief in the spirits, the chain was weakened, the contact breaks. I would say that whenever the Devil is loose, anything or anyone can be his tool.” 

I would say that Jean Paul in this episode is a tool, albeit a very handsome one.

Even his anger can’t disguise his cuteness.

Jean Paul ends the argument by threatening to punish Holly for invading the crypt. “Now you will see what happens to those who intrude on Erica’s resting place,” he tells the others and Elizabeth responds with this interesting, cryptic line:

So she approves of Jean Paul’s anger at her “impossible” daughter, but she doesn’t want him to punish her? Also note that she is eerily calm when she delivers this line.

In the next scene, Jean Paul gives Holly some serious mixed messages along the lines of the time my grandfather (with whom I used to live) told me “don’t worry about it” when he noticed my cat scratching at my bedroom door, then threw a fit over the (barely) damaged carpet a few hours later. I moved out of his house two and a half years ago but, up until recently, I got nervous any time anyone told me not to worry about something, because he’d often say things like “don’t worry about it” and “take it easy” shortly before he lost his temper over the very same things he told me not to worry about. In a similar vein, Jean Paul first tells Holly to “go ahead” into the crypt, only to then start ranting about how he thinks that some people on the island want the cryocapsule to break down and want to tell the authorities about what he’s doing on Maljardin.

“Now, what were you looking for, Miss Marshall?” he asks her menacingly after his rant.

“I wouldn’t touch that!” she replies, referring to the capsule. “I want you to bring your wife back to life!”

“Then what were you here for!”

“Looking for a way out!” She turns away from him, clutching her head. “Trying to get away from all this. I can’t stand it anymore!”

“I am going to have to make an example of you,” Jean Paul threatens.

“I was only looking for a secret door,” she protests, then explains how he (actually Jacques) led her down there to show him where she thought the secret passage was three episodes ago.

Before he can respond to her, Alison comes rushing down to the crypt to tell him about the notes of Dr. Menkin’s that Jacques left in her lab in Episode 38, which cover part of the previously missing six-week period of his experiments:

Sure, Jacques *might* answer, but only if he feels like it.

Jean Paul tells Alison, “guard these [notes] with your life,” and the episode ends, which means it’s time to discuss the Lost Episode summary. Normally, I do so in either the introduction or at a point in the episode where a plot point was changed, but here the events of the original episode differed so much from those of the final aired version that I decided to discuss them after my recap.

The Lost Episode 40

To begin, here is the summary for the original Episode 40:

Source: The Plain Dealer (November 7, 1969), p. 72.

So the second séance originally took place in this episode and involved a conflict between two spirits. But who? We know for certain the identity of one of these spirits, courtesy of these summaries for Episodes 41 and 42, respectively:

Source: Ibid, p. 84.

Source: Ibid., p. 88.

A slightly longer version of the latter summary from The Fitchburg Sentinel names this priestess Tarasca, the same figure who appeared in a puff of smoke in the original Episode 35 and whose existence apparently threatens Alison’s life. While most summaries of the original Episode 44 (including the one in The Plain Dealer) mention hallucinations, this one from The Minneapolis Star (November 13, 1969) specifically mentions that the hallucination took place at the séance:

Holly searches for the secret passageway when her sleeping mother re-lives the happenings at the séance.

So we know the identity of one of the fighting spirits from the second séance, but who is the other? This summary for Episode 38 states that Jacques promised Vangie that he wouldn’t interfere a second time, but can we really rely on him to keep his promises? (I believe that he most likely summoned Tarasca to mess with the second séance on his behalf while technically not getting involved in it himself.) Still, even considering Jacques’ lack of trustworthiness, it would make more sense for the other spirit to be Erica, given that the whole purpose of both séances is to contact her.

Curiously, another thing we know about the second séance is that Matt took part in it, because Vangie told him that Holly would be in danger if he refused. I know I called the summary for last episode boring, but hearing the way Vangie talks about him in this episode has made me rethink my previous dismissal of its importance. If Vangie demanded that Matt attend the second séance, that means that she must not have considered Matt a disruptive influence in the original, or at least not enough to exclude him.

Who else attended the séance? At the very least, Vangie, Matt, Jean Paul and Elizabeth, but logically Raxl and Quito as well because of their involvement in the Conjure Faith. Alison may also have attended, but I doubt it because (1) Vangie prefers séances with either five or seven participants including the spirit and (2) Alison is getting increasingly fed up with Jean Paul and may have refused to take part.

The mention of Holly being in danger also raises an additional question: which spirit was threatening her, Erica or Tarasca? For my attempt to answer that question--which would contain some spoilers if I included it here--you will have to wait for a future analysis.

Coming up next: The Bad Subtitle Special for Week 8, followed by a very special essay comparing Strange Paradise to the H. P. Lovecraft novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and its 1963 film adaptation The Haunted Palace. After that, a review of Episode 41.

{<- Previous: Episode 39   ||   Next: Episode 41 ->}

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 32 Review: Sea Fever

{ Not available on YouTube }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

I apologize for the delay in posting this review. Once again, I’ve been busy in real life and didn’t have enough time to work on it last week. (And so soon after starting my Shadow Over Seventh Heaven review series!) But now I’m back and I have enough time to write about my favorite show again--and, in a week or so, hopefully enough to continue my other review series as well.

This is the first episode to differ completely from the Lost Episode summaries published in various U.S. and Canadian newspapers--and therefore probably the point at which the original outline and the final one began to diverge. Episode 30′s summary described an event that happened in the episode, but whose cause appears to have been changed during forced rewrites; last episode’s was still accurate after revisions; but this one’s summary is the first to describe a scene absent from the final, aired episode. (More on that later.)

Shall we begin this review? This episode features some of the darkest Jean Paul (yes, Jean Paul!) dialogue thus far, along with many entertaining facial expressions as multiple characters feast on the scenery. It’s a wild ride with a genuinely scary scene, and, if you like those things, I think you’ll enjoy it.

We open right where last episode left off, with Elizabeth reacting to Jacques’ little comment about Holly and how he would stake her life in a bet that Vangie couldn’t contact Erica in the planned séance. ”Jean Paul,” she shouts, “your inference that I would harm my daughter to take her fortune for my own is insulting and in bad taste: something I’d never expect of you!”

The handsome devil replies, “Your strong defense against a simple query lends credence to a simple supposition”--which is just a fancier, less archaic way of saying “the lady doth protest too much.”

She flounces and runs into Vangie at the door--figuratively, not literally, although that would be amusing. “You interrupted Mrs. Marshall’s romantic exit from which there might be no return,” Jacques comments, which sounds suspiciously like foreshadowing.

The conversation drifts to the séance and how Jacques is most definitely not going to back down because he’s not a coward, and then, suddenly,

Vangie SCREAMS!

Apparently, every time a female character other than Raxl screams, she has to try eating her hand immediately afterwards.

She’s screaming because she can sense that someone is tampering with the cryonics capsule. And, at the same time that this happens, Jacques also de-possesses Jean Paul:

I’ll let these headache faces speak for themselves.

Jean Paul who threatens to kill anyone who tampers with the capsule. Very nice (not)! Normally, I find his concern for Erica romantic, but this is going too far. He reminds me of the captain in the CBS Radio Mystery Theater episode "Sea Fever" (also by Ian Martin) who…well, I don't want to spoil the ending, but let's just say that he is even crazier in love than Jean Paul. It isn’t one of the best CBSRMT dramas, but it will likely chill your bones. It certainly chilled mine.

Love this shot of Colin Fox backacting while Paisley Maxwell and Angela Roland stare at him with wide-open eyes. This episode is full of unintentionally funny facial expressions.

Jean Paul hurries back to Maljardin with Elizabeth and Vangie, and heads to the crypt immediately to see Raxl about the capsule. She recaps to him about the capsule tank’s malfunctioning in the previous episode. He asks who discovered it; she tells him Dan, which only makes him more suspicious of him. SHe also recaps to him about how Alison and Dan are searching for the cyanide that he stole from the lab. “Everyone questions my changes of mood,” he shouts. “Now I must question changes in others!...There is danger hiding everywhere on Maljardin. It has a history that has plagued the family, that will plague all who pry into my affairs!"

While Vangie questions the sincerity of Elizabeth’s devotion to Jean Paul above, Jean Paul leaves red flowers on the cryocapsule and announces his planned next moves to his love: “Erica, my dove, now [there] are some people here on our island who would destroy the process by which you will be returned to me and fill my arms again, but I promise you, no one, no one under any consequences [line flub], will live again if he or she causes you to remain forever dead!"

A beautiful shot of Jean Paul with flowers for Erica.

When Raxl next joins Jean Paul in the crypt, she tells him that “only the priestess of the Serpent knows what is really on their minds.” Jean Paul mentions that she has told him before about the human sacrifices that the priestesses used to perform on the island--which is not recap (as we have only heard her tell Matt about them so far), so she must have told him sometime before Erica’s death. She insists that, although that was true long ago, their altar has not been used for them since Jacques's time.

“But, if his evil can rise again, as you fear,” he begins, implying that he wants to start making blood sacrifices.

“No! Please, M’sieu, no!” Raxl interrupts.

“I will do what has to be done, Raxl. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Raxl draws the Sign of the Great Serpent in the air and the same Great Serpent symbol that's in the Temple appears on screen. It’s a cool effect and not something that’s ever seen in any other episode.

She leaves the crypt, looking back at Jean Paul a few times, probably in complete disbelief that he wants her, daughter of the unseen Priestess of the Serpent, to sacrifice Dan and any other troublesome guests to protect against THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES. This is a shocking new low for Jean Paul Desmond, and shows the darker side of his character. This is a man who, even without a curse and even when he is not possessed, is capable of murder because of his obsession with his love interest. This is a male yandere.

She sees Matt in the Great Hall, who tells her that he’s searched all over Maljardin and that there must be many hidden rooms there. It turns out they have both searched in every room they know about and still have found neither the missing cyanide nor the conjure doll and silver pin. He demands that she tell him the legend of Maljardin and that old black magic. And so we learn from her some very important background information, some of which is never brought up again:

Where there is evil, there is magic. Where there is magic, strange things happen, but first there must be evil, and there is!...Before the time of Jacques Eloi des Mondes, when this house first stood, it was a palace of kings and there were many people here until this island became his!…Only the greedy and foolish [natives] remained, and none who left ever returned.

There is a curse here, Reverend: him, that devil!

The implication is that Jacques did not build the château, but took it from someone else, which connects to his revelation about a month earlier that he was a “free looter”--or, in other words, a pirate. Matt argues that Jacques cannot still hold control over Maljardin because he died three hundred years ago, but Raxl says that “for some of us, three hundred years is but the span of a single lifetime,” indirectly revealing her true age to him.

She smiles at him right after she reveals to him that she’s centuries old. I think this is the first time Raxl smiles on the show, and the only time in the entire Maljardin arc.

Matt asks about the natives who stayed on the island, and Raxl says of them, “They died very soon. It was the curse on Maljardin. Have you ever seen a man who has lost his soul, Reverend? Their eyes down, the fishermen no longer fish, the children cease to play. They do no more than sit and wait [for death]...Since then, no native has ever tried to settle on Maljardin.” Only Vangie, the Conjure Woman, can go back and forth to and from the island “on the wings of the Great Serpent,” but she, too, is destined to die someday on Maljardin.

At the end of this scene, Vangie enters and adds that she doesn’t know when she’ll die, because the tarot cards did not (and cannot?) give her an exact date. This would seem to make her death on the show a foregone conclusion, but that may or may not be the case. (I say that not only to avoid spoilers, but also because the show and the original scripts give the Conjure Woman radically different fates, as we shall explore in future reviews.)

Meanwhile, down in the crypt, Jean Paul is still talking to Erica about how he is determined to kill anyone who interferes with the cryonics process when Jacques starts intruding on his mind. Like in Episode 27, the special effects team illustrates this by superimposing Jacques’ face from the portrait over that of Jean Paul when he is talking to him:

The best example from this episode.

None of Jacques’ lines in this scene are as funny as those of the old, pre-Lost Episode era Jacques, even if Fox-C still delivers the devil’s lines with the same amount of sarcasm and relish as before. His best line this time around is, in my not-so-humble opinion, “Suppose we just whisper so dear Erica may sleep.” I miss early Jacques’ jokes already--yes, even the ham-handed, cornball puns--and it hasn’t even been a week’s worth of episodes since the last.

We cut to Raxl and Vangie in the Great Hall, discussing the upcoming séance. Vangie says that she wants to find out if Erica’s spirit genuinely wants Jean Paul to continue mourning her and keeping her frozen. She insists that Raxl let her touch the cryocapsule before the séance, most likely to get a sense of Erica’s energy before they perform the ceremony.

Jean Paul: “What are you doing!”

Raxl: “Please, M’sieu. The Conjure Woman is trying to help.”

Jean Paul: “Only for a séance, Vangie. Erica must remain undisturbed.” Vangie: “And if you don’t like what you learn?” Jean Paul: “I’ll face that--when the time comes!”

The Lost Episode summary indicates that, at some point in the original draft, Raxl and Vangie had a conversation about Jacques, and Raxl would have told her how she can tell him and Jean Paul apart. As I’m sure many of you have realized, Raxl and Vangie oscillate between knowing that Jean Paul is being possessed and merely suspecting, depending on the episode. In the original Episode 32, Raxl would have known when Jacques is controlling Jean Paul’s body and Vangie would have only suspected until after Raxl explained. Ruling out all obvious non-diegetic clues such as the vanishing portrait shots and Jacques’ theme music, she could have said any number of things, including:

His energy/aura changes (although, logically, Vangie would notice that, too).

He wears the ring from the portrait (which we know is diegetic, because Elizabeth commented on it in Episode 13).

He opens his eyes really wide and makes silly faces.

He makes corny puns Never mind, we’re not doing that anymore.

He acts far too cheerful for a man who is supposedly mourning his dead wife.

He talks about kippers.

Etc.

I suppose we’ll never know which one(s) she mentioned, but I suspect #1, #2, and/or #5. Anyway, Jean Paul leaves to return upstairs and Vangie continues whatever she started doing with the capsule. He orders Jacques to “stop turning people against [him],” which he refuses to do, threatening to keep Erica dead if he doesn’t shut up about it.

“When we really get into the battle, someone has to die,” quips Jacques.

“Perhaps it will be you!” shouts Jean Paul in response.

“Or you, Jean Paul Desmond,” the handsome devil replies. “Or will you be preceded by one of our guests? Now let me see. A likely candidate could be...”

Jean Paul turns away from the roars of laughter, and the episode ends before Jacques can name the guest(s) he plans to murder.

Could it be Vangie? Or Holly? Dan? Alison? Even Elizabeth?

This episode was a fun one to watch, and probably the first review I’ve completed in only one day since sometime last winter. Jean Paul’s willingness to put everyone’s life on the proverbial line to save Erica shows a dark side to his nature that mostly vanishes at the end of this story arc--which is a shame, because I find morally ambiguous antihero Jean Paul the most interesting version of his character. I recommend this one, if you have access to it.

Coming up next: A Quito-centric episode where the detained guests learn shocking truths about Jean Paul’s manservant.

{ <- Previous: Episode 31   ||   Next: Episode 33 -> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 33 Review: The Gentle Zombie

{ Not available on YouTube }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

And now, following our over-4,000-word-long sojourn into the eerie, isolated estate of San Rafael on Tuesday, we at last return to the even eerier and even more isolated locale of Maljardin, THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES’ Garden of Evil! *sting*

Once again, Colin Fox has the day off to recover from his spinal injury the year before, meaning we get another Foxless episode. Unlike some of the previous Foxless episodes, however, this one is a real treat. We get the first centered around the mysterious Quito, Jean Paul Desmond’s silent manservant, Raxl’s closest companion, and owner of the adorable Chalcko, mascot of this blog. We also finally get payoff for my least favorite Maljardin-era subplot, the saga of the Holly portrait--which, if you ask me, is long overdue--and it’s good.

The Lost Episode summary for this episode indicates that it was always intended to focus on Quito. As usual, the Cleveland Plain Dealer provides the most detailed and best summary (and I am not at all biased, despite living in Cleveland):

Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer (October 24, 1969). The “Repeat” part is a misprint, as the episode only aired once on WKBF.

Interestingly, we already saw Quito give Holly the gift of a sparkling stone three episodes ago in the aired version of Episode 30. For whatever reason, the executives and/or Ian Martin himself decided to have this event occur earlier in the series’ timeline, possibly with its original importance to the overarching story decreased. The second sentence of this summary, however, remains accurate, as you will find in this review.

Quito kissing the cryonics capsule.

The episode begins with Quito visiting Erica Desmond's capsule and bringing more flowers for her. Both the way he kisses the capsule and the fact that Jean Paul doesn’t make him give Erica flowers show that he, like Raxl, truly loves her.

After leaving the crypt, he visits the Great Hall following a painting/bickering/recap scene between Tim and Holly, to stare at the portrait of Erica--or, rather, the roughest possible approximation of her appearance, because Jean Paul has done everything in his power to make Tim’s project as difficult and frustrating as possible for him (see also my post on Episode 24). A drum pounds for suspense, he turns to face the portrait, and, just as he reaches out to touch it,

HE COLLAPSES!

Fortunately, Alison and Dan come in from outside at just the right moment for her to check his pulse. She believes him dead at first because he has no heartbeat, but then hears him breathing despite him continuing to have no pulse. She concludes, much to pragmatic lawyer Dan’s shock, that Quito must be a zombie as he once said (this is another instance where I can’t recall which episode, unfortunately).

This is what the Holly portrait looks like now, by the way.

A close-up of the face. Still looks approximately halfway between Holly’s face and Erica’s in Tim’s original sketch of her.

They leave Holly and Tim alone with Quito while they go to the lab (in Alison’s case) and the crypt to search for the missing cyanide (in Dan’s), when they hear Holly scream! Dan, who was so close to making friends with Chalcko, bolts upstairs to find the mysterious servant previously thought to be dead (un-undead?) has once again come alive. He starts to pursue Holly, but Alison stops him, so he turns around and tears the cover off the Holly portrait. “Is it Holly, or my sister Erica?” she asks herself out loud. “I can’t tell!”

The rest of this scene suggests that perhaps Quito, too, can’t tell, or at least sees too much of Erica in Holly to ignore. Most likely, that’s why he’s drawn to her and waits on her as though he were her servant as well as that of Jean Paul and Erica. Dan attributes Quito’s fainting to the shock of seeing a portrait that so captures Erica’s likeness that the uncanny resemblance between her and Holly frightens him.

Two and a half months ago, Curt of the Maljardin Blog wrote that the production crew did not cast an actress to play Erica at the beginning of the show, as evidenced by their use of crew member Lara Cochrane to play Erica’s corpse in Episodes 1 and 4. But now I wonder, what if Ian Martin originally intended for Sylvia Feigel to play Erica as well as Holly, given his frequent mention of their alleged resemblance? It seems like an odd decision, especially because I believe that Sylvia was originally destined for a dual role as both Holly and the blonde girl whom Tarasca sacrificed in her nightmare. But, if Sylvia Feigel was supposed to portray the living Erica, would that mean that Erica’s past incarnation was not Jacques’ wife Huaco, but the sacrificed girl? It wouldn’t make sense for Erica’s past counterpart to be her instead of Huaco, unless he decided to also give Sylvia her role, which would have made her Huaco’s third actress. But this is all extremely unlikely, especially because such a quadruple role seems like far too much for a single arc of a live-action series. Even Dark Shadows didn’t make its actors play four roles in the same arc.

All right. Enough of a theory that I myself don’t completely believe, even if it is possible (if improbable) that Ian Martin intended it. Matt-- who, naturally, hurried down the steps when he heard his stalkee screaming--thinks that the reason why Quito fainted upon touching the portrait was because he "sees something of Erica Desmond in [Holly]." I believe there’s more to it than that, though. There must be something supernatural going on that made him faint, something like Erica’s ghost exerting her power over him. But they never did explain this bit, so--like most of this show--it’s up to interpretation.

Tim: “Quito, I thought you were dead!”

Quito touches the portrait and then his heart. “Only Raxl can tell what he’s trying to tell us,” Matt claims, but Alison, too, understands the message. Quito, whom Dan calls “a soulless man,” loves Holly.

This horrifies Holly even more than Matt’s affections. She shouts “NO!” and Quito retreats to the crypt. She throws a fit, disgusted by the thought of “a monster who lunges at people” wanting a romance with her, and even accuses him of pushing her down the staircase, even though Quito was in the temple at the time.

For the Serpent’s sake, Reverend Stalker, leave her alone! The last thing she needs is your “comfort” when we know that what you really want is to get in her pants!

Holly: “Drag, drag, drag, the Reverend Matthew Drag!”

I’m dying of laughter at this terrible line.

Dan suggests that, if Jean Paul can’t bring Erica back to life, he may decide to replace her with Holly. We know that Jean Paul would never do that, but that his ancestor Jacques almost certainly would--at least once he got bored with his lovely witch Elizabeth/Tarasca. (I’m still not convinced, though, that he doesn’t want to make her sacrifice Holly, either just for fun or so that she--and, after their marriage, he--can get her fortune.)

Tim begs to differ about the painting’s resemblance to Erica, once again lampshading the absurdity of the whole situation. You have an artist painting a portrait of a dead woman, using a living one as his model who may or may not resemble the show’s current image of Erica Desmond. He took on this commission to save his life, but, now that he is on Maljardin, he’s in more danger than he ever was while the Mafia was pursuing him. And now a zombie passes out, and the other characters blame it on Erica’s likeness to Holly, which Tim must know is a completely ridiculous explanation. I’m telling you, someone’s spirit--either Erica’s or Jacques’--made him collapse. And if it was the latter, most likely Jacques intended to kill him a second time.

Quito in the crypt.

I want to shift focus now to the subject of zombies and their portrayal on SP, as well as what we know of Quito’s past. This section will contain references to slavery and suicide, so, if those subjects trigger you, you may wish to skip ahead to the next section, beginning with another copy of the photo of Quito looking into Chalcko’s birdcage.

Before I got into SP, I was long predisposed to dislike zombies because of the clichéd way that most horror movies and shows depict them: namely, as mindless creatures focused solely on eating human brains. Hordes of walking corpses who go on living only to consume and destroy are a useful metaphor for the effects of things like consumerism and social media addiction, but they don’t make for interesting characters; in fact, they make for rather dull ones, in my (highly unpopular) opinion.

But Quito was shown from early on to be a very different kind of zombie, almost the opposite of the Dawn of the Dead type. We see hints as early as Episode 12 that he has thoughts and feelings and now we have confirmation that he even has the capacity for love. He appears mindless, soulless, and unfeeling to some other characters, but those who know him well like Raxl and Jean Paul know that, despite his silence and his undead state, he has a mind, a personality, and even a heart. It doesn’t hurt that Kurt Schiegl gives Quito a great deal of expression and personality through his body language; we may not know exactly what thoughts are going through Quito’s mind, but we can get an idea. (And he never once expresses an interest in eating brains, which is another plus.)

The reason why Quito is so different from most modern portrayals of zombies is because he is based on an earlier conception of who zombies are and how they are created. In the traditional beliefs of Haitian Vodou, a zombie is created when a Vodou sorcerer or bokor resurrects a corpse to serve as his personal slave. While there are many theories as to when these legends originated, the most likely theory (which Mike Mariani argues in The Atlantic) is that they began during the period of French colonialism. During this period, which stretched from 1625 to the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century, most of the population of the island of Hispaniola (then known as Sainte-Domingue) was enslaved on sugar plantations, which required back-breaking, often deadly labor. This, combined with the other indignities of slavery, drove many enslaved Africans living there to commit suicide in an effort to return to their home countries. The idea that those who ended their own lives would be stuck on Sainte-Domingue eternally as zombies came about as a way or Haitians to discourage suicide. “Death was better than slavery for many – the suicide rate among Haitian slaves was very high. It was bad to be a slave,” Amy Wilentz writes in her review of the Vice documentary I Walked with a Zombie. “Worse would be to die and discover that, rather than returning to Africa, you continued to be enslaved as a dead person, run by a master, doing his bidding – and this is the fear that created the ‘Americo-normative’ zombie, as we know him.”

According to Mariani’s article, zombies did not become associated with bokors until after Haiti won its independence and subsequently abolished the institution of slavery. He calls this “the post-colonialism zombie, the emblem of a nation haunted by the legacy of slavery and ever wary of its reinstitution...The zombies of the Haitian Voodoo religion were a more fractured representation of the anxieties of slavery, mixed as they were with occult trappings of sorcerers and necromancy.” Wilentz associates this with “the fear of re-enslavement,” for “no one wanted to be dead, consciousness-less, and working for free for a master,” especially in a country that had fought so hard to rid itself of its shackles.

The show canon for Strange Paradise has not given--and will not give--much information about Quito’s backstory. What we do know is that he is a native of somewhere near Maljardin, descended from an indigenous Central American culture related to the Aztecs, and that was alive during the same period as Raxl. He was Jacques’ “servant” (more likely a slave) in the 17th century and, at some point before Jacques’ death, became a zombie. We also know from his reaction to the Conjure Man’s name in Episode 13 that the Conjure Man did something to him at some point that traumatized him, which may or may not have included the spell.

The Paperback Library novel Island of Evil, however, gets far more detailed about Quito’s backstory and shows his transformation into one of the undead. In the novel, Jacques forces Raxl to relive a particularly painful memory from the 17th century in order to coerce her into doing his bidding in the then-present. In her memory, Raxl visits the pregnant and bedridden Huaco des Mondes during a dinner party, although Jacques has forbidden them from meeting with each other. When he catches her returning from Huaco’s room, Jacques gets revenge on Raxl by stabbing Quito (who is her husband in the books) and then forces an African Vodou priest whom he recently purchased to resurrect him for his guests’ entertainment.[1] It’s worth noting that, like the zombies of Haitian folklore, the Vodou priest tells Raxl not to allow Quito to consume salt: “Should he eat either [salt or meat],” he says, “he will know he is a dead man.”[2] Thus the book canon connects Quito both to the horrors of slavery in the colonial-era Caribbean and to early zombie folklore, before zombies became the brain-eating monsters they are usually portrayed as today.

Quito checking on his adorable bird. Curt recently mentioned the possible connection between Chalcko, Huaco (Jacques’ “pigeon”), and Erica (Raxl’s “little bird”) in a post on his Tumblr, which was a piece of possible symbolism that had never occurred to me until then.

Dan reveals to Matt that Jean Paul has a Stanford-Binet IQ of 187. I’m noting this only because I’ve referenced it before in regards to Jean Paul’s alleged intelligence juxtaposed with his tendency to make stupid decisions. He may have an IQ of 187, but that only applies to his book smarts, not to common sense decisions like the knowledge that you should never make a deal with the Devil unless you are absolutely certain that the Devil won’t screw you over, or that you can defeat him through loopholes or some other, similar means. Even the smartest people--even those with an IQ of 187--can be manipulated, and that is true of Jean Paul, whom THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES has successfully outsmarted. I wonder if he even suspects that Jacques has no intention on bringing Erica back to life, as he revealed fourteen episodes ago?

Holly talking to the cryonics capsule.

At the end of the episode, Holly visits the crypt to talk to Erica’s capsule. “ Mrs. Desmond,” she says, her hands on the capsule, “I want to say something to you. I don't know if you can hear or not, but I'm so afraid. I’m afraid of Quito, I’m afraid of my mother, and also of the Reverend. Mrs. Desmond, I’m so afraid somebody wants to kill me. But not your husband. I love him the way I love my father, but I'm so lost and so alone. Please help me...I want to know what it was that Quito and they saw in the picture.” 

Quito catches her talking to the capsule and approaches her, his arms outstretched. “No, please!” Holly pleads, finally screaming and running from him, leaving the zombie with a heart alone in the crypt.

Upstairs, Holly calls for everyone to “see what you’ve done,” and the camera cuts to the portrait, which now bears a slash across the middle:

The end of the ill-fated saga of the Holly portrait.

“There is your spirit of love,” she cries, “or is it hate?” Alison, Matt, Dan, and Tim stare on, shocked and appalled by the slashed portrait and forever unaware of the identity of the culprit. The episode implies that the responsible party is Jacques Eloi des Mondes by showing a shot of his portrait glowing shortly before this scene, but this episode’s trivia on StrangeParadise.net indicates someone else. As with the trivia for Episode 30, it has to do with plot points that ultimately remained unexplained on the show, but nevertheless contains spoilers for the true nature of one character, so read at your own risk.

The first time since the pilot that Jacques’ portrait has glowed.

Coming up next: The characters react to the slashing of the portrait and we learn a telling bit of backstory about Elizabeth Marshall.

{ <- Previous: Episode 32   ||   Next: Episode 34 -> }

Notes

[1] Dorothy Daniels, Island of Evil (New York: Paperback Library, 1970), pp. 92-99. I will cover this book and the other two Paperback Library novels in more detail in a future series of posts.

[2] Ibid., p. 100.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 19 Review: She Was One of Us

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

In the last episode, we saw Jean Paul’s lawyer and Alison’s fiancé Dan depart from the main island, at the behest of Jacques. This means that now all major characters save Vangie are on the isle of Maljardin, prisoners detained guests forced to partake in the funeral that Jean Paul reluctantly agreed to hold for Erica while he waits for her to return from the dead.

We open in the crypt, where Raxl and Quito are leaving flowers on top of the cryonics capsule. Raxl starts talking about how she wants Erica’s soul to “depart to the Great Serpent,” which Jean Paul overhears when he and Alison enter. “You don’t seem to have much faith in the last rites of Christianity,” he remarks. (Look who’s talking!) Jean Paul explains briefly to Alison that Raxl’s religion predates Christianity (which she calls “the new religion”), which soon devolves into yet another “Erica is dead forever and should be buried”/”Erica will rise again” argument. I’ve lost count of how many times he and Alison have argued about this, but I think we’re up to Argument Number #389723. They’re both determined to beat the dead horse until it’s reduced to a pile of smashed bones suitable only for fertilizer.

Colin, are you reading the Teleprompter?

She says that she wishes that he would have Erica put in the ground, and he responds that technically she is. I would call him a smart-ass, but the way he delivers the line doesn’t come across as sarcastic. In fact, at this point on the show, Jean Paul doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor. Jacques is the witty, sarcastic one, and Jean Paul is the serious one with the one-track mind that can only think of Erica. Later on in Desmond Hall, they try to give Jean Paul a sense of humor by having him make a joke every now and then, but it doesn’t work because it goes against his original characterization. Maljardin-era Jean Paul doesn’t joke around and rarely even uses sarcasm.

Despite his humorlessness, he is a joy to look at in this episode. Here he is earlier in the scene with Alison, putting flowers on the capsule and looking just dashing.

Anyway, Jean Paul sends everyone out of the crypt, so that he can have a few moments alone with the capsule. He clasps his hands together as through praying, although whether it’s to the Christian God, the Great Serpent, or himself is unclear because he stays silent.

Back in the great hall, Alison asks Dan and Matt some more about Raxl and Quito’s religious practices and learns that, because their religion considers Christianity heresy, they may refuse to take part in the funeral despite loving Erica. (They attend, anyway, although they do perform their own rites/ritual separately beforehand.)

Alison, the thought of that seems to please you a lot.

Holly comes downstairs and, after a recap conversation with her mother and Tim, goes to see Matt. She starts out by telling him that she’s wary of attending any funerals until her own (because of the quarrel that occurred at her father’s), but then mentions another reason why she doesn’t want to attend and why she couldn’t sleep in the previous episode:

Holly: "Look Reverend, you're going to think this is way off, but last night, I had a very strange nightmare."   Matt: "What about?" Holly: "About me. Like...some kind of a warning."

Raxl, presumably on Holly.

She lights some incense and then a message appears in the writing box where Quito wrote something a moment before. A message from the Serpent about Holly, perhaps?

Holly: "Suddenly, there was this woman, like a priestess, who seemed to be in a temple, she was standing over me with a strange kind of headdress and she looked like my mother." Matt: "Your dreams are beginning to sound like a B-movie. Go on." Holly: "Well, then she said, 'Those who are part of this evil must pay the price.'"

She asks him what the dream means. He declines to answer because he’s not an authority in dream interpretation, but insists that she attend the funeral despite her worries. Because he can’t answer, I shall try to provide one for him based on some of the research that other fans have done on Ian Martin’s original plans for the Maljardin arc.

(WARNING: The YouTube and Maljardin Blog links in the next four paragraphs contain spoilers for later Maljardin episodes.)

For the first nine weeks of Strange Paradise, all episodes were credited to Ian Martin, a veteran actor and soap opera writer who appears to have been quite emotionally invested in the story, as there is evidence that he may have based Erica on his first wife Inge Adams, who also died young. I’ve read a rumor that Krantz Films owner Steve Krantz and his wife Judith (who later became a famous and influential romance novelist) may have ghostwritten some episodes, but there is no evidence to support the presence of any ghostwriters in this period of the show’s history.

Nevertheless, as the Maljardin arc went on, a discrepancy started to appear between the episode summaries in newspapers and the actual content of the episodes that aired starting in Episode 30. Strange Paradise historian Curt Ladnier has written many blog posts on these “lost episodes,” comparing the newspaper listings with the aired episodes and analyzing the changed plot points. Ladnier attributes the changes to executive meddling, requiring Martin to rewrite episode scripts when he was already writing five per week.

One of the most notable changes to these scripts was the omission of a new character named Tarasca, whom the newspaper summary for Episode 42 describes as “a native high priestess in love with Jacques, a French buccaneer.” Because Elizabeth dreamed about being her in the original version of that episode, we can safely assume that the priestess in Holly’s nightmare who resembled her was Tarasca. Also, given that this show mostly uses dream sequences as a means of showing events that happened in the past, we can also infer that, at some point, she sacrificed a young woman who looked identical to Holly, meaning that Martin was most likely planning on writing a 17th-century counterpart for her as well.

Several other early episodes hint at (or appear to hint at) the character of Tarasca and her connection to Elizabeth Marshall, including a cryptic line in Episode 12 where Jacques promises Elizabeth a “change” while she is on Maljardin. For more information and some more speculation about Tarasca’s role and backstory, see this video. I’m a little obsessed with this aborted storyline and have been waiting since October for a chance to discuss it, so, from now on, I’m going to reference it often and provide my own thoughts as to how I think it would have played out.

Erica’s funeral. Why is no one wearing black save for Dan and (obviously) Raxl and Quito? At the very least, Alison should be, because she takes her sister’s funeral more seriously than anyone else.

Jean Paul, I know what you’re thinking, but Reverend Dawson’s not talking about the possibility of Jacques resurrecting her. You really do have a one-track mind.

Jacques: “I do believe Holly needs me to jack her up by the bootstraps.”

Holly’s response to seeing Elizabeth chatting with Jean Paul. Really, Holly? Your mother marrying the richest man in the world *who adores you* is probably the best thing that could possibly happen to you.

After the funeral and a couple boring scenes about Holly’s subplot (there are a lot of references to the stupid Holly portrait in this episode), we see Dan confront Jean Paul about whether the guests can finally leave the island. Even though Jacques re-hired him last episode, he claims to be looking for a new job and he wants to make Alison leave the island with him and return to New York. Before Jean Paul has time to object, Jacques crashes the after-funeral reception, which he treats as a party. Ignoring Dan’s question of whether he and Alison can return to the mainland, he opens up the bar and commences trolling his detained guests:

So not suspicious. ;)

Tim: "With your permission, sir, I would like to propose a toast. To the departed. To Mrs. Desmond!"

Jacques: "Cheers--I mean, thank you."

He also pressures Alison into staying, giving her Dr. Menkin’s lab to use for her research. He then brags to Dan that none of the other guests want to leave and insists that he, too, can if he wants, but he will have to do it himself because it’s too late for Quito to sail him back:

BISSITS!

After the reception, Jacques returns to the crypt and gloats a little to Erica about how he has now imprisoned everyone on Maljardin. The handsome devil once again makes it clear that he doesn’t intend on freeing her and that she, too, is his prisoner. And, of course, he has some pun with it, as one might expect:

Can’t criticize this one, because even Shakespeare made it and I think it’s funny. I like puns, sometimes, just not terrible puns like the “pose” one from last episode.

Not even a detained guest anymore?

I think I just broke my comedy drum set. ;)

Coming up next: Another episode with a flashback to Maljardin in 1689, which means another two-parter. I also have a special essay in the works about the copyright status of Strange Paradise in the United States, which may surprise you. (It certainly surprised me.) Stay tuned for all these posts, as well as the Bad Subtitle Special for Week 4 after the Episode 20 review.

{ <-- Previous: Episode 18   ||   Next: Episode 20, Part I --> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Bad Subtitle Special: Week 4

Things are now speeding up in the strange paradise of Maljardin as the plot gains momentum. As the storm gathers on the Island of Evil, so, too, do the unintentionally bad subtitles produced by YouTube’s automatic captions. So let’s make fun of them together as is the tradition on this blog at the end of every week of the show.

From Episode 16:

Jean Paul, I didn’t know you thought so highly of Matt.

From Episode 17:

That’s an...interesting pairing.

A surprisingly fitting new name for Jacques.

Dr. Carr tries to estimate the impact of the camp in tomorrow’s episode on the audience.

Who’s Nicole?

So many unanswered questions regarding the dog that she mentions to “German.” For instance, is the dog all black and did she find it with a bloody locket around its neck with no explanation? Also, does she believe it to be a Dog of Evil™ despite it only doing ordinary dog things like chase its tail and try to hump Jean Paul?

From Episode 18:

Jean Paul’s new name?

The return of Mouth Shut Up.

From Episode 19:

Raxl’s surprisingly normal (and modern) new name.

See you next month with the best worst subtitles for Episodes 21 through 25. The copyright essay should be up by Friday or Saturday, and my review of Episode 21 by next week.

{ <-- Previous: Week 3   ||   Next: Week 5 --> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 18 Review: Making Biscuits

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

Early morning on Maljardin. Exhausted from a day of shock and disbelief at the arrivals of her mother and Reverend Dawson on the island paradise(?) of Maljardin, Holly sleeps on the couch in the château’s great hall. Quietly, a fully dressed Jean Paul descends the grand staircase and stops behind the couch to cover her with a blanket. “Hi, Dad,” she says. “I had a dream. I thought that-”

I know that she’s probably a bit creeped out, but, honestly, I kind of envy Holly in this scene. There are days that I wish that I could wake up to see Jean Paul Desmond at my bedside. I know he has all kinds of issues and personality flaws, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find him cute and charming.

She tells him that she was dreaming about waiting for her father at home. “I know the feeling only too well,” he responds. “ Sometimes you know when memories haunt dreams, nightmares can follow.” I know that he is probably referring to nightmares about Erica’s death and/or to that freaky dream sequence with Raxl from the end of Episode 5, but still, I have to wonder if he, like Holly, lost his father at a young age. They reveal a little about Jean Paul’s father in the third and final arc of the show, but I don’t recall them discussing the specifics of his death beyond one thing that would be a spoiler to mention at this point. It would have been interesting to learn a bit about Jean Paul’s father in the Maljardin arc, but, unfortunately, we don’t.

So gallant! <3

We cut to a scene of Dan waiting impatiently for Jean Paul at the French Leave Café while talking to Vangie. Mostly, this scene exists so that Vangie can elaborate on why Maljardin is so hard to get to. “That channel is a cross between a tide and a continual tornado,” she says. “It's full of rocks and shoals. Actually, it’s never even been properly charted.” (Except probably by one of the des Mondes.) This is the only new information we get in any of the scenes between Dan and Vangie in this episode; the rest is nearly all recap, so I’m going to skip over most of it.

We return to Maljardin, where Holly and Jean Paul are sipping coffee from some dainty little cups. Before leaving for the main island, he asks her to attend Erica’s funeral, but she is reluctant because her mother and Reverend Dawson will be there. He advises her essentially to suck it up and go--which, as she points out, sounds like something "the good padre” would say. And then this happens:

I...don’t think that’s the generator.

Holly goes running upstairs and, just after, Jacques reveals that it was indeed he who tampered with the generator:

Love Jacques’ sarcasm in talking about the importance of the Holly portrait and how Tim and Holly may be “finished” before it is. And yes, the good Jacques portrait is back!

Next, we get what has to be the single most painful line of dialogue that the usually witty Jacques gets on the entire show: “Dear me, it does pose a dilemma,” says he about the situation with the Holly portrait that Boring Artist Tim is painting. “Pose, portrait, dilemma. A little play on words.” He snickers, indicating that at least he thinks the line is funny. “But I assure you I'm not playing games.” As Paflad would say, “BADOOM, and indeed, TSHHH!“

After the bad pun storm is over, he tells Jean Paul to bring Dan back with him to Maljardin because “[Jacques wants] to be sure that he doesn’t work against [him].” Cut to the second Dan and Vangie scene, where they recap nearly all the most important events on the show so far. It’s not all recap, however, as we do hear Vangie’s interpretation of the King of Wands, one of the Tarot cards featured last episode:

Vangie: “This way, a man of immense wealth and prestige and power in the world.”

“Reverse him, and he becomes the traditional card of ill-omen, a devil himself. Jean Paul Desmond...or Jacques Eloi des Mondes.”

And now onto the scene featuring the Matt-Holly-Tim love triangle, which feels endless because I can’t stand this subplot. I’m planning on writing a post someday explaining everything that’s wrong with this subplot and exactly why it doesn’t work, but I want to wait until after I’ve reviewed at least three more episodes featuring it. Nothing important happens in this scene, but we do get these lines:

Holly: "I wish my mother was on canvas instead of always on my back."

Be careful what you wish for, Holly. Someday you could have a portrait of Elizabeth Marshall that speaks to you constantly and manipulates you into doing things that make no sense to other characters. (Not a spoiler.)

The best Tim line on the show, and it’s a line flub. Go figure.

After the seemingly endless Tim scene ends, we return to the main island, where Jacques possesses Jean Paul while he is meeting with Dan. (He takes Jacques’ suggestions an awful lot, and I’m not sure if it’s because he actually agrees or because Jacques is manipulating him and he finds it too hard to resist.) We start with this shot of Jacques with ever-so-mildly creepy lighting:

Not scary, but it successfully conveys the message that Jacques has just taken control.

This scene makes up for the mediocrity of the rest of this episode. Jacques is his devilishly charming self, impersonating Jean Paul and making a fool of him by behaving far too cheerfully for a man in mourning. When Dan questions him, he insists that he’s only putting on a brave face and inwardly grieving, but Dan remains suspicious.

I must admit that I found this Jacques line--cheesy as it is--pretty funny.

Jacques, of course, takes advantage of the opportunity to troll him. Why not? For the first eleven episodes, he stuck to aiding Jean Paul and mostly just did things that they both wanted to do, with just a few exceptions like killing Dr. Menkin and giving Alison romantic dreams about him. Since Episode 12, however, he has been regularly screwing with Jean Paul’s life, trying to undermine nearly everything he tries to do in some way unless it also benefits him. By now, Jacques is in control of Jean Paul even when he’s inside the painting and so he probably feels he can get away with anything.

Anyway, remember when Jacques fired Dan in Episode 15? Well, he’s re-hired now and invited to Maljardin. He’s also more confused than ever, particularly because Jacques (who he believes is Jean Paul) keeps making faces like this:

BISSITS FACE!

For those of you who haven’t read my review of Episode 4 or who don’t remember it, Bissits Face™ is the name I gave to the cartoonish faux-innocent face that Jacques likes to make, where he opens his eyes extremely wide and purses his lips in a very cute way. The name comes from its resemblance to the face my cat makes when he makes biscuits, or “bissits” as I call them in baby-talk. I know the name is silly, but it is a silly face and probably not one you’d make in real life if you genuinely wanted to appear innocent--which is further evidence that Jacques thinks that he’s smarter than everyone else (and is probably right).

If his wrists weren’t crossed, he’d look like he was getting ready to make biscuits on that table like a cat.

Meow?

Of course, this isn’t his only bug-eyed expression, and he does keep those gorgeous blue peepers open quite a lot. I think that Colin Fox intended for Jacques to look “crazy,” which would explain all the wide-eyed expressions he has him make. Crazy eyes are, after all, pretty much standard acting technique for playing characters who are mentally disturbed to some degree. There’s an old French actor named Gérard Berner whom I’ve nicknamed “Crazy Eyes,” because, in the two miniseries I’ve seen him in (La dame de Monsoreau (1971) and Le roi qui vient du sud (1979)), he played characters with anger problems and, when said characters got enraged, he opened his eyes so wide that you would swear they were about to fall out of his head. This scene from Monsoreau is a good example, as is the one that follows it (Berner is the man with the longish hair and the silver doublet). Obviously, the intended meaning of Bissits Face™ is “I’m pretending to be innocent” and not “I’m angry,” but it’s still the same technique.

Gérard Berner (right) as François d’Anjou in La dame de Monsoreau (1971), demonstrating the crazy eye technique in a very different context.

Anyway, after Dan leaves to get ready to sail to Maljardin, Jacques and Vangie exchange a few words. By this point, she knows for certain who he is and that he will bring death to the island.

A rare instance of the subtitles getting Vangie’s name right.

I really like this exchange, so, as with many other exchanges that I really like, I’m going to post a full transcription:

Jacques: "Did you hear it all, Vangie?" Vangie: "Enough to make me wonder if I shouldn't contact the newspapers and let them find out the kind of man you really are."

Jacques: "You wouldn't do that, because you're afraid of my...power."   Vangie: "In this world...or the next?" 

Jacques: "Next world?" *laughs* "What are you talking about? You've been playing cards too much. It's dulling your senses."   Vangie: "My father is dead. I am now the Conjure Woman. My senses are greater than ever. There is evil roaming on Maljardin. It must be destroyed."

Getting nervous, Jacques?

Jacques: "Vangie! You and your witchcraft. It will be the death of me yet.” Vangie: "I'm after the Devil."

Yup, definitely nervous.

Jacques: "And he's after you!"

And then we have a marvelous little credits scene where Jacques sits down in the big wicker chair, looking enormously pleased with himself. He puts his feet up on the table in front of him, grins, polishes his ring, all while looking incredibly self-satisfied. I love this comment about it on YouTube: “I can imagine the director telling Colin at the end credits,'Ok Colin-Baby, now just sit there and look smug...that's it...more smug-more smug...annnnd got it!'”

Smug.

Smugger.

Smuggest.

This episode is typical of Wednesday episodes on this show: light on plot and heavy on recap and character interaction that may or may not be filler. The only important things that happen in this one are (1) Jacques brings Dan with him to Maljardin and (2) Vangie reveals to Jacques that she has become the Conjure Woman and therefore a powerful opponent. But neither of these happen until the final scene, so, in all honesty, one could skip over most of this episode without missing much save for Tim’s hilarious line flub.

Coming up next: Reverend Dawson holds Erica’s funeral and Holly discusses an interesting nightmare she had about her mother.

{ <-- Previous: Episode 17   ||   Next: Episode 19 --> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 16 Review: Jean Paul’s Latest Detained Guest

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

I wasn’t going to start working on another review until next week at the earliest, but I have been re-watching the Agatha episodes from Desmond Hall and, oh my Great Serpent, are they terrible! I don’t wish to spoil too much of what happens then because those reviews are a long way in the future, but I will say that (1) I can’t stand Agatha Pruitt and (2) while some episodes of Desmond Hall Part I have decent writing, in others the writing is very, very, very bad. I can’t help but feel sorry for the fans of both this show and Dark Shadows in early 1970, because Agatha would have been swanning around Desmondton getting on everyone’s nerves during the same period as one of the least-loved arcs on DS, the Leviathan arc.*

Normally, I would type out my complaints about Desmond Hall in the OneNote notebook where I take screencaps and save them for when I write those episode reviews in a year or two. However, I felt that I had to mention the awfulness of Episode 91 in this post, because that is what compelled me to return from my hiatus early. I needed to remind myself why I like this show enough to dedicate a whole blog to it, and so I took a (metaphorical) trip back to Maljardin to re-watch and review Episode 16.

Our mascot!

On the last episode, Jean Paul hired Reverend Matt Dawson to conduct a funeral service for his wife Erica, still frozen in the cryonics capsule  and awaiting her resurrection by THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES. Now Jean Paul--who has changed into a very nice pinstripe suit--is showing Matt the crypt at Maljardin where the capsule is located. “Even with the electrical connections, the compressor and cryonics capsule, I think this probably will be the best place for the service,” he says to the horrified minister. “Don’t you think, Reverend Dawson?” All Matt can do is smile and nod in response while privately questioning the life choices that led to this moment.

He’s probably thinking, “I left my ministry to stalk a 20-year-old full-time for this?!”

Jean Paul continues interviewing him. “You have no objection to a service without a burial?”

“No,” Matt shakes his head. “I have officiated at many such services, where the body is usually placed in the family crypt.” Considering that the vast majority of families don’t have family crypts--at least not in their basements--I think that he’s humoring Jean Paul. After all, he’s seen so many red flags already--the isolated island, the extreme secrecy, Jean Paul’s reluctance to tell anyone about Erica’s death, the whole cryonics/resurrection thing itself, and now his insistence on conducting the funeral service around a cryonics capsule.

He questions the idea that a body held in cryonic suspension can be brought back to life, and Jean Paul continues to deny that Erica is forever dead. He also continues to insist that the usual laws of nature don’t apply on Maljardin, and that on that island he is God:

Yes, Reverend Dawson, your new client thinks he’s God. There’s another red flag for you, Matt, that Jean Paul Desmond is not a client that you want to work for and you should probably cancel the agreement, give up on Holly, and try to get off the island while you still can.

Jean Paul tells him of a man who was allegedly brought back to life after dying in a blizzard, and who lived three decades as “a soulless corpse, like a zombie” before dying again. After saying “zombie,” the camera cuts to Quito who is spying on them, confirming that Quito is indeed a zombie--although, considering that Quito has emotions (which he expresses through body language) and pets whom he clearly loves, the “soulless” part is unlikely.

Did he offend Quito when he called zombies “soulless corpses,” I wonder?

It’s at this point that handsome devil Jacques takes over and starts trolling Matt. “You are a theologian trapped by your own logic and teachings,” he remarks with a mocking smile. “When you run out of answers, look to the fire god. He’s got some new ones, new for even you.” Which goes over about as well as proselytization usually does: that is to say, not at all, especially without one of those poorly-written smiley-face tracts that are absurdly popular with Christian fundamentalists. But Jacques, unfortunately, is straight out of copies of SMILE THE FIRE GOD LOVES YOU and so has to resort to confusing Matt (and us) with non sequiturs instead:

Jacques: “I don’t advocate or procrastinate.” (That has to be a line flub.) “I live and let live.”

I’m surprised he didn’t bring up the age-old theological question about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin and awkwardly try to connect that to the situation as well.

Matt storms out and Jacques stays behind to gloat. “I haven’t had so much fun,” he quips, “since one of my colleagues fiddled while Rome burned.” This reference to the Roman emperor Nero is without a doubt the clearest evidence so far that Jacques is indeed supposed to be the Devil, who at some point came to occupy the body of Jean Paul’s ancestor.

Back in the great hall, Matt returns to stalking Holly, who once again rejects him, because stalking only leads to mutual love and committed relationships in bad romance movies. He insists that he has something important to say to her, and she agrees to listen, but only for five minutes. He insists that Elizabeth doesn’t like him and that he followed her to Maljardin because he “thought [she] might need [him] for protection, guidance, maybe even comfort.”

According to StrangeParadise.net, this is an allusion to a real person, Reverend Harold Davidson, described in more detail on this page. I won’t copy Davidson’s bio on here because of its length, so I’ll just quote Holly by calling him a “lecherous minister.”

She rejects him, he leaves with his proverbial tail between his legs, then she proceeds to mope while sprawled in Jean Paul’s favorite chair for arguing with Jacques. Alison finds her there and asks what’s wrong, so she starts to explain before Matt arrives again and interrupts by insisting that he’s not trying to keep her from her inheritance like she claims. He’s right, but that doesn’t change the fact that Elizabeth is using him to do just that. Now it’s Holly’s turn to flounce, and she does it with more gusto than Reverend Stalker.

He talks to Alison, who fills him in on the whole situation, speaking again about how Jean Paul thinks he’s God and also about how Matt is now a prisoner on Maljardin.

Alison explaining the concept of a detained guest to Matt.

Matt suggests that Alison get Raxl to try to reason with Jean Paul, unaware of how well that didn’t work out a week before, He insists, though, that “perhaps these Tarot cards [that Vangie gave him in Episode 14] will sway her.” Although Alison is skeptical and so is Raxl upon her arrival, that all changes when he gives her the pack of cards and tells her that Vangie said “that [she] should use them for everyone’s good.”

She knows instantly that Vangie has predicted that Maljardin is doomed.

An interesting conversation between the two follows. Matt reveals to her that she should contact Vangie at “the third hour” (3 AM, also known as the “witching hour” or “demonic hour”), which means nothing to him but “everything” to her. She recaps for him about Jacques Eloi des Mondes, the conjure doll, and the silver pin, mentioning that “the power of the Great Serpent made him an eternal prisoner” for three hundred years.

Raxl: “Jacques Eloi Des Mondes! It must be he who walks. It must be!"   Matt: "Impossible!" Raxl: "You believe in God, but what about His work?” [I think this is a line flub for “word,” which would make more sense in context.] “I trust the Tarot cards, but what about the words of the woman who reads them?" Matt: "I'm a messenger, not a convert." Raxl: "One conjure doll, one silver pin. If that pin were still driven into that doll's head, we would all be safe."   Matt: "Raxl, that is witchcraft!" [And reading Tarot cards--a form of divination--isn’t?] Raxl: "Do you feel safe, Reverend?"

He gazes at the portrait of Jacques without another word until Jean Paul returns, explaining that he had to apologize to Quito after inadvertently hurting his feelings earlier, most likely with what he said about zombies. He asks Matt if he’s started preparing a speech for the funeral service, and an argument erupts between the two of them:

Did I mention yet that Jean Paul is more than a bit of a control freak?

Jean Paul decides that maybe Jacques had the right idea as far as the detained-guest thing went, and so puts the island on lockdown: “There will be no further trips to the main island and no trips even for mail until a matter between the Reverend and his conscience is resolved.”

Jean Paul is a male example of what is known in certain fandoms as a yandere, or a character who is madly in love, enough to hurt and even kill anyone who they believe is standing between them and their love interest.

Meanwhile in the basement, Raxl performs a ritual to contact the Conjure Man using Vangie’s Tarot cards while Quito enters the Not-So-Hidden Temple. And with that, the episode ends.

Raxl and the Tarot cards.

This was an interesting episode, with Matt as the central character for a change. The major theme of this episode seems to be belief, and how, whether seen through the lens of science (Alison), Christianity (Matt), or voodoo (Raxl), Jean Paul’s plans to revive Erica appear crazy at best and dangerous and/or sacrilegious at worst. There’s also the suggestion that Erica might return as a zombie, which does not seem to bother Jean Paul as much as it should (make of that what you will). Did it make up for the badness of Episode 91? Yes. It’s genuinely a good episode, even though some of the lines don’t make sense--but I think that at least most of those are line flubs.

Coming up next: Raxl sends a message to the Conjure Man, so Jacques decides to interfere. Also, Jacques’ portrait becomes much stranger.

Notes

* I don’t know the exact original airdates for most episodes of Strange Paradise. Maljardin aired from October 20, 1969 to January 19, 1970 in Canada according to StrangeParadise.net, but the show premiered in the United States on September 8, making the US six weeks or 30 episodes ahead of Canada. The YouTube user retronewfoundland has the endings of several episodes on their channel with the original Canadian airdates. The nearest episode to Episode 91 that retronewfoundland has a clip from is Episode 84, with the airdate of February 17, 1970 (a Tuesday). This means that (according to my calculations) Episode 91 would have most likely aired in Canada on February 26, and in the US six weeks earlier on January 15. Either date places it contemporary with the Leviathan arc, which lasted from November 14, 1969 to March 27, 1970 (source).

{ <-- Previous: Episode 15   ||   Next: Episode 17 --> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 12 Review: Jacques’ Cape Appreciation Post

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

This is one of my favorite episodes, one that I’ve re-watched more times than any other--not because of the plot, nor because of an abundance of analysis material or any particular turns of phrase, but for a completely different reason. In this episode, Jacques is, in my opinion, at his most dashing and is wearing what I consider his best outfit: a black suit topped with a long matching cape that is the epitome of elegance.

Do you remember two episodes ago, when Jacques told Jean Paul he did not want any more guests on Maljardin? Well, the handsome devil changes his mind and, while possessing Jean Paul, decides to bring Elizabeth Marshall to the island--where, as you may remember, her daughter Holly is hiding. Jacques does not have to dress up for the occasion any more than usual, but he does so anyway, giving Jean Paul an evil makeover:

Sweet dreams are made of this.

Quito knows that something is up, but says nothing because, as a zombie, he can’t. While they prepare to sail to the mainland, Raxl is in the basement communicating with psychic and voodoo priestess Vangie Abbott via makeup mirror, pleading with her to help her fight Jacques. Vangie suggests that she contact her father, the Conjure Man, which Raxl does by...having Quito beat the drum in the Not-So-Hidden Voodoo Temple? I’m not sure.

The priestess and the Conjure Man’s daughter communicating through the latter’s mirror.

Quito beating the drum during the ritual in the temple.

All Jacques knows, however, is that Raxl is in the basement, because he still hasn’t noticed the incredibly obvious "hidden” door. Probably thinking that she is just checking on the cryonics capsule or dusting the coffins of his descendants, he expresses his disbelief at her fondness of “the dark morbidity of that crypt.” Then he says this line, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

Once again, a man after my own heart.

Quito watches Jacques as he heads to the boathouse. I think that, despite being a zombie, he can still think for himself and he knows that Jacques is controlling Jean Paul.

So he and Quito sail to the mainland to get supplies, including “a few little goodies” that Jacques adds, which I assume refers to Elizabeth Marshall, the widowed, greedy mother of his guest Holly. They go to the French Leave Café so that Jacquet can meet with her. He arrives shortly after a heated argument between her and Matt that leads Vangie to comment, “No wonder Holly’s running.” Between her money-hungry, jealous mother and Reverend Stalker stalking her, I have to agree.

The red lining is lovely, even more so than the gold lining on his other one.

As he walks in, he cuts quite a lovely figure, his cape swishing as he turns. He stares at a young woman in a minidress who, surprisingly, doesn’t seem to notice him, when you would think that he would turn the head of everyone in the room. You would think that even people who aren’t sexually attracted to him would think, “OMG IT’S JEAN PAUL DESMOND THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD AND OWNER OF MALJARDIN” and stare. Maybe I’m alone in thinking that his outfit is one of the sexiest ever, but even if you don’t agree, you still have to admit that it’s one that would stand out almost anywhere, especially in the tropics where wearing all black with additional layers is highly impractical. So, logically, it should attract a lot more attention than it does. But maybe this isn’t the first time anyone in Jean Paul’s body has worn a cape to the mainland. Who knows? Before Erica’s death, Jean Paul might have shown up regularly at the Café in full Liberace regalia, for all we know.

I wonder what that string is near the top of the screen? It appears in other episodes, too, so it has to be part of some piece of equipment.

Filler scene with Holly commenting on Jacques’ resemblance to Jean Paul, with the portrait visible. They never should have established the rule of his likeness disappearing whenever he leaves the painting if they didn’t plan on showing that consistently.*

“A tonic water, please,” the handsome devil orders once he arrives at the bar. “Very cold.” Then, looking at the camera, he adds, “I don’t know what it is, but after all this time, I still can’t stand the heat.” I don’t believe you, Jacques. If you truly can’t stand the heat, then what are you doing dressed like that in the Caribbean? You must be very hot, in the literal as well as metaphorical sense. According to the first Paperback Library novel, the French Leave Café is air-conditioned**, and I’ve speculated before that the Château de Maljardin might be as well. But Jacques, surely you would have gotten hot on the boat or while walking from the dock to the Café, so don’t go around complaining about the heat when you’re walking around wearing a heavy, lined cape made of some suiting material. Besides, I’m sure Hell was much hotter.

Very practical clothing for a tropical climate. Not. But devilishly dashing!

He pulls out Alison’s letter to Dan and tries burning it in the ashtray (remember those?). Vangie, suspicious, deliberately bumps into him and spills his tonic water on the flames, then pretends it was an accident. “I’m charmed by your concern,” says Jacques, grinning.

“It goes back a long way,” she replies.

“Purely out of curiosity,” he asks, still grinning, “how long?”

“To your childhood!” she answers while staring at him and enunciating the words as though she intends to let him know that she knows.

“That’s quite a few years ago, depending on what you refer to by ‘how long.’“ He knows that she knows.

“It would be ungentlemanly to add up the years. As a woman, I would be the loser.”

“I never count a woman--any woman--a loser.”

She asks him about Holly and whether she is on Maljardin, and he replies in the affirmative. Soon after, Elizabeth arrives at their table, asking Vangie about Holly. “Vangie, who is this charming lady?” Jacques asks, so Vangie introduces them.

If such a dashing man were to kiss my hand, I would probably fall in love with him forever.

They chat about her and Jean Paul’s acquaintances for a minute, Elizabeth flirting with him all the while, before he changes the subject. “I have a confession to make,” he says, giving her Bissits Face™. “I’m harboring a fugitive on my island. A very charming one. Your daughter.”

Bissits Face™!

He notices Vangie eavesdropping and asks her if she wants anything, to which she responds, “It’s too late now.” This scene is really well-written and well-acted by Strange Paradise standards; nearly every line of dialogue is loaded with subtext, which the actors do a good job of conveying. We don’t need to be told that Vangie and Jacques recognize each other, nor that Elizabeth wants to marry Jean Paul or that Vangie is hurt because he just betrayed her trust. The subtext shines through. It’s the sort of scene that occurs in a lot of Ian Martin’s episodes once he gets the hang of writing the series. It’s also proof that Martin could be subtle when he wanted to be, which makes his choices to include over-the-top references to Jacques being THE DEVIL and obvious foreshadowing in certain episodes all the more perplexing.

Look at Elizabeth’s hair! A truly impressive bouffant.

They flirt some more and it takes little effort on Jacques’ part to persuade her to come with him to Maljardin. After all, her wealthy husband is dead and her daughter is set to inherit all of his fortune, so, in her mind, it’s the perfect opportunity to convince Jean Paul to marry her so that she can continue to live her fabulous high-society lifestyle as the new Mrs. Desmond. Also, she can capture Holly again and put her in another institution like Westley House, preferably run by someone who isn’t infatuated with her. She says that she is going to retrieve Holly, but hints that "[she] might want to stay forever.”

Two ladies, and he’s the only man.

On their way out, Vangie suggests that he invite Matt as well, but he refuses understandably. And after Jacques, Elizabeth, and Quito are on their way back to Maljardin, she retrieves the letter which Jacques has completely forgotten about (because of lust, perhaps?) and calls Dan. Meanwhile back on Maljardin, Jacques continues to flirt with Elizabeth and Holly realizes that her attempt to escape her mother has failed.

You can run, but you can’t hide!

Jacques doing that cute thing that his descendant does often in the Desmond Hall arc.

I think that I may have gotten carried away in this entry with all the screencaps of Jacques’ cape, but what can I say? He’s a gorgeous man who wears gorgeous clothes, and this is the only episode in which we see this particular outfit. It’s also a damn good episode--one of Ian Martin’s best--and I enjoyed reviewing this episode almost as much as I enjoy watching it.

Coming up next: Jacques and Elizabeth bond over some booze and Tim begins his ridiculous commission to paint Erica with Holly as his stand-in.

Notes

* One could argue that the characters do not actually see the portrait missing and that the blank canvas is only a visual cue so that the viewers know that Jacques has possessed Jean Paul. However, in the Paperback Library novels, the characters comment on the missing portrait, indicating that, at least in the books, the vanishing portrait is diegetic (in other words, that the canvas is literally blank from the characters’ perspective and not just the audience’s). I plan on eventually writing a post about diegesis in Strange Paradise, analyzing which effects are diegetic and which are not, because there are many things in this series that could go either way and I want to take the time to analyze them.

** Dorothy Daniels, Strange Paradise (New York: Paperback Library, 1969), 20. Daniels also states that the sun outside the Café is “mercilessly hot,” which should logically be true about the climate on the nearby isle of Maljardin as well.

{ <-- Previous: Episode 11  ||  Next: Episode 13 --> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 7 Review: Flying South Like the Birdies

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

We open with a conversation between Alison and Raxl about the death of Dr. Menkin. Mostly, this is repeating what we already know for the benefit of the original viewers who missed the previous two episodes, but not entirely. I just realized that Alison didn’t learn of Dr. Menkin’s death in either Episode 5 or 6. (I had to re-watch part of Episode 5 and skim over Debby Graham’s synopsis of Episode 6 to confirm this.) So this is also an important scene for her, one that augments the fear she has begun to feel on the island, even if, unlike Raxl, she does not yet believe in the supernatural forces that make Maljardin, as the immortal housekeeper says just before the opening, “the Garden of Evil.”

We also get an unintentionally funny moment where Raxl shouts “THAT DEVIL!” and the camera quickly zooms in to the portrait of Jacques Eloi des Mondes with some thunder and lightning for emphasis. Then Alison freaks out as she realizes that Jacques put the dream from last episode inside her head. It’s not clear if she is more frightened by the possibility that Jacques will kill her or by the fact that she is sexually attracted to a dead man who looks exactly like her brother-in-law.

Alison: “The dream was so real! This island...it IS evil! I have to get away, back to reason. Away from HIM!"

*flashing lightning and wailing theremin*

Colin Fox, by the way, isn’t in this episode, so, just like the previous Foxless episode, the focus is primarily on the subplots. In the next scene, we cut away to the French Leave Café, where Boring Artist Tim is hanging out with Vangie Abbott (Angela Roland). Now, even though Vangie first appeared on the show in the second episode, I wanted to wait a while to introduce her, mostly because I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started writing these massive blog entries and got overwhelmed early on by all the things I wanted to cover. But now that things are slowing down and she’s starting to become relevant to the plot, I will write a little about her.

Vangie, who owns the café, is a psychic who uses tarot cards to divine the future. She usually provides a lot of detail as to what individual cards mean, connecting them to specific characters and not always using the more well-known trump cards/Major Arcana to represent them. This indicates that Ian Martin probably did a significant amount of research on tarot cards and their meanings before writing about them. (Contrast with Dark Shadows, which mainly featured the same few cards--especially the Tower of Destruction--over and over and usually interpreted them literally.[1] I admittedly haven’t done much research on the tarot (although I intend to in the near future for this blog), so I’ve learned quite a bit about different cards’ meanings from Vangie’s dialogue. There’s a lot more that I could say about her character, but this is about all I can say for now without spoiling anything.

Well, I could also mention her quirky fashion sense and distinctive sing-song alto voice. (That’s Boring Artist Tim on the right, by the way.)

A screenshot of Vangie’s outfit from Episode 2.

Hundreds of miles away, we find the Reverend Matt Dawson at Westley House seeking word of the whereabouts of 20-year-old teenager Holly. He visits her roommate Dinah Heath[2] (Trudy Young), a young hippie who only appears in this episode, but who is the best thing about it. Truth be told, I wanted to write this entire post about just Dinah, but changed my mind when I re-watched the episode and remembered that Vangie was in it, too. Dinah is really fun and probably my favorite of the One-Episode Wonders: characters who only appear in one episode, but who are memorable for the right reasons. Dr. Patton from Episode 4 is another favorite one-episode character of mine, as is Claude from an episode months in the future (although my opinion is largely based on how I imagine him, because so far I have only read that episode’s synopsis and watched the accompanying slideshow).[3] And she totally takes the piss out of Matt when he comes to question her.

At the start of the scene, Dinah is jamming out in her room to some music while smoking. It looks like a cigarette, but it’s probably meant to be a joint, because she acts stoned during the entire scene.

Matt knocks on the door and she jumps off her bunk and immediately starts fanning the air to try to get rid of the pot smell. I love the ironic “please keep off grass” sign.

Matt doesn’t even need to mention Holly for her to know that he plans to ask about her. Dinah just outright says “she isn’t here” while smirking and posing with her hand on her hip.

Cue an exchange full of awkwardly-delivered 1960s slang as Dinah clarifies that he wants to know “why’d she split” and he accuses her of “trying to put [him] on.” I’m not sure how current the slang would have been when the episodes were written, but, considering that the writer was in his fifties at the time, probably not very.

She goes over to her desk to brush her hair while Matt continues questioning her. She denies knowing where Holly is, so he says patronizingly, “I admire your sense of loyalty, but there are times when it could hurt Holly rather than help her.” I might believe him if I didn’t already know that he had the hots for Holly.

More awkward slang. Dinah is still pretending to ignore him.

Matt’s horrified reaction when she says what we know from Episode 3. “Uh-oh,” he’s probably thinking, “she’s onto me.”

Definitely onto him!

Matt so wants the pretty young chicks at Westley House to see him as a groovy, happenin’ padre with all the hip slang he uses.

When he finally gets her to “level” with him, she tells him, “All I know is that she’s flying south like the birdies. Way down south. Has to be. Air alone costs $163.75 [$1,148.24 in 2019 USD, or $1,124.03 in 2019 Canadian dollars].” He asks how she got that money, and Dinah responds, “Saved some. We all chipped in with the rest.” So they all think that he’s a creep, enough to fund her escape from him.

She grabs this huge teddy bear and starts drumming on it. She’s not even trying to conceal that she’s stoned.

She means "vampire” figuratively, but I imagine this line was added to try to hook any DS fans tuning in. It would have admittedly been so awesome if Mrs. Marshall had turned out to be a literal vampire.

Stalker!

We next see Holly at the French Leave Café, trying to order a drink but getting turned away from the bar because she’s underage. How can they even tell? No one cards her before turning her away and Sylvia Feigel looks 27 at the youngest. Hell, I’m 26 years old, look younger than Holly does, and no one ever cards me when I buy alcohol. I could see them turning someone like Dinah away without carding her because she definitely looks under 21, but Holly? Really?

Holly does not look 20.

She has a meet-cute with Tim, followed by a free tarot reading courtesy of Vangie. Without her saying anything about her life, the psychic reveals that she knows Holly’s future:

Foreshadowing!

She also knows that a man has begun stalking her, but not his identity. “What are you running from Holly, and who is the man running after you?” she asks before the scene cuts to Matt telling Elizabeth Marshall that her daughter ran away. Soon after, the conversation shifts to his attraction to Holly. While stalkers are always creepy regardless of their age and the age of the stalkee, the way they talk about Holly makes it sound like the Reverend is interested in a teenager:

Because Reverend Dawson isn’t already gross enough with his stalking, smarmy demeanor, romantic interest in a just barely former ward, and offbrand Reverend Trask accent.

Elizabeth threatens to “fix” both him and Holly and leaves to track Holly down on her own. Then we get a short, unnecessary filler scene of Raxl and Alison before the credits.

In the next episode, THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES returns and Dan meets up with Vangie to do some more research regarding Jacques’ identity. Stay tuned!

Notes

[1] I’m not disparaging Dark Shadows here. I love both shows; I just wanted to point out that the Dark Shadows writers probably did less research on the tarot. Either that, or they just loved the Tower of Destruction. In any case, they used the Tower of Destruction so excessively that sometimes even thinking of that card is enough to send me into giggling fits. (If you haven’t figured it out yet, I have an odd sense of humor.)

[2] Ian Martin seems to have been fond of the name Dinah for girls and young women. Eight years later in 1977, he used the name again for the 12-year-old protagonist of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater episode “The Child’s Cat Paw,” played by a young Sarah Jessica Parker. It isn’t his best CBSRMT episode, but I still recommend it.

[3] Coincidentally, the episode with Claude also features the introduction of Susan, another Trudy Young character who plays a major role in the show’s final arc. I haven’t seen any full episodes after 130 yet because they’re not on YouTube, but I’ve read all the synopses. Someday I will watch the second Desmond Hall arc, and I can only hope that the Claude scene on the show is as romantic as it is in my head cinema. (It probably isn’t, given that David Wells' other character Cort is hilariously badly acted (if very, very cute), but perhaps Wells’ acting was better when he played Claude.)

ETA 6/22/2020: I just watched Episode 133 this evening (got the DVDs now) and I loved the scene with Claude. I’m not kidding. Surprisingly, David Wells’ acting as both Claude and Cort is decent in the episode--and, after re-watching the first Desmond Hall arc, I can say that his acting improves over time and is even occasionally good. I’ll write much more about Cort later on (this isn’t the right entry for it), but I will say that not all Cort episodes are created equal.

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[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 2 Review: 5 Reasons Why Jacques is the Best Character on the Show

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

This post is going to be far from a full synopsis, so, if you want to know everything that happens in this episode, watch it or read one of the links above. Really, the only interesting things that happen in Episode 2 are (1) Jacques messes around for a bit as he looks for a place to hide the Conjure Doll and pin and (2) Raxl and Quito enter the Not-So-Hidden Voodoo Temple for the first time on the show.

Neither Jacques nor Jean Paul know about this hidden door, despite both spending a lot of time in the crypt. Seriously.

We also meet Vangie Abbott (Angela Roland), a waitress at the French Leave Café who eventually becomes one of the most interesting characters in the Maljardin arc, and Tim Stanton (Bruce Gray), a starving artist type who is boring and stays that way. (Gray, however, seems to have been quite a funny guy in real life, if his account of filming Strange Paradise (HUGE SPOILERS) is any indication.) I don’t think I’m ruining anything for anyone by saying that the plot line that Ian Martin initially sets up about him needing thousands of dollars to pay off his debt to the Mafia is resolved early on and scarcely a word about it spoken thereafter.

No, what I want to focus on this entry is Jacques Eloi des Mondes, whom I absolutely adore, and some of the reasons why I love him. Yes, I know he is THE DEVIL according to Raxl, but that may just be Raxl’s silly personal opinion of him and he could very well have just been an ordinary man with some evil tendencies (which so far he keeps well-hidden). He may be evil, but he is also fun and funny and absolutely gorgeous. Jean Paul, too, is gorgeous (obviously--they’re played by the same actor and inhabit the same body), but Jacques is more entertaining. There are other great characters on Strange Paradise, but Jacques is unquestionably the best. That is not an opinion; that is a fact.

To recap, Jean Paul has just set Jacques free by removing his voodoo doll from the crypt and pulling the silver pin--or “silver sword,” as the characters mostly call it in this episode--from its temples. Now Jean Paul has transformed into Jacques, complete with doublet, long gold cape, and boots (which he apparently wore indoors during his life), not to mention a huge garnet ring that we will be seeing a lot of in future episodes. Jacques is overjoyed to finally be free again and the joy that he expresses while parading around Maljardin is infectious.

In Episode 2, Jacques is infectiously cheerful.

And that is reason #1 why I can’t help but love Jacques: when he’s happy, he’s so infectiously cheerful that I can’t help but smile. I don’t think that we’re supposed to be happy for him now that he’s free given that he is supposedly THE DEVIL, but you watch this scene and try to refrain from laughing or grinning. Even Danny Horn, who didn’t care for this show, enjoyed the scene, likening Jacques to “a kid who’s managed to convince his mother that he needs to stay home from school and play with his action figures.” Eventually, he actually starts doing devious things and messing up Jean Paul’s life, but he does it with a big, adorable, cheesy grin on his face much of the time--and when he isn’t grinning, he’s usually making one of several other adorable faces. When that happens, I try really hard not to root for Jacques, but don’t always succeed. As long as he isn’t doing anything evil, he’s the more likeable of the two des Mondes.

Jacques: “Freeee~!”

Reason #2: He is very handsome. Colin Fox is almost eighty-one now and still looks good for his age, but, fifty years ago when this show was made, he was downright stunning. He was handsomer, in my opinion, than most actors more widely considered heartthrobs; they tend to look bland, while Fox’s face is full of character. I have long agreed with Sir Francis Bacon that “there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion,” and his is the kind of strange beauty that appeals to me. He has an unusual nose (someone apparently broke it when he was a teenager) and his lovely white teeth are a little crooked, but these only add to his charm. I like that he doesn’t look perfect, because perfect is boring.

You can keep your blandly attractive Colin Firth. I’ll take this Colin instead.

Reason #3: His voice. Again, this applies to both of Fox’s characters on the show, but especially to Jacques. Fox has a beautifully modulated, deep voice that I just love listening to. In Jacques’ case, his lovely voice adds an extra layer of charm and suavity to his dialogue, some of which would sound smarmy if delivered by a less talented or less charismatic actor.

Jacques playing with the conjure doll and silver pin. I find it noteworthy that Raxl took the time to sew and dress the huge voodoo doll in a replica of Jacques’ outfit before using it to kill him. It suggests that she had been planning the murder for a very long time, perhaps waiting for the perfect occasion.

Reason #4: He’s funny. Martin gives Jacques some truly brilliant lines: something which none of the other writers of the Maljardin arc did, which is one reason why their episodes aren’t as good.  Even when Martin gives him bad jokes, he is still funny. In many episodes, he has Jacques deliver some truly corny one-liners about the devil, but Fox sells them. He’s like an alchemist with the ability to turn cornball into gold.

A 17th-century French aristocrat really shouldn’t have a tan, but he’s inside Jean Paul’s body here. Besides, it doesn’t make him any less gorgeous.

Reason #5: He’s eerily good at what he does. Jacques knows he is smarter than most of the other characters, Raxl and Vangie probably the only exceptions. Jean Paul allegedly has an IQ of 187, but that’s according to his lawyer and therefore probably false. Despite his high IQ, he still manages to fall for Jacques again and again because Jacques knows exactly how to manipulate him. None of the writers can agree on whether Jacques is the devil or a man just pretending to be him, but, devil or not, he is one magnificent bastard.

Jacques: *impersonating Jean Paul* “Raxl, witchcraft is a dead art. Life today is in the hands of the doctors. Now please, leave me be! I must rest.”

There are other reasons why he’s my favorite character, but I will get into those later on when they are relevant. I’ve already listed the main ones and said everything that I want to about this mostly uneventful episode.

In Episode 3, one of my other favorite characters, Elizabeth Marshall, is introduced, so my next post will mostly be about the subplot involving her, her daughter Holly, and the Reverend Matt Dawson. As I have decided to try to write two review essays a week, it should be done by Friday evening. Until then, have a good week!

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