Episode 372: He took a liberty

Time-traveling governess Victoria Winters sees a man fueling the fireplace in the front parlor of the manor house on the estate of Collinwood. As she has done several times since arriving in the year 1795, she jumps to the conclusion that he is the character the same actor played in the 1960s. In fairness to Vicki, a couple of the people are the same- young gentleman Barnabas Collins will become a vampire and meet her in her own time, and Barnabas’ ten year old sister Sarah will die soon and her ghost will haunt Collinwood and its environs in 1967. So it’s tricky to handle the repertory theater aspect of the rest of the cast, and, by having Vicki freak out and shout about the main time period every time she meets someone, the show has chosen the most irritating possible way of addressing this problem.

The man Vicki meets today is indentured servant Ben Stokes, and the man she mistakes him for is gruff groundskeeper Matthew Morgan. Since Matthew held her prisoner in this very house and tried to decapitate her here in 1966, her misidentification of Ben leads Vicki to scream and holler and bring the master of the house to ask what is going on. Ben responds that he did nothing at all, Vicki volunteers that it was all her fault and tries to explain.

The master, haughty overlord Joshua Collins, is ever mindful of Ben’s status as a felon entrusted by the state to his custody, and declares that Ben is forbidden to speak to any woman for any reason. Vicki is appalled by this, but as governess she is a servant herself, so Joshua orders her to be silent. Besides, her protestations don’t make any sense to anyone who didn’t see episodes #108-#126 of Dark Shadows. Since it is 1795, Joshua doesn’t have access to the show on streaming or even on cable. He tells Matthew he won’t get the day off he’d asked for tomorrow.

Before Joshua dismisses Vicki to return to her duties, he mentions that his second cousins Millicent and Daniel Collins will be arriving soon and staying for the month leading up to the wedding of Joshua’s son Barnabas to Josette duPrés. Daniel is a child the age of Joshua’s daughter Sarah, and will be joining Sarah as Vicki’s charge during his stay at Collinwood. Joshua mentions that Millicent is a lovely young woman, and that from her early childhood it had been understood that she would marry Joshua’s younger brother Jeremiah. Joshua is quite pleased with this prospect, not least because Millicent has inherited a considerable fortune.

Vicki’s compulsion to keep the audience up to date on the resumés of the actors is mirrored by a compulsion to blurt out information she knows only because she comes from 1967. She had studied the Collins family history, so when Joshua talks of Millicent’s prospective marriage to Jeremiah she shouts “Millicent never married!” Joshua is puzzled by this idiotic remark, but quick to accept Vicki’s explanation that she had read a novel about a spinster named Millicent and couldn’t help but yell about it.

During the first year of Dark Shadows, Vicki was, on balance, one of the smartest characters and was the one who made the most important things happen. So it is distressing to see her verbalizing her every thought, including irrelevancies about the actors’ other roles and information that would tend to expose her secret. If she is going to survive in this past world, she’s going to have to regain enough brain power to keep her mouth shut. Moreover, even when she was at her smartest Vicki was always a conspicuously inept liar. Joshua is fundamentally uninterested in a person of her apparently low social status, and so he accepted the story she made up to cover herself this time. But someone more willing to pay attention to her might very quickly conclude that Vicki is a strange and dangerous person.

Meanwhile, lady’s maid/ wicked witch Angelique is in the woods gathering noxious weeds to use in an evil potion. Ben catches her there, and warns her that the plants she has in her basket are poisonous. She drops them, thanks him, and strikes up a conversation. He tells her Joshua has forbidden him to talk to women. She says this is horribly cruel, and Ben agrees. He goes, and she picks the deadly leaves back up.

In the servants’ quarters, Vicki enters Angelique’s room. She sees some things of Barnabas’ that Angelique had used to cast a spell on him the other day. When Angelique comes in, Vicki tells her that Josette was asking for her. Vicki then asks how Barnabas’ things got to be in Angelique’s room. She says she doesn’t know, then puts the blame on Sarah. Vicki says she will scold Sarah for carrying Barnabas’ things around the house, and Angelique begs her not to. She says she is afraid that if she does, Sarah won’t visit her anymore.

Angelique has no way of knowing it, but this is the perfect lie to tell Vicki. For months before she left 1967, everyone was eager for Sarah’s ghost to come and visit them. Indeed, Vicki was at a séance called to contact Sarah when Sarah took possession of her, said through her that she would tell the “story from the beginning,” and yanked her back to this time. So, when Angelique presents herself as afraid that Sarah will stop visiting her, Vicki cannot refuse her request.

Angelique decides she needs a helper to keep herself from being suspected. We cut between the outdoors, where we see Ben chopping wood, and the servant’s quarters, where Angelique is mixing up a potion. Vicki comes to Ben, and we wonder which of them will be Angelique’s target.

Vicki apologizes to Ben. He just wants her to go away- he’s got into enough trouble for talking to her once, the last thing he wants is to be caught repeating the offense. She says that she knows that Joshua “can seem stern,” to which Ben reacts with disbelief. He says that Joshua is far worse than stern.

Again, this is Vicki failing to distinguish characters from the actors who play them. Louis Edmonds plays Joshua in 1795, and high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the twentieth century. For the first 25 weeks of the show, Roger was the villain, and he tried to kill Vicki once or twice. By the time his ex-wife Laura went up in smoke in #191, Roger was no threat to anyone. When Sarah brought Vicki back here, Roger had long since been reduced to occasional comic relief.

Joshua is as selfish and cold as Roger at his worst, but where Roger is cowardly, weak, and shameless, Joshua is bold, imperious, and utterly convinced that he is right. Roger is what Joshua might become after a long period of continual degeneration and degradation, a grotesque parody of his ancestor. He has Joshua’s style, but none of his strength. He is reminiscent of the “Last Men” in Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, who were strangers to every consideration but their own immediate comfort. Even so, enough of Louis Edmonds’ wit and personality come through that we always enjoy seeing Roger, and we can understand why Vicki likes him. Edmonds is so good that we are sure we will enjoy watching Joshua as well, but he is clearly never going to become a lovable squish.

Ben is trying to orient Vicki to the current phase of the show when we cut to Angelique in her room. She calls Ben’s name. Suddenly Ben seems to have taken ill. He finally persuades Vicki to leave him alone before he gets caught talking to her again. Once Vicki is gone, he sees a vision of Angelique calling to him and sets off.

When Ben gets to Angelique’s room, he tells her he has no idea what he is doing there. She tells him he is there because she wanted him. This means only one thing to him, so he lifts his arms and steps forward, obviously intending to brighten the day with some rapid love-making. She pulls back and tells him to take a drink first. The beverage she offers him is readily identifiable to a modern audience as Coca-Cola.

In the 1960s, Coca-Cola may have been the pause that refreshes, but in 1795 it had more drastic effects. After Ben drinks it, he staggers back and Angelique tells him that he no longer has a will of his own and will be her slave forevermore. He doesn’t make love to her, either, so no matter how tasty the Coke was the visit would have to be reckoned a loss from Ben’s point of view.