YAY, I'm caught up, at least temporarily!!!
No replay this time, the scene starts with Barnabas in the foyer, joined by Beth. Smart girl, she’s trying to deflect suspicion, but can’t convince Barnabas that the animal couldn’t have been wearing clothes or walked like a man. One good thing about the double standard is everything she says can be explained away by the menfolk as overwrought female hysterics; poor little woman, can’t be thinking clearly after she was attacked. I’m thinking she knows that, too, and is using it.
Laura flounces in wearing a new dress. Very fancy and floaty, but it doesn’t look like a nighty. Wonder what would have happened if she;’d happened across wolfieq? Would she have been able to manage something with her powers? (Just got a sick mental image of a werewolf with a hotfoot.) It’s now open warfare between Barnabas and Laura, but who will make the next move? It’s nearly dawn.
Beth just has NO luck. The foyer is seeing as much traffic as a train station, and now Laura is insisting on waiting right there until she sees Jamison. Not even instructions to lock up are making an impression on Laura. She’s on a Barnabas soliloquy and is getting awfully close. It seems she’s the first one to wonder why Barnabas is NEVER seen in the daytime.
But Beth doesn’t seem to be paying attention. Beth gives into Laura awfully quickly, since, like Charity, Laura has NO rights in that house, and Beth was specifically instructed to insure she leaves.
So Laura is making the next move, getting her Renfield to snoop at the Old House for her. Barnabas leaves a note for Magda. Here’s hoping this one works better than his last note left for trespassers. Laura and her magic create a fire that Barnabas disappears from, with Dirk conveniently snooping from the window. One wonders, though, if the Old House was abandoned, how can Laura remember Edward showing it to her? Or maybe she’s remembering Jerimiah showing it to her, and this is the cover story. Like Barnabas she seems to have a peculiar idea that something she remembers is going to be just where she remembered it, even 100+ years later.
Thank goodness Laura was speaking, else Quentin would have walked right in on the conspirators. At least this time he seems to have been elsewhere when he came to, and not transforming in the middle of the foyer. Good thing Beth was still lurking about, since just pulling himself up the stairs seems to have knocked him out. Realistic looking fall; he just seemed to go boneless and fall any old way.
Smart of Beth to get him into the drawing room; at that hour the servants would all have been up, leaving out the back staircase. And with the rucus over Jamison, anyone's guess if the front one would have traffic.
Poor Quentin – can’t tell from the framing if it’s because of the last thing he remembers, or it’s the look on her face that tips him off, but he now knows that she can tell him what happens to him. Got to give him some points for not trying to run away from it (maybe for the first time in his life, he’s facing something head on). He wants to KNOW, no matter how bad it is – and he knows from the way she’s trying not to tell him that it’s BAD. TC & DS do a very fine job with this scene. We see quite a play of emotions from Quentin as Beth tells him past her tears. Beth’s not telling him all of it, and not really in order, but she’s telling him the basics, which might be all he can handle just now. I think this is probably a time when Quentin wishes he weren’t so quick, because I think he figured out very quickly that if he attacked Beth and had to be beaten off, that he’s responsible for the dead girl. But he still hasn’t learned!
As soon as Beth reminds him it’s not him, it’s the curse, what does he do? Threaten to kill Magda.
So, Mr. Know-it-all, worked out well for you the last time, did it? Beth, thank goodness has more brains. Points out essentially what Evan told him: you need Magda to remove the curse, which calms him down. Once he’s off that track, he does think logically – how to lock me up so I don’t hurt anyone else. And his other thought is logical, too: research and find out what can be discovered about the curse to deal with it and maybe get rid of it.
Another great Quentin and Beth scene, all told. Sweet in a very sad way near the end, where he just puts his head on her shoulder and wants to be held.
This isn’t the lecher or the rake, just a man in a horrifying situation, even if he did bring it on himself, simply wanting comfort and human kindness from someone he cares for.
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Dirk and his careful and efficient method of getting into the secret room without anyone guessing he was there. Just so convenient, isn’t it, that the stuff Laura wanted is so easily accessible and quick to find?
And more on the ridiculous: Quentin and Beth picking the front landing to have a conversation about the lack of a full moon and things that happened to him last night and the night before.
Of course, that’s right up there with Quentin trusting Evan Hanley again.
Cut to the graveyard, which is Grand Central station lately. Where’s the old caretaker’s incestors when you need them? And is it just me, or wouldn’t a plain pine box like this one have rotted by then?
Booga booga at the end with the appearance of Barnabas, watching and lurking as they defile Ben’s grave.
Jeannie