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« on: November 30, 2014, 07:28:38 PM »
David Selby manages to get away with the impossible-to-take-seriously, melodramatic line, "Barnabas must die!" Now that's acting... Barnabas describes the experience of meeting Josette who just happens to call herself Lady Kitty Hampshire (Welcome Kitty) thusly (is that a word?): "It was as if I was back in time." With a straight face. You ARE back in time, Barnabas. I don't understand how Kitty changes their plans. I think this was by Violet Welles, since we get backstory about Kitty, Gerald Soames, and Petofi (I think that was this ep).
Good Quentin/Pansy scene. They all just interact with her as Pansy now, without a second thought. A lot of mood in this episode generally. Quentin elicits Charipansy's help in working his way around to the idea that Barnabas actually deserves to be destroyed. How often have we tried to justify something as Q's doing? "I just can't remember why we have to get the vampire." Or something like that. We can see Quentin thinking. That's good acting, when that happens.
Quentin's development of a conscience seems "right". I buy it. I'm not sure why. Maybe he identifies with Barnabas so strongly, their both being in the same cursed position, that it's almost like empathizing with himself... which he's good at.
Later in the cave (I love that cave, all the more so because of my theory that the cave walls are just scrunched up black paper stapled to the walls, yet it looks perfect), Quentin tries to stake Barnabas, and stops, saying, "You faced whatever you had to, and I will too." I liked that. Up until this point, it's fairly predictable. We don't expect Quentin to do it. When Pansy comes in, and picks up the stake and hammer, though... that's when we realize something big's going to happen. They wouldn't have two almost-stakings in a row. Yet she can't actually do it. But she does! There it is, bloody stake right in Barnabas's chest, camera moves up to his face, with blood coming out the corner of the mouth.
[spoiler]I remember in earlier viewings its seeming as if Barnabas was really gone, in the following episodes. I knew better, of course.[/spoiler]