Nancy Barrett VO. Selbtofi walking into the same old Collinwood foyer as usual is made into an amazing, unearthly experience, because we know it's not his time! ... though for us, it was regular old 1969. They get away with a lot with sets and writing and mood. Then he's on the floor of the Lair. Does Beth wonder why they had to do the trance there? He vents rage on her for bringing him back, not listening about the theft of the painting. I've forgotten if we're supposed to know who took it.
Beth, surprisingly, knows that new Barnabas is old Barnabas. "Barnabas has always been your friend!!" Huh?!
Note how Barnabas is able to pull off his great, big comeback stunt perfectly... while being utterly clueless and failing at part two, dealing with the woman he wants. Maybe he was "flushed with success", whatever that expression really means... He might have lapsed into autopilot, feeling (understandably) that the really hard part was now done, and that the rest was going to be "normal" and easy. But he should have gone to as much trouble with planning part two, as he did on part one. With a reincarnation for the sake of love under his belt (his own "reincarnation" I mean), Josette, cough, Kitty, should have fallen into his arms like a great big domino, it probably seemed. All that remained was dotting i's and crossing t's...? (Doesn't this sound like Tate assuming Amanda would love him, because he made her, and therefore owned her?)
The disturbing part is that it all clearly strikes Barnabas as a legitimate, morally clean version of the 1967 Maggie brainwashing, which he claims he is now horrified by, at the thought of having done it. "Those first few horrible months at Collinwood", I think he called them after he "reformed", whenever that was, if it indeed ever happened. He still thinks she can just let herself be Josette, losing Kitty's identity like a moth-eaten old coat nobody wants, and since she's Josette's reincarnation, it makes "sense" now...?!
Part of the problem is that they're fuzzy about the very concept of reincarnation. If someone is reincarnated, s/he is the same single person, the two or more incarnations being the same being, at different points of that one person's existence. Josette has turned into Kitty by being reborn. That's who Josette is, now. There's no other spirit floating around the ether, called Josette, wanting to gobble up Kitty's soul.
There is, though-- basically the ghost of Josette wants to take over Kitty's body on the apparently incoherent and meaningless pretext that Kitty is her "reincarnation". Barnabas gets to say "You'll be happier as Josette!!" to Kitty, with no guilt or sense of his own creepiness.
Yet Josette's been issuing warnings too. Very confusing.
I like how you were a lot more concise about it DL... "Barnabas is awfully pushy with his Josette-reincarnation stuff, isn't he?" That's all I needed to say, maybe...
Selbtofi and old/new Barnabas face off, knowing they can afford to reveal selves to each other. I like scenes like that. Vicki assuring Laura "Soon we shall know everything" comes to mind. The Hand is used to revamp Barnabas, only not really... it seems Selbtofi wants Barnabas to become a bat and a bat only, no human form, though he calls the state "what you were". It fails, and Barnabas catches on in a nanosecond, gloating about Petofi's failure. It's as if he knew ahead of time, but I'm pretty sure he didn't. Mr. Frid did though, and that's probably it... I'd have liked a bit of bracing against dread... ThayerQ finds the Hand's power returning to him! End.
(DL-- Petofi changed the Collins family one by one, making them see the "truth" about themselves, before regaining the Hand, too... About Barnabas having lived so long, as Selbtofi says... I like to think of him that way, but he was in his 30s when chained I guess, and his experience with life only goes a couple years past that...)
