god, i love this show and the true heart and soul of it is victoria winters as portrayed by joanna going. this was her chance to shine. she had previously been showcased on another nbc soap opera, another world. unfortunately her acting competition was the great anne heche who portrayed a double role as vicki and her twin sister marley and was winning accolades one after another.ben cross was the weak link in this production. they should have cast adrian paul as barnabas. adrian was so handsome and adorable. any woman would travel back centuries to get a hold of that hunky highlander stallion.ben cross' barnabas was so unsympathetic. ben cross played him like a raging lunatic and a psychopath. he didn't even try to resist savaging his victims. he just didn't care. all he cared about was satiating his perverse animal blood lust.i loved watching angelique torment barnabas. how dare he toy with the affections of a poor servant girl. when a woman can't tell a man no because of her station in life, it's rape. sure after barnabas had deflowered her she wanted to continue the ill-fated affair, but that was psychological. barnabas had spoiled angelique's virtue so she wanted him to do right by her. i don't blame her. you can't just screw someone and then toss them aside.if barnabas had been any kind of man he would have told his precious josette about his horny escapades with angelique and angelique would have had no power over him. well, not until she magically transformed him into a vampire which was so delicious and elegant in its execution.michael t. weiss. what can i say about michael t. weiss except that he is so gorgeous he makes adrian paul look homely and of course adrian paul is a major heart throb. victoria was so better suited with michael t. weiss than with ben cross. ben cross was devastating the scenery without all of his chewing and devouring of the dialog. his barnabas is so feverishly and needlessly overwrought.my heart breaks for victoria when she begins to weep and it's so gallant and chivalrous of michael t. weiss to console her and comfort her. you could just fall in love with him. nbc made good use of his stunning charisma by casting him in his own series which ran for about six or seven seasons.my favorite line of this episode: if you tell me where i am, maybe i could tell you where i'm from...it sounds like something samantha said in a bewitched fifth season episode after she had been transported back into the past against her will...my second favorite line: if they think you are mad, they will ship you to the madhouse and that is a fate worth weeping over...lol...god, that's funny even though he was deadly earnest...and to the detractors, yes, this was a gothic soap opera. what was it supposed to be blood and guts non-stop. vampire stories perfume themselves in romanticism and overripe stories of love. the same was true for buffy the vampire slayer and is also true for the big screen eclipse sagas. truth be told, the best vampire series besides this one is hbo's true blood, especially the third season where the mythology evolves and the male nudity abounds and the soap opera trappings crescendo...lol.

I didn't know Adrian Paul was in this! He looks so young and adorable :)

Undone by a zipper?!? that is quite an irony!

yet it seems like yesterday i saw this show for the first time with my mother when i was ten

Just when i thought Willie was the over actor along comes Ben. He steals the crown .Did they really have to give Ben the crummy teeth as well?