anniversaries – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 891: The only one there is

About Time

Dark Shadows committed itself to supernatural stories in late 1966 and early 1967, when the chief villain was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Since the usual laws of nature weren’t going to restrain Laura, they needed another set of rules that could predict her behavior sufficiently to create suspense. One of the things they settled on was that the barrier between past and present grows thin on the anniversaries of deadly events. So when well-meaning governess Vicki and the team she had assembled to fight Laura discovered that, in a previous iteration, she had taken a young son of hers to his fiery death “exactly one hundred years ago,” they knew that the crisis was at hand.

Anniversaries continued to have this effect in subsequent periods. So when in January 1969 recovering vampire Barnabas Collins wanted to take a day trip to the 1790s, he stood in a graveyard and shouted at a man who had died exactly 172 years previously to ask for a ride. It worked.

Barnabas was using a different form of mumbo-jumbo at the end of February, trying to contact the ghost that had made the great house of Collinwood uninhabitable, when he came unstuck in time and found himself in the year 1897.

In the middle of Barnabas’ long stay in 1897, the show decided to take its conceit that two events occurring on the same date in different years were mystically connected and show us both sides of the link. In #835, Barnabas was locked up in a cell with a secretary cabinet that he knew would be in the front parlor of his home, the Old House at Collinwood, in 1969. He wrote a letter to his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, and hid it in a secret compartment of the secretary. We cut to the front parlor in 1969, exactly 172 years later, where a series of events leads Julia to discover the letter, travel back in time, and precipitate Barnabas’ rescue.

By #839, the events of 1897 had played out differently enough from whatever happened the first time through that year that the ghosts found peace. As we cut back and forth between that year and 1969, we saw that the 1960s characters remembered the haunting and the disasters that accompanied it and were relieved that they were over.

That gives us the present as the result, not of any one series of events in the past, but of a composite of many separate and mutually incompatible pasts. This idea is the logical culmination of substituting anniversaries for natural laws. In the first part of Barnabas’ trip to 1897, he had not yet done enough to lay the ghosts to rest. So the haunting continued, because it was happening on the anniversaries of events that were much the same as those that took place originally. By the time the living people of 1897 who would become the ghosts of 1969 had changed enough that they were no longer doomed to haunt the house, the date was one that would fall almost ten months into the haunting. In #836, Julia had a conversation in which one of the ghosts tells her about events in 1897 that could not have happened in the original timeline without Barnabas’ intervention, and which do not happen in #838 after Julia herself travels to that year. So each anniversary creates another past that becomes another ingredient in the stew that makes up the present.

This conception of the relationship between past and present shows the difference between a set of fantastic tales like Dark Shadows and a science fiction story exploring more-or-less plausible consequences of open questions in science. The “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum mechanics posits that the cosmos is made up of countless parallel universes, and that everything that could ever have happened did happen in at least one of those universes. Since that is a defensible position within science, an author can incorporate as much fact and reality as s/he likes in a story based on it. But since the idea that one period of history is the result of a confluence of many conflicting pasts is not only not a live option in science, but does not really make any practical sense except as a metaphor, the logic that really matters is dream logic. As dreams seem perfectly convincing to us when the only connections that lead from one moment to another are random similarities in names or shapes, so all that matters in a fantastic tale is that there is a pattern the audience can follow, whether or not that pattern corresponds to anything in the world where we spend our waking hours.

Now Barnabas has returned to 1969, brought back by a mysterious cult that has brainwashed him and adopted him as its leader. The characters he knew before he left are delighted to see him again. Today, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard comes to the Old House and is overjoyed that the haunting is over and that she and her family have been able to return to the great house. She is grateful to Barnabas for undertaking his harrowing journey back in time.

Liz and Barnabas talk about Chris Jennings, a young man in whom Liz’ daughter Carolyn is interested. Barnabas gives it as his firm opinion that Carolyn should avoid Chris, and he urges Liz to encourage her to do this. Barnabas knows that Chris is a werewolf, and we saw last week that the cult that has co-opted him has plans for Carolyn which do not include her death as one of Chris’ victims, so this will not surprise returning viewers.

Chris himself is another example of the weird metaphysics the show has stumbled upon. When Barnabas left 1969 for 1897, Chris was in his wolfish form all the time, apparently never to become human again. We learned during the 1897 segment that his lycanthropy is a curse inherited from his forebear, Quentin Collins. The version of 1897 we saw was changed sufficiently from the original that Quentin avoided his own death and was for a time relieved of the effects of the werewolf curse, though at the end of the segment it looked like they might be on their way back. That he is now human part of the time but still subject to transformation suggests that the difference in Quentin’s experiences in the later part of the 1897 stories had some effect on him. It’s unclear whether Chris’ condition fluctuated every time the date marked the 72nd anniversary of something happening to Quentin that hadn’t happened when he was living in a Barnabas-free zone, but it wouldn’t contradict anything we’ve seen if it did.

The Time to Come

Barnabas brought one object back with him from the past, a wooden box. The box must be opened only at a certain time, by certain people, for the cult’s plan to take effect. Today, Barnabas receives a visit from the people. They are Megan and Philip Todd, owners of the new antique shop in the village of Collinsport. Carolyn sent them, thinking that Barnabas would likely have some things they could add to their inventory. He sees that Megan is wearing a necklace with a symbol representing intertwined snakes, which Barnabas calls a “Naga.” When Megan is unable to explain just how she came into possession of the necklace, he shows them the box, which is topped with an oval in which the same symbol is carved. They are both thrilled at the prospect of buying the old furniture he has in the upstairs rooms of his house, but Megan is particularly fascinated by the box.

Later, Philip and Megan are back in their shop. They are confident they can buy a great deal of furniture from Barnabas, but are also sure that they wouldn’t be able to afford the box, even if he were willing to part from it. This is a bit odd- we get a good look at the box, and it is absolutely nothing special. The actors manage to sell the scene, but it would be better if they had either invested in a showier prop or been more sparing about putting it on camera.

Megan and Philip with the box. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas comes to the shop and gives Megan and Philip the box as a present. After he goes, Megan is overwhelmed by an urge to open the box, which is locked. She is so consumed by this urge that she actually says “Let’s force it!” Since they had just minutes before been talking about it as if it were more expensive than anything they have for sale in their shop, this is a startling line. But when Philip opens the envelope Barnabas left to look at the list of furniture he is willing to sell them, he finds a key.

Philip is reluctant to open the box, having a strange feeling that if they do, nothing will ever be the same for them again. The other day it was Megan who had a strange feeling of impending doom. She wanted to sell the shop and flee Collinsport forever, lest they suffer an irretrievable disaster. That time it was Philip’s turn to urge her to set her misgivings aside. We’ve seen this kind of back and forth before. At the end of 1968, the great house of Collinwood was coming under the control of ghosts. Children Amy Jennings and David Collins kept trading the roles of possessed agent of the ghosts and unwilling sidekick. That alternation showed that the ghosts were not yet powerful enough to possess both children at once, and it faded as the haunting became more intense. It built suspense by suggesting that possible avenues of escape were gradually but inexorably closing.

As Philip and Megan begin to open the box, there is a whistling sound. They are unsettled, but decide they have to finish opening it anyway. They do, and we see their reaction to whatever is inside. Longtime viewers have seen similar reactions as cliffhangers many times; always before, they have indicated amazement that the container is empty.

New People

One of the less appealing villains of the 1897 segment was magically gifted artist/ surly criminal lowlife Charles Delaware Tate. Tate lived in a house that in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s was known as “the Evans Cottage,” home to drunken artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. The cottage burned down in #883, leading us to wonder if it would still be there when the show returned to 1969.

Sam died last year, and Maggie now lives at Collinwood, where she is David and Amy’s governess. Today she goes to the cottage to prepare it for some tenants to whom she will be renting it. Evidently it must have been rebuilt before the Evanses moved in.

The only movable property in the cottage is a portrait of Maggie’s mother which her father painted. That portrait also appeared in the cottage a few times when Tate was living there; that was just carelessness on the part of the production staff, but it is kind of reassuring to see it again.

A man who has been in a couple of episodes knocks on the door. He identified himself as a friend of Sam’s and is saddened to hear of his death. He enters and asks Maggie to do him a favor. He keeps refusing to give her his name. We haven’t heard his name at all; evidently his identity is supposed to be a mystery to us. Word of that apparently did not reach the department responsible for making up the credits; they’ve been billing actor Dennis Patrick as Paul Stoddard, whom regular viewers know as the long-missing husband of matriarch Liz and father of Carolyn. They do that again today.

This is the last time we will see the Evans Cottage. In 1966 and 1967, the set was a symbol of the village of Collinsport, and scenes there showed the consequences that the doings of the rich people in the big house on the hill had for the working class who live in its shadow. By the time Maggie moved into Collinwood, they had long since given up on those kinds of stories. Dark Shadows is sometimes called “Star Trek for agoraphobes”; as we go, less and less of the action takes place anywhere other than Collinwood, and eventually they won’t even let us outside.

Liz agreed to let Barnabas live in the Old House in #218; by #223, she was talking about it, not only as his home, but as if he owned it and its contents. For while they went back and forth on the question of Barnabas’ legal status regarding the property, but when, at the suggestion of Liz’ daughter Carolyn, he gives the Todds a list of its furnishings that he is prepared to sell to them, I think we can take it for granted that Liz no longer has any claim on it.

Episode 835: A past that runs parallel to our present

Stuffy Edward Collins was under a spell for several weeks that prevented him from keeping up with what has been happening on the estate of Collinwood in 1897. He knows that his distant cousin Barnabas is a vampire who originally died in the 1790s and has come back to prey on the living. From this, he has drawn the eminently logical conclusion that he is a character in a horror story, and that it is his responsibility to be the hero who destroys the undead ghoul.

Barnabas is beside himself. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In fact, Dark Shadows stopped being that kind of show long ago. Others know that it is chiefly about time travel now. That point is made when we flash forward to the year 1969, from which Barnabas has traveled to prevent a disaster that had its roots in 1897. Barnabas’ friends Julia Hoffman and Timothy Eliot Stokes talk about the intersection of past and present, so that the events of 5 September 1897 are somehow also taking place on 5 September 1969. The show has been using anniversaries as substitutes for natural laws in this way since #157, broadcast and set in January 1967, and they spin this out much further today. In his post about the episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn writes a big prose poem about the weirdness of the show’s conception of time at this point, it’s well worth reading.

When Barnabas first came on in the spring of 1967, it was set in contemporary times and the writers had a lot of fun with characters who mistook the genre of show they were on. Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis heard the plot of Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek, concluded he was part of a Gothic romance, and wound up freeing Barnabas and becoming his blood thrall. That mistake continued to shape Willie’s character. Willie was forced to be Barnabas’ accomplice in the abduction and attempted brainwashing of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Willie listened to Barnabas’ own rantings about his motive being an attempt to recreate his lost love Josette, and kept imagining that he would somehow overcome Barnabas to rescue Maggie and become her lover. Willie also harbored a deep hostility towards Burke Devlin, who was left over from a period when the show really was inspired by Gothic romance.

Willie’s sometime friend Jason McGuire made a similar mistake, believing that the show was still the noir crime drama it was when it spent weeks on the question of where Burke’s fountain pen had got to. So he sleuthed out signs of where Willie went when no one was looking and where Barnabas got his money. All that Barnabas could contribute to that kind of story was murder, and so he unceremoniously strangled Jason in #275.

Local physician Dr Dave Woodard thought he was on the usual daytime dramas of the period. Actor Robert Gerringer had a lot of fun playing Woodard as if he were on The Guiding Light. There were whole episodes built around that conceit- for example, we spend #235 in the Collinsport Hospital, where everyone acts just as you would expect them to on any other soap, except for Maggie, who is there being treated for vampire bites. Woodard notices that his friend Julia is growing close to Barnabas, and in #324 comes to the logical daytime conclusion- they are having an affair. Eventually Woodard finds out that he has misidentified the genre of the show, but it is too late- Barnabas and Julia murder him in #341.

Today, that is to say 5 September 1897, Edward catches Barnabas and locks him in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House at Collinwood. Barnabas kept Maggie in that cell when she was his prisoner, and the ghost of his little sister Sarah helped Maggie find a secret panel that led to a tunnel to the beach. In #260, Maggie escaped through that tunnel at the last minute before Barnabas could kill her, and Barnabas himself later used the same tunnel to escape from the cell in #616. In #781, Edward made it clear that he knew all about the tunnel and expected everyone else at Collinwood to know about it as well. So it is no surprise when he tells Barnabas that he has blocked it off. In fact, he says that he has blocked “all” of the secret passages- we may wonder just how many escape routes there are.

Edward leaves Barnabas alone in the cell, saying he will be back before dawn. There is a writing desk in the cell; Barnabas remembers that Willie moved that desk to the front parlor for him in 1967, and so he describes his predicament in a letter to Julia and closes it in a secret compartment of the desk.

In 1969, nine year old Amy Jennings is in the parlor, playing with her dolls. One of the dolls is named “Amanda”; this will catch the attention of returning viewers. The 1897 story features a character named Amanda, who is an oil painting come to life. If artist Charles Delaware Tate could make his paintings come to life, as in Greek myth the sculptor Pygmalion made a statue come to life as a woman named Galatea, then perhaps we should find out who made Amy’s doll before we let it out of our sight.

Amy first came on the show in November 1968, at the beginning of the story that led from contemporary dress to the 1897 segment. Her very first night at Collinwood, Amy went straight to the room where the magic objects were hidden that would trigger that story. She often delivers her lines directly into the camera, as if she knows perfectly well where the audience is. Amy is at the opposite pole from Edward and such earlier characters as Willie, Jason, and Woodard- she not only knows what genre the show is, she’s read the flimsies for next month’s episodes and is getting a head start on them.

Amy looks in the desk for a book to read to her dolls, and inadvertently opens the secret compartment. She eventually gives the letter to Julia; this is what prompts Julia and Stokes to have their talk about the ontological status of past events and what philosophers call “the reality of tense.” They know all about the time travel aspect of the show; Julia, in fact, has for some time been the closest thing the audience has in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s to a point of view character, one who knows everything we do. She was certainly the first one to know that the show was transitioning from vampire horror to quasi-science fiction. She surprised Barnabas in #291 with a proposal to develop a medical treatment that might put his vampirism into abeyance.

In the letter, Barnabas refers to his “secret.” Stokes does not know what this is, and is not satisfied with Julia’s lame attempts to answer his questions about it. This makes sense to regular viewers; shortly after Stokes arrived in Collinsport, another mad scientist got hold of Barnabas and succeeded where Julia had failed in putting the symptoms of the vampire curse into remission. For all the time he has known Barnabas, Stokes has seen him moving about in the day, casting reflections in mirrors, eating food not derived from human blood, etc. In 1968 and 1969, his ignorance of his Barnabas’ past vampirism is not much more serious than his ignorance of the details of the automobile accident that killed Mr Hanson in 1956. But the vampirism came back in full force when Barnabas went to the past, so Stokes is at a loss as to what the letter means.

Julia decides that she will try to travel into the past using the same mumbo-jumbo that transported Barnabas there. While Stokes reads up on that, Julia and Amy make a stop at the great house on the estate, which is impenetrably haunted by the ghost of Quentin Collins. That errand seems to be going sideways when the episode ends.

Episode 815: The gentleman he appears to be

One night in 1797, nine Rroma men trapped sorcerer Count Petofi in the forest of Ojden. They amputated his right hand, and with it took most of his magical powers. Some time after, Petofi learned that he had exactly one hundred years to reattach the hand. If he managed it within that time, he would become immortal. Otherwise, he would die on the anniversary of the amputation.

Now that anniversary has come, and Petofi has succeeded in regaining his hand with only minutes to spare. Time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins and his distant cousin, desperately handsome werewolf Quentin, have decided that because Petofi’s spirit is in possession of Quentin’s twelve year old nephew Jamison and Jamison is as close to death as is Petofi himself, only by surrendering the hand to Petofi can they save the boy. Barnabas did get Petofi’s servant Aristide to promise to free Quentin of lycanthropy once he has the hand back, but he put little faith in that promise.

Now Petofi is jubilant and Jamison is still sick. Barnabas tells Petofi about the deal Aristide made, and also says that he wants Jamison and the rest of the Collinses to be freed from the ill effects Petofi has had on them. Petofi could not be less interested. Instead, he wants Barnabas to tell him how he traveled in time from 1969 and how he will travel back there.

Petofi lets slip that he is anxious to go to another period of history because he is afraid of the Rroma people who are still after him. We know, not only that it was Rroma who cut off his hand, but that when Petofi saw a young Rroma woman in a tavern in #794 he couldn’t get out fast enough. While it may have taken nine Rroma men to take his hand, evidently a single Rroma woman, and a tiny one at that, is capable of doing him considerable harm. Barnabas has a Rroma friend, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, who has considerable magic powers of her own, and he knows of a Romany band currently camped near Boston. So Petofi’s apparently well-founded ziganophobia is a sign that Barnabas may be able to defeat him, even though Petofi’s powers were formidable even before he was reunited with his hand.

Petofi says that he will cure Jamison only if Barnabas explains how he traveled to 1897 from 1969. Barnabas tells Petofi he has no idea how he made that journey. This is so. He meditated on some I Ching wands, a process which he was told might have any of an infinite number of effects, and found himself in 1897. Nor does he have any idea how to get back. He might have enlarged on the theme of his complete lack of useful knowledge in this area. In 1968, Barnabas traveled back to his original era, the 1790s, by going to the grave of a man named Peter Bradford on the anniversary of Bradford’s death. Bradford’s ghost had been haunting him, and Barnabas called for Bradford to take him back to the year 1796. After he did so, Barnabas found that he could return to the 1960s only by having himself sealed in his coffin and waiting inside it for 172 years until friends let him out. He doesn’t tell Petofi about that incident, but it does not seem likely to be of any more help to him than the story about the I Ching would be.

Petofi does not believe that Barnabas is so hapless. First he squeezes Barnabas’ hand, depriving him of the power to dematerialize. Then he opens a cupboard and tells Barnabas to look in it. It takes a while to warm up, but eventually it gets an ABC affiliate showing Dark Shadows. Barnabas sees the parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood in 1969. His best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, is sitting there reading a book. We haven’t seen Julia since #700, but she might be on our minds today. At one point Aristide lights his cigar on a candle burning in a large candelabra. In #296, Julia very memorably did the same thing with her cigarette.

Barnabas sees strange and troubled boy David Collins come staggering downstairs, raving deliriously about Quentin. Julia tells him to reject Quentin, who in 1969 is a ghost haunting Collinwood and draining the life from David. David passes out, and Julia injects him with a powerful sedative, as you do with unconscious children.

The cupboard loses the channel, and Barnabas asks Petofi what else is happening in 1969. Petofi cannot answer any questions; it quickly becomes clear that he couldn’t see or hear the scene. Barnabas is intrigued to learn of another of Petofi’s weaknesses, and walks out.

Aristide then speculates that Barnabas might be telling the truth. Petofi rejects this at once, reveals more of his cupboard’s limitations:

No, he’s not a fool, Aristide. He thinks he can win, accomplish whatever he wants to do here, and disappear without me…

Had Petofi ever seen even one episode of Dark Shadows, it would not occur to him to say that Barnabas is “not a fool.” Nor would he surmise that Barnabas is pursuing a plan that includes a plausible method of escape. If Barnabas had a plan of any kind, Petofi would know all about it, since it would have failed spectacularly the moment he took the first step towards putting it into effect.

Petofi and Aristide then go to the Old House. They find Magda there. At the moment, she is under Petofi’s power. Like Julia, Magda is played by Grayson Hall. We may have thought the glimpse into 1969 was a videotaped insert, but evidently it was done live, because Magda is not wearing her usual heavy brownface makeup. She may have a bit of an artificial tan, but Julia’s blue eyeshadow is clearly visible through it.

Magda, looking more like an actual Rroma woman than she ever has before.

Petofi forces Magda to lead her to Barnabas’ hiding place. He has a cross and Aristide has a chain and a padlock. Petofi puts the cross inside the coffin, and orders Aristide to chain the coffin closed. Petofi declares that Barnabas is in for a long journey.

Episode 814: The hand knows what it must do

One night in 1797, nine Rroma men trapped the sorcerer Count Petofi in the forest of Ojden and cut off his right hand. With it, the count lost most of his magical powers. Sometime after, Petofi learned that he could live for exactly one hundred years without his hand. If he was reunited with it in that time, he would become immortal; if he was not, he would die.

Now, it is 1897, and the hundred years are almost up. Petofi has vacated his body and has for some weeks been operating in the person of twelve year old Jamison Collins. He has regained the hand, but as Petofi is dying, so is Jamison. Jamison/ Petofi collapses in the woods carrying the hand back to the place where his servant Aristide is waiting with Petofi’s own body. Jamison/ Petofi passes out shortly after Jamison’s uncle, the rakish Quentin Collins, catches up to him. Quentin carries Jamison/ Petofi and the hand to the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, where he confers with his distant cousin, Barnabas Collins the vampire.

Quentin and Barnabas decide that if Petofi dies, Jamison will die as well. Therefore they have no choice but to take the hand to Aristide. Barnabas does get Aristide to promise that once Petofi has the hand, he will use his powers to cure Quentin’s werewolf curse, but no one seems to regard Aristide’s word as valuable. Barnabas makes a menacing move towards Aristide; Aristide wards him off with a cross. Aristide puts the hand on Petofi’s chest, says some magic words, and waits a little over an hour. During this time, he needles Barnabas by offering him tea, which he must know is not part of a vampire’s diet. Then Petofi comes out of his room, laughing his evil laugh and showing off his reattached hand.

“At last my arm is complete again!” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die. (Caption by Stephen Sondheim.)

In #767, Jamison had a dream in which Quentin told him that his doom was sealed when the one person he truly loved turned against him. It was already clear at that point that this person was Jamison, but today Quentin tells Jamison in so many words that he is the only person he ever really loved. So we can take this as an announcement that the climactic crisis of the part of Dark Shadows set in 1897 is approaching.

Episode 807: An award-winning performance, wouldn’t you say?

From #1 to #274, each episode of Dark Shadows began with a voiceover narration by Alexandra Moltke Isles, usually in character as well-meaning governess Vicki. This identified Vicki with our point of view and suggested that she would sooner or later learn everything we knew.

Jonathan Frid joined the cast as vampire Barnabas Collins in #211, and quickly became the show’s great breakout star. If the upright Vicki found out what we knew about Barnabas, one of them would have to be destroyed. Vicki was the favorite of longtime viewers and Barnabas was attracting new ones, so that was out of the question. Therefore, other members of the cast started taking turns reading the voiceovers, and doing so not as their characters, but in the role of External Narrator.

Today marks the first time Frid himself reads the narration. His training first in Canada, then at Britain’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and later at Yale School of Drama prepared Frid well in the art of dramatic reading, and in later years he would concentrate on that aspect of his craft. Several of his colleagues are his equals in these voiceovers- I would particularly mention Kathryn Leigh Scott, whose conception of The Narrator is always arresting, and Thayer David, who could consistently achieve the most difficult of all effects in voice acting, a perfectly simple reading. So I can’t say I wish Frid had done all of them, but he is always good, and today’s performance is among his most gorgeous.

The action opens on a set known to longtime viewers as the Evans cottage, where from 1966 to 1968 artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie served as Dark Shadows‘ principal representatives of the working class of the village of Collinsport. In those days, it was on this set that we saw how the misdeeds of the ancient and esteemed Collins family had consequences that spilled out of the estate of Collinwood and warped the lives of people trying to make a more or less honest living nearby.

Now the dramatic date is 1897, and Sam hasn’t been born yet. But the cottage is already an artist’s studio. It is temporarily occupied by the nationally famous Charles Delaware Tate, who is painting a portrait of rakish libertine Quentin Collins at the behest of evil sorcerer Count Petofi. Charity Trask, a resident of the great house of Collinwood, is visiting Tate in the cottage when she sees the face in the portrait change from that of Quentin. It takes on a great deal of fur and long fangs, and reminds Charity of a wolf.

By the time Tate looks at the painting again, it has resumed its normal appearance. He tells Charity that the transformation must have been in her imagination. She is willing to consider the possibility, but we know better. Quentin is a werewolf, a condition Petofi knows how to cure. Portraits on Dark Shadows have had supernatural qualities at least since #70, including portraits we saw Sam execute on this set in 1966, 1967, and 1968, and the show has borrowed from The Picture of Dorian Gray before. Moreover, Tate’s reaction to Charity is one of barely controlled panic. Nancy Barrett has to ramp up Charity’s own emotional distress to the limit to make it plausible she would not notice Tate’s extreme agitation. Perhaps if Tate were played by a better actor than the ever-disappointing Roger Davis, his response might have been ambiguous enough that Miss Barrett could keep the tone a bit lower, but his unequivocal display of alarm leaves her nowhere to go but over the top.

Mr Davis was under no obligation to play the scene transparently, since Tate later goes to Petofi’s henchman Aristide and lays out in so many words his precise relationship to Petofi’s operations and his knowledge of them. Tate’s career is his reward for selling his soul to Petofi, and he has already experienced great sorrow as a result of that bargain. Tate knows that the portrait changed to reflect the full Moon’s influence on Quentin and that Petofi is currently in possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. Aristide tells us that Petofi’s own body is in suspended animation while he acts through Jamison. He also says that it was in 1797 that Petofi’s right hand was cut off, and that if he does not reclaim the hand in a few weeks, by the date of the one hundredth anniversary of the amputation, he will die and so will Tate.

Jamison/ Petofi is in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Barnabas has traveled back in time from the 1960s with some vaguely good intentions and is hanging around 1897 causing one disaster after another. Now, he is doing battle with Petofi and has locked him, in the form of Jamison, in the cell. Barnabas’ reluctant sidekick, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, guards Jamison/ Petofi during the day. Early in the episode, Jamison/ Petofi calls Magda and pleads with her to release him. He tells her that he is “just a little boy” and that she is a “rather heartless creature.” She says she wishes he were a little boy again, but that she isn’t stupid and he won’t fool her. Indeed, the phrase “rather heartless creature” and Jamison/ Petofi’s manner in delivering it sound so much like Thayer David as Petofi that they hardly count as an attempt to deceive Magda.

Later, Jamison/ Petofi casts a spell to summon Aristide, then calls to Magda again. When Magda arrives, Jamison/ Petofi gives himself a better script than the one from which he had acted in his previous scene with her. He pretends not to remember how he got into the cell and to be shocked that Magda knows he is there. Perhaps the utter transparency of his earlier pleadings was an attempt to get Magda to underestimate his abilities as a trickster.

In #803, we saw that when Petofi took possession of him Jamison’s right hand disappeared from his wrist, matching Petofi’s own mutilated condition. When Jamison/ Petofi feigns the amnesia that might come upon recovery from possession, we might therefore expect Magda to demand that he remove his gloves to prove that he is himself again. But he plays the part of Jamison so convincingly that we are not really surprised he does fool Magda. She goes into the cell, embraces Jamison/ Petofi, and he kisses her on the cheek. It is this kiss that spreads his magical power, and she realizes too late that she has been had.

Aristide arrives a moment later, and Jamison/ Petofi calls his portrayal of an innocent boy “an award-winning performance.” Indeed, if there had been daytime Emmys in 1969, David Henesy might have won one for his portrayal of Thayer David playing Petofi playing Jamison.

Aristide wants to kill Magda; Jamison/ Petofi forbids this. Under his power, she announces that she is responsible for all the evil that has happened in 1897. She was responsible for releasing Barnabas and therefore for all the murders and other harm he has done; she made Quentin a werewolf, and is to blame for his killings in his lupine form and for the curse his descendants will inherit; she stole Petofi’s severed hand and is at fault for the deaths of Rroma maiden Julianka and of her own husband Sandor that resulted from the hand’s presence. She even takes the blame for Quentin’s murder of her sister Jenny, the act for which the werewolf curse was meant as vengeance. Magda says she must be punished. Jamison/ Petofi tells her that he is not interested in punishing her. He has another use in mind for Magda She will lead him and Aristide to Barnabas’ coffin today, and they will destroy him.

Longtime viewers will perk up twice when Aristide says that Petofi lost his hand in 1797 and that he has exactly one hundred years to recover it. From December 1966 to March 1967, Dark Shadows’ first supernatural menace was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who at intervals of exactly one hundred years incinerated herself and a young son of hers, who was always named David, in an unholy ceremony that renewed her existence, but not that of the Davids. Since the usual laws of nature don’t apply, the show needs some other causal mechanism to create suspense, and anniversaries will do as well as anything else. Another iteration of Laura was on earlier in the 1897 segment. It was fun to see her again, but they could shoehorn her into that year only by retconning away the one hundred year pattern in her immolations. It’s reassuring in a way to see that Petofi is bringing centenaries back.

The date 1797 is also significant. It was in 1796 that Barnabas died and became a vampire. We flashed back to that period for the show’s first costume drama segment in November 1967 to March 1968, and Barnabas went back to 1796 for a week in January 1969. So we may go back again some day, and if Petofi was alive and in his prime in 1797, we might run into him there.

Barnabas and Petofi are not the only characters from the 1790s who might be on the minds of attentive longtime viewers. Barnabas’ little sister Sarah died in 1796, and as a ghost was an extremely important part of the show from June to November 1967. We’ve been getting reminders of Sarah for the last several days. In #792 wicked witch Angelique produced a toy soldier of Barnabas’ that Sarah gave to strange and troubled boy David in #331. In #805, Charity found Sarah’s recorder, a prop that often served as Sarah’s calling card in 1967, and talked about learning to play it. And today, we see a portrait standing on the floor of the Evans cottage, a set which Sarah visited in #260, depicting a girl wearing a bonnet very much like the one Sarah wore as a ghost in 1967 and a pink dress just like the one she wore when we saw her as a living being in the flashback to the 1790s.

I wonder if, when they were making up the flimsies for this part of the show, they had thought of reintroducing Sarah. That would have required a recasting of the part- Sharon Smyth was noticeably older when we saw Sarah die in January 1968 than she was when Sarah was a ghost in June 1967, and by now we would wonder what she has been eating in the afterlife that has made her get so much taller. Besides, Miss Smyth* had stopped acting by this point.

The process of planning the stories was in two stages, a rough sketching of themes six months in advance, and a capsule of each episode written thirteen weeks ahead of time. There was a lot of flexibility when it came to putting those plans into effect. Some stories that were supposed to end within thirteen weeks were extended over years, while others that were expected to be a big deal petered out before they got going. In an interview preserved by Danny Horn at his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, writer Violet Welles said that many of the moments on the show that made the least sense were those written when the plans hadn’t worked out: “toward the end of the cycle, you’d have characters who were really not a lot of interest who had to play scenes with other characters who really didn’t have a lot of interest, dealing with things that basically didn’t concern them. Those were hard to write.”

This episode was taped on 25 July 1969; thirteen weeks before that was 21 May. Six months before was 25 January. By 25 January, Denise Nickerson had been on the show for two months as Amy Jennings. Nickerson was actually born on 1 April 1957, but they several times say that Amy is nine years old. When the show goes to 1897, Nickerson plays Nora Collins, who is also nine. On 19 May, Nickerson taped #761, the last episode she would appear in until #782. She is currently in the middle of a second long absence from 1897, unseen between #783 and #812. Her characters were so important in the months leading up to the 1897 segment and she played them so well that we wonder what they were thinking leaving her in the background so long.

Maybe they were thinking of bringing her back as Sarah. Nickerson didn’t look all that much like Sharon Smyth, and was a far more accomplished young actress than was Miss Smyth, but she did have brown hair, and the show prioritized hair color above all else in recasting parts. For example, two actresses followed Mrs Isles in the role of Vicki, neither of whom had much in common with her either in acting style or in looks, but who both had black hair. So perhaps there was a time when they intended to travel between 1897 and the 1790s and to meet Sarah, played by Denise Nickerson. If Nickerson were still alive, perhaps someone would ask her if she posed for the portrait that is standing on the floor of the Evans cottage today.

*She’s been using her married name for decades now, but when talking about her as a child it’s pretty weird to refer to her as “Mrs Lentz.” Since I use surnames for people associated with the making of the show and attach courtesy titles to surnames of living people, I have to call her “Miss Smyth.”

Episode 666: Barnabas isn’t like anyone else

Thayer David joined the cast of Dark Shadows in August 1966, taking over the role of moody handyman Matthew Morgan from George Mitchell starting with #38. In that first episode, Matthew brawled in a barroom and left dashing action hero Burke Devlin gasping. The main storyline of the next few months was the investigation into the death of beloved local man Bill Malloy; it turned out Matthew had unintentionally killed Bill when they got into a fight and Matthew didn’t know his own strength.

Those two events explain the recast. George Mitchell was a slender little man whose white hair and craggy face made him look older than his 61 years. He was a fine actor, but no one would have believed that he could win a fight with Burke or that he was so strong that he would accidentally kill Bill. David was Mitchell’s equal in acting ability, but more importantly was a burly fellow in his late 30s.

Today, we hark back to David’s original function on the show. The setting is the year 1796; vampire Barnabas Collins has traveled back from the 1960s to rescue his fellow time traveler, well-meaning governess Victoria Winters, from death by hanging. David plays another servant. As Matthew was fanatically loyal to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, so Ben Stokes is utterly devoted to Barnabas. Ben finds roguish naval officer Nathan Forbes and visiting Countess Natalie DuPrés about to drive a stake through Barnabas’ heart. Ben demands they stop; Nathan aims his pistol in Ben’s direction and squeezes the trigger. The gun misfires. Ben reflexively clutches at his chest, but finding he is not hurt he advances on Nathan. They fight. As Matthew was so strong he could not fight Bill without accidentally killing him, so Ben accidentally kills Nathan. Ben then tells the countess he doesn’t want to hurt her and that she will be all right if she stays put until he can figure out what to do; she is unable to assure him she will do so, and in his attempt to restrain her he inadvertently kills her, too.

Barnabas had originally lived in the eighteenth century. He passed from that time into the 1960s because he was chained in his coffin in 1796 and discovered in 1967 by would-be grave-robber Willie Loomis. Now, he has rescued Victoria, and he is eager to go back to 1969, when he is free of the effects of the vampire curse. He traveled back by standing in an old graveyard and calling to the spirit of Vicki’s boyfriend, an unpleasant man known variously as Peter and Jeff, to pull him into the past. He went to the same graveyard yesterday and tried the same trick in reverse. Peter/ Jeff isn’t in 1969, so he calls instead to his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. That didn’t work, so he decided to have Ben chain him in the coffin and take the long way back.

Barnabas is unhappy to wake up this evening. He leaves his crypt to find Ben using a shovel to pat down some earth nearby. He asks why Ben did not chain the coffin as he was instructed. Ben tells him about Nathan and the countess; evidently he is only now finishing their shallow graves. Ben has never murdered anyone before, so he asks Barnabas’ expert opinion about the next steps. Barnabas tells him to get rid of the countess’ things and to tell whoever asks that she left for Paris.

The reference to Paris is a bit unexpected to longtime viewers. When the countess first appeared in #368/369, she said that she chose to live on the island of Martinique because metropolitan France had become a republic. She and her servant Angelique came to Collinwood along with the countess’ brother André DuPrés and André’s daughter Josette, who was at that time engaged to marry the still-human Barnabas. André is identified as the owner of a sugar plantation on Martinique.

In 1796, France was of course still a republic. But the Terror had ended shortly after the execution of Robespierre in the summer of 1794. Among the beneficiaries were the real-world counterparts of the DuPrés family, the vaguely aristocratic owners of a sugar plantation on Martinique. Their name was Tascher; the daughter of the family was named, not Josette, but Josephine, the widow of the Vicomte de Beauharnais. Josephine was imprisoned in Paris during the Terror, but she was freed, reunited with her son, and restored to her property by June 1795. In May of 1796, Josephine would marry an up-and-coming artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte. It would indeed be plausible that the countess would want to go back to Paris and take the opportunity to reestablish a life there.

After the story of Matthew Morgan and the consequences of the death of Bill Malloy ended in December 1966, Dark Shadows was for 13 weeks dominated by the battle between undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins and the forces of good, led by Victoria with assistance from the ghost of Josette. Laura was the show’s first supernatural menace.

The ghost of Josette had been introduced in #70 as the tutelary spirit of the long-deserted Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Matthew held Victoria prisoner in the Old House late in 1966, and in #126 he decided to kill her. Josette led the other ghosts out of the supernatural back-world that exists somewhere behind the action to save Victoria by scaring Matthew to death. During the Laura story, Josette’s ghost was deeply involved in the action, literally painting a picture to explain to the characters what was going on.

Prompted by Josette’s ghost, Victoria figured out that Laura was going to burn her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, to death on the anniversary of similar immolations. This would turn out to be a key turn in Dark Shadows’ world-building. When you are telling stories about supernatural beings, you can’t rely on the laws of nature or logic to shape the audience’s expectations. You need to give them some other mechanism of cause and effect if you are going to create suspense. So from that point on, the show would use anniversaries as causal forces. “It happened exactly one hundred years ago tomorrow night!” means it will happen again then.

That was the basis of Barnabas’ trip to 1796 and of his hope to return by standing on the same spot. Tombstones indicating that Victoria and Peter/ Jeff had been hanged materialized at times related to the anniversaries of those events, and Barnabas must leave 1969 at a certain point to arrive at a certain point in 1796. Eight o’clock on a given night in 1796 corresponds to eight o’clock on a given night in 1969, and those are the times when Barnabas and Julia go to the graveyard from which he vanished and call out to each other.

Even though the conjoined eight o’clocks don’t facilitate Barnabas’ return trip, the structure of today’s episode plays on the same idea of intercutting timelines. We alternate between scenes of Barnabas and Ben in 1796, and of Julia and Willie in 1969. Barnabas bit Willie and enslaved him when he opened his coffin; by the time Barnabas was cured of the effects of the vampire curse, Willie had let go of any hard feelings about that. Barnabas has made the Old House his home, and Willie voluntarily lives there as his servant. Julia has been a permanent guest in the great house on the estate since 1967, but now is apparently staying at Barnabas’.

Julia is determined that Barnabas will return by rematerializing on the spot from which he vanished, and she keeps going back there. Willie doesn’t believe this will happen, but in a long interior monologue comes up with the idea that he might reappear in his old coffin. In her turn, Julia dismisses that idea. They quarrel about these competing absurdities, and Willie decides to put his hypothesis to the test. He goes to the old mausoleum to check on the coffin, and finds it empty. He returns to the house to report this to Julia.

Julia decides it’s time to sleep, so she goes upstairs- apparently to her own bedroom. Seconds later, a ghost appears to Willie. He recognizes it as Josette. She vanishes, and he calls Julia. When Julia comes he tells her that Josette had never appeared to either of them unless Barnabas was in danger. As far as I can recall the audience has never known Josette to appear to Willie or Julia at all, and Barnabas is always in danger, so that remark is a bit of a mystery to longtime viewers.

In the days leading up to Willie’s discovery of Barnabas in April 1967, he, and he alone, heard a heartbeat coming from the eighteenth century portrait of Barnabas that hangs in the foyer of the great house. While he is talking with Julia, Willie turns to the portrait of Barnabas that artist Sam Evans painted in May 1967 and hears the heartbeat again. Julia cannot hear the heartbeat. Willie combines the sound of the heartbeat with the sight of Josette and concludes that Barnabas has returned and the old coffin is no longer empty. We cut to the hidden room in the mausoleum. Chains materialize around the coffin, and we see Barnabas inside it, struggling to escape.

Willie realizes what’s going on and tells Julia about it. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We may wonder if Barnabas has been struggling that way every night since he was chained there in his attempt to return to the 1960s. That would be 173 years, added to the 171 years the first time. It would seem that 344 years confined to a box would make Barnabas even screwier than he is. In a much later episode, we will see Barnabas released after a long entombment and he will be surprised that more than one day has passed. The 2012 film adaptation of Dark Shadows includes a humorous scene based on the idea that time does not pass for Barnabas while he is chained in his coffin. But when he was first released in April 1967, there were indications that he had undergone a nightly torment through the centuries, and the closing image of Barnabas in the box today echoes those indications.

Nathan’s death marks the final appearance of actor Joel Crothers, who has been one of Dark Shadows’ most valuable cast members since his debut in #3, when he played hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell. We said goodbye to Joe last week; it was nice to have another glimpse of Crothers in his villainous role before he left for the last time.

Episode 463: Comfort me

We open in the old cemetery north of town, where well-meaning governess Vicki and matriarch Liz are looking for the grave of Vicki’s old boyfriend Peter. Vicki last saw Peter this past Friday, which was over 170 years ago. That discrepancy was the result of some time travel she did in between. Vicki met Peter while spending nineteen weeks in the late eighteenth century. She came back home on Monday. By the end of her visit to the past, Vicki and Peter were both scheduled to be hanged for their many crimes. Vicki was whisked back to 1968 at the last possible instant, escaping by such a narrow margin that she had rope burns on her neck.

Vicki and Liz find Peter’s grave marker. Liz remarks that his date of death is the same as today’s date- 3 April. This sets Vicki off. She says that the hangings took place at dusk, that it’s dusk now, and that Peter is therefore being hanged even as they speak. Liz declares that this is gibberish. The date on the stone is 3 April 1795, and today’s date is 3 April 1968. Vicki tries to explain that everything that ever happened is happening over and again someplace. Yesterday, Liz heard similarly opaque verbiage from her distant cousin Barnabas. She didn’t buy this line when Barnabas was pitching it, and she isn’t any more impressed when she hears it from Vicki.

Longtime viewers of Dark Shadows are likely to make a connection. From December 1966 to March 1967, Vicki led the battle against the show’s first supernatural menace, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. When she saw the dates on which Laura’s previous incarnations immolated themselves along with their young sons, Vicki realized that she acted at intervals of exactly one hundred years. Laura was an embodiment of the cyclical nature of time; fighting her, Vicki is trying to break the cycle of death and rebirth, like a comely young Buddha.

I don’t think the show is making a serious metaphysical point by developing this theme. When you’re telling a story about a place where the usual laws of nature don’t apply, you need to substitute some other set of rules the audience can understand in order to create suspense. The power of anniversaries will do as well as anything else.

Back in the great house of Collinwood, we see Liz’ daughter Carolyn come in the front door wearing riding clothes and carrying a crop. This is the first indication that the Collinses have horses. In the early months of Dark Shadows, the family was running out of money, the estate was decrepit and mortgaged to the hilt, and they were barely holding onto control of their business. The stories those circumstances generated never went anywhere, and they’ve gradually been retconning the Collinses to be richer and richer. If they’re up to horse ownership now, by next year they might have a luxury yacht and a private jet.

The drawing room doors open, and lawyer Tony Peterson emerges. He quarrels with Carolyn about their last encounter. That was two weeks ago in story time, but we saw it before Vicki left for the past in November. It’s an even deeper dive for us than that makes it sound, because our view of Tony has changed profoundly in the interim. He was first introduced as an example of Jerry Lacy’s famous Humphrey Bogart imitation, and he still is that. But in the 1790s segment, Mr Lacy played the Rev’d Mr Trask, the fanatical witchfinder who hounded Vicki to her death and occasioned many other disasters. By now, we have come to see most of the 1960s characters as the (not necessarily dark) shadows cast by their eighteenth century counterparts. When Tony shows up today we find ourselves trying to figure out what it is about Collinsport in the twentieth century that could turn a holy terror like Trask into a basically nice guy like Tony.

Carolyn browbeats Tony into coming back at 8 pm to take her to dinner. He leaves, and Carolyn’s distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire, enters. Barnabas asks Carolyn if she’s noticed a change in Vicki. She has no idea what he’s talking about. He asks if she’s “more like you.” Thus first-time viewers learn that Carolyn is under Barnabas’ power. Returning viewers learn something, too. Yesterday’s episode ended with Barnabas about to bite Vicki, but cut to the closing credits before he sank his teeth into her. We’ve seen that before. Now we know that he has finally gone through with it.

In the opening scenes, Vicki showed absolutely no sign that anything had happened to her; Carolyn hasn’t noticed any change in her either. Soon, Vicki and Liz come home, and Vicki doesn’t react to Barnabas any differently than she had before he bit her. The people Barnabas has bitten have shown a wide variety of effects afterward. Perhaps Vicki will be the first victim who just can’t be bothered.

Vicki has a painting with her that she bought in town after she and Liz visited Peter’s grave. It turns out to be a portrait of Angelique, the wicked witch whose curse made Barnabas a vampire in the 1790s. That portrait first appeared in #449, a sign to the characters that Angelique’s evil spirit was still at work and to the audience that actress Lara Parker would be back on the show after the costume drama insert ended. Barnabas is upset to see this token of his old nemesis, and leaves the house. Vicki does not consciously remember the events she saw during her visit to the past, but when she sees Barnabas go she tells Liz that it makes sense that he would not like the picture.

Barnabas freaks out. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Tony returns and spends a few moments twitting Carolyn for her glamorous attire, describing the homely pastimes in which a working class boy like himself whiles away his idle moments. This prompts her to tease him back. Viewers who remember Tony and Carolyn’s previous interactions will recognize this as their style of flirtatious banter. They agree to go to dinner.

Before Tony and Carolyn can leave, we cut to Barnabas, standing in the window of his own house and staring at the great house. He calls to Carolyn, summoning her to come to him immediately. We cut back to the great house, and see Carolyn’s face go blank while Tony is still talking. She excuses herself, telling him she will meet him later. He is outraged, and vows he will not wait for her.

In Barnabas’ house, Carolyn tells Barnabas she objects to his summons. Irritated by this, he starts talking about Vicki. He says that he couldn’t understand why biting her did not bring her under his power, but that seeing the portrait explained it to him. The witch is interfering with his efforts. Carolyn laughs at the idea of a witch. This is a bit odd. Carolyn has lived her whole life up to this point in a haunted house and is having a conversation with a vampire. It wouldn’t seem to be a stretch for her to believe in witches.

Barnabas has a bad habit of leaving his front window uncovered. Many times, we have seen people peer into that window and discover Barnabas’ secrets. Now, Tony sees Barnabas bite Carolyn’s neck.

No cousinly kiss. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Carolyn goes home to the great house and finds Tony in the foyer. She is delighted at the idea that he is waiting to go on their date, but such is not the case. He is there to berate her for her perverse relationship with her cousin Barnabas and to storm out.

In this, we see the first point of similarity between Tony and Trask. Trask was right that there was a witch at Collinwood and right that the witch was the source of all the troubles afflicting the Collinses. But he was wrong about her identity, and wrong about the means to combat her. Likewise, Tony is right that Carolyn and Barnabas are manipulating him, and is right that their relationship is unwholesome. But he has no understanding of their goals, and his belief that their relationship is sexual is quite mistaken.

Carolyn’s protest that Barnabas is merely her cousin, like Tony’s indignant implication that their family relationship makes what they are doing incest, is rather strained. In the cemetery, Liz mentioned that Daniel Collins was her great-great grandfather, which would make Daniel’s sister Millicent Carolyn’s great-great-great-great aunt. When Millicent and Daniel were introduced during the 1790s segment, Barnabas’ father Joshua identified them as his second cousins. That was a distant enough relative that Joshua considered Millicent a potential marriage partner for either Joshua’s brother Jeremiah or for Barnabas himself. Since Barnabas and Carolyn are second cousins five times removed, nothing going on between them could very well be called incestuous.

Later, Barnabas goes to the drawing room in the great house and looks at the portrait of Angelique. To his surprise, Carolyn is waiting for him. She tells him that she doesn’t want to be his blood thrall anymore. She declares that he loves Vicki and that she has her own life to live. He is too busy to discuss the matter with her, and she leaves.

Barnabas cuts the portrait out of the frame, and throws it into the fireplace. He gives a little speech about how this is the only way Angelique can be destroyed. He turns from the fire, and sees that the portrait has regenerated. Angelique’s laughter sounds in the air, and Barnabas realizes that she is present.

This is not the first time a portrait of an undead blonde witch has been thrown into the fire in the drawing room, prompting a woman’s disembodied voice to make itself heard. In #149, Laura’s estranged husband, Roger Collins, threw into it a painting featuring her with their son, strange and troubled boy David. When that painting burned, we heard a scream coming from no one we could see. Whether the screamer was Laura or benevolent ghost Josette was never explained. What was clear was that burning the painting accomplished none of the goals Roger may have had in mind, as Barnabas’ incineration of this painting serves none of his purposes.

Episode 189: Doodling around

Yesterday, the group trying to keep blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins from immolating her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, agreed on a plan. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin would take David away very early in the morning on a trip to a fishing cabin far to the north, near the border between Maine and Canada. David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, would evict Laura from the cabin where she has been staying on the great estate of Collinwood. This plan was unsatisfactory to well-meaning governess Vicki, who believed that the time of greatest danger to David was before dawn. So she sat in David’s room overnight and watched him sleep.

Today, David wakes up after dawn and Vicki urges him to go back to sleep. When he stays up, they spend the morning on lessons. When Burke finally shows up around lunchtime, he announces that come evening he will be taking Vicki to dinner at the local tavern, the Blue Whale. Apparently the fishing trip to the cabin far to the north has somehow morphed into a couple of hours in the afternoon on a boat nearby. This is such a jarring break in continuity that Mrs Acilius and I wondered if the writer of today’s episode, Ron Sproat, just hasn’t been watching the show.

Vicki agrees to go out with Burke on condition that the housekeeper, the wildly indiscreet Mrs Johnson, keep David in her sight at all times. When Mrs Johnson was hired, David took it for granted she would be his “jailer.” He used that word with his aunt, reclusive matriarch Liz, in #77, and again with Burke in #79. Today, it turns out he was right. At one point, Mrs Johnson picks up a chair, sets it between David and the door, and plants herself in it to keep him from getting out. Sproat may not know what happened in yesterday’s script, but he does manage to set up an echo with what was going on five months ago.

The scenes between David and Mrs Johnson start off with some chuckles. David Henesy and Clarice Blackburn were both talented comic actors, and while they establish themselves as a restless boy and his irritable babysitter they seem like they are about to be funny. But they just don’t have the lines to keep us laughing. By the time Mrs Johnson tells David that she’s tired of watching him “doodling around,” we know the feeling- doodling around is all Sproat has to offer today.

At the Blue Whale, Vicki is too worried about David to keep her mind on Burke. Burke keeps trying to calm her fears. He saw Laura get on a bus out of town in the morning, and according to Vicki’s analysis it was last night that David was in the greatest danger. She still isn’t convinced.

Hardworking young fisherman Joe shows up. He tells them that he had looked at the nineteenth-century newspaper clipping that led Vicki to believe it was last night that Laura would make her move. Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, whom Vicki believes to have been an earlier incarnation of Laura Murdoch Collins, burned herself and her son David to death one hundred years before. Re-reading it, Joe realized that it was ambiguous whether last night was the anniversary of that event or tonight will be. So he went to the hall of records, and found that it was in fact one hundred years ago tonight that the Radcliffes burned.

Vicki wants to rush back to Collinwood at once to check on David. Burke suggests she telephone first and ask Mrs Johnson if he is all right. Vicki agrees.

This is one of the “Dumb Vicki” moments the writers make a disastrous habit of falling back on. When they can’t think of an interesting or even plausible way to get from one story point to the next, they have a character do something inexplicably stupid. Since Vicki is on screen more than anyone else, she is usually the Designated Dum-Dum.

At this point in the series, the only telephones in the great house of Collinwood are downstairs, one in the foyer, the other in the drawing room. Vicki has been living in the house since June, so she ought to know where the telephones are by now. Since David’s room is upstairs, the only way Mrs Johnson can answer a call is by leaving him unattended. Vicki knows that Laura’s power is so strong that she can do all sorts of bizarre things given a few seconds; it makes no sense at all that she accedes to Burke’s suggestion and gives Laura those seconds.

Mrs Johnson is reluctant to leave David alone, but he seems to be getting ready for bed. So she rushes down to get the phone. When Vicki asks her about David, she rushes back upstairs and finds that he has gone missing.

There are a couple of firsts in this episode. Burke has been trying to take Vicki out to dinner since the beginning of the series. They’ve had several near-misses, but this is the first time he buys a meal that she actually eats.

Burke first met Joe in #3, and within minutes he’d alienated him with an offer of a bribe. Joe found further reasons to dislike Burke as time went on. Those reasons have dissipated, and so today is the first time Joe greets cheerfully Burke and calls him by his first name. Joe and Burke were never particularly important to each other and there is no reason to expect they will become so now, but earlier this week we did see Burke and Roger, whose mutual hatred is a major theme in the show, act like friends for a little while. If Burke and Joe can make up, we might wonder if Burke and Roger’s brief détente might also point the way to some kind of reconciliation.

Episode 188: There is no room for you in my future

Well-meaning governess Vicki has concluded that, because someone called Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and her son David Radcliffe died in a fire “exactly one hundred years ago tonight!,” blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins must be planning to burn her son David Collins to death before sunrise. David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, agrees that Laura is probably a supernatural being, and that she probably represents a threat to David, but is not convinced that there is anything special about tonight. Vicki has also brought dashing action hero Burke Devlin, who is David’s idol and Laura’s ex, around to her point of view about Laura, but he too is unsure about the significance of the anniversary.

Yesterday, the three of them planned that Burke would take David away on a fishing trip early in the morning, and that once they are well away from the great estate of Collinwood Roger will evict Laura from her cottage on its grounds. Today, though, Roger decides not to wait until David is far from Laura and perhaps clear of the danger she embodies. Instead, he insists on going to her cottage immediately, in the middle of the night. When Vicki objects, Roger says he wants to call on her while he’s good and mad. For his part, Burke resists Vicki’s urging to take David away at once, cheerfully sure that morning will be soon enough.

Roger and Burke’s decisions set up the episode. Roger calls on Laura, then reports back to Vicki and Burke on their conversation. Burke calls on Laura, then reports back to Vicki and Roger on their conversation. Laura materializes in David’s bedroom and tells him they will be leaving together tomorrow night, and that he must keep this secret.

These scenes leave us with two reasons to object to what Roger and Burke have chosen to do. First, neither man’s decision makes much sense. Roger’s choice is particularly idiotic, a problem the script lampshades when Vicki tells Roger it makes no sense to let Laura know what’s going on while David is still in the house. But considering that Burke has already accepted Vicki’s analysis of the situation, his complacent refusal to take David at once is just as inexplicable.

The second problem is that today’s scenes are just so much filler. If Burke were to take David away immediately and Roger were to wait several hours before telling Laura that she must go, we’d have a situation in which Laura would either have to take action immediately in order to get David, to demonstrate that she has some power we didn’t know about previously, or to change her plans. Any of those would qualify as plot-advancing developments. Instead, we spend the whole half hour marching in place.

Making matters worse, the plan Laura outlines to David promises at least one more episode with no significant action. He will pretend to be sick, she will pretend to go away, Vicki will keep sounding the alarm, and the rest of them will wander around with their tongues hanging out. They may as well have staff announcer Bob Lloyd end the show by telling the audience not to bother tuning in until Friday.

The actors salvage some good moments. When Burke goes to Laura’s cottage, she is packing her bags. He tells her that people usually pack their bags shortly before going someplace. In response, she asks him if he has any more fascinating generalizations. Diana Millay is so good at delivering sarcastic dialogue that this line is worth a laugh out loud.

There are also some interesting connections with previous episodes. That Laura is packing shows that she at some point unpacked. When she first moved into the cottage in #135, we learned that she had never unpacked during the two or three weeks she had been staying at the Collinsport Inn. Indeed, her only luggage was a single bag that was so light it might be empty. That was a suggestion of her ghostly nature. As time has gone on, Laura has become more dynamic and more corporeal, to the point where she has some laundry.

As previously when Laura appeared in David’s room, today we see her standing in the corner for a moment before the spotlight finds her. I don’t know if that was intentional, or if they didn’t think the television audience would be able to make her out in 1967. Maybe they couldn’t- sets weren’t so great then, and most ABC stations didn’t come in well unless you had an extra-large aerial antenna. But I kind of like it. The pose Diana Millay holds while waiting for her light reminds me of live theater, and her gradual way of starting to move when the light does come plays into the idea that Laura isn’t a full-fledged human being. She turns on like a machine.

To motivate David to keep their plan secret from Roger, Laura tells him that Roger is going to send him to boarding school. At this, David flies into a panic.

In the first couple of months of Dark Shadows, David was preoccupied with a fear that his father would send him away. When David overheard Roger saying that he wanted David to go to boarding school in #10, David’s response was to sabotage the brakes on his father’s car in hopes that he would crash and die. When David saw Roger driving off in #15, he spoke into the night “He’s going to die, mother, he’s going to die!” We still don’t know if Laura could, by some uncanny means, hear David’s voice when he said this, but we do know who taught him that boarding school was so bad that patricide was a rational response the the prospect of it.

Episode 187: Exactly one hundred years (reprise)

Yesterday’s episode ended with a séance in the long-abandoned Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Strange and troubled boy David Collins was possessed by the spirit of David Radcliffe, a boy who died in 1867. David Radcliffe and his mother, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, stood in flames, refusing to be rescued, and burned happily to death. Through David Collins, David Radcliffe told well-meaning governess Vicki and drunken artist Sam that he wanted to be with his mother forever, but that he was separated from her when they died. He also tells them there will be another deadly fire very soon, in a small house by the sea.

Vicki, Sam, and others suspect that David Collins’ mother, Laura Murdoch Collins, is a reincarnation of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. A humanoid Phoenix, she will burn herself and somehow rise from the ashes. The voice of David Radcliffe, someone of whom David has never heard, confirms their fear that Laura will take David with her into the flames of her latest pyre, and that he will burn to death there.

During the séance, dashing action hero Burke Devlin and hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell had waited outside the Old House. When today’s episode opens, Joe has apparently taken Sam home. Burke carries David into the great house on the estate, with Vicki walking beside them. David is awake and keeps protesting that he can walk, but Burke insists on carrying him to his room. Burke has never seen David’s room before, and David enjoys telling him how to get there.

Vicki is very serious. She tells Carolyn that their friend, parapsychologist Dr Guthrie, was killed in a car crash on his way to the séance. They both believe that Laura somehow caused this crash, and lament their apparent helplessness before her. Vicki also recaps the events of the séance, leaving Carolyn terrified that Laura will take David soon.

Burke comes down and says that David wants Vicki. Vicki goes up to David’s room with some extra blankets; he is already in bed. He asks her what happened to him at the séance. Vicki lies to him, claiming that he just fell asleep and started dreaming. We know that Vicki is a deeply honest person, largely because she is such an inept liar. When she is about to say something that is not true, she looks down, stiffens, and starts talking fast. Most of the time, Vicki’s attempts to lie precipitate an immediate disaster, and this is no exception. David blows up at her and declares that he is going to go to his mother in the morning and tell her he wants to live with her from now on. It would be hard enough for Vicki to respond to this under any circumstances, but having just told David an obvious lie she can barely find words suitable for mumbling.

Downstairs, David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, comes home looking miserable. Carolyn tells her Uncle Roger that she has bad news for him. She means Guthrie’s death, which Roger says everyone in town already knows about. He expresses regret that he behaved so churlishly to Guthrie when Guthrie was only trying to help.

Roger proceeds into the drawing room and sees Burke. Roger and Burke are bitter enemies, and when Carolyn said that she had bad news she may well have been thinking of the fact that Burke was in the house. But Roger knows about that, too. He crossed paths with Joe, who brought him up to date. Roger and Burke agree to set their differences aside for the duration of the crisis.

Vicki comes down and tells Burke, Roger, and Carolyn about David’s decision. The four of them collaborate on a plan to keep David away from Laura. Burke will take David on a fishing trip in the morning. Once they are well away, Roger will go to the cottage on the estate where Laura is staying and throw her out.

Roger and Burke go together to David’s room and tell him that Burke wants to take him fishing. David says that he has to see his mother in the morning. Burke keeps pushing the idea, describing a fishing lodge at a lake in northern Maine that can be reached only by seaplane, where he might catch a record-setting muskie. David can’t resist that. Roger says he will tell Laura about David’s decision while he and Burke go away.

Roger and Burke do a good job of co-parenting David. There was some talk early in the Phoenix storyline about which of the two of them was David’s biological father; this scene shows that that was always the wrong question. If they were truer to themselves, Roger and Burke would forget their differences permanently, set up housekeeping together, and David would have two dads. Burke and the Collinses are rich enough and powerful enough to ignore convention, and people in town gossip about them constantly anyway, so why not.

Back in the drawing room, Roger and Burke are confident they have matters under control. Vicki isn’t listening to them. She looks at a contemporary newspaper clipping about the deaths of David and Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and notices something she had overlooked before. The fire took place “Exactly one hundred years ago!” The others dismiss this as a coincidence, but Vicki declares that the fire in which Laura will lure David to his death will happen within 24 hours.

Once you start telling stories about the supernatural, you cut yourself off from the usual laws that we see operating in our daily lives. You need some other system of cause and effect to maintain suspense. Dark Shadows settles on anniversaries as forces that can make things happen. Vicki had noticed hundred year intervals between the fiery deaths of women named Laura Murdoch, but this is the first time an anniversary is explicitly presented as the cause of an event.