Episode 227: The nature of her illness

Vampire Barnabas Collins enters the bedroom of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. We see a closeup of him in profile, his mouth open to expose his fangs. This shot might have been effective if it had flashed on the screen for a fifth of a second or less and been followed by some kind of action, but we linger on it for a couple of seconds and cut to the opening credits. The result is laugh-out-loud funny. It makes him look like he’s pretending to be a dog in a cartoon. It’s bad enough when Barnabas reminds us of a Scooby-Doo villain without pushing him over the line into imitating Scooby-Doo.

The rest of the episode is composed of scenes that go on too long, though none quite as disastrously as this. In the morning, Maggie’s father, artist and former alcoholic Sam, wakes her. She is ill and moody. Kathryn Leigh Scott maintains just the right level of intensity, and David Ford plays Sam quietly enough to stay out of her way. But they make all their points in the first minute or two, and it just keeps going.

Later, Maggie is sitting at the counter at her place of employment in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn.* She’s wearing a scarf and feeling awful. Her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, comes in. He teasingly asks her how a paying customer can get a cup of coffee. She tells him to pour it himself. He’s about to do it when she drags herself to her feet. She drops the cup. He makes a little joke about seeing her use a broom and she says she’ll sweep it up later. He is shocked, and she snaps at him.

She continues to have trouble with basic tasks, and Joe grows concerned. Sam comes in and reminds her that he told her she shouldn’t have gone to work. He says he’ll call the doctor, and she yells at him. Then, she faints.

That’s probably the best scene in the episode. Miss Scott holds on at the level she had established in the previous scene, while Joel Crothers matches Ford’s steady, understated support. With three actors, there’s enough action to keep us interested. My wife, Mrs Acilius, praised the choreography that allowed Miss Scott to make such a memorable turn unencumbered by Malcolm Marmorstein’s dialogue. Still, they could have done all that in about half the time and we wouldn’t have missed a thing.

Then Maggie’s back in her room, this time with Joe sitting on the side of the bed while she lies in it. The body language between them is affectionate, but after about a minute and a half you can’t help but notice them complying with the requirements of the Standards and Practices office. Sick as Maggie is, it is jarring to see Joe keep his distance from her quite so scrupulously.

Night falls, and we see Barnabas in his house. He peers out his window, and we cut to Maggie. She’s still in her room, but now she is out of bed, brushing her hair, and grinning. Sam enters and is surprised at the change in her.

After a meandering conversation, Maggie volunteers to drive Sam to Barnabas’ house where Sam will be working on a portrait of Barnabas. Evidently Sam agrees, because the two of them enter there together.

Maggie and Barnabas exchange looks and conversation loaded with double meanings while Sam sets up. Jonathan Frid plays Barnabas’ part in this so heavily that it is laughable Sam doesn’t notice something is going on between him and Maggie.

I’m always reluctant to complain about Frid’s acting. It’s so hard to explain just what it was that made Barnabas such an enormous hit that you can never rule out the possibility that any given thing might have been indispensable to it. Still, seeing him ham it up so shamelessly today, especially after the other three members of the cast have shown such strict discipline, I did have to wonder what he was thinking. It’s hard to imagine anyone would have directed him to play the part that way.

I can see one advantage to Frid’s overacting. Maggie sticks around his house a couple of minutes after the point of the sequence has been made, and the time is filled with repetitious dialogue about her illness. When Barnabas says that the house is an unhealthy place for someone in her condition, Frid leans so hard on the line and makes himself look so silly that you don’t really notice that there is no reason for the scene still to be going on.

After Maggie has gone home and got back into bed, Sam tells Barnabas he’s tired and thinks it’s time to stop for the night.** Barnabas wants him to keep going for a while and to take the next night off. They discuss this fascinating topic at length. Sam decides to spend an hour working on the background. Their conversation has already taken so long that we fear they might show that hour of painting in real time, and it is a relief when Barnabas says he will go outside while Sam paints. We can assume he’s going to pop into Maggie’s room for a snack.

*The last appearance of this set, alas.

**Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood-thrall, Willie Loomis, will be driving Sam home. At this point they’ve settled on the idea that Willie has a car.