Post by niecie on Sept 21, 2013 22:56:53 GMT -5
Or perhaps I should say, typing too much as I watch...
Murderous Spring. Whenever fans of Wild Wild West speak of their top ten favorite episodes, it's rare for this one to be left off that list. Here we have Dr Loveless in his fourth appearance, and it's one of his most chillingly villainous turns, having invented a drug that causes hallucinations along with wiping away the victim's inhibitions. And who does he have in mind to use as a guinea pig but our own James West!
As RC points out in the introductory comments, the part of the mute attendant watching over Jim & Artie was played by RC's dad, Leonard Falk. Also, Dr Loveless being in a wheelchair was written into the script after Michael Dunn fell from the second story of the set.
Lots of dogs.
Poor Kitten Twitty! She shows up and her size is a source of entertainment for the locals, who laugh at her efforts to simply get out of the carriage.
One thing about Kitten and maybe I shouldn't notice or comment on it, but her, ah, bosom looks weird in the scene when she takes her luggage from the carriage, like there's a box or something under the costume. I have no idea why. (But once she's no longer carrying the luggage, her bosom no longer looks boxy. Perhaps they had a brace under her clothes for her to lift the luggage?)
Everyone who tries to lift Kitten's luggage struggles with it except for Kitten herself. It's curious to me that they have her be illiterate, signing the register with two large X's and a period. The clerk wonders what the period is for. I suppose we find out at the end of the teaser.
Everyone else at the hotel seems to act like Kitten is someone to be laughed at, but Jim treats her with courtesy. Good for him!
Now here's the thing: the final scene of the teaser, the one in Kitten's hotel room, is done in a single long take, no cuts. Jim carries her bag in for her, sets it on the floor, then moves it onto the bed. They chat briefly, then he leaves to go buy his shaving equipment. She locks the door, comes back to the bag and opens it -- and surprise as the Loveless theme music plays! Apparently Michael Dunn was hidden inside the bag through that whole scene, with RC really toting him around!
It's curious that, much later in the episode, Kitten sincerely believes that Dr Loveless cares about her, because the way Loveless acts towards her shows him to find her irritating. He winces as she sings, and winces even more when she sits down very heavily on the bed, nearly bouncing him off.
As others have pointed out, how did Loveless know Kitten would have not just the room next door to West's, but an adjoining room? And how is there the two-way mirror between the two rooms?
After they peek at Jim shaving, Loveless closes the two-way mirror, then Kitten moves a large piece of furniture in front of the mirror to hide it. I just now noticed that there are casters under the legs of that huge chest of drawers.
The scene where Loveless lectures Kitten about man's veneer of civilization, then throws a tantrum because she's eaten all the fudge, is a classic. What he despises in others he apparently can't even see in himself.
The first effects of the drug hit Jim, and he immediately goes for the water to bathe his face. Absolutely what one would expect him to do, and no doubt what Loveless was counting on. How could Jim know that the water in the pitcher was the source of his suffering?
(By the way, RC does a great job all through here of acting like a man in severe pain.)
And notice how quickly the drug works! Within a minute, Jim is hallucinating that Loveless is in his window taunting him, aiming a gun at him. But how could Loveless have gotten into the window, not to mention, why would he sit in such a precarious place? This is subtle hint that the Loveless in the window isn't real.
(When RC spoke of Michael Dunn taking a real fall from the second story during the filming of this episode, I always wonder if the fall occurred during the Loveless-in-the-window scene, or perhaps shortly afterwards, when Loveless is on the balcony.)
Jim looks around in puzzlement to find no body on the ground. I like very much the bit where Mr Horseshoe comes over to ask what's wrong, and Jim is so affected by the drug he isn't careful where he points the gun, so Horseshoe gently moves the barrel of the gun so it's not pointing at him anymore.
Weird music as the stage comes in! And here's Artie. More subtleties going on. Notice how Ross has done something to the way he plays the character. In a way, Artie is bit more so; he smiles more, joshes more, and yet his serious moments are notched up a bit too. When he first shows up on the stage coach, he's briefly hanging his head out the window like a happy dog. He's not so much Artie as he is Jim's view of Artie, kind of happy-go-lucky.
By the way, does Artie ever wear that leather jacket again?
Kitten dancing with the music box doll is rather poignant, isn't it? And then Loveless, while carefully licking his fingers and poking each and every candy in his new box of chocolates (thanks to Cal Gal for pointing that out!), says some of his most famous lines:
'Now to make a man kill the thing he loves, that requires genius.' 'Tonight the good and loyal Mr West will shoot his best friend Mr Gordon and kill him.'
(Loveless certainly recognizes the dynamic between Jim and Artie, and here at the end of the first season we're seeing that the deep friendship between the two agents is firmly established.)
I noticed that Artie reads the entire note on the back of the Wanted posted, then Jim says, 'I know what it says.' But of course Artie was reading it for the benefit of the audience.
And Jim says he seeing things! Oh, those writers! They told us something true, but didn't let on to the full extent of how true it was (not yet, anyway).
The conversation between Jim and Artie (to me) has something of a feel of Jim talking to himself, especially when he says, 'I'm all right... No, I'm not.' (Not that I noticed that on first viewing. This is 20/20 hindsight here.)
For that matter, when the pain hits Jim again, I thought Artie's reaction to it was slow. He looks at Jim with concern, but doesn't get up and suggest getting a doctor until after Jim has washed his face again (yes, with that water!). But then it occurred to me why: Jim is dealing with the pain in his head. Until that subsides a bit, his mind is focused on the pain, not on giving Artie something to do.
And then Jim nearly goes out to check on a dangerous place without his gun! (Reminds me of that time much later in Fugitives when Artie gives Jim his gun and teases him about being absent-minded.)
Come to think of it, this scene with Artie being reasonable and also mother-hennish toward Jim and Jim insisting on no doctor and he'll go with Artie, then Artie having to remind him to take his gun -- this is building up to the confrontation in the shed later. Jim is slowly getting annoyed with Artie watching out for him.
Artie swings the door shut. I wonder how that was supposed to work. Him carrying in his own luggage I can understand. Him handling the Wanted poster too. The door? Not so much.
When the clerk says later that Jim was running around so much, I wonder was he referring to the scene when J&A are sneaking up on the shed.
More mother-henning, Artie grabbing Jim to keep him from running right into the shed. But they talk about how Loveless might be ten steps ahead of them, and then they just go inside anyway. Well, they're careful how they go in, but still.
Annoyance alert: when Artie says that Loveless will have to come through this door, he gestures with his gun, pointing at the door and, so it looks, at Jim in the process. Yeah, I get annoyed when a gun is used as a pointing device!
Loveless' Nya-nya-nya stance when Jim sees him in the doorway is so out of character for Loveless! More indication from the writer that this Loveless is not real. And he's keeping us so focused on Jim seeing imaginary Lovelesses, we're not supposed to notice what else Jim is hallucinating.
The 'You wanna be the hero?' bit is funny. Artie's response seems to be saying, 'Me? The hero? Hey, this is me! I'm not the hero type!' But again Jim is becoming more belligerent, more annoyed with his best buddy, and Artie continues to react in ways that defuse Jim's anger.
Jim just keeps washing his face in that water! Makes you want to scream at the screen: 'Stay away from the water!'
By the time Jim returns to the shed, he's just in terrible shape, falling this way and that because of the pain in his head. He even rests the barrel of his revolver against his forehead, even though he just cocked it; you could hear the click. Then he heads through the door and lights the lantern, which Artie, hiding in the dark, instantly tries to tell him is a bad idea. Jim's argumentative -- 'Is that an order?' -- and Artie quickly forgets about the lantern. Jim hears Loveless' laughter (again) and yanks Artie aside to protect him. Then Jim tries to go outside and Artie returns the favor, shoving him far from the door to protect him.
But they keep sounding like kids playing a game the way they keep saying 'Then we'll get him!'
When Artie is standing at the door, Jim cocks his gun; you hear the click and can see him cock it. And yet he had cocked it before he came inside, so when did the gun get uncocked?
And so to the confrontation. Jim looks cold, Artie somewhat goofy. And for the first time instead of saying something that defuses the tension, Artie says, 'No' to a direct order from Jim. Even when Jim levels the gun at him, Artie just keeps grinning and is still grinning when the gun fires.
When Ross drops, the cameraman has a little trouble finding him again. Now, to me, this is one of the best-acted scenes of the series. Of course actors (so I've been told) just love to get to play a death scene! But it's not just Ross' acting here. Watch Jim. His reaction to what he's just done is severely delayed, and then when it hits him, he kind of shrinks in on himself.
This scene is one of the few times in the series that there's visible blood, both on Artie's hand and on his shirt.
I'm sorry, but the 'Why?' almost makes me laugh. And then we get the full reaction from Jim. He runs.
Runs, yes, but not away. He goes immediately to get help from the hotel clerk -- and possibly, I think, to turn himself in to the sheriff? At any rate, the writers are kind enough to go ahead and let us know Jim didn't really shoot Artie. Jim can hardly believe what the man is telling him, that his whole day with Artie and even the stage Artie rode in on -- all of it was hallucinated. Jim goes up to his room and collapses into unconsciousness.
And here comes Loveless. With all his monologuing, just what did he have planned for Jim? Wasn't what he already did to Jim enough? More than enough?
And one thing I thought of was the gun in Jim's hand. At least he didn't get so upset over shooting Artie that he turned the gun on himself!
Now the stage really arrives. You can see the clerk prowling around, watching as it comes in, obviously looking for someone.
Artie makes his entrance for real now, wearing the same hat but his more usual corduroy jacket. The clerk speaks to him right away, and now we hear about Jim running around waving his gun and talking to himself. When the clerk gets to the part about Jim claiming he'd shot someone, he hesitates, then admits that the person Jim claimed to have shot was Artie. He also tells Artie that Miss Kitty Twitty took Jim off to the hospital.
Poor Jim wakes up in a hospital room and rolls over to find himself face to face with a full-size portrait of Dr Loveless, curiously done in the same style as the first-season end-of-act freeze frames. What a comforting sight to wake up to, yes? But Loveless is there in person as well, sitting in a high and imposing throne, of all things.
Dr Loveless makes an interesting observation: Stone walls are not so much a prison as the skin that surrounds each of us.
And the deaf-mute guard Loveless introduces: there he is, RC's dad! (Oh, cupcakes! It just dawned on me: I used to work for a man named Leonard Falk!) (Oh, cupcakes comes to you via the Bullwinkle school of swearing.)
I wonder what Antoinette whispers to Loveless when she pops into the room for a moment.
This whole scene is so lovely, full of marvelous writing, with Jim's assertion that Loveless needs him, and Loveless' horror at being called ego-centric, then comparing himself to the sun! Oh, no, not ego-centric a bit!
Artie rides out to the hospital. The gates are a familiar recycled item. Artie heads for the doors, touching his hat brim politely to the patients as he passes, then sees someone on crutches struggling to climb the steps, so he offers help. The surprise on his face when the 'frail old lady' grabs him is priceless, and then the old lady flips him too! Ta-da! It's Whitey! And here come Loveless and Antoinette as well. Artie gives Loveless the sort of salute that likely would have gotten a soldier court-martialed.
Whitey yanks Artie to his feet and searches him for weapons. As he does, you can see that Artie is wearing an ordinary belt, a gun belt, and suspenders. Wonder why? But as the story develops, Artie's suspenders will be important, but somehow both belts will disappear.
RC's daddy gets to shove Artie into the room with Jim. Jim can hardly believe it when he sees Artie alive, well, and not perforated. (And as Artie's jacket flaps open, we can see both belts are gone.) As Jim checks Artie for bullet holes, Artie says something about how Jim's done many things to him, but he never got around to shooting him!
Jim realizes that he himself was Loveless great experiment in giving someone hallucinations to drive them mad and advises Artie to ignore Loveless when he tries to brag so the little doctor will get angry and tell them everything. When the gang comes in -- Loveless, Antoinette, Kitten, and the guard -- Loveless gets so upset with them for ignoring him, he starts to use Artie for his next guinea pig. Jim balks at that, bless him; he sure doesn't want Artie to go through the horrors he did!
Then Loveless says he'll put the drug in the wine served to the staff at dinner. Well, he tells Kitten to do it, and when she objects, he announces that he'll do it himself. After Loveless and Antoinette leave, Jim detains Kitten, telling her the truth, that loyalty among the underlings means nothing to Loveless. Kitten, nervously twisting the bottle in her hands, declares that Loveless lov... well, likes her. Jim tries to get her to see the truth, that Loveless cares nothing for her and that he may well kill her too. Poor Kitten! She should have listened to Jim!
J&A come out the door of their room to find a jail cell surrounds the other side, in which has been set a table with their supper. They try again to convince Kitty that Loveless is not the fine man she believes him to be. In the end, Loveless himself convinces her. Loveless dotes on Antoinette, pretty Antoinette, but treats Kitten as a servant. And as the good doctor and Antoinette sing a duet of Brahms' Lullaby, the shrieking begins in the dining hall next door. The guard, standing with his back against the door, keeps getting shoved around by the blows falling on the door from within. Kitten is horrified at the sounds from the dining hall, but Loveless and Antoinette just go on singing.
Oh, and then there's the creepy mirror. Apparently when you look in it, you see yourself as you want yourself to be. Loveless sees himself tall and invincible, talking to his reflection as if speaking to a god. (I've always assumed they used a fun house mirror for that scene, the kind that distorts an image, to make his legs look long. Looking at the screen shot, though, I don't think his legs are distorted -- or rather, the cloak he's wearing doesn't look distorted -- so maybe they had him on stilts instead.)
Loveless is very mean to Kitten, telling her to go look in the dining hall. I suppose that's his punishment on her for questioning him about putting the drug into the staff's wine. The director (Robert Donner, well known to my generation for later directing Superman) does a nice touch here, letting Kitten's horror at the off-screen carnage stand in for the audience having to witness it (and saves some money from no one having to dress that set!). And then Loveless tells Kitten she will get to clean up the mess! That's sooo cold. And yet Kitten is still loyal to him!
And now Loveless reveals the rest of his plan to J&A: ducks. Loveless will attach a pellet of his drug to each of the multitude of migratory ducks gathered on the lakes and ponds in the area so that when the birds head back north in the spring (it being the eve of the Vernal Equinox), they will carry the hallucinatory powder far and wide, spreading death in its wake -- and not just to America, but world-wide. Loveless plans to wipe out Man the Destroyer so that Nature can live on it peace. But he doesn't seem to consider that, for one thing, Nature itself is full of destruction, what with the many predatory animals; and for another thing, how is his drug being in the water going to affect animals? Will they too go on mad killing sprees?
Loveless is, as usual, full of contradictions. In Wizard, he wanted to set up a kingdom for children to live in peace, but here he specifies that he will kill every man, woman, and child. He wants nature to live in peace from Man the Destroyer, and yet in Terror, he had a room full of mounted animals he bragged at having captured himself -- and even here in this room in this episode, there's a mounted bird! The only consistent constant about Loveless is that he is always the smartest of all, therefore he should make all the decisions for everyone else, whether everyone else wants him to or not.
Loveless and Antoinette leave, and the guard orders J&A back into their room by pointing his gun at them and tapping it on the bars of their cage. As they vacate the jail cell, though, Jim grabs a turkey leg, then gives it to Artie, saying he looks peaked and should eat. The lines here are cute, with Artie asking if Jim has any giblet gravy in his pocket, and Jim responding with, 'Ever kill a man with giblet gravy?' Well, Artie likes turkey! Freeze frame on him *ahem* gobbling it.
So the plan is to sharpen the turkey bone, then use Artie's suspenders (his only pair, he says) tied to the legs of an upended chair to launch the sharp bone at the guard when he comes in. Notice how Artie keeps plucking at his waistband. He was doing that even before he sacrificed his suspenders, so maybe that's why he had on a belt as well earlier?
Meanwhile, Loveless is capturing ducks from the pond and taking them to his lab.
The suspender slingshot works! Down goes the guard. J&A run out into the cage only to find it's locked. But Kitten is sitting nearby. Jim hides the gun he took from the guard and he and Artie start trying to reason with Kitten.
She looks in the magic mirror to see herself as a beautiful bride as she tells our heroes of all the things Loveless promised her, how he hated for people to laugh at her and how he would do an operation to make her beautiful.
Our heroes point out that Loveless plans to kill everyone though, so what good is it to be beautiful when all her admirers will be dead? She still refuses to unlock the door, but in her anguish over defending Loveless to the agents, she grabs the bars of the cell and bends them open. J&A instantly escape.
Antoinette runs in and cries, 'Kitten, what have you done?' 'I've betrayed him!' Kitten wails. (And yet it seems to me that Antoinette looks at Kitten with some compassion on her face.)
The ducks! Loveless' lab is lined with cages from floor to ceiling, all the cages apparently filled with ducks and all the ducks apparently with pellets of the powder attached to their legs. Loveless goes into a long megalomaniacal rant about the evil that is Man -- but again, he was portrayed as a hunter himself in a previous episode, and he is again forgetting that there are hawks and other predators that prey on ducks, not Man alone.
J&A arrive and sneak into the lab while Loveless is monologuing. As they hide behind the desk, Jim spots one of the pellets and passes it to Artie, presumably for Artie to analyze in his own lab later. Just as Loveless hits the climax of his monologue and grabs the release lever to set the ducks free, J&A pop up from behind the desk, Jim with gun in hand. Loveless points out that if Jim shoots him, his very act of falling will move the lever and there will go the ducks. So Jim takes another aim; he shoots the rope that connects the lever to the rest of the release mechanism. Seeing his lever is now useless, Loveless runs to knock away the support holding the cages closed, then hightails it out of there. Jim anticipated what Loveless did and is already trying to keep the mechanism closed, but needs Artie's help to reassemble the mechanism. So Loveless gets away.
The women are already there for him. He rides in his little wagon as Kitten pulls it, Antoinette running at their side as they head toward the lake and a rowboat there.
J&A, having reassembled the mechanism so that the ducks won't get loose, take off after them. The three fugitives reach the lake first and Kitten starts rowing them away. And Jim fires a single shot at the little boat, springing a big leak in it. None of the three in the boat can swim, and under the water they go. I do wonder, though, if Kitten really couldn't swim, or if she was too mad at Loveless to help him, or if she was too mad at herself to try to save herself. But Loveless assures Antoinette that they shall live forever.
There's an interview posted somewhere online where Phoebe Dorin talks about Michael Dunn and their experiences on WWW. During the boat-sinking scene here, her dress got caught in the mechanism that pulled the boat down under the water. Unlike Dr Loveless, Michael Dunn was an excellent swimmer. Realizing that Phoebe wasn't following him up out of the water, he dove down, pulled her loose, and helped her to the surface, saving her life.
The tag. Jim has been in the water trying to find them, but all he's found are the oars. His line about hate being as strong a bond as love is interesting, as he admits he'll miss Loveless. At last, after staring out over the water again, the pair leave the shore. If they'd only waited about three more seconds! For a large air bubble disturbs the surface of the pond just at the point where the boat sank.
In the case of Dr Loveless, it seems you can't keep a bad man down...
Murderous Spring. Whenever fans of Wild Wild West speak of their top ten favorite episodes, it's rare for this one to be left off that list. Here we have Dr Loveless in his fourth appearance, and it's one of his most chillingly villainous turns, having invented a drug that causes hallucinations along with wiping away the victim's inhibitions. And who does he have in mind to use as a guinea pig but our own James West!
As RC points out in the introductory comments, the part of the mute attendant watching over Jim & Artie was played by RC's dad, Leonard Falk. Also, Dr Loveless being in a wheelchair was written into the script after Michael Dunn fell from the second story of the set.
Lots of dogs.
Poor Kitten Twitty! She shows up and her size is a source of entertainment for the locals, who laugh at her efforts to simply get out of the carriage.
One thing about Kitten and maybe I shouldn't notice or comment on it, but her, ah, bosom looks weird in the scene when she takes her luggage from the carriage, like there's a box or something under the costume. I have no idea why. (But once she's no longer carrying the luggage, her bosom no longer looks boxy. Perhaps they had a brace under her clothes for her to lift the luggage?)
Everyone who tries to lift Kitten's luggage struggles with it except for Kitten herself. It's curious to me that they have her be illiterate, signing the register with two large X's and a period. The clerk wonders what the period is for. I suppose we find out at the end of the teaser.
Everyone else at the hotel seems to act like Kitten is someone to be laughed at, but Jim treats her with courtesy. Good for him!
Now here's the thing: the final scene of the teaser, the one in Kitten's hotel room, is done in a single long take, no cuts. Jim carries her bag in for her, sets it on the floor, then moves it onto the bed. They chat briefly, then he leaves to go buy his shaving equipment. She locks the door, comes back to the bag and opens it -- and surprise as the Loveless theme music plays! Apparently Michael Dunn was hidden inside the bag through that whole scene, with RC really toting him around!
It's curious that, much later in the episode, Kitten sincerely believes that Dr Loveless cares about her, because the way Loveless acts towards her shows him to find her irritating. He winces as she sings, and winces even more when she sits down very heavily on the bed, nearly bouncing him off.
As others have pointed out, how did Loveless know Kitten would have not just the room next door to West's, but an adjoining room? And how is there the two-way mirror between the two rooms?
After they peek at Jim shaving, Loveless closes the two-way mirror, then Kitten moves a large piece of furniture in front of the mirror to hide it. I just now noticed that there are casters under the legs of that huge chest of drawers.
The scene where Loveless lectures Kitten about man's veneer of civilization, then throws a tantrum because she's eaten all the fudge, is a classic. What he despises in others he apparently can't even see in himself.
The first effects of the drug hit Jim, and he immediately goes for the water to bathe his face. Absolutely what one would expect him to do, and no doubt what Loveless was counting on. How could Jim know that the water in the pitcher was the source of his suffering?
(By the way, RC does a great job all through here of acting like a man in severe pain.)
And notice how quickly the drug works! Within a minute, Jim is hallucinating that Loveless is in his window taunting him, aiming a gun at him. But how could Loveless have gotten into the window, not to mention, why would he sit in such a precarious place? This is subtle hint that the Loveless in the window isn't real.
(When RC spoke of Michael Dunn taking a real fall from the second story during the filming of this episode, I always wonder if the fall occurred during the Loveless-in-the-window scene, or perhaps shortly afterwards, when Loveless is on the balcony.)
Jim looks around in puzzlement to find no body on the ground. I like very much the bit where Mr Horseshoe comes over to ask what's wrong, and Jim is so affected by the drug he isn't careful where he points the gun, so Horseshoe gently moves the barrel of the gun so it's not pointing at him anymore.
Weird music as the stage comes in! And here's Artie. More subtleties going on. Notice how Ross has done something to the way he plays the character. In a way, Artie is bit more so; he smiles more, joshes more, and yet his serious moments are notched up a bit too. When he first shows up on the stage coach, he's briefly hanging his head out the window like a happy dog. He's not so much Artie as he is Jim's view of Artie, kind of happy-go-lucky.
By the way, does Artie ever wear that leather jacket again?
Kitten dancing with the music box doll is rather poignant, isn't it? And then Loveless, while carefully licking his fingers and poking each and every candy in his new box of chocolates (thanks to Cal Gal for pointing that out!), says some of his most famous lines:
'Now to make a man kill the thing he loves, that requires genius.' 'Tonight the good and loyal Mr West will shoot his best friend Mr Gordon and kill him.'
(Loveless certainly recognizes the dynamic between Jim and Artie, and here at the end of the first season we're seeing that the deep friendship between the two agents is firmly established.)
I noticed that Artie reads the entire note on the back of the Wanted posted, then Jim says, 'I know what it says.' But of course Artie was reading it for the benefit of the audience.
And Jim says he seeing things! Oh, those writers! They told us something true, but didn't let on to the full extent of how true it was (not yet, anyway).
The conversation between Jim and Artie (to me) has something of a feel of Jim talking to himself, especially when he says, 'I'm all right... No, I'm not.' (Not that I noticed that on first viewing. This is 20/20 hindsight here.)
For that matter, when the pain hits Jim again, I thought Artie's reaction to it was slow. He looks at Jim with concern, but doesn't get up and suggest getting a doctor until after Jim has washed his face again (yes, with that water!). But then it occurred to me why: Jim is dealing with the pain in his head. Until that subsides a bit, his mind is focused on the pain, not on giving Artie something to do.
And then Jim nearly goes out to check on a dangerous place without his gun! (Reminds me of that time much later in Fugitives when Artie gives Jim his gun and teases him about being absent-minded.)
Come to think of it, this scene with Artie being reasonable and also mother-hennish toward Jim and Jim insisting on no doctor and he'll go with Artie, then Artie having to remind him to take his gun -- this is building up to the confrontation in the shed later. Jim is slowly getting annoyed with Artie watching out for him.
Artie swings the door shut. I wonder how that was supposed to work. Him carrying in his own luggage I can understand. Him handling the Wanted poster too. The door? Not so much.
When the clerk says later that Jim was running around so much, I wonder was he referring to the scene when J&A are sneaking up on the shed.
More mother-henning, Artie grabbing Jim to keep him from running right into the shed. But they talk about how Loveless might be ten steps ahead of them, and then they just go inside anyway. Well, they're careful how they go in, but still.
Annoyance alert: when Artie says that Loveless will have to come through this door, he gestures with his gun, pointing at the door and, so it looks, at Jim in the process. Yeah, I get annoyed when a gun is used as a pointing device!
Loveless' Nya-nya-nya stance when Jim sees him in the doorway is so out of character for Loveless! More indication from the writer that this Loveless is not real. And he's keeping us so focused on Jim seeing imaginary Lovelesses, we're not supposed to notice what else Jim is hallucinating.
The 'You wanna be the hero?' bit is funny. Artie's response seems to be saying, 'Me? The hero? Hey, this is me! I'm not the hero type!' But again Jim is becoming more belligerent, more annoyed with his best buddy, and Artie continues to react in ways that defuse Jim's anger.
Jim just keeps washing his face in that water! Makes you want to scream at the screen: 'Stay away from the water!'
By the time Jim returns to the shed, he's just in terrible shape, falling this way and that because of the pain in his head. He even rests the barrel of his revolver against his forehead, even though he just cocked it; you could hear the click. Then he heads through the door and lights the lantern, which Artie, hiding in the dark, instantly tries to tell him is a bad idea. Jim's argumentative -- 'Is that an order?' -- and Artie quickly forgets about the lantern. Jim hears Loveless' laughter (again) and yanks Artie aside to protect him. Then Jim tries to go outside and Artie returns the favor, shoving him far from the door to protect him.
But they keep sounding like kids playing a game the way they keep saying 'Then we'll get him!'
When Artie is standing at the door, Jim cocks his gun; you hear the click and can see him cock it. And yet he had cocked it before he came inside, so when did the gun get uncocked?
And so to the confrontation. Jim looks cold, Artie somewhat goofy. And for the first time instead of saying something that defuses the tension, Artie says, 'No' to a direct order from Jim. Even when Jim levels the gun at him, Artie just keeps grinning and is still grinning when the gun fires.
When Ross drops, the cameraman has a little trouble finding him again. Now, to me, this is one of the best-acted scenes of the series. Of course actors (so I've been told) just love to get to play a death scene! But it's not just Ross' acting here. Watch Jim. His reaction to what he's just done is severely delayed, and then when it hits him, he kind of shrinks in on himself.
This scene is one of the few times in the series that there's visible blood, both on Artie's hand and on his shirt.
I'm sorry, but the 'Why?' almost makes me laugh. And then we get the full reaction from Jim. He runs.
Runs, yes, but not away. He goes immediately to get help from the hotel clerk -- and possibly, I think, to turn himself in to the sheriff? At any rate, the writers are kind enough to go ahead and let us know Jim didn't really shoot Artie. Jim can hardly believe what the man is telling him, that his whole day with Artie and even the stage Artie rode in on -- all of it was hallucinated. Jim goes up to his room and collapses into unconsciousness.
And here comes Loveless. With all his monologuing, just what did he have planned for Jim? Wasn't what he already did to Jim enough? More than enough?
And one thing I thought of was the gun in Jim's hand. At least he didn't get so upset over shooting Artie that he turned the gun on himself!
Now the stage really arrives. You can see the clerk prowling around, watching as it comes in, obviously looking for someone.
Artie makes his entrance for real now, wearing the same hat but his more usual corduroy jacket. The clerk speaks to him right away, and now we hear about Jim running around waving his gun and talking to himself. When the clerk gets to the part about Jim claiming he'd shot someone, he hesitates, then admits that the person Jim claimed to have shot was Artie. He also tells Artie that Miss Kitty Twitty took Jim off to the hospital.
Poor Jim wakes up in a hospital room and rolls over to find himself face to face with a full-size portrait of Dr Loveless, curiously done in the same style as the first-season end-of-act freeze frames. What a comforting sight to wake up to, yes? But Loveless is there in person as well, sitting in a high and imposing throne, of all things.
Dr Loveless makes an interesting observation: Stone walls are not so much a prison as the skin that surrounds each of us.
And the deaf-mute guard Loveless introduces: there he is, RC's dad! (Oh, cupcakes! It just dawned on me: I used to work for a man named Leonard Falk!) (Oh, cupcakes comes to you via the Bullwinkle school of swearing.)
I wonder what Antoinette whispers to Loveless when she pops into the room for a moment.
This whole scene is so lovely, full of marvelous writing, with Jim's assertion that Loveless needs him, and Loveless' horror at being called ego-centric, then comparing himself to the sun! Oh, no, not ego-centric a bit!
Artie rides out to the hospital. The gates are a familiar recycled item. Artie heads for the doors, touching his hat brim politely to the patients as he passes, then sees someone on crutches struggling to climb the steps, so he offers help. The surprise on his face when the 'frail old lady' grabs him is priceless, and then the old lady flips him too! Ta-da! It's Whitey! And here come Loveless and Antoinette as well. Artie gives Loveless the sort of salute that likely would have gotten a soldier court-martialed.
Whitey yanks Artie to his feet and searches him for weapons. As he does, you can see that Artie is wearing an ordinary belt, a gun belt, and suspenders. Wonder why? But as the story develops, Artie's suspenders will be important, but somehow both belts will disappear.
RC's daddy gets to shove Artie into the room with Jim. Jim can hardly believe it when he sees Artie alive, well, and not perforated. (And as Artie's jacket flaps open, we can see both belts are gone.) As Jim checks Artie for bullet holes, Artie says something about how Jim's done many things to him, but he never got around to shooting him!
Jim realizes that he himself was Loveless great experiment in giving someone hallucinations to drive them mad and advises Artie to ignore Loveless when he tries to brag so the little doctor will get angry and tell them everything. When the gang comes in -- Loveless, Antoinette, Kitten, and the guard -- Loveless gets so upset with them for ignoring him, he starts to use Artie for his next guinea pig. Jim balks at that, bless him; he sure doesn't want Artie to go through the horrors he did!
Then Loveless says he'll put the drug in the wine served to the staff at dinner. Well, he tells Kitten to do it, and when she objects, he announces that he'll do it himself. After Loveless and Antoinette leave, Jim detains Kitten, telling her the truth, that loyalty among the underlings means nothing to Loveless. Kitten, nervously twisting the bottle in her hands, declares that Loveless lov... well, likes her. Jim tries to get her to see the truth, that Loveless cares nothing for her and that he may well kill her too. Poor Kitten! She should have listened to Jim!
J&A come out the door of their room to find a jail cell surrounds the other side, in which has been set a table with their supper. They try again to convince Kitty that Loveless is not the fine man she believes him to be. In the end, Loveless himself convinces her. Loveless dotes on Antoinette, pretty Antoinette, but treats Kitten as a servant. And as the good doctor and Antoinette sing a duet of Brahms' Lullaby, the shrieking begins in the dining hall next door. The guard, standing with his back against the door, keeps getting shoved around by the blows falling on the door from within. Kitten is horrified at the sounds from the dining hall, but Loveless and Antoinette just go on singing.
Oh, and then there's the creepy mirror. Apparently when you look in it, you see yourself as you want yourself to be. Loveless sees himself tall and invincible, talking to his reflection as if speaking to a god. (I've always assumed they used a fun house mirror for that scene, the kind that distorts an image, to make his legs look long. Looking at the screen shot, though, I don't think his legs are distorted -- or rather, the cloak he's wearing doesn't look distorted -- so maybe they had him on stilts instead.)
Loveless is very mean to Kitten, telling her to go look in the dining hall. I suppose that's his punishment on her for questioning him about putting the drug into the staff's wine. The director (Robert Donner, well known to my generation for later directing Superman) does a nice touch here, letting Kitten's horror at the off-screen carnage stand in for the audience having to witness it (and saves some money from no one having to dress that set!). And then Loveless tells Kitten she will get to clean up the mess! That's sooo cold. And yet Kitten is still loyal to him!
And now Loveless reveals the rest of his plan to J&A: ducks. Loveless will attach a pellet of his drug to each of the multitude of migratory ducks gathered on the lakes and ponds in the area so that when the birds head back north in the spring (it being the eve of the Vernal Equinox), they will carry the hallucinatory powder far and wide, spreading death in its wake -- and not just to America, but world-wide. Loveless plans to wipe out Man the Destroyer so that Nature can live on it peace. But he doesn't seem to consider that, for one thing, Nature itself is full of destruction, what with the many predatory animals; and for another thing, how is his drug being in the water going to affect animals? Will they too go on mad killing sprees?
Loveless is, as usual, full of contradictions. In Wizard, he wanted to set up a kingdom for children to live in peace, but here he specifies that he will kill every man, woman, and child. He wants nature to live in peace from Man the Destroyer, and yet in Terror, he had a room full of mounted animals he bragged at having captured himself -- and even here in this room in this episode, there's a mounted bird! The only consistent constant about Loveless is that he is always the smartest of all, therefore he should make all the decisions for everyone else, whether everyone else wants him to or not.
Loveless and Antoinette leave, and the guard orders J&A back into their room by pointing his gun at them and tapping it on the bars of their cage. As they vacate the jail cell, though, Jim grabs a turkey leg, then gives it to Artie, saying he looks peaked and should eat. The lines here are cute, with Artie asking if Jim has any giblet gravy in his pocket, and Jim responding with, 'Ever kill a man with giblet gravy?' Well, Artie likes turkey! Freeze frame on him *ahem* gobbling it.
So the plan is to sharpen the turkey bone, then use Artie's suspenders (his only pair, he says) tied to the legs of an upended chair to launch the sharp bone at the guard when he comes in. Notice how Artie keeps plucking at his waistband. He was doing that even before he sacrificed his suspenders, so maybe that's why he had on a belt as well earlier?
Meanwhile, Loveless is capturing ducks from the pond and taking them to his lab.
The suspender slingshot works! Down goes the guard. J&A run out into the cage only to find it's locked. But Kitten is sitting nearby. Jim hides the gun he took from the guard and he and Artie start trying to reason with Kitten.
She looks in the magic mirror to see herself as a beautiful bride as she tells our heroes of all the things Loveless promised her, how he hated for people to laugh at her and how he would do an operation to make her beautiful.
Our heroes point out that Loveless plans to kill everyone though, so what good is it to be beautiful when all her admirers will be dead? She still refuses to unlock the door, but in her anguish over defending Loveless to the agents, she grabs the bars of the cell and bends them open. J&A instantly escape.
Antoinette runs in and cries, 'Kitten, what have you done?' 'I've betrayed him!' Kitten wails. (And yet it seems to me that Antoinette looks at Kitten with some compassion on her face.)
The ducks! Loveless' lab is lined with cages from floor to ceiling, all the cages apparently filled with ducks and all the ducks apparently with pellets of the powder attached to their legs. Loveless goes into a long megalomaniacal rant about the evil that is Man -- but again, he was portrayed as a hunter himself in a previous episode, and he is again forgetting that there are hawks and other predators that prey on ducks, not Man alone.
J&A arrive and sneak into the lab while Loveless is monologuing. As they hide behind the desk, Jim spots one of the pellets and passes it to Artie, presumably for Artie to analyze in his own lab later. Just as Loveless hits the climax of his monologue and grabs the release lever to set the ducks free, J&A pop up from behind the desk, Jim with gun in hand. Loveless points out that if Jim shoots him, his very act of falling will move the lever and there will go the ducks. So Jim takes another aim; he shoots the rope that connects the lever to the rest of the release mechanism. Seeing his lever is now useless, Loveless runs to knock away the support holding the cages closed, then hightails it out of there. Jim anticipated what Loveless did and is already trying to keep the mechanism closed, but needs Artie's help to reassemble the mechanism. So Loveless gets away.
The women are already there for him. He rides in his little wagon as Kitten pulls it, Antoinette running at their side as they head toward the lake and a rowboat there.
J&A, having reassembled the mechanism so that the ducks won't get loose, take off after them. The three fugitives reach the lake first and Kitten starts rowing them away. And Jim fires a single shot at the little boat, springing a big leak in it. None of the three in the boat can swim, and under the water they go. I do wonder, though, if Kitten really couldn't swim, or if she was too mad at Loveless to help him, or if she was too mad at herself to try to save herself. But Loveless assures Antoinette that they shall live forever.
There's an interview posted somewhere online where Phoebe Dorin talks about Michael Dunn and their experiences on WWW. During the boat-sinking scene here, her dress got caught in the mechanism that pulled the boat down under the water. Unlike Dr Loveless, Michael Dunn was an excellent swimmer. Realizing that Phoebe wasn't following him up out of the water, he dove down, pulled her loose, and helped her to the surface, saving her life.
The tag. Jim has been in the water trying to find them, but all he's found are the oars. His line about hate being as strong a bond as love is interesting, as he admits he'll miss Loveless. At last, after staring out over the water again, the pair leave the shore. If they'd only waited about three more seconds! For a large air bubble disturbs the surface of the pond just at the point where the boat sank.
In the case of Dr Loveless, it seems you can't keep a bad man down...