Episode #359 included a recreation of a shot from #69, harking back to a long-forgotten storyline in which housekeeper Mrs Johnson was a secret agent spying on the ancient and esteemed Collins family for their arch-nemesis, Burke Devlin. In #69, Mrs Johnson followed Burke’s orders and eavesdropped on a conversation between him and blonde heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. In #359, Carolyn herself is a secret agent, spying on the household for vampire Barnabas Collins. She follows Barnabas’ orders to eavesdrop on a conversation between him and mad scientist Julia Hoffman. The reference showed just how drastically both Carolyn and the show itself had changed from week fourteen to week seventy-two.
The puzzle is why writer Sam Hall watched #69. He wasn’t connected to Dark Shadows in those days, and it would be very far down the list of episodes you would watch in an attempt to get up to speed on what was happening when he came aboard. That puzzle is solved today.
As Mrs Johnson, Clarice Blackburn had a big turn in #69. Angrily denouncing the Collinses, she twisted up her face in a lunatic expression and loudly declared “I believe in signs and omens!” She appeared as the sworn enemy of the people we have been following all along, and as someone who is superstitious even by the standards of the haunted house where most of the action takes place.
Today, we and well-meaning governess Victoria Winters have been transported back in time to 1795. Blackburn reappears in the role she will be playing in the segment of the show set in that year- Abigail Collins, unmarried sister of haughty overlord Joshua. Abigail is a Puritan busybody out of Nathaniel Hawthorne by way of The Crucible. She renews the promise of all the mischief we had hoped Mrs Johnson would make when we first met her, long ago.
Vicki wakes up in the manor house and sees Abigail. She thinks Abigail is Mrs Johnson and is relieved that she has awakened from a nightmare. Abigail quickly makes it clear that the year is still 1795, that she is not “the friendly housekeeper,” and that she finds everything about Vicki to be appalling. She loses no time in declaring that Vicki is possessed by the Devil. Vicki denies this, but does not convince Abigail.
When Abigail leaves Vicki’s room, she locks the door from the outside. The rooms in the servants’ quarters are surprisingly large and well-appointed for the 1790s, but when we see that they can double as jail cells it offsets the apparent luxury. Vicki escapes through the window.
The great house of Collinwood, where Vicki lives in 1967, is under construction, and she goes there. Danny Horn, on his Dark Shadows Every Day, often said that the real subject of the series was the house. This scene corroborates his interpretation. When the ghost of little Sarah Collins said she would tell “the story from the beginning,” she sent Vicki back to the time when the great house was being built.
Vicki finds a man in the foyer played by Anthony George. George had been the second actor to play the part of Burke. You might think her experience with Abigail would break Vicki of her habit of telling her cast-mates what characters they played in the 1960s part of the show, but no such luck. She reacts to George’s new character as if he were Burke. After a moment, she tells him that she can see he isn’t the same man. This is a riddle- if the characters played by the same actor look so much alike that it makes sense for Vicki to keep mistaking them for each other, what does she see in this Anthony George character that sets him apart from the other?
As it happens, George is playing Jeremiah Collins, builder of the great house and brother of Joshua. In #280, Barnabas had given a costume party and George’s Burke had attended it dressed as Jeremiah. Barnabas, a native of the late eighteenth century, had been thunderstruck by the sight of Burke in that costume, unable to do anything but say “Jeremiah!” and glare at him. So there is a strong resemblance, perhaps suggestive of some spiritual linkage between the two men. Vicki’s constant confusion of the actors with their roles indicates that such linkages are to be found throughout the cast. Having her babble about the resemblances out loud so frequently is the most annoying possible way to make this point. If Barnabas had kept mistaking the 1960s characters for their 1790s counterparts, it’s hard to imagine that they would have accepted him and certain that the audience would not have.
Vicki tells Jeremiah that Abigail thinks she is a witch. Jeremiah makes it clear that he finds Abigail’s hostility to be a strong recommendation, and the fact that Sarah is a fan of Vicki’s clinches the deal. He takes her back to the main house.
Once Vicki is back in her room, Jeremiah brings her 1967 clothes. He asks her why she wants them so much, telling her that they will bring nothing but trouble if they are found. She tells him that she will need them when she gets home. Combined with her habit of blurting out remarks that could only strike people in the 1790s as bizarre, Vicki’s attachment to her belongings from her own time suggests that she will very soon find herself in huge trouble. That’s unwelcome- this voyage to the past is shaping up to be interesting, and it would be nice to stay here long enough to get to know all of the characters. If Vicki keeps acting like this, she’ll get herself kicked out of 1795 and drag us back to the 1960s before Dark Shadows has had a chance to show us what they can do with a period piece.
Vicki tells Jeremiah that she has amnesia about her life until her arrival at Collinwood the day before. He tells her that she will have to make up a better story than that. She is shocked that he is telling her to lie, and he says that she will never find a place in the world if she doesn’t.
When Barnabas left 1795 and showed up in 1967, we didn’t see anyone patiently explaining to him that he would have to conceal his true identity and maintain a convincing cover story. He had figured that out by the time we met him. Most of the time he was on screen in those first months, he was trying to play the role of a modern man, a distant cousin from England whom the Collinses had forgotten about. It was fascinating to watch him essay that part. Occasionally he would stumble and blurt out information only someone from an earlier century would know; Vicki caught him doing that more than once, most notably in #233, when it seems for a moment that he might be thinking of killing her to cover his indiscretion. Other times he would face questions he couldn’t answer, and we would wonder what he would set in motion with his attempts to evade them. Quite frequently actor Jonathan Frid would have trouble with Barnabas’ lines, and it would seem that Barnabas, not he, was the one groping for words. When we first realized yesterday that Vicki was taking Barnabas’ journey in reverse, we might have hoped that it would be as interesting to watch her trying to pass as a native of the eighteenth century as it was watching Barnabas trying to pass as a native of the twentieth. That hope took a beating before the day was done, and her conversation with Jeremiah reduces it to a still lower order of probability.
Downstairs, Abigail is telling Joshua and his wife Naomi that they ought to turn Vicki over to “the authorities.” Jeremiah opposes this plan. Naomi makes a great show of screwing up her courage and “for the first time” speaks out against Abigail’s ideas.
This is quite a reversal from what we saw in the part of the show set in the 1960s. Joan Bennett plays Naomi here and matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard there; Louis Edmonds plays Joshua here and Liz’ brother Roger there. But where Joshua is an iron-willed, self-assured tyrant and Naomi his cowed and isolated dependent, Liz is the mistress of Collinwood and Roger a shameless, sybaritic wastrel who lives as a guest in her house and collects a salary from her business. We saw yesterday that Naomi is entirely illiterate; we see today that this inability, though it is an anachronism in a wealthy New England lady of the 1790s, is of a piece with her cramped position in the world. Not only is she supposed to obey her husband; she is supposed to defer to his sister, and is sidelined even in the management of her own household.
The show has been hinting heavily from the first episode that Vicki, played by Joan Bennett lookalike Alexandra Moltke Isles, is Liz’ unacknowledged daughter. It’s certainly no surprise when Liz goes out of her way to stick up for Vicki. Regular viewers, connecting Bennett’s two characters, may not be surprised that Naomi also takes Vicki’s side, but she doesn’t really have much reason within the story to do so. It might have been better if they had given the two of them more time together before this scene, and shown us why Naomi would be especially well-disposed towards Vicki.
Naomi carries her point, and Joshua offers Vicki a position as Sarah’s governess. Vicki is surprised when he asks if she can read; he says that “Many people can’t, these days,” a reference to yesterday’s demonstration of Naomi’s illiteracy. She is startled by his offer of four dollars a week; he angrily asserts he could get someone else for less, and she remembers herself sufficiently to agree that the pay is ample. Joshua is very much the haughty overlord, but he does have some closeups in which we see him looking vulnerable as he tries to figure out who Vicki is and why his wife and brother have taken her side against Abigail. It is a strong scene, and it raises our hopes that Joshua will make exciting things happen.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 