Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1096: Goodbye, David. Goodbye, Hallie.

Dark Shadows began in June 1966, when well-meaning governess Victoria Winters was on her way to the great house of Collinwood to take charge of the education of strange and troubled boy David Collins. David’s aunt, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, had written to Vicki to offer her the job; his father, Liz’ brother Roger Collins, was opposed to Vicki’s hiring. Roger’s opposition rose from mild disapproval to paranoid fervor when he learned that his arch-nemesis, Burke Devlin, rode into the village of Collinsport on the same train as Vicki.

In the months that followed, the only story that consistently worked was Vicki’s attempt to build a friendship with David in spite of his vicious and at times murderous hostility towards her. Later, David met Burke, and the two of them quickly bonded over their shared hatred of Roger. For his part, Roger was haunted by the thought that Burke was David’s biological father, a thought which Liz forbade him to express.

For a long time, David continued to be the pivot on which the story turned. Crazed handyman Matthew Morgan abducted Vicki and tried to kill her; that crisis reached its emotional peak when David found Vicki bound and gagged in Matthew’s hiding place and refused to rescue her. David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, came back to claim him, which would have meant his death. That arc ended when David ran from the fishing shack Laura had set ablaze and flung himself into Vicki’s arms. With that, he chose Vicki and life over Laura and death, appointing Vicki as his new mother. That marked the conclusion, not only of the David and Vicki story, but of Dark Shadows 1.0.

As the show reinvented itself, David remained the key to the action. The two long costume drama inserts that established Dark Shadows as, first and foremost, a show about time travel, the trip to the 1790s that lasted from November 1967 to March 1968 and the trip to 1897 that ran from March to November 1969, were both prompted by attempts to protect David from a looming supernatural menace. Though he was not an active participant in either of those stories, it was his peril that triggered them, and attempts to protect him and his analogues in previous generations of the Collins family that set the boundaries of the possible action.

As of this episode, all of the characters mentioned above are off the show. Vicki made her final appearance in #665*; Matthew made his in #123; Laura in #191**; Burke in #344; Roger, in #979***. Liz made her last substantive appearance on Friday; she will have one brief scene in #1198, simply to mark the end of a storyline. David leaves the show today.

In the early parts of today’s episode, David and his fellow teenager, houseguest Hallie Stokes, are being led through the woods by the unspeaking ghosts of two people who died in 1841. David’s psychopomp is the late Gerard Stiles, who was apparently a pirate when he was alive but has become a landlubber in death. Hallie’s is the late Daphne Harridge, who was once the governess at the great house. Daphne’s charges were Tad Collins and Carrie Stokes. Hallie and David have spent vast amounts of time moaning about how the ghosts of Carrie and Tad are going to take possession of their bodies and erase them from existence. Much of this moaning has taken place in a mysterious room which they call “The Playroom.” The Playroom intermittently exists in a obscure corner of the great house. When it materializes, it can be found behind a door that at other times opens onto a linen closet. Gerard, Daphne, Tad, and Carrie have free rein in The Playroom.

There is a dollhouse in The Playroom that the ghosts like to play with when David and Hallie aren’t looking. This dollhouse is a scale model of Rose Cottage, a mansion which stood somewhere near Collinwood in 1840. It is in some supernatural sense identical with that mansion. In #1082 and again in #1093, it was made clear to Hallie and David that they are fated to become dolls confined to this dollhouse, and that any living that is left for their bodies to do will be done by Carrie and Tad.

Daphne and Gerard take Hallie and David to a full-sized version of Rose Cottage that stands in the woods. It is unclear whether this mansion is visible all the time, or if it comes and goes as does The Playroom. The latter would seem more likely, since it is such a big place it is hard to imagine it would have escaped the notice of the people who have heard the expression “Rose Cottage” and have recently been trying to figure out which of the big houses in the area was around in 1840 and could have been known by that name in that year.

Gerard gets David to Rose Cottage while Daphne and Hallie are still making their way through the woods. David takes a nap in the corridor outside the upstairs parlor where the dolls are kept. He has another dream like the one he and Hallie both had in #1082, in which they are in the upstairs parlor. Daphne is in his dream. She smiles. Her smile is more unsettling than Gerard’s sneer. David wakes up and finds that Daphne is there, with Hallie.

David says they must resist; Hallie says it is too late. Then there is a commercial break. When we come back, they are in the upstairs parlor. Hallie notices the dolls are gone. David says they are no longer needed. Hallie says they must resist; David says it is too late. David Henesy manages to make David Collins’ part in these two scenes work. In the corridor, David is conflicted, trying to sound brave as he says the words about resisting but looking helpless as his eyes turn to the ghosts. In the parlor, he is simply defeated. His performance sketches a clear line between these two emotional states.

Kathleen Cody is less successful as Hallie. She seems to have come to terms with the reality while in the corridor. In the parlor, she flips back into Hallie’s usual mode, maximum possible tension. It doesn’t help that her dialogue is a bunch of questions about why they can’t resist. In context, those questions are just nonsense, and Hallie’s abrupt switch from quiet resignation to extreme plangency is inexplicable. My wife, Mrs Acilius, asked if they were trying to make us root for the ghosts who promise to shut Hallie up.

This story is the second time Dark Shadows has adapted Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. The first time through, in late 1968 and early 1969, David and his friend Amy Jennings took turns in the role of Child Who Enforces the Will of the Ghosts and Child Who Resists the Will of the Ghosts. That got to be frustrating, but at least they waited until the episode was over to switch roles. Switching them during a commercial break is just a slap in the face of the audience. Miss Cody’s decision to play Hallie at such a high level of agitation so much of the time was a costly mistake, but no performer could really have saved the part.

The ghosts indicate that David and Hallie are to take their seats at the table where the dolls usually sit. When they do so, we jump to a somewhat lower camera angle. This cut does indeed make it look like Hallie and David are small figures inside a small space. Henry Kaplan directed this episode. I usually have a lot of complaints about Kaplan. His preferred visual strategy was to cut from a closeup of one face to a closeup of another face to an extreme closeup that shows at most part of a face. But this shot achieves a subtle effect, and that effect tells the whole story. I can’t suppress a suspicion that Lela Swift stepped in and set the shot up for Kaplan, but even if she did he deserves credit for not fouling it up.

Carrie and Tad come into view. Carrie superimposes herself on Hallie’s body, Tad superimposes himself on David’s, and both ghosts fade out. As they do, we hear Tad say “Goodbye, David,” and Carrie say “Goodbye, Hallie.” We will see Carrie and Tad in the persons of Hallie and David for some time, but will never see either David or Hallie again.

Final farewell. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

I remembered this closing image vividly from our previous watch-through of the series. I misremembered the lines, though. I recalled David and Hallie saying goodbye to each other, not the ghosts saying goodbye to the teenagers as they took possession of them. I think it is better the way it is. We are supposed to be horrified at Carrie and Tad’s thoughtless cruelty as they annihilate Hallie and David, and denying them even the opportunity to bid each other farewell serves that purpose. Unsatisfactory as are the rest of the episode and indeed the rest of the David and Hallie story, this closing shot is highly effective.

*Alexandra Moltke Isles last played the character in #627. Two other actresses succeeded Mrs Isles in the role.

**Another iteration of the character appeared in 20 episodes between #729 and #760.

***Another version of the character appeared in 17 episodes between #975 and #1055.

Episode 1095: Elizabeth Collins Stoddard

I first started watching Dark Shadows in the 1990s, when what was then The Sci Fi Channel was showing it Monday through Friday at 10:00 and 10:30 AM. I got into the habit of daily viewing when they were showing episodes from the summer of 1967, when the ghost of nine year old Sarah Collins was occasionally dropping in on strange and troubled boy David Collins. Sarah’s brother, vampire Barnabas, was thinking he might want to kill David, and David’s aunt, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, was a blocking figure who refused to engage with any evidence that anything unusual was going on.

In those days, it appeared that if Barnabas got his way the estate of Collinwood would be peopled only by the unquiet spirits of the dead. I imagined how that might have played out, if the show were not an open-ended serial but were allowed to come to an end. I pictured the great house in ruins. Well-meaning governess Victoria Winters and her boyfriend, hopeless schlub Burke Devlin, would venture into the wreckage. Vicki and Burke would dodge phantoms and demons and make their way into the drawing room. There, they would find Liz sitting serenely while leathery-winged fiends flutter about her head. Vicki would plead with Liz to escape with them. Liz would only smile at her and say that nothing is wrong, nothing at all. Seeing that Liz had taken her commitment to denial as a way of life to its ultimate extreme, Vicki and Burke would have no alternative but to leave without her.

The makers of the show have acknowledged that Barnabas’ plan would have left Collinwood entirely uninhabitable. They did that in the feature film House of Dark Shadows, which replays the story that led to the summer of 1967 and takes it to that conclusion. And they are doing it again now.

Vicki has long since left the show, replaced as the audience point of view character by mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Julia tried to cure Barnabas of his vampirism in 1967; in 1968, she completed a procedure devised by a fellow mad scientist that did put the symptoms of his curse into abeyance. Barnabas has since bungled his way into another vampire curse, but his connection to Julia still makes it possible for him to be a permanent part of the cast of characters and, on balance, a defender of the status quo, which in a genre where the most important thing is that there is still a story left to tell in the next episode is the closest thing there is to a hero. As such, he is the successor to Burke, who was supposed to be a dashing action hero when Dark Shadows started.

In July 1970, Barnabas and Julia came unstuck in time and found themselves in the far-off future year 1995. There, the great house of Collinwood was in ruins, its residents either dead, missing, or insane as the result of a mysterious disaster that took place before 1970 was out. The estate was dominated by malevolent ghosts, and the people of the village of Collinsport dared not even speak of the place, let alone visit it. Since Julia and Barnabas returned to 1970 in #1071, they have been trying to figure out what the disaster will be and to prevent it.

At first, Liz was somewhat sympathetic to Barnabas and Julia’s efforts, as befits the several times in 1969 and early 1970 we saw her admit that uncanny events were taking place around her. But her old commitment to denial came back to the surface when she forbade Julia and Barnabas to talk with David or teenage houseguest Hallie Stokes about what they had seen in 1995, even though Hallie and David are clearly central to the upcoming disaster. Because they cannot talk with the teens, Barnabas and Julia have not been able to do anything to prevent the ghosts from encroaching on them and taking an ever stronger position in the house.

In #1088, Liz finally realized what was going on and ran to find Julia, crying that they would have to get David and Hallie out of the house before the ghosts got hold of them. But it was too late. She found herself looking into the face of the haunting, an evil spirit known as Gerard. By the time Julia caught up to her in #1089, Liz was entirely under the power of Gerard, and placidly refused to accept that anything out of the ordinary was going on.

Hints have been mounting that the disaster will occur soon. Today, Julia and Barnabas tell Liz that it is urgent Hallie and David be taken from the house at once. Liz refuses, telling them that when the night ends with no further disturbances they will have to admit that all of their fears are simply a “ridiculous fantasy.”

For their part, David and Hallie have been spending a lot of time the last few weeks sitting around moaning about how helpless they are. That does not make for gripping television, even when they look at a dollhouse and say they think the ghosts have been playing with the dolls when they weren’t looking. David gets an idea. The dolls in the ghosts’ dollhouse have connections with particular people around the estate, so if he and Hallie make a doll of Barnabas, perhaps that will cause Barnabas to be aware of what the ghosts are doing.

Hallie asks David why he wants to alert Barnabas in particular. He says that if anyone can fight Gerard and the other ghosts, it will be Barnabas, because “He’s… different.” In the summer and fall of 1967, David was the one person at Collinwood who was on track to figure out Barnabas’ secret, leading the show into a blind alley from which it escaped by going back in time to the year 1795. When they returned from that first costume drama insert in March 1968, David was for some reason no longer a threat to Barnabas. But he was still conscious about his distant cousin in ways his Aunt Liz would never countenance. So in #660, David told his friend Amy Jennings that “Barnabas knows a lot of things that he doesn’t tell anybody.”

The doll is not particularly realistic; the spirit world doesn’t require very high production values, and Hallie and David are under severe time constraints. So their Barnabas doll is adorably crude. I’m thinking of making it my PFP, replacing the tailor’s dummy known as “Mr Juggins” that I’ve been using since David and Amy showed him to Liz in #681.

Looks more like Jonathan Frid than does the Barnabas from the Gold Key comics. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Regular viewers know that David’s instincts are sound. Barnabas and Julia confronted Gerard in the room where the dollhouse is in #1070. Gerard was powerless against Barnabas. Something might have come of that, but Gerard then turned his attention to Julia, causing her to become very ill and forcing them to retreat. After they have put the doll in the dollhouse, David and Hallie leave the room for a little while. When they return, the Barnabas doll has been thrown from the dollhouse and destroyed, suggesting that Gerard did indeed see a danger in its presence.

Finally, Julia and Barnabas manage to corner Liz and force her to let them take Hallie and David away. After they leave her, Liz shuts herself up in the drawing room and apologizes to the unseen Gerard. She says she could not think of any way to resist them further.

Liz, defeated. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This admission of defeat is the next to last time we will see Liz. She will appear again in one scene twenty and a half weeks from now, in #1198, in which she will simply serve to confirm that things are back to normal. Moreover, that version of Liz appears in a Collinwood where none of the events we have seen over the last several months has taken place; we have no idea what her character development has been. This is the final appearance of the person we have been watching since episode #1.

When Dark Shadows began, Joan Bennett was its biggest ratings draw and Liz was the most powerful character. Her function as Keeper of the Secrets set her on the path that would lead her towards extreme denialism and away from any active role on the story, but along the way Bennett used her great talents to give the show’s foundations their basic outline. For example, in the relationship between Liz and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, Bennett and Louis Edmonds pioneered the dynamic of Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother, the same dynamic that makes Barnabas and Julia so much fun to watch and that turned Quentin Collins into a breakout hit in 1969 when we saw him with his Bossy Big Sister, Judith (also played by Joan Bennett.) In her other roles, Bennett will continue to be indispensable to the show, but those of us who started with #1 will never stop wishing the writers had found more to do with the character of Liz.

Episode 1094: Our hearts will beat in tune

Carolyn Hawkes comes to the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood and announces to her mother, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, that she is about to do something special and they must light candles to provide the appropriate ambiance. Liz gets very unsettled by Carolyn’s attitude and keeps insisting that she go to bed, but Carolyn is nothing daunted. She stands behind the candles, apologizes for being out of practice, and starts to sing. Earlier, Liz had told permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman that Carolyn could not sing at all, and she seems quite surprised to be so abruptly proved wrong. Julia comes running in and shouts “Carolyn! ST-A-A-AAP!”

Carolyn in position for her concert. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia recently came unstuck in time and spent a couple of weeks in the far-off future year of 1995, where Collinwood was in ruins as the result of a mysterious disaster that is due to occur sometime before 1970 is out. Some residents of the great house, including Liz, vanished in that disaster; others, including Carolyn, went insane.

Carolyn would then be murdered by one of the ghosts who rule Collinwood in 1995. She left behind a note consisting of six cryptic phrases, which Julia and her friend Barnabas Collins have taken to refer to events that led up to the disaster in 1970. One of those phrases was “The night I sang my song.” It was in a conversation about that phrase that Liz told Julia Carolyn was incapable of song, and it is because the singing represents a step towards the disaster that Julia is so desperate for Carolyn to stop.

At the beginning of the episode, the evil Gerard Stiles, the ghost whom we saw kill the older Carolyn in 1995, took possession of Carolyn. As a result of the possession, she developed “second sight,” a mind-reading ability she had never had before. This will remind longtime viewers of another character played by Nancy Barrett, Miss Pansy Faye. We first met Pansy in #771, set in the year 1897, when she was played by Kay Frye. Pansy was a Cockney showgirl and fraudulent mentalist who came to Collinwood as the fiancée of daffy Carl Collins. To her amazement, Pansy found that in the ghost-packed atmosphere of Collinwood she really did have the psychic powers she had long pretended to have. Pansy didn’t live very long, but she returned to the show in the person of Miss Barrett when evil sorcerer Count Petofi caused her spirit to take over the body of the repressed and vicious Charity Trask. The song Carolyn sings in the drawing room today was Pansy’s song in both of her incarnations.

Pansy was fun the first time we watched the 1897 episodes, and she only got more enjoyable the second time through. It was prophesied yesterday that Carolyn would be taken over by a ghost named Leticia; if Leticia is like Pansy, that’s something to look forward to.

The reminder of Petofi is even more welcome. The story has been going nowhere for the last five weeks. Villains are supposed to create situations to which the other characters will respond, whether heroically or pitiably. Gerard is not a villain- he has been established as evil, but he has not given anyone else anything interesting to do. Petofi generated story all the time, so if Gerard is going to start taking pages from his book, we can hope that the show will come back to life. It’s even possible that when we travel back in time to 1840 to meet Gerard, Leticia, and the rest of them as living beings, as the show has been making it clear will happen sooner or later, it will turn out that Gerard is Petofi in disguise.

Episode 1093: It’s just gonna happen anyway

In July, vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman came unstuck in time and found themselves in the far-off future year 1995. Julia and Barnabas found that the great house of Collinwood had been in ruins ever since some mysterious disaster took place on an unspecified night in 1970. Some residents of the great house went missing that night, others died, and two of them, Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes and Quentin Collins, went insane. The mad Carolyn of 1995 apparently knew that Barnabas was a vampire; she had known that for a while in 1967, when she was his victim, but appeared to have forgotten it when he was relieved of the effects of his curse for a while starting in March 1968. Towards the end of Barnabas and Julia’s time in 1995, Carolyn left a note for them, consisting of six cryptic phrases, shortly before the ghosts who rule Collinwood killed her. They decided the phrases were clues to the disaster, and ever since returning to 1970 have been trying without success to use them to figure out what is going on.

One thing that is clear is that the disaster will involve the deaths of teenagers Hallie Stokes and David Collins and the merger of their ghosts with the ghosts of their lookalikes from the year 1840, Carrie Stokes and Tad Collins. David and Hallie are aware of this and spend all their time moaning about how helpless they are to do anything about it. Their headquarters for this operation is a room that intermittently materializes behind a door that usually leads to a linen closet. The room is much too large to fit into the space the linen closet occupies, is stocked with high-end antique toys, and is frequented by the ghosts. Hallie and David call it “The Playroom.” In 1995, Julia and Barnabas found that The Playroom was in existence all the time and that anyone could enter it, but until today only David, Hallie, and the ghosts have been able to go there. Everyone else just sees the linen closet when they open the door.

Hallie and David are in The Playroom, bummed out because Carrie has revealed to them that they are fated to become dolls in the dollhouse that is there. This was previously revealed to them in #1082, but Dark Shadows has been losing teenage viewers lately, so perhaps David and Hallie weren’t watching that day. A miniature carousel starts turning and playing music; David is influenced by the music, and says that perhaps their future in the dollhouse won’t be so bad.

Meanwhile, Carolyn is in the corridor outside The Playroom. We see her after the camera pans out from a closeup of the stained glass work above the door that sometimes opens on The Playroom. We notice that it depicts roses. The dollhouse is a scale model of a house that was known as Rose Cottage in 1840, and is in some sense identical to that house. One of the clues Carolyn left in 1995 was “The night Rose Cottage was destroyed,” which has led Barnabas and Julia to ask everyone if they’ve ever heard of Rose Cottage and to work feverishly to try to locate it. You might think they would remember the roses above the door to The Playroom and to think of the toys they saw there in 1995, but no such luck.

Carolyn hears the carousel’s music and wonders where it is coming from. She opens the door to The Playroom. She still hears the music, but sees only the linen closet. It is a haunting moment. We know that she is glimpsing an aperture between her world and another, but nothing she can see could lead her to conclude that anything at all extraordinary is happening. It might leave us wondering what it would be like if we were in the presence of some utterly bizarre phenomenon- would we notice?

Carolyn returns to the corridor. Her back is turned when David opens the door. We see The Playroom behind him. We wonder if Carolyn would be able to see it if she were facing the right way. David closes the door silently. Carolyn turns and is startled to see him. He says he is looking for Hallie. Carolyn asks him about the music; he claims he cannot hear it. He suggests someone may have left a radio playing in another part of the house.

The sequence reminded me of the 2017 season of Twin Peaks, as does the whole idea of The Playroom. As Agent Cooper disappeared into the mysterious, intermittently existent Red Room and the Black Lodge beyond, so the ghosts threaten to absorb the living characters into the mysterious, intermittently visible Playroom and the ruinous world of 1995 beyond. As Deputy Hawk once caught a glimpse of the curtains of the Red Room in the clouds above the spot deep in the woods where the worlds sometimes open onto each other, a glimpse so brief and vague that someone unfamiliar with the legends of the Black Lodge would likely either ignore it completely or assume it was a reflection of the clouds from some water on the ground, so the music from the miniature carousel gives Carolyn a glimpse so subtle and vague that anyone who had not been briefed by Julia and Barnabas would immediately accept David’s idea that it is just a radio. I doubt that this part of the show had a direct influence on Twin Peaks– more likely, the shared imagery is just the logical endpoint of a sense that there is more to the world than we can readily perceive with commonplace fears of being trapped in unfamiliar places. But I do think the two shows can shed light on each other.

Under the influence of the ghosts, Hallie and David make a doll with bright yellow hair and put it in the dollhouse. It represents someone named “Leticia” who will join them when they are living in the dollhouse. Since the only blonde character on the show other than Hallie is Carolyn, we have to assume that a ghost named Leticia has the same designs on Carolyn that Carrie has on Hallie and Tad has on David.

In 1995, Carolyn had not disappeared into the dollhouse, but was living in a shack by Finley’s Cove. She even went in and out of The Playroom from time to time, interacting with Tad and Carrie. This is the first indication we’ve had that the ghosts’ will is not entirely ineluctable. There may be nothing the characters can do to keep a disaster from occurring, but perhaps there is some hope that we might see them do something to shape the particulars of the disaster that will befall them.

Carolyn is busy looking after David and Hallie’s governess, Maggie Evans. Maggie is ill, having been bitten by a vampire. When he found out about this, Barnabas was surprised to learn he isn’t the only vampire in town, and he and Julia have been trying to figure out who has been feeding on Maggie. Carolyn and Maggie talk about the previous vampire attacks. There is an electric moment when each of them looks like she is trying very hard to remember something that is hidden way down in the recesses of her mind. Several times in 1968, Nancy Barrett played Carolyn as if she remembered a lot more about Barnabas than he knew. The script didn’t give her any support in that, and she eventually had to give it up. Maggie was Barnabas’ victim in May and June of 1967; that experience has been wiped from her memory several times, and we may wonder if it will emerge one more time. In light of what we saw about Carolyn’s knowledge in 1995 and the similarity of what Maggie is going through now to what she went through in 1967, this moment is highly effective.

Miss Barrett also manages to get a laugh from regular viewers today. She has a scene with Christopher Pennock as astrologer Sebastian Shaw. Pennock also played Carolyn’s late husband Jabe (alias “Jeb”) Hawkes. The two characters are supposed to resemble each other strongly, and for a while Carolyn hoped Sebastian would turn out to be Jabe. But she’s given up on that, and Sebastian wants to date Maggie.

Sebastian comes to Collinwood. Carolyn tells him Maggie is very sick and cannot receive visitors. Sebastian wants to see her anyway. Carolyn tells him that is impossible. He becomes angry and declares that she will see him sooner or later, no matter what! Sebastian storms out of the house, and Carolyn watches him go with a sad little smile. Sebastian is violent, irrational, controlling, and childish, just like Jabe. Her look shows us how much she misses those things about him.

Aww, what a wonderful dangerously unstable man-child he is!

Carolyn can’t get the tune the little carousel plays out of her head. She goes back to the door and opens it. Now, it opens on The Playroom. The circle the ghosts have drawn around Hallie and David now encloses her as well. We can start to see how she might have known enough to leave the clues she left in 1995 for Barnabas and Julia.

The vampire story is new and has some promise, but the haunting has been going in a tight little circle for five weeks, with no progress in sight. The miniature carousel is all-too-apt a symbol of that. Even the opening voiceover seems to acknowledge that the show is in a rut. It breaks off in mid-sentence. We hear Kathryn Leigh Scott telling us that David and Hallie have discovered “a secret world- a world populated by the dead. And this night, they learn…” That’s it, the audio stops abruptly at that point. What do David and Hallie learn? What does it matter, whatever it is can’t possibly affect the story in any way.

Episode 1092: Visitors only stay for a week

Governess Maggie Evans has been bitten by a vampire other than Barnabas Collins. Barnabas and mad scientist Julia Hoffman are stymied in their efforts to find out who this other vampire is. They decide not to take Maggie to the hospital, since they don’t want to answer any questions. Instead, Julia goes to some unspecified location in the village of Collinsport to get several units of blood to transfuse into Maggie. I’m sure a no-questions-asked blood bank would be a highly profitable enterprise in Collinsport.

I wonder if Julia had to go in the blood store to get that bag, or if they have a drive-through. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, Maggie’s charges, gloomy teenagers David Collins and Hallie Stokes, are sitting around in a space that intermittently materializes in a location usually occupied by a linen closet. It is stocked with fancy antique toys, frequented by ghosts, and called “The Playroom.” The ghosts don’t take visible form today, but Hallie and David notice that they keep playing with a dollhouse in The Playroom.

The dollhouse is a scale model of a mansion known as Rose Cottage that stood somewhere in the Collinsport area in 1840, when the ghosts were living beings, and is in some supernatural sense identical with that mansion. The ghosts are big fans of scale models. Some time ago they gave David a scale model of a ship that one of them sailed when he was alive. Today, David and Hallie see that the ghosts have added a tiny model of the same ship, reduced in size so that it is in the same proportion to the dolls in the dollhouse as the original model was to the residents of the great house of Colllinwood. Hallie says that if they go to David’s room, they will find that the model is gone from there, because it has been transformed into this minuscule thing.

The Java Queen II. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

At the end of the episode, Hallie and David hear one of the ghosts telling them to look into the dollhouse and learn their fate. They comply, and see themselves in place of the dolls. David and Hallie have spent all day sitting around doing nothing, and when they look into the future they see that they are still sitting around doing nothing. Evidently the greatest horror the writers can imagine is that the show will go on as it has been lately. I have to admit they have a point!

Ultimate fate. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 1091: Whoever did this

David Henesy has been in the cast of Dark Shadows since the first week, yet today is the first time he has been called upon to deliver the opening voiceover narration, after dozens of other cast members have had their turns. He does a great job with it, he should have done it every time.

As the voiceover concludes, we dissolve to an extreme closeup of a fixture that has been on the show even longer than has Mr Henesy, the clock in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. We see that there is a little painting in the body of the clock, above its face. It is a rustic landscape centered on a small church. I believe this is the first time we have been able to see this painting; certainly it is the first time it has received such emphasis. The episode will end with a closeup of a cross that heroine Julia Hoffman is carrying as she goes off to confront a vampire. Opening with a picture of a church and closing with a cross would suggest that there is some kind of Christian content in between, though it escapes me what it might be.

Today’s story is a whodunit. Governess Maggie Evans has been bitten by a vampire. Julia suspects her best friend, Barnabas Collins. Barnabas denies that he is the guilty party. They have three conversations which we might call soulful, if it weren’t tactless to remind Barnabas that he has no soul. When Julia sees Maggie’s indifferent response to Barnabas when he visits her in her sickroom, she is convinced of his innocence. That does raise the question of how Barnabas has been getting his nutrition lately, a question the show does absolutely nothing to answer or forestall.

Teenager Hallie Stokes fears that the ghost of the evil Gerard Stiles is responsible for Maggie’s condition. Her friend David Collins conjures up, not the ghost of Gerard, but that of Hallie’s lookalike Carrie Stokes, who indicates that Gerard had nothing to do with it.

So we know that we now have a B-story to complement the A-story of Gerard’s haunting of Collinwood, and that the villain in that B-story is a vampire who is new in town. Barnabas mentions that astrologer Sebastian Shaw arrived in Collinsport only recently; Julia rules Sebastian out as a potential vampire, since she has seen him during the day.

Sebastian arrived with a woman named Roxanne. Barnabas does not mention Roxanne as a suspect, perhaps because he is deeply infatuated with her and does not want to believe she shares his curse. But returning viewers know that Roxanne appears only at night that she has some hold over Sebastian that makes him miserable, and that just before Maggie showed up with the puncture marks on her neck Roxanne was quarreling with Sebastian about a date he had had with Maggie. Roxanne alluded to mysterious powers that she has and looked self-satisfied when she said she had further plans to use those powers. So I think we have to classify Roxanne as the prime suspect in the latest attack on Maggie.

Episode 1090: All we can do is maintain vigilance

Julia Hoffman enters the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood and sees her best friend, vampire Barnabas Collins, embracing governess Maggie Evans and staring hungrily at Maggie’s neck. She interrupts with news that she just had an ugly scene with one of Maggie’s charges, teenager David Collins. Julia suggests Maggie go to talk with David, and she immediately does so.

Julia scolds Barnabas for almost biting Maggie. He denies he was about to do that. She reminds him of the lengths he went to a few months ago to resist the temptation to bite Maggie. She does not mention that Maggie was his victim three years ago, in May and June of 1967, an event that has repeatedly been wiped from Maggie’s memory, though not from anyone else’s. Barnabas insists that he is in complete control of himself, and that Maggie is in no danger from him. Julia looks at him skeptically, as well she might. He sounds like every addict who is ten minutes away from a relapse.

Later, Barnabas and Julia are back in the drawing room. Barnabas is all huffy because Maggie went on a date with astrologer Sebastian Shaw. Julia asks why that bothers him. He says that Sebastian is either a charlatan or something worse. Coming from a vampire, this note of prim disapproval is pretty rich, and Julia does nothing to hide her sardonic amusement at his discomfiture.

Julia is darkly amused at Barnabas’ sputtering over Maggie’s date with Sebastian. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia is so deeply involved with Barnabas that she has no hope of making a life that does not include him, and she long ago decided to make the best of this situation by falling in love with him. Barnabas initially responded to this attitude by cruelly taunting her, but now tends to respond to her unrequited feelings with tact and, at times, a measure of compassion. That tact and compassion do not go so far as to keep him from telling her about the other women he is chasing and expecting her to help him catch up to them, but sometimes, he speaks softly and gives her a hug. For Barnabas, that’s an enormous act of kindness.

For a long time, Barnabas was hung up on Maggie, and early in 1970 it looked like she was about to reciprocate his interest. Julia meekly stayed out of their way at that time. Then Barnabas went on a cosmic journey through an alternate universe and into the far-off future year of 1995. Julia accompanied him on that journey. While in the alternate universe, he fell in love with a girl named Roxanne, who looked like she could be Julia’s daughter. When he and Julia returned to 1970, Barnabas spent some of his time trying to prevent the disaster he and Julia learned was coming when they were in 1995 and the rest mooning about his lost Roxanne. That left him no time to reconnect with Maggie. Then, he met Roxanne’s Doppelgänger who is native to the main universe, and he was back in love.

This Roxanne apparently lives with Sebastian, much to Barnabas’ dismay. So whatever his past attachment to Maggie, the fact that Sebastian is available for Maggie to date suggests Barnabas might have a shot with Roxanne. Part of Julia’s grim amusement may come from watching Barnabas’ total inability to be rational enough to see this as a bright side.

Maggie comes back to the great house having had a fine time with Sebastian. She talks with Julia and Barnabas about David and her other charge, Hallie Stokes. She agrees that they seem already to be under the influence of the evil spirits whom Barnabas and Julia saw in the wreckage of the great house when they were in 1995, and laments her inability to get through to them. Barnabas says he will go home; Maggie offers to walk with him partway, since she wants some fresh air.

We cut to Sebastian and Roxanne’s place. Roxanne knows all about Sebastian’s date with Maggie. She mentions that she saw them at the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn. That will interest longtime viewers- the diner, as it is often called, was a major set in the first 41 weeks of the show, when Maggie worked there. It has been seen so rarely since then that we can never be sure it still exists. Sebastian wonders how Roxanne knows so much, and she placidly tells him she has her ways. He leaves the room, and she gives a mischievous smile, as if she has thought of another opportunity to use her ways to secure her interests.

Julia sees Maggie when she returns to the great house. Julia tells Maggie that she has been gone for an hour and asks what kept her so long. Maggie collapses, and Julia sees bite marks gaping on her neck.

At one point they cut from the clock in the foyer at the great house to Julia. They do a matrix wipe, in which the picture dissolves into squares and then the next picture assembles from those squares. It’s the first time they have used this effect, and it is not at all clear what point it is supposed to make. Also, both shots are loaded with lots of little visual details, so that laying one on top of the other produces an ugly, confusing image.

Matrix wipe. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 1089: Why hasn’t anything happened?

It’s often said that the most compelling villains of stage and screen are played by the nicest actors. That’s often explained by saying that the audience can pick up on a sweetness in the actor even when the character is doing the most vile things, making it possible for us to enjoy watching actions that sound like they would be unbearable even to think about.

I suppose there is some truth to that. Certainly Jonathan Frid’s abundant kindliness helped to make the fiendish Barnabas Collins a pop culture sensation in the 1960s, as David Selby’s sunny good nature made the thoroughly deplorable Quentin Collins almost as popular. But it is also the case that the function of a villain is to focus attention on other cast members. The villain makes things happen that get us wondering what the heroic characters will do to oppose them, how vulnerable characters will elicit our pity and admiration by their noble suffering, and which differently vulnerable characters will wrestle with their consciences as they are drawn into the villain’s web of sin. That function is one that might be expected to appeal to the most generous members of the profession, those most eager to help their fellow players show what they can do.

The villain in this portion of Dark Shadows is supposed to be the ghost of Gerard Stiles. Gerard is played by James Storm, who is by all accounts as adorable a human being as Jonathan Frid, David Selby, or anyone else. If the actor’s lovableness were all it took to make a villain a hit, Mr Storm’s face would have been on the cover of every issue of 16 magazine from the summer of 1970 on.

But in fact, the writers have let us down. Gerard is not doing what we expect of a villain. Today he takes possession of matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. As a result of that possession, Liz becomes an emotionless drone and checks out of the story. That’s the common theme of all Gerard’s possessions- he stops his victims from exchanging information with others, slowing everything down and leaving them with nothing to do. He does not really serve the villain’s function at all. So far from bringing out the best in the whole cast as Barnabas did in his heyday or Quentin in his, Gerard has caused the plot to grind to a halt, leaving the characters playing out variations on the same few scenes over and again. He is a non-villain in the middle of a non-story.

Longtime viewers know that Dark Shadows has been chiefly about time travel since November 1967. When we see the ghosts, dwell on their wardrobe, and hear living characters tell us what they’ve been reading in documents from the years 1840 and 1841, we know that the show is getting ready to take us to that period for an extended costume drama segment. To the extent that the current haunting generates any suspense at all, that suspense comes from our wondering what explanation we will find in that upcoming segment for the activities of the ghosts. What was it about teenagers Tad Collins and Carrie Stokes when they were alive that makes their ghosts want to take possession of their lookalikes David Collins and Hallie Stokes, why will that possession result in the deaths of Hallie and David, and why will Tad and Carrie’s ghosts merge with theirs and appear in clothing from 1970? What goal does Gerard have that will be advanced by the possession and death of Hallie and David? What exactly is the relationship between Gerard and the ghost of Tad and Carrie’s governess Daphne Harridge? Are Daphne’s dealings with Quentin and the teens entirely in service of Gerard’s aims, or does she have goals of her own? The ongoing story has been laboring mightily to raise these questions, and it has been made very clear that none of them will be resolved until we get to 1840.

We do pick up a couple more bits of information today that we will have questions about in 1840. The show’s chief heroine and audience identification character, Julia Hoffman, reads that Gerard’s ship, the Java Queen, was a pirate vessel. That may remind us of #208, when David told dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis of a legend about a pirate who fell in love with a lady at Collinwood and brought her jewels. That story was a nod to Daphne Du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek, one of the “Gothic romance” novels that had inspired Dark Shadows in its early days. Willie found out too late that Dark Shadows wasn’t that kind of show anymore when he opened a chained coffin and found, not jewels, but Barnabas. Maybe when we get to know him as a living being, Gerard will bring in a little bit more of the “Gothic” element. Or at least we can hope that he will reveal his piratical background by overemphasizing the Rs in his name. Avast, ye mateys, beware of Gerrr-ARRRRd!

Moreover, Julia reads that the Java Queen wrecked off Collinsport exactly 129 years ago, on Thursday, 27 August 1841. In our universe, 27 August 1841 was a Friday, but apparently the calendar is aligned a little bit differently in the continuity where Dark Shadows takes place. I suppose there must have been a readjustment sometime between 1841 and 1970, because today is Thursday, 27 August 1970, which matches the day on which that date fell in our world.

Be that as it may, anniversaries have had the power to make things happen on Dark Shadows ever since it first became a supernatural thriller with the introduction of undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins in late 1966. Laura was going to incinerate herself with her son David on a particular date in 1967 because other women named Laura Murdoch had incinerated themselves with their young sons named David on the same date in 1767 and 1867. When you don’t follow the laws that science lays out for us, you have to come up with some other mechanism of cause and effect to keep the audience in suspense, and anniversaries will serve as well as anything else.

Julia reads on in her book. The captain of the Java Queen was widely feared, though his name was never known. He was the sole survivor of the crash off Collinsport, and he vowed that he would raise his men from the dead and resume his reign of terror.

David takes Hallie to Gerard’s grave. Cemeteries have been hotspots on the Collinsport dating scene since well-meaning governess Vicki insisted her boyfriend, instantly forgettable lawyer Frank Garner, take her to the old cemetery north of town in #153, but David and Hallie are not a couple and this is no mere social outing. David has told Hallie that you can tell whether the dead are at rest by standing on their graves at the stroke of midnight.

While they are waiting for the appointed time, Hallie notices a fenced-in area in the middle of the old cemetery and asks who is buried there. David tells her that that is where criminals were buried in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mostly in unmarked graves. He says that there are a lot of legends about how vicious they all were. He goes on to say that their spirits are supposed to be restless because they are so vile that Hell won’t have them. Hallie is, as usual, teetering on the brink of a fit of the screaming meemees, and this story makes her teeter even more rapidly.

At midnight, Gerard shows up. He approaches Hallie and David. They run away. When he was walking towards them, Gerard had his arms in front of him, bent at an angle that suggested he was hoping one of them would lead him in a waltz. When they run away, he has a disappointed look that makes us wonder if that’s all he wanted.

You lead. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Back at the great house, David and Hallie run into Julia. She demands to know what they were doing outside. David says they were out for a walk. Julia says that people do not take walks at one in the morning. That’s right, characters on Dark Shadows usually wait until three o’clock to start roaming about. Julia takes quite an authoritative tone for someone who is staying in the house as a permanent guest. While Julia is focusing her sternness on Hallie, whom she really seems to dislike, David sees a note tucked in the book Julia was reading. He slips the note in his pocket. He then asks Julia whether she is going to tell his Aunt Liz that she caught him and Hallie sneaking into the house so late. Julia agrees not to, and David thanks her.

Hallie and David go to her bedroom. As you would expect a teenage boy and girl to do when alone in a bedroom in the small hours of the morning, they conduct paleographic research. They examine the note, commenting on the age of the paper and features of the handwriting. They see that it concludes with the siglum “G,” which they hypothesize may indicate that it was written by Gerard. They read the text: “Know ye who do not rest in the town of Collinsport! In the dead of night watch for the signal, as ever before the green flag in the window. Three times shall it wave, as it did in days of yore!” Hallie claims that she doesn’t understand “a word of it!” For a second it seems like David might start explaining words Hallie might not be familiar with, such as “flag” and “green,” but he thinks better of it and assures her that he, too, finds the note puzzling.

David says that he thinks there might be a green flag in the tower room at Collinwood. I don’t know how he got that from the note, but if getting clarification requires Hallie to deliver more dialogue I’m just as happy to leave it unexplained. David goes to the tower room, finds a green polyester flag wedged into something attached to the ceiling, and starts waving it out the window. We cut back to the cemetery, where the soil on top of one of the graves in the enclosure is heaving. In view of the power of anniversaries in the universe of Dark Shadows, it makes perfect sense that polyester would have a profoundly disquieting effect on people who died in 1841, since polyester was invented in 1941- exactly one hundred years later.

Episode 1088: Why do I have to see Collinwood again?

Julia Hoffman and her friend Barnabas Collins have seen the future. They know that before 1970 is out, a mysterious disaster will leave the great house of Collinwood in ruins, inhabited only by ghosts. In the course of the disaster, teenagers David Collins and Hallie Stokes will die, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard will vanish, and the rakish Quentin Collins will go insane.

Liz has forbidden Julia from telling Hallie and David what she knows. The ghosts have stepped in and asserted an influence over David and Hallie, preventing them from telling Julia or anyone else what they know. One of the ghosts has taken Quentin into her power, preventing him from doing anything to move the story forward. Astrologer/ psychic Sebastian Shaw knows that a disaster is in store, but he is under the influence of a woman named Roxanne Drew, who wants him to string Liz along with happy talk until they can bilk her of a lot more money.

Today Sebastian has a vision while he is alone with Liz. He describes a room and tells her she must not enter it. He then rushes out. When Liz repeats Sebastian’s description to Quentin and Julia, they recognize the room as one they had been in earlier. Julia wants to go there at once, but Quentin points out that if Sebastian’s words are of value that is what they ought not to do. Julia agrees with this. Liz says that she can’t very well accept being told not to go into a room in her own house. Julia and Quentin take a very stern tone with her, speaking to her as if she were a naughty child.

Liz is too well-bred to point out that both of them live in her house as her guests, but she does object and does go to the room. All Sebastian told her about the room was that it had been out of use for a long time, the walls are green, and there is a small figurine in it of a woman bending over a child. All Quentin and Julia told her was that they had been there. Yet she goes directly there. In the room, she encounters the ghost of the malign Gerard Stiles.

Liz senses Gerard’s presence. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Liz had called Sebastian to Collinwood because the horoscope he prepared for her predicted that on this night an enemy would become a friend. We know enough about Gerard to be sure that his “friendship” means only his control. So if the prediction means anything, it can only be that Liz will cease to be a potential adversary to Gerard and will fall under his control. That, in turn, means that she, too, will be sidelined into a refusal to communicate, becoming yet another brake on a story that has been going nowhere for weeks.

Episode 1087: How can I go to sleep in a house like this?

For several months starting in late 1968, the great house of Collinwood was haunted by the unspeaking ghost of Quentin Collins. The Haunting of Collinwood posed a grave danger to children David Collins and Amy Jennings. At the end of March 1969, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins tried to communicate with Quentin’s ghost in hopes of saving David’s life. Barnabas came unstuck in time and found himself in 1897, where he met Quentin as a living being. For the next eight months Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in that year. David Selby’s charm made Quentin a breakout hit. In the course of Barnabas’ bungling, history was changed so that Quentin did not die. Instead, he was immunized against aging, so that when the show returned to contemporary dress he showed up alive, well, and apparently a bit under 30.

Now, this storyline is being recycled. In the Re-Haunting of Collinwood, the unspeaking ghost of Gerard Stiles takes the place of the unspeaking ghost of Quentin. Hallie Stokes takes the place of Amy. David is reenacting his original part.

David Henesy does a good job today playing David’s frustration at finding himself in the same situation over and over. He is in his bedroom when Gerard stands in front of him menacingly. He screams. Permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman lets herself into the room. Julia knows about Gerard, and tells David she can feel that “he” has been in the room. David feigns ignorance. Julia has withheld her knowledge of the ghosts from David, so she cannot give him an answer when he asks who she is talking about. She stays on the offensive, asking him to tell her. He won’t, so she asks him why he was screaming. He tells her he had a nightmare. She demands he stop lying and claims that she has always told him the truth. In fact, she has never told him the truth, and her failure to let him in on what she knows about Gerard and the other ghosts is a case of dishonesty that has kept the show on a treadmill for three and a half weeks now, so this is just a bizarre claim.

David becomes angry with Julia. When she tells him that it is important he report anything unusual to her, he explodes:

DAVID: What’s so unusual about a dream? Nothing. Or a kid having one? I can’t do anything around here without one of you jumping on my back, asking me about unusual things. Well, the unusual things around here are you, and Barnabas, and Quentin.

JULIA David, just be calm.

DAVID: No, you calm down! Pretty soon somebody’s going to come in here and say, ‘David, why aren’t you asleep yet?’ How could I go to sleep in a house like this, with all of you people crawling all over the halls?

David is right when he says that he is questioned in just about every episode in which he appears, and right that there have been countless scenes in which someone comes into his bedroom and asks him why he is still up. He’s also right that people at Collinwood keep odd hours. Most episodes are set at night, and involve people running into each other at four in the morning and exchanging stories about how they are out running errands and have to rush off to keep an appointment. And he is certainly right about Julia, Barnabas, and Quentin being unusual. Julia is a mad scientist, Barnabas is a vampire, and Quentin is an ex-ghost, ex-zombie, and ex-werewolf. All three of them have made weird journeys through time and into the world of the dead, and each is guilty of several murders.

Later, David opens the door to his bedroom and finds Julia examining his belongings. He’s had as much of that kind of thing as he plans to take:

DAVID (sharply): What are you doing here?

JULIA (oblivious to David’s irritation): Oh, David, David, this flag, it was never here before.

DAVID (angrier): Well, I don’t think that’s any of your business.

JULIA (still oblivious): I was just curious.

DAVID (making an effort to control his anger): Well, you have no right to be here.

JULIA (finally aware that David is upset): David!

DAVID (really blowing his stack): I’ve got a right to some privacy, don’t I? Do I have to put signs up?

JULIA (sincerely puzzled at his reaction): David, there’s no reason for you to be this angry.

DAVID (firm): Well, you can just get out of here. You don’t have to come back until you’re invited, and I can guarantee you won’t be, because I’m tired of all of your questions and snooping. Tired!

JULIA (seeming to realize she is in the wrong): I’m sorry.

Later, David goes to the drawing room and apologizes to Julia for his harshness. She says that he was right to object to her letting herself into his room when he wasn’t there. She assures him it won’t happen again. David says that he is glad she isn’t angry, because he can’t stand to be on bad terms with anyone. What if something happens and they never have a chance to make up? Julia shows signs of concern when he first says this, but then smiles and says she is sure that she and David will have many opportunities to fight and make up. As in all scenes where Julia talks to a child character in a happy and relaxed tone, we can see that Grayson Hall must have been great with kids. Julia offers David a hug at the end, but he is too deep in his thoughts to embrace her. They exit together.

Looking forward to future fights and makings-up.

The episode ends with Gerard in corporeal form, standing behind Quentin and preparing to strangle him with a cord. Gerard is played by James Storm, who like David Selby is a darkly handsome man. Mr Storm is much shorter than Mr Selby. This has some practical advantages. Mr Selby is well over six feet tall, so that it was often beyond the abilities of the makers of the show to keep the studio lights out of frame when they were shooting him from the perspective of a scene partner. But when we see the two of them together, I can think of Gerard only as mini-Quentin. It rather undercuts the effectiveness of the closing cliffhanger.