YAY and Beth to the rescue. This is one of her best episodes, before they stole her backbone.
![[easter_grin]](http://www.dsboards.com/SMF/Smileys/classic/easter_grin.gif "Grin")
. 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
