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Just finished this episode. I know a lot of people liked it, and I could enjoy it as entertainment, but it seemed a little pastiche to me. Just a hodgepodge of a lot of cliches from genre movies and some unresolved mystery to keep interest churning. Can we really believe all of Lucy Butler's baroque machinations and clue dropping were really just to get Frank's attention? Whenever Lucy Butler is involved there's always a kind of nefarious plan, but what is the actual fruit? How does this all speak to the nature of evil in any meaningful way? Anywho, that aside, my main question after watching was: where were the Millennium Group in all this? In the past they've shown extreme interest in her, putting an agent on surveillance in an attempt at monitoring her whereabouts. Surely with their tentacles in all departments of law enforcement, they'd have caught wind of her presence at least after Frank had. Narrative wise, I can understand why the show-runners would want to keep the scope "tight," focusing instead on Frank's relationship to Lucy, but in terms of verisimilitude to the universe created, I can't believe the Millennium Group would drop interest just because Frank is no longer a prospective member. If a potentially influential politician and is family are coming under the "spell" of the devil incarnate, surely they'd want something to do about it.

Could it be that Antipass would qualify as one of the overlooked gems mentioned in a recent thread? I rarely hear it discussed here, and was recently looking for a thread about it in "episode discussion" and didn't see one. As mentioned before, it is a great episode, and possibly my favorite Lucy Butler episode. This is probably because of the fact that she had such a prominent role in the episode. Actually, let me rephrase that, Lamentation is my favorite episode that she is in, Antipass is the best Sarah Jane performance (in my humble opinion). Anyways, one thing does bother me when I watch the episode, and that is the "button" incident. Not that it takes away from the episode in any way, but there were some strange factors involved in the scene. First off, Lucy, one of the sexiest and most beautiful women I have ever seen on TV gets down on her knees in front of John Saxum, and after he makes a comment about being frisked for a button, she looks up at him with this seductive, smoldering smile that would have made me weak in the knees, and he simply looks back at her with this fatherly smile, as though he is watching his kids play. Second, I have a problem with the time line. After Lucy and John's little exchage, you see Lucy with her little sewing tool, preparing to extract the button from the shirt. At this point, his wife Una sees them. She walks across the lawn to the house, walks through the mansion to the room where Lucy is getting the button, and Lucy is still working on removing it, a proceedure that would probably take about 2 seconds. OK, sorry to nit pick such a great episode, but it just bugs me a little every time I watch it. By the way, I really enjoyed Lucy's lawyer Selwyn Wassenaar. He just looks like the type that would defend the likes of Lucy. What a great character, right down to the wardrobe. I especially liked the conversation he has with Emma and her frustration, yet professionalism and restraint. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there is anything funny about racist views whatsoever, but the exchange and Emma's reactions is funny, and Wassenaar seems like the type that would enjoy pushing peoples buttons.