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michelles-garden-of-evil · 3 years

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Episode 46 Review: 2 Theories About Jean Paul, Erica, and the Locket

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

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

In this great house on Maljardin, evil lives, even amongst the dead, and the poison this evil spreads threatens Erica Desmond, who lies frozen in this cryocapsule until the day a scientific miracle returns her to the living and back into the arms of her husband Jean Paul Desmond, who has defied powers real and imagined to assure his wife’s return from beyond the veiled curtain of death. Strange happenings are forcing a decision that could doom Erica Desmond...forever.

Hello and welcome back to my Garden of Evil, where today we will examine Jean Paul’s reaction to Dr. Alison Carr’s new discovery about her sister’s bloodied locket and two possible explanations of what it may say about Erica’s death and Jean Paul’s state of mind. I could do an entire recap of this episode if I wanted to, but I'd rather narrow the focus of this entry to the theories that have been floating around my head for a while (one since before I started this blog, in fact).

A brief summary of the important stuff that happens in this episode: Alison learns that the blood on the locket is human blood, type AB-, which leads her to conclude that it must be Erica’s, because both she and Erica have that rare blood type[1]. She also tests the poison found in the glass of wine that Holly drank from two episodes ago and finds that it’s not the missing cyanide, but an unknown poison of vegetable origin. Elizabeth defends herself to Matt, telling him that she has no motive to kill Holly, not even her inheritance--and, surprisingly, he believes her. And then Raxl and Quito steal the rabbit from Jean Paul’s room and stumble upon that wonderfully sinister skull, which will co-star with Jacques in Episode 47.

Jean Paul receives irrefutable proof that the locket found around the rabbit’s neck belonged to Erica.

Outside of those plot points, this episode focuses primarily on Jean Paul’s confusion over how a bloodied locket even ended up in the cryonics capsule with his beloved Erica to begin with. When Alison shows Jean Paul the blood sample under the microscope, he's skeptical at first and tries to convince her that she either bled on it or someone else somehow put her blood there to confuse him. I would say it boggles my mind how someone with an IQ of 187 like Jean Paul can conceive such a ridiculous theory, but, honestly, it doesn’t. The popularity of conspiracy theories and other misinformation in our time has convinced me that human beings of any intelligence level can trick themselves into believing anything, no matter how patently absurd, if they want to believe it enough.

Subtle Dark Shadows reference?

I can’t tell how much of the next part where Jean Paul continues speculating about the locket is actually in the script and how much is just a particularly bad line flub. Listening to his dialogue, it sounds like a combination of both, but it’s hard to tell given that the character is supposed to be very confused already. Here’s an exact transcription of what he says:

Jean Paul: "Well, maybe I-I-I put the necklace on her neck without realizing it. I perhaps didn't put it on her when I put it in the capsule. It could have happened that way very easily. You see, I had thought I had. You didn't see me do it, did you, Raxl?" Raxl: "No." Jean Paul: "Quito, did you?" Quito: *shakes head* Jean Paul: "Well, there you are. You see? She could have cut her finger a while before she died, and so the blood got on the locket, and maybe I put the locket in the, uh, dresser drawer, and it was left there, and in my grief I didn't know what I was doing and I gave her another piece of jewelry which I put around her neck. Don't you think that probably is what has happened?"

Vangie isn’t convinced of any of these theories, and neither is Raxl. The latter believes that the locket appeared because of evil, “slimy like a snake, ugly like a black rabbit.” (WTF? The rabbit is adorable!) Jean Paul accuses Vangie of suspecting him, but she insists she doesn’t. Of course, he doesn’t believe her and he takes out his anger by breaking Alison’s microscope in half, throwing it to the ground, and accusing Erica of mocking him.

In the next scene, he ruminates in his room over the likelihood that he killed Erica, intentionally or otherwise:

Could I have killed my Erica? Could I have slain my love? That's impossible! Oh, you would like it, Jacques Eloi des Mondes, my bloody murdering ancestor. If it was so, how you would rejoice! But then, if I didn't put the locket in the cryocapsule with Erica as I thought, what other things that I believe as facts--things which are part of my life and experience--may be no more than creeping, malicious, lying fancies? Perhaps I didn't love my Erica at all. Perhaps I hated her!

Jean Paul pondering whether he truly loved Erica.

Getting dramatic!

Later, while lying on his bed in shirtsleeves, he realizes that he genuinely loved her, but that his memory is still faulty:

Jean Paul: "I loved her. I remember how I loved her. There was no world but the world outside, and then there was another world and that was us. Oh, how I loved her, so good, so beautiful, but what happened at the end? I can't…was the necklace with Erica when she was sealed in the capsule? I can't remember."

But later on when he visits the Great Hall (inadvertently giving Raxl and Quito the opportunity to retrieve the Rabbit of Evil), Jacques torments him by implying that Jean Paul, like him, is a murderer. “Think there’s a chance you may have murdered your sweet Erica?” he asks. “That blood was very interesting, wasn’t it?”

Jacques hinting again that they’re the same man, or just that the apple doesn’t fall far from the proverbial tree? Or perhaps this is like that one line from Game of Thrones: “You can’t kill me, I’m a part of you now.”

Then we get this exchange which acts as a segue into the next scene:

Jacques: "So maybe you killed your little love before you put her in that tin coffin, hm? Maybe there is no pristine, pure body to revive. That's what's been on your mind all day, isn't it?" Jean Paul: "Even if it has been, I certainly wouldn't tell you." Jacques: "You can have no secrets from me, anyhow. You know, if you ever are thinking of murdering again…" Jean Paul: "I did not kill her!" Jacques: "All right!" *laughs* "But whether you did or not, you might want to kill someone else one of these days." Jean Paul: "Good night." Jacques: "All right, run away, but you might find an example of my skill nearer than you know and sooner than you think."

After he storms out of the Great Hall, Raxl and Quito return, the latter carrying the rabbit. Before they can sacrifice the rabbit in an effort to rid the house of its evil, it jumps from Quito’s arms. While trying to catch it, he bumps his head into a painting of mysterious ancestor Étienne des Mondes and knocks it off the wall, revealing a hidden cupboard with a skull swinging from a rope through its jaws.

We’ll discuss this skull in the review for next episode, where it becomes the focus. For the rest of this review, however, let us turn our attention to two possible interpretations of the Jean Paul and Jacques scenes in this episode. My theories are as follows:

Theory #1: Jean Paul killed Erica and is living in denial

Jean Paul’s reaction to learning that his deceased wife’s blood is on the locket and especially Jacques’ comments about it seem to imply that Dan Forrest’s theory about murder may not be a red herring after all as Ian Martin would have had us believe. Remember that, although Jacques is evil and Martin’s episodes portrayed him as the Father of Lies, he and Jean Paul may or may not be the same man. That could mean anything from Jean Paul having a split personality to Jacques having transported himself forward in time to live as Jean Paul Desmond before the events of Episode 1, but I’ll save those ideas for another essay. The point is that Jacques seems to know Jean Paul as well as he knows himself, and as such knows things about him that the other characters don’t.

It’s possible even that Jacques has observed and interacted with Jean Paul since long before Jean Paul freed him by removing the silver pin from the conjure doll’s temple. Think back to Jacques’ introductory scene in the pilot, where he responds to Jean Paul’s proclamation of “on this island, from this moment forward, I am God” with “bravo.” He could speak through the portrait and even give characters visions before Jean Paul freed him! Also think of all the things he’s referenced that a man from the 17th century wouldn’t be aware of: merry-go-rounds, bus time tables, the figurative expression “jack up by the bootstraps,” and whatnot. Assuming Jacques is a spirit like he claims, he’s been observing and learning things on Maljardin for a very long time! Sure, he looked confused about that fountain pen in Episode 4, but perhaps that was only because he hadn’t had a chance to practice using one before Jean Paul set him free. If Jean Paul killed Erica, Jacques would know about it and may even have encouraged it by communicating with him through the portrait. There’s no indication that the scene in the pilot is the first time he made contact with his descendant. It could be the second time, the fifth, the tenth, the thousandth, or more.

Also note that the exact cause of Erica’s death is never made clear. Jean Paul claims in Episode 5 that she died of eclampsia, but the Lost Episode summary for Episode 47 from the CBC program log indicates that Dr. Menkin’s missing notes would have eventually revealed her to have “died attempting to gain eternal youth.” The latter could have meant anything from plastic surgery complications to swallowing gold à la Diane de Poitiers. It’s not even clear if the attempt at eternal youth is truly the cause of her death, just what she was doing when she died. This leaves the possibility of homicide open.

But did Jean Paul (or Dr. Menkin) intentionally kill her, or could it have been an unpremeditated, spur-of-the-moment decision? I believe the latter is more likely. Jean Paul seems genuinely confused by her death, and even by whether he loved or hated her. It’s possible he already wasn’t in his right mind before her death and may even have blacked out during it (although probably not because of possession, as he had not yet freed Jacques). Perhaps the artificial intelligence hinted at by the reference to W. Grey Walter’s “Imitation of Life” factored into this: for example, the implant inside Erica’s brain may have malfunctioned, causing her to become violent and attack Jean Paul and/or Dr. Menkin.

SPOILER WARNING FOR THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961)

Another thing to consider: Strange Paradise shares many plot points in common with the Roger Corman/Vincent Price movie The Pit and the Pendulum. In the film, we have (1) a husband whose wife recently died under mysterious circumstances, (2) whom he comes to suspect he accidentally murdered. (3) His doctor is living at the castle with him, when (4) a sibling of his deceased wife comes to investigate her death. Among the ghostly happenings in the house, (5) a portrait of the wife is slashed. Finally, (6) the husband goes mad and (7) is possessed by an evil lookalike ancestor, in this case his father. While I don’t think that we can accurately predict planned revelations in Strange Paradise using the events of a film written by someone unaffiliated with the show’s production, it is interesting to note that Vincent Price’s character accidentally buried his wife alive. This connects to the events of Episode 44, where Erica’s spirit possesses Holly and tells them to “let [her] out,” although in Erica’s case it’s more likely that she’s just been resurrected from death instead of being buried alive.

END SPOILERS

Theory #2: Jean Paul is imagining things

Another possibility is that he didn't kill Erica and is using the new (apparent) evidence to construct a false memory of killing her. Although most of us like to think of memory as infallible, numerous studies have proven that it's anything but. This can occur on a collective level, such as the famous Mandela effect where, prior to Nelson Mandela's actual death in 2013, many people misremembered him as having died in the 1980s. More often, however, individual people remember false versions of events from their own lives.

In the late 20th century, numerous psychological studies identified the way that even changing small details of a story--changing a stop sign to a yield sign, for example, or adding the detail of broken glass to the story of an accident--could alter a subject's memory of it, creating a "misinformation effect." During one such study, researchers used a fake advertisement showing Bugs Bunny in front of the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland to trick their subjects into believing that they could meet Bugs at the park (despite Bugs being a Warner Brothers character and Warner Brothers being affiliated instead with Six Flags). For 16 percent of the subjects, it worked, and they described further false memories of meeting Bugs at Disney, adding details like that they touched the ear of his costume[2].

Speaking of false memories of amusement parks, I swore for years that I remembered visiting a dinosaur theme park in the northern Ohio woods back in 1998 or 1999, when I was five or six. I never questioned whether the memory was real until one day when my family drove past a drive-through dinosaur exhibit and my dad said to my mom, "They didn't have anything like that when Michelle was a kid." Skeptical of his claim, I did some Googling and discovered that there was a dinosaur-themed park in the woods near Sandusky called the Prehistoric Forest that looked much like what I thought I remembered[3]. When I sent my parents the link to the article about the Prehistoric Forest, both of them denied ever taking me there or even having heard of the place. Nevertheless, I swear I've been there or somewhere very similar. I think the most likely explanation is that I dreamt about it, but that the memory of the dream was so vivid that I mistook it as one from my waking life.

Much as a researcher can convince their subjects to believe that Bugs Bunny appeared at Disney or I convinced myself that I had visited a place like the Prehistoric Forest, Jean Paul is capable of brainwashing himself into thinking that he murdered Erica. This isn't even the only time he speculates without clear evidence that he’s guilty of murder. We'll see something similar in Episode 137 regarding the murder of a different character, whom Jean Paul will successfully convince himself he killed despite hazy evidence at best.

Note that these two theories are not one hundred percent mutually exclusive. It’s entirely possible that Jean Paul killed Erica, but misremembered specific details about her death or how he felt about her. Also note that this show contains quite a few retcons, one of which we saw last episode. Just as the trajectory of this show has changed significantly from Ian Martin’s original plot, the truth about Erica Desmond’s fate is currently in flux within the show’s universe.

The contents of the secret compartment that Raxl and Quito discovered.

Coming up next: A delightfully chilling episode where Jacques uses the skull that Raxl and Quito found to further terrorize his guests.

{<-- Previous: Episode 45 || Next: Episode 47 -->}

Notes

[1] While rabbits can have type AB blood (or type ZY blood, using the system from this 1954 study) and they cannot tolerate injections of Rh-positive blood, they have different antibodies in their blood from those of humans.

[2] Elizabeth F. Loftus, "Memories of Things Unseen," in Current Directions in Psychological Science 13:4 (2004), pp. 145-146. There are other examples from other studies, including one involving false memories of witnessing a demonic possession, but the Bugs one is my personal favorite. Also, this period of Strange Paradise puts me in a rabbity mood.

[3] Coincidentally, the Prehistoric Forest's entrance appeared in the 1995 film Tommy Boy, which also featured Colin Fox and Pat Moffat (Irene Hatter) in supporting roles. There was also an animatronic dinosaur attraction at Sea World Ohio called Carnivore Park that operated in the late 1990s. Despite having visited that Sea World many times as a kid, I couldn’t have gone to that exhibit because we couldn’t afford to go there in 1998 or 1999.

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 3 years

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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.

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