Episode 759: It’s not our fault, what we are

Dark Shadows‘ first supernatural menace, on the show from December 1966 to March 1967, was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In those days, we learned that at intervals of exactly 100 years Laura incinerated herself and her young son, always a boy named David, and that she (but not the Davids) rose from the ashes as a humanoid Phoenix. Well-meaning governess Victoria Winters led the resistance to Laura.

The story came to its climax as Laura she tried to take her son, Vicki’s charge David Collins, to the fate that had claimed David Stockbridge in 1767, David Radcliffe in 1867, and who knows how many other Davids in the preceding centuries. At the final moment, David Collins ran from the burning shack to which Laura had brought him and found his way to Vicki’s arms. With that, he chose Vicki and life over his mother and death, and Dark Shadows 1.0 reached its conclusion.

Dark Shadows 2.0 picked up immediately after, and focused on another supernatural villain, vampire Barnabas Collins. There isn’t an established mythology for filicidal humanoid Phoenixes, so the writers had leaned heavily on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and on stage and film adaptations of the novel for the structure and details of the Laura story. For example, in many scenes they went out of their way to show that Laura never eats or drinks. They eventually established that Barnabas doesn’t eat or drink either, but when he first came on they had to show that they were not just repeating what they had done so shortly before. So in #221, Barnabas clearly drinks a cup of coffee.

The original plan had apparently been that Barnabas would wreak terror for thirteen weeks while Vicki gradually figured out what was going on, organized a force to do battle with him, and then staked him in #275, destroying him in the last episode the ABC network was likely to air before cancelling the show. But Barnabas brought a new audience with him, prompting ABC to renew for another thirteen weeks. So his destruction had to be postponed indefinitely, and Vicki wound up on the margins of the story. She became Barnabas’ friend and stalwart defender before ultimately disappearing altogether.

Since then, Dark Shadows has been reinvented several times. Version 3.0 ran from November 1967 through March 1968; it was a costume drama set in the 1790s, to which Vicki had been transported by the mysterious powers represented by the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah. Version 4.0 ran from March through November 1968; it was a Monster Mash in which a variety of vampires, Frankensteins, witches, and other refugees from the Universal Studios back catalog stumbled over each other in an ever-more futile search for a coherent plot. Version 5.0 began in November 1968 with two stories revolving around nine year old Amy Jennings. These were the Haunting of Collinwood by the malign ghost of Quentin Collins, who represented a special threat to Amy, and the Werewolf Curse on Amy’s big brother Chris. I don’t know what was in the original flimsies, but I suspect this portion of the show was originally meant to be much shorter than it is and to serve as a prologue to Version 5.0.1, a costume drama set in 1897, when Quentin was alive and the werewolf curse began. It shows signs of having been greatly extended when Quentin’s ghost started to attract a large and fervent fan-base and the producers were unsure whether he could keep that following as a living being.

We finally went back to 1897 in #701, twelve weeks ago. Barnabas, who at the beginning of the Monster Mash period was freed of the effects of the vampire curse, tried to save Amy, Chris, and everyone else at Collinwood by doing some mumbo-jumbo, and found himself transported back in time. Having traveled to the past, he has once again become a vampire.

Among the many people Barnabas has met during his uncertain and frightening journey to the past is another iteration of Laura. It turns out that he remembers her from 1767, when he was a child and she was married to his uncle. She at first accepted his story that he was the great-grandson of the original Barnabas. He was a small boy when she burned that time, and all she can see is that her new acquaintance has a family resemblance to that boy. But he knew that she was planning to incinerate her children, among them the ancestor of the Collinses whom he knows at Collinwood in the 1960s, and he has been flagrantly aggressive in his opposition to her. She has learned that he is a vampire, and has tried to destroy him.

The highlight of today’s episode comes when Laura enters the foyer of the great house and Barnabas pops up to greet her. He calls her Laura Stockbridge, and she begins talking about what he was like as a boy. She refers to their similarity, implying that she is herself a type of vampire. She tells him he shouldn’t oppose her, and he says that he would want her to stop him if he were about to do what she is planning. She says that he cannot know what her plans are. He assures her he does know, and she lists all the people with whom he may have discussed her, dismissing each in turn as an unreliable source. Barnabas keeps smiling. For a thrilling moment, we wonder if his key informant was Vicki. Perhaps she told him about her encounter with the Laura of 1966-1967, and he knows everything she figured out in those days.

Hello, Auntie! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Alas, it is not so. Barnabas opens a door and reveals the slumped figure of Laura’s dimwitted thrall Dirk. Earlier Barnabas, in bat form, had attached Dirk to prevent him bringing a letter to the house that would have exposed Barnabas’ secret. Barnabas tells Laura he hasn’t killed Dirk, merely bitten him and questioned him. In the first two-thirds of the episode, Dirk, played by the always-regrettable Roger Davis, kept grabbing Laura and pawing at her; at one point Diana Millay does an adroit little judo move to block his hand before he can put it on her left breast. As a result of these scenes and countless others in which Mr Davis engaged in similar behavior, many in the audience will groan with disappointment when Barnabas says that Dirk is not dead.

Millay and Jonathan Frid are wonderful in this scene. Laura’s lines are perfectly suited to display Millay’s gift for subtle emotional transitions, and Frid’s delivery shows what he can do when he has time to learn his part and the lines do not require him to verbalize the character’s every thought. Mr Davis is also well within his range, playing as he does an unconscious and apparently dead body. He should have specialized in that, it’s the first thing we’ve seen him do really well in all of his many appearances on the show.

Episode 758: Strangled on her stories

Undead blonde fire witches Laura and Angelique are trying to destroy each other, using Laura’s son Jamison and Jamison’s uncle Quentin as their cat’s paws. At the beginning of the episode, it looks like the spell Angelique and Quentin are casting is about to incinerate Laura; at the end, it looks like the spell Laura is casting is incinerating Angelique. In between, Quentin’s sister Judith notices that something is wrong with Jamison, and suspects that whatever Quentin and Angelique are up to is the cause.

Quentin and Laura get all religioused-up asking the gods of ancient Egypt to help them against Laura. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Laura is just about out of story, so we can see that she will be leaving the show soon. She has important relationships to all the characters on the show right now, so her departure will kick this segment of Dark Shadows, a costume drama set in the year 1897, into a new phase. Today’s episode is too deeply involved with the back and forth in the battle of the witches to give much indication as to what that next phase will be, but Judith’s perceptiveness suggests that whatever it is will keep up the rapid pace set in the first twelve weeks of the flashback, unencumbered by characters who slow things down by refusing to face facts.

Longtime viewers will be intrigued by variations on some familiar themes. Angelique orders Quentin to bring her a mirror and then leave the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Obviously she is going to use it to cast a spell that will protect her from Laura, but she refuses to tell Quentin the particulars. We know well how powerful reflections are in the universe of Dark Shadows; Wallace McBride of the Collinsport Historical Society made some very penetrating observations about how that motif was already in place in episode #1 in his 18 April 2020 post on that treasured, but now only intermittently available, site.

Later, Laura is in the drawing room at the great house on the estate about to tell Judith the secret of the mysterious Barnabas Collins, but Angelique enters, makes googly eyes at Laura, and thereby robs her of the power to speak. When the show had its first séance in #170 and #171, it was held in this room and another iteration of Laura was in attendance. It was that Laura who looked at the medium with bulging eyes when she began to speak, and that medium struggled to speak just as Laura does now. So today we see the tables turned on Laura.

Quentin and Angelique are alone for a moment in the foyer of the great house. He backs her against the portrait of Barnabas that hangs there and asks why she prefers Barnabas to him. That is a question that will have occurred to the audience. The two of them look great together and have a lot of fun together, while Barnabas hates Angelique. All she does is kill his family and friends to punish him for refusing to love her. She brushes Quentin off and orders him to go back to the Old House.

In the final scene, Quentin returns to the Old House and is baffled to find that Angelique not only got there before him, but that she has had time to play a long game of solitaire since returning from the great house. She dismisses his questions and tells him that she wants him to be with her when “it happens.” Before he can find the words to ask what she is expecting, she bursts into flames.

It seems that Angelique is in two places at once. More precisely, it seems that there are two of her, one that Quentin left in the great house, and another who was in the Old House all along waiting to be incinerated by Laura’s spells. Presumably the one in the Old House is a Doppelgänger that Angelique used the mirror to create. Nowadays, the idea of a home-made Doppelgänger fabricated to serve a specific purpose will remind many people of the 2017 season of Twin Peaks, with its concept of a “tulpa.” The Buddhist concept of the tulpa was indeed in circulation in the USA in the 1960s; Annie Besant had introduced it to the Theosophist movement, which had many followers in the Midwest, where writer Sam Hall was born. But Besant and her fans seem to have used the word in a sense closer to its original, in which people attaining Buddha-hood have the power to send copies of themselves back into the world to teach others pursuing enlightenment. Later heirs of Theosophy have tried to develop a non-Buddhist meaning for the word tulpa, but using it to refer to a lookalike that some practitioner of black magic can whip up to do a job appears to be the intellectual property of Lynch/ Frost Productions.

Be that as it may, we have seen ever since Laura was first on the show from December 1966 to March 1967 that each of the supernatural beings on Dark Shadows is a complex of related but independent phenomena, some of which may work at cross-purposes with each other. Angelique in particular seems to create another version of herself and send it out into the world each time she casts a spell. Since others of Angelique’s creatures have gone on to defy her, even trying to kill her, it must have come as a relief to know that this time the Doppelgänger would be going up in flames by nightfall.

Episode 757: All of them witches

Undead blonde fire witch Laura is in the act of driving a stake into the heart of vampire Barnabas when she is interrupted by another undead blonde fire witch, Angelique. Angelique announces that she will always be there to thwart any attempt to stake Barnabas, which rather tends to deflate the suspense inherent in having a protagonist who is a vampire. The two of them exchange threats, and Laura finds that she can hold Angelique at bay by generating the right kind of fire.

Laura leaves Barnabas’ house. His unwilling sidekick, thoroughly human witch Magda, sees her and asks what she was doing there. Laura does not answer, but Angelique enters and tells her. Angelique says that Barnabas would doubtless wreak a terrible vengeance if he found out what had happened while Magda was away. Angelique orders Magda to go to the great house of Collinwood and fetch a fourth witch, black magic enthusiast Quentin. Magda complies reluctantly.

Quentin is falling down drunk, which is not unusual. He has a better excuse than he typically does, however, since he just found out that Magda turned him into a werewolf. He is furious to see her. He says that no matter what she thinks, he will not “lie down and die!” This elicits a laugh from Magda, who points out that he can barely stand up. She tells him that Angelique has ordered him to come to Barnabas’ house, and that he cannot oppose her.

In the house, Angelique tells Quentin he must help her defend Barnabas from Laura. Quentin moans that he is in no condition to help anyone, which only makes Angelique impatient. Unlike her and Magda, Quentin does not know that Barnabas is a vampire, so Angelique keeps reminding herself to say that Barnabas has gone away for the day and that Laura will be a threat to him when he comes back tonight. Quentin tells Angelique about a trinket Laura received from some of the gods of ancient Egypt that keeps her alive, and she sends Magda to steal it from her.

Magda goes to Laura’s cottage. Magda tells Laura that she has more reason to hate Barnabas than she does, since Barnabas enslaved her husband Sandor. She wants Barnabas to be destroyed, but if Laura tells the authorities about him Sandor, too, will be killed. The dramatic date is 1897, and the state of Maine abolished the death penalty in 1887, so Magda is afraid of an extrajudicial killing rather than an execution for complicity in Barnabas’ murders.

Laura tells her that it is necessary to expose Barnabas if he is to be destroyed, but Magda tells her of another way. She says that vampires can be killed by silver bullets through the heart. Laura goes to get money for Magda to buy silver and have it made into bullets. While she is out of the room, Magda steals the trinket. It seems that Magda has given herself a chance to get rid of both Laura and Barnabas.

Once Angelique has the trinket, she tells Quentin that he will have to perform a ceremony using his copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. He is still heavily hungover and balks at the orders, but she gives him no choice. Once he starts his incantation, he breaks into a big smile, clasps the book to his chest, and preaches the phrases like a megachurch pastor when the collection plates are circulating. We cut to Angelique. Her expression is so admiring it is hard to tell whether the reaction is the character’s or the actress’. Angelique does some mumbo-jumbo with objects in the fireplace.

In her cottage, Laura struggles. She looks frantically for the trinket, then prays to Amun-Ra. The final shot of her is filtered to distort her image. It turns her eyes into little black coals, which is an effective visual metaphor.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Laura has been important in the history of the show and is key to this little period of the plot, but it is fairly clear that she is a short-timer now. All she cares about is taking her children away and burning them to death so that she can renew her own existence, and she keeps saying she is on a tight deadline for that project. We can be sure she won’t succeed, and even if she does she will be off the show. So she really could die, making the cliffhanger more suspenseful than usual.

Soaps classically divided the days of the week so that very little happened on Tuesday or Wednesday, Thursdays were devoted to plot mechanics setting up a big development, Fridays would show that big development and end with a memorable cliffhanger, and Mondays would resolve the cliffhanger and give a lot of recap to bring new viewers up to speed. Dark Shadows never followed this formula. These last three episodes are a case in point. #755 was all about Laura trying and failing to figure out whether Barnabas was a vampire. That was a mid-week throwaway if ever there was one, but it aired on a Friday. Yesterday she got confirmation that he was, and we ended with a fine cliffhanger with her holding the stake and mallet beside Barnabas’ open coffin. That aired on Monday, but was a perfect Thursday scene-setter. Today, a Tuesday, we have a whiz-bang battle of the witches, with new alignments and new dangers, a great Friday climax with a cliffhanger fitting for the end of any week.

Violet Welles was far and away the best writer of dialogue on Dark Shadows, and today’s script is so full of gems that even the plot summary on the Dark Shadows wiki is full of quotes. I can hardly blame the editor for that deviation from the usual format, there is so much good stuff I would have been tempted to transcribe the entire script if someone else had not already done so.

Episode 756: A bizarre activity for a beautiful woman

Undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins realizes that Barnabas Collins is a vampire, and that when he was alive he was the “strange, dreamy boy with sad eyes” she was fond of in the 1760s, when she was married to his uncle. Laura and Barnabas confront each other in a graveyard at the beginning of the episode; she tells him he is not human. He passes up the opportunity to reply “So few people are, these days.” At the end of the episode, Laura and her witless henchman Dirk let themselves into Barnabas’ house after dawn. She has a mallet and stake, he has a pistol to ensure no one interferes.

It means something to longtime viewers that we end today with Laura poised to destroy Barnabas. It was Laura who cleared the way for Barnabas’ first introduction. She was the show’s first supernatural menace when she was on from December 1966 to March 1967, and her story was structured very much like Bram Stoker’s Dracula. That was successful enough that the following month they introduced Barnabas as Dracula Mark II. That Laura knew Barnabas in the 1760s when she was already what she is and he was still a boy also nods to this history.

Laura went up in smoke in March 1967, when the show took place in a contemporary setting, and reappeared in April 1969, when it was a costume drama set in 1897. In the interval, Dark Shadows changed from a slow-paced, moody Gothic drama meant for an audience largely consisting of people who were fans of Joan Bennett’s in the 1930’s to a slam-bang supernatural thriller with a huge following among preteens. In her first tour as Laura, Diana Millay could focus on her strengths in dry comedy and subtle psychological drama. This time around, she recognizes the new demographic and plays Laura like a villain on Batman. At times it seems odd that Dirk isn’t wearing a jumpsuit with his name stenciled on it.

Perhaps when she hits the stake with the mallet, the word “Whack!” will be printed in a bubble on the screen. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, Barnabas materializes inside a classroom at a school where Laura’s nine-year old daughter Nora is alone. Nora tells Barnabas that she is not happy at the school and that she and her twelve year old brother Jamison want to leave with their mother. Barnabas tells her to “Look into my eyes!” and he puts the zap on her. When he is done, he tells her that their conversation will be their secret. She smiles, looks directly into the camera, and tells the audience “I like secrets!” Denise Nickerson had a talent for delivering lines to the camera, and ever since she joined the show in November 1968 they’ve had her do that quite often. Rather too often, I’m sorry to say- it can chill the audience to see a character who is so disconnected from everyone else that they just start talking to us if the effect is used sparingly, but they have her do it so frequently that it has lost its force by now.

Nora and Jamison’s school is a miserable place, less a center of learning than a dungeon where the sadistic Rev’d Gregory Trask gleefully inflicts unwarranted and cruel punishments on both children and teachers. Trask’s daughter Charity is a member of the faculty, and since #727 she has also been Barnabas’ blood thrall. In #753, we saw Charity acting as her father’s second in command at the school, enforcing a particularly vicious sanction against Jamison. It did not then seem that her subjection to Barnabas had modified her role in her father’s operation at all.

When Charity enters and finds Barnabas with Nora, her two enslavements come into conflict. Barnabas tells her that Laura will be coming to the school to see Nora soon, and orders her to let her in. Charity is very confused and starts talking about her father and his rules. Barnabas bites her, leaving her more tranquil but quite weak.

Laura knocks on the door. Charity finds that Barnabas has vanished, and lets her in. She demands to see Nora, saying that she will take her away. Charity says that no relatives are allowed to visit the children at night, and that she will need permission from others to allow Laura to take Nora. Laura insists, and eventually Charity complies. She sends Nora down, and brings her packed suitcase. But Nora has told her mother that she does not want to go. We saw in 1967 that Laura’s children must go with her willingly if she is to perform her evil mission, and so she has to yield. She looks at the collar Charity has drawn up to cover her neck, and says that she will not tell her father that two of Nora’s relatives have visited her tonight.

Some of the actors have trouble with the names “Laura” and “Nora” today. It really was a mistake to give Nickerson’s character a name that rhymes with “Laura.” In #354, set in 1967, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard told her daughter Carolyn that “Aunt Catherine” would be overjoyed to host her in her home in Boston, and that this never-before mentioned aunt gives wonderful parties attended by men Carolyn’s own age. Catherine cannot have been Elizabeth’s sister or a member of Carolyn’s father’s family; she must be Elizabeth’s own aunt. Nora is the only one of Elizabeth’s aunts we ever hear about, and she would have been 79 in 1967. As a grande dame of Boston society, she might still have been giving big parties featuring people of all ages, and so naming the character “Catherine” would have closed that loop.

It would also have opened the door for another story to add some action to the rather slow period leading up to the 1897 flashback. Aunt Catherine could have come to Collinwood from Boston in 1969 and met the evil ghost of the roguish Quentin Collins. Recognizing her favorite uncle but knowing that he came to a dark and mysterious end, that would have set up a confrontation that might have led to an enigmatic conclusion. Quentin killed other adults who knew about him, but his relationship with Catherine would have made it maladroit to bring their encounter to so straightforward a climax. Better to have her disappear inexplicably. That disappearance would be followed by signs that the disturbances in the house had suddenly grown far more dangerous. We would wonder if Catherine had joined with Quentin as another evil spirit, or if the two of them were doing battle in some unseen realm and inflicting collateral damage in the world of the living.

I have an idea who they should have cast as Aunt Catherine. Isabella Hoopes played dying matriarch Edith Collins at the beginning of the 1897 segment, and she was great fun. Had we been introduced to Hoopes as the spry and sophisticated Aunt Catherine, her turn as Edith would have been even richer. When Quentin chokes and threatens to kill Edith, we would try to read their interaction as a clue to what happened between him and Catherine before her disappearance. When Edith haunts Quentin after her death, we would look for clues as to what happened to Catherine after her disappearance. And of course Nickerson’s role as Catherine’s younger self would have gained another dimension, not only as we watch her interactions with Quentin, but also as we compare her personality at the age of nine to that of the octogenarian we had met previously.

I even have some dialogue Catherine could have exchanged with the Collinses of 1969:

Catherine: Roger, I hear you have married again. Will you present me to your wife this time? I must admit I took it rather personally that I could never meet Laura.

Roger: I’m sorry, Aunt Catherine. Cassandra and I have already gone our separate ways.

Catherine: Oh, I’m the one who should be sorry- it was tactless of me not to know… We Collinses have never have had much luck in marriage, have we?

Elizabeth: You and Uncle Ambrose were happy.

Catherine: Yes. Happy… But there wasn’t much luck to that. After all, he was my fourth husband and I was his third wife. We simply applied the lessons of experience.

Carolyn: So there is hope. After your disappointments, you found your grand passion.

Catherine (a look of frank disbelief on her face): Not exactly. (Pause.) Carolyn, your mother told me some time ago you were the one involved in a grand passion. His name is- what- Bud?

Carolyn: Buzz?

Catherine: Yes, Buzz. I should have remembered that, I once knew a Navy flyer who went by that name. If your Uncle Roger won’t be introducing me to anyone, will you at least present me to Buzz?

Carolyn: Oh, it ended between me and Buzz some time back. He’s left town.

Catherine: Ah, too bad. I’d have liked to meet another Buzz, the one I knew was so elegant.

Elizabeth: This one was hardly elegant. He rode a motorcycle, and that was his whole life. He always wore leather clothing and dark glasses, with a long beard and a ragged mop of hair. You never saw the like, Aunt Catherine.

Catherine: On the contrary, I have seen the like every often. Just such men make up your cousin William’s preferred milieu.

Carolyn (laughing): I once told mother I was going to marry Buzz, but that was an empty threat. Buzz isn’t the sort of man who really wants a wife.

Catherine: Neither is William.

(Elizabeth, Roger, and Carolyn fall silent. After a moment, they all start talking at once.)

Elizabeth: Have you seen-

Roger: How is old Mr-

Carolyn: Was your trip-

(They fall silent again. Another awkward pause ensues.)

Elizabeth: Do you know that there is another Collins at Collinwood?

Catherine: Oh?

Elizabeth: Yes, a distant cousin of ours, from England. His name is Barnabas Collins.

Catherine (furrows her brow): Barnabas Collins? Named for the man in the foyer?

Elizabeth: Yes, the portrait is of his ancestor.

Catherine: How odd. When I was a girl, I asked the old people around here about all of the portraits. They were happy to go on at length about all the others, but they were always tongue-tied when we got to that one. Left me with the impression there was something exceptionally sinister about it, or about the man. Of course that only piqued my curiosity.

Carolyn (suddenly defensive): There is certainly nothing sinister about our Barnabas!

Catherine: Nothing sinister? Are you sure he is a Collins?

(Roger and Elizabeth chuckle, Carolyn flushes.)

Elizabeth: Oh, he is a Collins, all right. He’s quite an expert on the family’s past. I’m sure the two of you would have a great deal to talk about.

Catherine: I’m sure. But I would rather choose another topic. At my age I can’t forget that I will soon be part of the past. I would like to keep my eyes on the future while I still have one.

This scene would have left longtime viewers with some suspense-generating questions. Why did Roger’s wife Laura go out of her way to avoid Catherine? Who were the “old people” at Collinwood in Catherine’s childhood? What did they know about Barnabas? Further, Laura and Buzz were so emblematic of two of the early phases of Dark Shadows that involving Catherine in a conversation referring to both of them would promise that she will be woven in with the whole narrative structure of the show.

Moreover, seeing a Collins who had spent decades far from Collinwood might give us a fresh perspective on the main characters. We see only those whose minds and hearts have been deformed by the many curses that loom over the estate. Meeting one who has been outside their influence for so long would suggest what it has cost the others to stay on the estate. We might then feel anew the tragedy that we have been taking for granted.

Episode 755: So many strange habits

Every character we see today is a trespasser at the great estate of Collinwood. Libertine Quentin Collins was banished from Collinwood the year before by his grandmother Edith, but came back shortly before Edith died and left the estate to his sister Judith. He then accepted $10,000 from Judith on condition that he would leave, but he did not keep his end of the bargain. Judith is too afraid of scandal to take Quentin to court for an eviction order, so he’s still living in his old room.

Judith fired maidservant Beth Chavez the other day. Beth never did leave, and now the family has given up and started giving her orders again.

Quentin and Judith’s distant cousin Barnabas was ordered to leave Collinwood forever by his father Joshua. That took place almost a hundred years before. Barnabas then became a vampire. Now he’s back, masquerading as his own imaginary great-grandson.

Quentin and Judith’s brother Edward is estranged from his wife Laura. Quentin and Laura had an affair, and she followed Quentin to Egypt upon his banishment. When she came back to Collinwood several weeks ago, Edward ordered her to leave. She threatened to make a scandal, and he caved in, agreeing to let her stay in the groundskeeper’s cottage on the property. Today she is in the great house, and Beth tells her that she has orders from Judith and Edward that she is to see to it that she leaves the house and does not come back. They quarrel, and Beth leaves her in the drawing room. Later, Laura comes back to the house and demands Beth let her back in the drawing room, and for some reason Beth feels she must comply.

The only person we see who has a legitimate reason to be in the great house is servant Dirk Wilkins. Dirk has been bewitched by Laura and now is her cat’s paw. She orders him to let himself into the Old House on the estate, where Barnabas is staying, and to steal any papers that might shed light on Barnabas. Dirk and Laura certainly know that neither Judith nor Barnabas would want them to do this, so Dirk winds up not only as a trespasser in that house, but as a burglar there.

The end of the episode takes us to an old graveyard for an even more egregious example of trespass. Dirk found an old document written by the late Ben Stokes confirming that Barnabas has a secret, but ending with Ben’s vow to take that secret “to the grave.” Laura takes this expression literally, and orders Dirk to dig up Ben’s grave. Sure enough, they find more papers hidden in the coffin.

Here it is, the secret he took to the grave! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Diana Millay was a fine actress, capable of subtle psychological drama and unsurpassed at dry comedy. But her delivery of today’s opening voiceover is stunningly bad. Between her first tour of duty as Laura in December 1966-March 1967 and her current run, Dark Shadows changed from a Gothic drama aimed at adults to a supernatural thriller popular among preteens. This left little room for what she did best. She may well have been frustrated by the new situation. If so, that frustration might show in her decision to deliver the summary of the plot so far as if she were a nursery school teacher reading to a group of groggy three year olds.

Episode 754: A place with special people

Twelve year old Jamison Collins has run away from the unspeakably horrible boarding school where he has been imprisoned, and erstwhile lady’s maid Beth Chavez thinks he might be in the woods on the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood. Beth knows that her boyfriend, Jamison’s uncle Quentin, is in those woods. She also knows that Quentin is a werewolf, so she has gone out with a gun to protect Jamison from him. She does not know that the gun will stop a werewolf only if it fires silver bullets, so she is in trouble when she comes face to face with Quentin in his lupine form.

Luckily for Beth, Jamison’s father, the stuffy Edward, and his distant cousin, the mysterious and recently arrived Barnabas, happen by. They distract the werewolf, and Barnabas beats him with the silver head of his cane. The werewolf runs off, and Barnabas gives chase. Edward calls him back. Edward tells Barnabas he will need a gun to fight the werewolf, and Barnabas replies that the head of the cane will be enough. Edward demurs, saying that will work only once. Barnabas can’t very well tell the quotidian Edward that silver is the only weapon that is effective against werewolves, still less that he learned this while fighting a werewolf in the year 1969 and that he has traveled back in time to 1897 to stop the werewolf curse at its origin. Even if he somehow convinced Edward of this lunatic story, he would only increase the likelihood that a further uncanny truth would be revealed, namely that he himself is a vampire. So Barnabas helps Edward carry Beth back to the great house on the estate.

There, Barnabas decides that Jamison has probably gone to visit his mother Laura, who is staying in the groundskeeper’s cottage due to her estrangement from Edward. Indeed, we have seen Jamison there, talking with Laura about going away from Collinwood with her. Barnabas suspects what the audience is in a position to know, that Laura is an undead blonde fire witch who periodically incinerates herself and her children so that she, but not they, may rise and live again as a humanoid Phoenix. Another iteration of Laura was on Dark Shadows from December 1966 to March 1967, when the show took place in a contemporary setting. When Laura tells Jamison about the place to which she will take him, longtime viewers will hear echoes of what that other Laura told her son David in #140 about a land that “some call Paradise.”

A bat squeaks outside the window of the cottage, and Barnabas materializes inside. They haven’t tried this effect in quite a while. When they did it in #341, they superimposed the image of Barnabas in the wrong place on the screen, so that he looked like he was about four feet tall. That Mini-Bar was not very intimidating. But they get it right this time, and it makes for an effective moment.

Barnabas materializes inside the cottage. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Laura emerges from the bedroom, and is indignant to see Barnabas. He bluntly tells her that he knows she is a mortal threat to her children, Jamison and his sister Nora. He tells her he will take them from her. She says she is sure that he is capable of “tricks,” but says that she has some of her own. She causes him to suffer intense heat. He recovers, and a groggy Jamison comes staggering out of the bedroom. Barnabas grabs Jamison and sets out for the great house. When Laura again mentions her “tricks,” he replies menacingly that “You have not known mine!” Laura vows to have her revenge.

The original 1966-1967 Laura story was the first plot on Dark Shadows to be driven by a supernatural character from beginning to end, and it did involve some confrontations between Laura and the ghost of the gracious Josette. But it was nearly as slow-paced, understated, and heavily atmospheric as were the relatively naturalistic stories that preceded it. That other Laura was the right menace for a show like that. She did not come with the established imagery of familiar movie monsters like vampires and werewolves, nor was there any reason to expect her to generate a lot of violent confrontations or special effects. Despite her association with fire, Laura was a cool presence on screen. She fit with a sedate tone and appealed to an adult audience interested in the long arcs of character development. When the 1897 Laura zaps a vampire who himself just fought a werewolf, there is no coolness anywhere. The show is meant primarily for children now, and they want the heat action and imagery generate when they are packed tight into each minute. Diana Millay is certainly up to the job, though it is a shame she doesn’t have the same opportunities she had in early 1967 to display her gifts for dry comedy and subtle psychological drama.

Episode 753: Each and every one of us is doomed

Before Dark Shadows became a costume drama set in 1897, we learned about a number of things erstwhile lady’s maid Beth Chavez had done in that year, none of which she has yet had a chance to do. So when yesterday’s cliffhanger left Beth alone in a small room with her boyfriend Quentin Collins after he had turned into a werewolf, we could be fairly sure she would somehow escape. In today’s opening teaser, we see that she stumbles into the middle of a pentagram that was chalked onto a rug as part of an abortive effort to contain Quentin’s lycanthropy. The werewolf paws at the space above the pentagram, but cannot enter it. As a stunt performer, Alex Stevens must have had considerable occasion to practice miming, but I guess there’s only so much you can do with the old “I’m trapped in an invisible box!” routine. He gives up, goes to the door, turns the knob, and leaves.

After this comic start, the episode turns to the grimmest story they have going. Twelve year old Jamison Collins has been sent to a boarding school that the overwhelmingly evil Rev’d Gregory Trask operates as a dungeon for the torment of children and teachers alike. Jamison has been confined to a closet and kept on a diet of bread and water until he confesses to offenses Trask knows full well he did not commit. The closet adjoins the classroom where teacher Tim Shaw works. Trask’s daughter Charity, temporarily in charge of the school in her father’s absence, sees Tim in the room with some papers; she offers to help him grade them, but he says he needs to go through them himself to judge the students’ progress. When she leaves him there, he smuggles food to Jamison.

Charity catches on, and gives Jamison her father’s “favorite book of meditations” to read while in confinement. She tells him he will have “ample time to browse through it” before her father returns and decrees his additional punishment in the morning. Since the book is about 8 inches thick, it must be in very large print. It is a bit difficult to imagine speed-reading a book of meditations. (“Meditate faster!”)

Charity gives Jamison something to read during the night.

In fact, the book is so thick Jamison can use it as a step to reach a window through which he escapes. Charity is distraught when she realizes that he is gone, and Tim is gleeful to see that he used Trask’s Big Book o’ Meditations to get away.

Charity assumes that Jamison has run back home to the great house of Collinwood. She orders Tim to accompany her there. Beth lets them in and tells them she hasn’t seen Jamison. In her imperious manner, Charity demands that Beth let them search the house, and dismisses out of hand her reply that she does not have the authority to permit such a thing.

In fact, Jamison did come to the house, and Beth is covering for him. He knows the place well enough that even if Charity did have free rein to search for him she probably wouldn’t find him. Jamison went into the drawing room when Charity and Tim came. Charity insists Beth let them into the drawing room. She is disappointed that Jamison isn’t there, and says he must have gone out the window. Regular viewers know that there is a secret passage leading from the drawing room to the west wing, and that the west wing has a myriad of hiding places.

Evidently Beth is unaware of that passage, because she seems to believe Charity is right. She is afraid that Jamison is in the woods, where she knows the werewolf is roaming, and once Charity and Tim have left she goes out there with a gun. Again, those who have been watching the show know something Beth does not, that the gun is formidable to the werewolf only if it is loaded with silver bullets. When she finds the werewolf and points the gun at him, we again come to a cliffhanger ending that leaves Beth’s life in jeopardy.

Episode 752: Matters other than the law

Libertine Quentin Collins murdered his wife Jenny the other day, shortly after he learned that she was the sister of broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi. Since Quentin is convinced that Magda has magical powers, this would seem to suggest a low degree of impulse control on his part.

Magda did place a curse on Quentin, and she refuses to tell him what it is. Last night he doubled over in pain, lost consciousness, and disappeared from the great house on the estate of Collinwood. This morning he has shown up in the foyer, flat on his back, his clothing in shreds and blood all over him. His girlfriend, Jenny’s former maid Beth, found him and helped him to his room. Neither of them can figure out what happened to him overnight.

Meanwhile, Collins family attorney Evan Hanley has come to meet with Quentin’s sister Judith, who owns the estate and the Collins family’s businesses. Judith is enraged that Quentin took $10,000 from her in return for signing an agreement to leave the house and never come back, but has refused either to leave or to return the money. Evan assures Judith he will take care of the matter at once. While he is still in the drawing room, Judith answers the telephone. She learns that a young woman named Dorcas Trilling was brutally killed on the estate the night before, her body ripped apart as if by a wild animal of some kind.

Unknown to Judith, Evan and Quentin are members of a Satanist coven. Evan does call on Quentin and Beth in Quentin’s room, and he does deliver Judith’s message. He and Quentin both ask Beth to leave so they can discuss another matter. At first she resists, but finally she does go. Quentin tells him what happened the night before and that he believes Magda has cursed him. Evan sees the bloody clothing in a pile on the floor, and his face shows a grim surmise. Nonetheless, he does not tell Quentin about Dorcas.

Quentin asks Evan to help him with Magda. Evan says that he will do so, but cautions Quentin that his help will come at a very high price. Quentin asks what happened to their friendship. Evan tells him that “There is no such thing as a friend” and laughs. That must come as quite a nasty shock to Quentin. You spend time with a fellow conjuring up demons, forging wills, and working together to impoverish half your family and kill the other half, and you think you mean something to each other. But no, it just isn’t that way with Evan.

Evan calls on Magda at the Old House on the estate. Magda is coy and does not tell him anything he does not already know, but he does notice that she is wearing a pendant in the form of a pentagram. She says it is just a bit of Romani jewelry, worth only a few cents. He offers her a hundred dollars for it. She refuses, saying that it was a gift from her late mother, and offers to show him other pieces of the same type. Evan tells her that he knows the pentagram can protect against many supernatural menaces, and asks which one she is guarding against at the moment. She keeps mum.

Back in Quentin’s room, Evan chalks a pentagram all over his rug. He tells Quentin and Beth that at nightfall, they must set two black candles burning, one in each of two points of the pentagram, and Quentin must take up a position in the center of the pentagram. He must not move from this spot until daybreak.

The year is 1897, and the first vacuum cleaner wasn’t invented until 1901. It’s going to be quite a job to clean that rug. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin is having an anxiety attack, and refuses to cooperate with Evan’s plan. This is consistent with his character as we have seen it so far. In #710, he and Evan summoned a creature to rise from Hell and smite one of their enemies, and when a form actually started to take shape, he panicked and tried to run away. Quentin is obsessed with black magic and the occult, but when it turns out there is something to all of his spells and incantations, he cannot bring himself to face the reality of it.

Quentin declares that he wants a plan that “makes sense.” He then says they have to kill Magda. Evan replies that that is the worst thing they could possibly do. If they kill Magda, there will never be any way to lift the curse.

Later that night, Beth and Quentin are still in the room. The pains come on Quentin again. She hurriedly picks up the chalk and redraws the parts pentagram that Quentin had smudged, then sets a chair in the middle. She tries to get Quentin into that chair, but he is unable to get himself onto the seat. She turns to look for the black candles, then hears snarling and growling. She turns to the spot off camera where Quentin is, and reacts with horror. We know that Quentin is a werewolf; now she knows it, too. As the closing credits roll, it does not seem likely that she will have much chance to make use of that knowledge.

Episode 751: Your most concerned friend

Libertine Quentin Collins presents himself as maidservant Beth Chavez’ great love. He wants her to run away with him and make a new life together, and to do so right now, before the curse he brought upon himself by murdering his wife in front of Beth kicks in. She is inclined to go along with him, but he collapses in agony before they can leave her room.

Teacher Dorcas Trilling presents herself as the most faithful devotee of the Rev’d Gregory Trask, keeper of a brutal dungeon for children disguised as a boarding school called Worthington Hall. Dorcas asks Trask why he keeps her disobedient colleague Rachel Drummond on the faculty. Trask tells Dorcas that he thinks of Rachel as a thorn in his flesh. She stirs up his basest impulses. Regular viewers know how true this is- in their scenes together, Trask has not only extorted Rachel to come to work for him, but has repeatedly made it clear that he wants to force her into a sexual relationship as well. But the base impulse he admits to in his conversation with Dorcas is anger at Rachel’s wickedness. He says that he keeps her around as a way of building his resistance to the sin of wrath. Dorcas takes the bait, and declares that it makes her admire Trask all the more.

Dorcas looks at Trask with love in her eyes. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Rachel presents herself as the protector of twelve year old Jamison Collins, heir presumptive to spinster Judith Collins as the owner of the great estate of Collinwood and the Collins family’s business enterprises. She slips out of Worthington Hall, which is currently operating from a house on the estate, in order to tell Judith that Trask has falsely accused Jamison of academic misconduct and is refusing to feed him until he confesses. As it happens, Trask confirmed to Dorcas that this is true, and said that by forcing Jamison to confess to something he did not do he will teach him humility. Dorcas is so far gone that this admission of loathsome injustice adds further to her admiration for Trask.

Beth presents herself as Quentin’s representative in a telephone call to the doctor. When she finds that the doctor is out, she urges his assistant to call back as soon as possible. She is about to go back to check on Quentin when Rachel comes to the great house looking for Judith or for Jamison’s father Edward. Beth tells her that they are out, and that there is an extreme emergency in progress. Rachel accompanies her to the room. They find that it is in a shambles and Quentin is gone. They return to the foyer, where the telephone rings. Beth is disappointed it is not the doctor. It is Trask, and he asks to speak to Rachel. Beth hands her the telephone.

Trask presents himself to Rachel as her “most concerned friend.” He also reminds her of his threat to frame her on charges of theft and murder, and demands she return to the school at once. As she has done before, she crumbles and rushes off. Beth watches her go with puzzlement, as others have done on those previous occasions.

Dorcas presents herself as a spy and enforcer for Trask. After Trask tells Rachel he has docked her a week’s pay for trying to feed Jamison against his orders, Rachel catches Dorcas listening at the door. Rachel leaves the room after their confrontation. We see Dorcas alone for a moment, then hear a window breaking and see her horrified reaction. We hear growling and snarling. Rachel comes in, Trask follows, and they see Dorcas’ mangled corpse. Returning viewers know that Quentin’s curse is that he has become a werewolf. Dorcas is his first victim.

Dorcas is played by Gail Strickland, who went on to have a huge career on TV in the 1970s and 1980s. Miss Strickland is a fine actress, and it is a terrible shame she wasn’t on the show more. Terrayne Crawford, who plays Beth, is good today, but she could really only project one emotion at a time. That is a grave weakness in this part of Dark Shadows, when most characters have complex motivations in almost every scene. In Miss Strickland’s hands, several scenes that were flat and tedious due to Miss Crawford’s literalist acting style would have been exciting and nuanced. Beth was originally seen as a ghost who did not speak but made an impression by her stark yet lovely features. Miss Strickland’s looks could have that effect as well as did Miss Crawford’s. Indeed, I suspect she must have attracted the producers’ attention when they were deciding between the two of them for the role of Beth.

As of this writing, every member of today’s cast is still alive. When you’re watching a show and posting about it on the 56th anniversary of its original airdate, that’s an unusual thing to see. I believe it is the first such episode we have come upon.

Episode 750: Hold back the night

Magda at Jenny’s grave. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The name “Magda” was first mentioned on Dark Shadows in #642, broadcast and set in December 1968. At that time, the residents of the great house of Collinwood had noticed unaccountable goings-on, and as they often do they held a séance to appeal to the spirits of the dead for guidance. The spirit they reached in that one identified herself as Magda. She repeated two things- “My curse!” and “He must not return!” Magda said enough to suggest that she had cursed someone and regretted doing so, and that she knew that the Collinses were threatened by the return of someone from her own period, but that was all. Since the Collinses of 1968 had never heard of anyone associated with their house named Magda and could find no record of such a person, those suggestions remained vague and useless to them.

They meant a good deal more to regular viewers. We already knew that the malign ghost of Quentin Collins had appeared in a room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house, that children David Collins and Amy Jennings were falling under the ghost’s influence, and that Quentin lived at Collinwood near the end of the nineteenth century. We therefore assume that Quentin is the one who “must not return!,” and that Magda, whoever she was, must have known Quentin and therefore also have lived sometime in the 1890s.

Among the participants in the séance was Amy’s older brother, mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. Chris broke the séance off before Magda could go into enough detail to help the others. The show had long since established that the person who ends a séance prematurely is the one who harbors a dreadful secret that the voice from beyond might uncover. Even the characters have caught on to this pattern; they treat Chris with suspicion. They do not know what we do, that Chris is a werewolf. So he is indeed under a curse, and we can take it that his curse originated when Magda placed it on one of his ancestors.

Over the next few months, Quentin’s power steadily grew, and at the same time Chris’ periods in his animal form grew longer and more frequent. These two developments moved in such close tandem that we had to suspect that there was some causal relationship between them. This suspicion was reinforced when, in #683, another ghost associated with Quentin, that of a tall, thin, blonde woman named Beth, led Chris to what proved to be the unmarked grave of an infant. That infant was wearing an amulet meant to ward off werewolves. The records of the silversmith who made the amulet showed that it was commissioned and paid for in 1897 by Quentin Collins and Beth Chavez. Thus we learned that a werewolf was active in the area of Collinwood when Beth and Quentin were alive, and that they cared about a baby who died at that time. The logical inference would be that the curse under which Chris labors originated at that time, that Beth and Quentin had something to do with it, and that the baby was related to someone who became one of Chris’ ancestors.

Now, the show has become a costume drama set in 1897. Quentin and Beth are alive. Beth is a maidservant who first came to Collinwood in the train of Quentin’s estranged wife, Jenny. Quentin left Jenny and was banished from the house the previous year; word was put about that Jenny responded to the desertion by going away and leaving no forwarding address. When Quentin returned to Collinwood in #701, he was surprised to find Beth still on staff, and he set to work trying to seduce her.

In #720, Quentin discovered that Jenny had not in fact gone so far away as he and everyone else had been led to believe. She turned up and stabbed him. He then learned that Jenny had become violently insane when he left her and that his sister Judith and brother Edward had responded to her illness by locking her up in a room hidden inside the great house. They kept Beth in their employ because she was the one entrusted to care for Jenny.

Now, Beth has given in to Quentin’s charms. The other night Jenny was hiding in Beth’s room while Beth and Quentin shared a tender moment, and she reacted by coming at them with a knife. Quentin disarmed Jenny, restrained her, and then put his hands around her throat. While Beth pleaded with him to stop, he choked Jenny to death. He keeps protesting that, because Jenny at one point had a knife, this was an act of self defense, but the audience and Beth both saw what happened, and she won’t agree with him any more than we will.

Edward and Judith have decided to shield Quentin from the legal consequences of his actions, and in the village of Collinsport the will of the Collinses supersedes the laws of the state of Maine. But Quentin finds no comfort in his immunity from criminal prosecution. Just hours before he murdered Jenny, Quentin discovered that he knew nothing about her origins. He thought she was some kind of Anglo, but she was passing. She was actually a Romani woman. Her sister is one of the neighbors, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi.

In Wednesday’s episode, Edward convinced Magda the police and courts would do nothing to punish Quentin, and so Magda threatened to place a curse on him to avenge Jenny’s death. Edward, a rational-minded modern man, dismissed Magda’s threat as “words.” But Beth and Quentin know things about the universe they occupy that Edward does not know. When Beth heard Magda’s threat, she looked wide-eyed at Quentin, walked backwards away from him, and ran off. Quentin, who is obsessed with the occult, was immediately terrified, and has been dissolving into a puddle ever since.

Yesterday, Quentin fell into a trap Magda set for him and brought a curse upon himself. Today, Magda stands with her husband Sandor by Jenny’s grave, watches the full Moon rise, and recites an incantation specifying that Quentin’s male descendants will suffer from the same curse he does. So far as Magda knows, Quentin does not yet have any descendants, male or female, and so that proviso is just an abstraction for her.

We know more than Magda does. Not only have returning viewers heard her spirit say that she regrets the curse and been led to the conclusion that it fell on Chris Jennings, but even those who are watching the show for the first time today know that Quentin and Jenny are the parents of twin infants whom Judith is paying a Mrs Fillmore to raise in her home in the village of Collinsport. Mrs Fillmore’s name was first mentioned in #707, and it comes up today when Judith is firing Beth.

Judith explains to Beth that, since Jenny is no longer around, she no longer has any work to do at Collinwood. She indicates her dissatisfaction with Beth, and says that it is only through Edward’s influence that she included a severance payment with her letter of dismissal. Beth mentions her task of taking money to Mrs Fillmore to pay her for taking care of Jenny and Quentin’s children; Judith does not see a need to retain an employee simply to carry an envelope full of cash to the village every now and then.

Beth objects that Judith is terminating her employment because she has become involved with Quentin; Judith takes that as an opportunity to castigate her for the impropriety of that relationship. Joan Bennett plays Judith’s reaction to Beth quite effectively; in a comment on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at Dark Shadows Every Day, “Rev Velveteen” writes:

I wanted to mention a Judith Collins, er, Joan Bennett acting moment I found particularly entertaining here. When she’s giving Beth the boot and the servant attempts to “innocently” inquire as to why she’s being let go, Judith turns around and gives her SUCH a look! Huge eyes, a stifled gasp, then bright pursed lips…Her expression goes from incredulous (Are you freaking KIDDING me?) to amused (Just how stupid does she think we are?) to triumphantly satisfied (Fine, we shall just both play out this little charade and I’ll soon be rid of you.) Her chin goes up as she turns away snarkily-“Let’s just say that now Jenny’s gone, your services are no longer needed,” which everyone on and off screen knows is a total lie. It’s such a sweet piece of work by Ms. Bennett, I need to keep an eye out to see if she repeats that expression because it just sums up the whole character of any Collins she plays when as the perpetual straight man, she’s faced with yet another absurd situation. And is also just stunning in that gorgeous green dress.

Comment left by “Rev Velveteen” at 12:43 am Pacific time, 25 June 2020, on Danny Horn, “Episode 750: Gypsy Ascendant,” 18 October 2015, Dark Shadows Every Day

Yesterday, Judith gave the penniless Quentin $10,000 on condition that he leave Collinwood forever and induce Sandor and Magda to do the same. Quentin had hoped to use the money to bribe them into forgoing Jenny’s vengeance, but they only pretended to take it to lure him into bringing the curse on himself. Magda contemptuously threw the cash at him after he did so.

Quentin has told Judith that Magda took the money and agreed to go. Today, Magda comes to the house to ask for Jenny’s things. Judith starts in with lecture about how she must go at once, since she and Sandor have been paid so well to leave, and Magda reveals that she did not take the money. Enraged at Quentin’s childish lie, Judith demands he return the $10,000. He tells her to sue him, and stalks off. Judith fumes, knowing that she has been cheated and that she cannot assert her rights without creating the public scandal that she fears above all else.

Quentin finds Beth packing Jenny’s things. He tells her he has to leave tonight, and announces that she will be coming with him. She responds in a mild tone that she doesn’t seem to have any say in the matter. She tells Quentin that she has lost her job, and says that she will give him her decision in the afternoon.

Sandor comes for Jenny’s things. Quentin offers him the $10,000 all for himself if he can lift the curse. He says he doesn’t know how. Quentin says he will give it all to him if only he will tell him what form the curse will take. Sandor shakes his head at Quentin’s desperation and says that knowing that would be of no benefit to him.

As night falls, Quentin goes to Beth’s room. She agrees to go with him, but insists on running a personal errand first. Even though she just told him that they have to be honest with each other, she will not tell him what it is. She is still honoring Judith and Edward’s decree that Quentin must not know that Jenny gave birth to his twin children after he left her, and that they are in Mrs Fillmore’s care.

Quentin keeps saying there is no time left to do anything but run. We might wonder why he didn’t stop by Beth’s room earlier. She is on her way out the door when Quentin cries out and collapses in severe pain. Regular viewers recognize Quentin’s pains as the same Chris had when he turned into a werewolf. When we see the rising moon and hear the baying of the hounds, we know who Chris’ forebears are, and why Magda came to regret her curse.