acting – Page 12 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 749: The kiss of death

In the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s, Louis Edmonds plays Roger Collins, younger brother of matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. In 1966 and 1967, we saw that Roger had squandered his entire inheritance. He was reduced to living as a guest in Liz’ house and working as an employee for her business. Roger was the show’s first villain. His villainy was confined to a storyline known as “The Revenge of Burke Devlin.” That story never really caught on, and by #201 even Burke Devlin had lost interest in it. Roger receded to the margins, and for the rest of the series Edmonds’ gift for sarcastic dialogue kept the character alive as occasional comic relief.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. Edmonds, a costume drama specialist in his years on Broadway, came into his own as haughty overlord Joshua Collins. Joshua’s focus on moneymaking and his determination to preserve the glamour of the Collins family name at all costs placed him at the opposite pole from Roger, a blithe spendthrift pathologically lacking in family feeling. Joshua used his power to cover up all of the tragic and horrible events we saw in the 1790s segment, and imposed a false history in its place.

Now, the show is set in 1897. Edmonds plays Edward, the stuffy eldest brother of the adult members of the Collinses of Collinsport. Edward has Joshua’s imperious demeanor and his determination to conceal the family’s disgraces, but like Roger he finds himself penniless, dependent on his sister’s largess. Yesterday he learned that his youngest brother, libertine Quentin, had killed his estranged wife Jenny. So far, Quentin has been a breezily amoral wastrel, easily recognizable to longtime viewers as a kindred spirit of his great-nephew Roger. But Quentin shocked himself when he murdered Jenny, and he had a terrified look on his face as he tried to sneak out of the house afterward.

Edward intercepted him then and forbade him to go. Edward had learned from Quentin’s girlfriend, Jenny’s former maid Beth, what happened. Edward was in a high dudgeon about the mess Quentin had made, but did not seem particularly surprised or at all grieved. He was quite confident he would be able to hush the whole thing up, and fabricated a story about Jenny falling down the stairs and dying shortly after from a head injury.

What did shock Edward was Quentin’s revelation that Jenny was the sister of one of the neighbors, Magda Rákóczi. Magda is a member of the Romani people, an ethnicity against whom Edward and the rest of the Collinses are violently prejudiced. “You married a Gypsy!” he exclaims in utter disgust. He remained convinced that he could keep the whole thing quiet, and drilled Beth and Quentin in the lies they were to tell Magda and her husband Sandor.

Magda did not give Edward a chance to direct the little play he had written. She found physical evidence indicating Quentin had murdered Jenny, and accused him. When she threatened to go to the police, Edward asked her what she imagined the authorities would do when asked to choose between the word of a Collins and the word of a “Gypsy.” At that, Magda dropped her plan to go to the police and vowed to place a curse on Quentin. Edward dismissed that as “words,” but Quentin is deeply involved in the occult. He is helpless with fear.

Today, Edward calls on Quentin in his room. He finds that Quentin has not slept all night. He continues to regard Quentin’s fear of Magda’s curse with total contempt, but perks up when Quentin says that he has thought of a way to escape it. Returning viewers already know that there is one way wide open to Quentin to escape the curse. He can go to the police and confess that he murdered Jenny.

This, of course, is not Quentin’s idea. He wants to offer Magda $10,000. Neither he nor Edward has that kind of money, but their sister Judith, whom their grandmother chose as her sole heiress, does. Edward says that he might be able to persuade Judith to give him that sum on one condition. Their grandmother’s will left Quentin no property or income, but it did guarantee him the right to live in the great house of Collinwood as long as he might wish. If he will sign documents renouncing that right, Judith might give him the money.

Edward embarrassed by Quentin’s craven mewling. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin drifts off to sleep. He has a nightmare. Sandor and Magda show him Jenny’s body and tell him he can escape punishment if he blesses it. He does so, and Jenny comes back to life. She asks for a kiss. Quentin gives it, and Magda and Sandor laugh. They say that the kiss has sealed his fate- it is “the kiss of death!”

Edward returns with word that Judith will give him his $10,000, but that she has added a condition. Not only Quentin, but Sandor and Magda too, will have to leave the area forever. Quentin promises to make that happen, and signs the papers.

Meanwhile, Magda and Sandor are at home in the Old House on the grounds of the estate. Magda has mixed a potion and told Sandor that “a very old Gypsy woman” once used it to place a terrible curse on someone called “Count Petofi.” All they have to do is trick Quentin into drinking the potion, and the same curse will befall him. Sandor disdainfully replies that he had thought Magda might have come up with a plan that had a chance of working. He can’t imagine Quentin drinking anything they might give him.

They look out the window, and see Quentin coming to the house. They are pleasantly surprised that he is delivering himself. He knocks. They open the door, and he bursts in. Magda makes a great show of telling him he is not welcome and demanding he leave. He tells them about the nightmare, and says he knows that it is part of the curse. He offers them money to lift it. Magda is at first openly offended, while Sandor behaves as if he is tempted. Quentin shows them the money, and Magda plays the part of a woman succumbing to greed. She asks Jenny’s spirit to forgive her, and takes the envelope. She makes a gesture that Quentin takes to be an act of spellcasting. While she counts the money, Sandor says they will have to share a drink to complete the deal. Quentin happily agrees.

Once Quentin has taken the drink, Magda tells him that he has been fooled. The nightmare was not part of any curse, but was simply the voice of his own conscience. She tells him that the drink brought the curse on him, and that he will begin to suffer its effects tonight. She throws the money at him and tells him to take it. He reels away, dazzled by the horror of it all.

Magda’s curse shows the limits of the Collinses’ power. Their prestige and connections enable them to intimidate the authorities so that they need not worry about an insistent police investigation. But their freedom from that concern has allowed Quentin to travel so far into depravity that he has committed murder and brought a curse upon himself. When they encounter someone who will not be intimidated, their only recourse is to money. Magda’s unwillingness to sell her sister’s vengeance for any number of dollars means that the rich Judith would be as powerless against her as are the impecunious Edward and Quentin.

Not only has the Collinses’ station led Quentin to indulge himself in one vice after another until he is so far gone he cannot imagine good behavior, it has led him to assume that everyone assigned to a humbler place in the world can be bought. Sandor and Magda are quite good actors, almost as good as Thayer David and Grayson Hall, and they look very much like people who are tempted to take the bribe Quentin is offering. But even to make the offer shows a complete lack of perspicacity. Jenny has not been dead for twenty four hours, and he somehow supposes her sister is ready to bargain away her memory.

Quentin cannot say he wasn’t warned. His dream told him that Magda and Sandor would trick him into bringing the curse on himself by leading him to believe they were giving him a way to escape the curse. He is so far gone in the symptoms of his over-privileged background that he cannot even interpret this message. Thus we see that the real curse of the Collinses, the obstacle that blocks the sunlight and casts all the dark shadows that shroud them, is their wealth and power. The first ten months of the show made some feints towards developing a social drama about the relations between the Collinses in their house on the hill and the working people in the village below. The village is mentioned nowadays only as a source for victims of the various monsters bred at Collinwood, but the price everyone pays for the Collinses’ exalted position is always front and center.

Episode 747: Triumphant life behind a locked door

Madwoman Jenny, estranged wife of libertine Quentin Collins, is on the loose again, and she is the object of a madcap search by Quentin’s sister, spinster Judith, his girlfriend, maidservant Beth, and his distant cousin, secret vampire Barnabas. Quentin makes two contributions to the process. The less important is to serve as the bait in a cockamamie trap Barnabas and Judith lay for Jenny. The more important is to keep up a running commentary mocking the other characters for the silliness of their activities.

The trap itself involves a moment of intentional humor. Barnabas has returned to the year 1897 to prevent Quentin becoming a ghost who will ruin things for everyone on the great estate of Collinwood in 1969. One of the things Quentin did in that year that terrified the characters and tried the patience of the audience was to cause the strains of a sickly little waltz continually to resound from the walls of the great house. When the show became a costume drama and we got to know the living Quentin, we found that he too played a gramophone record of that same tune incessantly, annoying all and sundry. The trap requires Quentin to play the recording over and again until Jenny hears it and comes. After it has been going for half an hour, Barnabas tells Quentin that the plan didn’t work and they should stop playing the waltz. Quentin asks “Are you tired of hearing this music?” Barnabas speaks for all of us when he replies “Frankly, yes.”

Not only is this a successful comedy, it also gives the cast an opportunity for some of their best dramatic acting. As Judith, Joan Bennett at one point stops, looks at Barnabas, and asks “Can we trust you? Really trust you?” She apologizes for the bluntness of that question, then admits that she has long been busy putting a prettier face on the Collins family than the dark secrets Barnabas has discovered make plausible. “I’m not really very trusting. I try to pretend we’re nicer than we really are.” In the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s, Bennett plays matriarch Liz, whose whole personality is about denial and the pretense that the Collinses are nicer than they really are. Liz latched onto Barnabas as soon as she saw him, and refuses to see any evidence that he is not quite normal. Nor does she ever really face her own habits of concealment and their implications. In this little exchange, we see Bennett playing a character whose superficial similarities to Liz point up her profound differences from her.

Joan Bennett had one of the most distinguished careers of any American actress of the twentieth century. Terrayne Crawford stands at something of the opposite pole, and her performance as Beth leads most fans to declare that she is the weakest of all the members of the cast of the portion of Dark Shadows set in the year 1897. I don’t really disagree with that, but she is fine today. Miss Crawford’s great limitation was that she could play only one emotion at a time, and she was on the show in a period when the scripts gave every character complex motivations in almost every scene. But today, all Beth has to play is Anguish, and Miss Crawford does a fine job.

Beth took care of Jenny during the year Quentin was away from Collinwood, and became very close to her. In the nine and a half weeks since Quentin’s return, she has fallen in love with him. In a scene at the close of today’s episode, Beth tearfully admits to Quentin that she wishes something would happen to Jenny so that he would no longer have a wife. Beth collapses into Quentin’s arms. Jenny has been hiding in a corner, eavesdropping; she comes out, holding a knife. There have been occasions when we might have rooted for Jenny to succeed in killing Beth, just to spare us the embarrassment of Miss Crawford’s flat, tedious performances. But this time, we want to see more of her, and the prospect that Beth might die makes for an effective cliffhanger.

Episode 744: Sometimes he makes himself invisible

The House by the Sea

In September and October 1967, well-meaning governess Vicki and her depressing boyfriend Burke wanted to buy a long-disused property that everyone referred to as “The House by the Sea.” Collinsport is a coastal village, so many of its houses would lie by the sea, but at that point only that one was so designated on Dark Shadows. It was important that The House by the Sea lay on the other side of Collinsport from the great estate of Collinwood. When it was first introduced, matriarch Liz was eager to go there, signaling that the show was done with an old and unproductive theme presenting Liz as a recluse. And Burke was willing to live there with Vicki, whom he is determined to get away from Collinwood and the Collins family.

The house belonged to the Collinses, and the show suggested that it might be haunted in such a way that if Burke and Vicki lived there they would become possessed by the unquiet spirits of its former occupants, Caleb Collins and his wife, whom we know only by the initials “F. McA. C.” When Liz found in #335 that for legal reasons she would not be able to sell Vicki and Burke the house for a few years, the whole story vanished without a trace. We did not hear the phrase “The House by the Sea” again until #679, in January 1969.

At that point, the show was in fact running a story about ghosts taking possession of the living, a coincidence that leads me to wonder if the writers were making an inside joke about a story that was in the flimsies early in 1967, that was reflected in the talk about “The House by the Sea” that autumn, and that went nowhere. At the beginning of January 1969, strange and troubled boy David Collins was intermittently possessed by the ghost of his Aunt Liz’ great-uncle Quentin, and when Liz questioned him about some of his odd doings he made up a story about The House by the Sea to persuade her that he was just being silly.

In between those two stories, we did hear a great deal about another place called “A House by the Sea.” From #549 in August 1968 until #633/634 in November, this house was rented by suave warlock Nicholas Blair. At first it was said to be located at some distance from Collinwood, and it seemed that it might be the house Burke and Vicki had been interested in. But as we saw it, we could see that it was in quite a different architectural style. And as time went on, the house moved closer and closer to Collinwood. After a while, the opening narrations referred to it as “Another house on the same great estate.” That did not stop Big Finish Productions from conflating Vicki and Burke’s “The House by the Sea” with Nicholas’ “A House by the Sea” in their 2012 drama The House by the Sea, but the houses remained distinguishable on the show as of early 1969.

Now, Dark Shadows has become a costume drama set in the year 1897. Well-meaning time-traveler/ bloodsucking fiend Barnabas Collins has gone to that year, when Quentin was a living being, in hopes of preventing the events that made him into the all-destroying evil spirit of 1969. Barnabas does not have the slightest idea what those events were, and in the absence of that information he has decided that the best course of action is to antagonize as many people as possible.

Among the enemies Barnabas has made is the evil Rev’d Gregory Trask, head of a boarding school/ abusive cult called Worthington Hall. Another of Barnabas’ new enemies has, for reasons of her own, burned Worthington Hall to the ground. Trask has captivated the current mistress of Collinwood, spinster Judith Collins, and in #739 Judith offered Trask the use of a “small house on the estate” as a temporary base for the school until she can finance the restoration of the previous site. Today, Judith instructs a servant to take steps to prepare “the house by the sea” for this purpose.

Perhaps this means that Trask’s cruelty center will occupy the house Burke and Vicki wanted to buy. That Judith said it was “on the estate” would suggest that it is the one where Nicholas lived, and they have decided that so few people remember the dead-end storyline of autumn 1967 that they no longer need to keep the two houses distinct by calling only one of them “The House by the Sea.”

No More Knife

While Quentin was haunting Collinwood in late 1968 and early 1969, he showed himself to be a peculiarly corporeal sort of ghost. In addition to the usual ghostly business of materializing and dematerializing inside closed rooms, possessing children, and making noises resound from everywhere and nowhere all at once, he also poisoned one person, choked another, and came and went through a secret passage. Occasionally this served to show that Quentin’s power started small and grew steadily until he was irresistible, but it also left the impression that Quentin simply enjoyed feeling like he had a body. Now that we see Quentin as a living being, the impression that he revels in the flesh is frequently confirmed.

Quentin’s estranged wife Jenny has gone mad and is being kept prisoner in the great house by Quentin’s sister Judith and brother Edward, with the assistance of a couple of the servants. Quentin learned of Jenny’s continued presence at Collinwood only when she escaped and stabbed him a few weeks ago, and he still can’t figure out where in the house she is locked up. He has vowed to kill her once he does find her.

Jenny is on the loose again today. Judith has a close call in the drawing room. She finds Jenny there. Jenny menaces Judith with a knife; just as she gets Judith into a helpless position and it looks like she is about to stab her to death, Jenny picks up a candlestick and knocks Judith unconscious. Shortly after, Quentin comes in and finds Judith recovering from the blow. Judith tells him what happened. He gets a gun and goes out to hunt Jenny down.

Jenny makes her way to the Old House on the estate. She knocks on the door, and Barnabas answers. They introduce themselves to each other. His name means nothing to her; he arrived only nine weeks ago, long after she lost her marbles and was consigned to a hidden cell. No one has told her that Judith invited a distant cousin from England to stay in the Old House. But Barnabas knows exactly who Jenny is, and he listens to her every word and watches her every move with vivid interest.

Jenny announces that she has come to find Quentin. Barnabas says that Quentin is not there, and invites Jenny to search the house. As she walks through the front parlor, Jenny announces that “Sometimes he makes himself invisible.” That line will strike a chord with regular viewers who remember the ghostly Quentin of the 1960s, though Jenny is apparently thinking of a psychotic break she had earlier in the episode when she hallucinated his voice coming from various pieces of furniture in the drawing room. Nonetheless, Jenny is confident that she will know if Quentin is nearby.

Jenny talks about her “children”; Barnabas visited one of her former cells, and saw that there were dolls there. He asks twice if the children she is talking about are dolls, and each time she angrily insists that she has real live children and that they are in her room at Collinwood. She sings a lullaby in a minor key; she forgets the lyrics halfway through, and asks Barnabas if he knows them. She has a lovely voice, and he seems to be sincere when he says he is sorry that he cannot help her finish the song.

As Jenny talks about her children, it dawns on Barnabas that she may in fact have had children who were taken from her. His reaction to this is an important moment. In 1969, Barnabas learned that in 1897 a baby died and was buried in an unmarked grave on the grounds of Collinwood with an amulet meant to ward off werewolves. So far in his trip back to that year, he has found no babies and there is no werewolf. His response to Jenny’s talk of her children looks like a man making a wild surmise. If the baby in the unmarked grave was one of Jenny’s children, the werewolf must be coming very soon.

Jenny is sitting on the staircase for part of this conversation with Barnabas. Ever since Barnabas first met David in #212, he has had his most human moments while standing on the floor and talking to people on that staircase, and his talk with Jenny is an outstanding example. He talks to her very gently. Perhaps he has the presence of mind to try to befriend someone who might be useful to him, but whatever he is thinking he shows a real warmth.

Jenny tries to stab Barnabas; he takes the knife from her. She cowers in a heap on the floor, wailing that now he will kill her. He throws the knife in the fire and tells her she has nothing to fear. Of course, a metal blade could not harm a vampire, so it was easy enough for Barnabas to remain unruffled during the attack.

Barnabas vetoes Jenny’s demand to search the basement, where his coffin is, and takes her upstairs to a bedroom once occupied by his lost love Josette. In 1967, he restored that bedroom to the condition it was in when Josette lived there, and for some reason he has done the same this time. By the time they get to Josette’s room, Jenny thinks that she and Quentin are on their honeymoon and that Barnabas is a bellhop. She apologizes that she has no money to give him as a tip.

Jenny looks into the mirror and is revolted by the terrible person she sees there. Barnabas points to an assortment of lady’s toiletries and assures her that the terrible person will go away if she uses them. He locks her in the room and calls for his servant Magda.

Jenny is so crazy we can never be sure what she will make of any set of facts she encounters, and Barnabas is, for once, keeping his thoughts to himself throughout his scene with her. But however much ambiguity may be built into Barnabas and Jenny’s interactions with each other, there is no question what Marie Wallace and Jonathan Frid are doing. She is supposed to play Jenny without restraint, and she makes the most of that opportunity to be larger-than-life. He also seizes his chance to show what he can do when he has time to really learn his part. He is not only letter-perfect with his lines, but also subtle and precise in his characterization of Barnabas’ reactions and intentions. It is a fascinating performance.

Jenny hears Barnabas calling Magda’s name. She not only repeats it, but also says the name of Magda’s husband Sandor. Magda and Sandor have been in the Old House for quite some time, well before Barnabas showed up and forced them into his service, so it is no surprise that Jenny remembers them. It is interesting that she seems to have strong feelings about them, though. Before she left the great house, Jenny was talking to herself, saying that her father was “a king in India.” Sandor and Magda are Romani, and the Romani people originated in India. Their ethnicity may be what brought that part of the world to Jenny’s mind.

Magda and Sandor are out. The sun is rising. Barnabas leaves a note for Magda, and goes to his coffin for the day. Quentin enters, brandishing his pistol. He finds the note and a key, and goes upstairs. We close with him standing outside Josette’s room. He and Jenny talk to each other through the locked door. He tells her that he is coming to her and that they will never be separated again.

In a comment about Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, David Pierce makes an interesting observation:

My favorite line was from Quentin to Judith when he wants to know how Jenny escaped: “What, did she leave by fasting and prayer?” He was misquoting Jesus from the New Testament, Matthew Chapter 17, verse 21 “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
David Pierce, comment left at 12:01 PM Pacific time 13 January 2021 on Danny Horn, “Episode 744: Crazy Little Thing,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 9 October 2015

Quentin does paraphrase the Bible quite often, a habit which, combined with his penchant for Satanist ceremonial practice and his gleeful libertinism, suggests that he won’t pass up any potential source of delights.

Episode 743: A person of the supernatural

Rakish Quentin and time traveling vampire Barnabas have each been fighting undead blonde fire witch Laura, and today they agree to team up. This marks the beginning of their friendship, which will be central to Dark Shadows for the next 90 weeks.

The script has some problems. The dialogue between Quentin and Barnabas runs in circles, and there are scenes where, for no apparent reason, the two of them go back and forth between Barnabas’ house and the cottage where Laura is staying. But the episode is still fun. The actors deserve a lot of credit for that. David Selby and Jonathan Frid both turn in such fine performances that even the most unnecessary scenes between Quentin and Barnabas hold our interest, and Diana Millay finds ways to make Laura intriguing even when she is saddled with the disagreeable Roger Davis as her only scene partner.

There is also a happy accident with a special effect. Barnabas has called on Laura to appear in his house as a ghost; she is before him as a transparency when Quentin enters. Quentin’s presence breaks the spell, and she vanishes. In the cottage where she has been staying, a male servant whom she has bewitched is waiting for her. She reappears there; she materializes and passes out. The image of her overlaid on the picture is a little too small and a little too high in the frame, so that when she collapses she doesn’t quite reach the floor.

The result turns out to be better than it would if the effect had worked as intended. Laura’s appearance and her fainting seem to play out in a window briefly opened between one world and another.

The episode ends with Laura sending a telepathic message to Quentin’s estranged wife, madwoman Jenny. The scene plays out with Laura in voiceover while Jenny is alone in the cell where Quentin’s brother and sister have been keeping her. Laura wants Jenny to escape and kill Quentin. Again the dialogue is awkward and repetitive, but Millay and Marie Wallace save it.

Episode 742: Barnabas, Quentin, and the advantage of being seen together

We open in the cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, where the rakish Quentin Collins has triumphantly confronted his sister-in-law and sometime lover, Laura Murdoch Collins, with a telegram from the authorities in Alexandria, Egypt, declaring that she died in that city the year before. Laura points out that the fact that she is standing in front of him and breathing would tend to limit the credence such a document might be expected to command. Quentin hadn’t thought of that. He looks puzzled for a moment, then says that even if no one else is convinced, he is now sure that she is dead.

Laura, unable to believe that Quentin really is this stupid. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Viewers who have been with Dark Shadows from the beginning will particularly enjoy this exchange. Another iteration of Laura, also played by Diana Millay, was on the show from December 1966 to March 1967, when the dramatic date was contemporary with the broadcast date. In those days, the authorities in Phoenix, Arizona, kept sending messages to the residents of the great estate of Collinwood concerning their reasons for believing that Laura was dead. Most of those messages were received with a laugh, then with irritation that a bunch of brain-dead bureaucrats wouldn’t stop pestering them with reports that were obviously false. But there were a few times when characters took them with an inexplicable seriousness. It’s a relief to see that this part of the show, set in the year 1897, will not include any of those jarringly foolish reactions.

Quentin and Laura argue about her children. She wants to take them and leave Collinwood; he asks what she will accept instead. Quentin’s pretense that he would have anything to offer her that might be tempting so amuses Laura that she doesn’t bother to be insulted. When he says that he will give her money, she laughs. The penniless Quentin says that he will steal any amount she names. He claims to “have powers.” Before Laura returned to Collinwood in #729, we twice saw Quentin take part in unholy summoning rituals on this set (#711 and #718,) each of which did result in communication with the spiritual forces of darkness. It does seem to be a bit of an exaggeration for him to claim to “have powers,” though. Especially so when he is talking to someone whom he believes to have transcended death.

A male servant comes to the door. Quentin believes this man to be Laura’s lover, and nearly says so today. In fact, Quentin has severely underestimated Laura in every way. She did die in Alexandria. But she has also died in other places, at other times, and will do so again. She is an undead fire witch who periodically incinerates herself and rises from the ashes as a humanoid Phoenix. The man is not her lover in any human sense. Rather, one of the ways she keeps herself more or less alive is by draining heat from his body in a kind of dry vampirism.

Quentin leaves Laura alone with the servant. Opposite David Selby, Diana Millay had shown her gift for dry comedy to great advantage. Once he exits and she is alone with the servant, her manner shifts abruptly. She suddenly starts overacting and sounding false. I think that is down to the actor who plays the servant, Roger Davis. Mr Davis was notoriously abusive of his female scene partners, and she has to play her scene in his arms. It would have been difficult for anyone to relax sufficiently to give a good performance when she was stuck in that unenviable position.

Laura is not the only vampiric presence at Collinwood these days. Time-traveler Barnabas Collins is the old-fashioned blood-sucking kind, and we see him rise from his coffin. He summons his blood thrall Charity Trask to come to him at the Old House on the estate. Charity comes. Several of Barnabas’ female victims have gone through a particular series of stages. First, they are elated at their new connection with Barnabas, and want to devote themselves to him as slavishly as possible. Then, they become reluctant to go on serving as his breakfast, and make anguished protests about wanting to return to their previous lives. Finally, they rebel. Charity has entered the second stage. She says that her father expects her. Barnabas has seen all this before, and has learned to have fun with it. He tells Charity that he needs her more than her father does. He bares his fangs and bites her, after which she is back to elated servility.

Barnabas tells Charity that she will be assisting him in a ceremony. She waits in the Old House while Barnabas goes to the great house on the estate to fetch something he needs for that ceremony.

We cut to Quentin’s room in the great house, where we see a mirror. It shows the reflection of Quentin kissing maidservant Beth. When we first saw them talk to each other in #701, Beth was fighting her attraction to Quentin and trying to resist his attempts to seduce her. That’s what was supposed to be going on, anyway, but we didn’t actually see it. Terrayne Crawford played Beth’s lines according to the literal meaning of the words, with the result that for the first six weeks of the part of Dark Shadows set in 1897 Beth seemed sincerely uninterested in Quentin, and his overtures were just sexual harassment. Now Ms Crawford no longer has to play conflicting emotions. Beth is simply in love with Quentin. She gets that point across adequately.

Beth pulls away from Quentin, explaining that she has to get back to work. He talks about ending his marriage so that they can be together permanently; he says that it may serve their cause to stop being so discreet, since a little scandal may prompt the rest of his family to drop their opposition to any change in the status quo. While they get ready to part, we see the window, outside of which a bat is squeaking incessantly. They exit, and Barnabas appears.

Barnabas rummages through Quentin’s desk and finds a book. Beth reenters and catches him. He tells her he came for the book and was planning to leave a note. A smirk on her face, Beth says that it will not be necessary to do so, as she will tell Quentin all about what she has seen.

Beth goes downstairs and meets Quentin in the foyer. Quentin asks what book it was Barnabas took. She says that all she saw of the title was the word “dead.” Evidently Quentin has quite a few books with the word “dead” in the title, because he has to ask where exactly Barnabas found it. She says it was in the desk, and he rushes off to the Old House.

It was the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Barnabas used it to perform a rite calling on Amun-Ra to cause the spirit of one of Laura’s previous incarnations to appear before him. At that, we cut to the cottage, where the currently alive-ish Laura grows weak and vanishes. Back in the Old House, we see the ghost take shape. Charity sees it too, and runs screaming out the front door. Quentin enters just in time to see the end of Barnabas’ conversation with the phantasmal Laura. The phantom looks at Quentin, screams, and disappears.

On Friday, Laura said that no one knew just how deeply Quentin was obsessed with the occult. His own absurd claim today to “have powers” so great that he could make it worth Laura’s while to leave without her children confirms that he is very far gone in this obsession. So when he sees that Barnabas is not only doing battle with the same adversary whom he is trying to confront, but is also able to conjure up spirits from the vasty deep, we can be confident that Quentin’s hostility to his recently arrived “cousin from England” will soon be evaporating. As Tony Peterson might say, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Episode 737: The suffering of some people

Laura Collins is the estranged wife of stuffy Edward and the mortal enemy of Edward’s brother, libertine Quentin. Only Quentin knows that Laura is an undead fire witch. He has found the Egyptian urn housing the magic flame that gives life to Laura, and has extinguished the flame.

In the great house of Collinwood, Quentin and Edward’s spinster sister Judith notices that Laura has taken ill. Judith goes off to order a servant to prepare a hot cup of tea for Laura, and is alarmed when she returns to the drawing room and finds that Laura has gone. Quentin enters, and Judith asks him if he saw Laura. Judith explains that Laura is ill, and is appalled at Quentin’s indifference.

Laura has gone to the gazebo on the grounds, where she hid her urn under an armillary sphere. She finds that the urn is gone. Surly groundskeeper Dirk Wilkins chances upon her; she clutches at him. He is shocked at how cold she is, and is afraid of how the scene would be interpreted if anyone saw them in each others’ arms.

Dirk takes Laura back to the great house. Quentin insists on walking her upstairs to her bedroom. While she lies in bed, he taunts her with her doom, reminding her that she had treated him the same way a few nights ago when she thought he was dying. Quentin’s behavior is really abominable in this scene, but as David Selby plays him he keeps the audience’s affection. He visibly thinks about each line before he says it, so that we can really believe he is finding his way through what is after all a bizarre situation and is deciding what to say to Laura. He is relaxed and easy in his physical movement, and modulates his delivery subtly in response to every cue.

After Quentin leaves, Laura prays to the gods of ancient Egypt to take possession of Dirk and send him to her room. They oblige; Dirk finds himself standing by the fire in the drawing room and speaking a few words of old Egyptian, then heads upstairs.

Dirk and Laura take hold of each other while she is in bed. There are a few moments of dissonance when Diana Millay has to reposition herself to get Roger Davis’ hands onto more broadcast standards-friendly parts of her body while Laura insists Dirk hold her ever closer and he protests he must not, but it isn’t as bad as we might expect considering Mr Davis’ usual practice of assaulting his female scene partners. They speak each line more rapidly and more breathily than the one before. Mr Davis has both feet on the floor, but the result is still the most sex-like encounter we have seen so far on Dark Shadows.

Dirk takes hold of Laura while she is in bed. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Mr Davis’ performance is the opposite of Mr Selby’s. He is as stiff as Mr Selby is relaxed, holding himself rigidly still even when he is grappling with Diana Millay in bed. He tends to take a deep breath and deliver each speech as a single exhalation, making it impossible for him to show thought or adjust his approach while speaking. So even though today’s action shows us Quentin at his most despicable and Dirk at his most innocent, our loyalties are firmly with Quentin.

Joan Bennett famously said that Mr Davis was show business’ answer to the question “What would Henry Fonda have been like if he had had no talent?” Not only does his face resemble Fonda’s, but by his own admission he often mimicked Fonda while acting. There is nothing wrong with mimicry- John Gielgud was as good an actor as any, and he used to say that from the time he first saw Claude Rains in a play, his acting style consisted of imitating Claude Rains. He also said that imitating Rains was a great improvement over his previous style, which was imitating Noel Coward. Mr Davis’ readings of his one-line speeches today are distinctly Fonda-like, and the longer speeches may also have been if he had been breathing normally while delivering them. Today Mr Selby also sounds very much like the actor he tends to mimic, Joseph Cotten. I suspect Cotten would have been more flattered than Fonda had the two of them watched this episode!

Episode 734: After school detention

Until November 1967, Dark Shadows was set in contemporary times. So when #283 was shown in July 1967, we could assume that its dramatic date more or less matched its broadcast date.

In that one, psychiatrist Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) brought her patient Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott) to the old cemetery north of the village of Collinsport, Maine. When Maggie reacted to one or another of the sights of the cemetery with a particularly strong emotion, Julia pressed closer to it. This technique led the two women to a mausoleum. Once inside the mausoleum, Maggie had the strongest reaction of all. Julia was trying to break through Maggie’s amnesia. She did not yet know that vampire Barnabas Collins had held Maggie prisoner, and that there was a secret room hidden in the mausoleum where he once tortured her.

Now, the dramatic date is 1897. Broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi (Grayson Hall) brings neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond (Kathryn Leigh Scott) to the old cemetery north of the village of Collinsport, Maine. Rachel’s position as governess in the great house on the estate of Collinwood has been eliminated, and she is terrified that she will have to return to Worthington Hall, a hideously abusive school where she was forced to spend a miserable childhood as a pupil and an equally miserable first part of adulthood as a teacher. The headmaster of Worthington Hall, the evil Gregory Trask, is demanding Rachel return to his school-cum-cult, extorting her with threats of false criminal charges against her and her one friend from the school, fellow student-turned-teacher Tim Shaw. Magda takes Rachel to the same mausoleum we saw in #283, because she knows about the secret room and has decided it is the perfect place for Rachel to hide from Trask.

Meanwhile, Tim is on the job at the school, shaking his head at Rachel’s former charge, twelve year old Jamison Collins. Tim is played by Don Briscoe, who when the show was set in 1968 and 1969 played cursed brothers Tom and Chris Jennings. The Jenningses were supposed to be bad-boy sex symbols, and Briscoe often seemed stiff and uncomfortable when he had to take his shirt off or be aggressive. But as a beaten man who takes refuge from his guilt in pomposity, he’s just terrific. They found the perfect part for him.

On Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine Scoleri says that she finds Tim Shaw the fretful schoolteacher to be “Totally hot!” Evidently Don Briscoe didn’t have to play a troubled bad boy to be a sex symbol for some people.

Jamison hasn’t done his schoolwork, and Tim is keeping him after class. Trask enters, and asks why Jamison is in detention. Tim claims that Jamison is not being punished, but that the two of them are just talking. Trask is displeased with that hint of friendliness, and before long he finds a reason to lock Jamison in a storage closet. Jamison objects to this confinement, prompting Trask to gleefully declare that “there are worse punishments! Much worse!” When Jamison lets himself out of the closet, he finds Trask waiting for him, grinning. Trask says that they will spend the day together tomorrow, and that in the course of their time together he will ordain Jamison’s further punishment.

Trask sends Tim to Collinwood to fetch Rachel. He makes a show of resistance before going. At first he has trouble finding her; he goes back to the school and reports to Trask that he has failed. Trask refuses to accept this, and sends him back. Tim meets Magda and persuades her that he is Rachel’s friend. She leads him to the secret room, and leaves him alone with Rachel. When Rachel and Tim leave the room, Trask is waiting for them.

Episode 733: From pocket to pocket

A lot of business about a magical urn that belongs to undead blonde fire witch Laura Collins. This is Laura’s second tour on Dark Shadows; she didn’t have an urn the first time around, but the plot is much busier these days and she needs a MacGuffin for her enemies to chase after if she’s going to stay afloat.

There are also a couple of moments when characters deride spinster Judith Collins as “plain Judith,” envious of the “pretty wives your brothers brought home.” This is ridiculous. Judith isn’t even Hollywood ugly; she’s played by Joan Bennett, one of the great beauties of the screen in her youth and still, in her late 50s, a remarkably attractive woman.

But all in all, the episode is quite good. The highlight is a confrontation between governess Rachel Drummond and a villain who makes her first appearance today, Minerva Trask. Minerva is the wife of the loathsome Rev’d Gregory Trask, and with him she runs a boarding school called Worthington Hall. Rachel grew up at Worthington Hall, and like all other children there she was subjected to continual abuse at the hands of the Trasks. We haven’t seen Gregory for several days; as played by Jerry Lacy, he is so overwhelmingly evil a presence that the makers of the show wisely decided to use him sparingly. It looks like Rachel will soon be forced to go back to Worthington Hall as a teacher.

Minerva is played by Clarice Blackburn, whom many consider to be the single best actor in the whole series. For example, Nancy Barrett gave her that title in her interviews with the authors of the book Barnabas and Company. Blackburn is absolutely believable as the sanctimonious Minerva, so much so that I found her scenes as difficult to watch as are those featuring Mr Lacy as Gregory. Kathryn Leigh Scott plays the terror and misery Minerva inspires in Rachel quite effectively, but to be honest I felt those emotions very intensely myself just watching the episode on TV. I suspect that when you have a scene partner like Blackburn, all you need is to learn your lines and remember your training and you’ll connect with the audience.

Rachel and Minerva. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Rachel tells her troubles to broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, who volunteers to help her escape the Trasks. Magda’s plan requires Rachel to do three extraordinary things. She must give her garnet-encrusted broach, the only keepsake her late mother gave her, to Magda to sell to raise money for a coach ride to Boston. She must spend the night in a secret room hidden in an old mausoleum. And once in Boston, she will have to find employment without having recourse to any credentials or references that would make it possible for her to find a situation agreeable to a neurotic intellectual such as herself. We could never believe Rachel would do any of these things if she were facing a less gruesome threat than return to Worthington Hall.

Longtime viewers may wonder just how far Rachel’s fears will drive her. In #9, broadcast and set in the year 1966, flighty heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard told well-meaning governess Victoria Winters that over the years, two governesses had leapt to their deaths from the precipice atop Widow’s Hill, and that legend had it that a third governess would someday follow their lead. In other episodes, before and after, that story was rephrased as “two women” rather than “two governesses.”

So far, we have only seen one woman take the plunge, and she wasn’t a governess. She was the gracious Josette, also played by Miss Scott. Josette jumped in 1796 because she saw that she was about to be made into a vampire. Now, the dramatic date is 1897. The prospect of turning into a member of the teaching faculty of Worthington Hall is scarcely less horrifying than is the prospect of becoming a vampire, so perhaps it will turn out that Rachel was one of those whom Carolyn had in mind after all.

Episode 731: Your greatest weakness

One of the first “Big Bads” on Dark Shadows was crazed handyman Matthew Morgan, played by Thayer David. Matthew was the most devoted employee of reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett.) Matthew took his devotion to Liz to such an extreme that he was a menace to everyone else. In November and December of 1966, we learned that Matthew had decided that Liz’ second most dedicated employee, plant manager Bill Malloy, was a threat to her. Matthew had tried to put a stop to Bill’s doings. Not knowing his own strength, Matthew accidentally killed Bill. When well-meaning governess Victoria Winters discovered what had happened, Matthew abducted Victoria, held her prisoner in the long-deserted Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, and was about to murder her when a bunch of ghosts emanated from the show’s supernatural back-world and scared him to death.

In those days, Dark Shadows was a slow-paced “Gothic” drama set in contemporary times. From November 1967 to March 1968, it was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and its plot often moved at a breakneck speed. Among the characters then was much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes, who like Matthew was played by Thayer David. At first Ben made a stark contrast with Matthew. He was as relaxed, friendly, and reasonable as Matthew was tense, forbidding, and paranoid. But when his one ally among the Collins family, scion Barnabas, was cursed to become a vampire, Ben’s devotion made him resemble Matthew ever more closely. In his development, we saw a retrospective reimagining of Matthew. The curses that were placed on Barnabas and the rest of the Collinses from the 1790s on had burdened the village of Collinsport, and people who grew up there labored under the consequences of those curses and of the Collinses’ attempts to conceal them. Ben was what Matthew might have been had he not been warped by the evil that began when black magic was first practiced in the area so many generations before.

In January 1969, the show briefly returned to 1796, to a time coinciding with the last days of the earlier flashback. We saw that by that point, the curses had already transformed life on and around the great estate. In that period, Ben’s efforts to protect Barnabas led him inadvertently to kill a man, not knowing his own strength, and then to cover that crime up by killing a woman, not at all inadvertently. He had become Matthew. The curse placed on Barnabas had become the curse of all those who work for the Collinses and all of those who live in the shadow of their wealth and power.

Before Matthew, Dark Shadows‘ chief villain was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds); after, it was Roger’s estranged wife, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins (Diana Millay.) In this episode, the makers of the show take a page from its 1790s flashbacks. They have Edmonds and Millay reconceive the Roger and Laura of that atmospheric, sometimes almost action-free soap as characters appropriate to the fast-paced supernatural thriller it now is.

Since #701, Dark Shadows has been set in the year 1897. Louis Edmonds plays Roger’s grandfather Edward; Diana Millay plays Edward’s estranged wife, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In his days as a villain, Roger’s defining characteristic was his unnatural lack of family feeling. He had squandered his entire inheritance, a fact which did not bother him in the least. When his sister Liz confronted him in #41 about the difficulties he had created by putting his half of the family business up for sale, he airily replied that he had enjoyed his inheritance. When in #273 Liz and Roger discussed a blackmail plot of which she had been the victim, Roger admitted that had he known her terrible secret, he probably would have used it to force her to give him her half of the estate so that he could squander that, as well.

It wasn’t only the family’s material possessions and Liz’ right to them to which Roger was indifferent. He openly hated his son, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy.) He continually insulted David, badgered Liz to send David away, and in #83 coldly manipulated David’s fears to lead him to try to murder Victoria.

In the 1897 segment, Edward is as stuffily serious about the family business as Roger was in 1966 nihilistically apathetic about it. Edward loves his children, twelve year old Jamison (David Henesy) and nine year old Nora, but his rage at Laura has come between himself and them. Laura left Edward the year before to run after Edward’s brother, breezy libertine Quentin (David Selby.) Edward tried to conceal the fact that his brother cuckolded him. He has repeatedly declared that Laura “No longer exists!” and has forbidden her name to be mentioned in the house.

Edward trapped between the enigmatic Laura and the exuberant Quentin. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For his part, Quentin bears a striking similarity to the early, wicked Roger. He wants money only to spend it, a fact which he cheerfully admits. He tried to forge a will in his grandmother Edith’s name to cheat his sister Judith (Joan Bennett) out of her inheritance, having previously threatened to kill Edith. He does have great affection for Jamison, but since he often uses the boy as a pawn in Satanic ceremonies, his fondness for his nephew is not much of an improvement over Roger’s hatred for his son. Indeed, Quentin’s resemblance to Roger connects the 1897 segment not only to the early months of the show, but also to the weeks immediately preceding it. Early in 1969, Quentin’s ghost had taken possession of David Collins and was causing him to die. When we see that Quentin is now what Roger was originally, David’s ordeal takes on a new dimension. He is dying for the sins of his father.

In this episode, Laura has returned. Edward has offered her a great deal of money to go away and never come back; she refuses. She threatens to tell the world about her relationship with Quentin if Edward does not let her stay at Collinwood. Edward buckles to this blackmail. Laura tells him that “Family pride is your greatest weakness,” making him Roger’s exact opposite.

When Laura was at Collinwood from December 1966 to March 1967, her old boyfriend Burke Devlin kept pestering her with his suspicion that he, not Roger, was David Collins’ father. Burke was not the first character to bring this idea up. Roger had mentioned it to Liz in #32, when they were talking about an attempt David had made to kill Roger. At that time, Liz was horrified that Roger seemed to want to believe that David was Burke’s natural son.

It seems unlikely that Quentin is Jamison’s father. They have been firm about 1870 as Quentin’s date of birth, and in 1897 Jamison is quite plainly twelve. Laura may have gone on to marry her own grandson, but it would be a bit of a stretch for her to have started sleeping with her brother-in-law when he was fifteen, even if he did look like David Selby.

But Roger’s anger and jealousy about Burke and Laura do mirror Edward’s about Quentin and Laura. It was abundantly clear that Roger and Burke’s deepest pain regarding Laura was that their intense attachment to each other was disrupted when she left Burke for Roger; Diana Millay used her gift for dry comedy to make this explicit in a scene the three of them played in the groundskeeper’s cottage in #139. Likewise, Edward’s frustration with and disappointment in his brother is at least as deep a source of anguish to him as is his loss of Laura’s love.

Laura, too, is quite different this time around. The first Laura story took shape gradually over a period of weeks, as Laura herself emerged from the mist. Now Laura is a forceful presence from her first appearance. Originally we heard that Laura had married into several of the leading families of the Collinsport region; now they have given up on the idea of developing other leading families, and Laura just keeps coming back to the Collinses. In the first story, they laid great emphasis on the interval of precisely one hundred years between her appearances; now, the number of years doesn’t seem to have any particular significance. As we go, we will see an even more important difference. When we first met Laura, she was utterly determined to make her way into a pyre so that she could rise as a humanoid Phoenix; now she is unhappy about the whole thing, and angry with people who have helped her on her fiery way.

Edward lets Laura live in the cottage where Roger and Liz would put her in 1966. In the final scene, she goes there and finds Quentin, drunk and trying to conjure up an evil spirit. Quentin keeps telling Laura that she is dead. Frustrated with her persistent refusal to concur with this statement, Quentin puts his hands around her neck and announces that whether or not she is dead now, she will be by the time he gets through with her.

Roger was uncharacteristically sober at the beginning of his three-scene in the cottage with Burke and Laura in #139, but he did enter brandishing a fire-arm. So Quentin’s homicidal intentions on this set further cement his affiliation with his great-nephew in the eyes of longtime viewers.

Millay and Edmonds are not the only actors whose screen iconography the show turns to advantage today. We first saw Kathryn Leigh Scott and Don Briscoe together in #638, when she was playing ex-waitress Maggie Evans and he was playing mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. They met in the foyer at Collinwood. Maggie was angry with Chris, and Chris was guilt-ridden. Today, Miss Scott plays governess Rachel Drummond and Briscoe plays teacher Tim Shaw. They meet in the foyer at Collinwood. Rachel is angry with Tim, and Tim is guilt-ridden.

Though the same actors are playing the same basic emotions on the same set, the situations are different, and the characters are very different. Maggie is Dark Shadows‘ principal representative of the working class of the village of Collinsport. She speaks directly and bluntly, using the plainest language she can to dare Chris to try to excuse his inexcusable behavior. Chris occupies a lowly and unsettled place in the world, and he dodges her gaze and evades her questions, saying as little as he can, almost mumbling.

But Rachel is a neurotic intellectual, and she expresses her anger in complex sentences featuring vocabulary that only a very well-read person would have used in 1897 (for example, the word “sadist.”) Tim retreats from her anger into a defense of his job that quickly devolves into the tiredest platitudes imaginable. At one point he actually intones “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” Miss Scott makes Rachel’s highly literate onslaught on Tim as forceful as was Maggie’s unvarnished challenge to Chris, and Briscoe makes Tim’s pompous posturing as pitiable as was Chris’ broken burbling. Writer Gordon Russell must have been delighted that the actors did such good work with his ambitious pages.

Episode 729: A tired family

Libertine Quentin Collins has learned that his estranged wife, madwoman Jenny, is being kept locked up somewhere in the great house of Collinwood. He learned this when Jenny escaped and stabbed him. He also learned that his brother, stuffy Edward, and maidservant Beth Chavez are involved in the plot to keep Jenny in confinement. He spends time today trying to find out where Jenny is, openly telling both Beth and Edward that when he finds her, he will kill her.

Edward is estranged from his own wife, and just yesterday we learned that her name is Laura. Evidently she is the same sort of creature as we came to know from December 1966 to March 1967. In those days Dark Shadows was set in contemporary times, and Edward’s grandson Roger Collins was dismayed at the return of his estranged wife, who was also named Laura. That Laura was an undead blonde fire witch, a humanoid Phoenix who sought to be incinerated with her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, so that her own life could be renewed.

Today, the year is 1897 and Edward and Laura’s nine year old daughter Nora is convinced that her mother will return after a year when she has been away and it has been forbidden to mention her name. Nora has a vision of Laura’s face in the fireplace, a vision of flames in the corridor, and a dream in which she meets Laura in the woods outside the house. At the end of the episode she wakes up, sneaks out to the woods, and finds the cloak Laura was wearing in her dream lying on the ground.

All of this is recapped from previous episodes, but actors David Selby, Louis Edmonds, and Denise Nickerson make it worth watching. As Beth, Terrayne Crawford is stiff and literal, and her awkward performance does detract from her scenes. But everyone else is so good that you don’t notice her weaknesses too much.

This episode marks the second time we hear the name “Mrs Fillmore.” In #707, we learned that Beth took substantial sums of money into the village of Collinsport to a lady of that name as part of the plot to cover up Jenny’s presence in the house. Today Beth has to remind Edward of that fact, and Quentin looks through the envelope with hundreds of dollars in banknotes meant for Mrs Fillmore.

When Nora screams that there is a fire in the upstairs hallway, Edward and Beth run towards it. Quentin just sulks in the drawing room; evidently the idea that the house is on fire bores him. By the time Beth and Edward get upstairs, the flames Nora saw have vanished, and nothing is burned. She swears that there was a fire, they cannot believe her. This echoes #400, when wicked witch Angelique cast a spell that caused time-traveling governess Vicki to see flames in her room in the Old House on the estate, and subsequently Vicki’s friends were puzzled that there was no indication there of anything burned. That confusion led to trouble for Vicki, and longtime viewers can imagine it is a sign of trouble for Nora as well.

Yesterday, Nora drew a series of Egyptian hieroglyphics saying that her mother was coming home. At the beginning of her dream, a maniacal Edward holds an oversized copy of that drawing and rips it up, declaring Laura will never be back. The oversized drawing harks back all the way to episode #722, when Nora’s governess, neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond, had a dream in which the daffy Carl Collins held a gigantic pocket watch. That was a striking enough image that not even the Vaseline almost entirely covering the lens could ruin it. But today even less of the picture is legible, and the gambit isn’t fresh anymore. Louis Edmonds does do a fine job of laughing maniacally, though, I will grant that.