On Jonathan Frid's website, he says that he lost his place right at the beginning of Barnabas's conversation with Elizabeth in his first episode, and Joan Bennett filled the gap. When I read that, at least a year ago, I watched the scene again but could not see where the problem might have occurred. Same thing today. Frid stumbles over a word when he says the Collins bloodline is strong (or something) but that can't have been what he was talking about. Either Frid's memory is fuzzy on this (which seems unlikely; it's the sort of thing that would be engraved on one's memory - first day on the show, and WHOOPS!) or else Bennett was far, far smoother than I ever knew she could be.
Meanwhile, there's Elizabeth, in the house she's lived in all her life, which has been like prison to her for the past 18 years - and in walks Barnabas, and tells her he's been hearing about it all his life - as if it just seeing it were some sort of over-the-rainbow dream come true. Must have been sort of weird for Elizabeth.
That "I was a Collins" speech never fails to get to me. Barnabas's voice is so different from when he's talking to his cousins - all pretence dropped. Interesting, though - he says "They made me into something my own father loathed." That gives you the reluctant vampire, who didn't choose to be one but was "made" into one - and then later on we've got Barnabas telling Julia that it was indeed his choice, and then still later it wasn't "they" who made Barnabas a vampire but a very definite "she". Talk about fuzzy memories...
