Discuss - Ep #0868

Robservations #868

Aristede awakens to find the face of Barnabas Collins peering down and the simple minded one reacts in horror.
Quentin in the drawing room listening to classical music.  How arrogant is  Quentin's body with Petofi's mind to not care that he is acting totally unlike Quentin and how stupid that nobody seems to realize that something is going on.
Quentin recaps the Lady Hampshire storyline to bring eveyone up to speed, but really where did he find Ben's diary and how did he know that it would be useful to learn about Josette.  It seemed that Ben's diary was last seen in the Old House bravely weathering the passage of time during Laura's story.
Barnabas is back and reveals once again that he is a cousin from England.  He survives the dawn and Edward decides to go to the cave to the horror of Quentin's body with Petofi's mind.  Barnabas is still in the coffin and Angelique is missing. " What is going on," asks Edward at the dramatic ending.   The second Barnabas collapses.   A really good episode.

What a wonderful beginning to the episode!  A man, elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit, is lying unconscious outside a cave.  He comes to, and sees another man, also elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit, standing near him.  Suit #1 runs off, whereupon Suit #2 obligingly falls unconscious so that we can revert to the status quo: A man, elegantly dressed in a three-piece suit, is lying unconscious outside a cave.

I loved the Victorian feel of this episode.  All those men in three-piece suits (more of them!) worrying about a vampire, and the bacteriological chart at the doctor's office, and the dark wood, and, of course, the ferns.  Is it always the same fern that we see here, there, and everywhere?  Is it fake?  If not, does it get bugs?

Sadly, the doctor didn't seem sufficiently Victorian to me.  Maybe it's that his voice wasn't deep enough, or maybe he wasn't weighty enough.  Victorian doctors should be ponderous.  Everything Victorian should be ponderous.  Except the ferns.  But their pots should be ponderous.

How arrogant is  Quentin's body with Petofi's mind to not care that he is acting totally unlike Quentin and how stupid that nobody seems to realize that something is going on.

I had a similar thought, but then I changed my mind.  Apparently it's going to take Petofi a while to bend the I Ching to his will (you've got to feel sorry for the Collinsport prostitutes: they should have been safe with Barnabas staked, but now they've got Petofi feeding them to the I Ching), so he might as well make a few alterations in Quentin's lifestyle so he can be reasonably comfortable for the duration.  Quentin was the only person at Collinwood who ever liked any music at all, so I think the others will probably regard the change in his music as just a different twist on his strangeness.

I can understand Petofi wanting to stick to his own interests instead of Quentin's, but he should have been doing it in the privacy of Quentin's room and not in public. If he wants to listen to his own type of music and read musical scores, it would have been smarter of Petofi to do it in Quentin's room. True, Edward only believes what's in front of his eyes and Judith has been away too long to have realized what happened to Quentin...but Charisy, despite her caving in the other day, is still too aware that 'Quentin' isn't himself. And there's also Beth who knows the real Quentin as well.

Petofi made another mistake in here...he doesn't try and put on the act of being the 'real' Quentin for Barnabas. I know he was shocked upon seeing Barnabas alive but he knows that Angelique and Julia were up to something and Barnabas was also in on it, he could have found out all about it if he had played it cool. [spoiler] He does try it a couple of episodes later, but by then it's too little too late. [/spoiler]

Edward describes Gerald and Kitty's marriage as a storybook romance, and Petofi scoffs at that. Since Petofi had been somehow connected with the Soames (I'm annoyed that the writers never bothered to tell us how), I'm thinking that maybe he knows a lot more about their marriage than Edward.

I thought that was cool seeing Edward, 'Quentin' and the real Barnabas staring down at the doppelganger Barnabas. The shock on Petofi's face was priceless. I am sure he was looking forward to shooting Barnabas since he figured that the coffin had to have been empty...but no, 'vampire' Barnabas was still in there, stake through the heart and all.