Since late March, Dark Shadows has been set in a universe parallel to the one we saw in the preceding 196 weeks. One of the most important characters in that original continuity was Angelique, a wicked witch who has been wreaking havoc on the estate of Collinwood at irregular intervals over the last 175 years. Angelique’s counterpart in this universe was born in 1939 in the village of Collinsport. She died in 1969, and came back to life in #1000, in April 1970.
This Angelique had an identical twin sister named Alexis. Alexis stayed at Collinwood as a guest of Angelique’s widower, gloomy sourpuss Quentin Collins, from #984. In #1001, Angelique murdered Alexis and took her place. Though Angelique had assembled a cult around herself, the most devoted members of which expected her to rise from the dead, she has disclosed her true identity only to her aunt, Hannah Stokes, whom she has used to do some of the dirtiest of the dirty work she has needed done these last three weeks.
Lara Parker played Angelique and Alexis, Paula Laurence played Hannah. Laurence’s approach to the part has involved an imitation of the mannerisms Parker brought to her portrayal of Angelique in the original continuity. Laurence even imitated the laugh Parker developed for Angelique. This helped us to believe that Hannah was a relative of Angelique, and it worked very well indeed when Hannah and Alexis were opposite each other. Longtime viewers could see that Parker really was playing a different character.
It was tricky when Angelique and Hannah had their first scenes together, in #1003. They pulled it off, because Angelique was pretending to be Alexis at the beginning of the first scene and Hannah was reeling in shock after she learned the truth. So Parker could dial down her Angelique-isms, and Laurence could dial up some non-Angelique-derived business she does. But today the two of them share a scene where they are arguing about a spell Angelique wants Hannah to help her cast, and neither Parker nor Laurence has any choice but to go all in on the most distinctive qualities of Angelique’s line delivery. The result is a few minutes of Dueling Angeliques, and it is embarrassing.
There are a couple of stories underway in this one. The spell Angelique wants to cast is one that will inflame Quentin’s love for his second wife, the former Maggie Evans. She wants Quentin to persuade Maggie to come back to Collinwood and live with him again. She has decided that as long as Maggie is living with her sister in New York, Quentin will be obsessed with her and she will never be able to win him away from her. Hannah points out some of the flaws with this plan, and indeed the episode ends with Quentin, under the influence of the spell, about to stab Angelique.
Maggie’s portrait arrives from Paris. This mirrors the arrival of the portrait of the gracious Josette from Paris in #402. Unfortunately, this portrait is far inferior, not only to the portrait of Josette, but to most of the paintings that decorate the set, including the portrait of Angelique Stokes Collins that is one of the major props in the current segment. It looks like it was done by some photo-transfer process. I think Dan Curtis Productions probably just overspent on the portrait of the first Mrs Quentin Collins, but it makes it look like Quentin didn’t care enough about Maggie to hire a real artist to paint her.
Vampire Barnabas Collins has crossed over from the main continuity. Today he runs into strange and troubled teen Daniel Collins, who suspects something is wrong with him and is about to go report to Quentin. Barnabas does a “Look into my eyes!” and makes him forget they met. There are a couple of infelicities with that scene. We see Barnabas’ reflection in a mirror. The show has made a big point of his inability to cast a reflection, so it’s always awkward when that happens. This one is especially bad, because Barnabas tells Daniel to examine his own reflection in his eye, putting the concept of reflections front and center. They’ve been stressing that we are in a “Mirror Universe” by cramming every vertical surface with mirrors, so we’re going to see Barnabas’ reflection again.
Also, Quentin and others are aware that there is another universe near them, that someone named Barnabas Collins went missing from it recently, and that that Barnabas is under a “terrible curse.” Had Barnabas used the power we saw earlier in the episode and vanished into thin air as soon as Daniel saw him, he could have used that as evidence that he was a different Barnabas. He could explain the vanishing by suggesting that Daniel had glimpsed the other universe just as the portal that allows people to see into it was closing. Since the scene takes place in the very room where the portal is visible, the audience may well have been expecting him to do something like that, and it certainly would have been interesting to see him play it out.
Dark Shadows Commentary 