Strong men weep when Barnabas says, "I have a plan." I wonder if it has occurred to him yet that he can't avoid changing the past. He should remember that if Jamison dies, other Collins scions are possible. He might end up with a different set of Collinses in the 1960s, but the Collins family will live on, and that's all that matters.
I got sort of annoyed when Barnabas went for the melodramatics with Dirk in the cottage. Such a waste of time and effort! Break Dirk's neck, drop him off Widows Hill, and then go find a doxy on the docks for a nice little after-dinner snack - now
that's the way to make the most of one's night. And (for the thousandth time) why did it not occur to Barnabas to move his coffin into a place where it would be less easily discovered?
Beth with a backbone of steel who is determined to try SOMETHING rather than just wallow is nowhere to be seen, replaced by the helpless crier.
As Midnite pointed out, Beth should have known that Barnabas was not destroyed because she still felt his power over her, but she didn't figure that out. Maybe his power felt so natural to her that it didn't occur to her that it should be gone. And that being so, I don't blame her for crying helplessly. She still, because of his power, thinks of him as essential to her existence, so the thought of his destruction had to be devastating. Logically, it makes sense to me, but I feel compelled to add that Beth never has seemed as susceptible to Barnabas's power as some others have. Oh, well, we don't have a basis of comparison for how a vampire's victim should respond to the belief that her vampire is destroyed. Maybe if Julia had believed that Tom Jennings was dead when he wasn't, back when he had power over her, she would have thrown herself off of Widows Hill.
