Discuss - Ep #0701

[Watching Project]

Robservations #701

And if you'd care to look back, the first WP discussion topic for this ep:

Re: Discuss - Ep #0701

[MagnusTrask]

Hooray!!  We've entered Character Acting Heaven!!  Welcome Magda, Sandor, corporeal Quentin and Beth, Judith, Jamison!!!!!

It's only really 1897 after the DS theme finishes... so this is ep 1 of the story I guess.  We get the information immediately, in a close up of some unspecified thing that Sandor's aiming knives at, which I always thought was a calender, but no, it's some simple picture, maybe a chidren's picture, which just happens to have "1897" on a tag below it.  Maybe the year was a last minute inspiration.

Grayson's in heaven I think, character-acting her heart out!  DS from here on is filled with wit and absurdity, as well as being more adult and darker.  The humor starts with the very situation of gypsies apparently squatting in the Old House drawing room!  I suppose first viewers are instantly thinking "They're-a-gonna git a spankin' from Barnabas!  Wait'll he sees this!!"  Nice bit of insanity, though not overtly played for laughs, thankfully.

I think living Quentin, with his sometimes-clever sarcasm, is a step up for DS.  We haven't had a funny character before, not one who intentionally joked.  We needed this.  (Stokes did come to think, but he just stepped in from the sidelines occasionally and went away again-- and Q is non-stop sarcasm jokes)  DS at other times is so humorless, as if they felt things were so out-there that they didn't dare make jokes, for fear of looking too ridiculous.  Every other show was getting wittier though, and DS needed to catch up.  The show actually gets smarter because of it.

Q's first living line: "Hello.  Hello."  I'd forgotten we do see him arrive in ep 1.  Q grabs Beth's wrist to dominate and subjugate, the classic bully tactic toward women and children, I think.  Clever to avoid showing it (sparing TC), but just showing their faces.  You totally know what's happening. 

Beth refers to "Miss Edith".  How do you produce a generation of the family and stay "Miss"?  We hear about Gabriel later.  Sandor approaches the secret room, door opens before he pulls on the ring.  He's not as nicely shocked as Willie was.

[DarkLady]

Great stuff, MT! Yes, we are definitely in 1895 now, and the whole nest-of-vipers scenario is loads of fun!

Establisher shots: Eagle Hill Cemetery; the Collins mausoleum; the secret room; the chained coffin. Barnabas (in his 1795 clothes) suddenly wakes up and realizes where he is--and what he has once more become. He presses up on the lid, but the coffin is still secured in the chains that his father order Ben Stokes to wrap around it in 1796.

Nice repartee between Magda and Sandor. It seems to be underlaid with real fondness. I think that somewhere, GH said that Magda was her favorite role, and no wonder. She can pretty much get away with anything.

A man’s hand in a black glove knocks on the front doors of the Great House of Collinwood. Quentin Collins--no ghost but a living, flesh-and-blood man--calls repeatedly, Hello! Hello! (his first line!) The doors are opened--by Beth Chávez, looking every bit as regal in life as she was in death. Quentin is witty and sarcastic, but he's a real mean, utterly selfish bastard. Beth doesn't deserve such mistreatment. The writers have done a great job of setting him up here.

Since there is at least one actual servant (Beth) in the house in 1897, the bell pull next to the fireplace now makes sense.

Welcome to the wonderful and genuinely elderly Isabella Hoopes as Edith! Because she is the senior female in the household, Beth properly should call her Mrs. Collins. The free-spirited Magda always refers to her simply as Edith.

And since Edward (as we will learn) is the oldest grandson and I suppose the Master of Collinwood, he should be Mr. Collins to Beth.

In a small blooper, the secret panel actually opens slightly before Sandor pulls the ring. He scarcely has time to be horrified before a bone-white hand grabs him by the throat....

[MagnusTrask]

It's nice re-experiencing the episodes through your recaps, DL.  Thanks. Grayson did say Magda was her favorite DS part.  I think servants are or were supposed to call any of-age males in the family "Mister", and the male children "Master".

I like how Barnabas has survived off of and re-spent the same family jewels over and over again...

[DarkLady]

Thanks, MT! I do wish I could see the eps again. Like I said, I wrote my summaries years ago for a friend who didn't have access to them, so I tried to be thorough.

I like how Barnabas has survived off of and re-spent the same family jewels over and over again...

Plus there's that good old compound interest on whatever funds Joshua managed to sock away!

[Joeytrom]

1897 is different already then 1795 as the beginning of the time travel story is told in the third person then in the first (with Vicky) as 1795 began.

I always thought it odd for a time travel storyline, that although time traveler Barnabas appears in the first scene, we then switch to the omniscient point of view.  Has that been done in other time travel stories?

Its like the start of a new series.