Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is not allowed to leave home. The yard outside her door is full of policemen. They are hoping that a rumor that her amnesia is breaking and she will soon remember who abducted her and held her prisoner will draw that person out of hiding. If he approaches the house, they will… it isn’t clear what they will do, exactly. Whatever they do, Maggie hopes that it will end the danger so that she can get back to her normal life.
Maggie and her father Sam talk about the situation. This conversation doesn’t advance the plot or give the audience new information, but it is somewhat interesting to people who have been watching the show from the beginning. For the first 40 weeks of the show, Sam was an alcoholic and Maggie’s attempts to keep him out of trouble were a substantial part of the story. Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACoA, in the lingo of the twelve step movement) mannerisms such as advertising that she is happy by starting utterances with a laugh and stressing whatever syllables have a rising pitch are still a major part of Maggie’s characterization.
But Sam isn’t an alcoholic anymore. Not only doesn’t his drinking cause him problems, but we’ve seen him function as a social drinker. He keeps a bottle of whiskey in the living room of the Evans cottage and occasionally takes a drink or two; he often goes to The Blue Whale tavern and enjoys happy hour there. But he declines drinks when they are offered at inconvenient times, doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t have trouble with his work, and Maggie doesn’t have any complaints. The other day, the show referred back to Sam’s drinking days. He and the sheriff went to The Blue Whale, where Sam started the rumor about Maggie’s memory. Sam pretended to be drunk and the sheriff pretended to hush him while he declared that Maggie would be leading the police to her captor any day now. But he was stone sober the whole time, even though he had had a drink at home before leaving for the tavern.
The show dropped the theme of Sam’s alcoholism when it gave up on the storyline of “The Revenge of Burke Devlin.” Sam had started drinking because of the events behind that storyline and his drunkenness made it unpredictable what role he would play in it. Since that ended in #201, the writers don’t seem to see a point in presenting Sam as an alcoholic, even as one in recovery. But I think that is a mistake. The actors and directors remember that Sam has that history, and it adds depth to both David Ford’s portrayal of Sam and Kathryn Leigh Scott’s of Maggie. You wouldn’t have to spend any more screen time presenting Sam as a recovering alcoholic than they spend now presenting him as a social drinker. All he’d have to do is reply to a remark about booze by saying that he never touches the stuff anymore, and you’ve made the point.
Viewers who have been with the show from the beginning will look at Sam and Maggie’s heart-to-heart talk and remember the scenes from the first 40 weeks where Maggie wound up playing the parent in the parent-child relationship. Seeing him really function as a father here will not only reassure us that they are free of that now, but will also explain why Maggie kept falling into all of the patterns of behavior that enabled Sam when he was a drunk. Today, he’s the Daddy she knew before alcohol got the better of him, the one she was always sure was still in there someplace.
Sam leaves the room, and Maggie gets a visitor. After Sam had assured Maggie that the house was so well-guarded no one could get in, we saw a shot of the permanently nine year old ghost of Sarah Collins outdoors, peering over a picket fence.
Maggie falls asleep, and wakes to find Sarah in the room with her. Maggie repeatedly asks Sarah how she got in, and Sarah keeps declining to answer. Maggie keeps trying to get her father into the room, and Sarah keeps telling her that if a third person comes in, she will have to go away. Sarah finds that Maggie is not in possession of the doll she gave her, and tells her that she will have to get it back as soon as possible and keep it with her at all times. Maggie asks more than one question about that as well, and Sarah again tells her that she can’t explain. Sarah gets to be quite exasperated that she has to keep reviewing the ghost rules with Maggie.
Several characters have entertained the possibility that Sarah might be a ghost, among them Maggie and Sam. They keep snapping back from really believing that she is. In the early months of the show, characters had speculated that there might be ghosts on and around the great estate of Collinwood, but they couldn’t let go of the idea that they lived in a world that basically made sense according to the usual natural laws. So no matter what they saw, they kept retreating from the full implications of the supernatural events that came to be a more and more obvious part of their experiences. Sarah’s impatience with Maggie today is reflected in the impatience many viewers of the show express when characters who have had encounter after encounter with the paranormal won’t stop droning on about how there must be a perfectly logical explanation.
Sarah keeps repeating herself and Maggie keeps missing the point. Maggie tells Sarah that she will like Sam, who likes little girls. That again is a poignant line to those who are thinking about the happy life Maggie had with her father before he started drinking and that has only recently resumed, though it is lost on newer viewers. We also know that Sarah already likes Sam- she visited him in this house in #260 and told him where to find Maggie.
But in the world of Dark Shadows, ghosts cannot appear to more than one person at a time. For example, in #141 strange and troubled boy David Collins took his mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, to the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, hoping that the ghost of Josette Collins would appear to her. He left her alone in the house, explaining that Josette appears only to one person at a time. Josette did communicate with Laura after David left, though Laura concealed that fact from her son.
We’ve seen only two exceptions to the rule that ghosts appear to one person at a time. The first case was in #165, when Josette manifested herself in a room with David and Laura. The second time was in #294, when Sarah herself helped Maggie escape from the mental hospital where mad scientist Julia Hoffman was keeping her for evil reasons. Both Maggie and her nurse could see Sarah that time.
But those were special occasions. It was such a strain for Josette to present herself to two people that she could shimmer into view only when David was asleep, and a few words from Laura were enough to shoo her away before he could wake up, though he did feel her presence afterward. And Sarah’s appearance to Maggie and the nurse lasted for only a few seconds. Viewers reminded of Sarah’s earlier appearance to Sam will remember that she vanished before he finished a sketch of her that she very much wanted him to give her, so however great a power she might represent, we know that it is not entirely under her control. She can do what she is supposed to do and tell people what they are supposed to know, but she cannot simply do as she wishes, and when she has completed an assigned task or entered an uncongenial situation she will disappear.
Eventually Maggie insists on opening the door and calling to Sam. Of course Sarah has vanished when he enters, of course the men guarding the house didn’t see her, and of course Sam and Maggie fret that if Sarah could come and go unobserved so could the person they are trying to catch. Those bits bring on our frustration with characters who don’t get that they are living in a universe pervaded with supernatural beings. If they were proceeding from the premise that Sarah was a ghost and considering the possibility that Maggie’s captor may also have been some kind of uncanny being, that would indicate that the action is about to start moving a lot faster. As it is, it’s just filler.
Meanwhile, Julia has left her hospital and come to Collinwood, where she is in league with Maggie’s captor, vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas has heard the rumor that Maggie is recovering from her amnesia. Julia induced that amnesia to keep Maggie from exposing him and inconveniencing her.
In Friday’s episode, Julia tried to talk Barnabas out of killing Maggie. He had calmly and suavely told her that he had no choice but to yield to her arguments, and she had been satisfied that she had persuaded him. Today, he tells his sorely bedraggled blood-thrall Willie Loomis that he will set out for the Evans cottage as soon as the clouds cover the moon and give him a deep enough cover of darkness.
Willie sneaks over to the terrace at the great house of Collinwood, where he informs Julia of Barnabas’ intentions. Julia cannot believe that her powers of persuasion failed to win Barnabas away from his plan to kill Maggie. Willie has to repeat himself time and again, until he grows as exasperated with Julia as Sarah was with Maggie.
This is the first time we have seen Julia in denial. It’s understandable that she would overestimate her ability to bend Barnabas to her will- not only has she had a great deal of success so far at dominating their relationship, but she is usually able to manipulate people to a fantastic degree. When she induced Maggie’s current amnesia, she took her in a matter of minutes from a state in which she remembered everything that had happened to her to one in which an impenetrable mental block covered exactly the period in which Barnabas abused her. Someone who can do that might well have difficulty grasping the fact that she has not turned someone to her way of thinking.
Barnabas stares out the window of his house in the direction of the Evans cottage and thinks murderous thoughts about Maggie. My wife and I often laugh about the comment Danny Horn made on this scene in his post about this episode on his blog Dark Shadows Every Day:
Meanwhile, the dogs are howling, and Barnabas is standing at the window, staring out into the night.
“Goodbye, Maggie Evans,” he thinks. “I might have loved you. I might have spared you. Now… you must die.”
Man, what a diva. He even has backup singers.
Danny Horn, “Episode 321: What We Talk About When We Talk About Ghosts,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 3 February 2014
When the show dwells on the dog-noise, Mrs Acilius and I often turn to each other, say “the backup singers!,” and laugh. When we watched this episode yesterday, we laughed louder than usual because our beagle joined in with them, right on cue. He often looks up when the howling starts, the backup singers are the stars of the show as far as he is concerned, but it is unusual for him to sing along. They must be in particularly good voice in this one.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 