Carl Collins -

What is the chonological order of the 1897 sibs?  I always thought it was Edward, Judith, Quentin and Carl.  Am I wrong?

Maybe someone else knows better, but to the best of my knowledge, the series never pins that down precisely.  The only sibling whose birthdate is mentioned is Quentin born 1870. (Interesting FYI is that Jenny's tombstone shows her born 1869 or a year before Q.) Whether Carl or Quentin is actually the younger is something you have to play by ear, depending on how you interpret the ways they behave.

It could work well either way: Quentin does behave like the baby at times, running home to Edward and Judith to fix things when he gets into scrapes.  But Carl, too, behaves that way a lot. But the theory I mentioned about Carl being supplanted by Q then acting out to get attention is the one I personally prefer.  Your mileage may vary.

On a lighter note, here's a possible scenario for you:  Quentin and Carl as kids in the winter.  Anyone think Quentin wouldn't tease or trick Carl into licking the icy pump handle?

Judith I think is definetly the oldest, follwed by Edward. I thought it was mentioned on the show that Carl was the youngest brother, but I could be wrong.

On a lighter note, here's a possible scenario for you:  Quentin and Carl as kids in the winter.  Anyone think Quentin wouldn't tease or trick Carl into licking the icy pump handle?

  I can picture that quite clearly.

I think we assume Carl is the youngest because Karlen plays him so child-like.

Now, how would James Hall have played Carl??   Forget it, not a serious question...

Jeannie... I guess it was hard to process it that way for me (Q placating Barnabas when saying it wasn't his fault) because TV rarely, even now, skips the exposition as to what a character is actually thinking.   In real life, someone in Q's position would say something incomplete or cryptic and we'd have to figure the meaning out ourselves, if we were in the room with him.   But on TV, if the writers wanted us to believe that version of Q's motives for saying what he did, they'd generally have him go off to some other character and say, "You know, that Barnabas is more dangerous than I thought... I'd better humor him..."

Of course, he probably had no one to say that to.    I'm not criticizing.    I love it when a program trusts the viewers to have brains and figure things out for themselves.     But it throws you (or it did me) when so many other shows spell everything out and DS doesn't.     It leads one to look only at what's explained on-screen.