I wonder what would have happened if Jason had found and destroyed the vampire while he (Jason, not the vampire) was blackmailing Elizabeth. Would it have been an additional hold over her? "Now remember, Liz, I helped you. I didn't tell anyone that it was your own cousin who victimized that poor innocent girl, Maggie Evans." I'm not sure what evidence he'd have threatened her with, but then, lack of evidence never worried Jason.
This time around, I keep rooting for Barnabas to complete the transformation of Maggie into Josette - which says a lot for Kathryn Leigh Scott. She makes it look as though union with Barnabas were her Manifest Destiny. And the alternative, Joe, is very sweet, but not very interesting. I guess that was Joel Crothers's complaint about the character anyway - but I'm not much of Joel Crothers fan. Sorry - I've read all the posts about how wonderful he was, and I just find him limited. If David Selby had played Joe, with the exact same lines, there would have been something extra there. But as played by Joel Crothers, Joe was just Joe.
I was thinking today what a perfect medium the soap opera is for supernatural stuff. The time-honored themes of "Which suitor will the fair maiden choose?" and "Will the poor, suffering kid recover from his multisyllabic disease or will he kick the bucket?" get such an interesting twist when one of the suitors is a vampire and the multisyllabic disease is vampirically transmitted anemia. I'd say, "Gosh, Dan Curtis was brilliant!" but I'm not sure that he thought much about it. He just took what was available, and was perfectly happy to make movies and prime-time series and miniseries later on.