Another excellent episode, with great acting from all and sundry.  Nice Louis Edmonds voiceover.  I don't think there's been that many of them, especially in 1897.

And here we see Magda, immediately running to prepare her revenge.  Jumping in with both feet, essentially making it up as she goes along, since she's only seen this done once, long ago (and from what we learn later, we can't even take this for the full truth).  And here we have the first mention of... COUNT PETOFI.    Of course, the story we get from Magda bears virtually no resemblance to anything we learn later....

Now we see the panic stricken Quentin, locked in his room, unable to sleep.  And Edward, who seems to think there's some switch you can turn in your head to stop thinking about horrible things.  Given how it all played out, AND his earlier memories of Jenny stabbing him, he's probably having a whopping case of PTSD.  Every time he tries to sleep he's probably got two interchangeable loops replaying  endlessly in his mind:  reliving him getting stabbed by Jenny, and reliving  him killing her.

Edward's arrogance is so incredibly Victorian Robber Baron.  Yes, the gypsies probably know, but they're gypsies and Quentin is a COLLINS, so that means that they can do nothing. He also expects Barnabas to buy the story without question, no matter what else he's told, simply because they are all COLLINS'.  He's also very quick to see how he can use Quentin's panic about Magda to rid himself of Quentin permanently.  Quentin is so terrified that he'd agree to do absolutely anything to save himself.

LE does a wonderful job in playing Edward as the right bastard this episode shows him as.  The arrogance goes even a step further with burying Jenny without even telling her family. From beginning to end Edward's handling of the matter does almost as much damage with Magda and Sandor as Quentin's original act.  It was Edward's cover up made her think it was a deliberate murder, and treating the family as he did just fanned the flames.

Interesting how he gets drowsy and hears Jenny -- which we could put down to a guilty conscience if it weren't for the appearance of the doll.  Quentin knew NOTHING about "her babies" or the dolls, so how could he have imagined it?  (LOL it's a 60s era plastic drink n wet doll with the hole in the plastic mouth.  Probably from the same Woolworths as Barnabas' ring.     )  Poor Quentin's at the end of his rope here, when he's begging for even EDWARD'S company rather than be alone.  Very nicely played on the edge of hysterics, I thought at one point he was going to cry.  And Edward the ever compassionate can't even spare a non cutting word.

And now we have the funky dream (should I even bother to check who wrote this episode?)   which could have easily been manufactured from Quentin's guilty conscience.  Edward was conveniently close to hear Quentin screaming, since apparently Q. has the whole West Wing all to himself.

And we cut back to the schemers (who for some reason right now are making me think of Pinky and the Brain).

Quentin sure was uncharacteristically naieve, trusting them like that. I guess like Edward, he couldn't understand genuine family feeling being more important than money.  Or maybe pure terror and lack of sleep rotted his brain....Great cliffhanger ending with Magda making her triumphant announcement, then the look of sheer horror as Quentin realizes he played right into her hands.

Jeannie

Great interview, Mark!  Thanks for posting the link.  Is that comment about writing more Dark Shadows a PROMISE?  <hint, hint>

Jeannie

Wonderful episode.  Great script and fantastic performances across the board.

The final scene shortened for the teaser, but much more of a closeup on poor Jenny.  Marie did a wonderful job, with no words.  It's not played with violence or rage, but hurt and betrayal, with tears in her eyes as she watches them kiss.   She starts forward with the knife raised, like a sleepwalker, until she is nearly on top of them.

Beth goes into helpless ingenue though, standing there screaming as he handles Jenny by himself.  Would it have made any difference in the long run?  Who knows, since we find out that it's BETH Jenny really wants to kill this time -- enough to leave a clear shot at Quentin to do it.  Never noticed this before (the advantage of watching it on a small portable right next to the laptop, I guess) but Beth's cheek has blood on it.  Hers -- or one of the others?

Now to the $64,000 dollar question.  Did he intend to kill her, or was it an accident?  I've watched this scene on slo mo and rewinding dozens of times to get my own answer for a reference in a particular piece of fanfiction I wrote. He gets her to drop the knife, but doesn't go to a less lethal grip on her.  He's like a sleepwalker. He doesn't even seem to hear Beth yelling to let her go.  He also doesn't seem to have kicked the knife away to where she can't grab for it if she gets loose, which may or may not mean anything.

Given that Jenny came for him with a knife before, probably under similar enough circumstances -- and Angelique magic or no, he refers to still having what sounds like a nasty scar.  This combination of factors makes me think that he had a flashback, and though she really couldn't have hurt him, his mind was probably telling him differently and he couldn't let go. When Beth finally gets him loose, he's breathing hard and looks horrified, then runs like hell, which also makes me think he didn't realize what he did till it was too late. (FYI Marie does dead with fixed eyes REAL well.)

Quentin in the drawing room staring at his hands like they belong to someone else.  Anyone else thinking "will all Neptune's oceans wash this blood clean from my hands?"

Is it just me, or does Edward treat this whole thing as something that transpired for the sole purpose of inconveniencing him?  He goes out of his way to be nasty.  Nice touch when TC takes the knife from him, her hand is trembling. And a lot of her reaction is probably guilt -- after all she said she wished somethign would happen to Jenny, and not minutes later Jenny is dead after tryint to attack her for saying that.

Quentin, being Quentin, is trying to run.  Interesting how Edward takes the bag from Quentin and he gives in to him like a little boy. As a matter of fact, both Q and B are behaving like naughty little children being taken to task by a schoolmaster.  LOVED the way LE played the reaction to Edward being told that Quentin had married a gypsy (which in those days was thought of like an interracial marriage in the South in the 50s).  LOVED Quentin's line about "This is NO time to be socially offended!"  And Edward, being Edward is convinced that because he wants it covered up, it's possible for it to be covered up.

And talk about timing, what a time for Sandor and Magda to show up.  Real sensitve way to tell Magda that her sister is dead -- way to go Edward.  And NOT a good coverup -- can't they even have laid her out like she was put on the bed normally, instead of leaving her where she died.  Not to mention missing the button in her hand, and the bruises on her neck.  Sloppy sloppy.

And at the end Quentin is all alone with the knowledge of Magda's threat, with not even Beth willing to stay with him.

Jeannie

Narrow escape there for Barnabas -- after all who would believe anything Jenny said about what she sees?

Great scene with Magda and Quentin. Typical that he snuck back to try and do his dirty work, undetected by Beth.  And its Quentin the little boy, just as Magda said, running back to Judith for help.  Though one does have to give him points for one thing:  the fact that he was married to a gypsy didn't freak him out, like it does the rest of the family.

Irony strikes again -- if Barn had done what Magda asked, that would have prevented the whole mess.  Just like with the stabbing of Quentin, his interference is causing the very thing he wants to prevent.

And of course, the teaser is Jenny telling THE SECRET 

Jeannie

Belated happy birthday Rick.  At least I got the e card to you on time. Glad you enjoyed the dinner at Red Lobster.

 


(waves to Jimbo because he's here  )

Jeannie

Coming in late on this, but can't resist.  It's one of my favorite Selby performances.  .  I have a tape, thanks to a kind friend who made it for me before I got the Hallmark channel, and should really watch it again.  Of course, that may be Lincoln overload, since I'm still working my way through the piles of Lincoln books that followed me home from DC. 

It's times like this I REALLY miss there being a Selby discussion group around.  Back when I first got on the DS groups there was a place where people would chat about stuff like this after a rerun.  Alas, no more. 

The whole episode was marvelous.  The writers made a real effort to make it fit the facts, and it showed.  Even aside from that, the writing was wonderful.  I lost it when Monica is encouraging Lincoln that what he did DOES matter -- totally and absolutely lost it during the part about  “an example for little boys and girls to look up to when they wondered if there was ever a time that principle mattered more than politics”.  (No, I didn't do that from memory, I cheated and copied it from the piece on my website  ). On some other topic here I told the story of my friend Kelly the Lincoln fan, who, once she saw the ep, had to keep the tape for herself.

And then there's the serendipity that caused Selby to be in this, instead of another actor.  He was telling this story at the booksigning I attended last fall, and still seemed stunned, ten years later, over the fact that, when he originally couldn't do the role (his mother had just died), they changed the schedule around so that he COULD play it. Talk about something that was meant to be.

Jeannie

YAY and Beth to the rescue.  This is one of her best episodes, before they stole her backbone.  . She will not let him do this, and actually tries to grab the gun to stop him.  Of course, true to period she's going to get another man (Barnabas) to stop him if he won't stop by himself.  Which brings me to a line that sounded odd.  Barnabas, as the audience knows) is asleep in his coffin, it looks like daylight outside. But Beth tells Quentin "Do you want me to wake Barnabas?"  What's up with THAT?  Though Quentin's reaction  -- an annoyed grunt -- as they go back down the stairs, is amusing.

Poor Jenny and her line "Wasn't I pretty enough".  (and she does realize afterward that he never saw her).  So typically period that she didn't have to be insane to wonder it.  Looks and appearances were everything, especially for women.  He wanted her because she was pretty -- did he even know or care about anything else about her.

Great scene with Quentin and Beth.  He tries to convince her it's all for her (and maybe even believes it himself on some level).  Interesting that that's the first time he's mentioning marriage. It's hinted at broadly in the earlier scene where they discuss how impossible things are, and whether or not he can get an annullment, but never said outright. Is this something he came up with on the spur of the moment?

I really like the way Terry Crawford plays the scene.  She's angry, horrified, sad, repulsed, she's on the edge of tears but she's still able to argue with him.  Very nice touch the way she plays it when he puts his hand on her shoulder, and she not only pulls away, but pulls the sleeve away, like she can't even bear for him to touch something she's wearing, much less touch her.  He's also playing it very Victorian -- I'll handle this, be the little woman and go back to the house and you don't need to know anything.

They did Beth SUCH a disservice later in the storyline, turning her into a constantly crying helpless prop.  Here he tries to manipulate her by sayign if she acts like this he doesn't think he wants to marry her.  She draws a line in the sand.  "Well it IS the way!" and goes right on the attack with logic and facts, making him think about how he would manage to get away with it.  Is this a side of him that she's just now seeing (doubtful, since she's been seeing his behaviour over a long period of time).  Or, having seen that there's more to him than his bad behavior, is she furious that he's now living down to his worst instincts.  Maybe that's part of why she takes the pretty big chance of telling him if he kills Jenny he has to kill her too.  If she hadn't reached his better instincts, I think she knows full well he could find a way to make it seem Jenny killed her, then he killed Jenny. Whether he WOULD is the only question. And it occurs to me that something we find out later would have been perfect ammunition for her to hurl at him. Whether or not she reached him with the locket with his picture in it, if she said somethng like  [spoiler]"are you willing to kill the mother of your children" THAT would have stopped him in his tracks.[/spoiler]

For his part,  he must know she's NOT bluffing.  We've seen enough scenes of them together to know that when she stands her ground, or gives her word, he's seen she means it.  I don't think he considered the possibility that he might have to kill an innocent person to kill Jenny -- and that it would be someone he cared about.

Of course, it's also possible she scared the living daylights out of him by reminding him about hanging.  It might even be a particular horror of his.  I could well see Edward taking the kids Carl and Quentin to a public hanging to show them JUST how they would end up if they didn't behave. And a bit of trivia from Wild West Tech is that if the weight was overestimated, the death would be neither quick, neat nor painless.

Clumsy of Beth with the locket on the table, though.  Guess we can put that down to reaction from the earlier scene.

Beautfully played scene with Magda and Jenny.  Poor Magda.  Like everyone else, she doesn't know what to do, how to handle it. Poor Jenny, desperate to not be trapped into being a gypsy again. And how the HECK did she find the keys to go into the basement and find Barney's coffin?

Jeannie

I have always felt that the zombie period of 1897 was one of the most well-thought out pieces of the storyline. Everyone was given great lines, and the acting was (almost!) infallible.

Quote from: Pansity on March 11, 2009, 08:00:31 PM

Is it me, or is the robe Carl wears in the beginning the same one we've seen on Barnabas a number of times?

I haven't thought of that before, but I do believe you're right, Pansity. Clothing was often interchanged between actors in certain periods.

Yes the zombie stuff was well thought out internally, no disconnects where you go  .

Glad someone else saw that.  I can think of a few instances like that,one of which is coming up soon in this storyline.  The other one I think of is somewhere in 1840, where Karlen and Selby apparently switched jackets.  Karlens is tight and overly long sleeved and Selby's sleeves are waaay to short. 

I tend to look at costumes more than most people though, at least I think so.  I have done costume recreations (which is a big part of the programming at most science fiction and media conventions),mostly from period movies.  My first job was also as assistant manager of the mens department in a major retailer, where a large part of it was suits and alterations of same. So, in combination, I probably look for things a lot of people don't care that much about.

Jeannie