Thought just occurred: I've been disappointed by the end of 1795 every time, because it seems during 1795 as if some climax has to happen, where Barnabas becomes increasingly more "evil", and he eventually has to be forced into the coffin and chained. On my first adult viewing (2002), the gloom hanging over the whole thing was because I thought I knew for sure that that had to happen, at the end. Seeing Barnabas agree to being destroyed in an almost casual-sounding conversation, brief at least, with his father was an anti-climax.
What just now occurred to me is that if his family and maybe others too had coerced him into the box, certainly his family at least since he went into a family crypt, Barnabas would have risen in 1967 full of rage against his own family. He didn't. He was honestly affectionate and protective of his new family, without even knowing them. He had rage built up inside him, but not in that direction. I suppose it could have turned out that Jerimiah alone had sealed him in the coffin (he was bitter toward him), but still, his total lack of bitterness against the whole modern Collins family makes me think otherwise.
A larger subject for a thread might be the many times, I feel, in which a plot point seems hasty and clumsy and illogical, then upon repeated viewings one can think of very sensible reasons for things to have gone that way... and then, was it intentionally and subtly written that way, without their feeling the need to spoon-feed us an explanation, or did they just luck out?
