The most interesting storyline in the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows was the relationship between well-meaning governess Victoria Winters and her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. That story concluded when David chose life with Vicki over death with his mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Vicki and David settled into a happy and uneventful friendship, and the show moved on. Now its core is vampire Barnabas Collins, and Vicki is trying to migrate into his orbit.
When we open, Vicki has made her way to Barnabas’ house as a storm was breaking. She had made a show of wanting to hurry home, only to find that it was raining so hard she had to stay with Barnabas overnight. The opening scenes take place in Barnabas’ front parlor, where Vicki is all wide-eyed innocence.
Vicki and Barnabas are both excited about the prospect of a sleepover. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die
Vicki asks Barnabas about the long-ago death of Josette Collins. Unknown to her, Josette killed herself because she feared Barnabas would turn her into a vampire, the fate he has in mind for Vicki now. As he tells the story, Barnabas shows more and more anguish. At the end, he suggests that the storm might be letting up and offers to take Vicki home. She says that the rain sounds worse than ever, and insists on staying. This is the first scene in which Barnabas plays the “reluctant vampire” we hear so much about in thumbnail sketches of Dark Shadows.
Vicki goes up to Josette’s restored bedroom. She lies on the bed and covers herself up, remaining fully clothed. She doesn’t even take her shoes off.
Downstairs, Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie brings a child’s ball he found in the basement by Barnabas’ coffin. For a moment they are afraid that David might have made his way to the basement during the daytime, but Barnabas concludes that they would have heard about it by now if that had happened. Willie brings up the little girl whom he and David both saw playing outside the house on separate occasions some weeks ago. He also reminds Barnabas that when he was keeping Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, in the prison cell in the basement Maggie talked about a little girl who visited her there. Barnabas won’t listen to anything about Maggie, and is irritated when Willie keeps saying that he has the feeling that there is someone else in the house. But he does go to search the basement.
Meanwhile, Vicki is awakened by the sound of a child’s voice singing “London Bridge.” Returning viewers know that this is the little girl Willie spoke of, and that she is the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah. Victoria lights a candle and searches the room, but finds nothing.
Willie is startled when Victoria comes down the stairs and calls him. Barnabas hadn’t bothered telling him she was around. We might be startled too. The diffident, girlish manner she had used with Barnabas earlier in the episode is gone; when she calls “Willie!” she is every inch the lady of the house summoning a servant. In their previous interactions, Willie has always called Vicki by her first name. Today she is “Miss Winters” to him, and that’s only to be expected- she retains an air of command even as Willie tries to warn her that she is in danger.
Barnabas enters and hears Willie urging Vicki to get out of the house at once. Willie takes a second to come up with a suitable lie, claiming that he was afraid spending the night in the house would get people talking about Vicki. She and Barnabas dismiss this concern. Vicki praises Willie’s generous offer to walk her home and shelter her from the rain, and Barnabas assures Willie that he will get what he deserves.
Vicki tells Barnabas that she heard a little girl singing “London Bridge.” Shaken by this report, he insists it is impossible for her to have heard any such thing. He says that he understands if she does not want to return to the room, implicitly repeating his offer to let her go, but she happily returns upstairs. In this conversation, she is not as loftily aristocratic as she had been with Willie, but neither does she revert to the diffident girlishness she had shown Barnabas in the first scene. She looks him in the eye, smiles, speaks briskly, and moves from her hips. She is a woman who knows what she wants and has made up her mind to get it.
Barnabas and Willie have an interesting talk after Vicki goes back upstairs. Willie asks about the little girl, and Barnabas hotly denies she exists. Barnabas is his usual menacing self at first, but then says he won’t punish him for trying to warn Vicki. He asks Willie to “talk to me.” Willie is startled by this, then Barnabas says he has a better idea- “don’t talk to me.” This generates a bad laugh. Some think this is Jonathan Frid trying to cover a misreading of a line, but I tend to think it is good acting exposing bad writing. After their talk, Barnabas sends Willie to his room, then goes upstairs and stares at Vicki while she sleeps, apparently contemplating the possibility of biting her.
Well-meaning governess Vicki says that she would like sit alone in her room “forever” listening to an antique music box. This may seem extreme, but consider the alternatives. Heiress Carolyn comes in and asks her to recap the last couple of episodes; Carolyn responds to every sentence Vicki speaks by asking her to repeat it. Fake Shemp Burke Devlin is downstairs waiting to take Vicki on a date; they went out yesterday, and he spent the time angrily telling her she must be crazy because she believed things he knew to be true. When she meets him today, he’s even angrier, and Carolyn joins in his gaslighting project.
The one bright spot in Vicki’s evening is the courtly Barnabas Collins. He has dropped by the house to give her a book that he thought she might like. By the time Vicki gets downstairs, Burke and Carolyn have come at Barnabas with a lot of free-floating hostility about Vicki’s interest in history. He responded to them affably, and when Vicki arrives he makes a show of not giving her the book.
Vicki sees the book and insists Barnabas let her look at it. When she sees that he inscribed it to her, she asks what is going on. Burke admits that he talked Barnabas out of making the present. Vicki becomes upset with him. Barnabas apologizes for having come and hastens back to his house. Burke is left looking like an absolute fool, which was no doubt Barnabas’ plan.
Burke keeps banging on about how it is unhealthy to “live in the past.” He means that he doesn’t want Vicki to learn about the history of the people she works for and of the house they live in, and that Barnabas is a big nerd because he restored the Old House on the estate to its condition as of a previous century and that he lives there.
This is an eccentric way of using the phrase. Usually when people say that someone “lives in the past,” they are accusing them of being stuck in a bygone period of their own life. Burke doesn’t know that Barnabas is a vampire, or that he lived in the house when it was in the condition to which he has restored it. So that isn’t the charge he has in mind. So far as Burke knows, Barnabas is a creative person who imagined a new project, committed himself to it, and with great effort and great skill made it a reality. Nor does he know that Barnabas wants to turn Vicki into a vampiric version of his lost love Josette, or that her interest in history is partly inspired by Barnabas’ supernatural influence over her. So far as Burke knows, Vicki has taken up a scholarly hobby that would be wholesome for anyone and that is particularly appropriate for a teacher.
If any character is “living in the past,” in the sense in which that expression is typically used, it is Burke. When he was Vicki’s age, he was a member of the local working class, presumably living in a rented room in the town of Collinsport. Since then, he went to New York, became a corporate raider, and grew so rich he could live anywhere he chooses. The place he has chosen is another rented room in Collinsport. He is dating a woman half his age, and regularly drops in on the Collinses, who were acquaintances of his in his youth. In all these ways, he has turned his back on his current life and created a fantasy version of the life he lived long ago.
Burke is also an echo of the past of Dark Shadows. When the show started, he was the driving force of many storylines. But those storylines all fizzled, and what remained of them was wrapped up in the story of his ex-girlfriend, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Shortly after Laura’s story ended, Burke formally renounced the quest for revenge that had been his chief motive, and there’s been no reason for him to be on the show since. Making matters worse, he was recast last month as actor Anthony George, who is completely lost in the part. So we can sympathize with Vicki’s reluctance to keep spending time with him.
Burke demands that Vicki come with him. He barks at her that he needs a drink. He’s already so angry and so insulting that we can only hope he isn’t a mean drunk. After he issues several more declarations and commands, Vicki tells him she will be staying home with a book. He leaves.
Staying in and reading doesn’t seem to be Vicki’s real plan. Vicki goes to Barnabas’ house, ostensibly to apologize for the unpleasant reception Burke and Carolyn gave him, and for her failure to thank him for the book. He accepts her apologies most graciously.
A storm is starting, and Vicki has neglected to wear the raincoat and headscarf we’ve seen her in several times. When they look outside, she and Barnabas say that it is raining too heavily for anyone to go anywhere. She apologizes for getting caught at his house, and Barnabas says that he is happy to have her. He suggests she spend the night in the restored bedroom of Josette Collins. She is delighted by this idea.
Yesterday, Victoria had said she could stay in Josette’s room “forever.” So it seems obvious that she fully intended to be at Barnabas’ house when the storm started raging, and to spend the night there. Of course this fits very well with Barnabas’ scheme, so he is quite happy to oblige her.
Vampire Barnabas Collins spends most of his time on screen doing a job of acting. He is playing the role of a present-day gentleman from the long-forgotten English branch of the ancient and esteemed Collins family of Collinsport, Maine. His performance has been convincing enough that the Collinses have entrusted him with the long-abandoned Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. He and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie reside there and have restored it to the condition it was in when Barnabas was alive.
Today, another actor comes to Collinwood. She is mad scientist Julia Hoffman. By profession, Julia is a medical doctor with specialties in psychiatry and hematology. She is treating Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, who is in a state of complete mental collapse after months as Barnabas’ victim. After Maggie escaped from Barnabas, her family doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, decided to tell everyone in town that she was dead and send her to Julia’s mental hospital so long as her captor was unknown and at large. So when Julia figures out that the person responsible for Maggie’s woes is an undead monster who dwells at Collinwood, she has to conceal her identity from everyone there and in Collinsport.
In the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, Julia tells well-meaning governess Vicki and Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, that she is an historian writing a book about the Collinses. David immediately exposes a fatal flaw in Woodard’s cockamamie plan when he mentions a girl named Sarah whom he has seen near the Old House. Julia knows that Maggie saw Sarah when she was imprisoned and that Sarah visited Maggie’s father Sam and told him where to find her. If that information had been made public, Vicki and David would have been able to connect Sarah with the Old House, and the police would have suspected Barnabas weeks ago. Returning viewers know that Sarah is the ghost of Barnabas’ sister, a fact onto which Julia cottoned yesterday and of which she finds corroboration today.
Vicki tells Julia how elusive Sarah is
We also know that Barnabas wants Vicki to become his next victim, and that she is already under his influence to a substantial degree. When she and Julia are talking in the drawing room, Vicki waxes enthusiastic about how Barnabas has recreated a past world and committed himself to living in it, and says that this is a fine thing for him. “But not for you?” asks Julia. Vicki looks down, and with a troubled expression says that she supposes not.
When Julia asked “But not for you,” she drew a reaction from my wife, Mrs Acilius. Mrs Acilius said that while Julia may not seem like any kind of therapist in the sessions we’ve seen her have with Maggie, her delivery of that question sounds exactly like every therapist she’s ever had. With Maggie, the mad scientist is very much on the surface of Julia’s manner, but when she is playing the role of Miss Hoffman the historian she can draw on her profession to make herself appealing.
Vicki takes Julia to the Old House and shows her the restored bedroom of Josette Collins. Vicki says that she could stay in that room forever, which is as a matter of fact precisely what Barnabas has in mind for her. Julia feels a chill as the sun sets. Perhaps this is the result of Barnabas coming back to life and rising from his coffin in the basement of the house, or perhaps it is Sarah or another friendly ghost* trying to warn her to get out before the vampire finds her. Whatever its cause, Vicki doesn’t feel it. Again, we don’t know whether this is because Barnabas already has a strong enough hold on Vicki that she is insensitive to warnings about him, or if it is a message specifically for Julia.
Julia wants to leave the room, but Vicki insists on lighting a candle so that they can see it as Josette did. The candle burns long enough for Julia to make the appropriate comments, and then something we cannot see blows it out while Julia feels another chill. The cold still doesn’t reach Vicki.
Julia returns to Woodard’s home office,** where she has stashed Maggie. Maggie has the doll Sarah gave her when she visited her in Barnabas’ dungeon. Julia takes the doll from Maggie, much to Maggie’s displeasure. She holds the doll and says she wants her to listen for the doll’s name. Maggie furrows her brow and asks “Doll talk?” Maggie has been speaking in complete sentences lately, but apparently Julia’s latest antics have been too much for her and she has lost some ground.
Julia orders Maggie to listen and says the names of some of the people at Collinwood. Maggie doesn’t react until she gets to “Barnabas Collins,” at which point Maggie freaks out. Julia holds her and repeats “It is the wrong name” until Maggie stops crying and starts singing “London Bridge.” She then looks away and says “The wrong name for the doll… but the right name for… something else.”
*Sarah’s little cousin, Caspar Collins?
**An exact replica of his office in the hospital as we saw it in #242. Man knows how he likes to have things set up.
Four and a half weeks ago, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, escaped from vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas managed to scramble Maggie’s brains sufficiently that she has amnesia covering her time as his victim and much of the rest of her life as well. She is now a patient at a mental hospital called Windcliff, where her care is supervised by Dr Julia Hoffman.
Maggie’s family doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, is an old friend of Julia’s. He had recommended Maggie be sent to Windcliff. He had also come up with a cockamamie scheme to protect her from her captor by hiding her there and telling everyone in and around the town of Collinsport that she was dead. If he had known that the captor was a vampire, this might have made some kind of sense- no character on Dark Shadows has ever heard of Dracula, so they don’t know how to fight against vampires. But he doesn’t know that, so his plan is just a way for the writers to stall while they try to come up with more plot points.
Today we open with Woodard in Julia’s office, complaining that she isn’t communicating with him about Maggie’s case. She tells him that there have been no developments worth reporting. Returning viewers know that this is a lie, because in a session we saw yesterday Maggie remembered a lot of sense impressions from her time of captivity and Julia told her that they represented tremendous progress. Woodard tells Julia that a lack of new information is no excuse for her failure to return any of his last six phone calls. He says that she seems to be intent on hoarding any information she may glean from Maggie as her own private possession, an impression he describes as frightening.
Julia responds to this characterization with a display of offense, and Woodard apologizes. She then brings up an idea that occurred to her at the end of yesterday’s episode. She says that Maggie’s memory might improve if she takes her to visit Eagle Hill Cemetery, where she was found wandering early in her illness. Woodard objects strongly that Maggie’s condition, as Julia has described it, is so delicate that such a visit might do her permanent harm. Julia retreats and promises she won’t actually take Maggie to the cemetery. This is such a flagrant lie that the camera momentarily goes haywire, focusing on Woodard’s chair rather than his face.
Woodard leaves, and Julia calls Maggie in. She’s already wearing her coat. She asks where Julia is going to take her, and she tells her not to worry about that.
On the great estate of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is staring vacantly into space while listening to an antique music box Barnabas gave her as part of his plan to subject her to the same treatment he inflicted on Maggie. A knock comes at the door. Vicki closes the music box and goes to answer it. It is her boyfriend, fake Shemp Burke Devlin.
Burke is waging a determined battle against the story, and he is fighting dirty. He doesn’t want Vicki to have anything to do with Barnabas, or with the ghost of Josette Collins. When Vicki says she wants to lay flowers on Josette’s grave in the cemetery, where we know she will cross paths with Maggie and Julia, he resists furiously. When she reminds him that she has had dealings with Josette’s ghost, he says “Or you think you have.” In previous episodes, including yesterday’s and Monday’s, he knew she had, and in an earlier period of the show he knew that several other characters, including some of the most level-headed ones, had also encountered Josette’s ghost. When he starts belittling Vicki for believing in “the spooks of Collinwood,” it therefore comes off as an especially crude instance of gaslighting. The Mrs and I aren’t much for profanity, but we both cussed at the screen when Burke was disgracing himself this way.
Julia and Maggie are in the cemetery. I believe it is the first time we’ve seen the set in a daylight scene. You can see the shadows of the foliage on the soundstage walls, and the corners where the walls meet. I can’t believe the director meant for us to see those things, but I kind of like it- the situation needs a touch of unreality, and the obvious falsity gives it the feeling of a black box theater.
Some of the shadows on the wall that Art Wallace spoke ofCorner of the soundstage
Maggie is agitated. Julia tells her to calm down and that everything is all right. I’m no expert, but I kind of doubt that talk therapy involves a lot of “Calm down!” and “Everything is all right!” It reminded me of this Saturday Night Live sketch from the 90s, in which Patrick Stewart plays “Phil McCracken, Scottish Therapist,” a psychologist who won’t stand for any emotionalism from his patients.
Vicki and Burke see Julia and Maggie in the distance. When Maggie turns to face them, Vicki recognizes her. Julia whisks her away before Burke can see her. When Vicki tells Burke she saw Maggie, he immediately unloads on her with the same garbage he handed her at Collinwood. He declares that Maggie is dead, that Vicki knows she’s dead, that she can’t possibly have seen her, that “there is a resemblance, THAT’S! ALL!” When he asks “What’s wrong with you?” I stopped the streaming and shouted at the screen “She’s wasting her time with you, you ******* ********, that’s what’s wrong with her!” To that, Mrs Acilius said that we should just restart the show and get through the scene.
Part of what makes Burke’s behavior so infuriating is the writer’s fault. A first-time viewer, unaware that what Burke is telling Vicki are delusions that suggest she is crazy are in fact things he knows to be true, might think that he is being reasonable in dismissing ideas about ghosts and the like. But even that viewer will realize that a person ought to be nicer about it. When Vicki says she saw Maggie, Burke could easily have suggested that they go up to the woman and introduce themselves, thinking that a closer look will disabuse her of the notion. But actor Anthony George must also bear part of the blame.
George C. Scott famously told Gene Siskel that there are three things to consider in evaluating an actor’s performance: first is to make the audience believe that the person they are looking at is the sort of person who might do the things the character does. This is in turn dependent on casting- put the wrong person in the part, and all is lost. Second are the choices the actor makes in the key emotional moments. Performers have any number of options as to how they will use their faces, voices, and limbs to show a character’s feelings, and those who make a lasting impression are those who make choices that are at once totally unexpected and perfectly logical. Third is the zest of performance, the actor’s joy in the opportunity to create a character. If that doesn’t come through, nothing else is worth much.
As Burke, Anthony George fails all three of these tests. Burke would have been a difficult part for anyone to take over, both because the originator of the role, Mitch Ryan, was so memorable, and because the character had lost all connection to any ongoing storylines by the time Ryan left. And by his own admission, George knew nothing about soap operas and had no idea how to play a romantic interest on one when he joined Dark Shadows. That’s where he fails the casting part of the believability test.
As for the skill part, George has something going for him. He is always mindful of his physicality, moving only those parts of his body he needs to show us who he is and keeping the rest of himself admirably still. He also keeps his voice remarkably consistent, both by holding a steady level of volume and maintaining a simple, precise pitch. In these and other ways, he shows impressive levels of technical proficiency as an actor, but the result is a mannered, unconvincing performance. His Burke doesn’t seem to be a real person. As a cardboard figure, he becomes an abstract symbol of whatever he’s doing, and when he’s doing something bad he’s hard not to hate.
Since he makes one choice for each resource available to him and sticks with it unvaryingly throughout the episode, he doesn’t give the audience any surprises. Nor does he yield anything to his scene-mates. They always know exactly what’s coming from him. George’s eyes are always watching another actor intently, as he watches Alexandra Moltke Isles intently today, but nothing in her performance can divert him from his plan, not in the smallest particular. When Burke isn’t listening to the other character, as he isn’t listening to Vicki, George’s disconnection from the other actors makes Burke seem like an irredeemable jackass.
Nor does George show any zest for the part. He covers his discomfort with soap acting by plastering on a smile whenever the script allows it, but he is stiff when Burke ought to be loose, cool when he ought to be warm, and loud when he ought to speak with a quiet, nuanced voice. The result is just sad and awkward. When Burke is being pleasant, we can feel sorry for George, but when he has to play the scenes like the ones Burke gets today we just want him to get off the screen and leave us alone.
Compare George’s Burke with Grayson Hall’s Julia, and you will see how an actor can determine an audience’s reaction to a character. Julia is a terrible therapist. She lies repeatedly to Woodard in the beginning, denying the severe breach of ethics and disturbing disregard of public safety involved in covering up what she knows and suspects about Maggie’s experiences and running an unconscionable risk with Maggie’s mental health by taking her to the cemetery. She lies again to Maggie at the end, promising that they will duck into the Tomb of the Collinses only for a moment and then refusing to let her leave there when she starts to show a violent emotional reaction. Her methods are so unorthodox and so harsh that we suspect she is not interested in helping Maggie at all. Because we have known Maggie since episode #1, and Kathryn Leigh Scott’s performance as Maggie renews our fondness for her every time she appears, we ought to feel deep hostility towards Julia.
But we don’t. In fact, Julia quickly becomes (almost) every Dark Shadows fan’s favorite character. The George C. Scott tests tell us why. Hall’s manner is so intense that we can believe her as a mad scientist; her uninhibited use of every facial muscle, of the full range of her vocal output, and of subtle tricks of movement she learned from choreographers when she appeared in musicals may have produced a style that no acting teacher could recommend as a model, but they do mean that every moment she is on screen she is doing something we wouldn’t have predicted; and she’s clearly having a blast. She can do things vastly worse than what makes us hate Burke today, and we will still want her to come back again and again.
Closing Miscellany
The opening voiceovers aren’t usually the best-written parts of the show, but there is a particularly bad bit in today’s: “Hidden deep in the cliffs of Collinwood, the majestic, ancient rocks that separate the Earth from the sea, there is a tiny cove carved by a long-ago sea. No one at Collinwood has seen it, and no one will ever see it.” If no one ever will see it, why bother telling us about it? The narrator tells us that it is because “the Earth knows how to hide its secrets well. Sometimes men, too, must hide secrets.” Does this mean that “no one ever will” discover the secrets the characters are hiding from each other? That isn’t a very promising thing to tell the audience of a soap opera, a genre which is all about unsuccessful attempts to keep secrets and their aftermath.
Maggie tells Julia that she doesn’t recognize the name Collins. She has lived her whole life in the town of Collinsport, where most people are employed by Collins Enterprises, which is owned by the Collins family who live at Collinwood. That’s some pretty widespread amnesia she has.
The show has been going back and forth on the dates when Barnabas and Josette Collins originally lived and died. Today we get a long look at Josette’s tombstone, giving her dates as 1800-1822, and another at the plaque on Barnabas’ little sister Sarah’s resting place in the mausoleum, with the dates 1786-1796. Those dates fit with a remark Barnabas made to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie in #271, that Sarah lived long before he met Josette, but not with his remark in #281 that Josette had been dead for “almost 200 years,” much less with a book we saw in #52 that gave her dates as 1810-1834.
We cut back and forth between an opulent estate called Collinwood and a mental hospital called Windcliff.
At Collinwood, we spend our time with well-meaning governess Vicki. From the beginning of Dark Shadows, Vicki has been the audience’s main point of view character. The audience is now made up chiefly of people who want to see how they are going to fit vampire Barnabas Collins into an ongoing series, and Barnabas’ principal concern is getting hold of a woman, erasing her personality, and replacing it with that of his lost love Josette. So of course Vicki is fascinated with Barnabas and fantasizes about being Josette.
Matriarch Liz has functioned as a blocking figure. Her goal has been to keep her secrets. Her actions in pursuit of that goal have slowed story development in a largely futile attempt to create suspense. She’s fresh out of secrets, but is still trying to put the brakes on. She keeps complaining that Vicki’s interest in Josette is unwholesome.
Liz has a point. Barnabas has settled on Vicki as the next subject of his experiment. To that end, he has given Vicki Josette’s music box. When he was trying his lunatic plan on Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, he had given Maggie the music box. Evidently the music box has some kind of magical power over the women to whom Barnabas gives it. When she opens it, Vicki sits for hours staring vacantly into space listening to its simple tune.
The previous night, Vicki had worn Josette’s dress at a costume party Barnabas hosted in his house on the estate. The party ended in a séance in which Josette spoke through Vicki. Liz mentions this possession as a sign that Vicki is becoming too involved with Josette. Vicki doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She blandly exclaims “It’s happened before!” Indeed, the show’s first séance, in #170 and #171, climaxed with Vicki channeling a message from Josette. Liz points out that this doesn’t make it better.
Vicki goes to Barnabas’ house to return the dress. She and Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie take it to Josette’s restored bedroom upstairs. There, she blissfully tells Willie she wishes she could wear Josette’s clothes all the time. Remembering what Barnabas did to Maggie and knowing his plans for Vicki, Willie winces. He hates the things Barnabas does, but is too far under his power to actively oppose him. Vicki goes on about how close she is coming to feel to Josette, and Willie winces harder. She tells him that she has been listening to the music box for hours at a time, and he shouts “You shouldn’t do that!” When she asks why not, he takes a second to come up with something that he can say. He tells her she might damage the mechanism. Still blissful, she says, “Oh, I’ll be careful.”
Willie tells Vicki that tomorrow is Josette’s birthday. Vicki is delighted with this information. She resolves to go to the cemetery and lay flowers on Josette’s grave. When she tells Liz of this plan, Liz objects to it. Because of Liz’ function as a blocking figure, her opposition implies that it will advance the plot. To appease Liz, Vicki agrees not to go alone, but to take Liz’ fellow narrative speed-bump Burke Devlin.
At Windcliff, Maggie is in session with her therapist, Dr Julia Hoffman. As a result of her time as Barnabas’ prisoner, Maggie has amnesia and can speak only with difficulty. In his effort to Josettify Maggie, Barnabas combined his own supernatural powers with sensory stimuli like the music box that were supposed to elicit the responses he had in mind. Now Julia is trying to recreate those stimuli in her effort to recover Maggie’s memories and restore her personality.
At one point, Maggie tells Julia about a sweet scent that regular viewers know to be that of Josette’s jasmine perfume. As she does so, music starts playing on the soundtrack that we have heard when Josette’s ghost has appeared. When this happened, my wife, Mrs Acilius, said “Josette is there.” Later in the episode, when Vicki is in Josette’s room with Willie, Vicki takes a whiff of the perfume. The music strikes up then too. Josette’s ghost hasn’t manifested since March- maybe the ghost’s musical cue is now the perfume’s.
Their use of sensory stimuli is not the only way in which Julia is a reverse-image reflection of Barnabas. Barnabas is a vampire, so we expect to hate him and oppose his plans. But he is also the character who makes the show fun to watch, so we find ourselves wanting to see more of him. Further, he evolves into a comic villain, with whom we identify as we see him scramble to keep his madcap schemes from backfiring. And the longer we see him, the more of actor Jonathan Frid’s personality comes through, and Frid seems to have been adorable.
Julia is a doctor trying to help a patient we know and care about, so we expect to like her and cheer her on. Yet she always seems more than a little sinister. She takes a stern, occasionally impatient tone with Maggie today, which we might think is part of her therapeutic technique. But in her previous appearance, in #265, she took the same tone with Maggie’s father, boyfriend, and family doctor, none of whom is her patient. More than once in that episode, she made remarks suggesting that she suspected that Maggie’s condition was the result of an encounter with an undead monster, then refused to explain what she meant. We wonder why she would withhold such information. At the end of today’s installment, she insists that Maggie return to a place where something terrible happened to her. When Maggie begs her not to make her go back there, we see a closeup of Julia’s face with a look of satisfaction that led Mrs Acilius to say “Julia can do ‘evil face’ as well as Barnabas can.”*
Julia’s E-face
Julia’s grim satisfaction mirrors ours. Ever since Liz gave her great show of reluctance at Vicki’s plan to lay flowers at Josette’s grave, we’ve been wondering what kind of progress a stop at the cemetery could possibly represent for the story. Julia has unwittingly answered that question for us. The place she is going to take Maggie is, of course, that very cemetery.
*Mrs Acilius had a lot to say about Julia as Barnabas in reverse, this whole section is derived from her insights.
Vampire Barnabas Collins is giving a costume party in his home at the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. His distant relatives, the living members of the Collins family, are dressed as their ancestors from Barnabas’ own time as a living being. The whole thing was impossibly dull until the mischievous and witty Roger Collins suggested they have a séance. Now well-meaning governess Vicki is in a trance, channeling the spirit of Josette Collins.
The last time Josette took possession of Vicki at a séance was in #170 and #171. At that time, Josette delivered her message in French. Since Vicki could not speak French (but Alexandra Moltke speaks it fluently,) that was evidence enough to convince even the most skeptical that something was going on. Today Josette speaks English. The characters are all sure that she is the one speaking, but it doesn’t have the same effect on the audience as did that earlier irruption of a language we had not expected to hear.
I do wonder if the decision not to use French came at the last moment. Even though Vicki/ Josette’s voice is loud and clear, the others make a show of struggling to understand what she is saying and seize on a word here and there (“Something about ‘run!'”,) as people do when they are listening to someone speak a language they don’t quite understand. Perhaps writer Joe Caldwell wasn’t quite up to writing in French, and the Writer’s Guild wouldn’t let Alexandra Moltke Isles or any other Francophones on set make a translation. Or maybe they thought that the switch to French wouldn’t be as effective the second time as it was the first.
Josette is telling the story of her death. A man was chasing her, and fleeing him she threw herself off the peak of Widow’s Hill to the rocks below. Barnabas interrupts and breaks Vicki’s trance.
When the others scold him for stopping Josette before she could reveal the name of the man who ran her off the cliff, Barnabas says that the name could not have been of any importance, since whoever it was who drove Josette to kill herself must have been dead for “almost 200 years.” The others do not suspect that he was that man. They do not know that he is a reanimated corpse; they think he’s just English.
When Dark Shadows started, the stories of the tragic death of Josette and of the building of the great house of Collinwood were set in the 1830s. In the weeks before Barnabas’ introduction in April of 1967, they implied that Josette’s dates were much earlier, sometime in the 18th century. Last week, they plumped for the 1830s again. But Barnabas’ line about “almost 200 years ago” puts us back to the 1700s.
After the séance ends, we have evidence that this bit of background continuity might start to matter. Vicki looks at the landing on top of the staircase and sees the ghost of Barnabas’ 9 year old sister Sarah watching the party.
It seems that when Barnabas was freed to prey upon the living, he unknowingly brought Sarah with him. Sarah has been popping in and out quite a bit the last few weeks, and she has already made some important plot points happen. We’re starting to wonder just how many more beings will emerge from the supernatural back-world into the main action of the show. The opening voiceover today tells us that “the mists that have protected the present from the past are lifting,” so perhaps they will have to nail these dates down sooner rather than later.
The whole party had accepted instantly that Vicki was channeling the spirit of Josette and none of them ever comes to doubt it. But when she says that she saw a little girl at the head of the stairs, they get all incredulous. By the end of the episode, Vicki will have encountered so much disbelief on this point that she herself will decide that she must have been hallucinating.
Back in the great house, Roger is still overjoyed that the séance turned out to be so exciting. His sister Liz and Liz’ daughter Carolyn consider this to be in terrible taste. But Roger won’t give an inch. He has some great lines, exiting with “I think that all of the unhappiness of all of my ancestors is my rightful heritage, and you shouldn’t try to keep it from me. Good night, ladies.” Both Patrick McCray, in his Dark Shadows Daybook post about this episode, and Danny Horn, in his Dark Shadows Every Day post, make insightful remarks as they analyze the fun Louis Edmonds has playing Roger.
Carolyn approaches Vicki to speak privately. She tells her that she isn’t bothered that fake Shemp Burke Devlin is dating Vicki. Vicki’s response to this is “What?” Carolyn reminds Vicki that she used to be interested in Burke and was initially jealous of Burke’s interest in her. But she assures her she doesn’t feel that way any longer. Vicki smiles, nods, and looks away. Carolyn then says “He’s really very nice!” Vicki answers “Who?” “Burke!” says Carolyn. Again, Vicki smiles, nods, and looks away.
This is probably supposed to tell us that Vicki is coming under some kind of spell associated with Barnabas, but in fact it is likely to suggest something quite different to the audience. Burke was originally a dashing action hero played by Mitch Ryan. Dark Shadows never really came up with very much for a dashing action hero to do, but Ryan’s skills as an actor and his charismatic personality always made it seem that he was about to do something interesting. Several weeks ago, Ryan was fired off the show after he came to the set too drunk to work.
Since then, the part of Burke has been played by Anthony George. George was a well-trained actor with an impressive resume, and by all accounts was a nice guy. But he cannot dig anything interesting out of the character of Burke as he stands at this point in the series. The only scene in which George has shown any energy so far was in #267, when Burke had lost a dime in a pay phone. The rest of the time, he has blended so completely into the scenery that it is no wonder Vicki can’t remember him from one line to the next.
Back in the Old House, Barnabas talks to Josette’s portrait. In the months from #70 to #192, it was established that Josette can hear you if you do this. Several times she manifested herself either as a light glowing from the surface of the portrait or as a figure emerging from it. In #102, we saw strange and troubled boy David Collins having a conversation with the portrait- we could hear only his side of it, but it was clear that Josette was answering him.
The first time we saw Barnabas in the Old House, in #212, he spoke to the portrait. At that point, Josette was not yet his lost love. It seemed that she was his grandmother, and that she had sided against him in some terrible fight with his father Joshua. He ordered Josette and Joshua to leave the house to him. The next time David tried to talk to the portrait, in #240, it seemed that they had complied- David could no longer sense Josette’s presence in it.
Barnabas had spoken briefly to the portrait the other day, but today he makes his first substantial address to it since banishing Josette and Joshua in #212. Again he entreats her to go, but for a very different reason. Now he says that she is lost to him forever, and must allow him to live in the present. Since he has been scheming to capture a woman, erase her personality, replace it with Josette’s, and then kill her so that she will rise from the grave as a vampiric Josette, this sounds like he has decided to make a big change in his relations to the other characters.
It turns out that he hasn’t, but the writers have decided to change their relationship to their source material. Barnabas’ original plan was identical to that which Imhotep, the title character in the 1932 film The Mummy, had pursued in his attempt to replicate his relationship with his long-dead love Princess Ankh-esen-amun. Imhotep met Helen Grosvenor, whom he regarded as the reincarnation of Ankh-esen-amun because they were both played by Zita Johanns, and subjected her to the same treatment Barnabas first inflicted on Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and now plans to try on Vicki.
Maggie is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. The audience in 1967 would not have known that Miss Scott also played the ghost of Josette in some of her most important appearances. However, they would have noticed when David saw Maggie dressed as Josette in #240 he assumed it was the ghost, because her face was “exactly the same” as it had been when she manifested herself to him previously. So we have the same reason to believe that Maggie is the reincarnation of Josette that Imhotep had to believe that Helen was the reincarnation of the princess, and we therefore assume that Barnabas, like Imhotep, was trying to take possession of both the ghost and the living woman.
But after Barnabas tells Josette to go away, he declares that if he is to have her, she must be someone from the present. This sequence of words is nonsensical in itself, but harks back to a theory he had laid out to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie in #274: “Take the right individual, place her under the proper conditions and circumstances, apply the required pressure, and a new personality is created.” Jonathan Frid would always sound and move like Boris Karloff, but now his project of Josettery is inspired less by Imhotep than by the various “mad doctors” Karloff played in the 1940s. Of course, in the 1960s real-life mad scientists such as Stanley Milgram and John Money were performing experiments on human subjects for which Barnabas’ statement might have served as a motto. So Barnabas is coming to be less a merger of Dracula and Imhotep than of Dracula and Dr Frankenstein.
One of the devices by which Barnabas tries to place women “under the proper conditions and circumstances” for Josettification is a music box which he bought for the original Josette and may or may not have given her.* He gives this to Vicki. To his satisfaction, she is reduced to a complete stupor when she hears it play. She is in that state when the episode ends.
* In #236, he says he never had the chance to give it to her. In subsequent episodes, he implies the opposite.
Vampire Barnabas Collins is giving a costume party using clothes that belonged to members of his family in the century when he was alive. It isn’t exactly a wild evening. Barnabas doesn’t appear to have planned any activities beyond mutual admiration of the costumes and a guided tour of his house. Moreover, four of the five guests live together and the fifth is fake Shemp Burke Devlin.
My wife, Mrs Acilius, said that the first time we watched the episode it was enough for her to see the actors dressed in antique clothes. But this time, she couldn’t help but notice their awkward pauses as they sit around with nothing to do.
There are some red herrings that particularly bothered her. For example, when the other guests left for the party while well-meaning governess Vicki waited for Burke, the show dwelt on Vicki for quite some time, leading us to expect that her separation from the group would cause something dramatic to happen. When Vicki and Burke arrive shortly after the other guests, Barnabas is startled by the sight of Burke in his costume. For a moment it seems that this might be the dramatic thing we were led to expect, but Barnabas recovers his composure right away and Burke doesn’t seem to be offended. Everyone forgets about it instantly. Vicki and Burke might as well have come with everyone else.
Amid the boredom, the guests start to notice cold spots in the room and other traditional indications of ghostly presences. Roger Collins gets a bright idea. There is no electricity and are therefore no light bulbs in Barnabas’ house, so the idea is represented by a candle above his head.
Roger has an idea
Roger suggests they hold a séance to contact any ghosts who might be in the room. Everyone is reluctant, especially Barnabas, but Roger gets his way. After a lot of grumbling from around the table, well-meaning governess Vicki goes into a trance. Roger announces that a visitor from the world of the dead is about to deliver a message. The closing credits roll.
Closing Miscellany
This episode was taped on the Fourth of July. I can’t help but suspect that the characters’ impatience with Barnabas’ snoozer of a party may reflect the cast’s frustration at having to work on a holiday.
As the party begins, a bell tower strikes eleven. We’ve heard this chiming in Barnabas’ house before. Barnabas identifies it as the bells of “the chapel in the valley,” and matriarch Liz remarks that she hadn’t realized you could hear it so clearly in his house.
So much emphasis is placed on Liz’ resemblance to Barnabas’ mother and Vicki’s to Josette Collins that we wonder if Joan Bennett and Alexandra Moltke Isles will play their ghosts in upcoming episodes. Barnabas mentions that Roger doesn’t look as much like his father as Liz looks like his mother, so any plans they did have along those lines evidently did not include Louis Edmonds.
This is the third séance we’ve seen on Dark Shadows. In #170 and #171, the ghost of Josette spoke through Vicki, and in #186 someone named David Radcliffe spoke through strange and troubled boy David Collins. Roger had been a staunch opponent of those earlier séances, a fact he acknowledges in passing as he begins his pitch today.
The living members of the ancient and esteemed Collins family have been invited to a party hosted by their not-so-living cousin, Barnabas Collins the vampire.* It will be a costume party, in which each adult Collins will dress as a counterpart from the era when Barnabas was human.
The show has been hinting from episode #1 that well-meaning governess Vicki is the illegitimate daughter of matriarch Liz, and today Liz’ daughter Carolyn tells her she “deserves to be a Collins.” From what we’ve seen of the Collinses, that’s hardly a compliment, but she is going to the party dressed as the legendary Josette Collins, to whom she refers as one of “our ancestors.”
Vicki and Carolyn confide in each other that they feel strange wearing the dresses. Vicki gets a strong sense of déjàvu when she wears Josette’s dress, and when Carolyn puts on Millicent’s she feels like an intruder.
Vicki’s boyfriend, fake Shemp Burke Devlin, shows up. Vicki tells him about the party. He expresses unease at the idea of her dressing as Josette. He brings up the séance in #170, when Josette spoke through Vicki. That was one of a great many contacts Vicki had with Josette’s ghost between episodes #126 and #192, but Vicki seems startled when Burke brings the matter up.
Vicki suggests that she might go to Barnabas and wangle an invitation to the party for him. He jovially responds that he would be out of place at a Collins family party. He makes it clear that he is not at all bothered to be left out, but Vicki insists. He drives her across the estate to Barnabas’ house and waits in his car while she goes inside.
Vicki lies to Barnabas, claiming she had a previous commitment to go out with Burke. This is only the second time Vicki has successfully told a lie. The first time, in #228, she told Liz something she so desperately wanted to believe that she ignored the fact that Vicki couldn’t look at her, or stand still, or maintain a normal conversational tone of voice. Now, she tells her lie smoothly and easily. Perhaps Carolyn was right, and Vicki has indeed earned the right to be a Collins.
Barnabas is initially disappointed that Vicki wants to bring a date, but brightens when he thinks of a role for Burke to play. Burke can wear the clothing of Jeremiah Collins. After Vicki leaves, Barnabas tells sorely-bedraggled blood thrall Willie that he hated Jeremiah and wanted to “destroy him.” He smiles and says that perhaps he will have that opportunity at the party. My wife, Mrs Acilius, was impressed with Jonathan Frid’s expression as he delivers that line. “Man, he knows how to do evil-face!”
Barnabas had told Willie that he expected the party to be “the most important night of [his] life,” and now he thinks it might present him with opportunities to “destroy” the guests. I’ll admit that there have been times when I had unrealistic hopes for a party I was planning, but I can’t say I’ve ever raised my expectations quite to that level.
On his blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn pokes fun at Barnabas for setting the bar so high. In a long comment, I tried to figure out what the writers might have been getting at by giving Barnabas these lines. I won’t copy it here, in part because it goes over material I’ve discussed repeatedly in earlier posts and in part includes spoilers for people who haven’t seen the rest of the series.
Closing Miscellany
Carolyn talks about the ancestors they will be impersonating as people who lived “over 130 years ago” and talks about “nineteenth century” styles. That fits with some references in the early months of the show to Josette having lived in the 1830s, and to the great house of Collinwood having been built in that decade by Josette’s husband Jeremiah Collins. The other day Barnabas said that his sister Sarah, whose ghost we have seen a number of times, lived long before he met Josette, and her dates have been established as 1786-1796. Apparently Barnabas and Sarah were both children when she died, and Barnabas was in his 40s when he knew Josette. Actor Jonathan Frid was in his early 40s when Dark Shadows was in production, so that would be plausible as the age at which Barnabas is frozen. Also, today a portrait of a man wearing a suit from the 1840s is identified as Joshua Collins, Barnabas’ father and a contemporary of Josette and Jeremiah.
This portrait usually hangs in the foyer, and I usually think of it as James K. Polk Collins. In #59, it was identified as Benjamin Collins, but today Vicki says it is Joshua. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die
At other times Jeremiah and Josette have been placed earlier, in the eighteenth century. It is unclear whether they have decided to stick with the 1830s as the time when Barnabas originally became a vampire, or if the date will shift again.
Burke asks Carolyn if her interest in motorcycling is a thing of the past. She says it is. This is the last reference we will hear to her onetime fiancé, biker dude Buzz. Buzz was hilariously out of place on Dark Shadows, and he will be missed as a source of comic relief.
When Burke was introduced in #1, he was a self-made millionaire planning to use his great wealth to take revenge on the Collinses. He gave up on his revenge in #201, and we haven’t seen much sign of his wealth lately. The last time a financial question was attached to him was in #267, when he was heartbroken because he had lost a dime in a pay phone. Today he shows up wearing a jacket that we’ve seen working class characters like Willie and hardworking young fisherman Joe wear. It might make the audience wonder if they are thinking of retconning his wealth away for some reason.
*They have no idea Barnabas is a vampire. They chalk his eccentricities up to being English.
The first major villain on Dark Shadows was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, played by Louis Edmonds. Edmonds was a master of the sarcastic remark, so that Roger was often funny. But no matter how often he made the audience laugh, Roger was never a comic villain. That requires a character we can empathize with as we watch them scheme and plot, scramble and improvise, in pursuit of goals that could not be achieved without ruining all the fun. We laugh when we recognize our own foibles in an outlandish character, and laugh again when we realize that our ability to feel with others encompasses even those whose feelings have led them to do dastardly deeds.
Roger’s personality was too cold, his motives too contemptible for us to empathize with him. Where a comic villain thinks fast and puts himself in ridiculous situations, Roger stuck with his fixed ideas, using the same tactics time and again to bully his unwilling co-conspirator Sam to stick with their plan. Even when he bumbled about with a damning piece of evidence, a fountain pen left at a crime scene, he was never the coyote caught in his own over-elaborate trap, but a criminal in a police procedural. He was a melodramatic villain who was only incidentally funny.
The first supernatural menace on the show was Roger’s ex-wife, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, played by Diana Millay. Millay was hilarious, every bit as funny as Louis Edmonds. It was a shame the two of them didn’t play a married couple in a long-running comedy. They could have raised sarcasm to heights previously unknown to humankind. But while Millay gets laughs every time the script gives her the least chance, Laura was even less of a comic villain than Roger.
It is clear that Laura is a malign presence from beyond the grave and that, if she is not stopped, she will burn her young son David to death. But everything else about her is an impenetrable mystery. She is not part of a familiar mythology, and even the most basic questions about her remain unanswered. We cannot empathize with her motives, since we cannot begin to guess what her motives are or even be sure if she has motives.
The first comic villain on Dark Shadows was seagoing con man Jason McGuire, played by Dennis Patrick. Jason had his first comic turns only after he had been on the show for weeks, during which time we had been subjected to many iterations of a dreary ritual in which he made a demand of reclusive matriarch Liz, Liz resisted, he threatened to expose her terrible secret, and she capitulated. When his henchman Willie slips out of Jason’s control and he starts scrambling to contain the damage Willie is doing to his plan, Patrick finally gets a chance to play Jason as a comic villain, and the result is very engaging. But those scenes are scattered too thinly through Jason’s long-running, relentlessly monotonous storyline to make him a success as a comic villain.
Now, the show has struck gold. Vampire Barnabas Collins is becoming a pop culture phenomenon and bringing the show the first good ratings it has ever had. They have to keep Barnabas on the show indefinitely, and he has to be the most important character. That presents a practical difficulty. Vampires usually figure in folklore and fiction as unstoppable killing machines. Daytime soap operas explore the shifting relationships among large casts of characters. It’s going to be hard to maintain that cast if Barnabas sets about murdering everyone. To square the circle, they try to redefine Barnabas as a comic villain.
Barnabas is giving a costume party for his distant cousins, the living members of the Collins family. He has invited well-meaning governess Vicki to attend and to wear the dress of the legendary Josette Collins. In the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, Vicki had developed a close friendship with Josette’s ghost, so she is excited about this. For his part, Barnabas has borrowed an evil scheme from the 1932 film The Mummy. He will erase Vicki’s personality and replace it with Josette’s, then kill her so that she will rise as a vampiric Josette. So he is glad she likes the dress.
Barnabas asks Vicki to come to his house and help him pick out the antique clothes that the family will wear at the party. She enthusiastically agrees, saying that she loves to go through trunks full of old clothes. The clothes are in a trunk in Josette’s old room, which Barnabas has restored.
In the room, we see the ghost of Barnabas’ 9 year old sister Sarah sitting on the trunk. She vanishes a second before Barnabas and Vicki enter. Both of them have a strong feeling that someone just left the room. Barnabas tries to dismiss the sensation as nervousness, but Vicki has had too much experience with ghosts to be put off so easily.
Vicki has been our point of view character for most of the series. At first, that was because she was a newcomer to the great estate of Collinwood and the nearby town of Collinsport, and so we would learn everything we needed to know as we listened to people explain things to her. Later, it was because she was the key protagonist in the stories, so that the action got going once she knew what was going on. So when Barnabas equals Vicki’s sensitivity to Sarah’s presence, he is presented to us as another possible point of view character.
Barnabas keeps talking about the Collinses’ eighteenth century ancestors in terms that make it obvious that he knew them, so that he more than once has to clean up after himself with remarks like “I would imagine.” He does alarm Vicki when he blurts out something about what will happen to her should she “become Josette.” He hastens to say that he means that Vicki will become her for the duration of the party.
“Become Josette?”
Vicki goes back to the great house and talks with Liz about the party. Liz smiles happily, the first time we’ve seen this expression on her face in the whole run of the series.
Happy Liz
Vicki goes on about Barnabas’ connection to the past, saying that he gives the impression of someone who really is misplaced in time. She has the feeling that he needs to recreate a bygone era, and that he is doomed to be unhappy because of the impossibility of traveling backward in time. Vicki does not know what Barnabas’ plans for her are, but she understands his motives perfectly and empathizes with him deeply. That Vicki, Barnabas’ intended victim, can feel this way suggests that we can, too.
Back in Barnabas’ house, Sarah reappears in Josette’s room and sees her blue dress. She is excited to find it. She looks at her reflection in the mirror and smiles. Her good cheer is emphasized when her musical cue, an excerpt from “London Bridge,” is for the first time played in a major key.
Sarah’s reflection looks like it has never seen a ghost before
The minor key was appropriate during Sarah’s previous appearances. The first several times we saw her, Sarah was associated with Barnabas’ imprisonment of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie was the victim of Barnabas’ first mad attempt at Josettery, and Sarah intervened just in time to keep Barnabas from killing her. The other day, Barnabas killed Jason, and we saw Sarah when Barnabas was forcing Willie to help him hide his old friend’s corpse. Barnabas isn’t killing anyone today, so Sarah can be a bit more cheerful.
Sarah helps to establish Barnabas as a comic villain. As the ghostly sister who returned to the upper world when Barnabas was loosed to prey upon the living, Sarah and he are part of the same eruption from Dark Shadows‘ supernatural back-world into its main continuity. Perhaps she personifies his conscience, certainly she gives him an occasion to make schmaltzy speeches about his days as a human. More important than either of these, when we see that Barnabas’ 9 year old sister is his most powerful adversary, we begin to wonder just how seriously we should take him.
Closing Miscellany
Yesterday and today, Alexandra Moltke Isles delivered the recorded voiceover monologue at the beginning of the episode. The first 270 times she did this, it was in character as Vicki. Now, they’ve given up the idea that Vicki or any other one character will eventually find out about everything that we see on screen, so the openings are delivered by whatever actress is available as a nameless external narrator.
In those first 270 outings, Mrs Isles sounded like Vicki. She adopted Vicki’s distinctive way of speaking, carefully articulating one word at a time and often ending sentences with surprising little inflections- a curl of uncertainty here, a touch of breathy optimism there, a falling note of despair in another place. The voiceovers were usually remarks about the weather or the sea that were supposed to involve some vague metaphor for events in the story, so that it is open to question whether it was really worth Mrs Isles’ time to put so much effort into creating a character with them. But I guess a pro is a pro, and it was a matter of course that she would do her best no matter how little she had to work with.
In these last two, she has used a relatively flat voice, with none of Vicki’s particular vocal traits. The pacing has been structured, not around sentences, but around an attempt to convey an overall sense of urgency. They sound very much like The Narrator. I wonder what Mrs Isles would have made of The Narrator if the voiceover passages had extended beyond the opening moments and run through the episodes.
There is a famous production error under the closing credits, when a stagehand shows up in the window, realizes he’s on camera, and makes himself all the more conspicuous when he tries to escape from his predicament.
Vampire Barnabas Collins and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis talk about the man Barnabas killed the other day, seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Willie has been in town, and assures Barnabas that no one misses Jason. They say a few words about Barnabas’ plan to take control of well-meaning governess Vicki, erase her personality, and replace it with that of his long-lost love Josette. Barnabas then decides to invite the residents of the great house of Collinwood to a costume party.
In the drawing room of the great house, matriarch Liz and her brother Roger talk about the family business. Liz hasn’t willingly left home for 18 years, for reasons that were never very interesting and that the show has now promised to stop bothering us with. So Roger urges her to stop working from home and start coming to the office. She reflexively says that she can’t, but then agrees that she will. It’s an interesting moment of psychological realism- even if Liz’ original motive for cooping herself up had nothing to do with agoraphobia, such a long immurement would breed tenacious habits.
Liz and Roger wonder about Jason. He had been living at Collinwood while blackmailing Liz, and now has disappeared. They are glad to see the last of him, but are puzzled that he didn’t take any of his belongings. Even his razor is still in his room.
That will also strike regular viewers as odd. Willie had been staying at Collinwood when Barnabas claimed him, and they were able to get Willie’s things out of the house without anyone noticing them come or go. You’d think they’d have done the same with Jason’s things, just to prevent any suspicion forming.
Part Two. Gone the Sun
Barnabas comes by the great house. Vicki greets him at the door. He invites her to come outside and look at the scenery. He chats about the loveliness of the sea and the Moon, then starts hating on the Sun. “I find the daylight harsh and cruel, whereas the night is kind and soft… When one considers that the Moon takes on its beauty by reflecting the rays of the Sun, it seems inconceivable that the sun could be so ugly… One cannot even look upon it without being blinded; it burns the skin, it scorches the Earth.” The episode was taped in New York City on 5 July 1967, a fairly hot day, so the part about how the Sun “scorches the Earth” was at least topical.
In reply to this, Vicki says of the Sun that “our whole universe revolves around it. We can’t exist without it… man was designed to live with it.” Vicki may overstate the scientific case with her reference to “the whole universe,” but she is putting the matter into a powerful mythological context. In trying to alienate Vicki from the Sun, Barnabas is trying to lure her into his private world away from the common light in which communities of people live. His world is cut off from the cycle of growth, fertility, aging, and death which the Sun traditionally represents.
Further, the Sun is in many cultures a symbol of the masculine, and its relationship to the Earth represents the union of male and female. Barnabas’ plans for Vicki will short-circuit her sex life and replace it with something that is essentially solitary. Perhaps this aspect of the vampire myth explains why so many pubescent girls in the late 1960s embraced Barnabas. Though within his narrative universe he is a blood-sucking creature of Hell, in terms of the situation such girls are actually uneasy about he is a Non-Threatening Boy who will not push her into something she isn’t ready for.
That may also be part of the reason why LGBTQIAAPP+ people have had such a complicated reaction to the image of the vampire over the years. On the one hand, the vampire promises an escape from compulsory heterosexuality. On the other, that escape leaves in place a whole cosmic order centered on opposite sex relationships. It leads to an absolute dead end of isolation, sterility, and parasitism. A figure like Barnabas shows that a real liberation for sexual minority groups can come only in the course of revolutionary change on the grandest scale, not as a result of individual adventures.
Part Three. A Family Party
Barnabas invites Liz, Roger, and Vicki to his party. Liz initially declines. While Barnabas and Vicki wait in the study, presumably going into greater depth about how ugly the Sun is, Roger exhorts her to give up her reclusive ways. She agrees.
Barnabas explains that he has clothing that belonged to their ancestors in the late eighteenth century, and that he will make it available to his guests. He will dress as his “ancestor” (actually himself,) Barnabas Collins. Roger and Liz will dress as Barnabas’ parents, Joshua and Naomi Collins. He turns to Vicki and says “You will be Josette Collins.” The credits roll.
Vicki reacts to Barnabas’ casting her as Josette
Vicki was excited when Barnabas first invited her to the party, but looks pensive when Barnabas tells her that she will be Josette. My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out that for Vicki, Josette is still an active presence. Josette’s ghost appeared and spoke to her in #126, and interacted with her and her friends many times during the arc centering on Roger’s ex-wife, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Further, Barnabas’ house had been Josette’s stronghold in the months between her first appearance in #70 and Barnabas’ arrival there in #212. As far as Vicki is concerned, Barnabas is asking her to dress in the clothing of the mistress of the house and to impersonate her while she watches. That would make anyone feel silly.
Dark Shadows Commentary 