Table of Contents and Episode Guide

I started this site as a collection of links to comments I’d made on other Dark Shadows themed sites, principally Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day and John and Christine Scoleri’s Dark Shadows Before I Die. That version of the site was of no interest to anyone but me, and I made no effort to make it user-friendly.

When I realized the calendar for 2022 was the same as that for 1966, I decided to rewatch each episode of Dark Shadows on the 56th anniversary of its original broadcast. So I watched #1 on Monday, 27 June 2022. At that time my plan was to post any thoughts I might have as comments at the Scoleris’ site, since theirs was the only readily available blog that starts from the beginning and freely allows comments. But they didn’t have the sort of community in their comboxes that had grown in Danny’s during the years he was writing. After I saw that I wasn’t going to get many responses to my remarks there, I decided to start posting here. My eye still on the calendar, I decided to catch up so that my posts would go live on the anniversary, at the time the show premiered in the Eastern Time zone.

Now I’ve attracted a fair number of readers and a handful of faithful commenters. That’s encouraged me to write more substantial posts than the ones I started with, and to do what I can make the site easier to find and to navigate.

Links page. I try to keep these up to date; let me know if any are dead.

Posts, Category 1: Dark Shadows Every Day Comments.
Those link-posts are still there. I find them handy when I’m trying to remember what exactly I said the last time I saw the show, five years ago. If you can find another use for them, you have my congratulations.

Posts, Category 2: Usual Themes.
These are posts that collect multiple comments I left on Danny’s site or the Scoleris dealing with the same topics. There’s a lot of copying and pasting, and typically a little additional explanation of what I was getting at. When I read these to my wife, Mrs Acilius, she often grimaced and protested “There’s way too much repetition in there! That’s just bad writing!” I left them as they were, because when I was posting them it didn’t occur to me anyone would ever read them. Again, if for some reason you want to look at those posts, there they are.

Posts, Category 3. Fanfic.
Like every other fan of Dark Shadows, I’ve thought of stories that I wish they had told on the show. From time to time I write these up, and they appear in this category.

Posts, Categories 4 and 5.
Episode Commentary and Preemption Days. These of course are the bulk of the project. As I noted above, commentaries appear on the 56th anniversary of the original broadcast; on weekdays when, for whatever reason, no episode of Dark Shadows debuted 56 years prior, I post little notes about whatever happens to be on my mind at that point in the run. Below are the titles I’ve given those posts, links to them, and hints as to their content. Items without links refer to posts that have not yet gone live.

• Episode 1: Who’s talking?
  I identify myself as a commenter looking for a combox, then give a single paragraph about a particular aspect of the episode that struck me as interesting.
• Episode 2: Wouldn’t be the first, you know.
  The first post to take its title from a line of dialogue in the episode, as most have since. Made up mostly of quotes from Marc Masse’s post about the episode at his (currently unavailable) blog, Dark Shadows from the Beginning; doesn’t directly address the episode at all.
• Episode 3: Open your door!
  The first commentary to go beyond what would fit in a comment on someone else’s site. Includes an animated gif and introduces the term “diptych” to describe Art Wallace’s signature method of structuring a drama.
• Episode 4: Frightening a new friend.
  Made up chiefly of a comment I made on the Scoleris’ site and a little expansion of it.
• Episode 5: Good morning, you lovely people.
  I talk about one of my favorite sets and describe its dramaturgical function, then praise one of the actors. Much shorter than most of the posts I write now, but both of those are very typical content here.
• Episode 6: “Winters! Victoria Winters!”
  The first post to be as ambitious in length and range of topics as is now usual on here.
• Episode 7: Nowhere- Everywhere- Perhaps I was here.
  Another response to Marc Masse.
• Episode 8: The famous ghosts of Collinwood.
  A two-paragraph special- a remark about sets, and one about the word “ghost” in the early days of the show.
• Episode 9: There are no ghosts here.
  More about what the show is doing with the word “ghost.”
• Episode 10: To the death of the monster.
  The first post to focus on the character Burke Devlin.
• Episode 11: “‘Straight from the bean to you!’ I wonder who writes that junk.”
  I contrast Conrad Bain, Excellent Actor, with Mark Allen, Incompetent Actor.
• Episode 12: You can still hear the widows.
  We first encounter one of the major peculiarities of Collinsport English, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they are going to tell a real ghost story sooner or later.
• Episode 13: Worst thing that ever happened to this house, him comin’ back.
  I talk about the geography of Collinwood.
• Episode 14: We’re all pals again.
  For the first time, we see an undoubted manifestation of the supernatural, and for (almost) the last time Vicki is allowed to make a joke.
• Episode 15: I think he’s beginning to trust me.
  Two comments I made on the Scoleri’s blog explain why I think this is a crucially important episode.
• Episode 16: This is no place for young people.
  It sure isn’t- the show is taking a turn that no one too young to remember Joan Bennett’s heyday in the 1930s would likely have found exciting.
• Episode 17: Such a strange question.
  One of Art Wallace’s more effective diptych episodes.
• Episode 18: Strange sounds and lonely echoes.
  I see some typically 1960s pop psychoanalysis in Roger’s characterization.
• Episode 19: If it isn’t Burke Devlin, it’s somebody else.
  Collinsport is a character, and Burke is a function.
• Episode 20: A mockery to the future.
  The show misses out on making an extraordinarily good episode only because of the shockingly poor acting of Mark Allen.
• Episode 21: “Carolyn’s mother is a witch.”
  A strong episode that raises questions about the childhoods of Vicki and of Carolyn that could have been answered with substantial stories.
• Episode 22: I only run from enemies.
  Another good script ruined by Mark Allen’s performance.
• Episode 23: The dignity of my badge.
  Our first encounter with law enforcement in Collinsport, and the most astoundingly ill-written and well-acted of all the tutoring scenes between Vicki and David.
• Episode 24: Have you ever sat on a wrench?
  The whole day is set in Burke’s redoubt, the Collinsport Inn.
• Episode 25: A neat way of managing people.
  Vicki is allowed to spend an entire day as a smart person, and the result is the best episode so far.
• Episode 26: I want that valve!
  The first episode completely dominated by an Idiot Plot, and Vicki is cast as the Designated Idiot.
• Episode 27: In your room.
  Liz acts like a ghost, and we catch a glimpse of a television set in a hotel room in Bangor.
• Episode 28: Just curious.
  Another Idiot Plot, this time with Maggie and Roger as the Designated Idiots. Also features an unflattering image of President Lyndon Johnson.
• Episode 29: The Burke Devlin Special.
  The first time something other than the prospect of murder makes David smile.
• Episode 30: What monsters we create.
  The ghosts are ready to come into view.
• Episode 31: The judgment of the gods.
  We can understand why Vicki won’t give up on David, even if his family cannot.
• Episode 32: Where all criminals belong.
  Liz admits to herself that David tried to kill Roger. The first really outstanding episode.
• Episode 33: The one with Harvey Keitel.
  Yes, that Harvey Keitel!
• Episode 34: You amaze me, Miss Winters.
  In which we suspect that Vicki learned some things at the Hammond Foundling Home that won’t be coming up in David’s lessons.
• Episode 35: I got a million recipes how to cure it. None of ’em work.
  David Ford takes over the part of Sam Evans.
• Episode 36: Politeness is a passing phase.
  The first time I devote a post to an overview of the show up the point it has reached and a surmise that its writers and producers were looking for a fresh way forward.
• Episode 37: Fatigue lines.
  We reach the end of the first chapter of the show.
• Episode 38: The Count in his castle.
  We meet someone new, and he will take us further than anyone could have expected.
• Episode 39: Questions don’t mean a thing.
  Featuring Bill Malloy- man of action!
• Episode 40: Their shrieks and their moanings.
  The further adventures of Bill Malloy, super-sleuth.
• Episode 41: Working day.
  The first episode credited to a writer other than Art Wallace leaves us sure there is about to be a murder, but not sure who will be the victim.
• Episode 42: The anticipation of doing it.
  The show gets deeper into its Freudian phase.
• Episode 43: Do you think they’d tell me?
  We see that the residents of Collinwood are so lonesome they will let in all sorts of dodgy characters.
• Episode 44: Casually, and in passing.
  The director and some of the actors do their best with a weak script.
• Episode 45: Where Burke Devlin’s pen is.
  Heaviest Freudian day yet.
• Episode 46: Collinwood, with all its dark shadows.
  In which the script is credited to Art Wallace, but is so clumsy I suspect the uncredited presence of Malcolm Marmorstein.
• Episode 47: Three calls for the ghosts of Collinwood, and none for me.
  We get a hint of what Carolyn’s childhood was like, see that Liz is really extremely strange, and waste some time with the guys in Roger’s office.
• Episode 48: Tell us all where we’re going.
  Burke gives David a crystal ball, a prop with a great future (some of it set in the past.)
• Episode 49: Where are we all heading?
  We see that Carolyn and Maggie could be happy if it weren’t for the depressing men in their lives- Joe, Sam, Burke, Roger, Malcolm Marmorstein…
• Episode 50: He wasn’t there again today.
  A strong installment ends with the discovery of a body on the beach below Widows’ Hill.
• Episode 51: A tricky light.
  A study in perspective. Every character knows just enough about what is going on to be hopelessly confused. A surprisingly effective miniature.
• Episode 52: The very atmosphere.
  Everyone is very worried about Bill Malloy, including the ghost of Josette Collins, who makes her first unmistakable contribution to the story.
• Episode 53: You can move almost anything by water.
  Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy triumph over another incredibly bad script.
• Episode 54: A proper charge.
  Dana Elcar debuts as Sheriff Patterson, and I end the post with a “Closing Miscellany.”
• Episode 55: We are the only ones here, unless you include the ghosts of your past.
  Paired confrontations between Liz and Roger at Collinwood and Maggie and Sam at the diner show that some unhappy families are unhappy in more similar ways than you might have thought.
• Episode 56: World of horror.
  Bill Malloy is definitely dead, and Art Wallace definitely wants us to wonder when the show will start doing ghost stories.
• Episode 57: All we do is talk about death.
  That’s Vicki describing herself and her friends. I talk about posts by Marc Masse and Patrick McCray.
• Episode 58: A day for remembering, and forgetting.
  Everyone has their own way of reacting to Bill’s death.
• Episode 59: He sort of talked me out of it.
  Liz and Vicki’s reactions reveal to us that what David now is, Roger once was, and that unless something changes David will someday be what Roger now is.
• Episode 60: Double, double.
  We see the portrait of Betty Hanscombe, and notice that Dark Shadows never did follow the usual soap opera pattern of reserving big developments for Fridays.
• Episode 61: A sandwich for a lonely man.
  Burke barges into the Evans cottage, and makes himself most unwelcome.
• Episode 62: On and on.
  We cite Marc Masse’s very convincing argument that this episode includes a great many fine and intricate echoes of #37, echoes which only a handful of viewers are likely to catch in the streaming era and which absolutely no one could have been expected to recognize in 1966.
• Episode 63: The world around it.
  I talk a lot about some problems with the opening voiceover, problems which will recur frequently for the next year or so and do real damage to the show.
• Episode 64: Collinwood breeds murderers.
  Matthew wins a bar fight with Burke.
• Episode 65: I think I’m having tea.
  Liz uses her genteel manners to cause more chaos than Matthew could create with his fists.
• Episode 66: The appearance of hospitality.
  Vicki tells Liz another hilariously depressing story about life at the Hammond Foundling Home.
• Episode 67: I was fresh out of arsenic.
  Maggie isn’t holding back. Mrs Johnson’s first appearance.
• Episode 68: Only friend in the world.
  David gives Vicki a real scare, and Roger encourages him to go further.
• Episode 69: I believe in signs and omens.
  Clarice Blackburn gets to show what she can do.
• Episode 70: David is gonna show me some ghosts.
  David takes Vicki to the Old House.
• Episode 71: The place where they cut the heads off the fish.
  Roger and Vicki go on their first date.
• Episode 72: Whose eye is she after?
  Carolyn tells Liz Vicki was with Burke all day, and talks her into hiring Mrs Johnson. The longest post yet.
• Episode 73: The company you’re putting me in.
  A quiet day full of fine acting.
• Episode 74: Speak of angels and they shall appear.
  Burke and Roger have opposite reactions to the latest news about Bill’s death.
• Episode 75: The end of our happy day.
  Lots of outdoor footage and fresh air, ending forever when Vicki finds Burke’s pen.
• Episode 76: His own shadow.
  The last episode Marc Masse posted about, prompting me to bid a sentimental farewell to his blog.
• Episode 77: Burke Devlin, Burke Devlin, Burke Devlin!
  A photo of Burke striking oil.
• Episode 78: Such fascinating company.
  Roger and Vicki go on their second date.
• Episode 79: I’ll hate you in public.
  Burke charms David.
• Episode 80: Not one to talk.
  Roger tries to hide Burke’s pen, and in an idle moment is pointlessly cruel to Carolyn.
• Episode 81: I’m not a gossip.
  Mrs Johnson is hired to be the housekeeper at Collinwood.
• Episode 82: Gift from the sea.
  In the opening voiceover, Vicki calls David a “strange and troubled boy.” The story of Burke’s fountain pen wears thin.
• Episode 83: I resign from the idiot’s union.
  Art Wallace is about to leave Dark Shadows, and he lets his frustrations show in the script.
• Episode 84: Ten hundred years.
  Strange and troubled boy David locks Vicki up in an abandoned store-room, hoping she will die there. Today, she seems dumb enough to do so.
• Episode 85: What do you do with a drunken sailor?
  Art Wallace’s last script features a musical number from the ghost of Bill Malloy.
• Episode 86: No way to go but down.
  Louis Edmonds is on camera and his pants are in his dressing room.
• Episode 87: She came to us from nowhere, and now it seems she has disappeared into nowhere.
  Roger opens a secret panel in the drawing room and makes his way to the west wing, where he discovers that Alexandra Moltke Isles can play an explosive emotional moment as well as anyone else in the cast.
• Episode 88: Restless souls.
  Liz and Roger comer perilously close to telling each other the truth about the haunted house they live in.
• Episode 89: Money talks.
  We see that the reason the business stories on Dark Shadows couldn’t take off was that the show didn’t do enough to make the working class of Collinsport real for us.
• Episode 90: In this house, nothing is impossible.
  Just as Vicki is giving up hope she will ever make an emotional connection with strange and troubled boy David, Ol’ Strange and Troubled throws his arms around her and declares “I love you, Miss Winters!”
• Episode 91: Everything she knows.
  Burke takes Vicki to Bangor.
• Episode 92: It’s hard to believe there was ever any gaiety at Collinwood.
  In the only episode of the series set outside the Collinsport area, Vicki meets Frank Garner, whose function on the show is at this point a complete mystery.
• Episode 93: A little wrong about David.
  Ol’ Strange and Troubled can’t find his footing in a world where the only relationship that matters is between Bossy Big Sisters and their Bratty Little Brothers. He’s bratty enough and little enough, but has no big sister.
• Episode 94: The Sproatening.
  A new writer uses the dialogue to tell us about his plans for the show.
• Episode 95: My pen is among the missing.
  They are really putting more symbolic weight on Burke’s pen than it can carry.
• Episode 96: I should have carried you over the threshold.
  Roger and Vicki continue their anti-courtship in a cozy little retreat from the rain.
• Episode 97: Paint her soul.
  They start another story about a portrait, prompting me to review the previous ones.
• Episode 98: My part of the bargain.
  Strange and troubled boy David is strangely, and chillingly, untroubled at the end of the episode, when he seems to have vanquished his conscience once and for all.
• Episode 99: Sobbing women and females.
  Ron Sproat takes his catalogues of story elements that are and are not available for future development and makes a script out of them, more or less.
• Episode 100: Friends again.
  Vicki makes a pot of coffee in Burke’s kitchen.
• Episode 101: Little snoop of a cousin.
  David and Vicki work as a team for the first time.
• Episode 102: Come down like you do.
  David knows more about Josette than any other character, but Roger inadvertently directs our attention to a fact that neither he nor David nor even the writers could have known at this point.
• Episode 103: The girl can’t help it.
  The whole point of this one is that Vicki is terrified of Roger, so it’s a problem she slips and addresses him as “Rodgie” early on. Still has a great energy.
• Episode 104: Chamber of horrors.
  Someone tries to run over Vicki while she is walking on the road between Collinsport and Brock Harbor.
• Episode 105: Concrete evidence.
  Burke and the sheriff come upon Roger and the pen.
• Episode 106: Swann song.
  In his next to last script, Francis Swann closes most of the gaps between the characters’ knowledge and the audience’s as regards the main ongoing storyline.
• Episode 107: Who is it?
  Matthew is revealed as the man behind Vicki’s troubles.
• Episode 108: Bottled up.
  Vicki realizes Matthew is her enemy.
• In place of 109 and 110: Dividing Dark Shadows into periods.
  The first Preemption Day post.
• Episode 111: I’d believe you if you were dead.
  Liz goes to Matthew’s cottage and finds him holding Vicki prisoner.
• Episode 112: A person has to trust somebody in this world.
  Matthew vacates his cottage and goes to the Old House, and we have reason to believe that the next story will involve someone we haven’t seen taking up residence in one of those places.
• Episode 113: I’ve got another contemplation.
  Francis Swann’s last credit as writer, but the first half is so bad I sense the presence of Malcolm Marmorstein.
• Episode 114: Miracles don’t happen.
  Burke kisses Vicki for the first time.
• Episode 115: The suddenness that frightens.
  David isn’t a sociopath after all.
• Episode 116: I’m afraid of you, that’s all.
  Vicki’s locked up again.
• Episode 117: I’m only here because of Vicki.
  At the beginning, the only two eligible bachelors in town are fighting over Carolyn; at the end, they are both literally chasing after Vicki.
• Episode 118: Last chance to get away.
  Vicki’s still locked up.
• Episode 119: We criss-crossed paths a dozen times.
  Vicki’s not loose yet.
• Episode 120: No promise of salvation.
  David is worried about Vicki.
• Episode 121: Ghosts and ghosts-to-be.
  The actors manage to salvage a little something from Malcolm Marmorstein’s lousy script.
• Episode 122: No man in his right mind.
  We know the ghosts are real, but don’t know if they can help Vicki.
• Episode 123: A nice dungeon.
  A new character makes her first appearance as a customer at the diner, and David finds Vicki.
• Episode 124: To die again.
  David leaves Vicki in Matthew’s dungeon, and the closing credits identify the new character as Laura Collins.
• Episode 125: Someone will die at Collinwood tonight.
  The ghosts have trouble getting their point across, and so does David.
• Episode 126: Do not be afraid.
  The ghosts rescue Vicki.
• Episode 127: More like me than the portrait.
  Vicki makes statements which would previously have driven Liz behind a stone wall of denial, but under the circumstances Liz has to concede a great deal.
• Episode 128: Whaddaya hear from the morgue?
  Sam finds out that Laura is back in town, and tells Roger.
• Episode 129: Woman in flames.
  Sam finds to his surprise that he has painted a portrait of a woman engulfed by flames, and the bartender for the first time answers to the name “Bob.”
• Episode 130: Someone should watch you.
  We get definite indications that Laura is in some way associated with the supernatural.
• In place of 131: A Christmas Carol.
  Many surviving members of the cast reunited to perform a dramatic version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
• Episode 132: Why don’t you hate me?
  Vicki helps David through his guilt at leaving her to die.
• Episode 133: The kind of son we could have had.
  The other characters are in a daytime soap, but Laura is doing something else altogether.
• Episode 134: Stage fright.
  David is happy with Vicki and afraid of Laura.
• Episode 135: No one is being kind.
  A lot of hints about what Laura really is, and an odd coincidence when Mrs Acilius and I watched it.
• Episode 136: Fire all around them.
  Vicki is worries she might lose her job, and is happy when Roger thinks he might be able to find another way to keep her living at Collinwood.
• Episode 137: The one with Frederic Forrest.
  Yes, that Frederic Forrest, and I could spend an hour watching a loop of him giving David Ford that dirty look.
• Episode 138: You should know about the Grim Reaper.
  Burke keeps trying to get Laura to act like a soap opera character, and Roger keeps failing to notice that everyone else, including him, does.
• Episode 139: Are you going to Madagascar?
  The script is very heavy-handed with 1960s pop Freudianism.
• Episode 140: Some call it Paradise.
  Vicki saves David’s life, directs him to Laura, then finds herself wondering if she has sent him into a new danger.
• Episode 141: The ashes of the old.
  David takes Laura to the Old House. Vicki goes to the Evans cottage, where she sees Sam’s painting of Laura. Josette’s ghost is in evidence in both places.
• Episode 142: Firelight is not for looking closely.
  A new record for longest post. I express frustration with a day centering on Dumb Vicki, and consider several plot possibilities the show was leaving open at this point.
• Episode 143: Why did you paint my dream?
  Some miscellaneous odds and ends.
• Episode 144: Saying things I don’t expect you to say.
  Our first clear indication that Laura and Josette are on a collision course.
• Episode 145: The idea for the fire.
  Laura confronts Sam.
• Episode 146: Laura Collins exists mostly in your imagination.
  Kathryn Leigh Scott gets a chance to go in depth with her interpretation of Maggie as an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.
• Episode 147: Certain things unsaid.
  Burke and Laura meet on the docks, next to a huge bucket of dry ice that fills the place with an impenetrable fog.
• Episode 148: A sane and adult level.
  Ron Sproat’s script makes it clear what is and is not going on in the story, and gives the actors a chance to make an impression.
• Episode 149: The scent of jasmine.
  The show takes a significant step when, for the first time, a supernatural manifestation takes place in front of several witnesses.
• Episode 150: Time isn’t easy to give.
  The show makes an allusion to the Histories of Herodotus, and Alexandra Moltke Isles gets a memorable fit of the giggles.
• Episode 151: Finishing my puzzle.
  Everyone is playing games, and no one understands what’s at stake.
• Episode 152: Woman in the cottage.
  The show gives up on the idea that the Collinses are running out of money, and Frank Garner seems to have a function in the story.
• Episode 153: To be a dead woman.
  Frank assumes his final form, as someone Vicki can boss around.
• Episode 154: Died by fire!
  One of our favorite characters makes his debut.
• Episode 155: Around her little finger.
  Laura has Burke where she wants him.
• Episode 156: Why is my baby crying?
  Not much action, but a lot of firsts. Including an appearance by future TV star Susan Sullivan.
• Episode 157: Exactly one hundred years.
  The show introduces anniversaries as a casual mechanism, filling in for the laws of nature which no longer apply in its universe.
• Episode 158: Never tell with women.
  Laura moves against Liz.
• Episode 159: No absolute values.
  The writers are at pains to make sure everyone knows they are up on Freud.
• Episode 160: Another moment in this house.
  Dr Peter Guthrie shows up.
• Episode 161: Something in the atmosphere.
  Carolyn is officially in charge of the house, but Vicki actually is.
• Episode 162: Already told you that.
  Vicki reaches the limits of her ability to lie effectively, and David takes Guthrie to the Old House.
• Episode 163: Poor relation.
  John Lasell did a good job playing Dr Guthrie, and he lived a long life.
• Episode 164: Beyond caring that it might destroy her too.
  Sam finds an ally in Guthrie, and Vicki makes a discovery.
• Episode 165: It feels like someone was here.
  Vicki finds that she has nothing to hope for from either physical force or Roger’s intervention, Josette and Laura have a showdown, and something Louis Edmonds did was so funny to Alexandra Moltke Isles and Nancy Barrett that they both struggle visibly not to laugh.
• Episode 166: The most harmful thing of all.
  Maggie confronts Sam about his drinking.
• Episode 167: The power to do more.
  A badly overwritten script defeats the actors, even though they were in a good mood.
• Episode 168: The uninvited.
  Laura would like to be alone, but men keep stopping by.
• Episode 169: Living, but no longer alive.
  Guthrie wants to have a séance.
• Episode 170: Member of the family.
  Dark Shadows begins its first séance.
• Episode 171: Making a suggestion.
  The séance ends, and so do the hints from the first weeks of the show that something unsavory was going on between Roger and Carolyn.
• Episode 172: The sound of fire.
  Mrs Johnson appoints herself Vicki’s protector, and we consider Edward Ormandroyd’s 1957 novel David and the Phoenix.
• Episode 173: Don’t work me.
  Many screenshots illustrating some remarkable acting Alexandra Moltke Isles does in a scene where Vicki finally gets through to Burke.
• Episode 174: I can’t say it hasn’t been weird.
  We go to Phoenix, Arizona.
• Episode 175: A few simple facts.
  Dr Guthrie now knows as much as the audience does about Laura, and he is starting to draw some conclusions.
• Episode 176: Hearts of flame.
  Vicki offers David two desserts- cake and ice cream.
• Episode 177: The glare of our scientific era.
  Joe tells Maggie that there are no serious obstacles in the way of their relationship, which is bad news when you’re a character on a soap opera.
• Episode 178: Bake me a cake.
  Guthrie and Joe set out on an illegal venture.
• Episode 179: The dead take their death with them.
  Guthrie and Joe are the first Dark Shadows characters to steal a coffin with the intention of opening it.
• Episode 180: She’s out there somewhere.
  We say goodbye to Conard Fowkes and his character, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank Garner.
• Episode 181: People can change.
  Carolyn is nice to David, and Joe is at the Collinsport Public Library.
• Episode 182: That spook bit.
  It starts to dawn on Roger that he is missing out on something by refusing to love David.
• Episode 183: Listening to reason.
  Vicki finally has a team in place to oppose Laura, and the phrase “the undead” is spoken for the first time.
• Episode 184: It’s been my life.
  Guthrie makes Laura an offer she can easily refuse. The show will bring Guthrie’s idea back in a few months, with other characters, as the basis of one of its most important stories.
• Episode 185: Soon we may know all there is to know.
  Dark Shadows has its first on-screen murder (fictional, they’re all fictional murders, I assure you.)
• Episode 186: An extraordinary ordinary life.
  Another séance, this time with an unexpected voice speaking through an unexpected medium.
• Episode 187: Exactly one hundred years (reprise.)
  Roger and Burke co-parent David, and it is explicitly stated that anniversaries are an acceptable substitute for cause and effect.
• Episode 188: There is no room for you in my future.
  Vicki has figured it all out, but neither Burke nor Roger can really grasp what she tells them.
• Episode 189: Doodling around.
  Mrs Johnson acts as David’s jailer, just as he knew she would.
• Episode 190: Always.
  Events approach their climax, while the characters are all deeply confused.
• Episode 191: Everything will be complete.
  David chooses Vicki and life over his mother and death. The conclusion of Dark Shadows Version 1.0.
• Episode 192: Can we stop being afraid?
  They can today- there are no ongoing storylines of any significance. Roger and David share a genuinely beautiful scene.
• Episode 193: Portia Fitzsimmons.
  Two strangers come to town, and between them they will tie up all the loose ends from Version 1.0 and launch Version 2.0.
• Episode 194: Traces of fear.
  Evidently we are about to revisit the question “Why did Liz become a recluse?,” which might be interesting if we had seen anyplace Liz would ever want to go.
• Episode 195: It looked pretty dead to me.
  Jason McGuire enters the great house of Collinwood, and people who have already seen the later episodes will realize what his function is on the show.
• Episode 196: How long will it take him to say goodbye?
  Liz tells Jason she doesn’t intend to entertain him at all, and we may wonder how the storyline they share will manage to entertain us.
• Episode 197: Our most prominent loose ends.
  Two blackmail plots promise to answer all the open questions, which might be an exciting prospect if we had cared about those questions in the first place.
• Episode 198: Only up to a point.
  Liz and Jason have their third scene together, or more precisely they play the same scene for the third time.
• Episode 199: About as welcome as poison ivy.
  Sam won’t be keeping Roger’s secret from Burke much longer, and a man named Willie Loomis comes to town.
• Episode 200: Say it again, Sam.
  Sam has exciting scenes with Burke and Maggie, and Jason has dull ones with Roger and Liz.
• Episode 201: People like you.
  The “Revenge of Burke Devlin” story ends, not with Roger’s suicide as originally planned, but with Burke deciding to peace out.
• Episode 202: You and I wouldn’t be friends.
  The opening voiceover tells us that Willie will “awaken and unleash a force that will affect the lives of everyone.” Jason says that he and Paul Stoddard were very much alike. Future TV stalwart Paul Jenkins is seen in the background at the Blue Whale.
• Episode 203: Buried in the floor.
  A series of attempts to make the audience feel claustrophobic.
• Episode 204: It pays to be friendly.
  Carolyn pulls a gun on Willie, and we have our first look at a face that will soon become very familiar.
• Episode 205: Barnabas Collins was rich, too.
  We hear a new name from David.
• Episode 206: Hey, it’s Big Man.
  Burke becomes a protector of the Collinses, Willie becomes John Karlen, and 3:30 PM becomes the suggested broadcast time.
• Episode 207: Just fate.
  In a bar fight between Burke and Willie, Mitch Ryan and John Karlen execute the first professional choreography we have seen on the Blue Whale dance floor.
• Episode 208: From generation to generation.
  Willie loses his billet in the great house, but finds his destiny.
• Episode 209: The darkest and strangest secret of them all.
  Willie takes a legend from the Gothic romance novels that inspired Dark Shadows Version 1.0 and follows it to the opening of Dark Shadows 2.0.
• Episode 210: He’d want to say goodbye.
  Willie finds out the show is not a sequel to Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek.
• Episode 211: He pretended to be someone he wasn’t.
  Jason thinks he is in a noir crime drama where people look for dropped cigarette butts and mislaid fountain pens, even after the Caretaker tries to tell him that the show is now a supernatural horror story.
• Episode 212: Haunting the rooms.
  Vicki’s opening voiceover and Barnabas’ climactic speech to the portrait of Josette suggest that the two characters are bound for a collision that will have radical consequences for Vicki.
• Episode 213: Meeting for the first time.
  An arrangement of the popular song “Brazil” plays at the Blue Whale.
• Episode 214: Nothing lasts forever.
  Barnabas plays the role of a man native to the twentieth century, with mixed success. At the end, he appears to have become a garden gnome.
• Episode 215: Play the mystery man.
  Characters who don’t like each other are so involved in trying to solve the same puzzle that they can’t help but work together.
• Episode 216: First the boy is sorry, then the boy is sick, now the boy must stay.
  Some characters know what kind of show they are on, and others do not.
• Episode 217: A terrible beating.
  It turns out that Jason actually likes Willie.
• Episode 218: Crime encouraged.
  Barnabas asks Liz’ permission to live in the Old House.
• Episode 219: One look at the man.
  A doctor examines Willie, and the sheriff talks to Roger about cows.
• Episode 220: He belongs to the house.
  Barnabas and Willie have their first scene together, and it might have played very differently if they had stuck with their original idea for Willie’s name.
• Episode 221: A new Collins in Collinsport.
  Barnabas stops by the diner for a cup of coffee.
• Episode 222: The local crime rate.
  Vicki stands up to Willie, and Barnabas commissions Sam to paint his portrait.
• Episode 223: She isn’t watching over us anymore.
  We learn that Josette’s ghost won’t play the same role in the Barnabas storyline that she did in the battle with Laura, and Burke has a business meeting with Liz.
• Episode 224: Alone in the growing darkness.
  A dream sequence is presented on screen for the first time, and ABC’s Standards and Practices office has started telling the makers of the show to tone down the gay stuff.
• Episode 225/226: Enough to give any woman nightmares.
  Everyone ends up at the Blue Whale, where Burke and Barnabas have a bizarre conversation.
• Episode 227: The nature of her illness.
  Barnabas bites Maggie.
• Episode 228: An unending succession of demands.
  Liz and Jason play the same scene for the twelfth time, and Vicki seems to be figuring out what’s going on.
• Episode 229: A very sick girl.
  Vicki realizes that Maggie has the same symptoms Willie had.
• Episode 230: Some explaining to do.
  A long post, subdivided into three sections.
• Episode 231: Anyone’s blood.
  Robert Gerringer takes over the part of addled quack Dr Woodard.
• Episode 232: One quick day.
  Jason sees Willie with bruises on his face, and Vicki sees Barnabas’ silhouette at Maggie’s window.
• Episode 233: Very clever girl.
  If Vicki keeps up at this rate, she’ll have Barnabas’ secret all figured out in no time.
• Episode 234: The people who inspire the questions.
  Vicki isn’t an idiot today, but she isn’t very interesting, either.
• Episode 235: What’s true, Maggie?
  The Collinsport Hospital is the setting for a strange mix of standard daytime drama and a vampire story.
• Episode 236: The future, for the first time.
  We find that Barnabas is less a remake of Dracula than he is of Imhotep from the 1932 film The Mummy.
• Episode 237: Seemingly dead.
  We spend a day with people who don’t know where Maggie is.
• Episode 238: This place is becoming a prison.
  Vicki and Carolyn walk around outdoors.
• Episode 239: The lover of her.
  A strong echo of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and a suggestion that Barnabas is absolutely nuts.
• Episode 240: Don’t look for her there.
  David expects to find Josette’s ghost at the Old House, as do longtime viewers. But it seems that she is gone forever, and so are some other familiar touchstones.
• Episode 241: What other name?
  David sees Maggie and thinks she is Josette.
• Episode 242: One of the best men in the field.
  No one has much to say, but Liz and Roger can really dance.
• Episode 243: Something about your cousin bothers me.
  Three terrible people have serious problems.
• Episode 244: The nature of evil.
  Yet another iteration of Liz and Jason’s tired little liturgy.
• Episode 245: Microscopic views of hideous malignancies.
  Other people have already said it all about this one, so I quote several of them.
• Episode 246: A woman gets lonely.
  Liz files for divorce from Paul, and Carolyn gets a job as a coat-rack.
• Episode 247: A fix on this man’s character.
  Maggie and Sam have a couple of near-misses, Barnabas spends the whole episode being cold and bleak, and we get our first look at the basement of the Old House.
• Episode 248: The bride of Barnabas Collins.
  Barnabas shuts Maggie, and us, in his old coffin.
• Episode 249: The most pitiful exhibition I’ve ever seen.
  We go to a room in the basement and stare at the floor for 22 minutes. (The finished episode isn’t as good as that synopsis makes it sound.)
• Episode 250: A servant’s name.
  Maggie struggles to retain her identity.
• Episode 251: Madness preferable to sanity.
  Barnabas sees Vicki with Josette’s music box and has an exciting new idea.
• Episode 252: I know we swing, and that’s all I have to know.
  In a story that is intended as a comedy, Carolyn dates Collinsport’s answer to Eric von Zipper. Joan Bennett unintentionally gets an even bigger laugh when the door sticks and she can’t make her final exit.
• Episode 253: Ring cycle.
  Maggie reaches way back for a strategem to escape from Barnabas.
• Episode 254: As much fun as a bag of spiders.
  Vicki knows what Liz is thinking, Jason knows what Carolyn is thinking, Carolyn knows what Joe is thinking, and Buzz isn’t thinking at all.
• Episode 255: My fair lady.
  We meet Sarah.
• Episode 256: Always choose the worst things to want.
  Sarah mentions her “big brother” to Maggie.
• Episode 257: If you feel it, sit it.
  An episode married only by the inclusion of scenes devoid of motorcycle enthusiast Buzz.
• Episode 258: Secret friend.
  Barnabas decides that Maggie has gone insane, so he will kill her.
• Episode 259: Mustache, must tell.
  The sheriff has some facial hair.
• Episode 260: One, two, away they flew.
  Maggie escapes.
• Episode 261: Nine, ten, home again.
  I have a little fanfic idea to explain how a doctor could come to be doubly qualified in psychiatry and hematology.
• Episode 262: Hand the world over to madmen and murderers.
  Burke Devlin, a part tailored to the style of Mitch Ryan, is recast with Anthony George, whose approach was diametrically opposite to Ryan’s.
• Episode 263: Her second daughter.
  We wonder if the story of Vicki’s quest to learn her origins might be making a comeback.
• Episode 264: In the shadows.
  We wonder if the business stories might be making a comeback.
• Episode 265: Unusual as doctors go.
  The gang’s all here…
• Episode 266: The sea is my grave. My grave is the sea.
  Mrs Johnson keeps Liz from jumping off the cliff. I think this was the episode they taped the day they took the famous 1967 cast photo.
• Episode 267: No one has clearly defined death.
  Barnabas keeps Liz from jumping off the cliff. David makes it clear that Sarah, while she is a girl and is his friend, is definitely not his girlfriend, she is just a weird little kid. Burke, who is supposed to be a millionaire many times over, is despondent because he lost a dime in the bar-room payphone which he uses to conduct his business.
• Episode 268: The future takes care of itself.
  Liz wishes she were dead, and the actors seem to wish they had a script to work with.
• Episode 269: To recognize hopelessness.
  It’s Vicki’s turn to keep Liz from jumping off the cliff. At this rate Bob the Bartender should be up there with her before the month is out.
• Episode 270: That’s where I’ll go for my honeymoon.
  Buzz stands Carolyn up for a date, so she goes to her mother’s wedding instead. Carolyn intends to add a distinctively Collins touch to the proceedings by shooting the groom before he can say his vows, but the bride’s murder confession foils her plan.
• Episode 271: A secret you had no right to keep.
  The episode runs so short we have to conclude they cut a scene from the script at the last minute.
• Episode 272: Nothing downstairs.
  It turns out Liz was The Sobbing Woman all along.
• Episode 273: Why is there nothing there?
  Roger admits he’s no better than Jason, and the characters open a coffin to find it empty.
• Episode 274: Compare a crime to an adventure.
  Jason reminds us of Vicki’s quest to learn her origins, and sets about folding himself into the vampire story.
• Episode 275: To the end of the Earth.
  Barnabas kills Jason, earning our love forever.
• Episode 276: Into the room.
  Barnabas and Julia each rule over their own self-contained worlds, neither of which has a suitable place for Maggie.
• Episode 277: Redesigned to live without it.
  Three short posts about the episode, each with its own title.
• Episode 278: If you become Josette.
  A slip of the tongue takes Barnabas a little further than Vicki is ready to follow just yet. Liz and Sarah both smile for the first time.
• Episode 279: That night must go nothing wrong.
  Preparations for Barnabas’ costume party.
• Episode 280: To the past.
  Everyone is bored at Barnabas’ party, so Roger suggests they hold a séance.
• Episode 281: All the unhappiness of all my ancestors.
  Vicki channels Josette at the séance and sees Sarah afterward.
• Episode 282: Sense memories.
  Vicki and Julia are both trying to find a place in the vampire storyline. Not the actresses, not the writers, the characters have taken on lives of their own and started jockeying to become Barnabas’ sidekick.
• Episode 283: The shock of recognition.
  In her attempt to become part of the main plot, Julia takes Maggie to Eagle Hill Cemetery. Vicki sees her there; Burke fears that she will succeed in regaining relevance to the show, and savagely insists nothing is going on.
• Episode 284: The right name for something else.
  Julia visits Collinwood for the first time. Under Burke’s influence, Vicki disclaims an interest in “the past,” which is well established as code for “the story.”
• Episode 285: The storm has already started.
  Vicki invites herself to spend the night at Barnabas’ house, in the guest bedroom she has already said she would like to occupy “forever.”
• Episode 286: No little girl.
  Vicki auditions for the role of Mistress of the Old House.
• Episode 287: Entering the past.
  The ghost of Josette, like Burke a remnant of an earlier phase of the show, keeps Barnabas from biting Vicki and making her a participant in its current action. Vicki leaves the Old House, and Julia goes there.
• Episode 288: Feminine vanity.
  Vicki fails to let Burke believe that she went to bed with Barnabas, and Julia performs a scientific test that confirms her major hypothesis.
• Episode 289: Hold back the dawn.
  Julia looks at Barnabas in his coffin and shudders with terror.
• Episode 290: The work itself.
  We open with Julia looking at Barnabas in his coffin, and close with Barnabas in Julia’s bedroom at night.
• Episode 291: Doctor Hoffman has fooled us all.
  A potential storyline, referenced in #184 but not then developed, is picked back up. It is filtered through both the 1945 film The House of Dracula and the Christian story.
• Episode 292: I know who’s dead and who isn’t.
  The adults in the great house insist on pretending they don’t know that ghosts are real, to David’s frustration and ours. Sarah leaves her cap in the foyer.
• Episode 293: A better story next time.
  Anthony George finally gets to play a scene that suits his approach.
• Episode 294: The same way I got out.
  Sarah helps Maggie escape from Windcliff. In scenes between Burke and Vicki, Alexandra Moltke Isles does some remarkably good acting.
• Episode 295: A special kind of music.
  Maggie makes a surprise return to Collinsport. In the first episode made in color, the stark and haunting black and white compositions of the first 59 weeks give way to that cruddy palette of near-pastels that defined TV in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The show still looks good if you turn the color off, though.
• Episode 296: Safe tonight.
  Julia has erased Maggie’s memory of Barnabas’ crimes. She lights her cigarette from his candelabra.
• Episode 297: Only my doll.
  Sarah’s ghost gets very weepy all of a sudden when Maggie doesn’t recognize her. It’s hard to see why she would react that way. Maybe she just needed a nap. After all, as the old Caretaker of Eagle Hill Cemetery used to say, “The dead must rest!”
• Episode 298: You will remember nothing.
  Liz is definitely not a recluse any longer, and Julia re-mutilates Maggie’s memory.
• Episode 299: When darkness falls.
  The show is a lot less hard-edged now that it’s about a vampire. Still, we do have a dose of horror today, when Anthony George inflicts a kiss on Alexandra Isles.
• Episode 300: Burke Devlin must die.
  Julia and Barnabas settle into a dynamic of Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother.
• Episode 301: Devlin is an obstacle.
  I thrust, you parry, we both look at the teleprompter.
• Episode 302: As dead as Jeremiah Collins.
  Writer Gordon Russell is trying to figure out what to do with Burke, and some of his ideas are more interesting than others.
• Episode 303: Separate worlds.
  We end with Burke listening to Josette’s hypnotic music box, leading us to wonder if he will start to think that he’s Josette.
• Episode 304: Strange vibrations.
  Burke misses his last chance to do something interesting.
• Episode 305: I’m trying to be your friend.
  A scene between David Collins and Sarah gives Sharon Smyth an opportunity to settle some business with David Henesy.
• Episode 306: Private little investigations.
  David talks with Vicki about Sarah, and sets up a potential crisis.
• Episode 307: A man and a woman.
  Alexandra Isles and Anthony George have a scene that plays to both of their strengths.
• Episode 308: Master of the evasive answer.
  Sam and Joe look for Sarah.
• Episode 309: The tougher the better.
  The final script credited to Malcolm Marmorstein features effective use of anticlimax.
• Episode 310: A logical place.
  David hides in the secret room in the mausoleum.
• Episode 311: Attached to children.
  David can’t get out of the secret room, and Vicki can’t get into the vampire story.
• Episode 312: Find the boy.
  The sheriff comes to the Old House, and Barnabas and Willie turn into Abbott and Costello.
• Episode 313: You must rest.
  Roger and Joe go for a walk in the woods, and in the process treat longtime viewers to a trip down Memory Lane.
• Episode 314: Bordering on the supernatural.
  Willie has a touching encounter with Sarah, and a chilling one with Julia.
• Episode 315: The night holds no danger for me.
  We know that Barnabas is trying to kill David, and we are fairly sure Sarah isn’t.
• Episode 316: He just showed up one night.
  David doesn’t have all the answers yet, but he is asking all the right questions.
• Episode 317: Other voices, other tombs.
  Julia and Barnabas get more deeply into Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother mode.
• Episode 318: What can a little girl know?
  Julia and Woodard are on a collision course.
• Episode 319: Police baffled.
  Dr Woodard has another rotten idea, and Bob the Bartender speaks his last words.
• Episode 320: It must have been a nightmare.
  A spectacular dream sequence and some extraordinary acting.
• Episode 321: How many times do I have to tell you?
  Sarah has to keep explaining the Ghost Rules to Maggie, and Barnabas’ “backup singers” are in unusually good voice.
• Episode 322: Trust games.
  Julia overestimates her ability to control Barnabas, and the police shoot some random guy and decide to pin Maggie’s abduction on him, whoever he turns out to be.
• Episode 323: Partly responsible.
  The luckless schlub the police have shot is Willie. Julia feels sorry for Barnabas when he says that he can’t help but “feel partly responsible” for some of the crimes for which he is totally responsible.
• Episode 324: They shot the wrong man.
  Woodard jumps to the conclusion that Barnabas and Julia are a couple.
• Episode 325: Such pretty flowers.
  The Sarah David meets in his dream is a lot more forthcoming than the one he runs into around the estate.
• Episode 326: Some experience with child psychology.
  The 1960s TV color really makes this one look like a plate of baby food.
• Episode 327: Snap! Like that.
  Waking Life Sarah is alarmed to find out what Dream Visitation Sarah told David.
• Episode 328: My entire career.
  Barnabas frames Willie for Maggie’s abduction.
• Episode 329: The truth about Willie.
  Dana Elcar’s final appearance as Sheriff Patterson, and John Karlen’s last appearance for a long while.
• Episode 330: bat by Bil Baird.
  Vicki finally notices that, contrary to what everyone keeps saying, David is a remarkably unimaginative child. This one ends with Bob Lloyd’s final assurance that “Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.”
• Episode 331: Not always sure of the answers.
  Sarah looks like a little girl, but she is nothing of the sort.
• Episode 332: Worse than a nightmare.
  In his desperation to prove that he has been telling the truth, David does the worst possible thing.
• Episode 333: Why are you lying?
  Burke and Dr Woodard insist on searching Barnabas’ basement.
• Episode 334: Help the boy.
  Roger admits to Burke and Woodard that he spent his childhood terrified of the portraits on the walls of Collinwood, and makes it clear that he still is.
• Episode 335: The imaginary Barnabas.
  A psychiatrist is hilariously wrong in his diagnosis of David, but perhaps close to the mark in his analysis of the mentality of Dark Shadows fans.
• Episode 336: People don’t keep secrets anymore.
  Dr Woodard, created to be an analogue to the stolid Dr Seward of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, must try to do the work of Van Helsing.
• Episode 337: Disowned.
  Some actors who aren’t really on the show call back to scenes that we saw long ago.
• Episode 338: Suspicion itself.
  Barnabas is suspiciously nice to Julia, and Liz offers to rent the west wing of Collinwood to Burke and Vicki.
• Episode 339: Even greater fool.
  Barnabas is incredulous that Julia is attracted to him.
• Episode 340: Medical silence.
  The professional inadequacies of a bunch of strike-breakers leave us much happier than we are supposed to be that a vampire and a mad scientist are about to commit murder.
• Episode 341. A fatal curiosity.
  Julia commits her first murder, and Barnabas can’t stop being a real jerk about it.
• Episode 342: Perfectly natural.
  David Ford audibly passes gas on camera, and Kathryn Leigh Scott keeps a straight face and an unwrinkled nose.
• Episode 343: Not as a monster.
  Barnabas is at his most gleefully despicable, and Julia is utterly alone.
• Episode 344: Listen to the music, listen!
  Carolyn is starting to awaken from her dream of a world where there are logical explanations, and Vicki can hear the sound of the supernatural back-world breaking in and crushing all the commonsensical pretense forever.
• Episode 345: That place in Brazil.
  Art Barroso’s 1939 song “Aquarela do Brasil” has long been Burke’s unofficial theme song; today he’s gone to Brazil, and he’s dead.
• Episode 346: Neither good nor gentle.
  Barnabas’ coldness leaves Julia choking back tears.
• Episode 347: And you will never forget, and you will never remember.
  Julia hypnotizes Vicki in an attempt to keep her from becoming Barnabas’ next victim.
• Episode 348: A matter of fact.
  Sarah visits Carolyn in her room and comes out to her as a ghost. Perhaps the best episode so far.
• Episode 349: A man who would have been long dead by now.
  Barnabas begins to age rapidly. Even though he needs blood to save his life, he still can’t bring himself to bite Vicki.
• Episode 350: Own flesh and blood.
  Julia offers herself to Barnabas as his victim; in response, he calls her by her first name, which he has never done before. He declines the offer, and bites Carolyn.
• Episode 351: Like ice.
  Carolyn becomes Barnabas’ most enthusiastic thrall.
• Episode 352: After-effects.
  Carolyn is delighted with the idea of serving Vicki up to Barnabas and irritated with Julia for her insufficient loyalty to him.
• Episode 353: Dead man’s hand.
  Julia finds that Carolyn is a formidable adversary.
• Episode 354: She has done more.
  A reference to “Aunt Catherine” in Boston leaves us wondering what storyline they never got round to developing would have included her. Carolyn follows Julia and Vicki to the basement of the Old House.
• Episode 355: A fool in the face of death.
  Yesterday, Carolyn was overjoyed at the prospect that Barnabas would start murdering everyone; today, she is unhappy about the idea.
• Episode 356: The clock is running.
  The clock in the foyer is a fine piece of property.
• Episode 357: Hit the blood.
  The first script credited to Sam Hall introduces Jerry Lacy as Bogart-esque lawyer Tony Peterson.
• Episode 358: The secret magic number of the universe.
  It’s getting very hard to tell where the show could possibly be heading, and this episode floats an idea that doesn’t seem very promising at all.
• Episode 359: Very difficult for a girl.
  Carolyn picks up where another spy left off.
• Episode 360: You would understand, if you understood.
  Sarah meets Julia.
• Episode 361: Julia’s rough night in.
  Most of the episode is a one-woman drama with Julia struggling to keep her sanity as she deals with the pressures Barnabas has brought to bear on her. Wherever the show is heading, we can be fairly sure it will not be like this.
• Episode 362: The charms of Collinwood.
  An Idiot Plot with Barnabas as the Designated Dum-Dum. The story really seems to be eating itself alive.
• Episode 363: Very honorable guy.
  Carolyn has to make up a story and recycles the Liz/ Jason plot. Barnabas has a visitor.
• Episode 364: Barnabas, Barnabas.
  Sarah tells Barnabas she won’t be back. Since she was the only thing keeping the show going, this seems like a cancellation announcement.
• Episode 365: Respectable houses.
  The narrative seems to have died completely, so the characters try to connect with it by holding a séance. Something then happens that there was absolutely no way to see coming, except for people who had seen the promos that ABC ran spoiling the surprise.
• Episode 366: Who else could I be?
  The back-world and the front world trade places, and Vicki will have to pull off the same kind of act Barnabas has been putting on since April if she is to survive.
• Episode 367: Good and evil vibrations.
  Vicki meets more of the Collinses who lived in the year 1795.
• Episode 368/ 369: Whole future.
  We meet Angelique.
• Preemption Day: In place of episode 369: “Genuinely Good Episodes” and “Stinkers” in Dark Shadows 1.0 and 2.0.
  I look back and try to figure out what made episodes very good and very bad in the first two versions of Dark Shadows.
• Episode 370: Foreign to both of us.
  The living Josette appears and longtime viewers make a startling realization. I have an idea about how they could have saved Vicki from the problem that does more than any other one thing to ruin her character in the 1795 segment.
• Episode 371: Death whispering.
  Angelique cast a spell. It does not go as she planned, and she has difficulty lifting it. Perhaps she is new at witchcraft.
• Episode 372: He took a liberty.
  As Ben Stokes, Thayer David shows us what Matthew might have been like if he hadn’t grown up in the shadow of the Collinses and their ancient curse.
• Episode 373: Not a lady yet.
  Nancy Barrett debuts as the fluttery Millicent.
• Episode 374: A woman decides, and it happens.
  Barnabas is identified as our new point of view character.
• Episode 375: Decisions melt like ice.
  Barnabas is teaching Ben to read, and Angelique is writing a story using Josette and Jeremiah as her pencils.
• Episode 376: Occult gibberish.
  The countess reads her Tarot cards and Naomi has a dream.
• Episode 377: A brand for lovers.
  Millicent and Nathan may be played by the same actors as Carolyn and Joe, but wow what a difference.
• Episode 378: Cat got your tongue.
  Why Angelique was right to turn Joshua into a cat rather than a jackass.
• Episode 379: Governesses are supposed to be trusting.
  Vicki does not hold up under the countess’ questioning.
• Episode 380: No end to your tricks.
  We wonder if Angelique will not only curse Barnabas, but possess him.
• Episode 381: Of his own will.
  Angelique is in 1795 very much what Barnabas would be in 1967.
• Episode 382: The devil has sent one of his minions.
  In response to Abigail’s accusations, Naomi denies that Vicki is a witch, but does have to admit that Josette is French.
• Episode 383: Between men now.
  The show misses a chance to have some fun with a bit of real-world history.
• Episode 384: What is the truth, Barnabas?
  Barnabas kills Jeremiah.
• Episode 385: How long have you been in league with the Devil?
  Vicki shouts back at Trask, and longtime viewers discover a skill they hadn’t known Alexandra Isles had.
• Episode 386: Innocent until proved innocent.
  Barnabas defends Vicki as only he can.
• Episode 387: Just how does one go about sensing an evil spirit?
  Angelique flirts with Nathan, and Vicki is the first person ever to spend a night in the great house of Collinwood.
• Episode 388: Someone else you love.
  Angelique takes a very dark turn.
• Episode 389: Samantha.
  Sarah’s doll reminds longtime viewers of everything we’ve seen since April 1967.
• Episode 390/ 391: Accept me as I am.
  Barnabas tells Angelique that a marriage between them will be a sham, and she agrees to it even so.
• In place of episode 391: Jonathan Frid reads “The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall”
  A ghost story for Christmas.
• Episode 392: This great democracy of yours.
  Josette and Naomi see Jeremiah’s hand burst out of his grave.
• Episode 393: It would make her more interesting.
  The countess considers, and rejects, the idea that Angelique might be the witch.
• Episode 394: Not a simple woman.
  Barnabas is put in the same position Josette was in yesterday.
• Episode 395: Stay on as master of the Old House.
  The script seems to be driven by at least three mutually incompatible ideas of what “continuity” should mean on a daytime serial.
• Episode 396: The doll and the pins.
  Vicki tries to tell Barnabas the truth about herself.
• Episode 397: I’m not sure I should be here, either.
  Angelique and Barnabas get married.
• Episode 398: The only real witch there is.
  It dawns on Vicki that Angelique is now the mistress of the Old House.
• Episode 399: Fraud in this house.
  Sharon Smyth does some good acting. (Really!)
• Episode 400: Fire knows your name.
  Trask finds to his amazement and delight that his mumbo-jumbo has actually worked, for once. Popular as Dark Shadows may have been at this point, we can be sure the NYC fire marshals were not watching.
• Episode 401: The A V club.
  There is a prison cell in the basement of the great house of Collinwood.
• Episode 402: Name the witch.
  Barnabas makes some farcical attempts to kill Angelique, and Josette’s portrait arrives.
• Episode 403: Eye to follow him wherever he goes.
  Millicent thinks she is “ruined!,” and she might be, if anyone noticed what she was doing.
• Episode 404: I forgot you were here.
  Roger Davis makes the first of his sadly frequent appearances on Dark Shadows.
• Episode 405: To love anyone.
  Barnabas gives Josette a music box, hangs her portrait over his mantel, and is bitten by a large bat.
• Episode 406: Cursed with eternal life.
  Angelique regrets cursing Barnabas and hopes he will not die.
• Episode 407: Damn spot.
  Angelique finds that she is not in control of the situation she has created.
• Episode 408: My imperfect science.
  Vicki is shocked to find that Josette, whose ghost was her best friend in 1966 and 1967, is, as a living being in the 1790s, not at all well-disposed towards her.
• Episode 409: Some of the facts.
  Barnabas dies.
• Episode 410: Do you know the word “vampire”?
  Joshua offers Angelique a fortune to go away.
• Episode 411: No longer really human.
  Ben sticks with his friends no matter what.
• Episode 412: The book.
  We wind up cheering on the people who want to put the heroine to death and hoping that her love interest joins her on the gibbet.
• Episode 413: So sad for such a long time.
  Sarah sneaks out after dark.
• Episode 414: Walks the night.
  Barnabas sneaks out after dark.
• Episode 415: Sarah Collins.
  Sarah dies in Barnabas’ arms.
• Episode 416: Poor lost children.
  Naomi and Joshua grieve for Sarah, and Barnabas asks Ben to stake him.
• Episode 417: Distant laughter.
  Angelique hasn’t been away long enough to make her return an effective surprise, and a botched special effect makes matters worse.
• Episode 418: Wind in the woods.
  The episode leans very heavily on special effects, none of which works very well.
• Episode 419: Collins as in Collinsport?
  We meet bartender Mr Mooney and the magnificent Suki Forbes. Nathan reminds us of Paul Stoddard.
• Episode 420: A man’s position in society.
  Suki lifts a story from the Book of Genesis, and Barnabas bites Josette.
• Episode 421: A series of prepared speeches.
  The countess stops in the middle of the episode to give it a harsh review.
• Episode 422: Never gave you love.
  Joshua and the countess each start to figure out what is happening, while Vicki just wanders ever deeper into the darkness.
• Episode 423: A position to threaten me.
  Barnabas kills Suki.
• Episode 424: Your son’s name.
  Millicent finds out that Suki was Nathan’s wife.
• Episode 425: Widow’s Hill.
  We see a moment we’ve been hearing about since the first week.
• Episode 426: Men change, and seldom for the better.
  A showcase for the actors.
• Episode 427: I object.
  Vicki’s trial begins.
• Episode 428: Witness for the defense.
  The sense in which the not-very-brainy Millicent is a Smart Character.
• Episode 429: Dark conquest of the grave.
  Barnabas reaches new levels of selfishness.
• Episode 430: Do not disturb.
  Barnabas’ moral failings don’t have much overlap with the show’s shortcomings, but today they both involve a shockingly extreme case of looks-ism.
• Episode 431: Never learn to leave the past alone.
  We meet Daniel Collins. We see that the makers of the show painted themselves into a corner by passing up stories they didn’t realize they would have time to tell.
• Episode 432: Cousin Abigail’s religion.
  Abigail dies. Trask and Daniel have a meeting.
• Episode 433: Quite enough bickering.
  Some scenes of Vicki’s trial.
• Episode 434: No business to run.
  Nathan and Peter have a fistfight, Joshua gets a lot of bad news, and Naomi reveals herself to be a remarkably advanced feminist.
• Episode 435: No next witness.
  For the second Friday in a row, the opening voiceover ruins the episode’s big surprise.
• Episode 436: Thin air.
  Thayer David and Joel Crothers reprise themes they dealt with earlier in the series, when they played different characters.
• Episode 437: It’s gone on too long.
  Vicki tells us how the 1795 segment will end, and gives her opinion that it ought to do so soon.
• Episode 438: A night he will never forget.
  Barnabas gets to work punishing Trask.
• Episode 439: Whose cane this is.
  Maude Browning knows her trade.
• Episode 440: You’re bein’ more stupid now.
  Barnabas leaves Maude’s corpse in Trask’s bed.
• Episode 441: The subject of vicious gossip.
  Two ghosts visit Trask in his dreams.
• Episode 442: For the love of God, Montresor!
  Barnabas bricks up an alcove in his basement.
• Episode 443: Masculine details.
  Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight.
• Episode 444: What if she doesn’t?
  How stories create suspense.
• Episode 445: Powers of persuasion.
  A story told in visual metaphors.
• Episode 446: You have given me nothing I can understand.
  Barnabas comes out to his dad.
• Episode 447: Dear son.
  Some interesting visual echoes.
• Episode 448: On their wedding day.
  Millicent marries Nathan, to her instant sorrow.
• Episode 449: To provide a witch.
  The portrait of Angelique appears, Millicent comes face to face with Barnabas, and Bathia Mapes comes in response to Joshua and the countess’ wishes.
• Episode 450: That man who says he is Barnabas.
  Millicent is out of her mind, Bathia gets to work, and Barnabas recoils from a cross.
• Episode 451: The pit of my soul.
  Naomi decides to go to the Old House, where Joshua and Bathia are at a delicate point in the exorcism process.
• Episode 452: What can I say to stop this?
  Joshua tries to prevent Vicki’s execution without telling the whole truth.
• Episode 453: Legal guardian.
  We revisit some elements we saw in #123 and #124.
• Episode 454: The course of history.
  Vicki has nothing left to do but to clean up the messes she has herself made.
• Episode 455: Old enough now.
  Vicki kills Noah.
• Episode 456: The little boy I brought with me.
  Naomi hides Vicki and finds Barnabas.
• Episode 457: I will meet you.
  Ben turns into Matthew.
• Episode 458: Soon her journey will be over.
  Naomi commits suicide.
• Episode 459: The means to destroy ’em.
  Nathan tries to destroy Barnabas.
• Episode 460: Lies beyond the grave.
  Vicki goes to the gallows.
• Episode 461: Crosses in life.
  Vicki’s home.
• Episode 462: Whole image.
  Barnabas thinks about biting Vicki.
• Episode 463: Comfort me.
  Tony sees Barnabas bite Carolyn and draws a reasonable, and therefore mistaken, conclusion.
• Episode 464: Justice to history.
  The portrait of Angelique obsessed Roger, we meet Professor Stokes, and Barnabas bites Vicki.
• Episode 465: Too cool for ghoul.
  Vicki is strangely blasé about her new role as Barnabas’ blood thrall.
• Episode 466: Four o’clock in the afternoon.
  Barnabas is no longer a vampire.
• Episode 467: Pulsebeat.
  I wish Howard da Silva, instead of Addison Powell, had been cast as Dr Lang.
• Episode 468: As free as you are.
  Vicki and Carolyn no longer have bite marks on their necks, and they react to their absence in intriguing ways.
• Episode 469: Temporarily arrested.
  Vicki takes Julia on an inspection tour of the mausoleum, Barnabas feels he is reverting, and Julia tries to connect with Lang.
• Episode 470: Nonsense about names.
  A four-part post about an episode featuring a visit from our once-prominent but now seldom seen friend, Smart Vicki.
• Episode 471: Be quiet, Harry!
  Harry Johnson shows up, and Vicki makes one more attempt to team up with Barnabas.
• Episode 472: Witches, curses, spirits!
  Barnabas and Julia are best buddies all of a sudden.
• Episode 473: And that’s all I want to say.
  The story gives Vicki nowhere to go. Roger has married Angelique, who calls herself Cassandra.
• Episode 474: A Collins does the unexpected.
  Angelique/ Cassandra discovers that she doesn’t know as much as she thought she did.
• Episode 475: Still in the world.
  Stokes visits Barnabas in the Old House.
• Episode 476: A piece of rope.
  Barnabas and Dr Lang agree to murder Peter/ Jeff.
• Episode 477: Beware of dreams.
  Angelique announces that she is going to be spamming everyone’s dreams with a nightmare that will ultimately turn Barnabas back into a vampire, and that along the way will make the show very hard to watch.
• Episode 478: Carried on the wind.
  Angelique/ Cassandra meets Maggie.
• Episode 479: No stranger to horror.
  Dr Lang is about to cut Peter/ Jeff’s head off to use in The Experiment, and all Peter/ Jeff can do is complain and bring up all sorts of selfish objections.
• Episode 480: Bring your medallion.
  Angelique/ Cassandra, Barnabas, and Dr Lang all try to hoodwink Julia, and none of them comes close to succeeding.
• Episode 481: Every time, it will be the same story.
  Addison Powell breaks character to remind Jonathan Frid of his line.
• Episode 482: Someone you hate.
  Willie is coming back, and Maggie is wearing a gharara.
• Episode 483: The three faces of Willie.
  John Karlen recapitulates Willie’s whole character arc.
• Episode 484: Not so much for you as for me.
  Barnabas inadvertently gives Willie a course of therapy that will lead him to regain his memory.
• Episode 485: His last night on Earth as himself.
  The show is drifting into Bram Stoker’s territory, using a vampire to tell stories about how terrible Calvinists are. At the same time, it’s getting very much into gender-bending in a way that might have made the Irish Catholic Stoker queasy.
• Episode 486: Endless corridors of trial and error.
  Vampires, witches, and mad scientist may be deadly enough, but in terms of sheer killing power none of them can match a gossipy housekeeper.
• Episode 487: No homicidal tendencies.
  Peter/ Jeff tells Vicki that a medical report says he has no homicidal tendencies. When she is puzzled that he thought he did, he looks like he’s trying to strangle her.
• Episode 488: May be human.
  Barnabas and Julia talk about The Experiment, while Maggie and Stokes talk about The Dream.
• Episode 489: ga-ZAY-bo.
  Angelique/ Cassandra works her will on Tony, and on Collinsport English.
• Episode 490: We’re both alive.
  Barnabas tells Vicki that “Loving me would have been the worst mistake of your life.” At the end of The Experiment, Barnabas and Adam are both alive.
• Episode 491: What we do with him now is up to us.
  Barnabas and Julia find themselves responsible for a 6’6″ newborn.
• Episode 492: Think of a worse place.
  In Barnabas and Julia, Adam has the worst possible parents. David isn’t much better off.
• Episode 493: What horrors we commit.
  The Adam story becomes even more depressing.
• Episode 494: They were meant for me.
  Willie minds Adam, and Maggie reacts to a mysterious present.
• Episode 495: A nice boy.
  David meets Adam for the first time, and for the second time runs into Barnabas’ arms.
• Episode 496: A walking dead man.
  They tell us about a scene that would have been fascinating to watch, and show us some scenes that are… less so.
• Episode 497: Acting like ourselves.
  Characters seem to be reverting to type.
• Episode 498: One step closer to the dream.
  Barnabas gives Sam a very strange commission.
• Episode 499: Fair warning.
  Angelique/ Cassandra comes to the Evans cottage.
• Episode 500: Ruined another life.
  Collinsport must be the only soap opera town where Friday is the often quietest day of the week.
• Episode 501: You’ve lied out of worse situations.
  It dawns on Liz that Julia and Barnabas know more than they are letting on about Adam.
• Episode 502: Some experience with the criminal mind.
  Neither Liz nor the audience is interested in Willie’s dream, but it is dramatized for us anyway.
• Episode 503: Man made monster.
  Adam is holding Carolyn prisoner at the former residence of Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
• Episode 504: A talent for making everyone feel guilty.
  We meet the single worst law enforcement officer in the whole history of Collinsport.
• Episode 505: Prepare yourself for an ordeal.
  Adam saves Carolyn from falling off the cliff and goes over himself.
• Episode 506: That man again.
  A visit to the beach below Widow’s Hill.
• Episode 507: Comparative strangers.
  Some events would make sense only if Professor Stokes has been talking with Vicki, others wouldn’t make sense even then.
• Episode 508: Old tricks.
  Stokes has The Dream.
• Preemption Day: Dan Curtis’ Frankenstein.
  I review the 1973 two-part TV movie.
• Episode 509: Adam, last name unknown.
  Stokes deals brusquely with Vicki.
• Episode 510: One passion in death.
  The first séance to take place without Vicki.
• Episode 511: It’s not fair to come into someone’s house.
  David sneaks into the Old House, where he winds up meeting Stokes.
• Episode 512: A jury of the dead!
  The ghost of the Rev’d Mr Trask puts Barnabas on trial.
• Episode 513: The woman in the window.
  Liz catches Angelique/ Cassandra kissing Tony.
• Episode 514: Serious talking.
  Joe loses his temper with Maggie.
• Episode 515: A word you’re saying.
  Julia encounters Josette’s ghost sobbing in the basement of the Old House.
• Episode 516: Man of God.
  Trask’s ghost faces both Julia and Angelique/ Cassandra.
• Episode 517: Tell me your dream.
  Angelique is determined to restart the Dream Curse.
• Episode 518: How to speak to people.
  Stokes tries to keep Sam from restarting the Dream Curse. Sam dies.
• Episode 519: Poor suffering servant of Satan.
  Trask’s ghost is allowed to say “Satan” and “the Devil,” even as other characters use euphemisms to refer to the same personage.
• Episode 520: What is it about this family?
  Julia is optimistic that Angelique might be gone for good.
• Episode 521: All the words.
  Professor Stokes teaches Adam to read, repaying Ben’s debt to Barnabas.
• Episode 522: Brother devil.
  Nicholas introduces himself around the estate. The episode features one of the all-time great goofs.
• Episode 523: Back to Hell, from whence thee came!
  Trask’s ghost takes one look at Peter/ Jeff, wrinkles his nose, and disappears forever. Peter/ Jeff probably got that from a lot of people.
• Episode 524: Nothing but a ghost.
  Peter/ Jeff has a dream about Nathan.
• Episode 525: Tree in the forest.
  Vicki won’t let Nicholas borrow the portrait of Angelique.
• Episode 526: Tell me now.
  Alexandra Moltke Isles does some conspicuously good acting.
• Episode 527: Without the face.
  Peter/ Jeff meets Adam, and Stokes has all the clues he needs to figure out where Adam came from.
• Episode 528: Old girl.
  Angelique/ Cassandra and Nicholas recreate the Kennedy-Nixon debates, with the goddess Ceres as moderator and The Dream Curse as the Quemoy-Matsu question.
• Episode 529: Fascinated by that character.
  Joe sets out to find Adam, and succeeds.
• Episode 530: A fine line between love and hate.
  Angelique raises Sam’s ghost and compels him to tell Vicki The Dream. David Ford’s final appearance.
• Episode 531: A blazing light.
  Vicki has The Dream.
• Episode 532/533: Your dream will end with me.
  Vicki confronts Angelique/ Cassandra.
• Episode 534: Selfish fool.
  Barnabas is worried about Vicki, Vicki is worried about Barnabas, and Carolyn is worried about Adam.
• Episode 535: The dream begins.
  Barnabas has The Dream.
• Episode 536: Now we’re gonna hear the dogs howlin’ again!
  The show returns to the 4:00 timeslot, and Julia and Willie show their friendship for Barnabas by burying him alive.
• Episode 537: Reason to stay.
  Julia and Willie get ready to leave town, and Stokes brings the news that Adam appears to be dead.
• Episode 538: Usually without reason.
  Julia and Stokes dig Barnabas up. They find that he is alive and that he casts a reflection in Julia’s mirror, implying that the twelve weeks devoted to The Dream Curse were pointless.
• Episode 539: Child’s play.
  David walks in on Angelique/ Cassandra while she is in the middle of an incriminating soliloquy, and then gives her the tape with Lang’s dying words.
• Episode 540: Intervening factor.
  Angelique is in hot water with Nicholas for the failure of the Dream Curse; the audience is pretty mad at her for wasting our time with it, too.
• Episode 541: Creating a living human being.
  The writers can’t figure out what to do with David, Nicholas has a crush on Maggie, and we see the portrait of Betty Hanscombe for some reason.
• Episode 542: Henceforward in thy shadow.
  Liz is in the hospital, Adam is in the west wing, and Harry is in trouble with his mom.
• Episode 543: Adam must live.
  Harry finds Adam and Carolyn blackmails him into helping her look after him. Adam tries to kiss Carolyn, and she can’t explain why he shouldn’t have.
• Episode 544: An incomplete man.
  Nicholas puts together the world’s most unattractive boy band, and Stokes tries to give Adam some fatherly advice.
• Episode 545: Another living soul.
  Nicholas recruits Adam to his self-esteem cult, and the west wing becomes a different sort of place.
• Episode 546: A woman, born on Martinique in 1774.
  Nicholas strips Angelique of her powers, and of her immortality.
• Episode 547: I can’t let you lose this moment.
  Julia wants to kill Angelique, Barnabas is hesitant.
• Episode 548: Too much a part of him.
  Angelique turns into Sam Hall and dies.
• Episode 549: Grabbing, demanding, lying, cheating- it’s the only way!
  Nicholas convinces Adam he should rape Carolyn. When he tries it, Nancy Barrett and Robert Rodan find a way to play the scene so that it cannot be mistaken for sexy.
• Episode 550: Much given to melodrama.
  Stokes is coldly dismissive of Vicki, and Adam misinterprets his own reflection.
• Episode 551: Different like me.
  Nicholas talks Adam into demanding that Barnabas make a mate for him. Craig Slocum does a good job of acting (Really!)
• Episode 552: He talk so good.
  Vicki goes to tell Barnabas that she is going to marry Peter/ Jeff, and Barnabas takes the news so calmly that even she must suspect that he isn’t as hung up on her as she had thought he was. Adam abducts Vicki.
  • Episode 553: The five captivities of Victoria Winters.
    Each of the five times someone locked Vicki up, the show changed direction. This time, the director even changes his name.
• Episode 554: What must be.
  Julia puts her finger on the hook to prevent Barnabas calling the police, and Don Briscoe joins the cast as Tom Jennings.
• Episode 555: Innocent, completely innocent.
  Nicholas isn’t too talented to spend his time drugging drinks after all. Angelique is a vampire.
• Episode 556: A pocket in time.
  Two encounters take unexpected turns, one explicable, the other not.
• Episode 557: Unannounced visitors.
  A series of characters take turns being unwelcome houseguests.
• Episode 558: Talking of right and wrong.
  Stokes and Nicholas present competing moral theories to Adam, making him feel bad.
• Episode 559: I specialize in human relations.
  Nicholas shows Angelique his magic mirror.
• Episode 560: Just too horrible.
  Barnabas tortures Willie with the idea that he might be responsible for Maggie’s death.
• Episode 561: Rob a grave.
  Joe’s virtues lead to his downfall, and we have an indication that Nicholas is losing control of events.
• Episode 562: The power of this house.
  John Karlen and Joel Crothers demonstrate two very different, but equally powerful, styles of acting.
• Episode 563: A kind of magician.
  A three part post- part one is about Beverly Hope Atkinson; part two, a scene between Joe and Maggie at the Blue Whale; part three about Joe as an addict getting a fix.
• Episode 564: Three stooges.
  Willie, Barnabas, and Julia skulk about in the most ridiculous possible fashion.
• Episode 565: I keep hearing the sea.
  Julia’s happy evening comes to a terrible conclusion. The conclusion is terrible in more than one sense, because there are some mistakes in the blocking that ruin the closing shocker.
• Episode 566: Too much sunlight.
  Julia is sick, and we get some echoes of an earlier phase of the show.
• Episode 567: You will help me.
  Adam shows up in the basement laboratory and demands to know why the process is taking so long.
• Episode 568: The unchaperoned.
  Liz has escaped from the mental hospital, and Barnabas takes a shot at Tom. The writers finally produce a script that not even Grayson Hall can figure out how to play.
• Episode 569: Call me a superstitious woman.
  Liz comes home.
• Episode 570: Are you being profound?
  Barnabas and Willie have a genuinely funny comedy scene.
• Episode 571: Bring me a mirror.
  Barnabas stakes Tom. Liz hides behind a chair in Barnabas’ parlor when Roger comes.
• Episode 572: Anyplace else.
  Joe throws Maggie to the floor, and Barnabas and Julia sneak intro Nicholas’ house.
• Episode 573: Hit me over the head.
  Nicholas is preoccupied with Maggie, much to Angelique’s amusement.
• Episode 574: Another girl.
  We tour the bachelor pads of Collinsport.
• Episode 575: This rotten collection of death.
  Angelique works to thwart Nicholas’ plans.
• Episode 576: Enough to occupy your mind.
  Peter/ Jeff is Angelique’s victim, and has to refuse Roger’s offer to send him to an executive training seminar. Liz goes on about her fear of being buried alive.
• Episode 577: I imagined we would discuss Freud.
  Adam asks Carolyn to tell him about her mother.
• Episode 578: The misplaced. Someone else plays Carolyn.
• Episode 579: One tick of the clock.
  Saddled playing scene after scene with Roger Davis, Alexandra Moltke Isles finds a more compelling scene partner.
• Episode 580: Slow Friday.
  The first episode with an all post-Barnabas cast doesn’t involve much action, but it does suggest that Adam is a lot smarter than he gets credit for.
• Episode 581: Death and I are old friends.
  Adam receives his first present, and Lara Parker plays a part in which most women find themselves cast at some point in their lives.
• Episode 582: Everything seems to be my fault now.
  Julia explicitly tells Willie that she has feelings for Barnabas, and he is as shocked to hear her say it as he would have been if he hadn’t known it all along.
• Episode 583: Act of treachery.
  The show comes screeching to a halt when Alexandra Moltke Isles has to suppress a bad laugh for a remarkably long time, and Willie hides behind the furniture.
• Episode 584: Terribly familiar.
  Willie takes Maggie to the secret chamber in the mausoleum.
• Episode 585: Death and mausoleums and being buried alive.
  Adam wants to kill Vicki, but he’s too late- the writers did that months ago.
• Episode 586: The way my life has turned out.
  A bad episode ends with a brilliant turn by Robert Rodan.
• Episode 587: How can you hate yourself so much?
  Adam finds out that Barnabas expected to die and come back to life in Adam’s body when they first did The Experiment. Nicholas uses Willie to show Adam his powers of mind control.
• Episode 588: Remember it after tonight.
  Maggie remembers what Barnabas did to her.
• Episode 589: He wants it to happen all over again.
  Carolyn volunteers to provide the “life force” for The Experiment.
• Episode 590: Make up new rules any time you want.
  Adam invades the Old House and holds Barnabas, Julia, and Willie prisoner. Barnabas is afraid Maggie will escape from the mausoleum and report him to the police.
• Episode 591: Frightened of new things.
  Carolyn is ready for The Experiment.
• Episode 592: Why isn’t it showing some sign of life?
  Carolyn is pronounced dead.
• Episode 593: To face reality.
  Maggie awakens in the mausoleum and finds Julia blocking the exit. Carolyn turns out to be alive. A post in four parts.
• Episode 594: Ominous stillness.
  Nicholas conjures up Danielle Roget, “the most evil woman who ever lived,” and tells her to call herself Leona Eltridge. Nicholas dubs Adam’s mate “Eve.”
• Episode 595: The man downstairs.
  We get to know Danielle/ Leona, sort of.
• Episode 596: She can speak.
  Eve comes to life, and Stokes figures out that she is a reincarnation of Danielle.
• Episode 597: Do not expect the logical.
  Stokes questions Eve, who gives more answers than she intends.
• Episode 598: I thought you might be looking for Adam.
  Stokes and Willie take turns discovering that David knows more than they think he does, and that the hiding places are empty.
• Episode 599: If you open it, something terrible will happen.
  Maggie is on her way to tell the sheriff about Barnabas, then Nicholas the Mental Squeegee Man wipes her memory away.
• Episode 600: A woman does not like to be thought of in those terms.
  Adam bores Eve to tears. Stokes leads Barnabas and Julia in a séance, during which Barnabas channels Philippe Cordier.
• Episode 601: Neither of us is a match.
  The story is told largely through the characters’ choices of wardrobe.
• Episode 602: Someone who will make you happy to be a vampire.
  Nicholas struggles to control his staff.
• Episode 603: Almost on the point of believing it.
  A day without supernatural manifestations.
• Episode 604: The presence of death.
  Barnabas and Julia plot to murder Eve. Roger Davis helps himself to a handful of Joan Bennett’s left breast.
• Episode 605: Ordinary people like us.
  A man sneaks into a house where he hopes to find a young woman, but he meets his ex-wife there instead.
• Episode 606: Hello, Barnabas.
  Angelique bites Barnabas. When he asks her what he can tell people, she replies “Tell them anything. Tell them the truth.”
• Episode 607: Bedtime.
  Joe tells Angelique she has ruined his life, and she doesn’t care. She doesn’t even want him anymore.
• Episode 608: The experts.
  Joe is resting in Josette’s room, recovering from vampire bites. Maggie visits him there.
• Episode 609: For want of a fig leaf.
  Roger Davis is very rough with David Henesy, then as Peter/ Jeff has some lines that only a sociopath would find convincing.
• Episode 610: You are the angel of death.
  Roger Davis and Humbert Allen Astredo show us the wrong and right way for actors to handle directions calling for stage violence.
• Episode 611: She must come willingly.
  Nicholas strikes out on his date with Maggie, then goes home and gets a grip on Harry Johnson.
• Episode 612: I want you to be the guilty one.
  Nicholas drugs another drink.
• Episode 613: I must have thought the morning had come.
  Julia stops Barnabas from killing Joe.
• Episode 614: Any morbid fantasy.
  Mrs Johnson stops Joe from killing Barnabas.
• Episode 615: Protecting the vampire.
  Julia fails to lie when the sheriff questions her, and uses a vocabulary from a more casual register than she usually does. So maybe she’s just sleepy.
• Episode 616: When a woman has a man in her power.
  Barnabas crawls awkwardly through the tunnel from the prison cell to the beach.
• Episode 617: Few people in this world.
  Evil, namely Peter/ Jeff, triumphs over good in the form of Roger’s decision to involve Vicki in the story.
• Episode 618: Long goodbye.
  Vicki is perfectly safe with both Roger and Barnabas.
• Episode 619: Advantages of being the master.
  Julia confronts Nicholas. Her behavior makes little sense in the story, but the scene is sensational.
• Episode 620: The middle of the journey.
  The 613th of the 1225 episodes produced comes at the end of the 124th of the series’ 249 weeks. Appropriately, Dark Shadows reaches this midpoint when it is tangled up in some themes that don’t suit it at all. The very middle comes when Barnabas is going on about the saving power of the Cross, of all things.
• Episode 621: The only known cure.
  Julia goes to Nicholas’ house and insists on treating Adam. Nicholas’ behavior leaves us wondering if he is feigning a brain injury.
• Episode 622: A position to help each other.
  Roger Davis goes too far in his clutching at Alexandra Moltke Isles, then goes even further and flings Marie Wallace to the floor. I quote a brilliant fanfic idea about Vicki’s origins.
• Episode 623: Her name was Gloria Winters!
  In 1796, Danielle visits Peter. Joshua tells Ben that he will see to it that posterity believes events played out as described in the Collins family history book Vicki brought from the 1960s.
• Episode 624: Difficult adjustment.
  Liz and Vicki look very much like mother and daughter, and Adam and Eve may possibly have sex.
• Episode 625: Dead man’s wedding.
  A traditional wedding at Collinwood, complete with a death threat, the flight of one of the couple, and the exposure of an empty coffin.
• Episode 626: The sad case of Victoria Winters and Peter Bradford.
  A point of view shot gives the sensation of being sexually assaulted by Roger Davis, which I for one could do without. Also, Adam kills Eve.
• Episode 627: Her name is Victoria. I cannot take care of her.
  Alexandra Moltke Isles’ final appearance.
• Episode 628: Taking it to corporate.
  Angelique goes over Nicholas’ head and complains about him to his boss.
• Episode 629: I know him by another name.
  Nicholas visits Hell, which turns out to be located in a corner of Barnabas’ basement.
  • Episode 630: Held back by something that is over.
    Betsy Durkin debuts as Neo-Vicki. Neo-Vicki goes to Nicholas and makes a lot of empty threats. Nicholas pulls the stake out of Tom’s heart, reactivating him as a vampire and sending him after Vicki.
• Episode 631: The curse of the undead.
  Barnabas explains to Neo-Vicki what a vampire is. He destroys Tom.
• Episode 632: A new mate.
  We meet Amy. The werewolf kills Mr Wells. Nicholas consecrates Maggie as a sacrifice to his boss, Satan.
• Episode 633/ 634: Now was the moment, or never at all.
  We catch a breathtaking glimpse of Evil Maggie. Nicholas is recalled to the head office.
• Pre-emption Day: Adam in New York.
  A fanfic idea that would explain more than the makers of the show would probably have felt comfortable having explained.
• Episode 635: Adam smiles.
  Adam hits all the women, then tries to run The Experiment himself. Barnabas is caught on camera picking his nose.
• Episode 636: The old Adam.
  The only story arc in all of Dark Shadows to have a clear formal structure comes to an end with Adam’s final appearance.
• Episode 637: Too late for anything to happen.
  Neo-Vicki marries Peter/ Jeff, and Barnabas and Julia find that Angelique’s coffin is empty.
• Episode 638: Red riding hood.
  Liz meets the Big Bad Wolf.
• Episode 639: I’ve never heard of a Quentin Collins.
  David and Amy find the telephone and see a picture in an old album.
• Episode 640: Stay for another séance.
  Neo-Vicki disrupts David and Amy’s séance. The werewolf bursts through the window at the Blue Whale and kills the barmaid.
• Episode 641: Your time is now.
  Neo-Vicki decides to kill herself, and we wonder who “Penberry Jones” really was.
• Episode 642: Stop thinking of Jeff.
  In which the part of Peter/ Jeff is played by a white dot, which is quite an improvement over Roger Davis.
• Episode 643: Magda, whoever she is.
  Amy manages David like a pro, but Denise Nickerson and David Henesy are still figuring out how to work together.
• Episode 644: Well that was a waste of time.
  Ron Sproat is working under protest.
• Episode 645: We’ll go downstairs and be ourselves again.
  On Dark Shadows, even the skeleton in the closet wears a wig. Amy hugs Barnabas.
• Episode 646: Morbid games children play.
  Quentin and Beth first appear.
• Episode 647: Her own sensitivities.
  Madame Findley comes to Collinwood.
• Episode 648: Her name is Madame.
  Madame Findley meets the children.
• Episode 649: Why did that music stop?
  Madame Findley’s final appearance.
• Episode 650: I must see to my luggage.
  Neo-Vicki disappears, and the character leaves the 1960s forever. Barnabas takes a gig as a house-sitter.
• Episode 651: The tomb is ready, and I am ready.
  Liz and Barnabas are feeling sorry for themselves, and Chris wants so many sedatives not even Julia can satisfy him.
• Episode 652/ 653: Someone to take care of them immediately.
  Liz orders Barnabas to hire Maggie as the new governess, and we see the werewolf sleeping on his little bed.
• In place of episode 653: The Gift of the Magi.
  A link to a video of Kathryn Leigh Scott and David Selby doing a little drama on Zoom.
• Episode 654: After you see what happens, you will never be the same again.
  Joe fights the werewolf.
• Episode 655: The doctor’s office.
  Julia has developed a very strange medical practice. The first episode directed by Henry Kaplan.
• Episode 656: Mister Jonathan.
  Maggie finds Josette’s music box and doesn’t want to see it anymore than anyone else does.
• Episode 657: We will never leave this house.
  The show has officially given up on bringing the village of Collinsport into the stories, and one of the cameras is on its last legs.
• Episode 658: Joe’s rough night in.
  Farewell to one of Dark Shadows‘ original characters.
• Episode 659: Changing of the guard.
  We see a photo of someone whom Barnabas recognizes as Vicki, though we’ve never seen her before. Craig Slocum’s last episode.
• Episode 660: Suppose I am from another century.
  It seems for a moment that Barnabas might share his secret with Stokes, scaring Julia out of her wits.
• Episode 661: The secret of the chained coffin.
  A clip show. At the end, Barnabas goes back in time and becomes a vampire again.
• Episode 662: The course of history.
  In 1796, Barnabas materializes inside a cell at the Collinsport gaol and meets Post-Vicki.
• Episode 663: Forbes, capitalist tool.
  Barnabas kills another sex worker, prompting him to feel deeply and sincerely sorry for himself.
• Episode 664: Consigned to this time forever.
  Barnabas and Ben travel to a part of the studio where no set has been built.
• Episode 665: Burn, witch, burn!
  Angelique gets yet another death scene.
• Episode 666: Barnabas isn’t like anyone else.
  Ben completes his metamorphosis into Matthew. Joel Crothers’ final appearance.
• Episode 667: The idea of leaving Collinwood.
  Barnabas takes the long way back to the 1960s, and David paves the way for Don Vito Corleone.
• Episode 668: Very odd games.
  A geography lesson.
• Episode 669: Hide and seek.
  Quentin appears to Mrs Johnson in the cottage. Edward Marshall plays Harry Johnson. He imitates Craig Slocum, but is a zillion times more interesting to watch.
• Episode 670: A nice couple.
  Maggie isn’t very good at her new job.
• Episode 671: We promised Maggie we’d be good children.
  Nancy Barrett’s wardrobe makes it clear no one from the network’s Standards and Practices office is watching the show.
• Episode 672: And it was my mother’s voice.
  Liz isn’t buried alive anymore.
• Episode 673: Urgent business.
  Denise Nickerson’s performance as Amy Jennings carries the episode.
• Episode 674: When there is a Moon.
  In a classic farce, Chris tries to get out of being alone with Donna Friedlander.
• Episode 675: The best alibi you can have in this town.
  Sheriff Patterson has been getting dumber and dumber. Today, his brainpower reaches absolute zero and he ceases to exist.
• Episode 676: Scared of the funniest things.
  Barnabas locks Chris up in the secret chamber in the old mausoleum. Quentin wants David to poison Chris.
• Episode 677: To contain your violence.
  Quentin poisons Chris. Beth leads Julia and Barnabas to Chris.
• Episode 678: This time, I saved him.
  Julia and Barnabas catch on that David and Amy are involved in The Haunting of Collinwood.
• Episode 679: Your make-believe people.
  I make six discrete points about an action-free episode.
• Episode 680: Chicken Little was right.
  Quentin is still weak enough that he has to make concessions to Amy. I offer a little Latin lesson, free of charge.
• Episode 681: Mr Juggins.
  David Henesy sings to a tailor’s dummy. I wish the two of them had got their own spinoff.
• Episode 682: He killed me.
  Maggie’s first séance marks a major deviation from the form the ceremony has followed consistently up to this point.
• Episode 683: The children themselves.
  Barnabas and Chris dug up a child’s coffin. We hear Bob Lloyd’s voice one more time, telling us “that Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis production.” The last script credited to Ron Sproat.
• Episode 684: This is a funny house we live in.
  Further evidence that there is a connection between Quentin and the werewolf. Abe Vigoda first appears as old Mr Braithwaite.
  • Episode 685: Barnabas,Quentin, and the Thing Glasses.
    Quentin kills old Mr Braithwaite.
• Episode 686: Curious so many hearts should stop in this house.
  Roger threatens to kick Barnabas and Julia out of the great house unless they stop talking about ghosts and apologize to David.
• Episode 687: An old acquaintance.
  Roger Davis rejoins the cast as a man who tries to confine Carolyn to the drawing room. She doesn’t draw a gun on him, unfortunately.
• Episode 688: Why have you come back?
  Roger Davis crowds Grayson Hall and Jonathan Frid, making them visibly uncomfortable. David writes a story suggesting a connection between Quentin and the werewolf.
• Episode 689: A victim of the werewolf.
  Barnabas finds David in the mausoleum.
• Episode 690: A different mood.
  The women and children in the cast refuse to stand within reach of Roger Davis.
• Episode 691: Too late to be afraid.
  The Haunting of Collinwood takes over from the werewolf as the A-story and Liz ceases to be a blocking figure.
• Episode 692: The only existing link.
  We find that Liz knows about the secret passage from the drawing room to the west wing. Lisa Blake Richards makes her first appearance, playing Sabrina.
• Episode 693: Contemptuous and evil spirits.
  Stokes tries to exorcise Collinwood, and the crew tries to burn down the studio.
• Episode 694: Enough tragedy in this house.
  Roger, the last character still insisting that “There must be a logical explanation!,” sees evidence that even he must accept.
• Episode 695: Collinwood belongs to the ghosts now.
  Barnabas and Maggie spend a cozy evening in the parlor at the Old House, reading the Collins family histories.
• Episode 696: Not anywhere at all.
  Maggie is someone else.
• Episode 697: He was so cold and evil, he touched me.
  Roger Davis gropes Lisa Blake Richards, who is required to remain motionless. Jonathan Frid looks like he’s about to stop tape and call Equity.
• Episode 698: The kind of scene you should be avoiding.
  I quote someone who speculated that Sabrina’s woeful condition is less to do with the werewolf she loved than with her loathsome brother.
• Episode 699: If only I could put these images into some kind of a sequence.
  Maggie has a dream, and she and Barnabas venture into the great house.
• Episode 700: Beyond the door, anything is possible.
  Barnabas undertakes a quest.
• Episode 701: Welcome home the prodigal.
  The first episode set in the year 1897.
• Episode 702: There are many times. You only have to find them.
  Barnabas meets Magda.
• Episode 703: A creature of darkness.
  One of the all-time great goofs at the very end.
• Episode 704: The sort of person relatives would want to meet.
  Barnabas faces Quentin down, then kills a sex worker.
• Episode 705: Mrs Collins no longer exists.
  Barnabas meets Edith.
• Episode 706: What it was to be a Collins.
  Barnabas meets Carl, and I try to figure out how Edith learned The Secret.
• Episode 707: Dark for over a hundred years.
  Quentin meets Rachel, and we first hear the name “Mrs Fillmore.”
• Episode 708: The merry chase begins.
  Barnabas meets Jamison and immediately alienates him.
• Episode 709: You are the ghost.
  Barnabas confronts Quentin about Edith’s will. Roger Davis again wanders onto the set and bothers the actors while they are trying to work.
• Episode 710: The raven and the viper and all the dark creatures.
  Edith’s ghost thoroughly enjoys haunting Quentin, and Sandor still thinks it’s funny that the Collinses are afraid of the dark. Quentin and Evan consecrate Jamison to the Devil.
• Episode 711: Our beautiful black-hearted child of the angels.
  Evan and Quentin bring Angelique to 1897. The first script credited to Violet Welles.
• Episode 712: A pawn in this cruel game.
  Barnabas tries to make another Josette whom he can love me and Angelique tries to make another Josette whom she can hate.
• Episode 713: The heart of the room.
  Rachel finds herself in Barnabas’ front parlor, and Judith finds the will.
• Episode 714: The available ladies in the house.
  Judith’s brothers react to the will. We see the cradle we saw in #645, closing a loop.
• Episode 715: The grace to be curious.
  Neurotic intellectual Rachel can’t find a psychiatrist, so she goes to a fortune-teller instead.
• Episode 716: Someone who is not going to come.
  We meet Jenny, but we are not properly introduced to her.
• Episode 717: I know what color a lie is.
  Rachel tells Barnabas about something she has seen, and he investigates.
• Episode 718: Spy school.
  Barnabas confronts Angelique, and Quentin enlists Jamison as a secret agent.
• Episode 719: Every person has a theme of music.
  Jenny gives Dirk a good smack, earning our love forever.
• Episode 720: The big, bad wolf.
  We find out that Jenny is Quentin’s wife, not Edward’s.
• Episode 721: If he stays dead now.
  Terry Crawford’s acting style adds some welcome humor to a scene that needs it, and Roger Davis’ carelessness with his lines adds a less desirable laugh.
• Episode 722: Too good-looking to die from old age.
  Quentin, who is dead at the moment, possesses Jamison.
• Episode 723: A mindless hulk.
  Quentin is a zombie, and Barnabas has a plan.
• Episode 724: There has to be truth to make a story.
  Sandor rescues Rachel from Quentin, and Magda is so impressed she forgets to insult him.
• Episode 725: Imagination, properly channeled.
  Judith proves that she is not Liz. Gregory Trask shows up and immediately takes charge of the house.
• Episode 726: A boy’s dislike.
  Trask gets credit for restoring Jamison and Quentin to themselves, and we see that he is bad news for children.
• Episode 727: The lost lamb.
  Barnabas bites Charity.
• Episode 728: Mother is coming home.
  We find out who Edward’s estranged wife is.
• Episode 729: A tired family.
  Henry Kaplan simply did not know what to do with a television camera.
• Episode 730: The very same dream.
  Laura comes home.
• Episode 731: Your greatest weakness.
  Quentin has all of the vices Roger did when first we knew him, and Edward has all the vices opposite to those.
• Episode 732: The possessor and the possessed.
  Two undead blonde fire witches, no waiting.
• Episode 733: From pocket to pocket.
  Minerva Trask shows up, and we wonder if she will drive Rachel to be one of the three governesses Carolyn spoke of in #9.
• Episode 734: After school detention.
  The show finds the perfect role for Don Briscoe.
• Episode 735: Defenseless souls.
  Laura confronts Trask.
• Episode 736: Quentin and Magda find Laura’s urn.
  The whole day is given over the operation of the plot.
• Episode 737: The suffering of some people.
  A joltingly sex-like encounter between Laura and Dirk.
• Episode 738: The rest of the truth.
  Barnabas recognizes Laura.
• Episode 739: No one’s daughter.
  The retcons come thick and fast. Trask finds the bite marks on Charity’s neck.
• Episode 740: A doll without pins in it. How unusual.
  The show really wants us to think Barnabas was in his twenties in 1795, and is willing to make hash of a lot of established continuity in service of that goal.
• Episode 741: Death certificate follows.
  The retcons get tangled up in each other.
• Episode 742: Barnabas, Quentin, and the advantage of being seen together.
  Quentin grossly underestimates Laura and just as grossly overestimates the persuasive power of the Egyptian Records Office.
• Episode 743: A person of the supernatural.
  A series of happy accidents involving the special effects and the actors come together to strengthen a weak script.
• Episode 744: Sometimes he makes himself invisible.
  Barnabas meets Jenny.
• Episode 745: What I am is what I will be.
  We learn that Jenny is Magda’s sister.
• Episode 746: Madness in her background.
  Quentin keeps trying to kill Jenny, and Judith is keeping something from Barnabas.
• Episode 747: Triumphant life behind a locked door.
  Jenny is on the loose again.
• Episode 748: Here in the past.
  Quentin murders Jenny, and Magda vows to curse him.
• Episode 749: The kiss of death.
  Magda places the first part of the curse.
• Episode 750: Hold back the night.
  Magda finishes placing the curse, which will be passed down to Quentin’s descendants.
• Episode 751: Your most concerned friend.
  Everyone knows what they want everyone else to think of them. The earliest episode with a cast all of whom were alive 56 years after the original broadcast.
• Episode 752: Matters other than the law.
  Evan chalks up Quentin’s rug, and Quentin turns into a werewolf.
• Episode 753: Each and every one of us is doomed.
  The werewolf does his best Marcel Marceau imitation, and Jamison is imprisoned in a closet at school.
• Episode 754: A place with special people.
  Laura has to compete with a vampire and a werewolf.
• Episode 755: So many strange habits.
  Laura learns that Ben took a secret to the grave, so she has Dirk dig up his grave to look for it.
• Episode 756: A bizarre activity for a beautiful woman.
  Diana Millay is playing Laura as if she were a Special Guest Villainess on Batman, which works well. I wish they had named Denise Nickerson’s character “Catherine.” I write a whole scene that Catherine might have played.
• Episode 757: All of them witches.
  Laura prays to Amun-Ra.
• Episode 758: Strangled on her stories.
  Laura and Angelique battle each other. Angelique and Quentin have a smiley prayer meeting.
• Episode 759: It’s not our fault, what we are.
  Laura and Barnabas level with each other.
• Episode 760: A creature of fire.
  Angelique destroys Laura.
• Episode 761: This is no time to try to understand anything!
  Evan and Quentin try to conjure up Satan, and a shadowy figure appears in the doorway.
• Episode 762: You called the Devil, and you got me.
  As the original Trask’s fanaticism made him a hypocrite, Gregory Trask’s hypocrisy makes him a fanatic.
• Episode 763: An afternoon of cards, an evening of murder.
  Beth tells Magda about the children. Tim Shaw of Dark Shadows merges with Raymond Shaw of The Manchurian Candidate.
• Episode 764: A primitive tribe.
  Five miscellaneous points.
• Episode 765: The animal in the woods.
  Barnabas bites Beth.
• Episode 766: The weeping Dorcas.
  The ghost of Dorcas confronts Quentin.
• Episode 767: Birthdays are for people who get older.
  A brilliant dream sequence.
• Episode 768: Some kind of exhibit.
  A Roger Davis-heavy installment.
• Episode 769: All dead things look the same.
  Roger Davis goes so far over the top his scene partners have nowhere to go.
• Episode 770: We must give him a vampire.
  Edward is neither Roger nor Joshua.
• Episode 771: When the music begins.
  The short and happy life of Miss Pansy Faye, mentalist extraordinaire.
• Episode 772: Apologies are the Devil’s invention.
  Barnabas buries Pansy, and Tim is too brainwashed to listen to Charity.
• Episode 773: Tear up the card.
  Evan has acquired some magical powers, but he doesn’t know how to use them to further his own ends.
• Episode 774: Sometimes people change their roles in life.
  Dirk bites Judith, and I quote a conversation in which Jerry Lacy and Lela Swift confronted Roger Davis about his assault on Joan Bennett during rehearsal.
• Episode 775: Call it a vampire or whatever you like.
  Dirk bites Rachel, then orders Judith to kill her.
• Episode 776: We used to sing sea shanties.
  Judith kills Rachel. Barnabas stakes Dirk. Trask is high on his own supply.
• Episode 777: Two murderers at Collinwood.
  Tim blackmails Trask and Judith. Pansy’s ghost appears.
• Episode 778: The strongest magic is always the simplest.
  An ambitious dream sequence that seems to be from a different show altogether, then the introduction of The Hand of Count Petofi.
• Episode 779: Our cousin, who always appears at dusk.
  Angelique urges Barnabas to go back to the 1960s, Carl tells Quentin that Barnabas is a vampire, Magda tries to lift her curse, and Quentin locks Carl up with Barnabas.
• Episode 780: Carl was not mad.
  Barnabas kills Carl. Quentin is really broken up about it, for almost a whole minute.
• Episode 781: Sympathy somewhat disturbing.
  Trask hits Magda and puts a cross on Barnabas’ coffin.
• Episode 782: Satan on the run.
  Edward is impatient with the idea that anyone at Collinwood could fail to know about the tunnel from the prison cell in the basement of the Old House to the beach below Widow’s Hill.
• Episode 783: Talk to the hand.
  The Hand cures Charity, and Evan captures Barnabas.
• Episode 784: Impaled by a pin.
  Judith marries Trask, and Evan is disfigured.
• Episode 785: Time is my hobby.
  Judith tells her brothers that Jamison will still be her heir, but that Trask will be executor of the estate if she dies before Jamison turns 21.
• Episode 786: Dreams of long ago.
  Trask tries to play the role of master of Collinwood with Magda, who slaps him down at once. Charity has a dream about some records that are going to be in stores in the summer of 1969.
• Episode 787: You said that, I said nothing!
  Edward and Barnabas confront each other at the police station.
• Episode 788: From a beast to a man.
  Quentin’s face is disfigured, and so is Evan’s, until it isn’t, for some reason that is apparently none of the audience’s business.
• Episode 789: We are going to create a thing.
  Evan and Trask create a simulacrum of Minerva.
• Episode 790: Making a demon of her.
  The simulacrum of Minerva drives Judith to distraction.
• Episode 791: Roomful of spirits.
  Evan dissolves the simulacrum of Minerva, and Jerry Lacy commits one of the all-time great goofs.
• Episode 792: No place. And every place.
  Quentin tries to steal The Hand from Evan, only to be robbed of it by someone we haven’t seen before. Angelique returns.
• Episode 793: All the revolted spirits.
  Angelique steals The Hand, and we meet a man who calls himself “Victor Fenn Gibbons” (even though the closing credits call him “Victor Fenn Gibbon.”)
• Episode 794: The Hand doesn’t always bring out the best in people.
• We visit the Blue Whale, where Bob O’Connell plays the man pouring and we meet Julianka.
• Episode 795: My little puppeteer.
  Everyone chases after The Hand, Quentin is confined to a death-trap, and there is a wonderful live theater moment when two actors go up at once.
• Episode 796: Don’t sound human.
  Barnabas rescues Quentin, but no one can rescue Julianka.
• Episode 797: I do not like death at all.
  A most unconventional séance conjures up Julianka’s ghost, who curses Magda.
• Episode 798: A gift from the unicorn.
  Quentin learns that he is a father in the same conversation he learns that his son is dead. Sandor dies.
• Episode 799: Who understands the Moon.
  Magda tries to destroy The Hand, and it keeps trying to touch her rear end.
• Episode 800: Nothing further to lose.
  Tim takes The Hand with him on a visit to Evan.
• Pre-emption Day- In place of episode 801: Periodization again.
  I revise my chaptering.
• Episode 801/ 802: Ignore the truth whenever you can.
  Quentin realizes that Fenn-Gibbon is Petofi, and Petofi takes possession of Jamison.
• Episode 803: As soon as you’re finished with the mumbo-jumbo.
  David Henesy’s imitation of Thayer David brings the house down.
• Episode 804: He’s a gem, isn’t he?
  Edward thinks he’s a valet, Charity thinks she’s Pansy Faye, and Dan Curtis thinks we want to see Roger Davis.
• Episode 805: The shocking condition of your face.
  Trask is shocked that Charity has become fun.
• Episode 806: You’re not thinking of the foolish things.
  Trask tells Charity she is sinful when she finds his confession, and Tate tells her she is hallucinating when she sees Quentin’s portrait.
• Episode 807: An award-winning performance, wouldn’t you say?
  Jonathan Frid takes his first turn as narrator, David Henesy does a particularly fine job as Jamison/ Petofi, we see what appears to be a portrait of Sarah Collins, and Magda admits that she has been responsible for all the story progression in the last twenty-two weeks.
• Episode 808: The mysterious shadow he can cast.
  Jamison/Petofi and Aristide are holding Magda prisoner. Charity has a dream and, after waking, finds Quentin with the gravely injured Tessie.
• Episode 809: Back from your evening revels.
  Trask carries Tessie into the house, and Jamison/ Petofi directs Quentin to Trask’s confession.
• Episode 810: Not with pity.
  We see Mrs Fillmore for the first and last time.
• Episode 811: A man’s investment in the future.
  Quentin and Edward show us two variations on Roger’s character.
• Episode 812: The back road to salvation.
  Tim Shaw is back. He puts Don Briscoe’s W. C. Fields imitation into a remake of Burke’s original story.
• Episode 813: All things, good or evil, come to the same end.
  The restaurant at the Collinsport Inn is already in business in 1897, and it is still in black and white.
• Episode 814: The hand knows what it must do. Petofi regains the Hand.
• Episode 815: The gentleman he appears to be. Petofi can’t believe that Barnabas
  • doesn’t know how to get back to 1969.
  • Episode 816: David Collins, who lives in the year 1969. Tim becomes a nastier version of Burke.
• Episode 817: The way back. Barnabas seems to have lost his last allies.
• Preemption Day: Some videos of Dark Shadows-related gatherings on Youtube.
• Episode 818: I have but one, and his name is Petofi.
  Charity has learned some facts, but she does not know who shares her knowledge.
• Episode 819: You’re a bit of all right, you are!
  Miss Charity Trask ceases to exist. In her place, we have the return of Pansy Faye.
• Episode 820: The music and the mirror.
  I use lyrics from Donna McKechnie’s big number in A Chorus Line to string together some miscellaneous observations.
• Episode 821: The beautiful people of 1969.
  King Johnny and Istvan hold Magda at the Old House, while Petofi and Aristide hold Barnabas at the abandoned mill.
• Episode 822: I’ll give you some spins.
  A great scene between Charity/ Pansy and Trask.
• Episode 823/4: Brandy will warm you.
  Petofi may be to talented to spend his time drugging drinks, but Charity/ Pansy is too uninhibited not to do so.
• Episode 825: Good at coming in room.
  Magda seems to be turning into Julia.
• Episode 826: King Johnny’s court.
  Magda is tried by a jury of the damned- a mashup of two Broadway shows, The Devil and Daniel Webster and Bajour.
• Episode 827: Magnificent, ain’t I?
  King Johnny sets out to kill Petofi.
• Episode 828: Sovereign of the worms.
  King Johnny is dead and Jamison is dying. Petofi confronts Angelique.
• Episode 829: Miss Moon Eyes.
  Angelique frees Jamison and Edward and secures Quentin’s agreement to marry her. Charity/ Pansy has a vision of Quentin’s death.
• Episode 830: Up in the tower room, all bloody.
  Trask finds Quentin and Magda in a compromising position.
• Episode 831: The most loquacious people I know.
  As Petofi and Angelique, Thayer David and Lara Parker invert scenes they had played as Ben and Angelique.
• Episode 832: The stamp of Petofi.
  David Selby and Donna McKechnie are both so charming it doesn’t really matter what either of them does.
• Episode 833: We don’t have any secrets in Collinwood.
  Charity/ Pansy shouts for Trask.
• Episode 834: Gentlemanly greetings.
  Barnabas takes an action that will make him far more vulnerable than he can afford to be.
• Episode 835: A past that runs parallel to our present.
  Characters who don’t know what kind of show they are on collide with others who do.
• Episode 836: The grownup world.
  Terry Crawford has a chance to show what she can do, which turns out to be not nearly enough.
• Episode 837: Somewhere locked up in her mind.
  The only thing more fascinating than watching Grayson Hall talk is watching her be silent.
• Episode 838: Your part in this drama is finished.
  The producers delegate the task of firing actress Terry Crawford to the character Count Petofi.
• Episode 839: Second chance.
  Petofi lays claim to Quentin.
• Episode 840: A man who has betrayed a friend.
  Roger Davis grabs Donna McKechnie’s breasts on camera.
• Episode 841: Beyond it lies the future.
  Petofi meditates on a set of I Ching wands, and finds himself trying to do what Professor Stokes did when he had The Dream.
• Episode 842: Some kind of an unnatural creature.
  Julia realizes that only her spirit has come to 1897, and she has a testy exchange with Angelique.
• Episode 843: The meaning of shadows.
  Beth volunteers to work for Petofi. Tim finds the man Tate created, and immediately loses all interest in Amanda. Amanda is convinced she can neither love nor be loved, but she does hate Tate.
• Episode 844: Some clean, fresh air.
  Tate murders the man he created, then tells Tim about Petofi. Tim tells Petofi about Tate’s power. Kitty Soames shows up, meets Barnabas, and starts to turn into Josette.
• Episode 845: Dance your cares away.
  Charity/ Pansy tries to talk to a drunken Quentin. She follows him to a cave and stakes Barnabas.
• Episode 846: Advantage of an unfortunate creature.
  Tim think he’s going to cash in on Charity/ Pansy’s staking of Barnabas. Charity/ Pansy warns Kitty that she will soon receive a dangerous music box.
• Episode 847: Some new and astounding piece of information.
  Julia keeps a secret from Petofi and from first-time viewers, leading those who have been watching the show for a while to think that she, Barnabas, and Angelique are up to something.
• Episode 848: You have no mortality.
  One guy after another comes into Amanda’s room, telling her what to do. She agrees to leave with the one who isn’t a total jerk about it. Tate steals the portrait of Quentin.
• Episode 849: You wouldn’t expect me to forget a vampire.
  Petofi learns that Julia’s physical body is still in 1969, so he will need to have a body of his own waiting for him in that year if he is to escape from 1897. Kitty introduces Quentin to the concept of “learning.”
• Episode 850: That’s your train, lady.
  Quentin knocks Tate out in a fistfight. Amanda is called to take the second half of Vicki’s round trip.
• Episode 851: Common cause.
  Quentin gives Tim a nasty beating. Petofi and Angelique make an alliance.
• Episode 852: All kinds of spells on people.
  Kitty is turning into Josette.
• Episode 853: Strange and horrifying spirits.
  Julia and Angelique have a friendly chat.
• Episode 854: Substitute for will.
  Quentin and Kitty are both turning into other people. He asks her a question, and she gives the most intelligent possible response.
• Episode 855. The winds of change.
  Petofi begins the process of swapping bodies with Quentin, and we can see a possible direction the show might take if he succeeds.
• Episode 856: Like a new man.
  Petofi and Quentin have swapped bodies.
• Episode 857: Champagne for Wanda.
  One of Collinsport’s ladies of professionally agreeable disposition meets with a series of surprises, some much more to her liking than others.
• Episode 858: Despite all appearances.
  Quentin, trapped in Petofi’s body, takes his lunatic story first to Beth, then to Julia. Beth has reason to believe him, but the real Petofi might murder her at any minute. Julia does believe him, but she vanishes before she can do anything.
• Episode 859: Not this grownup.
  Kitty tries to win Nora over, but finds that the girl does not share her father’s fondness for crazy ladies.
• Episode 860: I just say things.
  Kitty turns to Pansy for help.
• Episode 861: Complete control of my faculties.
  Judith is back, and finds herself a stranger in a sea of familiar faces.
• Episode 862: Reexamine your loyalties.
  P-Quentin enlists Evan for an assault on Q-Petofi. I am reminded of Stobaeus’ list of the maxims inscribed on the stones at the Oracle of Delphi.
• Episode 863: Homecomings.
  Q-Petofi is about to kill Evan, Judith is becoming independent of Trask, and we once more see a relationship between Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother.
• Episode 864: Shipwreck Point.
  Evan has a new boss, Pansy has a new project, and Angelique has a new problem.
• Episode 865: The mind and the body.
  Angelique finds out about the body swap.
• Episode 866: Some various phases of change.
  Q-Petofi strips Angelique of her powers and confines her to the cave with Barnabas’ coffin. Kitty/ Josette goes to the Old House.
• Episode 867: The name of your beloved.
  Barnabas is back.
• Episode 868: The man we thought he was.
  Barnabas tells Edward and Q-Petofi a story which is ridiculous even by the standards of this universe.
• Episode 869: The man who walks in the day.
  Trask has a series of crises to manage.
• Episode 870: Your Josette, always.
  Edward finds Kitty in the middle of a psychotic episode, and therefore proposes marriage to her. They share a kiss, Louis Edmonds’ first on Dark Shadows.
• Episode 871: The twin of life.
  The audience gets good news and bad news. On the one hand, we find that Angelique did not leave 1897 when Petofi deprived her of her powers. On the other, we find that Charles Delaware Tate is also sticking around.
• Episode 872: Favors for enemies.
  Q-Petofi makes preparations to go to 1969 and Barnabas tries to stop him.
• Episode 873: Charming and exquisitely dangerous.
  Beth pulls Q-Petofi back from 1969. He has an unpleasant surprise.
• Episode 874: Makes a girl feel creepy.
  Kitty realizes that she is also Josette, Beth realizes that Quentin’s body is inhabited by Petofi, and Pansy is still Pansy.
• Episode 875: Barnabas, Quentin, and the Difficulty of Being Oneself.
  Looking for someone she can trust, Beth finds Tim Shaw. P-Quentin tries to undo the body swap.
• Episode 876: The gift again.
  Petofi and Quentin are themselves again. Beth goes over Widows’ Hill in a reenactment of Josette’s death. Petofi restores Tate’s painting ability. Aristide turns up, mistakes Quentin for Petofi, and accepts his orders to kill Petofi.
• Episode 877: Put down that sword.
  Aristide stabs Petofi, tries to make up for it by stabbing Quentin, and everyone winds up surviving.
• Episode 878: The moors are my domain.
  Petofi conjures up Garth Blackwood, which may not turn out to have been his cleverest decision.
• Episode 879: A room of one’s own.
  Trask plots to murder Judith, who is plotting to murder him, while Garth Blackwood is roaming about murdering whomever he encounters.
• Episode 880: I like all my stories to have endings.
  Several leftover characters meet their ends.
• Episode 881: Voracious for the future.
  Petofi discovers he cannot control Garth Blackwood and plots to swap bodies with Quentin again.
• Episode 882: The show must go on. That’s the one and only rule there is.
  Quentin must not sleep.
• Episode 883: The stone of justice.
  Garth Blackwood catches up to Petofi, and they fight as the Evans Cottage burns around them.
• Episode 884: Departure date.
  Barnabas finds Petofi’s glasses, Blackwood’s chain, and a note from Tate, suggesting they are all gone. Trask kills himself. Quentin visits Amanda in New York and tells her he has come to say he must be going. Kitty and Barnabas disappear into Josette’s portrait.
• Episode 885: The girl in the portrait.
  Barnabas finds himself back in 1796, on the night Josette killed herself.
• Episode 886: One of the most terrifying tales ever told.
  Josette commits suicide a different way than she did previously, and Barnabas has a run-in with two mysterious hooded figures.
• Episode 887: The man in the medium-sized hat.
  Barnabas becomes the leader of whatever group the hooded figures represent, Julia hangs out with Carolyn, and a man whose face we don’t see takes a walk around the grounds of Collinwood.
• Episode 888: The place that he disappeared.
  The audience is told that Paul Stoddard has reappeared in the place from which he disappeared, Julia expects Barnabas to reappear in the place from which she saw him disappear, and there is a threat that Charles Delaware Tate may also reappear. Christopher Bernau is on the show for the first time, but has already disappeared into a Jack Benny imitation, from which he will years later rescue himself by imitating a very different actor.
• Episode 889: Remember the night.
  Barnabas returns to Julia, Chris returns to Carolyn, and Lisa Blake Richards returns to the cast.
• Episode 890: They will be strangers, but you will know them.
  Barnabas won’t put the secret box in an inconspicuous place, and someone wants to buy the painting Julia bought from Philip and Megan.
• Pre-emption Day: Apollo 12 Splashdown.
  I explain why I never joined the Navy.
• Episode 891: The only one there is.
  I explain how time works on Dark Shadows. Megan and Philip open the Leviathan box, and Maggie says goodbye to the Evans Cottage.
• Episode 892: The chosen room.
  The writers are trying to figure out how the Leviathan storyline will connect to the show’s previous stories and themes.
• Episode 893: We serve him now
  Carolyn meets her father and gets a job. David is still as afraid of Roger as he was in the first months of the show, when Roger was scary.
• Episode 894/895: The time of the Leviathan people.
  David has the book, and Barnabas takes Philip to the cairn.
• Episode 896: Those who have been hidden shall show themselves
  David joins the cult of the Leviathans, and a woman introduces herself as Olivia Corey
• Episode 897: Restore our flesh and bones
  In which the action depends on four characters, none of whom is suited to the function they are serving in the story.
• Episode 898: The keeper of the book
  David emerges as the new leader of the Leviathan cult, opening the possibility that the current storyline will involve something new.
• Episode 899: How well I remember that charm of yours
  The show is taking a turn that threatens to be as uninteresting to its very young fans as some of the recent stories have been to the grown-ups in the audience.
• Episode 900: Precious possession
  If you ever wondered what The Twilight Zone would have been like if it had been a lot more heavily concerned with unmistakably gay dudes, you can find the answer here.
• Episode 901: In Collinsport, where your only hope lies
  Carolyn has misread Paul’s situation disastrously
• Episode 902: I heard breathing
  Joan Bennett gets a chance to do some good acting
• Episode 903: Rhinoceros
  Julia lends the painting to Olivia, who has Mr Nakamura take it to be x-rayed.
• Episode 904: To have fun, like everybody else
  Liz is onto David
• Episode 905: My darling now
  Quentin has amnesia, and the Leviathan boy ages up
• Episode 906: Like an organization
  Liz invites Paul to move back into Collinwood
• Episode 907: Knowing the criminals but not the crime
  Paul realizes Liz is not going to help him fight his enemies, but begins to hope Julia might
• Episode 908: Mollycoddle that monster
  Alexander comes to Collinwood, and Paul acts like a crazy man.