The Kind of Woman Willing to Wait
Medical researcher Cyrus Longworth has invented a potion which, when he drinks it, darkens his hair, causes him to grow more of it, and adds to his muscle mass. When he is in this state, Cyrus calls himself “John Yaeger.” Yaeger serves Cyrus as a very effective disguise. The other day, he ran into his old friend Quentin Collins while he was presenting himself as Yaeger. Quentin did not suspect that the man he was talking to was Cyrus.
Cyrus uses Yaeger to escape responsibility for violent crimes. He has started a couple of bar fights in the Eagle tavern. Barmaid Buffie Harrington has drawn Cyrus’ special attention; he hit her, twisted her arm, choked her, and threatened worse when he was alone in the tavern with her, and he has since taken an apartment in her boarding house. Cyrus has also beaten Buffie’s sometime boyfriend Steve so severely that he put him in the hospital. Cyrus was choking Steve when he heard a police whistle and ran away. It looked like he would probably have murdered him if the police had been a minute later. When Buffie saw Cyrus in his undisguised form and told him of the cruelty she and Steve had suffered at Yaeger’s hands, Cyrus barely bothered to conceal his pleasure. When Buffie asked Cyrus if Yaeger worked for him, Cyrus was delighted to say that he did.
We open in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, where Cyrus is waiting for Quentin. All of a sudden Cyrus starts to transform into Yaeger. This is the first time the transformation has taken place spontaneously, without a fresh dose of the potion. Cyrus leaves a note, then jumps out the window and runs away.
In his laboratory, Cyrus is about to drink the antidote to restore his usual appearance. He decides he would rather have some more fun as Yaeger first and puts the antidote back. His fiancée and lab assistant Sabrina Stuart comes downstairs. She has not seen Cyrus as Yaeger before, and is completely fooled by the disguise. She has heard the name John Yaeger in connection with recent strange behavior on Cyrus’ part, and is stern with him. Regular viewers know how brutal Cyrus is with Buffie, and we fear that he will mete the same treatment out to Sabrina. But he does not do so, not this time. He insists that Cyrus wants him to wait in the laboratory, and Sabrina leaves him alone there. After Sabrina exits, he takes a painting from the wall and goes.
Cyrus takes the painting to the apartment he has rented in the name of Yaeger. Buffie comes to him there. He harries her about her visit to him when he looked like his usual self and she knew him as Cyrus. He says she told Cyrus she likes a quiet man. He walks up to her, talking all the while about how quiet he can be. He gets quieter and quieter until he brings his hand across her face with full force. The next we see, she is bruised and cut, her clothing badly torn. Christopher Pennock and Elizabeth Eis play these moments very well. They are really hard to watch.
Cyrus gives Buffie the painting from his laboratory. He asks her if she wants him to take her someplace nice, with good food and a sophisticated atmosphere. She perks up and is enthusiastic. He then points out that she is covered in bruises and abrasions and wearing damaged clothing. He ridicules the idea that she could be seen anywhere looking like that, and taunts her with imprecations to take better care of herself. She leaves, hanging her head and carrying the painting. Cyrus laughs, relishing the misery he has inflicted on Buffie.
As Cyrus, whether he has red hair, a white coat, and a diffident manner, or black hair, a mustache, and a sadistic swagger, Pennock has a relatively straightforward job to do. He is to embody a total rat bastard, one who pretends to be nice when he might be held accountable for his actions and who exults in hurting people when he thinks he can get away with it.
Eis has a trickier assignment. When we first saw Buffie, she was cheerfully fending off Steve’s clumsy advances. Even after she had seen Cyrus, as Yaeger, outfight many strong men, she still stood up to him and spoke her mind. But now he has harmed her again and again, and she just keeps coming back for more. It would be depressing to see anyone fall into that pattern, but it strips us of all hope when we know the person to be so lively and dynamic. That’s the point, I think, and Eis doesn’t let us off the hook. Buffie still holds her head up, she still looks Cyrus in the face, she still speaks in a mature tone of voice when she protests against his abuse. But even so, whatever masochistic fascination is at work has such a grip on Buffie that she will not walk away from a situation that is already intolerably bad and can only get worse.
A Window Into This World From That
We are currently several weeks into a segment set in a different continuity than the one where Dark Shadows spent its first 196 weeks. Vampire Barnabas Collins brought us here. Barnabas discovered that a room in the long-disused east wing of the great house of Collinwood was the site of an inexplicable phenomenon. When he opened the doors to the room, he usually saw it as it was in his universe, a dark space with bare floors and undecorated walls. But once in a while, it appears to be brilliantly lit, fully furnished, and the setting of frequent meetings among people who look and sound just like his acquaintances, but who are living different lives. Through an invisible barrier, Barnabas could see and hear those people, but he could neither pass through the barrier nor attract the people’s notice.
Barnabas became obsessed with the forlorn hope that if he could pass into the other universe, he might be free of his curse and become a living man once more. Other characters from the main continuity joined him in watching their counterparts in the other world; few of these knew that Barnabas was a vampire, but all of them could see that the phenomenon had some obscure significance special to him, and were concerned that he was going to do something dangerous. In #980, Barnabas managed to make his way through the barrier, only to find that he was still a vampire. He bit the first person he met, and shortly after was chained in a coffin by her husband. He has been trapped there ever since.
The room on which Barnabas and others in the main continuity had been spying in the days before he crossed over has been a major set in the “Parallel Time” segment, and every time we see it we wonder if those others are still watching. Today, we intercut with the original “time-band.” Quentin goes to the room, and finds the bare dark space it represents in the main continuity. He sees two children there, whom he takes to be his son Daniel Collins and Daniel’s cousin Amy Collins. The boy is telling the girl that “Dr Hoffman” told his father that Barnabas got caught in that room. The girl responds that she certainly does not want to get caught, and she wants to leave at once. Quentin calls Daniel and Amy’s names, and is puzzled that the children do not react. He hears Daniel’s voice coming from behind him. He turns and sees Daniel and Amy standing in the hallway, asking why he is calling their names.
This is the first indication we have had that the main continuity is ever visible from this one. We are left wondering if the traffic between the universes can go both ways, and if so whether this continuity and the original one will in some way merge together. Cyrus’ attack on Buffie and her response to it were so difficult to watch that, done as well as the scenes were done today, they left us reluctant to tune back in tomorrow. The story of Buffie’s degradation at Cyrus’ hands can only become more depressing as it goes. But this new information about how “Parallel Time” works suggests such a wide variety of possible next steps that it sets our imaginations into overdrive, and we can’t wait to see which way we will turn next.
(If you don’t recognize today’s section titles…)
Dark Shadows Commentary 