BTW, the artist was Ken Bald, who of course was a fan of the show!

Happy Birthday to Proudhug!   

MB grabbed these caps of Quentin and Laura in her room after she caught him searching it:

Was the set dresser asleep?! 

Voiceover first:  "He has met Laura Collins and seen, to his horror, that beyond this past lies another past containing even more terror than he has yet dreamed of."
Really!?!  The truth about Laura is more horrifying than being cursed as a vampire, losing Josette and his little sis, destroying his mother, killing Jeremiah, being married to Angelique??!!!

I keep going back and forth over Barn's line to Charity:  "I sense this woman is more than she seems.  Much more."  Did he sense that Laura wasn't human, I wonder, like a vampiric version of the spidey sense.  Then I think I'm probably reading too much into it.  But if he's going on appearance and name alone, then you'd think Barnabas would have seen a photo of David's mother at some point; I'm pretty sure there's a scene where he learns her name.  So all that leaves are her voice and mannerism, and their meeting wasn't long enough for that.  Okay, I'll shut up about this now.

Guess I've gotten a bit ahead here, and I'm making the first comments. 

You're not ahead.  The rest of us are just behind.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I like that Angelique called her thick-witted.  Here's a vampire victim who can't fathom that Laura is dead but still walking around.  And right after Ang introduced herself to her, she showed up in her dream and Charity had to ask who she was.  D'oh.

I LOVED the dream.  No credits for this ep, but I don't have to look up the writer.  That was a Violet Welles dream if ever there was one (and there are some doozies).  "I'm being married."  "No, my dear, you're being buried.  That's how it is when you're dead."  Brrr.  The black wedding veil was the best, cuz if ever there was a virgin on DS, it's Charity.

Good point about no one in the house hearing Charity when she woke up.  I bet the scream could be heard during filming over in Hell's Kitchen.

But I'm pretty sure that Judith's shawl was different.  It didn't have the all-over pattern that Charity's did.

Is it me, or was Judith acting flirty with Gregory?  Yikes, her body language on the staircase.  "All I'm offering is money;" yeah right.

Grown women didn't go out in public with their hair down, and for certain NOT out of their room in their nightclothes.

I think DS is taking advantage of the fact that this storyline takes place in the same year as the publication of Stoker's novel by portraying the changes in the once-pious Charity as in the corrupted Mina (also engaged to be married at the beginning of Dracula).

 

Love LOL Cats!

with Laura we seem to be seeing someone even more selfish than even Quentin.  Her absorption in what she wants, and it's being all about her, makes me think in terms of a clinical sociopath.

You're right, of course.  Since dying by fire, Laura is probably as sociopathic as Barnabas was when he was released from his coffin-- both doing what they feel compelled to do by circumstances out of their control.  We don't condone what she wants to do with her children, but we understand her need to do it, same as with Barn's blood lust.  But risking the lives of the children in the school, regardless of her motive for doing it, was just crazy, and probably comparable to what Barnabas did to Maggie and its repercussions.

Makes one wonder what she was like before the flames took her.  Is there a difference in personality, and, if so, how does it evidence?

Well, she abandoned her children for her lover and didn't contact them at all prior to when she burned alive.  So in regard to being selfish, nope, she hasn't changed.

I've never seen 1966-7 Laura... it would be interesting if after multiple fires she was unbelievably psychotic by 1966, but I've never heard that she was.

The 1966/7 Laura was messed up.  She was described as being mentally unbalanced, an alcoholic, and was institutionalized for a time.  And Burke once talked about what she was like when she married Roger, and it was pretty surprising to learn she was a wild child back then, and not long before she became a mother.

There's a 4 1/2 min. recap of Wednesday's ep on YouTube that includes her 2nd scene (only):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqt1zOC6s7I

There might be a milestone warranted here: Was it the first time that Jenny's name was mentioned?

Yes.