HAA was consistently wonderful, from his first appearance as Nicholas Blair to his demise in this ep. I for one thought it was a wonderful and imaginative touch that Wardrobe dressed Nicholas entirely in gray. He brought so much energy and enthusiasm to all his roles.

Storm as Judah: This is the first and only time we really get to see Judah in his true colors. I almost--almost--felt sorry for Angelique when she cried all the harder on realizating that her powers were really and truly gone. Well, at least her magical ones anyway--she did her best to seduce Dawson.

Nice turn by David Hurst as Justin Collins--the scene with him and Melanie is very tender and touching. And we hear the name "Bramwell" for the first time. Barnabas's reaction is him all over: What room are they talking about? Why can't I help them? But really, Barn, you have plenty of people to help on this side of the upstairs parlor!

Lovely and equally touching scene with Leticia and Desmond in prison. Even sadder when Judah stops her. I hope Nancy Barrett had a rest between those demanding scehes.

Q1 at last becomes almost Zen-like in his attitude toward his impending demise, although it's funny how his W.Va. accent creeps in when he tells Desmond they have no one to object to.

And a powerful bit of writing for Q1 when he tells Desmond, I'll go first. The deposed Master of Collinwood and builder of the Stairway through Time has only one thing left in his power to give anyone, and he gives it all without hestation: time. Plain Desmond looks almost noble as he and Quentin exchange farewell glances, friends to the last.

Anyway, a fabulous episode jam-packed with wonderful moments and an unbeatable cliffhanger ending!

I think that smocking is the actual technical term for what Janet refers to as "bubbles." It's created by gathering teeny little pinches of material and sewing them together, like so:

http://sanctimommy.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/the-a-z-of-smocking-and-the-a-z-of-sewing-for-smockers/
Scroll down halfway to image

Once upon a time, smocking was a prominent feature of little girls' dresses. I remember it well. It still turns up from time to time, though rarely in women's clothes now.

(edited by admin)

This is the kind of episode that made me love DS!

Q1: You'd better go upstairs. WTF?? The only reason I can think of that he'd say this is that he was afraid of how Gerard would punish Daphne if she didn't obey. Still, WTF?? However, a nice little shivery bit when Gerard throws the covers off the bed and announces (unnecessarily for us) that he's a very patient man. I guess that's why instead of forcing himself on Daphne, he is calmly sitting in the drawing room when Valerie arrives so that he can gloat to her about Q1's recapture.

Barnabas gets to see more of PT than everyone else put together! Nice work by PT Quentin--who is surely the most mercurial of all the Quentins--and PT Daphne.

Fabulous, fabulous scene with Barn and Valerie--and very nice little soliloquy by V. later on. But she should really expand her bag of tricks.....

Leticia isn't even from the village, LOL! But that's our ditzy Flora all over!

The single word that all PT Collinses dread the most is spoken for the first time.

Unfortunately for Daphne, now that Gerard has lost his harem (a loss he doesn't mourn at all either), he can devote all of his evil attentions to her. Well, at least it's her last dream--I found them incredibly tiresome. And her sudden bewitchment has left her no time to find a proper wedding gown, so she is wearing her plain dark red gown--the one she wore as a ghost when our Quentin met and fell in love with her.

Poor Leticia! It's no good having second sight when you know that all your plans are going horribly, horribly wrong.

Yes, nothing signals the end of a story line like a corpse-littered stage--just like Shakespeare, methinks.  

*getting a bit warm for the snowperson emoticons*

I love love love Q1's enthusiasm, despite his real danger, over Professor Ernest Weissman of Vienna and his theory of parallel time! After all, Q1 did invent the Stairway throught Time. It was throw-away stuff and never mentioned again, but Selby really makes us believe it. Too bad he isn't that smart all the time, as when he made the idiotic suggestion that Desmond could recuperate at Collinwood. Maybe he was going to hide him in the East Wing somewhere.

Were there really trained professional nurses in 1840? I thought Florence Nightingale started professional nursing during the Crimean War about a decade later. Maybe that's one difference between RT and PT. That green brocade silk gown seems a bit sumptuous for a mere nurse, but it does look nice on Virginia Vestoff. Ditto RT Samantha's vermillion number.

I think RT Samantha is the only other person besides Joshua and Nathan in 1795 to shoot someone (Joanna) who can't die because they're already dead.

I enjoyed the cliffside scene in this ep., not least because Lee Beery actually got her lines right and delivered them well. But it seems as if the writers invented Joanna without really knowing what they wanted to do with her. I suppose that's why she always seemed so enigmatic to me. At least Lee Beery got the enigmatic gaze right, even if she blew a lot of her lines.

Have women ever really instinctively covered their mouths with their hands when shocked by something?   They're doing it a lot onscreen lately.   I'm not sure why one would do that.

I suppose to keep from screaming? I've certainly never seen anyone do it in real life.

Our first new set in quite a long time--the parapet! Pennock has to work a little at getting the break-away railing to break away so that Gabriel can plunge screaming to his death.

At the shack, Desmond's shirt is open, but not a chest hair to be seen!

Joanna tells Quentin she'll have Daphne meet him at a deserted spot--but leaves (by simply walking out rather than dematerializing) before she tells him which spot she has in mind. Lingering sisterly jealousy or a writer goof? And Quentin is so confused that he offers this garbled bit of philosophy: Every man's castle is his own--except mine. Where does that leave those of us who don't have a castle?

Kendrick's coat is green, but really, in the Collinwood Universe, what other color could it possibly be? He looks a little bit like Franz Schubert, but a bit thinner and without the specs.

Poor Quentin, forced to gamble on who hates him more--his own brother or his best friend.

And poor Daphne, forced to shut her eyes, grit her teeth and think of Quentin while Gabriel paws at her, just on the off chance that Gabriel will let her go. But unlike many another heroine, she has the good sense to pull the secret panel shut behind her.

Only at Collinwood would some family member attempt to decorate a secret passageway by hanging a painting in  it!

I love Melanie's flame-colored gown!