Ghost in the Family

EPISODES 642-650

Fashion and suicide don't mix

The last we checked, Vicki was standing on the edge of Widow's Hill, despair in her eyes and lime color coat on her back but luckily Liz and Prof. Stokes arrive just in time to stop her. It's so considerate of Liz to have made time to cover her hair with a fashionable babooshka, especially when she was racing against time to save someone on a windy cliff. Prof Stokes, who pratically told Vicki a little while ago to kill herself, is quick to change his mind and say there is another way to contact Jeff. He grabs Vicki and cautiously moves her away from the danger zone as she has another nervous breakdown.

It's séance time again!

Once back at the house, Prof Stokes apologizes for putting ideas in her head. Vicki feels Jeff's presence in her room again and notices his watch (that had stopped when he vanished) ticking again. Then to everyone's surprise, a blue ball of light appears in front of them when Vicki calls out to Jeff. However it disappears shortly after and the watch stops working, leaving Vicki crushed again. Prof Stokes identifies Jeff's blue balls as an "astral manifestation" and offers to arrange a séance. Despite Liz's protests, Vicki accepts the offer knowing pretty well she may be sucked into the past like the last time. Also joining them are Carolyn and Chris, who happens to be around discussing the murder of that Blue Whale waitress, the latter being weird about it (for good reason). Prof Stokes is glad to have Chris on board because apparently spirits usually like to possess people with their gender to speak (and they could always use extra man). However during the séance, it is Carolyn who starts to moan and gets to be the ghost-walkie talkie. A spirit of a woman named Magda takes over her body and warns them anxiously about a curse and that "They must stop them. He must stay where he is". Probably assuming his own secret may be out in the open, Chris stops Carolyn's yammering, breaking the spiritual wi-fi connection in the process. Vicki runs to her room crying and stays there for the next eight episodes. When asked, Chris can't give a solid answer as to why he stopped the séance in a haste.

While we were left wondering what the heck that spirit chick meant by what she said, the answer comes quickly when Amy wakes David up and tells him that Quentin the family ghost is angry. He speaks to Amy on the phone again and he says "she will try to stop them". It seems the séance grabbed an unwanted visitor.

When ghost aren't
clearer..

And that visitor doesn't wanna leave yet. Roger witnesses a book fall down from the piano and there is a letter in it adressed to Jamison Collins -Roger and Liz's father- by Quentin Collins asking for his help. Carolyn fills her uncle in on the séance he just missed and thinks Magda is still around. Of course, it also helps that Carolyn gets possessed by Magda occasionally to shout out warnings (but never too clear. It gets very annoying that those damn ghost can't be much more clear like "two little brats are about to unleash a ghost" and maybe then add "stop them"). Carolyn feels someone in this house is in danger. Cut to Amy and David, waiting for everyone to go to bed so they can sneak into the west wing. But the residents of the house aren't the only obstacle on their way. Magda's invisible spirit tries tricks like knocking the flashlight out of their hands or pulling them away from the door that opens to the abandoned wing. So, David and Amy use the secret panel in the drawing room that we haven't seen get used since the two digit episodes. It's good to see the writers didn't forget about that; cause I didn't either. Once they pass through, it's Quentin's turn to pull some tricks; he pushes the chair that covers the enterance back against the wall so their tracks are covered. The kids go up to the room where they first contacted Quentin on the phone but the ghost shuts the door behind them and locks them in.

Fancy a game of Wheel of Fortune?

Carolyn wakes up hysterically screaming from a dream in which she saw David and Amy dead. Roger goes to check on the children only to find empty beds. Magda gives them another obscure clue and the name Jamison appears on Carolyn's mirror. Roger guesses the word two letters before. Clever boy! Him, Liz and Carolyn go about the house looking for the missing kids but it is once again Magda that shows the way; she urges Carolyn towards the west wing. They go looking for them and even enter the room the kids are in. However, afraid of their punishment but obviously not of Quentin's wrath, the kids decide to hide and consequently they aren't found.

Is that Maggie's missing wig?

When they are alone again, the kids hear music from behind the wall. Assuming there's a secret room behind it, they break the board and voila, there it is: A door. It opens by itself while the kids discuss whether they should go through it or not, leaving them no choice but enter. And enter they do and find Quentin's remains sitting in a chair. They are sorta scared but are unable to leave for the door is locked behind them. They find a candle and light it as the gramophone in the room starts playing the same music by itself. Then, Quentin's evil man laugh echo in the room. By now we know he ain't no Casper.

The Hands That Rock The Cradle

The next day, Liz visits Barnabas at the old house to ask if he knows where the kids are; he doesn't but joins Liz on the search. Unbeknownst to them, David and Amy are hiding right outside; watching them. When the adults leave, the kids enter the house to do a job Quentin told them to do. Amy thinks David is acting weird. She is not wrong. As the search for them continues, the kids find what they came for in the attic: An old crib. Now, how they manage to sneak that huge thing into Collinwood and to the west wing without being seen by the worried adults I do not know but they do all that anyway. Then, the crib starts to rock by itself and David, acting like a creep again, pushes the scared Amy towards it, telling her "she won't hurt you". Too many unseen shes in the show. Nice!

Later, the kids come in through the front door like nothing has happened. Liz and Barnabas are surprised to see them but what is more surprising is to find out Amy and Barnabas had a friendship during their brief stays in Windcliff. There's nothing like a traumatic experience to bring an old man (who happens to be an ex vampire) and a little girl together. The kids make up one of the lamest excuses about where they were that I won't even bother to tell. Liz and Barnabas try to find a loophole in the kids' story but they can't, so they don't further dig it. Amy seems to be under the same influence as David now. Creepy kids from hell? Check!

Beth & Quentin: I'm lovin' them

The kids visit the west wing again that night and this time they come face to face with Quentin's ghost in flesh and blood. Ok, that doesn't really make sense; they see him would be more appropriate. He looks at the kids in a serious posture without saying a word. Then, the same music starts again. The air is tense. There is a lot of staring. Then out of the shadows, a woman in a white dress with a sharp chin appears and stands next to Quentin, eyeing the kids. Nobody says a thing.

Now that he has a new one,
Quentin can dispose of his old body

Sometime later, the ghosts are gone and the kids are wearing the 19th century clothes that they've found earlier. If you think that's odd, wait until you hear them call each other Quentin and Beth and talk in a kind, "why thank you sir"ish manner. A-ha! A classic case of what I like to call an "impersonation possession". David as Quentin says his family has to pay for the unhappiness they'd caused. But first, they must bury what's left of his body. 

The next morning, the kids manage to sneak it out inside a toybox, even getting Roger's help to carry it. Once the body is buried somewhere on the estate, the kids return to their hidden room in the west wing and make a plan. That night, Roger is in his bed reading a book or something (aww, the hard on the outside man unravels like a lonely flower in front of us) when Amy visits him to say she's scared of the sounds she's heard downstairs. Roger goes down to investigate, not aware of the trap his son has set for him. He trips over the wire that's been placed on the stairs and comes down tumbling.

What doesn't kill you makes you
look like a fool, A FOOL!

That's two Collins siblings down the same stairs (remember how Liz fell because of Laura the phoenix?) and it is Liz who comes to his rescue 'cause she's now an expert on the subject of staircase accidents. Roger is bruised but alive. He is also convinced there's someone in the house trying to kill him, yet he fails to find the wire. The brats must be working like ants. On a funny note, Doctor Julia Hoffman takes all the time in the world to attend to Roger and we never get to see her do it anyway. Let's just hope she didn't give a man who may have a concussion a sedative. 

Tarot cards are bad omen

Later, Liz finds a single tarot card in Roger's room and gets freaked out by it. She has a gut feeling that the spirit from the séance is trying to warn them. When Roger doesn't really believe that, she calls Prof Stokes to consult his expertise on the occult. The next day after seeing the card, Stokes acts hesitant to give the bad news but Liz tells him to cut the crap and give it to her like a shot of stiff scotch. Prof Stokes waters it down to "a sign of upcoming unhappiness".

Meanwhile, David feels guilty about what he did to his father (we're talking about a kid who once messed his father's car up in order to kill him) and begins to break the influence but when the music starts playing and the cradle rocking again, he becomes not-himself again.

Prof Stokes comes back with an eccentric medium: Madame Janet Findley. She proves she is not a sham when she guesses some of the things that happened in the house, not that anybody at this point thinks that she is. She trances herself up to contact the spirit and speaks to the "one" who is somewhere in the house. Once out of the trance, she says there's a war going on in this house and she must find out how it started. Woo hoo, Collinwood now a battleground for a psychic war!!!

Medium stuff

As the medium has an intimate "one knock is yes, two knocks is no session" with Magda's spirit, Amy gets a visit from his cousin Joe who is out of the hospital and looking rather normal; Angelique's influence had somehow disappeared. Amy acts all normal during their brief talk where she says she's happy in Collinwood (you live in a mansion girl, of course you're happy). Then suddenly, she sees an upside down pentagram on Joe's face; just like Chris did on the waitress. The star disappears when Joe walks up to the mirror but Madame Findley says she saw it too and tells him to avoid an animal that walks like a man. Joe responds with the skeptic's sarcasm but when was he a believer anyway? (Although one would expect he opened himself up to different possibilities after his affair with a vampire but noo)

After Joe leaves, Madame Findley has a talk with Amy about her psychic tendencies but what she doesn't know is that she too is about to fall into a trap of two mischievous kids. David "accidentally" appears out of the panel that opens into the west wing and Madame Findley goes in to find the source of that spiritual energy against the children's "warnings". Once she's in, they close the panel behind her and cover up the evidence and tell Liz that the woman has left. Since Madame Findley didn't see that coming, I guess she isn't a very good psychic afterall. Through the dark corridors and stairs of the west wing, she finds her way into the secret room where Quentin died. She gets locked up in there and has a mental fight with the spirit that is trying to break her.. well..spirit. Quentin plays the same old tricks on her: the music, the rocking crib, the telephone call. She also feels a woman's spirit in the room; probably Beth's.

Meanwhile, Joe is at Chris' small hotel room talking about Maggie and his plans to leave town. Eventually the subject comes to the medium's warning and Chris gets utterly disturbed to hear it. He politely kicks his cousin out and thinks of a way to keep himself from killing him. Just because he has the mark doesn't mean Joe will die, does it? WELL DOES IT? Chris runs to Julia for help and asks if she can give him some seda-waitforit-tives; her favorites! She finds his insistance rather curious at first but agrees to give him a reasonable dose.

Stair falls are very in this season

Things start to go apeshit in Quentin's room. The ceiling lamb begins to swing and the furniture start to move around. Then something offscreen grabs Madame Findley's attention and she screams!! Downstairs, Liz is disturbed by the medium's disappearance and has been looking for her for hours. Then out of nowhere, the woman appears on top of the stairs, standing still in dark (mostly because she's trying to cover up the fact she is a stuntwoman). When Liz calls out to her, she collapses down the stairs and dies. Liz and Julia scream. Or was Julia doing a monkey imitation?

Forever Alone Barnabas!

Later, Roger comes back from the coroner's office and announces the cause of death was a heart attack (if the fall didn't kill her, Julia's scream did). Vicki must have been bored by the lack of attention, so she interrupts the siblings' talk and announces rather dramatically that she will be in her room all day (that's not really news, you know) for she feels Jeff is coming for her because of a dream she had. When all she gets is suspicious looks, she runs off back to her room like the drama queen she is. Roger decides it is best to bring in their best gun: Barnabas! However, he turns out to be the biggest hypocrite when he proposes to Vicki. Really Barnabas, is that your way of helping her you opportunist bastard? In the middle of all the mess she is in, Vicki doesn't forget to be nice and thanks him for the offer but no thanks, she can't love another man because she has just lost her husband (Here is where I usually mention Frank Garner and Burke Devlin but why bother; the girl is a slut). Hurt by the boot on his ass, Barnabas says his farewells to Vicki because she has decided to leave Collinwood.

Honeymoon to the past

Once she is alone, she starts pleading with Jeff to come back again. Occasionally the watch would start to work again and an "astral manifestation" that looks more like a giant twinkie if you ask me appears. Then, Vicki feels a hand touch hers. What do you know; it is Jeff friggin' Clark right in front of her. His love made him come for her again blah blah but this time he has come to say goodbye and asks Vicki to get over him.  He's finally made his peace with his identity as Peter Bradford and says his love for Vicki made him inhabit the body of a man named Jeff Clark but now he has to go back. They hug, kiss and Vicki doesn't look like she's gonna give him up. So she says she will go back to the past with him. It is a big, emotional scene "Please Peter take me, take me!!!". Liz and Barnabas run to her room after hearing her talk to a man; just in time to catch Vicki disappear with Peter into thin air hand in hand. Happy ending?

*

Notes.. Notes.. Notes..

*Vicki has finally reunited with her man. Good for her; she was actually turning into one of those crazy women out of the gothic genre. Anywhere but today is better for her, I suppose. But that Jeff Clark thing doesn't really make sense? If Peter inhabited the body of Jeff, what happened to the original Jeff? How did Dr Lang came into contact with the new Jeff? Too many loose ends and unanswered questions.

*I thought it was pretty funny that Roger finally pointed out the fact that Vicki has been slacking her duties as a governess for some time. About time someone noticed. Roger has also left for London; we won't be seeing him for a while, I guess. Oh how much I don't care.


*David and Amy were obviously possessed by Quentin and Eve but at some point, Amy suggested David be "Jamison". What's going oon?

*Poor Janet Findley! She never had a chance. It was obvious from the start that she'd be a victim of what I call "an outside help's curse". Remember Peter Guthrie and Bathia Mapes?


*I said I was shipping for Chris & Maggie but it's obvious it is Carolyn that has the werewolf's attention. But who knows, Maggie has been known to steal Carolyn's boyfriends before.

*I've started to change some stuff about the blog, namely the background. Doesn't it look fancy. What was I thinking using the flat grey one for a whole year? I may play around with it from time to time.