Carolyn Collins Stoddard has been a spoiled heiress all her life, and now is settling into a new role as blood thrall to her distant cousin, vampire Barnabas Collins. Carolyn is trying her level best to comply with Barnabas’ command to seduce lawyer Tony Peterson so that she can steal the notebook mad scientist Julia Hoffman entrusted to him. She is on a date with Tony, and they are starting to do some serious kissing.
No matter how well Carolyn serves him, Barnabas can’t keep himself out of her way. When Barnabas is upset, nearby hound-dogs start baying; Danny Horn calls the dogs Barnabas’ “backup singers.” When Carolyn hears them, her face goes blank and she forgets about Tony. Tony becomes irritated and ends their date abruptly.
Later, Julia goes to Barnabas’ house. Carolyn is there; Barnabas sends her into the next room to eavesdrop on their conversation. The shot of Carolyn in that room recalls a similar shot of housekeeper Mrs Johnson eavesdropping on Carolyn and local man Burke Devlin, on Burke’s instructions, in #69. That shot marked the beginning of the career of the previously guileless Mrs Johnson as a secret agent Burke employed to spy on the Collinses.
As Mrs Johnson once listened to Burke pretending to a romantic interest in Carolyn, so Carolyn today listens as Barnabas pretends to a romantic interest in Julia. Julia realizes that she is unlikely ever to get Barnabas out of her life, and for a time she tried to make the best of the situation by falling in love with him. In his show of contrition and gallantry, she sees a glimmer of hope that he will reciprocate this love. Julia has seen too much to be as taken with Barnabas as Carolyn was with Burke, but she does give serious consideration to the idea that Barnabas might have given up on killing her and might be thinking of becoming her boyfriend instead.
After Julia leaves, Carolyn comes back into the room. She objects that Barnabas was being cruel by raising Julia’s hopes that way. Again, this echoes #69. Mrs Johnson came back into Burke’s room after Carolyn left, and asked him if he thought “the girl [was] involved” in the wrongdoing they thought had taken place at the great house of Collinwood. When Burke replied that anyone in the house was “fair game,” Mrs Johnson asked “Even the girl?” To which Burke replied “Anyone!” That marked the end of the episode, so we didn’t hear how Mrs Johnson reacted to that pronouncement. But she did go on working for Burke, so apparently it didn’t bother her too much.
Barnabas calls Carolyn to him, looks into her eyes, and tells her she is tired. She smiles, and agrees that she is tired. Evidently he used his supernatural influence over Carolyn to erase her misgivings about his treatment of Julia. He hadn’t done anything supernatural to quiet Carolyn’s predecessor, the luckless Willie, on any of the countless occasions when he acted as Barnabas’ external conscience; he usually just hit him in the face with his cane. Barnabas has been picking up lots of new powers lately, gaining the ability to transform into a bat, to materialize inside closed rooms, and to cast magic spells, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that he now has greater control over his blood thrall than he had before.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 