Just thought of this-- those implied scenes were pretty daring, for a soap opera.  Shows like this go through story so fast, that they're in the position of having to show everything and maybe add unnecessary scenes, just to have enough to broadcast every weekday, and to spin their wheels a little so viewers who miss an occasional episode can still follow.  They decided to make the show as good as they could, at this point, even if it involved telling a story as a novel or film might.  One thing I give D Curtis credit for... it was probably at this point that he demanded plot development in every episode.  The ratings were high enough, what with kids like me becoming sprinters to see it every afternoon, that he could now get away with this.

jeweled rings or jeweled girdle

a date

grilled cheese sandwiches

a giant gold ingot

Gypsy Rose Lee's great grandmother

stripped down for the Pope  (again, it popped into my head immediately)

Barnabas meets the family, posing as a cousin from England again, and gets away with it (though it doesn't look that way yet in this ep!), because they haven't heard the ploy yet.  You have to love DS just for that alone, when they give us a moment like that.  This also gives the appearance of Barnabas a sort of timeless, classic aura.

Barnabas pointlessly toys with the swords on the wall, establishing that they exist, so that Quentin when he pulls one out to threaten BC with won't seem like he suddenly became Errol Flynn for no reason...  Then it turns out Quentin knows there's no English branch-- he looked when he was over there recently-- pulls out a sword, bum bum BUM.  End.  The whole thing seems to be falling apart.  We imagine... Q skewering BC, BC unaffected... what ARE you?  Then what does he do?  Jump back in the coffin waiting for something good to happen?  Skip town?

Hooray!!  We've entered Character Acting Heaven!!  Welcome Magda, Sandor, corporeal Quentin and Beth, Judith, Jamison!!!!!

It's only really 1897 after the DS theme finishes... so this is ep 1 of the story I guess.  We get the information immediately, in a close up of some unspecified thing that Sandor's aiming knives at, which I always thought was a calender, but no, it's some simple picture, maybe a chidren's picture, which just happens to have "1897" on a tag below it.  Maybe the year was a last minute inspiration.

Grayson's in heaven I think, character-acting her heart out!  DS from here on is filled with wit and absurdity, as well as being more adult and darker.  The humor starts with the very situation of gypsies apparently squatting in the Old House drawing room!  I suppose first viewers are instantly thinking "They're-a-gonna git a spankin' from Barnabas!  Wait'll he sees this!!"  Nice bit of insanity, though not overtly played for laughs, thankfully.

I think living Quentin, with his sometimes-clever sarcasm, is a step up for DS.  We haven't had a funny character before, not one who intentionally joked.  We needed this.  (Stokes did come to think, but he just stepped in from the sidelines occasionally and went away again-- and Q is non-stop sarcasm jokes)  DS at other times is so humorless, as if they felt things were so out-there that they didn't dare make jokes, for fear of looking too ridiculous.  Every other show was getting wittier though, and DS needed to catch up.  The show actually gets smarter because of it.

Q's first living line: "Hello.  Hello."  I'd forgotten we do see him arrive in ep 1.  Q grabs Beth's wrist to dominate and subjugate, the classic bully tactic toward women and children, I think.  Clever to avoid showing it (sparing TC), but just showing their faces.  You totally know what's happening. 

Beth refers to "Miss Edith".  How do you produce a generation of the family and stay "Miss"?  We hear about Gabriel later.  Sandor approaches the secret room, door opens before he pulls on the ring.  He's not as nicely shocked as Willie was.

(I'd totally forgotten it a second time!)