barnabas collins – Page 38 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 293: A better story next time

Well-meaning governess Vicki was the main character of Dark Shadows in its first 39 weeks, and themost interesting storyline was her relationship to her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. That story came to its climax when David chose life with Vicki over death with his mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, in #191, and Vicki hasn’t had much to do since.

Yesterday, Vicki told her depressing boyfriend, fake Shemp Burke Devlin, about an old vacant house that excites her. Since Vicki’s work with David is compensated mainly with room and board, the only way her interest in an empty house could lead to anything happening on the show would be if she quit her job, married Burke, and moved there with him. Since Burke has even less connection to the ongoing narrative arc than Vicki does, and has been spending his time lately demanding that she stop trying to attach herself to the story and settle in with him in his dead end far away from the plot, that is a dismal prospect.

All the action on the show is centered on vampire Barnabas Collins. In the opening scene, Barnabas talked with his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis about two women. One was Vicki. Willie was agitated that Barnabas is planning to bite Vicki. This is an odd thing to worry about- Vicki has gone out of her way to make herself available to Barnabas for biting, even contriving to spend the night in his house. But she still has all her blood, and no foothold in the vampire story. When Barnabas tells Willie that he does not intend to harm Vicki in any way, those of us who hope she will stay relevant to Dark Shadows have a sinking feeling that he might be telling the truth.

The other woman Barnabas and Willie discuss is mad scientist Julia Hoffman. In contrast to his assurances that he means no harm to Vicki, Barnabas muses openly that he might have to kill Julia at any moment. Observing Willie’s reactions, Barnabas comments that it is interesting that Willie is so concerned about Vicki, but utterly indifferent to Julia. If we remember Willie as he was before Barnabas enslaved him, this may not be so odd.

Before he became sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis, he was dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis, menace to womankind. Willie tried to rape Vicki, among others, and his guilt over the use he made of his freedom when he had it is reflected in his solicitousness towards those whom he once used so ill. By the time he met Julia, he had been under Barnabas’ power for months, so he has made no choices concerning her that he can regret.

Barnabas shows up as Vicki and Burke are getting ready to visit “the house by the sea.” Barnabas slips a couple of times as he talks with them about it, revealing to the audience that he is familiar with the house. This raises our hopes- perhaps Vicki’s fascination with the house will lead her to Barnabas and relevance, not to Burke and oblivion. Vicki invites Barnabas to come along with her and Burke as they tour the house, and he agrees.

While Vicki is upstairs changing her clothes, Barnabas and Burke talk in the drawing room. Barnabas points out that little is known of how Burke became so rich so quickly in the years before he came back to Collinsport. Burke responds that far less is known of Barnabas than of him, that his entire life before this year is perfectly obscure to everyone. As Barnabas, Jonathan Frid plays this scene with more variety and subtlety of expression than any previous one, and as Burke, Anthony George gives a tight, forceful performance. It is the first time Dark Shadows viewers have glimpsed the reason George had such a long and busy career as an actor.

George was a cold actor who excelled at characters whose intelligence and determination were obvious, but whose feelings and intentions the audience could only guess at. That would have made him a fine choice for the part of Burke in the early months of the show, but these days he spends most of his time giving big reactions to bewildering news and the rest in passionate love scenes with Vicki. George was just awful at both of those. But in today’s duel with Barnabas, Burke is choosing his every word and gesture with care, putting him right in the center of George’s wheelhouse. Opposite the much warmer Jonathan Frid, the effect is electric.

It leaves me wondering what might have been. Mitch Ryan was compelling as Burke #1, but his hot style of acting pushed Burke’s emotions to the surface and took away some of the mystery that would have been needed to make the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” storyline a success. With George in the part, that story would probably still have fizzled, but it might have taken a bit longer to do so. And of course the part George has been struggling with, until this scene in vain, was written for Ryan. If the two had just traded places and the scripts had stayed the same, Burke #1 and Burke #2 might both have been strong characters.

Of course, they wouldn’t have stayed entirely the same. The writers watch the show and are influenced by what they see the actors doing. But they may not have changed as much as you might expect. Neither Ron Sproat nor Malcolm Marmorstein seemed to have much sense of what actors could do. It’s no wonder that George’s first good scene comes in the second episode credited to Gordon Russell. Perhaps if Russell had been with the show earlier, Burke #2 might have been more of a success.

The scene also brings up one of my favorite fanfic ideas. People are going to wonder about Barnabas’ background, and Burke needs to be written off the show. Why not solve both of those problems by having Barnabas enslave Burke, make Burke set up businesses in Barnabas’ name and use his shadier contacts to get Barnabas false identification papers, then kill Burke off once he has exhausted his resources? You could do that in such a way that the other characters would think Barnabas was a nice guy who was using his wealth to prop Burke up, consolidating his position in their eyes. You could also use it to connect Barnabas to the wider world beyond the estate, suggesting that he poses a menace not only to one family but to a whole community.

At length, Vicki comes back downstairs. Burke greets her first, but she barely acknowledges him. She has eyes only for Barnabas. Barnabas may not be in any hurry to bite Vicki, but she is bursting with readiness to get into the vampire story and back into the main action of the show.

Eyes on the prize. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 291: Doctor Hoffman has fooled us all

Up to this point, Dark Shadows has been scrupulous about avoiding references to Christianity. Of course, that was necessary- you can more or less casually drop in an image from ancient Greek mythology, for example, because not many people put a lot of energy into wondering whether they ought to be worshiping Zeus. But Christianity is very much a live option nowadays, with the result that even a subtle allusion to it tends to take over the audience’s reaction to whatever story you’re telling and turn their reception of it into a theological debate.

It can be particularly hard to steer clear of Christian ideas when you draw elements from stories that were first told in cultures where Christianity was so heavily dominant that people simply took its major concepts for granted and used them without thinking. To take an obvious example, vampires are an inversion of Jesus. Where Jesus is the ultimate example of self-sacrifice, the vampire is a metaphor for selfishness. Where Jesus’ resurrection represents his final victory over death, the vampire’s resurrection leaves him under the power of death every dawn. Where Jesus invites us to drink his blood and eat his flesh and thereby join him in eternal life, the vampire drinks our blood and annihilates our flesh in order to subject us to his indefinitely prolonged dying. Where Jesus commands his followers to spread truth wherever they go, the vampire’s existence depends on lies and secrecy. It’s no wonder that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is all about people using crucifixes and communion wafers to contain and destroy the sinister Count.

The scene that closed Friday’s episode and that is reprised in today’s opening is, I think, the first to include a recognizable allusion to the Christian story. In the Gospels, the first human being to learn that Jesus has been resurrected is Mary Magdalene. She learns this when Jesus interrupts her attempt to mourn his death and calls her by name, and that act of naming creates a new kind of relationship between them and a new place for her in the history of the cosmos. In Dark Shadows, the first person to find out that Barnabas Collins is a vampire otherwise than by becoming his victim is Dr Julia Hoffman. Barnabas learns that Julia has caught on to him when she interrupts his attempt to kill her and calls him by name, and that act of naming creates a new kind of relationship between them and a new place for her in the narrative arc of Dark Shadows.

Furthermore, Jesus had, before his death and resurrection, freed Mary of seven demons who possessed her. The memory of that past liberation was the original basis of her devotion to him. In this scene, Julia, as the anti-Mary Magdalene, promises that she will free Barnabas of the force that has made him a vampire. Hope for that future liberation is what stops Barnabas from murdering Julia, and will become the basis of their initial collaboration. Julia’s promise is not based in any claim of divine power, but in a lot of pseudo-scientific gibberish derived from the 1945 film The House of Dracula, in which a mad scientist tries to cure Dracula of vampirism by an experimental treatment that involves the participation of several other characters from Universal Studios’ existing intellectual property. The echo of the Mary Magdalene story also evokes the “meddling in God’s realm” theme of that and the other monster movies Universal made in the 1930s and 1940s.

Julia is not the first scientist on Dark Shadows to offer to help an undead menace to rejoin the world of the living. That was Dr Peter Guthrie, parapsychologist, who in #184 told blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins that if she would stop trying to incinerate her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, he would help her. Laura laughed at Guthrie’s offer, and when he said that his research into conditions like hers “has been my life,” she remarked that she found his choice of words strangely apt.

As a humanoid Phoenix, periodically burning herself and her sons to death and then reappearing in a living form, Laura was not part of any mythology as familiar and well-articulated as are the vampire stories from Bram Stoker, Universal Studios, or Hammer Films. The only really well-known thing about Phoenixes, beyond their rebirth from ashes, is their elusiveness. That the Fire Bird can be seen alive or not at all is a recurring theme of medieval and early modern literature based on Celtic and Germanic folklore, and a reason why the Phoenix is so often associated with the mysterious realms that figure in the legends of the Holy Grail. It is essential to Laura that we cannot understand what she is thinking, or even be sure if she has an inner mental life at all. Not only can Laura not give up her plan to burn David alive and retain a sense of menace. If we so much as catch her thinking about Guthrie’s offer, she will cease to be any kind of monster. So it is no surprise that she responds to Guthrie by killing him the moment opportunity presents itself.

Vampires, by contrast, combine decades of prominence in popular culture with a deep resonance for those who identify with their individual compulsions and social isolation. That gives storytellers a whole warehouse of resources to use when shaping a vampire into an image in which the audience can recognize themselves. So when Julia tells Barnabas that she has spent her whole life looking for someone like him to use as an experimental subject, he doesn’t have to make a snappy remark like that Laura made to Guthrie. He takes it in, and spends the rest of the episode weighing whether to cooperate with Julia or kill her.

Barnabas takes Julia back to his house. While she is in the basement picking out a room to use as a laboratory, Barnabas tells his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie that he has decided to kill her after all. Willie protests, and Barnabas goes back and forth on the question. When Julia comes back upstairs, Barnabas sends Willie away.

As Barnabas moves in to kill Julia, she tells him that her survival guarantees his. She explains that this is because his former victim, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is not dead as everyone has been told, but alive and well-hidden. Maggie is suffering from amnesia covering her time with Barnabas. Julia is Maggie’s psychiatrist, and if Barnabas cooperates with her experiment she will see to it that Maggie does not recover her memory.

Julia betrays Maggie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

From our first glimpse of Julia in #265, she has been a mysterious, forbidding figure, harsh with Maggie and indifferent to the usual norms of medical ethics. But she is, after all, a doctor, and so we’ve been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Now that we’ve heard her tell the vampire that she will abet his crimes by using her professional skills to ensure that Maggie’s psychological injury will not heal, we realize that she is not a maverick, but a mad scientist.

Again, the echo of the story of Mary Magdalene in the opening adds to the shock of Julia’s willingness to betray Maggie at the end. Mary was Jesus’ most faithful disciple, accompanying him to the cross when the men he had called were all busy denying him and looking for places to hide. It is also traditional among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Roman Catholics to name her in prayers for healing, because of old stories that she had healed people of blindness, mobility impairments, and leprosy, among other conditions. So Mary Magdalene is the most trustworthy of healers, and it is startlingly appropriate that Julia, as her exact opposite, is the least.

Episode 290: The work itself

It’s chiasmus week on Dark Shadows. Chiasmus is when the last thing that happens in a story resembles the first thing that happened. Usually that causes the audience to look back on that first thing in a new light. Sometimes chiasmus gets very detailed, and the first several things are mirrored by the last several things.

On Wednesday, we began with well-meaning governess Vicki asleep in vampire Barnabas Collins’ house on the estate of Collinwood. Barnabas crept into her bedroom and stood over her, but did not bite. Then it was morning, and Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie delayed Vicki as she was leaving the house. Vicki took our point of view with her to the great house on the estate, where we started to see events through the eyes of visiting mad scientist Julia Hoffman. That episode ended with Julia going to Barnabas’ house. Willie delayed Julia entering the house, and Barnabas and Julia met. Their scene was tense, but Barnabas did not use any of his powers against Julia. That chiasmus marked the transition from Vicki to Julia as the audience’s main character to identify with.

On Thursday, we began with Barnabas spying on Vicki through her window, then entering her bedroom and standing over her while she slept. He again left the room without harming her. We ended with Julia spying on Barnabas through his window, then entering his house, opening his coffin, and looking at him. The parallel is completed when we see today that she left the coffin room without harming Barnabas. That chiasmus showed that Julia is capable of turning the tables on Barnabas.

Today’s episode begins with a reprise of yesterday’s cliffhanger, showing Julia gasping when she opens the coffin. So returning viewers suspect that it is likely to end with Barnabas in Julia’s room, and the suspense comes as we try to figure out how he will get there and how she will escape his malign power.

We see Julia in the drawing room of the great house talking to her friend, addled quack Dave Woodard. Dr Woodard says that her failure to report to him on the progress she has made with their common patient, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, coupled with her presence at Collinwood, a hundred miles from the hospital where Maggie is, has forced him to remove Maggie from her care. Julia lies to him, claiming that she has no progress to report and that the whole thing is impossibly boring. This somehow convinces Dr Woodard to leave Julia on the case.

Julia is at Collinwood pretending to be an historian studying the old families of New England, and Vicki has volunteered to help her in her research. Now Vicki is terribly afraid that if she gets involved in what Julia is doing, she will become involved in things that are too interesting for her to handle, and she wants to withdraw before she forever loses contact with tedium and drabness.

Barnabas tells Vicki that she has nothing to fear from “the past,” which at this point on Dark Shadows means the plot. While he is reassuring her, the set catches fire. We hear fire extinguishers and other noises in the background, but Jonathan Frid and Alexandra Moltke Isles don’t break character for an instant. The scene is a dreary one, marking as it does the doom of Vicki as a major part of the show, and the lines are poorly written, but they are absolutely committed to their work.

Barnabas does not believe Julia’s cover story, and is quite sure she represents a threat to him. He meets with her in the drawing room to reiterate his refusal to cooperate with her project. When Julia says that she is particularly interested in his “namesake”- actually himself- Barnabas airily asserts that he was by all accounts a dull fellow. Julia may have been able to sell that line to Dr Woodard on this same set a few minutes ago, but Barnabas doesn’t make any impression on Julia with it. The two of them continue to argue as they pass from the drawing room through the foyer. The dialogue isn’t really any better than what Barnabas and Vicki had in the previous scene, but because Frid and Grayson Hall have a lively relationship to depict- two people who each of whom knows more about the other than they are willing to say, and each of whom knows that the other knows much of what they are holding back- they make their whole sparring match seem to glisten with wit and style.

Barnabas agrees to meet Julia at his house the next evening. After he leaves, Julia tells his portrait that she can’t wait that long for their next encounter, and she knows he can’t, either.

We cut to Julia in her bedroom. Vicki pays a visit, during which we hear another depressing conversation about Vicki’s newfound fear of narrative relevance. Julia assures her that “There is nothing for you to fear.” After Vicki leaves, Julia looks at her clock and sees it is a quarter to one in the morning. We dissolve to the foyer, where the hall clock reads 2:00. Barnabas appears in Julia’s bedroom and approaches the bed, where he prepares to uncover Julia. We then hear Julia greeting Barnabas by name. She emerges from the shadows on the other end of the room, and tells Barnabas she has been waiting for him a long, long time.

Julia greets her long-awaited visitor. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 289: Hold back the dawn

A storm is keeping everyone awake at the great house of Collinwood. Well-meaning governess Vicki is having a particularly hard time falling asleep, since she has the feeling someone is staring at her. When heiress Carolyn comes into Vicki’s room, Vicki points out the window and asks Carolyn if she sees a figure standing behind a tree. Carolyn doesn’t know what Vicki is talking about. We cut to the yard, but we see a figure crouching in the bushes, not standing by a tree.

Peeping Drac. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The crouching figure is vampire Barnabas Collins, and he looks ridiculous. Barnabas has been meaning to bite Vicki for weeks now, and keeps getting sidetracked. Earlier this week she even invited herself to spend the night in his house, and come morning she still had all her blood.

After Carolyn leaves the room, Vicki goes to bed. Barnabas finally materializes and approaches her bedside, but again can’t bring himself to go through with the bite. Instead, he opens the music box he gave her and disappears. The music awakens her.

Carolyn comes back in and tells Vicki the power is out. Vicki says she doesn’t understand how the music box could have been opened while she slept, and says she had a feeling that something dangerous had been in her room. Barnabas’ pusillanimity makes him dangerous indeed to Vicki- if she doesn’t get a place in the vampire story soon, Vicki will be at risk of becoming irrelevant to the show.

Vicki and Carolyn go downstairs and find Julia Hoffman awake and reading some old books. Julia is a mad scientist who has learned that Barnabas is a vampire and has come to study him, but she has told the family that she is an historian working on a book about the old families of New England.

Julia questions Vicki about Barnabas. She had learned about Barnabas in her capacity as a doctor treating his previous victim, Maggie Evans, and Vicki’s answers explain what Maggie meant when she remembered that she heard “a tinkling melody” and smelled a “sweet fragrance” during her captivity. As Julia continues to probe, Vicki becomes upset and hastens back to her room. Vicki has been Julia’s main advocate in Collinwood, as she was the main advocate for Dark Shadows‘ first character derived from Professor Van Helsing, Dr Peter Guthrie, who helped in the fight against undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins last spring. Julia’s unbothered reaction to her angry departure suggests that she isn’t planning to take Vicki into her confidence and doesn’t think she needs her help.

Julia and Carolyn chat for a moment, then go back to bed when the power comes back on. John Scoleri has a fine summary of this part of the episode: “So in Collinwood they drink coffee when they can’t sleep, get up when the power is off, and go back to bed once it comes back on. Maybe they’re all vampires…”

At home in the Old House on the estate, Barnabas is staring out the window feeling sorry for himself. Julia sneaks up near the window. She listens to him talk to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie.

Barnabas tells Willie to go to Portland, Maine to buy some necessities and to come back as soon as possible so that he can keep Julia away from the house. He says he is worried about who Julia really is and what she wants. He tells Willie that the sun is about to rise, so he might as well leave right away while Barnabas goes to the basement.

Once the front parlor is clear, Julia opens the window, a process we see from the inside. Just three weeks ago, we saw seagoing con man Jason McGuire enter through the same window. Jason would fight Willie, go to the basement, find Barnabas in his coffin, and be killed.

Julia has made sure Willie is gone, but she does go to the basement. Like Jason, she finds Barnabas’ coffin, opens it, and sees him inside. We see her reaction. For the first time, there is a trace of fear on her face.

Julia sees it. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia is now the first person to learn that Barnabas is a vampire otherwise than by becoming his victim. As the episode began with Barnabas spying on Vicki through her window, then entering her room while she was unconscious and looking at her, so it ends with Julia spying on Barnabas through his window, then entering his inner sanctum while he is unconscious and looking at him. This chiasmus suggests that Julia is capable of turning the tables on Barnabas. It remains to be seen whether the parallel will be complete, and she will choose to leave him be as Barnabas left Vicki be, or she will try to do something against him.

Episode 287: Entering the past

In the first year of Dark Shadows, every major storyline came to its climax after well-meaning governess Vicki found out what was going on. Now, the only ongoing storyline is centered on vampire Barnabas Collins. If Vicki finds out Barnabas is a vampire, she will lead an effort to destroy him, as she led an effort against Dark Shadows’ previous undead menace, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Barnabas is a hit, bringing far and away the biggest ratings Dark Shadows has had. So we are in suspense as we wonder how Vicki will find out about Barnabas, and in another kind of suspense as we wonder how they will manage to keep him on the show after she does.

As we open today, we see an intriguing possibility. Vicki is staying over at Barnabas’ house, sleeping in the bedroom of his lost love Josette. Barnabas is standing over her, about to bite. If he does, perhaps he will turn her into a vampire. Then we might find out what kind of vampire Vicki could be. Perhaps she would be like Lucy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, who became the “Bloofer Lady” and preyed on the small children of the East End of London. Since Vicki’s whole thing has been her role as protector of strange and troubled boy David Collins, it would be a heartbreaking reversal to see her become a threat to David. And perhaps she might emerge as a rival to Barnabas. He is a lackadaisical vampire, who was on the show for 13 weeks before he got round to killing anyone and even then it wasn’t a premeditated murder. Maybe Vampire Vicki will be the killing machine who shows Barnabas how it’s done.

But Barnabas wimps out. He keeps looking at Josette’s portrait, and slinks out of the room without biting Vicki. If they go on like this much longer, we will stop wondering how and when Vicki will be incorporated into the vampire story and start wondering why she is still on the show.

Vicki is bustling out the front door of Barnabas’ house when his sorely bedraggled blood thrall, Willie, offers to make breakfast for her. He keeps asking her if she sensed anything wrong while she was sleeping, and holds onto the topic until she remembers the dangerously unstable ruffian he was before Barnabas got hold of him. She sternly asks if he slipped into the room while she was sleeping, and he denies it.

Back at the great house, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, pretending to be an historian studying the early history of the ancient and esteemed Collins family, is trying to convince matriarch Liz to cooperate with her project. Liz is too worried about Vicki to pay Julia much attention. Vicki had left for Barnabas’ house after everyone in the great house was asleep, planning to be back before they awoke, but because she felt such profound peace in Josette’s room she overslept. Vicki comes in and explains the situation. Liz seems like she is about to weep for joy, and talks about how wonderful it is that Vicki was with Barnabas. Julia has figured out the truth about Barnabas, and reacts to Liz and Vicki’s swoony attitude towards him with alarm. This is one of the first times someone other than Vicki has served as the audience’s representative while Vicki is on screen.

Julia does not share Liz’ conviction that Barnabas is the best host a girl could hope for

Julia takes a look at Vicki’s complexion and her neck

Vicki backs Julia’s efforts to win Liz over. When Julia says that she is sure she will uncover important information if Liz and “Mr Collins” help her, Liz replies that her brother Roger is even less interested in the past than she is.

Julia explains that she was referring to Barnabas, but the mention of Roger reinforces the concern Barnabas’ failure to bite Vicki raised. When Dark Shadows started, Roger was its principal villain. That all ended, and he hasn’t had a storyline in months. Louis Edmonds was such a talented actor and such a funny person that the whole cast is loose and zestful in episodes that do include Roger, but in terms of the plot he is surplus equipment. Now that Barnabas is driving the story, “interested in the past” is synonymous with “relevant to the plot,” so that when Liz says that neither she nor Roger is interested in the past, she is saying neither of them is likely to make anything happen.

The biggest draw for the first episode of Dark Shadows was that onetime major movie star Joan Bennett was in the cast, but none of Liz’ storylines really clicked, and now all she does is spend a scene or two objecting to plot developments that we all know she won’t be able to prevent. If those two characters could end up on the junk-heap, there is no reason why the same might not happen to Vicki.

Indeed, Julia’s project suggests that Vicki may be heading for the fringes of the story. The last time a researcher was at Collinwood under false pretenses was during the Laura story. As the leader of the good guys, Vicki had advised parapsychologist Dr Peter Guthrie to keep his specialty a secret from Roger and others to reduce the danger that Laura would catch on to what they were doing. Now, Vicki is one of the people from whom the secret is being kept.

After Liz caves in and tells Vicki that, as a favor to her, she will allow Julia to proceed, Julia goes to Barnabas’ house. This gives us a bit of chiasmus. As the episode began with a scene involving Vicki and Barnabas followed by a scene in which Willie delays Vicki’s departure from the house, so it will end with a scene in which Willie delays Julia’s entry into the house followed by a scene between Barnabas and Julia. That structural device is another hint that Julia will be occupying a space where we had expected to find Vicki.

Julia keeps interrupting Willie’s demands that she leave the house with questions that he can’t resist answering. She is impressed that the restoration of the house is so consistently faithful to the period, and asks if Barnabas referred to pictures when they were doing the work. Willie answers with a flat no. She asks how he managed to create something so convincing that it looks like the work was supervised by someone who saw the house when it was originally in that condition in a previous century, and Willie says that he did have pictures. She asks him why he lied to her, and he is tongue-tied. She asks if Barnabas is such a difficult man to work for that he feels he has no choice but to lie, and Willie panics all the more.

Willie is still trying to get out of the trap when Barnabas appears. As usual when he has to talk to a visitor whom Willie has failed to scare off, Barnabas apologizes for Willie’s unfriendliness. He is his usual gracious “cousin from England” self at first, but very bluntly refuses to cooperate with Julia’s efforts. She prods him, and he becomes rather crude. Her amused response to his arrogant remarks leaves him uneasy, knowing that she has made him look foolish and limited the options available to him in future encounters.

Episode 286: No little girl

The most interesting storyline in the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows was the relationship between well-meaning governess Victoria Winters and her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. That story concluded when David chose life with Vicki over death with his mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Vicki and David settled into a happy and uneventful friendship, and the show moved on. Now its core is vampire Barnabas Collins, and Vicki is trying to migrate into his orbit.

When we open, Vicki has made her way to Barnabas’ house as a storm was breaking. She had made a show of wanting to hurry home, only to find that it was raining so hard she had to stay with Barnabas overnight. The opening scenes take place in Barnabas’ front parlor, where Vicki is all wide-eyed innocence.

Vicki and Barnabas are both excited about the prospect of a sleepover. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Vicki asks Barnabas about the long-ago death of Josette Collins. Unknown to her, Josette killed herself because she feared Barnabas would turn her into a vampire, the fate he has in mind for Vicki now. As he tells the story, Barnabas shows more and more anguish. At the end, he suggests that the storm might be letting up and offers to take Vicki home. She says that the rain sounds worse than ever, and insists on staying. This is the first scene in which Barnabas plays the “reluctant vampire” we hear so much about in thumbnail sketches of Dark Shadows.

Vicki goes up to Josette’s restored bedroom. She lies on the bed and covers herself up, remaining fully clothed. She doesn’t even take her shoes off.

Downstairs, Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie brings a child’s ball he found in the basement by Barnabas’ coffin. For a moment they are afraid that David might have made his way to the basement during the daytime, but Barnabas concludes that they would have heard about it by now if that had happened. Willie brings up the little girl whom he and David both saw playing outside the house on separate occasions some weeks ago. He also reminds Barnabas that when he was keeping Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, in the prison cell in the basement Maggie talked about a little girl who visited her there. Barnabas won’t listen to anything about Maggie, and is irritated when Willie keeps saying that he has the feeling that there is someone else in the house. But he does go to search the basement.

Meanwhile, Vicki is awakened by the sound of a child’s voice singing “London Bridge.” Returning viewers know that this is the little girl Willie spoke of, and that she is the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah. Victoria lights a candle and searches the room, but finds nothing.

Willie is startled when Victoria comes down the stairs and calls him. Barnabas hadn’t bothered telling him she was around. We might be startled too. The diffident, girlish manner she had used with Barnabas earlier in the episode is gone; when she calls “Willie!” she is every inch the lady of the house summoning a servant. In their previous interactions, Willie has always called Vicki by her first name. Today she is “Miss Winters” to him, and that’s only to be expected- she retains an air of command even as Willie tries to warn her that she is in danger.

Barnabas enters and hears Willie urging Vicki to get out of the house at once. Willie takes a second to come up with a suitable lie, claiming that he was afraid spending the night in the house would get people talking about Vicki. She and Barnabas dismiss this concern. Vicki praises Willie’s generous offer to walk her home and shelter her from the rain, and Barnabas assures Willie that he will get what he deserves.

Vicki tells Barnabas that she heard a little girl singing “London Bridge.” Shaken by this report, he insists it is impossible for her to have heard any such thing. He says that he understands if she does not want to return to the room, implicitly repeating his offer to let her go, but she happily returns upstairs. In this conversation, she is not as loftily aristocratic as she had been with Willie, but neither does she revert to the diffident girlishness she had shown Barnabas in the first scene. She looks him in the eye, smiles, speaks briskly, and moves from her hips. She is a woman who knows what she wants and has made up her mind to get it.

Barnabas and Willie have an interesting talk after Vicki goes back upstairs. Willie asks about the little girl, and Barnabas hotly denies she exists. Barnabas is his usual menacing self at first, but then says he won’t punish him for trying to warn Vicki. He asks Willie to “talk to me.” Willie is startled by this, then Barnabas says he has a better idea- “don’t talk to me.” This generates a bad laugh. Some think this is Jonathan Frid trying to cover a misreading of a line, but I tend to think it is good acting exposing bad writing. After their talk, Barnabas sends Willie to his room, then goes upstairs and stares at Vicki while she sleeps, apparently contemplating the possibility of biting her.

Episode 285: The storm has already started

Well-meaning governess Vicki says that she would like sit alone in her room “forever” listening to an antique music box. This may seem extreme, but consider the alternatives. Heiress Carolyn comes in and asks her to recap the last couple of episodes; Carolyn responds to every sentence Vicki speaks by asking her to repeat it. Fake Shemp Burke Devlin is downstairs waiting to take Vicki on a date; they went out yesterday, and he spent the time angrily telling her she must be crazy because she believed things he knew to be true. When she meets him today, he’s even angrier, and Carolyn joins in his gaslighting project.

The one bright spot in Vicki’s evening is the courtly Barnabas Collins. He has dropped by the house to give her a book that he thought she might like. By the time Vicki gets downstairs, Burke and Carolyn have come at Barnabas with a lot of free-floating hostility about Vicki’s interest in history. He responded to them affably, and when Vicki arrives he makes a show of not giving her the book.

Vicki sees the book and insists Barnabas let her look at it. When she sees that he inscribed it to her, she asks what is going on. Burke admits that he talked Barnabas out of making the present. Vicki becomes upset with him. Barnabas apologizes for having come and hastens back to his house. Burke is left looking like an absolute fool, which was no doubt Barnabas’ plan.

Burke plays into Barnabas’ hands. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Burke keeps banging on about how it is unhealthy to “live in the past.” He means that he doesn’t want Vicki to learn about the history of the people she works for and of the house they live in, and that Barnabas is a big nerd because he restored the Old House on the estate to its condition as of a previous century and that he lives there.

This is an eccentric way of using the phrase. Usually when people say that someone “lives in the past,” they are accusing them of being stuck in a bygone period of their own life. Burke doesn’t know that Barnabas is a vampire, or that he lived in the house when it was in the condition to which he has restored it. So that isn’t the charge he has in mind. So far as Burke knows, Barnabas is a creative person who imagined a new project, committed himself to it, and with great effort and great skill made it a reality. Nor does he know that Barnabas wants to turn Vicki into a vampiric version of his lost love Josette, or that her interest in history is partly inspired by Barnabas’ supernatural influence over her. So far as Burke knows, Vicki has taken up a scholarly hobby that would be wholesome for anyone and that is particularly appropriate for a teacher.

If any character is “living in the past,” in the sense in which that expression is typically used, it is Burke. When he was Vicki’s age, he was a member of the local working class, presumably living in a rented room in the town of Collinsport. Since then, he went to New York, became a corporate raider, and grew so rich he could live anywhere he chooses. The place he has chosen is another rented room in Collinsport. He is dating a woman half his age, and regularly drops in on the Collinses, who were acquaintances of his in his youth. In all these ways, he has turned his back on his current life and created a fantasy version of the life he lived long ago.

Burke is also an echo of the past of Dark Shadows. When the show started, he was the driving force of many storylines. But those storylines all fizzled, and what remained of them was wrapped up in the story of his ex-girlfriend, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Shortly after Laura’s story ended, Burke formally renounced the quest for revenge that had been his chief motive, and there’s been no reason for him to be on the show since. Making matters worse, he was recast last month as actor Anthony George, who is completely lost in the part. So we can sympathize with Vicki’s reluctance to keep spending time with him.

Burke demands that Vicki come with him. He barks at her that he needs a drink. He’s already so angry and so insulting that we can only hope he isn’t a mean drunk. After he issues several more declarations and commands, Vicki tells him she will be staying home with a book. He leaves.

Staying in and reading doesn’t seem to be Vicki’s real plan. Vicki goes to Barnabas’ house, ostensibly to apologize for the unpleasant reception Burke and Carolyn gave him, and for her failure to thank him for the book. He accepts her apologies most graciously.

A storm is starting, and Vicki has neglected to wear the raincoat and headscarf we’ve seen her in several times. When they look outside, she and Barnabas say that it is raining too heavily for anyone to go anywhere. She apologizes for getting caught at his house, and Barnabas says that he is happy to have her. He suggests she spend the night in the restored bedroom of Josette Collins. She is delighted by this idea.

Barnabas invites Vicki to stay in Josette’s room. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Yesterday, Victoria had said she could stay in Josette’s room “forever.” So it seems obvious that she fully intended to be at Barnabas’ house when the storm started raging, and to spend the night there. Of course this fits very well with Barnabas’ scheme, so he is quite happy to oblige her.

Vicki doesn’t hold this expression for very long… Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Episode 284: The right name for something else

Vampire Barnabas Collins spends most of his time on screen doing a job of acting. He is playing the role of a present-day gentleman from the long-forgotten English branch of the ancient and esteemed Collins family of Collinsport, Maine. His performance has been convincing enough that the Collinses have entrusted him with the long-abandoned Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. He and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie reside there and have restored it to the condition it was in when Barnabas was alive.

Today, another actor comes to Collinwood. She is mad scientist Julia Hoffman. By profession, Julia is a medical doctor with specialties in psychiatry and hematology. She is treating Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, who is in a state of complete mental collapse after months as Barnabas’ victim. After Maggie escaped from Barnabas, her family doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, decided to tell everyone in town that she was dead and send her to Julia’s mental hospital so long as her captor was unknown and at large. So when Julia figures out that the person responsible for Maggie’s woes is an undead monster who dwells at Collinwood, she has to conceal her identity from everyone there and in Collinsport.

In the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, Julia tells well-meaning governess Vicki and Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, that she is an historian writing a book about the Collinses. David immediately exposes a fatal flaw in Woodard’s cockamamie plan when he mentions a girl named Sarah whom he has seen near the Old House. Julia knows that Maggie saw Sarah when she was imprisoned and that Sarah visited Maggie’s father Sam and told him where to find her. If that information had been made public, Vicki and David would have been able to connect Sarah with the Old House, and the police would have suspected Barnabas weeks ago. Returning viewers know that Sarah is the ghost of Barnabas’ sister, a fact onto which Julia cottoned yesterday and of which she finds corroboration today.

We also know that Barnabas wants Vicki to become his next victim, and that she is already under his influence to a substantial degree. When she and Julia are talking in the drawing room, Vicki waxes enthusiastic about how Barnabas has recreated a past world and committed himself to living in it, and says that this is a fine thing for him. “But not for you?” asks Julia. Vicki looks down, and with a troubled expression says that she supposes not.

When Julia asked “But not for you,” she drew a reaction from my wife, Mrs Acilius. Mrs Acilius said that while Julia may not seem like any kind of therapist in the sessions we’ve seen her have with Maggie, her delivery of that question sounds exactly like every therapist she’s ever had. With Maggie, the mad scientist is very much on the surface of Julia’s manner, but when she is playing the role of Miss Hoffman the historian she can draw on her profession to make herself appealing.

Vicki takes Julia to the Old House and shows her the restored bedroom of Josette Collins. Vicki says that she could stay in that room forever, which is as a matter of fact precisely what Barnabas has in mind for her. Julia feels a chill as the sun sets. Perhaps this is the result of Barnabas coming back to life and rising from his coffin in the basement of the house, or perhaps it is Sarah or another friendly ghost* trying to warn her to get out before the vampire finds her. Whatever its cause, Vicki doesn’t feel it. Again, we don’t know whether this is because Barnabas already has a strong enough hold on Vicki that she is insensitive to warnings about him, or if it is a message specifically for Julia.

Julia wants to leave the room, but Vicki insists on lighting a candle so that they can see it as Josette did. The candle burns long enough for Julia to make the appropriate comments, and then something we cannot see blows it out while Julia feels another chill. The cold still doesn’t reach Vicki.

Julia returns to Woodard’s home office,** where she has stashed Maggie. Maggie has the doll Sarah gave her when she visited her in Barnabas’ dungeon. Julia takes the doll from Maggie, much to Maggie’s displeasure. She holds the doll and says she wants her to listen for the doll’s name. Maggie furrows her brow and asks “Doll talk?” Maggie has been speaking in complete sentences lately, but apparently Julia’s latest antics have been too much for her and she has lost some ground.

Julia orders Maggie to listen and says the names of some of the people at Collinwood. Maggie doesn’t react until she gets to “Barnabas Collins,” at which point Maggie freaks out. Julia holds her and repeats “It is the wrong name” until Maggie stops crying and starts singing “London Bridge.” She then looks away and says “The wrong name for the doll… but the right name for… something else.”

*Sarah’s little cousin, Caspar Collins?

**An exact replica of his office in the hospital as we saw it in #242. Man knows how he likes to have things set up.

Episode 276: Into the room

For the first 54 weeks of Dark Shadows, reclusive matriarch Liz was paralyzed by the fear that someone would enter the locked room in the basement of the great house of Collinwood and find the murdered body of her husband Paul Stoddard buried there. For the last 16 of those weeks, seagoing con man Jason McGuire exploited that fear to blackmail Liz.

It turned out that Liz didn’t actually kill Stoddard and there never was a corpse hidden in the basement of the great house. There is, however, a corpse hidden in the basement of another house on the same estate. During the daytime, Liz’ distant cousin Barnabas Collins is a dead body resting in a coffin in the basement of the Old House. He gets up at night to feed on the blood of the living, lure the unwary to their damnation, and deliver rambling monologues about how sorry he feels for himself. Unlike Stoddard’s supposed grave in the great house, Barnabas’ coffin is not kept in a locked room, so the parallel has been incomplete.

Today, Barnabas decides to complete it. Trying to find and steal Barnabas’ jewels, Jason had broken into the Old House. He made his way to the basement, where he stumbled upon the coffin. He opened it, and Barnabas strangled him. Now, Barnabas orders his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie to help him carry Jason’s body to the secret room in the mausoleum where Barnabas himself was imprisoned and undiscovered for “nearly 200 years.”

Before they leave the basement, Barnabas tells Willie about his sister Sarah, who died when she was very young and innocent. After they leave, Sarah’s ghost appears and puts Jason’s sea cap on Barnabas’ coffin.

Sarah places Jason’s cap. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Episodes #1-#274 had all opened with voiceover narrations delivered by Alexandra Moltke Isles in character as well-meaning governess Vicki. Starting Friday, they gave the opening monologues to one of the actresses who happened to be in the episode to deliver as an unnamed external narrator. Today, this spoils a surprise. We haven’t seen Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, for a while, and aren’t sure when we will see her again. When Kathryn Leigh Scott delivers today’s opening voiceover, we know we will see Maggie today.

Barnabas had held Maggie prisoner for several weeks. He had borrowed a plan from the 1932 Universal film The Mummy. He would erase Maggie’s personality and replace it with that of his long lost love Josette. Once he had done that, he would kill her and she would rise from the dead as a vampiric version of Josette. Maggie did not go along with the plan, and Sarah’s ghost helped her to escape. Barnabas managed to scramble Maggie’s memory before her father found her, and she is now in treatment at a sanitarium called Windcliff.

Maggie’s hometown doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, is visiting the director of Windcliff, Dr Julia Hoffman. Woodard wants to show Maggie a sketch Maggie’s father, artist Sam Evans, made when the ghost of Sarah visited him to tell him where to look for Maggie. Julia resists, Woodard insists. While Julia delays, she feeds the fish in the aquarium in her office. We see enough of the aquarium to suggest that Julia is the keeper of a world within a world, a little enclosure with its own rules.

Woodard shows Maggie the sketch. After a moment, she says “Sarah.” She tells them that Sarah visited her in the room where she was confined, that she told her a riddle that showed her how to escape. She becomes too upset to talk. She starts miming her search for a loose brick in the wall of the cell, then sings a verse of Sarah’s signature tune, “London Bridge.” She is shouting words from “London Bridge” when the nurse drags her down the hall, back to her room. Julia declares that the whole thing was a waste of time, a judgment in which Woodard does not concur.

Sam’s sketch of Sarah. Apparently the drawing was done before Sharon Smyth was cast as Sarah, when they planned to give the part to Harvey Keitel in drag. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Meanwhile, Barnabas and Willie take the body of Jason to the tomb of the Collinses and bury it in the secret room. They talk about the people buried in the part of the structure known to the public- Barnabas’ parents and his sister Sarah. Barnabas confirms that Sarah is the one he was telling Willie about in the basement, the friend he knew long before he met Josette. He reminisces about repairing a doll of hers the night before she died. We see the plaque giving her dates as 1786-1796, implying that Barnabas met Josette after 1796. They leave, and Sarah appears.

Liz had last seen Jason the night she thought she killed Stoddard; his reappearance would lead to the opening of the locked room and the exposure of its secret. Barnabas last saw Sarah in 1796; her reappearance, today’s events suggest, might lead to the opening of all the rooms Barnabas wants to keep closed and to the exposure of all his secrets.

Episode 275: To the end of the Earth

Part One. Her name is not Victoria Winters.

Each of the episodes of Dark Shadows from #1 to #274 began with a voiceover narration delivered by Alexandra Moltke Isles in character as well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. The implicit promise of these little bits of prose was that Vicki would eventually find out about whatever was happening in the episode we were about to see.

Now, vampire Barnabas Collins is a permanent addition to the cast of characters. If Vicki finds out what Barnabas is up to, she will work to destroy him as she worked to destroy the show’s previous undead menace, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. If she succeeds, the show will lose the only ratings-maker it has ever had. If she fails, Barnabas will have to kill her and who knows how many other characters, requiring them to start all over with a new cast. So Vicki has to move off the center of the stage.

Today’s opening voiceover is delivered by Nancy Barrett, not in character as heiress Carolyn, but as an unnamed external narrator. The pattern will be that a female member of the day’s cast will play that role. Mrs Isles still does it when she is in the episode, but if she isn’t they give it to another woman. Eventually they will start letting the men do it, and down the line there will be episodes in which Mrs Isles appears but which she does not narrate. Sometimes they are careless and give the voiceover to an actress whose character’s presence in the episode was supposed to come as a big shock, spoiling it for us.

Part Two. “All those years… there was nothing there.”

Matriarch Liz spent the last eighteen years on the great estate of Collinwood. Ostensibly this was because she was afraid that if she left, someone might wander into the locked room in the basement where the remains of her ex-husband Paul Stoddard were buried, and once there would discover that she had killed him.

This never made much sense-the estate is supposed to stretch for miles in every direction, and she roams all over it. If she is spending a day in the gardens by the groundskeeper’s cottage, she is no more guarding the locked room than she would be if she were skiing in the Alps. It made even less sense when we learn, in #249, that nothing untoward can be seen in the room, which Liz has frequently visited over the years, because the tile flooring over Stoddard’s grave had been replaced and cleaned up. It made the least sense of all when we learned in #271 and #272 that Liz herself must have been the one who replaced and cleaned it.

In #259, Liz confided her terrible secret in Vicki. She told Vicki that she had to keep the secret at all costs, not because she feared prison, but because she feared that her daughter Carolyn would hate her if she found out she had killed her father. Now the secret has been revealed and Liz has discovered that she never actually killed anyone. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire helped Stoddard fake his death, buried an empty trunk in the basement, and told Liz she had killed him. Liz never had anything to hide from either the police or her daughter.

Today, Liz is in bed. She appears to be ill, but it turns out the doctor just overdid it a bit with a sedative, she’s fine.

Carolyn left the house before the truth came out, and thinks her mother killed her father. Liz is distraught. We hear her thoughts in a taped voiceover. She is horrified that Carolyn is under this impression and urgently wonders where she is. We fade to a location insert of Carolyn walking along the beach, she’s fine also.

Carolyn comes to Liz’ room and tells her that she was silly to run- she’s sure that whatever Liz did, she did because she had no choice. She vows to stand by her throughout the trial and what may come after, and mentions that after all, she never really knew her father. Liz then tells her there won’t be a trial, because she didn’t actually kill Stoddard.

On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn expresses his exasperation with this extreme anticlimax:

So, you know that blackmail storyline where Liz had to do everything that Jason said, because otherwise she’d go to prison and her daughter would hate her forever?

Well, guess what? Liz finally told everybody that she killed Paul, and now she’s going to prison, and her daughter hates her forever.

But not really. It turns out that Liz never killed Paul in the first place, and Carolyn would have forgiven her even if she had.

Carolyn spent the night wandering around outside, in clear violation of Collinsport’s recent curfew. She’s given it a lot of thought, and now she’s ready to stand by Liz through the trial. Except there won’t be a trial, because there was no murder, and the entire four-month storyline was a complete waste of time.
Danny Horn, “Episode 275: The Last Normal Day,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 29 November 2013

Liz then explains that Jason won’t stand trial either. She isn’t going to press charges for the blackmail because she just wants to forget the whole thing. An understandable desire, to be sure. Carolyn says she hopes Jason has gone a million miles away, two million miles away, even further. “I hope he’s gone to the end of the Earth.”

Part Three. He gets what he came for.

Carolyn gets her wish. As it happens, the end of the Earth is conveniently located right there on the grounds of Collinwood. It is the Old House, where Liz’ distant cousin Barnabas and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie are in residence. Jason broke into the Old House at the end of yesterday’s episode, and is searching the front parlor for a box of jewels he had earlier seen through the window.

Willie catches him there. Willie was once Jason’s henchman, and still has friendly feelings towards him. Willie tries to warn Jason that he is in danger, and even after Jason hits him and twists his arm he resorts to the extreme expedient of telling him the truth- “Barnabas, he isn’t alive. He can walk at night, but he’s dead.” Jason doesn’t believe him.

Jason keeps telling Willie that he is determined to get enough money to start over. The way he expresses it is “I need a stake.” Little does he know how right he is!

Jason forces Willie to accompany him to the basement. He sees Barnabas’ coffin there, and is convinced it is full of treasure. Willie makes one more effort to save his former friend, taking a handful of jewels from a table near the coffin and offering them to Jason if he will leave at once. Jason scoffs at him, and Willie backs sadly away. Jason opens the coffin. A ringed hand shoots out and chokes him. So long, Jason! We can’t say it hasn’t been weird.

This is only the second on-screen killing we’ve seen on Dark Shadows, after Laura murdered Van Helsing-equivalent Dr Guthrie in #185. Moreover, it’s the first time Barnabas has killed anyone on the show. It’s kind of odd to have a vampire around for thirteen weeks before the first fatality is recorded. We might wonder if he will pick up the pace as he goes on.