Awful. I mean, well done but hard to watch for Magda's sake. I was thinking of Sandor's death as being a copy of James Cagney's when gangsters left him propped up at the mother's or wife's front door and ran off. It may still be, but not overtly. Ghosts can work instantaneously, and can affect events over enormous spaces, maybe playing with time, so that far-off living Sandor could be unalive Sandor at the front door.
After the theme, cut very soon to Thayer once again, as Fenn-Gibbon. They had to do one Sandor-VFG ep, and I'm glad they did. I like the talk with Q, with latter saying looking at the Moon is one of his hobbies... one he hates. Q is saying this to the one stranger who can put together instantly what he means.
The whole long drawn out reaction of Magda to Sandor's death is very well done, affecting, realistic. This being a story that keeps going without a climax followed by The End, as with a movie, the grief flares up, then... real life goes on in a profoundly uncomfortable way.
I've underacknowledged before now how much of a change all this makes between Barnabas and Magda. I now think the extreme anger from Barnabas in their last argument was meant to set this up, for contrast. Magda's ridiculous "Bite me. Bite me now!", which would have been fun at a different point, undercuts this, but Barnabas's merciful and sympathetic response tells us that, finally, the human part's still there and has been reached, and has been forced to re-appraise. Is this going to be a lasting change? Am I seeing the famously guilt-ridden vampire being born?
I think it's worth noting, too, that (I think) whatever class barrier there had been between the two of them just falls away at this point.
Quentin in the woods with a revolver is toying with the idea of suicide as a palliative against lycanthropy. A cure really, but "palliative" sounded cool in the sentence for a moment. He spots VFG and Aristede going at it rather heatedly in the "gazebo", with the two actors simulating a conversation that's too far away to overhear by pantomiming. I guess TV studios are made to have good acoustics, too good... What is it that Victor threatens Aristede with... the gift of the Unicorn? Something more interesting than a stab in the belly with a candy cane striped head horn I hope. It sounds as if he's talking about a face mutilation, possibly a bloody Melty Face, or maybe a werewolfhood, with someone else's blood on his pillow? Mysterious blood upon waking up is involved.
Ooh, excellent
rage from David Selby, directed against VFG with the gun! Again and again, relative newcomer Selby makes all this seem
real. It just occurred to me what a small miracle it was, creating a
young period character who seems totally invested in and part of his time, yet totally identifiable to modern people the same age or younger. The first step in hard-- making the turn of the century seem like it's not just the land of old fogies. Another actor could have seemed like an awkwardly uprooted and transplanted young 60s guy. (This made me think of Tim trying to get the word "whippersnapper" to come out of his mouth convincingly, but they didn't give Selby those words, fortunately.)
Good "defeated" scene with Barnabas, Magda, and Quentin in the Old House. Q knows his son exists and is dead. It would be nice if he were happier about his surviving daughter. Barnabas and Magda later have awkward going-on-with-business scene (only on DS), with both wanting to say to hell with all of it instead. Then Magda gets a handy tiny ax off the basement stairs wall, and chops up the Hand, as if it needs to be pretty and look like a complete Hand to have power. Maybe she's just given it the additional power to be in two places at once...
According to my notes, this is the last ep. in which Quentin wears fake sideburns while waiting for his own to grow out.
Thanks, I didn't think to try to notice this time!