#chalcko (quito's bird)

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 45 Review: Bob Costello’s First Episode

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

At long last, welcome back to my review series for Strange Paradise, a show increasingly living up to its name. In 1969 PT, the audience for this episode--primarily young people and housewives smitten with Colin Fox--is watching Jacques threaten Alison’s life if Vangie tells anyone about the events on Maljardin after leaving. Meanwhile in our timeline, the story takes a different, more bizarre direction, featuring an allegedly evil rabbit, a bloodied locket that once belonged to Erica Desmond, and an emergency séance that ends in a poisoning.

Now that former Dark Shadows staff member Robert Costello has taken the helm as producer, there will be many changes to the show, including a change in writers. Co-creator and former headwriter Ian Martin is gone now, and in his place we have George Salverson and Ron Chudley. Salverson was a prolific writer for Canadian radio and television, writing (among many other works) a 1949 radio adaptation of Dracula that’s very good and at least four scripts for the 1967 historical comedy TV series Hatch’s Mill[1], which also starred Cosette Lee and Sylvia Feigel and featured Kurt Schiegl as Big Kurt. Chudley was an up-and-coming writer who, like fellow SP writers Ian Martin and Harding Lemay, became better-known for his later work. He is still alive as far as I can tell and works as a novelist and playwright. The resume on his personal website lists a wide variety of works, including a series of mystery novels, one published play (After Abraham), and many scripts for different media, including “over one hundred [TV] scripts, for CBC and independents.” Salverson and Chudley will only write the next five episodes, but one of these (Episode 47) will be among the best of Maljardin.

From now until Episode 149, all episodes will open with new, Dark Shadows-style narrations delivered by cast members. The first, read by Angela Roland (Vangie), is rather vague and--surprisingly--doesn’t recap Holly’s poisoning:

Death lives in this great house on Maljardin, striking as swiftly as a bolt of lightning. Legend says it is caused by the evil of this man [Jacques Eloi des Mondes], three hundred years dead:

But others believe it is something more, like the Reverend Matthew Dawson.

The reason why she mentions Matt of all characters is because he appears first in this episode, lamenting the fact that Alison hasn’t yet verified whether or not his twenty-year-old stalkee Holly survived the poisoning attempt at the end of last episode. “Murder is a three-hundred-year-old tradition here on Maljardin,” he comments, speaking to the portrait which he refuses to believe is animate. “Do traditions ever die?”

“Murder, Reverend Dawson?” Vangie asks, which triggers a discussion of who could have poisoned the wine that Holly drank. Was the culprit her mother who poured it (and whom Vangie and Raxl have identified as a dangerous witch)? Was it Raxl, who filled the decanter? And could Holly have drank the cyanide that Jean Paul took from the lab in Episode 23, which has been missing since? We soon get an answer to the third question, courtesy of Holly’s mother Elizabeth:

Well, that was quick.

“They tried to murder my daughter,” she accuses. “What will they do to the rest of us?”

“They?” Matt asks, confused. “Who?”

“I filled the glass, Raxl filled the decanter, and where was Jean Paul?” She asks about the master of Maljardin with a tone of accusation, evidently suspecting him of playing some role in the attempted murder. This is the first time on this show that one of Colin Fox’s contractually obligated absences has been worked into the plot in a way that makes sense, and I think it’s brilliant. His absence from the second séance provides her with a realistic and believable reason to accuse him of having something to do with the poisoning.

As for what Jean Paul was doing during the events of last episode...

Less realistic or believable, IMO.

He appears to have spent the night rabbit-sitting in his bedroom the whole time while trying unsuccessfully to interrogate it. “What are you?” he asks the Rabbit of Evil, who ignores him because it knows which of them is really in control of the island now. “A creature that cannot exist on this island and yet does exist! My...Erica...”

Raxl cuts him off when she enters the room, bringing tea as a pretext. “The master is not safe with a devil spirit in the room,” she tells him, no doubt wanting the fluffy devil spirit back so she can sacrifice it.

Jean Paul must see through Raxl’s flimsy pretext, given how dramatically he refuses the refreshments she brought. “Leave me, Raxl,” he hisses, mugging for the camera. “I do not want your tea!” Even after she offers to taste it first, he refuses.

Raxl leaves to visit the Great Hall, where she arrives just in time to overhear Elizabeth accusing her of poisoning Holly. After pissing off Elizabeth by giving her the stink-eye, Raxl sends Vangie upstairs to report to Jean Paul with the locket.

Raxl giving Elizabeth the stink-eye.

Elizabeth tries using the look as evidence that Raxl is working against them. Vangie doesn’t buy it.

While ranting to Quito in the crypt, Raxl recaps what she knows about Erica, the locket, and the Rabbit of Evil. She speaks of herself in the third person: “Raxl cannot tell them because they are fools!” This is a new thing, which Ian Martin’s Raxl never did. It’s also the second time this happens in the episode; the first instance occurs in the tea scene. where she asks, “Does the master wish Raxl to taste the tea before he drinks?” I don’t like it. I think referring to herself in the third person makes Raxl sound less intelligent than she’s proven herself to be.

Meanwhile, in Jean Paul’s room, Vangie dangles the sparkling locket like a pendulum before Jean Paul’s eyes:

Vangie: "Jean Paul Desmond…look at the locket…focus on the locket…focus as I swing it back and forth like a pendulum…you are now getting very relaxed…now, Jean Paul Desmond…now you will stop being mean and grumpy as you have been since the capsule malfunctioned…you will go back to being polite and charming like before and stop breaking everybody’s hearts…you will confess your love to Dr. Alison Carr…you will also stop looking constipated…Jean Paul Desmond…Jean Paul Desmond…"

I wish. No, she isn’t actually using it to hypnotize Jean Paul, just showing it to him so that he can inspect it. He verifies that it belonged to her and claims that he “put [it] on Erica’s throat with [his] own hands. I saw it sealed into the capsule with her, with these same eyes that see it now.”

The line above is a retcon. In Episode 4, Erica was not wearing any visible locket when the men from the Cryonics Society insert her body into the cryocapsule. Jean Paul entered the crypt to see her after they had already sealed her in.

“Now, take it, Jean Paul,” Vangie orders. “Feel it. It is real!” She says this as though Jean Paul had just denied it being Erica’s, which is the opposite of his reaction. “I can touch it no more! Take it back!”

She hands it to him and he takes it. Even though he says it’s real and so does she, he still wants confirmation. “Touch it, Vangie!” he begs. “You must! How am I to save my mind? How else am I to know if it is true and real, what I am seeing?”

“Do you doubt your mind, Jean Paul?” Vangie asks, although it’s obvious that’s the only explanation for his command.

“This is the mystery,” he says. “This is the terrible fact I must find out, without this.” It’s not clear what specifically he means by this in either of those sentences. “Vangie, how can you make a contact?”

Not wanting to subject herself to a third dangerous séance on the island, Vangie tells him, “I’m sorry, Jean Paul. The séance is impossible. The angry spirit that came into this house with the locket and the black rabbit is still here, waiting. It can seize any one of us as it seized Holly. I will not do it!”

But Jean Paul insists that she must, or else “how will [he] be able to save [his] mind?”

“How much are you asking?” Vangie demands. “What are you doing to me? What are you doing to all of us?”

Speechless, Jean Paul doesn’t respond. After Vangie leaves the room, he clutches the locket to his chest. “How am I to save myself and my Erica?” he ponders, his eyes wide with terror.

Down in the Great Hall, Vangie vents to Matt and Elizabeth about how she doesn’t want to put them in danger by holding another séance, throwing the box that was on top of the séance table in anger. Elizabeth, remembering that Jean Paul had once seemed “such a reasonable man,” speculates that one of them may be able to reason with him.

Meanwhile, Jean Paul begins to speculate that someone has opened the capsule and continues his attempted interrogation of the very bored-looking rabbit:

Jean Paul: “Who are you? What are you? If I gave you the poisonous leaves here on Maljardin where nothing lives, would you die, or have you lived and dined on this vile island on poison?” Rabbit of Evil: “...”

Jean Paul: *obviously reading Teleprompter* "Or are you innocent? And if you are, then you would die blameless. Or is Raxl right? Was it evil that brought me the locket or good?"

Jean Paul: *unable to suppress a smile at the ridiculous monologue about the cute animal* "And which are you: good or evil?" Rabbit of Evil: *twitches nose cutely*

This scene is the crowning moment of cute on Maljardin, between Colin Fox’s unsuccessfully suppressed smile and the adorable rabbit twitching its nose at him. Eventually giving up on questioning the animal, he sets it back down in the picnic basket and returns to the matter of the locket.

“Yes!” he declares. “I can find these answers if the capsule is opened. And if there’s nothing there or the locket is there,”--he reads the Teleprompter some more--”then this is false!”

After a brief filler scene between Raxl and Quito--in which she, thankfully, is back to referring to herself in the first person--Matt visits Jean Paul in his room. Attempting to reason with him, the Reverend begs Jean Paul to confess if he is responsible for the things that have happened to Holly, between her being pushed down the stairs, the slashed portrait, and last episode’s poisoning. Jean Paul accuses him of plotting with the others on the island to gaslight him, then describes his new, bizarre theory about Dan removing the locket from the cryocapsule when it allegedly failed and dipping it in blood as part of their plot. But how did Dan get the blood? The only possibility, he believes, is that there was blood on Erica. This provides him with yet another reason to open the capsule: to see where and how Erica was bleeding, which he now claims he remembers happening.

Meanwhile, Raxl and Quito meet in their bedroom to discuss the necessity of finding the conjure doll and the silver pin. And the fact that they’re meeting in their room means...

There he is, again: our mascot!

They leave to search in the Temple of the Serpent shortly after, and we get this well-lit shot of the passageway between the crypt and the temple.

Matt returns to the Great Hall and recaps his conversation with Jean Paul to Vangie, who comes to the conclusion that the situation on Maljardin is hopeless because Jean Paul doesn’t know the truth. At the same time, Raxl prays to the Serpent in the temple to tell her if the “woman-child” Holly should die, to which the answer is “yes.” She then orders Quito to “search” (for the doll and pin) and he screams!

Quito screaming, with the moment’s location in the video of Part 3. Even though it’s not technically a line, I’m going to count this as a line flub because Quito is supposed to be mute.

Later in the Great Hall, Jacques speaks to Jean Paul through the portrait, telling him not to open the capsule. “You will learn nothing,” he argues. “You will finish off Erica for nothing. Don’t you think so? All you can learn is whether that machine works. Is Erica’s body perfectly preserved, or is Erica now something else?”

Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.

Ignoring him, Jean Paul retreats to the crypt, where he grips the capsule and cries, believing he must open it but fearing for Erica’s safety. Raxl finds him there and begs him to open it and let her die naturally, not just so he gets his answers, but also “so that she may have eternal peace with the god that you denied.”

“Are you, too, suggesting that I am mad?” Jean Paul asks.

“Open the capsule, do not open the capsule. If madness is to come, it may come right away," is her cryptic reply.

Jean Paul crying on the capsule from the episode’s final scene.

While not as good as the other Salverson and Chudley episodes to come, Episode 45 shows promise in its focus on Jean Paul’s descent into insanity. Once he realizes that the locket was Erica’s, he constructs a ridiculous conspiracy theory involving his enemy Dan removing it while tampering with the capsule and somehow getting blood on it. He feels tempted to open the capsule despite the danger to her frozen body, and now must choose between risking her permanent death by opening (what Raxl wants) and keeping it shut despite his mounting fears that the uncertainty will drive him mad, so that Jacques can resurrect Erica. The script has its issues and there are some amusing bloopers, but the first episode produced by Robert Costello is engaging and suspenseful, leaving the viewer with questions about what will happen and be revealed in Week 10.

Coming up next: The Bad Subtitle Special for Week 9, followed by two theories about Jean Paul’s new fears regarding Erica and the locket.

{<-- Previous: Episode 44   ||   Next: Episode 46 -->}

Notes

[1] Hatch’s Mill makes for an interesting footnote in SP history. In addition to sharing one writer and three actors in major roles, Peg McNamara (aka Peg Dixon, the first Ada Thaxton) and Patricia Collins (the first Huaco des Mondes) played minor roles in one episode. A scathing 1968 review by critic Douglas Marshall provides the most detailed description of Hatch’s Mill available for free online.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 42 Review: Here Goes Peter Cottontail

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

At last, we’ve hit another milestone on Strange Paradise. A little less than a year ago, I discussed the third and final costumed flashback. Just under six months ago, we reached Episode 30, the first episode for which conclusive proof of executive meddling exists. And today we shall explore the introductory episode of a character particularly notorious among Strange Paradise fans. That’s right: this episode features the first appearance of the infamous Rabbit of Evil. The true face of evil has arrived on Maljardin, and it's soft with long ears and a fuzzy tail.

Because the plot has now split off completely from the Lost Episode summaries and I’ve already discussed the one for this episode, I’m going to ignore it for this post. I’m not even going to do much analysis this time. Instead, let us just lay out our beach towels on Maljardin, relax, and bask in the glow of the coming insanity.

Early morning on Maljardin. The unseen clock chimes three, and already Jean Paul Desmond is up sitting on the couch in the Great Hall next to the decanter of his favorite drink. Although it is the demon hour and almost everyone else in the château is asleep as far as he knows, he is already dressed in his brown velvet jacket, as one does when one is the richest man in the world on the coldest tropical island in existence. One would assume that he would at least loosen his tie to make himself a little more comfortable, but then, I’m not a fancy rich guy living in the 1960s, so what would I know?

Feeling the presence of his demonic ancestor Jacques Eloi des Mondes, he stands up and approaches his portrait as though in a trance. During their brief staring contest, Jacques begins to taunt him: “Come now, Jean Paul Desmond. Three o'clock in the morning and still you wander the house. Why?”

“Because your evil wanders here, Jacques Eloi des Mondes!” Jean Paul answers overly dramatically. “I sum-”

“Jean Paul, no oaths on your honor that you would be compelled to uphold. It might be the end of us both. And Erica might never rise to a new beginning.”

Jacques tells Jean Paul to go to bed because *he’s* tired. Could this be evidence that Jacques and Jean Paul are one and the same?

I like the way that Raxl's face appears on the screen just as the title card is fading.

Raxl paying her respects to Erica Desmond.

We cut to Raxl visiting Erica’s cryocapsule, when suddenly a little cockatiel starts tweeting. And who could it be but our mascot, the adorable Chalcko?

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<3

Quito checking on his beloved bird.

Meanwhile, Jean Paul visits the lab to find Dr. Alison Carr sleeping at her desk, Dr. Menkin’s notes next to her:

For the love of yourself, Jean Paul, do not disturb!

He wakes her up despite it being very early in the morning (because God forbid she not sleep in her own bed, I guess?). Really, there are only a handful of good excuses to wake someone up at 3 AM, including to ensure they catch an early flight and to kick them out of your bar after they passed out drunk with their glass shattered into a million pieces in front of the talking portrait across the room. Having fallen asleep at one’s desk while pulling an all-nighter that your employer deems unnecessary isn’t one of them, IMO. But, just like my cat who wakes me up around 3 almost every night crying for a midnight snack, he gets away with it because he’s cute.

Jacques has made cat-like faces before on this show, so now it’s Jean Paul’s turn to act like a cat.

That’s not to say that Jean Paul’s cuteness makes Alison any less annoyed with him. He asks her why she stayed up so late to study the notes, and she responds, “I can't sleep very well, anyway, and what else is there to do, since you keep us here as prisoners on this Island? Good night and please don't disturb anything.“ She leaves and he starts flipping through the notes.

Meanwhile, outside among the suspiciously Canadian coniferous trees of Maljardin...

Wait for it...

Quito finds a big, fluffy black rabbit hopping around the garden and brings the adorable, plump creature inside. His crush Holly happens to be in the Great Hall when he returns, and she falls in love with the rabbit at first sight.

“I didn't know anything as wholesome and innocent like that existed on Maljardin,” she coos. "Oh, he's so sweet! I haven't seen anything like him for--well, it seems like a whole lifetime.”

Then she remembers what Raxl said about there being no wild animal life on the island. “But Quito,” she says, “Raxl said like, nothing like this could exist on this island for three hundred years! I guess this little fellow disproves that, doesn't it?”

“What are you going to do with it?” she continues. “I mean, are you going to keep it?” Quito shakes his head. “You should. You should keep it for a pet. He’d make a lovely pet, something nice in this house of accident and death.” Because Quito is reluctant to keep the rabbit and has no way of expressing why to Holly, she offers to keep it as a pet.

“I wonder how he managed out there with all that poisonous undergrowth around?” she thinks out loud, as the rabbit starts to try to jump out of Kurt Schiegl’s arms, which I doubt was in the script. The rabbit they got to play the new embodiment of evil on Maljardin doesn’t always want to behave the way the plot demands. I suspect that, instead of getting a trained animal actor, someone just brought in their pet or bought a bunny on short notice at an Ottawa pet store or nearby farm. I like the rabbit. The rabbit does what it wants and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about following the script or doing what Jerry Layton wants it to.

Holly asks Quito to make her a cage so that she can keep the rabbit in her room, and he nods in agreement (I’m guessing just because he knows it’ll please her). He leaves. She sits down at the dining room table and rings for Raxl, who is not pleased when she tells her about the new guest:

Holly: "Hey, Raxl." Raxl: "Good morning, Miss Holly." Holly: "You know, everything I've heard about this island isn't the truth." Raxl: "Truth is a matter of seeing." Holly: "Well, I've seen. You told me that because of the curse, nothing could exist outside in that poisonous jungle." Raxl: "The Devil's evil is everywhere on Maljardin!"

Holly: "Well, just this once, Raxl, you may be wrong." Raxl: "It may be that demon wants you to think I am!"

Raxl instantly suspects that the rabbit is a tool of THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES.

The bit about all the plants being poisonous on Maljardin, by the way, may be a retcon. In Episode 13, Jacques mentions that papayas are native to the island. I suppose that, because he didn’t say that they were picked on Maljardin, that they could have been grown on another island. Still, I’m not ruling out the possibility of Ian Martin and/or a ghostwriter retconning this detail.

This scene is followed by a cool shot where the camera pans along the side of the staircase and over to Jacques’ portrait (see the beginning of Part 2), then a short scene of Quito pulling out a huge wicker picnic basket for a makeshift cage while Chalcko tweets as though trying to warn him of the evil presence.

In the morning, Alison returns to the lab to find Jean Paul in a scandalous state of undress:

Ye gods! He took off his suit jacket again! I am SHOCKED and SCANDALIZED by this wanton display of nudity! ;)

Jean Paul must be even more stressed now than last night if he not only has his suit jacket off, but has also loosened his tie. Turns out he ended up pulling an all-nighter himself in the lab reading the notes, even though Alison doubts that he possesses the necessary knowledge to understand notes about cellular reconstruction. Jean Paul asks Alison if Dr. Menkin did any experiments on animals, but it’s not clear if he’s asking just out of curiosity, because of something mentioned in the notes, or if somehow he feels the presence of the rabbit despite not having seen it yet. Whatever his motivation, the screenwriter almost certainly added the line to imply that the rabbit may have belonged to Dr. Menkin.

Using such a line as a hint (or, more likely, as a red herring) is a very Ian Martin thing to do, so I’m thinking that he must have written this scene. For a while, I suspected that perhaps some ghostwriter hired by either Jerry Layton or Steve Krantz inserted the scenes with the rabbit into a later draft, but now I’m having second thoughts. While it is possible that one of the showrunners hired a ghostwriter to speed up the script edits, this line has Martin’s influence written all over it. The insertion of the evil rabbit isn’t his style, but this kind of dialogue certainly is.

Also note that the very next shot is of the rabbit again.

Hearing the bird tweet is making Quito anxious. It’s obvious that the bird detects some sort of presence.

Jean Paul and Alison go to the dining room and sit down for breakfast with Holly. Jean Paul reminds her that another séance is coming and she tells him that she wants no part of it. “The spirits will decide that, and the Conjure Woman,” says Raxl.

“Vangie said that the conjure cards--the Tarot cards--spoke to one person,” Jean Paul adds, flubbing his line adorably. “They may well speak to another, for or against.” I’m not sure what he’s implying, especially because he faces Alison (or maybe the Teleprompter) as he delivers the line.

More proof that Maljardin is no tropical paradise, but a dystopia. (”Rattled” = “Raxl’s”)

Alison tells Holly that Jean Paul will probably blame them if the séance doesn’t bring him into contact with Erica and Jean Paul glares at her before flouncing passive-aggressively. I’m so conflicted about Jean Paul at this point because he’s becoming more and more of a control freak (and therefore more and more unlikeable), and yet he’s so adorable. Take a look at the face he makes just before flouncing:

Foxy!

And this shot of him from earlier in the scene:

Never have I seen any guy look this cute after pulling an all-nighter.

Holly tells Alison about the rabbit Quito bought brought her (yes, there’s another creative line interpretation). “That’s impossible!” she replies, stunned. “I mean, nothing alive exists out there now.” There are so many flubs in this episode that it makes me wonder if the actors had less time to rehearse than usual.

An unspecified amount of time later, Alison catches Jean Paul arguing with Jacques’ portrait, then Quito feeds the rabbit a carrot to the sound of more tweets. (Anyone else miss the days when “tweets” referred only to the noise that birds make? God, I'm barely 28 and already I feel so old.) Alison warns Jean Paul that dabbling in the occult is bad for his mental health, but he doesn’t care because he needs to hear Erica’s voice so badly. He tells her he’ll buy her some animals for her experiments the next time he visits the main island just to shut her up. (Spoiler: He won’t.)

And then Quito arrives, carrying the rabbit in its makeshift cage. Like Raxl, Jean Paul is not pleased to see the animal. “Holly, where on Earth did you get that!” he asks.

“Right on this Earth, on this island, from Quito,” she responds innocently.

Jean Paul giving his best “WTF” face. He’s lived on the island long enough to know that the rabbit came out of nowhere.

He asks Raxl about it and she cries out to the Great Serpent to tell her what the Devil’s plans are for Maljardin, making the Sign of the Great Serpent with her hands. Alison insists that the rabbit is only an animal, but Raxl reminds her that no animals can survive outside on the island--meaning, by her logic, that it must be a demon or similar evil being!

Jean Paul asks Quito where he found the rabbit. Raxl interprets the signs he makes as meaning “on the path to the boathouse,” which leads Holly and Alison to think that the rabbit must have snuck aboard Quito’s boat and sailed there with him. Raxl’s response?

Raxl: “It is a creature of the Devil!”

Holly objects and insists that the rabbit is only an animal, but Raxl sticks to her belief that it’s actually a demon assuming the guise of innocence, most likely sent by THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES himself! No one believes her, not even Jean Paul:

Jean Paul: "I must admit, Raxl, this is very unlikely." Raxl: "Not here. An animal here is an impossibility. Is that not true?" Jean Paul: "Until now, yes!" Raxl: "Then what force altered the impossible? There are forces at work on Maljardin as the hour draws near when the master will attend a séance and seek through purified mind and cleansed spirit to reach his Erica beyond the veiled curtain. What does the master say?"

Jean Paul does not respond. He looks like he is about to cry.

Raxl: "Quito! You will remove the rabbit. It is evil!"

Raxl: "It brings danger and wickedness and more evil than we will ever know! It must be destroyed and buried in the sea!"

Raxl: "If the master wishes to contact his Erica and hear her voice, he will be advised: that animal is evil!" Holly: "Mr. Desmond, please, no!"

Jacques’ commentary.

Coming up next: Raxl makes a horrifying--and mystifying--discovery when she examines the Rabbit of Evil.

{ <- Previous: Episode 41   ||   Next: Episode 43 -> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 33 Review: The Gentle Zombie

{ Not available on YouTube }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

And now, following our over-4,000-word-long sojourn into the eerie, isolated estate of San Rafael on Tuesday, we at last return to the even eerier and even more isolated locale of Maljardin, THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES’ Garden of Evil! *sting*

Once again, Colin Fox has the day off to recover from his spinal injury the year before, meaning we get another Foxless episode. Unlike some of the previous Foxless episodes, however, this one is a real treat. We get the first centered around the mysterious Quito, Jean Paul Desmond’s silent manservant, Raxl’s closest companion, and owner of the adorable Chalcko, mascot of this blog. We also finally get payoff for my least favorite Maljardin-era subplot, the saga of the Holly portrait--which, if you ask me, is long overdue--and it’s good.

The Lost Episode summary for this episode indicates that it was always intended to focus on Quito. As usual, the Cleveland Plain Dealer provides the most detailed and best summary (and I am not at all biased, despite living in Cleveland):

Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer (October 24, 1969). The “Repeat” part is a misprint, as the episode only aired once on WKBF.

Interestingly, we already saw Quito give Holly the gift of a sparkling stone three episodes ago in the aired version of Episode 30. For whatever reason, the executives and/or Ian Martin himself decided to have this event occur earlier in the series’ timeline, possibly with its original importance to the overarching story decreased. The second sentence of this summary, however, remains accurate, as you will find in this review.

Quito kissing the cryonics capsule.

The episode begins with Quito visiting Erica Desmond's capsule and bringing more flowers for her. Both the way he kisses the capsule and the fact that Jean Paul doesn’t make him give Erica flowers show that he, like Raxl, truly loves her.

After leaving the crypt, he visits the Great Hall following a painting/bickering/recap scene between Tim and Holly, to stare at the portrait of Erica--or, rather, the roughest possible approximation of her appearance, because Jean Paul has done everything in his power to make Tim’s project as difficult and frustrating as possible for him (see also my post on Episode 24). A drum pounds for suspense, he turns to face the portrait, and, just as he reaches out to touch it,

HE COLLAPSES!

Fortunately, Alison and Dan come in from outside at just the right moment for her to check his pulse. She believes him dead at first because he has no heartbeat, but then hears him breathing despite him continuing to have no pulse. She concludes, much to pragmatic lawyer Dan’s shock, that Quito must be a zombie as he once said (this is another instance where I can’t recall which episode, unfortunately).

This is what the Holly portrait looks like now, by the way.

A close-up of the face. Still looks approximately halfway between Holly’s face and Erica’s in Tim’s original sketch of her.

They leave Holly and Tim alone with Quito while they go to the lab (in Alison’s case) and the crypt to search for the missing cyanide (in Dan’s), when they hear Holly scream! Dan, who was so close to making friends with Chalcko, bolts upstairs to find the mysterious servant previously thought to be dead (un-undead?) has once again come alive. He starts to pursue Holly, but Alison stops him, so he turns around and tears the cover off the Holly portrait. “Is it Holly, or my sister Erica?” she asks herself out loud. “I can’t tell!”

The rest of this scene suggests that perhaps Quito, too, can’t tell, or at least sees too much of Erica in Holly to ignore. Most likely, that’s why he’s drawn to her and waits on her as though he were her servant as well as that of Jean Paul and Erica. Dan attributes Quito’s fainting to the shock of seeing a portrait that so captures Erica’s likeness that the uncanny resemblance between her and Holly frightens him.

Two and a half months ago, Curt of the Maljardin Blog wrote that the production crew did not cast an actress to play Erica at the beginning of the show, as evidenced by their use of crew member Lara Cochrane to play Erica’s corpse in Episodes 1 and 4. But now I wonder, what if Ian Martin originally intended for Sylvia Feigel to play Erica as well as Holly, given his frequent mention of their alleged resemblance? It seems like an odd decision, especially because I believe that Sylvia was originally destined for a dual role as both Holly and the blonde girl whom Tarasca sacrificed in her nightmare. But, if Sylvia Feigel was supposed to portray the living Erica, would that mean that Erica’s past incarnation was not Jacques’ wife Huaco, but the sacrificed girl? It wouldn’t make sense for Erica’s past counterpart to be her instead of Huaco, unless he decided to also give Sylvia her role, which would have made her Huaco’s third actress. But this is all extremely unlikely, especially because such a quadruple role seems like far too much for a single arc of a live-action series. Even Dark Shadows didn’t make its actors play four roles in the same arc.

All right. Enough of a theory that I myself don’t completely believe, even if it is possible (if improbable) that Ian Martin intended it. Matt-- who, naturally, hurried down the steps when he heard his stalkee screaming--thinks that the reason why Quito fainted upon touching the portrait was because he "sees something of Erica Desmond in [Holly]." I believe there’s more to it than that, though. There must be something supernatural going on that made him faint, something like Erica’s ghost exerting her power over him. But they never did explain this bit, so--like most of this show--it’s up to interpretation.

Tim: “Quito, I thought you were dead!”

Quito touches the portrait and then his heart. “Only Raxl can tell what he’s trying to tell us,” Matt claims, but Alison, too, understands the message. Quito, whom Dan calls “a soulless man,” loves Holly.

This horrifies Holly even more than Matt’s affections. She shouts “NO!” and Quito retreats to the crypt. She throws a fit, disgusted by the thought of “a monster who lunges at people” wanting a romance with her, and even accuses him of pushing her down the staircase, even though Quito was in the temple at the time.

For the Serpent’s sake, Reverend Stalker, leave her alone! The last thing she needs is your “comfort” when we know that what you really want is to get in her pants!

Holly: “Drag, drag, drag, the Reverend Matthew Drag!”

I’m dying of laughter at this terrible line.

Dan suggests that, if Jean Paul can’t bring Erica back to life, he may decide to replace her with Holly. We know that Jean Paul would never do that, but that his ancestor Jacques almost certainly would--at least once he got bored with his lovely witch Elizabeth/Tarasca. (I’m still not convinced, though, that he doesn’t want to make her sacrifice Holly, either just for fun or so that she--and, after their marriage, he--can get her fortune.)

Tim begs to differ about the painting’s resemblance to Erica, once again lampshading the absurdity of the whole situation. You have an artist painting a portrait of a dead woman, using a living one as his model who may or may not resemble the show’s current image of Erica Desmond. He took on this commission to save his life, but, now that he is on Maljardin, he’s in more danger than he ever was while the Mafia was pursuing him. And now a zombie passes out, and the other characters blame it on Erica’s likeness to Holly, which Tim must know is a completely ridiculous explanation. I’m telling you, someone’s spirit--either Erica’s or Jacques’--made him collapse. And if it was the latter, most likely Jacques intended to kill him a second time.

Quito in the crypt.

I want to shift focus now to the subject of zombies and their portrayal on SP, as well as what we know of Quito’s past. This section will contain references to slavery and suicide, so, if those subjects trigger you, you may wish to skip ahead to the next section, beginning with another copy of the photo of Quito looking into Chalcko’s birdcage.

Before I got into SP, I was long predisposed to dislike zombies because of the clichéd way that most horror movies and shows depict them: namely, as mindless creatures focused solely on eating human brains. Hordes of walking corpses who go on living only to consume and destroy are a useful metaphor for the effects of things like consumerism and social media addiction, but they don’t make for interesting characters; in fact, they make for rather dull ones, in my (highly unpopular) opinion.

But Quito was shown from early on to be a very different kind of zombie, almost the opposite of the Dawn of the Dead type. We see hints as early as Episode 12 that he has thoughts and feelings and now we have confirmation that he even has the capacity for love. He appears mindless, soulless, and unfeeling to some other characters, but those who know him well like Raxl and Jean Paul know that, despite his silence and his undead state, he has a mind, a personality, and even a heart. It doesn’t hurt that Kurt Schiegl gives Quito a great deal of expression and personality through his body language; we may not know exactly what thoughts are going through Quito’s mind, but we can get an idea. (And he never once expresses an interest in eating brains, which is another plus.)

The reason why Quito is so different from most modern portrayals of zombies is because he is based on an earlier conception of who zombies are and how they are created. In the traditional beliefs of Haitian Vodou, a zombie is created when a Vodou sorcerer or bokor resurrects a corpse to serve as his personal slave. While there are many theories as to when these legends originated, the most likely theory (which Mike Mariani argues in The Atlantic) is that they began during the period of French colonialism. During this period, which stretched from 1625 to the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century, most of the population of the island of Hispaniola (then known as Sainte-Domingue) was enslaved on sugar plantations, which required back-breaking, often deadly labor. This, combined with the other indignities of slavery, drove many enslaved Africans living there to commit suicide in an effort to return to their home countries. The idea that those who ended their own lives would be stuck on Sainte-Domingue eternally as zombies came about as a way or Haitians to discourage suicide. “Death was better than slavery for many – the suicide rate among Haitian slaves was very high. It was bad to be a slave,” Amy Wilentz writes in her review of the Vice documentary I Walked with a Zombie. “Worse would be to die and discover that, rather than returning to Africa, you continued to be enslaved as a dead person, run by a master, doing his bidding – and this is the fear that created the ‘Americo-normative’ zombie, as we know him.”

According to Mariani’s article, zombies did not become associated with bokors until after Haiti won its independence and subsequently abolished the institution of slavery. He calls this “the post-colonialism zombie, the emblem of a nation haunted by the legacy of slavery and ever wary of its reinstitution...The zombies of the Haitian Voodoo religion were a more fractured representation of the anxieties of slavery, mixed as they were with occult trappings of sorcerers and necromancy.” Wilentz associates this with “the fear of re-enslavement,” for “no one wanted to be dead, consciousness-less, and working for free for a master,” especially in a country that had fought so hard to rid itself of its shackles.

The show canon for Strange Paradise has not given--and will not give--much information about Quito’s backstory. What we do know is that he is a native of somewhere near Maljardin, descended from an indigenous Central American culture related to the Aztecs, and that was alive during the same period as Raxl. He was Jacques’ “servant” (more likely a slave) in the 17th century and, at some point before Jacques’ death, became a zombie. We also know from his reaction to the Conjure Man’s name in Episode 13 that the Conjure Man did something to him at some point that traumatized him, which may or may not have included the spell.

The Paperback Library novel Island of Evil, however, gets far more detailed about Quito’s backstory and shows his transformation into one of the undead. In the novel, Jacques forces Raxl to relive a particularly painful memory from the 17th century in order to coerce her into doing his bidding in the then-present. In her memory, Raxl visits the pregnant and bedridden Huaco des Mondes during a dinner party, although Jacques has forbidden them from meeting with each other. When he catches her returning from Huaco’s room, Jacques gets revenge on Raxl by stabbing Quito (who is her husband in the books) and then forces an African Vodou priest whom he recently purchased to resurrect him for his guests’ entertainment.[1] It’s worth noting that, like the zombies of Haitian folklore, the Vodou priest tells Raxl not to allow Quito to consume salt: “Should he eat either [salt or meat],” he says, “he will know he is a dead man.”[2] Thus the book canon connects Quito both to the horrors of slavery in the colonial-era Caribbean and to early zombie folklore, before zombies became the brain-eating monsters they are usually portrayed as today.

Quito checking on his adorable bird. Curt recently mentioned the possible connection between Chalcko, Huaco (Jacques’ “pigeon”), and Erica (Raxl’s “little bird”) in a post on his Tumblr, which was a piece of possible symbolism that had never occurred to me until then.

Dan reveals to Matt that Jean Paul has a Stanford-Binet IQ of 187. I’m noting this only because I’ve referenced it before in regards to Jean Paul’s alleged intelligence juxtaposed with his tendency to make stupid decisions. He may have an IQ of 187, but that only applies to his book smarts, not to common sense decisions like the knowledge that you should never make a deal with the Devil unless you are absolutely certain that the Devil won’t screw you over, or that you can defeat him through loopholes or some other, similar means. Even the smartest people--even those with an IQ of 187--can be manipulated, and that is true of Jean Paul, whom THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES has successfully outsmarted. I wonder if he even suspects that Jacques has no intention on bringing Erica back to life, as he revealed fourteen episodes ago?

Holly talking to the cryonics capsule.

At the end of the episode, Holly visits the crypt to talk to Erica’s capsule. “ Mrs. Desmond,” she says, her hands on the capsule, “I want to say something to you. I don't know if you can hear or not, but I'm so afraid. I’m afraid of Quito, I’m afraid of my mother, and also of the Reverend. Mrs. Desmond, I’m so afraid somebody wants to kill me. But not your husband. I love him the way I love my father, but I'm so lost and so alone. Please help me...I want to know what it was that Quito and they saw in the picture.” 

Quito catches her talking to the capsule and approaches her, his arms outstretched. “No, please!” Holly pleads, finally screaming and running from him, leaving the zombie with a heart alone in the crypt.

Upstairs, Holly calls for everyone to “see what you’ve done,” and the camera cuts to the portrait, which now bears a slash across the middle:

The end of the ill-fated saga of the Holly portrait.

“There is your spirit of love,” she cries, “or is it hate?” Alison, Matt, Dan, and Tim stare on, shocked and appalled by the slashed portrait and forever unaware of the identity of the culprit. The episode implies that the responsible party is Jacques Eloi des Mondes by showing a shot of his portrait glowing shortly before this scene, but this episode’s trivia on StrangeParadise.net indicates someone else. As with the trivia for Episode 30, it has to do with plot points that ultimately remained unexplained on the show, but nevertheless contains spoilers for the true nature of one character, so read at your own risk.

The first time since the pilot that Jacques’ portrait has glowed.

Coming up next: The characters react to the slashing of the portrait and we learn a telling bit of backstory about Elizabeth Marshall.

{ <- Previous: Episode 32   ||   Next: Episode 34 -> }

Notes

[1] Dorothy Daniels, Island of Evil (New York: Paperback Library, 1970), pp. 92-99. I will cover this book and the other two Paperback Library novels in more detail in a future series of posts.

[2] Ibid., p. 100.

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 16 Review: Jean Paul’s Latest Detained Guest

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

I wasn’t going to start working on another review until next week at the earliest, but I have been re-watching the Agatha episodes from Desmond Hall and, oh my Great Serpent, are they terrible! I don’t wish to spoil too much of what happens then because those reviews are a long way in the future, but I will say that (1) I can’t stand Agatha Pruitt and (2) while some episodes of Desmond Hall Part I have decent writing, in others the writing is very, very, very bad. I can’t help but feel sorry for the fans of both this show and Dark Shadows in early 1970, because Agatha would have been swanning around Desmondton getting on everyone’s nerves during the same period as one of the least-loved arcs on DS, the Leviathan arc.*

Normally, I would type out my complaints about Desmond Hall in the OneNote notebook where I take screencaps and save them for when I write those episode reviews in a year or two. However, I felt that I had to mention the awfulness of Episode 91 in this post, because that is what compelled me to return from my hiatus early. I needed to remind myself why I like this show enough to dedicate a whole blog to it, and so I took a (metaphorical) trip back to Maljardin to re-watch and review Episode 16.

Our mascot!

On the last episode, Jean Paul hired Reverend Matt Dawson to conduct a funeral service for his wife Erica, still frozen in the cryonics capsule  and awaiting her resurrection by THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES. Now Jean Paul--who has changed into a very nice pinstripe suit--is showing Matt the crypt at Maljardin where the capsule is located. “Even with the electrical connections, the compressor and cryonics capsule, I think this probably will be the best place for the service,” he says to the horrified minister. “Don’t you think, Reverend Dawson?” All Matt can do is smile and nod in response while privately questioning the life choices that led to this moment.

He’s probably thinking, “I left my ministry to stalk a 20-year-old full-time for this?!”

Jean Paul continues interviewing him. “You have no objection to a service without a burial?”

“No,” Matt shakes his head. “I have officiated at many such services, where the body is usually placed in the family crypt.” Considering that the vast majority of families don’t have family crypts--at least not in their basements--I think that he’s humoring Jean Paul. After all, he’s seen so many red flags already--the isolated island, the extreme secrecy, Jean Paul’s reluctance to tell anyone about Erica’s death, the whole cryonics/resurrection thing itself, and now his insistence on conducting the funeral service around a cryonics capsule.

He questions the idea that a body held in cryonic suspension can be brought back to life, and Jean Paul continues to deny that Erica is forever dead. He also continues to insist that the usual laws of nature don’t apply on Maljardin, and that on that island he is God:

Yes, Reverend Dawson, your new client thinks he’s God. There’s another red flag for you, Matt, that Jean Paul Desmond is not a client that you want to work for and you should probably cancel the agreement, give up on Holly, and try to get off the island while you still can.

Jean Paul tells him of a man who was allegedly brought back to life after dying in a blizzard, and who lived three decades as “a soulless corpse, like a zombie” before dying again. After saying “zombie,” the camera cuts to Quito who is spying on them, confirming that Quito is indeed a zombie--although, considering that Quito has emotions (which he expresses through body language) and pets whom he clearly loves, the “soulless” part is unlikely.

Did he offend Quito when he called zombies “soulless corpses,” I wonder?

It’s at this point that handsome devil Jacques takes over and starts trolling Matt. “You are a theologian trapped by your own logic and teachings,” he remarks with a mocking smile. “When you run out of answers, look to the fire god. He’s got some new ones, new for even you.” Which goes over about as well as proselytization usually does: that is to say, not at all, especially without one of those poorly-written smiley-face tracts that are absurdly popular with Christian fundamentalists. But Jacques, unfortunately, is straight out of copies of SMILE THE FIRE GOD LOVES YOU and so has to resort to confusing Matt (and us) with non sequiturs instead:

Jacques: “I don’t advocate or procrastinate.” (That has to be a line flub.) “I live and let live.”

I’m surprised he didn’t bring up the age-old theological question about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin and awkwardly try to connect that to the situation as well.

Matt storms out and Jacques stays behind to gloat. “I haven’t had so much fun,” he quips, “since one of my colleagues fiddled while Rome burned.” This reference to the Roman emperor Nero is without a doubt the clearest evidence so far that Jacques is indeed supposed to be the Devil, who at some point came to occupy the body of Jean Paul’s ancestor.

Back in the great hall, Matt returns to stalking Holly, who once again rejects him, because stalking only leads to mutual love and committed relationships in bad romance movies. He insists that he has something important to say to her, and she agrees to listen, but only for five minutes. He insists that Elizabeth doesn’t like him and that he followed her to Maljardin because he “thought [she] might need [him] for protection, guidance, maybe even comfort.”

According to StrangeParadise.net, this is an allusion to a real person, Reverend Harold Davidson, described in more detail on this page. I won’t copy Davidson’s bio on here because of its length, so I’ll just quote Holly by calling him a “lecherous minister.”

She rejects him, he leaves with his proverbial tail between his legs, then she proceeds to mope while sprawled in Jean Paul’s favorite chair for arguing with Jacques. Alison finds her there and asks what’s wrong, so she starts to explain before Matt arrives again and interrupts by insisting that he’s not trying to keep her from her inheritance like she claims. He’s right, but that doesn’t change the fact that Elizabeth is using him to do just that. Now it’s Holly’s turn to flounce, and she does it with more gusto than Reverend Stalker.

He talks to Alison, who fills him in on the whole situation, speaking again about how Jean Paul thinks he’s God and also about how Matt is now a prisoner on Maljardin.

Alison explaining the concept of a detained guest to Matt.

Matt suggests that Alison get Raxl to try to reason with Jean Paul, unaware of how well that didn’t work out a week before, He insists, though, that “perhaps these Tarot cards [that Vangie gave him in Episode 14] will sway her.” Although Alison is skeptical and so is Raxl upon her arrival, that all changes when he gives her the pack of cards and tells her that Vangie said “that [she] should use them for everyone’s good.”

She knows instantly that Vangie has predicted that Maljardin is doomed.

An interesting conversation between the two follows. Matt reveals to her that she should contact Vangie at “the third hour” (3 AM, also known as the “witching hour” or “demonic hour”), which means nothing to him but “everything” to her. She recaps for him about Jacques Eloi des Mondes, the conjure doll, and the silver pin, mentioning that “the power of the Great Serpent made him an eternal prisoner” for three hundred years.

Raxl: “Jacques Eloi Des Mondes! It must be he who walks. It must be!"   Matt: "Impossible!" Raxl: "You believe in God, but what about His work?” [I think this is a line flub for “word,” which would make more sense in context.] “I trust the Tarot cards, but what about the words of the woman who reads them?" Matt: "I'm a messenger, not a convert." Raxl: "One conjure doll, one silver pin. If that pin were still driven into that doll's head, we would all be safe."   Matt: "Raxl, that is witchcraft!" [And reading Tarot cards--a form of divination--isn’t?] Raxl: "Do you feel safe, Reverend?"

He gazes at the portrait of Jacques without another word until Jean Paul returns, explaining that he had to apologize to Quito after inadvertently hurting his feelings earlier, most likely with what he said about zombies. He asks Matt if he’s started preparing a speech for the funeral service, and an argument erupts between the two of them:

Did I mention yet that Jean Paul is more than a bit of a control freak?

Jean Paul decides that maybe Jacques had the right idea as far as the detained-guest thing went, and so puts the island on lockdown: “There will be no further trips to the main island and no trips even for mail until a matter between the Reverend and his conscience is resolved.”

Jean Paul is a male example of what is known in certain fandoms as a yandere, or a character who is madly in love, enough to hurt and even kill anyone who they believe is standing between them and their love interest.

Meanwhile in the basement, Raxl performs a ritual to contact the Conjure Man using Vangie’s Tarot cards while Quito enters the Not-So-Hidden Temple. And with that, the episode ends.

Raxl and the Tarot cards.

This was an interesting episode, with Matt as the central character for a change. The major theme of this episode seems to be belief, and how, whether seen through the lens of science (Alison), Christianity (Matt), or voodoo (Raxl), Jean Paul’s plans to revive Erica appear crazy at best and dangerous and/or sacrilegious at worst. There’s also the suggestion that Erica might return as a zombie, which does not seem to bother Jean Paul as much as it should (make of that what you will). Did it make up for the badness of Episode 91? Yes. It’s genuinely a good episode, even though some of the lines don’t make sense--but I think that at least most of those are line flubs.

Coming up next: Raxl sends a message to the Conjure Man, so Jacques decides to interfere. Also, Jacques’ portrait becomes much stranger.

Notes

* I don’t know the exact original airdates for most episodes of Strange Paradise. Maljardin aired from October 20, 1969 to January 19, 1970 in Canada according to StrangeParadise.net, but the show premiered in the United States on September 8, making the US six weeks or 30 episodes ahead of Canada. The YouTube user retronewfoundland has the endings of several episodes on their channel with the original Canadian airdates. The nearest episode to Episode 91 that retronewfoundland has a clip from is Episode 84, with the airdate of February 17, 1970 (a Tuesday). This means that (according to my calculations) Episode 91 would have most likely aired in Canada on February 26, and in the US six weeks earlier on January 15. Either date places it contemporary with the Leviathan arc, which lasted from November 14, 1969 to March 27, 1970 (source).

{ <-- Previous: Episode 15   ||   Next: Episode 17 --> }

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 13 Review: A Camouflage for the Devil

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

The first half of this episode consists mainly of character interaction scenes that have little bearing on the plot. I would call them filler, but the term “filler” implies that a scene is unimportant, and I think that these ones are important in that they reveal more about Elizabeth’s personality. In the last episode, Jacques brought her to Maljardin; here, we see her first morning on Maljardin. Since the first half of this episode doesn’t really have a plot, I will just post my favorite quotes and screencaps:

Surprisingly, the subtitles for this one were otherwise mostly OK.

If you haven’t figured it out already from the facial expressions and the EEEEEEVILLLLL color scheme of his clothing, Jacques is still controlling Jean Paul’s body. As the Devil (or so Raxl claims), he favors the colors black and red. Colin Fox was born to wear black and red; that color combination looks particularly stunning on him.)

Elizabeth: "Mr. Desmond, you are so gallant you should be that cavalier in the portrait." Jacques: "You know, sometimes, I think I am?" *snickers*

Elizabeth: "Someday, when I ring…" (Most obvious hint at her scheming to marry Jean Paul for money so far.)

Raxl: "Mademoiselle Holly will be with you shortly, madame." Elizabeth: "Thank you, Raxl. I think I would like some toast with my coffee."   Raxl: "And your daughter?"   Elizabeth: "I haven't the slightest idea what her tastes are, nor any respect for them." (Ouch!)

Elizabeth: "Will Mrs. Desmond be down soon?"   Raxl: "There is no Madame Desmond." Elizabeth: "There was one. Has there been a separation or divorce?"   Raxl: "No divorce and they never will be separated." (The dramatic irony!)

Holly doesn’t seem to regard money as a responsibility, likely because she grew up wealthy.

More dramatic irony. (This is still Jacques. He is still wearing the same white shirt and red ascot from earlier.)

Jacques, where were you when I had to do that stupid "Words of Wisdom" assignment for high school English? If I could turn back time, I would take a bunch of your quotes and use them alongside the less appealing required ones. I don’t know how well Jacques’ philosophy would have gone over in the school district I went to--which let teachers get away with making all kinds of inappropriate comments while hypocritically punishing students who said the same things--but it sure would have made for an interesting Words of Wisdom booklet.

Suspiciously specific denial.

Because they learn early on to spot gold diggers from a mile away?

That explanation makes sense, too.

So cute! <3

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<3

Actually, there are a couple minor details in this episode that are important. First, we learn that Holly sold a clasp worth $3,500 with diamonds and emeralds on it at a pawn shop for $200. As part of her father’s estate, she considered it rightfully hers, but her mother accused her of stealing it. (Might that have been a pretext for having her locked up in Westley House?) Also, I realized that I was wrong when I said back in my review of Episode 4 that no one ever comments on Jacques’ ring appearing on Jean Paul’s hand. Elizabeth does while she, Jacques, and Holly are eating breakfast. This means the ring is diegetic: the characters see it appear, even if they rarely mention it, making it more than just a visual cue for the audience.

Like I said, the subtitles in this one were *mostly* OK.

There is also this bit from a short scene between Raxl and Quito in the servants’ quarters, which implies that Vangie’s father, the mysterious Conjure Man, hurt Quito in the past:

When she adds, “he will help us,” he shakes his head. Then when she tells him he has to find him, he drops onto the bed and starts crying. Was it the Conjure Man who turned Quito into a zombie on the show? (Another unexplored plot point.)

In addition, we meet one of the cutest minor characters. In this episode, we see Quito’s pet cockatiel for the first time, and he is adorable. According to Bryan Gruszka of Strangeparadise.net, his name is Chalcko. You may recognize him, as he is the bird in my avatar:

Quito and Chalcko.

He also has a gerbil, but I like the bird better.

In the second half, the focus shifts to the subplot about the portrait of Holly, which Boring Artist Tim has just started working on and is planning to pass off as a portrait of the late Erica Desmond. I have a number of problems with this subplot, but I shall discuss them in detail in another post since this one is already quite long and some more problems crop up later. Ian Martin trolls the audience via Jacques in the second half just before a commercial break; Paflad wrote a hilarious description of this part that I don’t feel I can compete with, so I shall quote his review:

Painter Dude points out that he's limited in what he can do with Holly as a model. After all, she looks nothing like Cryo-Wife, so all he can get from her is a basic shape and an idea of lighting; anything more and he's going purely from memory and one old sketch he did weeks ago. 'Oh no', says Jacques. 'That won't be necessary. I can arrange to refresh your memory.' He grins like a lunatic, the music swells, the camera zooms in for shocked close ups of all the other characters, and we fade to an ad break... HE'S GONNA WHEEL OUT CRYO-WIFE! No. He's gonna show Painter Dude some photo's [sic]. F---ing shameful.

It would be so much more diabolical for Jacques to pull Erica out of the cryocapsule, letting her thaw out and risking damage to her corpse, so that she could pose for Tim while Jean Paul "stands motionless in time” (spoilers through Episode 60), unaware of what’s happening. But he does owe Jean Paul a favor and he has other things in mind to do with Erica that we will learn about later.

Anyway, Holly and Tim leave, so Jacques and Elizabeth resume flirting. I know that this entry is hardly a review since I mostly just included screencaps and quotes, but I love so many quotes from this episode that I can’t help it.

Elizabeth: "Wouldn't it be wonderful to be twenty again and have nothing more to worry about except the prospect of becoming twenty-five?” Jacques: "Even though I'm much older, I still feel young." Elizabeth: "You don't look a day over two hundred." Jacques: "You're close, you know? You nearly guessed my true age. Would it be presumptuous of me to say that you bring out the devil in me?”

Jacques kissing her hand again.

Yum!

There’s another one for the Words of Wisdom booklet from twelve years ago. (Or, rather, it would have been a good one had high school not been too painfully grim to cherish.)

It’s time for BISSITS!

And now another kiss on the hand. So romantic... *sigh*

Right at the end of the episode, Jacques de-possesses Jean Paul, who monologues again. He also magically becomes less attractive upon de-possession, and the irony that he was not distressed about not giving Erica a Christian burial until after Alison complained about it is completely lost on him:

Erica, what is he doing to me? What am I doing when he enters my soul and possesses it, Jacques Eloi Des Mondes! Oh God, my darling, I pray that you know when he is in my being. And that it is he not I that poisons the air! Did I say, “pray?” I, that denied God by denying you a Christian burial? Oh Erica, I can't bear to hurt you, but more and more of the time, I am not my own life, but a camouflage for the Devil!

He was so much more attractive when he was possessed.

I find it funny how this show sends such mixed messages, portraying the rejection of Christian funeral practices as bad but making the alleged Devil the most fun and therefore the most likeable character. It doesn’t help that, save for killing Dr. Menkin in Episode 5 and Huaco and Rahua in his backstory, trapping people on his island, and engaging in lots of gaslighting, they’ve barely had Jacques do anything evil so far. Sometimes I think that he’s just the ghost of an ordinary man who dabbled in the occult and he only pretends to be the Devil to humor Raxl.

Coming up next: Alison makes an important decision that will affect the love square between her, Jacques, Jean Paul, and gloomy old Dan.

{ <-- Previous: Episode 12   ||    Next: Episode 14 --> }