Another thoughtful post from MT. I had never thought of it that way. Barn's safety has been Julia's prime directive for so long. No wonder she was willing to shoot Angelique, if it could have meant that Barn--and Julia herself--could have had more or less normal lives.

Nice bit with Barn and Cass: Your hand is trembling, Barnabas observes. Don’t come near me, Cassandra warns him. Are you afraid of me? he asks mockingly. You have the gun. I have nothing but my mind and my hands, he says with massive understatement--and some pride.

Julia is all for shooting Cass point blank, but Barnabas insists that he might learn more about Nicholas if he lets Cass go. Maybe he's also remembering all the murders he did commit. Seeing Angelique certainly must bring back his whole past in a vivid and forceful way.

The big break-up with Cass seems to have made Roger nicer--at least for now. When Vicki doesn't want to be left alone with Angelique's portrait, he very kindly suggests she stay with Carolyn. And later, Roger does not recognize the extremely old woman and has no idea how she got to the house, but he kindly helps her to a chair.

Roger does give us some idea of the vastness of the Great Estate when he mentions that the gates are a quarter of a mile from the house.

Julia and Barnabas are the next to arrive at Collinwood. They stop to argue at the front door. Julia still has the gun. Please, Barnabas, let me finish the job, she pleads. He answers with real  regret, Your life has already changed because of me. [Maybe he is thinking of Dave Woodard.]

Julia kicks the two men out of the drawing room while she examines the very aged Cassangelique. She emerges to tell them that her patient will be dead in a matter of minutes. But when all three return to the drawing room, the couch is empty and the french windows are wide open.

dom, name me just one scene in this show that isn't over the top! 

Nicholas opens the front door when Stokes arrives at the Great House, but open war hasn't yet been declared. Nicholas takes Stokes by surprise (temporarily), asking if Stokes knows someone named Adam. But Stokes quickly recovers and replies blandly, I once knew a man by that name--a missionary married to a woman named Eve. They lacked humor, he continues, and a humorless man is an incomplete one.

Carolyn tells Stokes about her growing discomfort over Adam. Stokes is alarmed when she mentions having to bribe Harry and is completely at a loss when Carolyn tells him that Adam is falling in love with her. But he tells her that his house is too dangerous to keep Adam there.

Stokes and Adam have a nice reunion, even though Adam is disappointed that he can't go "home" with the professor.

n coming downstairs, Stokes finds Julia. As usual, she asks, Do you know where Adam is? As he sits at a table in the drawing room where a chessboard has been set up, Stokes replies, Before I tell you where Adam is, I want more information about him from you. First of all, What did Barnabas Collins actual dream as the intended victim of the dream curse? What was the point of return? Julia can tell him safely, The point of return was the Old House. She adds, I found him lying just outside the front door, dead--apparently of a heart attack. Not much escapes Stokes’s notice. He comments, I know you failed to report Barnabas's death to the police as you should have done. I suspect you were following Barnabas's own orders--that he wanted to be buried in an unmarked grave in the woods because he was afraid the dream curse would bring him a horrible or perhaps shameful death. Julia has all she can do to hide her reaction to Stokes’s shrewd guesses. Stokes continues, I also know that Adam's appearing to suffocate in the root cellar was more than just a wild coincidence. What is the connection between Adam and Barnabas? I’ve told you all I can, Julia protests, but it’s nowhere near enough for Stokes. Then I’m afraid I can’t help you, he answers bluntly. In fact Stokes leaves her with a few more things to ponder: I know that Adam was artificially created from body parts by Eric Lang, that Barnabas is somehow responsible for Adam’s creation, and that Barnabas did something that has caused Adam to hate him. (He learned most of this from Jeff Clark when he was under hypnosis and guessed the rest.) Then he calmly departs, leaving Julia shocked speechless (although he still is ignorant of the true nature of said connection).

Frontal nudity! Nicholas summons the ghosts of two men whose bodies were descretated to create Adam.

Cool grandmother, alwaysdavid! And a good thought too.

Barnabas looks very good in his red velvet smoking jacket, but it's sad to see Julia so uncharacteristically defeated.

Mrs. Johnson accuses her ne'er-do-well son Harry of stealing food, but for a change he isn't the culprit.

Carolyn brings Adam his breakfast. When he’s feeling good about himself and his accomplishments he refers to himself as “I,” but when he’s unhappy he reverts to third person. The poem he reads to her is one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, and he reads it very nicely too. Carolyn comes to the sudden and unhappy realization that she is dealing with a lovestruck teenager--a very large, lovestruck teenager--and makes a hasty exit.

Barnabas grills Carolyn about Adam while Harry eavesdrops. His mother catches him at it and tells him that "Miss Stoddard" doesn't want him going upstairs. Harry promptly goes upstairs and the locked door to the West Wing with a piece of clear plastic (not so many credit cards back then, if you can imagine!)

Harry's exploration of the cobwebby West Wing come to an abrupt end. Still starry-eyed and oblivious of rejection, Adam blissfully murmurs Carolyn's name over and over as he caresses the book that She touched. Overcome with curiosity, Harry moves toward the door to listen. Suddenly it opens to reveal a very large man with a pair of very large hands who drags him into the room beyond and slams the door....

I saw the montage. Depp's line sounds as if he's asking for the coat-check girl at a nightclub.

Then again, a housemaid would have answered the door and taken his hat and cane (and an overcoat or cloak if he was wearing one). But he would have called her a housemaid, and opening the door for visitors would have been only one of her duties.

Nicholas fools absolutely no one when he tells Cassangelique, "I must pay a visit to Miss Evans--purely to gain information, of course." Oh yeah.

Farewell, skeleton hand!

Acting the perfect gentleman, Nicholas asks about Joe, and Maggie tells him, The doctors say that Joe will make a full recovery, but he’ll have to be in the hospital for a long time. [In fact, he’ll be away from the show for three weeks.] That’s good news, says Nicholas with smiling ambiguity, and Maggie naively agrees. He asks to see her father’s work, and naturally Maggie is proud to show it off. (One of the paintings he examines is Sam’s portrait of Vicki’s look-alike, Betty Hanscomb. Even though Sam gave the painting to Vicki back in pre-Barnabas times, somehow it returned to the cottage a few episodes ago.)

Nicholas admires one particular painting (we don’t see it) and offers her $2,000 for it. Surprised, Maggie replies, That’s very generous of you. Pop could never get that kind of money for his work while he was alive, she says sadly. I could use the money now. Strangely, Maggie's candor and innocence make her even more attractive to Nicholas than did his first impression of her outward beauty. He persuades her to consider his offer, sweetening it by adding, I’ll even let you to keep the painting on permanent loan if you’ll sell it to me. He asks about Adam (the manifest reason for his visit), but Maggie says no one has seen him recently, and she has no idea of his whereabouts. They agree that someone must be hiding him. Nicholas persuades Maggie to call him Nicholas, so she says to call her Maggie. After he leaves, they separately reflect on their meeting with pleasure.

Julia presses David to try to remember, but because he didn't understand it, all he remembers is "if Adam lives, Barnabas something; if Adam dies, Barnabas something else." Now frantic to hear Eric's message and knowing that she herself foolishly let it fall into Cassandra's hands, Julia rushes back to Collinwood with David.

Just then Julia and David return. Cassandra tries to play stepmother and pack him off to bed. I’m not a baby, David retorts. I can stay up till whenever I want. Cassandra suddenly tires of arguing with him and decides to go out for some air. Nicholas agrees to accompany her, evidently unconcerned about the tape recorder, which is sitting innocently on the piano in the drawing room. Now Nicholas’s lack of concern alone should have warned our intrepid heroes that something was up, but the idea never occurs to them till they play the tape--and out come the strains of the "Dies irae" ("Day of Wrath," i.e., Judgment Day) from the finale of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique! This isn't the music I heard! It must be another tape! David exclaims. Knowing full well that only one tape is involved, Julia asks him who else has listened to the tape. Finally David tells Julia that the only other person he knows of who heard the tape was Cassandra. He says apologetically, I wish could remember what the man was saying on the other tape, but it didn't make any sense. I don't understand why everyone is so excited about what that man said. I hope someone will explain it to me. Maybe Cassandra left the other tape in my room, he sighs, then trudges disconsolately off to bed. Meanwhile, Julia realizes with horror that Cassandra now knows all about the experiment and about Adam and that she has the power to destroy Barnabas--but Julia has no way of stopping her....