barnabas and julia sitting in a tree – Page 3

Episode 349: A man who would have been long dead by now

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has been trying to cure Barnabas Collins of vampirism. We open today with Julia fleeing from Barnabas in terror. You’d think he’d be used to this reaction, but she’s been pretty cozy with him for a long time, so he knows she isn’t doing it for the usual reason. He demands to know why, and she tells him it’s to do with his appearance. He can’t use a mirror, so he touches his face. He realizes that, as an unforeseen side effect of Julia’s treatments, he is starting to look his age. Considering that he’s about 200 years old, the typical look would be a pile of dust, so he is quite upset about the situation.

Barnabas accuses Julia of intentionally botching the experiment because he refused to let “our relationship become all you wanted.” For the last couple of weeks, Julia has been responding to the realization that she is going to be connected to Barnabas for the rest of her life by trying to fall in love with him. He has observed this attempt, and answers it by pouring scorn on her. The other day, we saw her struggling to hold back tears at the end of an episode. She keeps her cool this time, and dismisses this particular accusation quickly.

One of the aspects of Barnabas’ sudden aging that bothers him the most is that he will have to cancel a date to watch the sun rise with well-meaning governess Vicki. Julia can hardly keep from laughing out loud when she says that “Foregoing an appointment with Vicki must be a bitter pill.” Barnabas responds “Spare me your sarcasm!” Even before she decided she would have to cultivate a romantic interest in Barnabas, Julia often showed signs of impatience when conversing with Vicki. She often rolled her eyes as soon as Vicki wasn’t looking, and sometimes plastered on a smile and spoke to her very slowly. But this is our first direct confirmation that Julia thinks Vicki is an idiot.

The Vicki/ Julia relationship is the first time on Dark Shadows that one major character is oblivious of the fact that another holds her in disdain. That adds a fresh wrinkle to their scenes together, as we wonder if Vicki will catch on to Julia’s real attitude towards her.

Barnabas orders Julia to run up to the great house of Collinwood and tell Vicki that he won’t be able to watch the sunrise with her. Julia opens the front door to comply, and sees Vicki standing there. She has overheard the last part of their conversation. Barnabas sits in a high-backed armchair with his back to her and claims that he has an illness he is afraid she will catch if she comes too close to him. He also claims that he will be leaving town on a long business trip later in the morning. When Vicki points out that these two things don’t fit together, he makes a lot of statements that don’t add up to much more than throat-clearing.

Barnabas hiding in his chair. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

It’s also odd that Vicki, who like the other residents of the great house of Collinwood does not know that Julia is a doctor, doesn’t seem to notice that she’s wearing a lab coat, much less to wonder what she’s doing in Barnabas’ house in the pre-dawn hours. The whole scene is so ridiculous that the comedy must be intentional, on the part of the director and the actors if not of writer Ron Sproat.

After Vicki goes, Barnabas says he will have to save himself by reverting to his bloodsucking ways. Julia is shocked by the thought that the horrors will resume, and laments that she will be “partially responsible” for them.

Julia’s shock doesn’t last long. She urges Barnabas to choose Vicki as his first victim. She is absolutely gleeful about this idea.

Barnabas’ doctor suggests a new addition to his diet. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas is miserable- he has already passed up several prime opportunities to bite Vicki, including an occasion when she invited herself over to spend the night in his house and one on the terrace of the great house when she virtually pressed her neck into his mouth. There have been times when we have expected Vicki to draw an arrow on her neck and write next to it the words “MR VAMPIRE, BITE HERE!” But Barnabas doesn’t want to let go of the fantasy that Vicki’s personality will somehow disappear and be spontaneously replaced with that of his lost love Josette. His attachment to this fantasy suggests that Barnabas is as bored with the actually existing Vicki as is Julia.

Back in the great house, Vicki tells heiress Carolyn that Barnabas was in a strange mood. Carolyn says that Vicki has become quite fond of Barnabas, and Vicki says that she is more than fond of him. She has come to rely on him. Since Vicki’s depressing fiancé, Burke, is missing and presumed dead, there is no reason why this shouldn’t mean that Vicki will fall in love with Barnabas. No reason, that is, except Barnabas’ obvious lack of interest in her.

Later, we see Carolyn and her old friend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, sitting at the Blue Whale tavern. Yesterday, Carolyn had a visit from the ghost of ten year old Sarah Collins. As a result, she believes that her young cousin, strange and troubled boy David, was probably telling the truth when he claimed to have seen various weird things.

Carolyn tries to enlist Joe in an effort to investigate David’s stories, but he won’t have it. He admits that Sarah exists. He has to- lots of people have seen her and she has made several observable things happen. Besides, Joe himself encountered the ghost of Josette in #179, so he can’t very well deny that there are such things as ghosts. But like other characters who have admitted that one or another supernatural being exists, he snaps right back to a frame of reference that doesn’t allow for the supernatural, or even for the unusual. Joe asks Carolyn if she really believes that there is “something sinister about Barnabas,” as David’s visions would imply. She admits that she doesn’t.

While Vicki sleeps, Barnabas materializes in her room. He stands there watching her, as he has done before. This time, his wizened appearance shows that it is a matter of urgency that he feed on someone. But he still can’t bring himself to bite her. Even when his existence is hanging in the balance, he just isn’t into Vicki.

Barnabas tries to work up desire for Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After Barnabas loiters for a while trying to talk himself into doing what he so plainly has no desire to do, Carolyn comes to Vicki’s door. She apologizes for waking Vicki, and explains that she thought she heard someone in the room. Vicki isn’t upset at the interruption, but grateful for Carolyn’s concern. The two are startled when they see the silhouette of a giant bat outside Vicki’s window.

Episode 347: And you will never forget, and you will never remember

In the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is worried about her depressing fiancé Burke, who is missing and feared dead after a plane crash in Brazil. Permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman enters and shows her a piece of crystal. Julia says that she thinks the crystal might have been part of a chandelier that hung in the foyer of the long-abandoned west wing of the house. Vicki plans to restore the west wing and hopes to live there with Burke, so this is of interest to her.

Julia tells Vicki to peer into the center of the crystal. As she complies, Julia stares directly into the camera and continues to give instructions. The Federal Communications Commission was very nervous about hypnosis in the 1960s, so much so that even indirect references to the process would draw memos from the television networks’ Standards and Practices offices warning producers that they must not put anything on the air that could hypnotize the audience. Apparently ABC’s Standards and Practices office wasn’t vigilant enough about the daytime dramas, because after a while we hear the tinkling sound Julia tells us we will hear and instead of the picture we see a kaleidoscope effect. By the time we come out of the trance, Julia and Vicki are in the basement of the Old House on the estate.

Find the center… Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The Old House is home to Old World gentleman Barnabas Collins. Vicki sees a coffin in the basement, and Julia orders her to open it. After a long display of reluctance, she does. She finds Barnabas inside, apparently dead. Julia shows her the crystal again. Once more the screen shows the kaleidoscope pattern, and next thing we know Julia and Vicki are returning to the drawing room of the great house.

There, Vicki is about to say that she wants to show the crystal to her dear friend Barnabas, only to find that she has an unaccountable difficulty bringing herself to say Barnabas’ name. Later, Barnabas comes to the house and asks Vicki to watch the sunrise with him. He is diffident about the invitation, and she is uncomfortable with him. Actor Jonathan Frid may have had some difficulty with Barnabas’ lines at this point, but if so, his stumbles dovetail so well with Barnabas’ own display of shyness that they don’t hurt the scene.

Vicki overcomes her discomfort and agrees to meet Barnabas at dawn. He is about to shake her hand when she notices that there is something wrong with his hand. He looks at it and is shocked. He says something about having injured it this morning. She pleads with him to stay and let her put something on his hand, but he rushes out.

Unknown to Vicki, Barnabas is a vampire and Julia is a mad scientist trying to turn him back into a human. The night before, Julia had given him an accelerated treatment that initially caused numbness in his hand, but that later gave him such a sense of well-being that he thought he would be free of his curse by the time the sun came up. After leaving Vicki, he returns to Julia’s laboratory in the basement of his house and shows her his hand, which has aged enormously.

Also unknown to Vicki, Barnabas has designs on her and sees Burke’s absence as a sign that he should move quickly to win her affections. That’s why he ignored Julia’s objections and insisted on the accelerated treatment. In the last few episodes, the show has put heavy emphasis on Julia’s wish to start a romance of her own with Barnabas and his scornful response to this wish; perhaps she took Vicki to Barnabas’ coffin to keep her from becoming a rival for his affections. Or perhaps her motives were altruistic- even if Barnabas weren’t a vampire, there would still be plenty of reasons why a woman would be well-advised to steer clear of him.

Episode 346: Neither good nor gentle

Well-meaning governess Vicki has learned that her depressing fiancé Burke probably died in a plane crash yesterday. His body hasn’t been found yet, and she still hopes he will turn out to be alive.

We open with a dream sequence. Vicki finds herself in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. She is in the bedroom once occupied by legendary grande dame Josette, restored to its original condition by the house’s current occupant, Old World gentleman Barnabas Collins. Barnabas enters, accompanied by permanent house guest Julia Hoffman. As is usual in dreams, much of it is a rehash of the dreamer’s recent experiences. Vicki had met Barnabas and Julia the preceding night while on a walk and told them that Burke was missing and feared dead. Barnabas told Julia that it was too cold for her to be outdoors and sent her home, then he told Vicki that he was sure she would be a bride soon. These same lines occur in the dream.

The dream deviates from the waking scene in three key ways. First, Barnabas addresses Julia as “Doctor.” In fact, Julia is a medical doctor, a mad scientist who has come to Collinwood with an experimental treatment intended to cure Barnabas of a chronic ailment, vampirism. But Vicki doesn’t know that Julia is a doctor, any more than she knows Barnabas is a vampire. Still less does she know that Barnabas always addresses Julia as “Doctor” when they are alone. That suggests that it is not a normal dream, but is a message from the supernatural.

Second, Julia looks humiliated when Barnabas tells her she is suffering from the cold and orders her to leave. That did happen in yesterday’s encounter, but Vicki didn’t see it. So that is further evidence that the dream is a transmission from worlds beyond.

Third, while Barnabas yesterday encouraged Vicki to believe that Burke was alive, in this dream he shows her a shrouded figure on the bed and identifies it as Burke. He still insists that she will be a bride. When she says that she can never be a bride if Burke is dead, Barnabas adopts a chipper tone and says that he doesn’t see why. She is saying “He is dead, he is dead” and the camera is focused on Barnabas when the dream ends. Evidently the message is something to do with Barnabas being dead, as he is during the daylight hours, and therefore being an unsuitable groom for her.

Later, we cut back to Josette’s room, where we see Julia standing around and hear her thoughts in an extended voiceover. She has resigned herself to spending the rest of her life linked to Barnabas, and has decided that she may as well fall in love with him. For his part, he is still hung up on his long-dead love Josette and believes that Vicki will someday turn into Josette and come to him. Julia is ruminating about this crackpot notion when she senses a ghostly presence. She wonders if it is Josette. Indeed, for 28 weeks, from #70 to #210, Josette’s ghost was the foremost supernatural presence on Dark Shadows, and it was based in the Old House. But Julia resists the idea that it could be her.

In her resistance, we can hear one of the themes the show has been exploring lately. Even characters who have accepted the reality of particular supernatural phenomena don’t have a frame of reference for those phenomena. They keep snapping back to Logical-Explanation-Land and trying to find mundane answers to unearthly questions. Julia is personal physician to a vampire, and even she starts telling herself that she’s being silly to expect to see a ghost.

There is a good deal of noise from off-screen, and Julia finally accepts that there is a ghost in the room. She says aloud that it is not Josette’s ghost, it is a man’s. She thinks it is the ghost of Dave Woodard, her old medical school classmate, whom she and Barnabas murdered a week ago. She is calling out “Dave!” when she hears Vicki in the hallway outside.

Julia calls to Vicki, who joins her in Josette’s room. Vicki tells her that after she left them the night before, Barnabas volunteered to help her restore the west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Vicki wants to accept that offer. Julia becomes angry and says that Barnabas is much too busy to do any such thing, and that if he offered to do it he was only being polite.

Later, Vicki is back in the great house. Barnabas visits her there. When she tells him what Julia said and how agitated she was when she said it, he assures that he sincerely wants to help her with the project, and they speculate that Julia is working too hard.

Julia joins them. She is carrying flowers and in an abashed mood. She apologizes to Vicki for raising her voice and says that she must have been working too hard. Vicki goes to get a vase, leaving Julia and Barnabas alone in the drawing room.

Barnabas demands that Julia put her feelings to one side and approach their relationship simply as one of doctor and patient. He doesn’t ignore her feelings, nor does he make the slightest attempt to be gallant about them; he speaks of her attraction to him as if it were a mildly ridiculous offense against good manners. I suppose if someone treated you that way, it would be relatively easy to get over your unrequited passion for them, but Julia is stuck with Barnabas. When he tells her to stop being foolish and keep their relationship simple, she says that it is too late for that. Barnabas understands that as a reference to their murder of Woodard, which has indeed cut her off from any other potential life partner for the foreseeable future.

This whole conversation is conducted in loud stage voices with the doors wide open. Vicki walks in as Barnabas and Julia are in the middle of a fairly incriminating topic. She is sufficiently absorbed in her worries about Burke that it is believable that her only reaction would be a startled look after she enters the room and sees Barnabas and Julia in an intense confrontation, but they really are being remarkably careless.

Vicki finds that the flowers, which were in full bloom when she left the room a few minutes before, are now dead and shriveled. Barnabas had held the flowers briefly; evidently the vampire’s touch drained them of life. He squirms and looks up, the picture of someone embarrassed by his failure to control a bodily function in a social setting.

Looks like David Ford isn’t the only one whose metabolism creates awkward moments.

Back in the Old House, Barnabas and Julia are in the basement laboratory. She is preparing to give him an injection. He wants her to accelerate the treatments so that he can woo Vicki now, while she is lonely and confused. In case Burke does come back, Barnabas wants to have established a foothold from which to compete with him for Vicki’s affections. Julia is nervous, fumbling with the needle and complaining about the way Barnabas is looking at her. When she is about to give him the shot, he stops her, telling her that he suspects her jealousy will lead her to do something to harm him. He warns her against any such attempt. After this last moment of unrelenting hostility, we end with a closeup on Julia, her lower lip trembling.

Episode 343: Not as a monster

Vampire Barnabas Collins is in a chirpy mood. He and his associate, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, have just committed the premeditated murder of Julia’s medical school classmate Dave Woodard. As we saw when Barnabas made his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie to help him hide the corpse of seagoing con man Jason McGuire, nothing makes him happier than forcing someone to help with the killing of a former friend.

I think the actors were placed behind the laboratory apparatus intentionally, to highlight the characters’ helplessness and isolation.

Today, Julia wants to stop her attempt to cure Barnabas of vampirism, but he won’t hear of it. When she tells him she might try to kill him instead of curing him, Barnabas relishes telling her that he trusts her completely. She does knock him out of his blissful state when she suggests that if she manages to turn him into a real boy, he might have a conscience. He gives a little speech in which he says some brave things about being willing to accept the punishment fitting a man who had done the things he has done if he also gains the ability to love as a man can love. Jonathan Frid puts enough into this speech that it is possible to sympathize with Barnabas in the moment that he is delivering it.

That moment doesn’t last very long. By the end of the episode, we are back on this set, where Julia says that “someone” might love Barnabas as he is, and he takes delight in her humiliation as he makes it obvious that he knows she is referring to herself.

Some say that Barnabas’ speech about wanting to love is meant to make the character more likable, but it has the opposite effect when he so smoothly transitions back into this gleeful cruelty. The other day, Julia told Barnabas that she had wondered whether he was capable of feeling any emotions at all, but we see in this scene what we’ve seen all along, that he is nothing but emotion. Except when he is acting, trying to convince the living members of the Collins family that he is their long-lost cousin from England, his feelings are right on the surface. For a minute or two, he has some feelings about love and justice, and we see those very clearly. But that is a brief interlude in the middle of his entirely gratuitous torture of Julia. We are left in no doubt that he takes an utterly unmixed pleasure in causing her pain. We’ve already seen very cold villains on Dark Shadows and before the series ends we will see more, but by the end of this scene Barnabas claims the crown of most detestable character ever to appear on the show. It’s so hard to imagine how he could possibly sustain such a level of malignity that it’s no wonder viewers still keep tuning in to see what he will do next.

The main theme of the episode is the contrast between Barnabas’ relationship with Julia and his relationship with well-meaning governess Vicki. For the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, Vicki was the audience’s main point-of-view character; now Julia is the one who knows what we know, and who makes things happen when she learns new information. Seeing Barnabas first with one woman, then with the other, we see how the show has been changing since he joined the cast.

Barnabas eavesdrops on Vicki’s conversation with her depressing fiancé Burke on the terrace at the great house of Collinwood, then slides in and claims to have inadvertently overheard the last few words of their conversation. Burke gives Barnabas a dirty look, then excuses himself to do some telephoning while Vicki and Barnabas stay on the terrace and talk for a little while.

Barnabas has some vague idea of seducing Vicki, an idea he has been remarkably desultory about pursuing. In this scene, he does the only thing he has ever really got round to doing about it, which is to listen sympathetically while Vicki tells him her troubles. This time, she’s trying to convince herself that she wants what Burke wants, which is to get away from Collinwood and start a new life somewhere else. It isn’t an exciting situation, but Alexandra Moltke Isles delivers her lines with so much urgency that it holds our attention.

Vicki shares her anguish with her kindly friend Barnabas

Julia eavesdrops on this conversation. She looks miserable. Whatever she may have had in mind when she first came to Collinwood, Julia is stuck with Barnabas for the foreseeable future. Not only has Julia murdered one of her oldest friends for Barnabas’ sake, she has involved herself so deeply in so many of his activities that it is unclear how she would go back to the successful professional life she had before she met him even if he were destroyed. If he is going to spend his time hanging around other women, she faces a drab prospect.

In the drawing room, Burke, Vicki, and Julia talk about the death of Dr Woodard. Julia can’t bear the topic, and excuses herself to go out to the terrace. There, she catches a glimpse of Woodard’s ghost. Julia screams, Burke and Vicki come, and all she can do when they ask what’s wrong is to keep jabbering that “he wasn’t there.”

There are some rough patches in the script today. For example, in the opening, Julia is touching the equipment when Barnabas exclaims “Don’t stop!” This is puzzling- she doesn’t appear to be stopping anything. And when Julia says “He wasn’t there,” Vicki has to ask “Who wasn’t there?” A person might reflexively say such a thing, and Mrs Isles’ rapid delivery of the line and simultaneous movement of the neck and the shoulders suggest such a reflex. That’s probably the best choice any actor could have made, but the line still gets a bad laugh. Barnabas and Julia’s successive eavesdropping expeditions also come off as some kind of joke, and all the scenes take too long. The whole thing could have used another trip through the typewriter. Still, writer Joe Caldwell was at his best with miniature character studies, and while he may not have had the time he needed to give this one his usual polish, the actors still have more than enough to show what they can do. It’s a fairly good outing, all things considered.

Episode 339: Even greater fool

This episode was taped during a National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians strike. While the camera operators picketed outside, network executives and other amateurs were handling the equipment. It shows. As the episode begins, there is a lot of chatter and miscellaneous noise off camera; none of the shots is properly focused; each zoom shot moves at alarmingly fast pace; and at one point the camera swings wild. Dark Shadows was produced under such poor conditions that any one of those things might have made its way even into an episode made by trained professionals, but today is the single roughest cut yet.

At least the technical incompetence of the suits has some funny results. That can’t be said of the work of the alleged actor scabbing in the role of Dr Dave Woodard. Robert Gerringer, who started playing Woodard in May, honored his union obligations and refused to cross the NABET picket line; the stooge replacing him is so monotonous in his delivery of dialogue and so undistinguished in his bodily movement that he is little more than a blank spot on the screen. Much of this episode is devoted to him rummaging around looking for some papers; it would take considerably more skill than non-Woodard ever displays to make that interesting to watch.

The actor is so dull that he ruins one of the major sources of suspense. We ought to be conflicted about Barnabas’ plan to kill Woodard, because while we want the story to advance and Barnabas to stay on the show, we don’t want the good guys to be killed. Moreover, Woodard is the only one now who fully understands and supports one of our favorite characters, strange and troubled boy David. We certainly shouldn’t want David to lose his only backer. But this guy is such a waste of screen space that it is fatally easy for us to root for the character’s death.

There are a few interesting moments scattered here and there in Ron Sproat’s script. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman tells vampire Barnabas Collins that she tried to quell Woodard’s suspicions by telling him Barnabas had a rare blood disease that she was trying to treat. In fact, Julia does believe that vampirism is a rare blood disease, and she is trying to cure Barnabas of it, so she wasn’t lying when she told him that. It’s always startling to find Julia resorting to the truth.

Julia also tells Barnabas that Woodard came up with an idea she has encouraged him to believe, that she is in love with Barnabas. Barnabas laughs at this notion, and Julia objects that it doesn’t seem so preposterous to her. An incredulous look on his face, Barnabas glances at her wig, then at her clothes. He has a point- it really does not look like an ensemble a woman would wear if she was into dudes.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Yesterday’s episode gave us several clues that Julia is in fact attracted to Barnabas. Today, she not only seems hurt when Barnabas laughs at the idea she might be falling for him, but she flashes a look of jealousy later when he says something extravagantly complimentary about well-meaning governess Vicki. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, this makes it rather unsettling when Julia remarks that she had thought Barnabas was incapable of feeling any emotion, even fear. We know that Julia is a very strange person, but as we find out what she looks for in a partner we start to wonder just how strange she is.

Barnabas is bewildered by everything Julia says and does. When she says she is surprised that he is frightened by Woodard’s investigation into him, he says that of course he is frightened, as it could easily result in his extinction. When she goes on to say that she had thought him a totally unemotional being, he becomes for a moment the audience’s point of view character- he doesn’t say anything, just gives her a look as if she is completely nuts.

At the moment, Barnabas is especially vulnerable because Julia is keeping her notes on the experiment in a little box in her bedroom at the great house of Collinwood. That is an odd place for them. She presumably makes the notes while she is working in her laboratory in the basement of Barnabas’ house, and she consults them while she is there. The laboratory is well-hidden- Woodard and local man Burke Devlin searched the basement in #333, and found no trace of it. So it doesn’t make any sense to create another danger of exposure by keeping them anywhere but there. Of course Woodard sneaks into Julia’s room today and finds the notes.

Housekeeper Mrs Johnson is in this one, after fourteen and a half weeks away. In fact, it’s only her second appearance since #211, the episode in which she was the first character to exchange lines with Barnabas. It’s great to have her back, though of course it saddens me that Clarice Blackburn crossed a picket line.

Episode 338: Suspicion itself

Dr Dave Woodard is onto vampire Barnabas Collins’ terrible secret. Woodard doesn’t think he can share his suspicions with the sheriff or a medical colleague or an expert in the supernatural or with any of his friends. Still, he has to tell someone. So he has gone to Barnabas and told him all about it. Barnabas tells him he’s crazy and orders him out of his house.

On his way out, Woodard crosses paths with his medical school classmate and onetime friend Julia Hoffman. He had introduced Julia to the case of Barnabas’ victim Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, hoping that her dual qualification as an expert in psychiatry and hematology meant that she would be the perfect person to find out what happened to Maggie. He knows now that Barnabas was the source of Maggie’s troubles, and that Julia has gone over to Barnabas’ side. The doctors engage in a brief verbal sparring match, then Julia goes into the house. Woodard pretends to leave, then crouches by the window where we have already seen several people eavesdrop on Barnabas’ conversations. Even though Julia herself is one of those people, neither she nor Barnabas thinks to look out the window before they launch into a hugely incriminating conversation.

Among the more important pieces of information Woodard learns are that Julia is performing an experiment on Barnabas, that she is keeping notes on that experiment, and that she keeps those notes in a box in her room at the great house of Collinwood. For some unaccountable reason, she thinks that no one will look for them there.

Barnabas demands that Julia find out how much Woodard knows. He butters her up a bit, telling her that while she has said that Woodard was the most brilliant student in their medical school class, he is sure he can’t have been more than the second most brilliant. He even calls her “my dear,” the first time he has addressed her as anything more affectionate than “doctor.” She is facing away from him when he says all this, and we see her brighten. By the time she exits, she looks positively blissful.

Julia thrills to Barnabas’ non-hostile talk.

Perhaps this suggests that Julia is falling in love with Barnabas. She does get carried away with sympathy for him earlier in the scene, when he is whining about his situation and she exclaims “Poor Barnabas!” Perhaps it’s just that she has been spending all her time with him for months and is relieved to get some friendly attention. Whatever the cause of it, her excitement must be considerable- she even allows herself to bring up a topic to which she has never before so much as alluded, and says that “They didn’t take me as seriously as they should have because I’m a woman.”

Julia calls on Woodard at his office. She tries to sell him on an idea he himself had in #324, that she’s hanging around because she’s fallen in love with Barnabas. He confronts her with a list of the medical supplies she has ordered recently. She ignores the list and keeps saying that she is just a woman in love. Woodard isn’t having it, and she ultimately resorts to warning him that for his own good, he must stop asking questions.

Meanwhile, there is some activity at the great house. Well-meaning governess Vicki receives a visit from her depressing fiancé Burke. The two of them had hoped to buy a “house by the sea” that turned out to be unsaleable because of provisions in an old Collins family will. Matriarch Liz eavesdrops as they talk about this, then enters the room and offers to let them live in the long-abandoned west wing of Collinwood until the house they want becomes available. Vicki loves the idea, Burke is hesitant.

This echoes a theme of the first few months of the show, when Burke wanted to take possession of Collinwood and throw the Collinses out. In response, Liz vowed that Burke would never spend a night under its roof. This offer shows viewers who have been watching from the beginning how far we have come since those days.

I wonder if that vase is full of Cheetos

Episode 324: They shot the wrong man

The Collinsport police have solved the case of the abduction of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. The investigation has been stalled for months, because Maggie is suffering from amnesia covering the entire period of her captivity. So the authorities spread a rumor that Maggie’s memory was returning, camped out on her lawn, shot the first guy who strayed onto the property, and declared him to be the culprit.

Though this method would appear to be impeccably scientific, strange and troubled boy David Collins is unconvinced. The wounded man is the luckless Willie Loomis, servant of David’s cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. David is sure that Willie wouldn’t hurt anyone, and has developed an intense aversion to Barnabas.

David troubled. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

David’s aunt, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, is discussing this situation with his well-meaning governess Vicki. Liz mentions that Willie originally came to the estate of Collinwood as a friend of seagoing con man Jason McGuire. She says that she is prepared to believe any bad thing about any friend of Jason’s.

This is the third day in a row we have heard Jason’s name mentioned. That marks quite a departure from recent months of the show. In #275, Barnabas killed Jason, and in #276 he forced Willie to help him bury the body. He was forgotten, apparently forever, shortly thereafter.

It is not clear at all where the show is heading. A few weeks ago, David learned that the secret chamber where Jason is buried exists, that Barnabas and Willie know about it, and that there is something hidden in it that makes Willie uncomfortable. Barnabas knows that David has been in the chamber, and is thinking of killing him. So perhaps the next storyline will involve Barnabas trying to do away with David lest Jason’s death be discovered.

Bolstering that expectation is the fact that Willie has survived the shooting. When he was first shot, day before yesterday, the police said he had five bullets in his back and that only a miracle could keep him alive. Yesterday, we heard that he was in a coma and that the preliminary medical report on his case gave him virtually no chance of living. Today, his doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, tells his medical colleague Julia Hoffman that the odds are a hundred to one against Willie seeing another day. Experienced soap opera viewers will know that when a man has been declared dead so many times, he will be with the series for years to come. Willie does feel bad about what happened to Jason, so if David manages to lead the authorities to the secret chamber, that might bring matters to a head.

The scene between Woodard and Julia marks an interesting first. Julia is, among other things, a psychiatrist, and Maggie was her patient for a time. Woodard believes that she is at Collinwood in order to find out who abducted Maggie. He is surprised she plans to stay on now that Willie has been named. She claims that she is trying to keep her cover story intact, that she is an historian studying the old families of New England. This doesn’t make much sense to him, but he doesn’t expect it to- he thinks he knows her real motive. He thinks she is in love with Barnabas. Julia smiles, and doesn’t deny it.

Julia the lover. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Returning viewers know that Julia’s actual motives are infinitely less wholesome. She is a mad scientist, and Barnabas is a vampire. She is conducting an experimental treatment which, if successful, will relieve him of that condition. For the sake of that experiment, she has become Barnabas’ accomplice. She induced Maggie’s amnesia, she has lied to everyone she has met, including the sheriff, and she is happy that Willie is likely to die and take the blame for Barnabas’ crimes. Woodard’s idea that she is in love with Barnabas delights her because it helps conceal her true role. It also starts us wondering if it is the beginning of a story in which the two of them avoid awkward questions by pretending to be a couple, then perhaps really do fall in love.