...be independent and run a business!!"

...beat around the bush!!"

...go olallieberry picking with him in the lower forty."

...play red light, green light, one, two, three!"

...make tea out of those "bay leaves" for Mister Joshua!"

...do the tube steak boogie!!"

...square dance!!"

...stomp the master!!"

...drop kick the master!!"

Volume 29 MPI VHS tape has a cover photo that will forever bring me back to my youth to the day finding the book The Phantom and Barnabas Collins at the tiny paperback bookstore in Asbury Park, New Jersey. I got all my M. Ross DS books there. Once a week it was the bookstore and the record store that I spent my allowance. I remember they had a crystal ball in the glass counter at the register that I would marvel at while being rung up. The old man would go “in the back” and search for DS books for me. When he’d come out with one or more I would be thrilled – comparable to the thrill of a new Supremes 45 or a DS feature in the latest 16 Magazine.

Hooray! Thayer David is back as the servant Ben Stokes. I have been counting the days!

Nice opening scene. I believe “a repeat” of Vicki meeting Mathew Morgan building a fire in Collinwood’s drawing room fireplace. I don’t really see Joshua, a man of his times, acquiescing to being questioned by a governess, but in his doing so we get Ben’s adulthood bio since the war. Was there a war after the Revolutionary War? Ben must have received a lengthy sentence for ransacking a farmhouse to still be indentured to Joshua all these years later.

“You sound like Jeremiah and Barnabas; if they had their way he would sit at table with the entire family. There is in my brother and in my son a streak of sentimentality that I…” Joshua scolds Vicki when she affords Ben sympathy and the benefit of the doubt.

Vicki is still on track or should I say off the tracks by thinking out loud, saying to Joshua that Millicent had never married after he reveals that Millicent might be paired with Jeremiah. Dear lord this girl is reckless. I liked the slight smile Edmonds used to show Joshua’s glee at the thought of two marriages – a nice subtle touch.

Ben meets Angelique in the woods. Great scene. TD is brilliant and LP held her own against him. Loved the way Thayer has Ben say duPrés, lol. And the scene between Vicki & Ange was very good too. Vicki (still in reckless mode) and Ben in the woods – more perfection. Ange & Ben again, in her room, he becomes her slave – fantastic. Poor Ben, he's definitely a sympathetic character.

There’s no doubt how Ben feels about Joshua, and vice-versa, eh? Lol

This is a damn good episode!

R.I.P.

...Quentin had grown quite a lovely pair of breasts since his arrival at Collinwood!!"

...the black plague.

The "I got the witch" quote you chose, MB, is probably my favorite line from the opening narration. Glad you included it in your selection of the 2012 slideshow.

I never quite "got" the previous one about Barn getting into the black arts because he was convinced his parents death wasn't accidental. Why, so they could use the Golden Arches for a laugh? But whatevah.