barnabas sees sarah – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 415: Sarah Collins

Sarah dies. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Dark Shadows first aired in June 1966, it kept hinting that behind the action we saw there was a back-world of supernatural presences some of whom might eventually interact with the characters. Often these hints occurred in conversations between a character native to the village of Collinsport and newly arrived governess Vicki. The local would use the word “ghost” metaphorically to refer to unresolved conflicts around the estate of Collinwood, Vicki would shriek “You don’t mean you believe in ghosts!?,” and the other would say that he damn well did believe in ghosts and that if Vicki stuck around long enough she would, too.

The first ghost whose name we heard was Josette, mentioned in #5 as a grand lady from France who came to town to marry Jeremiah Collins, was unhappy with him, and threw herself to her death from the precipice known as Widows’ Hill. Josette manifested herself on camera in #70 and rescued Vicki from murderous groundskeeper Matthew Morgan in #126. In that climactic encounter, we saw Josette and a group of other wraiths. Joining the ghosts of women who jumped from Widows’ Hill at various points in the 19th century was the ghost of Bill Malloy, who had been a living character in the first ten weeks of the show and had shimmered into view as a ghost and sang a song in #85. This assemblage suggests that the spectres haunting Collinwood know each other and act with a common purpose at least occasionally.

The first supernatural menace to appear on the show was undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, mother of strange and troubled boy David. Josette warned several characters of the threat Laura posed to David. Josette herself was unable to fight Laura directly. In #165, she manifested in the room where Laura held the sleeping David, but had to retreat when Laura ordered her to go. Thereafter it was up to Vicki, advised by Josette, to organize the opposition to Laura. If #126 showed that the benevolent spirits can act together to defeat a threat from a mortal man, #165 and its aftermath showed that they must withdraw into the back-world when the enemy is of an uncanny nature.

In April of 1967, vampire Barnabas Collins succeeded Laura as the show’s new danger from beyond the grave. In #212, Barnabas went to the Old House at Collinwood, the place where Josette is most present, and told her portrait above the mantel that her power was at an end. In #223 and #240, Josette’s friend David felt her absence from the Old House and lamented that the family had lost its tutelary spirit. With that, we bid farewell to the wispy presences we had seen in #126. A vampire is too dynamic an adversary for them. It seemed for a period that the show had simplified its ontology- there are those who live by the laws of nature we know, there is Barnabas, and that is that.

That period ended in #255. Barnabas has passed himself off as a cousin from the Collins family’s long-lost English branch and settled in to the Old House. He is keeping Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, as a prisoner in a barred cell in the basement. Maggie looks out her window and sees a little girl in 18th century garb sitting in the corridor. The girl is holding a doll and singing “London Bridge.” She does not respond to Maggie’s attempts to get her attention.

In the next several episodes, we learn that the little girl’s name is Sarah, that she has a big brother, and that she can’t find anyone she knows. Even if the closing credits hadn’t immediately given away the fact that she is the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister, we would be able to gather that she is a supernatural being who was pulled out of the back-world when Barnabas rose from the grave. For the next 22 weeks, Sarah keeps popping up in the world of 1967. We wonder what she will do next, when she and Barnabas will confront each other, and what other paranormal beings are waiting to erupt into the visible world.

In #365, the major characters held a séance to contact Sarah and ask her what she was trying to tell them. Sarah spoke through Vicki and said that she would not appear to them again. She also said that she wanted to “tell the story from the beginning.” With that, Vicki vanished from the table and a woman in an 18th century dress appeared in her place. The woman identified herself as Phyllis Wick, governess to Sarah Collins, and demanded to know where she was. Meanwhile, Vicki found herself in the year 1795, in Phyllis’ place. At a stroke, the back-world and the foreground are interchanged.

Now it is 26 January 1796, Sarah’s eleventh birthday. She is not having a happy one. Last night she found Barnabas in the family mausoleum with blood smeared on his face. She may not know that he has become a vampire, but she knows that something has gone horribly wrong with him. She runs off and hides behind a tombstone. By the time faithful servant Ben finds her and carries her home, she is severely weakened by exposure. She cannot speak, but mouths Barnabas’ name and looks distressed. Her mother Naomi and cousin Millicent keep vigil at her bedside.

Night falls; Barnabas rises again, and Ben tells him that Sarah is gravely ill. Barnabas resolves to visit her. Unable to talk him out of this plan, Ben offers to help him get into her room unobserved.

Ben relieves Naomi and Millicent, then ushers Barnabas into the room. Barnabas tries to reassure Sarah. Eventually she warms to him. She regains the power of speech, and with her first words she asks her brother to hold her. He does. She tells him she will always love him, then dies in his arms.

This is Sharon Smyth’s last appearance on Dark Shadows. As a child, she had some rather obvious limitations as an actress, a fact Sharon Smyth Lentz cheerfully acknowledges nowadays. During her first 22 weeks, she was playing a ghost, so there were many scenes where all she had to do was seem vague and detached and she could be effective. The story moved very slowly during that period, giving the writers and directors time to figure out her strengths. Near the end of it, she excelled in two scenes with a lot of dialogue. In #348 she had a complicated, serious conversation with heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, and in #364 she had her confrontation with Barnabas. Supported by Nancy Barrett and Jonathan Frid, she executed those scenes very well indeed.

In 1795, Sarah is alive and the plot moves at a breakneck pace. Under those conditions, it would have taken intricate advance planning to craft scenes that would have been in Sharon Smyth’s range. But the writers of Dark Shadows rarely had time to do any advance planning. When the show was moving slowly enough, they could usually hit all the major points the audience would expect to see, but there are some glaring omissions in 1795. Young Daniel Collins will be played by David Henesy, who also plays David Collins. Since the relationship between Vicki and David had been the core of the first 39 weeks of the show and the relationship between Sarah’s ghost and David had been one of the most intriguing elements of the 22 weeks she was haunting Collinwood, it is particularly disappointing that we barely see Vicki with Sarah and never see Sarah and Daniel together at all.

I first saw Dark Shadows on the SciFi Channel, as it was then called, in the 1990s. I saw a handful of episodes on random mornings when I happened to be off work. They whetted my curiosity about the show, but I left it to chance until I saw an episode with Sarah’s ghost. Then I decided to set my VCR and watch regularly until I found an explanation for what was going on with her. The whole idea of supernaturalism is that there are phenomena which defy explanation, so of course I never reached that point. Naturally, I got hooked on the show within a couple of weeks.

On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn rather unfairly, albeit hilariously, griped that “Sharon stopped acting after Dark Shadows, or possibly during.” When she looks back on her days as a child actress, Mrs Lentz talks about how excited her mother was to meet show biz celebrities, and says that her main gratification was in pleasing her. But she has fond memories of many castmates, and says that her favorite person to run lines with was Jonathan Frid. So there is something sweet about her ending her time on the show in his arms.

Episode 414: Walks the night

There was a lunar eclipse on the night of 24 January 1796; it reached its maximum at 10:09:20 Eastern time. In our time-band, that eclipse was not easily visible in central Maine, but in this episode we see that in the universe of Dark Shadows, it was spectacular there. Caddish naval officer Nathan Forbes and fluttery heiress Millicent Collins come inside from the terrace of the great house of Collinwood after watching the eclipse.

In the drawing room, Nathan proposes marriage to Millicent. She gladly accepts. Matriarch Naomi Collins enters. Millicent is worried Naomi will disapprove of them being alone together so late, while Nathan wants to tell her of the engagement. Before they can say anything, Naomi tells them that her daughter Sarah, whose eleventh birthday is day after tomorrow on the 26th, has gone missing. Nathan volunteers to take charge of the search parties.

Sarah had been looking for her big brother Barnabas. Unknown to her, Barnabas has become a vampire and has been snacking on the women who frequent the waterfront of the village of Collinsport. In yesterday’s episode, Sarah caught a glimpse of Barnabas, followed him to the cemetery, and wound up in the outer room of the family mausoleum, near the secret panel behind which Barnabas’ coffin is hidden. At the top of today’s episode, the door out of the mausoleum slams itself shut and Sarah is unable to open it.

That moment suggests a solution to a riddle that has been part of Dark Shadows ever since Barnabas joined the cast of characters in April 1967, when the show was set in contemporary times. Doors in structures associated with Barnabas would close themselves and trap people. Sometimes this advanced Barnabas’ objectives, but just as often it was an inconvenience to him. Today, he most definitely does not want Sarah to be in the mausoleum. Part of the curse that made Barnabas a vampire is that everyone who loves him will die. Barnabas has killed the malign Angelique, the witch who placed the curse on him, but he is still a vampire- the curse lives on. So perhaps the curse itself has a power that makes the doors slam shut, keeping Sarah in this cold room until she falls ill.

At the waterfront, Barnabas meets a woman named Ruby Tate. Ruby is fashion-forward, to say the least; her outfit would become stylish nearly a century later. It’s the sort of thing that might have been admired by the women Jack the Ripper killed in the Whitechapel section of London in 1888-1891. Indeed, this foggy scene is a fairly obvious reference to the Whitechapel murders.

Ruby smiles for the last time. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas is alarmed when Ruby recognizes him and calls him by name. He is befuddled when she tells him she had heard that he went to England- he doesn’t know that his father Joshua is spreading that story to conceal his death, which Joshua believes to have been the result of the plague. Ruby keeps saying that the other girls will be jealous when she tells them she spent the night with Mr Barnabas Collins, alarming him further.

In the early months of the show, the story of Burke Devlin’s quest for revenge on the Collinses had occasionally brought up the contrast between the working class village of Collinsport and the lordly family on the estate of Collinwood and suggested class conflict as a theme. Those suggestions were never very richly developed, and lately we have spent so much time holed up with the Collinses in their mansions that it is startling to see them through the eyes of the villagers. Ruby’s excitement at pairing off with one of the area’s grand aristocrats reminds us that the curse threatens the future of more than one family.

Ruby promises Barnabas not to tell anyone about him, but does notice him looking at her strangely. Something clicks, and she cries out “It’s you!” Barnabas draws closer. Fleeing him, she falls into the water. Barnabas calls Ruby’s name, but cannot stop her drowning.

Apparently Barnabas found someone else to attack after Ruby drowned, because his face is smeared with blood when next we see him. He returns to the mausoleum. Sarah sees him. He keeps his face turned away from her while she pleads with him to take her home. He keeps telling her to go without him. He finally turns to look at her. She sees the blood and shouts “You’re not Barnabas! You’re not, you’re not!” She runs out of the mausoleum, and dawn breaks.

Ruby Tate is played by Elaine Hyman. Hyman was busy as an actress in New York for decades before her death in 2020. She was in three plays that made it to Broadway, and her TV credits included episodes of The Sopranos, Broad City, and several iterations of the Law and Order franchise. She’s a sensation as Ruby, it’s a shame this is her only appearance on Dark Shadows.

Episode 399: Fraud in this house

Little Sarah Collins misses her governess, the well-meaning Vicki. Unknown to Sarah or her elders, Vicki is a time-traveler, displaced from 1967 by Sarah’s own ghost to come to this year 1795 and see how the troubles that will afflict the Collins family in days to come began. Vicki has utterly failed to adapt to her new surroundings, and is now in hiding, suspected of witchcraft.

Vicki is secreted in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, the guest of its owner, gallant gentleman Barnabas Collins. Unfortunately for her, Barnabas’ new wife Angelique is the real witch, and by her harebrained behavior Vicki has volunteered for the role of Angelique’s patsy. Angelique takes advantage of Vicki’s presence in the house to cast spells directing ever more suspicion her way and increasing the likelihood she will be caught.

We see Sarah in the foyer of the great house, tossing a ball in the air. Tossing a ball was one of her favorite pastimes as a ghost in 1967. In those days, she usually sang “London Bridge” while playing ball, but she is silent now. Indeed, we have yet to hear the tune in connection with the living Sarah. She is interrupted by Vicki’s disembodied voice calling her to the Old House. Regular viewers, remembering Sarah as the calmest and most adroit of ghosts, will be intrigued to see the living Sarah bewildered by a supernatural phenomenon.

The voice stops, and we cut to the Old House, where a puzzled Barnabas catches Angelique doing something weird with candles. She makes up a story about having needed the light to search a dark corner for a piece of jewelry she dropped. In the course of the story, she says that she was crawling about “like a cat.” It’s a bit startling to hear her compare herself to a cat, since in #378 she turned Barnabas’ father, haughty overlord Joshua, into a cat. It doesn’t make an impression on Barnabas, though, and he quickly disregards the whole thing.

Back in the great house, repressed spinster Abigail meets her brother Joshua in the drawing room of the great house. She is sure Vicki is a witch and that Barnabas is sheltering her in the Old House. Joshua had earlier given Abigail and her favorite divine, the Rev’d Mr Trask, free rein to investigate Vicki; he now seems to regret that decision, and on no account does he want any member of the family to go to his disowned son Barnabas’ house. When Abigail finds Sarah and forces her to tell the story about hearing Vicki’s voice calling her to the Old House, she seizes the high ground. She insists that Sarah go to the Old House and that she and Joshua follow her there. When Abigail says “Come, Joshua,” she leaves him little choice but to comply.

Sarah enters the Old House through the front door, and for the first time in 1795 the strains of “London Bridge” play on the soundtrack. Apparently Sarah’s visit to her former home marks a step towards her postmortem fate. She calls for Vicki. Barnabas asks Sarah what she’s doing there. Abigail and Joshua appear at the threshold and ask to be admitted. Angelique, as lady of the house, invites them in and offers to make tea. Abigail refuses the offer and announces their purpose. While the adults quarrel, Sarah slips out. We cut to Vicki’s room; evidently Sarah went directly to her, for they are already in the middle of a conversation.

In 1967, the spectral Sarah was an expert in the arts of concealment and escape. She has some of those talents already in her living form. She takes Vicki to a compartment in the attic that none of the adults, not even Barnabas, remembers. Vicki hides there while Abigail and Joshua search the house.

Having found Sarah, Abigail questions her closely. Sarah stands with her back to her aunt; it is uncharacteristic of Abigail to allow this, and we wonder why she does. Young Sharon Smyth plays the scene so well that we are glad to see her face. Abigail asks if Sarah knows that “curious and terrible forces” beset them; Sarah replies with a crisp “Yes, ma’am!” She asks if she knows what happens to little girls who lie, especially to their elders; “Yes, ma’am!” We see the struggle on Sarah’s face as she denies having seen Vicki.

Sarah makes herself lie to Abigail. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After they complete their search, Joshua agrees that Vicki is not there and is embarrassed by the whole thing. Abigail insists that she is there, citing Sarah’s lies as proof. Now we understand why she let Sarah turn her back on her- she didn’t intend to extract the truth from her, since a lie would serve equally well. Abigail demands that Trask be brought back to perform a rite of exorcism. Joshua reacts to this demand with distaste, Barnabas with indignation, but Angelique persuades her husband to allow it.

After the visitors have left and Barnabas has gone to be alone, Angelique gives a soliloquy about how she will turn Trask’s fraudulent mumbo-jumbo to her own purposes. Vicki’s face is superimposed over hers in an effect we have not seen since the days of blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Laura’s face was superimposed over those of people on whom she cast spells, most significantly over parapsychologist Dr Peter Guthrie in #185. Laura’s spell killed Guthrie; evidently Angelique’s plans for Vicki are equally final.

Episode 364: Barnabas, Barnabas

Vampire Barnabas Collins has been part of Dark Shadows at least since we first saw his portrait on the wall of the great house of Collinwood in #204, more properly since they went to great lengths to make it look like there was a portrait on that spot in #195. He is now the main force driving the action of the show, and pretty much the only reason people are tuning in to watch it. The ghost of Barnabas’ ten year old sister, Sarah, first appeared in #255; ever since, we’ve been waiting for the two of them to meet. At the end of yesterday’s installment, they finally did.

Barnabas was in his living room, trying to choke the life out of his only friend and would-be lover, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Sarah materialized, and he let Julia go.

This echoes a scene in #341. Barnabas and Julia were in the act of murdering her medical school classmate and onetime friend, Dave Woodard, when Woodard claimed to see Sarah. At that, Barnabas almost let Woodard escape. Only when Julia called out “Stop him!” did Barnabas take hold of Woodard and kill him. Not only is he murdering a good-guy character, he has coerced Julia into taking part in the crime and will gloat over her new status as a murderer. But in the middle of all that loathsome cruelty, we see a flash of his longing for his baby sister. It is a tribute to actor Jonathan Frid that we can feel Barnabas’ loneliness and want to like him even in the middle of one of the character’s very darkest moments.

This time, Sarah really is there, and she really does stop a murder. There is a puzzle as to why. In #360 and #361, Julia knew that Barnabas wanted to destroy her, and appealed to Sarah for help. Sarah refused, saying that she liked Dr Woodard and knew what Julia did to him. We heard Sarah’s “London Bridge” theme on the soundtrack during the murder of Woodard, so it is clear that she witnessed that crime. But if she can stop Barnabas killing Julia, why couldn’t she stop him killing Woodard?

Today is only the second time Sarah has appeared to more than one person at a time. When Barnabas’ ex-victim Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, wanted to escape from the hospital where Julia was keeping her locked up in #294, both she and her nurse could see and hear Sarah. Maybe it is difficult for Sarah to manifest herself to two people, and impossible for her to show herself to three. In that case, Julia’s presence would have stopped Sarah from saving Woodard.

It’s also possible that Sarah can’t do anything that will lead to Barnabas’ capture. She has appeared to many people and given all of them clues about the strange goings-on, but she has referred directly to Barnabas only when speaking to his partners in crime Willie and Julia. Time and again she has stopped short of giving information that would expose her big brother. When Barnabas and Julia moved against Woodard, he was calling the sheriff. Woodard might have placed himself beyond Sarah’s protection when he picked up the telephone.

Indeed, if Barnabas does kill Julia now, he will probably be caught. Julia has given a notebook full of incriminating evidence about Barnabas to a local attorney to be handed over to the authorities in case anything happens to her. Besides, everyone knows she spends a great deal of time at Barnabas’ house, so if she suddenly goes missing he will be investigated. By preventing Barnabas from killing Julia, Sarah is protecting him from exposure.

Sarah tells Barnabas that he taught her the first lessons she ever received in morality, and that he has now forgotten them himself. He begs her to stay, showing at length the vulnerability and need that have been so effective at recruiting our sympathy when we have glimpsed them before. She says she will never appear to him again, not until he learns to be good. We’ve known him long enough to know that this will be an extremely long wait.

Barnabas begs Sarah to stay while Julia looks on. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Sarah vanishes. Julia sees her friend shattered. She approaches him. She addresses him, for the first time, as “Barnabas, Barnabas.” He recoils from her. He does not renew his attempt to strangle her, but he does tell her in the coldest imaginable voice that he could kill her as easily as he could crush a moth. It hasn’t been two minutes since his little sister reduced him to tears, and he has snapped back into his place as death itself.

“Barnabas, Barnabas.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Some say that Barnabas’ frequent references to his longing for Sarah during these weeks are meant to make him easier for the audience to sympathize with. I think this scene shows that the opposite is more nearly the case. They’ve undercut every other ground for liking Barnabas, leaving us only his love for Sarah. When we see that not even a visit from Sarah can thaw him out for any length of time, not only do we have to give up any hope that there is a nice guy hidden inside him, but we also hear the door slamming shut on any possibility that his character will develop in a way that will surprise us. Since he is the show, the closing of that door means that Dark Shadows 2.0 is all but over.

In the great house, matriarch Liz breaks the news to well-meaning governess Vicki learns that the authorities in Brazil have identified one of the corpses found in the wreckage of an airplane that crashed outside Belem as that of Vicki’s depressing fiancé, Burke Devlin. It has been clear for some time that Burke probably died in that crash, so Liz is worried that Vicki’s refusal to accept their verdict is a sign that she is in an unhealthy denial about the facts of the situation.

In the first 25 weeks of Dark Shadows, Burke was a major figure, the arch-nemesis of the Collins family. His storyline never really took off, though, and when undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins was on the show from #126-191 his issues were all absorbed into her arc. He formally renounced his grudge against the Collinses in #201, and has been surplus to requirements ever since.

There is just one thing I wish they had done differently about Burke’s death. During the early period of the show, there was a story about high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins trying desperately to hide a custom-made filigreed fountain pen of Burke’s. That dragged on for months, and dominated 21 whole episodes. It would have been a nice Easter egg for those of us who sat through those not-very-interesting installments if Liz had said the authorities were able to identify Burke’s body in part because that pen was on it.

There is a bit of intentional comedy this time that works very well. Telling Barnabas of Vicki’s refusal to accept Burke’s death, Liz exclaims “She can’t go on loving a dead man all her life!” Barnabas is clearly offended by this remark, quite understandably since he is deceased himself. He responds that “It has been known to happen.” But he manages to keep cool enough that Liz doesn’t notice.

“It has been known to happen.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Closing Miscellany

This episode marks the last appearance of Sharon Smyth as the ghost of Sarah Collins.

Episode 1-274 of Dark Shadows each began with the words “My name is Victoria Winters,” delivered in voiceover by Alexandra Moltke Isles and leading into a few sentences vaguely related to the plot of the show. Beginning with #275, these voiceovers might be delivered by any actress with a speaking parts in that episode, and do not involve their character’s names. Many are written in the first person, however, as is today’s:

There has been a homecoming in the great house of Collinwood, and those who have returned have found that very little has changed. We still live within a ring of fear, a fear that is generated by the one who lives in the Old House, where on this night a kind of madness prevails, a madness that will lead to the threat of murder.

Every time this happens, the Dark Shadows wiki complains that “by this time in the series, the narrations are no longer spoken in character.” That complaint might have made sense if only a few of the episodes since #275 included first person pronouns, but dozens of them do. So we would have to say that they often are spoken in character, but that it isn’t always clear who the character is. The wiki editors will be glad from now on, because this is the last time a narrator says “we.”

Episode 363: Very honorable guy

When Dark Shadows debuted in June 1966, it was a Gothic romance in which characters sometimes equivocated about whether they were using the word “ghost” metaphorically to refer to present troubles caused by past conflicts or literally to refer to things that go bump in the night.

That version of the series ended with the story of undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In Laura’s months on the show, her arc absorbed such major plot elements as the conflict between high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins and local man Burke Devlin, the psychological problems of strange and troubled boy David, David’s relationship with his well-meaning governess Vicki, and the tensions between the ancient and esteemed Collins family and the working class people of the town of Collinsport. By the time Laura went up in smoke in #191 and #192, there was no life remaining in any open narrative thread, and Dark Shadows 1.0 was at an end.

Dark Shadows 2.0 launched in #193 with the introduction of seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Jason was an in-betweener who would tie up the loose ends remaining from the 25 weeks before Laura joined the gallery of characters and facilitate the introduction of Laura’s successor as a major supernatural menace, vampire Barnabas Collins. Jason kept himself busy blackmailing reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, his sidekick Willie Loomis accidentally released Barnabas, and the show kept dropping hints that when Liz finally stood up to Jason all of the original secrets would be laid bare.

The makers of Dark Shadows didn’t do much advance planning, so they kept Jason on the show for 13 weeks after Barnabas premiered while they tried to come up with some other way to fill the time. When Jason’s plan finally blew up in his face, they even left some of the old secrets still buried, most notably the question of where Vicki originally came from.

Barnabas finally killed Jason in #275, and he hasn’t been mentioned in a while. But he is not forgotten. As we open today, lawyer Tony Peterson has caught heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard in his office, rummaging through his safe. Tony has been dating Carolyn and is clearly very much attracted to her. He invites her to tell him a story that will give him an excuse not to call the police. She has to think fast to come up with one, and what she settles on is a version of the story of Jason and Liz.

Tony knows that Carolyn was trying to steal a notebook that he had put in his safe. This notebook was the property of his newest client, Julia Hoffman, a permanent guest at the great house of Collinwood. Carolyn tells Tony that Julia was blackmailing Liz. The notebook, she claims, is a diary kept by a man with whom Liz had an affair, and it contains proof that the man was Carolyn’s father. Julia knew the man and knew that he was planning to come to Collinwood to squeeze money out of Liz in return for his silence, but he died before he could do so. Julia took the diary and picked up where he left off.

Since Tony’s professional ethics will not allow him to be a party to blackmail, this is the one story that could give him a plausible reason not to report Carolyn’s crime to the police. It also gives him a reason to feel sorry for the Collinses, whom he hated when we first saw him, removing an obstacle to the possibility he might fall in love with Carolyn.

The echo of the Jason/ Liz story in the image of Liz forced to accept a blackmailer as a member of the household offers a great deal more than narrative convenience to regular viewers. The audience knew what Jason was threatening to tell if Liz did not submit to his demands, but the characters did not. One idea that some among them seemed to suspect was that Jason was Vicki’s father and Liz was her mother. Indeed, the makers of the show did plan to explain Vicki’s paternity at the end of the blackmail arc, a plan they abandoned so late that the climactic episode runs some minutes short. When Carolyn brings up the idea of her mother being blackmailed to keep it secret that she bore a child out of wedlock, those of us who have been watching all along will realize that she was among those who suspected that this was the secret that gave Jason his hold over her.

The audience knows that there will be no romance between Tony and Carolyn, because we know that she is Barnabas’ blood thrall. Barnabas sent her after Julia’s notebook, because it contains the records of an experiment in which she tried to cure him of vampirism. It would expose him were it to fall into the hands of the authorities. Since Barnabas wants to rid himself of Julia, perhaps by killing her, perhaps by driving her totally insane, he cannot leave such a document out of his possession.

Dark Shadows has come to as much of a dead end now as it had when Laura’s arc was ending. None of the ongoing stories has room for more than a few steps of further development, and if they keep running through those steps at the current pace everything will be resolved in a couple of days. Bringing up Jason, whose introduction marked the beginning of Dark Shadows 2.0, leads us to wonder if they have something up their sleeves that will launch Dark Shadows 3.0.

Tony takes Carolyn home to Collinwood, where he confronts Julia. He tells her what Carolyn told him. She denies it, and says that she will write a letter entrusting the notebook to him to remain unread unless something happens to her, in which case he will read it and hand it over to the authorities. That satisfies him that he isn’t a party to blackmail, and he agrees to her terms.

For the last couple of days, Barnabas has been using black magic in an attempt to break Julia’s grip on sanity. Her clear thinking and calm demeanor in this scene prove that this attempt has failed. The only open question in the only ongoing conflict is, therefore, whether Barnabas will try to murder Julia. She is such a valuable character that it is hard to feel any real suspense about whether he will succeed in killing her, but there is a chance that he will make an attempt.

David and Vicki have come home from a trip to Boston. David enters the drawing room, sees Julia, and greets her. She can barely pay attention to him long enough to say hello. He asks if she is all right; again, she is clearly not at all focused on him. She excuses herself, saying she has to go to Barnabas’ house.

David’s relationships to the other characters were the engine that drove Dark Shadows 1.0, and when Barnabas began to pose a danger to David that same engine accelerated the pace of Dark Shadows 2.0. Julia has been central to the plot for some time; that she can’t be bothered to take any notice of David tells us that that engine has fallen apart. Whatever they are planning to do next week, David won’t be at the heart of it.

David leaves the drawing room. He gets as far as the foyer. There, he sees his friend, the ghost of Barnabas’ ten year old sister Sarah. He tells Sarah that he has been on a trip. She asks where he went. He says he went to China. “Oh,” she responds, blandly. “You’re not impressed?” “No, my father’s friends used to go to China on their ships.” “Well, I didn’t really go to China. I went to Boston.” “BOSTON!!!” Sarah exclaims. “I went to Boston once!” She’s electrified. It’s adorable beyond belief.

Suddenly, Sarah looks disturbed and says she has to go. David asks why, and she says there is trouble brewing at the Old House. Again, David has been sidelined. If there is going to be any more action, it will have to come from fresh sources.

The Old House is Barnabas’ house, and that’s where we go next. We see Julia arriving there. She tells Barnabas that Vicki is back. He is mildly interested. She then tells him that she has seen Sarah. Barnabas longs to see Sarah, and is tormented that she will appear to others but not to him. He accuses Julia of lying. She insists that she is not, and taunts him with Sarah’s refusal to appear to him. He grabs Julia by the throat. He has done this before as a threat, but this time it looks like he really means to strangle her. Before he can, a wind blows the door open and the candles out, and Sarah walks in. She approaches her brother, glaring at him.

Sarah has had it with Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 288: Feminine vanity

At the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is in a stupor, staring out a window and dreaming of a time when she will again be central to the plot.

Ever since #191 when she rescued her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, from his mother, undead fire witch Laura, Vicki has been hanging on to narrative relevance by her fingernails. Now Dark Shadows is built around vampire Barnabas Collins, and Vicki longs to play a major role in his storyline. He plans to make her his next victim, but is moving so slowly towards that objective that we’ve started to wonder if he ever will strike.

David comes into the room and calls Vicki’s name several times. When she finally comes to, she admits that she has been zoning out a lot lately, and says that it is a habit she needs to break. David says that it frightens him when she gets that way. She doesn’t look like herself when those spells come over her. He gets the feeling that she’s turning into someone else. Vicki can’t deny that David is onto something, and only when he insists on sticking with the subject after she has clearly become uncomfortable does Vicki become defensive and retreat behind claims that David is letting his imagination run away with him.

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has insinuated herself into the house, concealing her true identity and pretending to be an historian writing a book about the old families of New England. David shows her an album of family portraits. He identifies one portrait as his namesake, David Collins. In #153, it was established that he was the first member of the family to bear the name “David,” and that his mother Laura insisted on giving her son this name would ultimately become evidence that her evil plans for him were in place long before he was born. So David’s remark about a previous “David Collins” will strike longtime viewers as a significant retcon.*

Though David has looked through the book many times, he finds a portrait in it that he has never seen before. It depicts Sarah Collins, who lived from 1786 to 1796. Sarah’s ghost has been busy in the area in recent weeks, and the clear implication is that she inserted the page. That in turn would suggest that Sarah might have more powers than we have seen her use so far.

Julia and David find a photograph of Sarah Collins, d. 1796.
Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

David has seen Sarah and played with her on more than one occasion, and he recognizes the portrait. He wonders aloud if the girl he has met is Sarah’s ghost. Julia laughs off the suggestion. Vicki returns. She also recognizes the picture of Sarah. The police circulated a drawing of her when Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, was missing. Since Julia is actually a doctor who found out that supernatural doings were afoot at Collinwood when she was treating Maggie, she has heard several facts about Sarah, and by the end of her talks with David and Vicki she knows enough to be sure David is right about her.

We cut to the Blue Whale tavern, where Vicki is on a date with her depressing boyfriend, fake Shemp Burke Devlin. Burke sullenly complains about Vicki’s wish to help Julia with her project, complaining about Vicki’s “interest in the past.” “Interest in the past” is at this point synonymous with “a function in the story,” and Burke lost the last trace of that months ago. It’s as if Burke and Vicki know that they are fictional characters, and he resents her for holding on to a place in the action while he has settled in once and for all on the discard pile.

Vicki mentions that the night before, she had been awakened by the sound of a small girl singing. She says that after she got up and lit a candle, she could still hear the singing, but could not see the girl. Burke is too busy grumbling and making nasty remarks about Vicki’s mental health to ask her why she lit a candle rather than flipping the light switch. Vicki has to press on with more details and then volunteer that she wasn’t sleeping in her own room. She was sleeping in the Old House at Collinwood, home to Barnabas Collins.

Burke is upset by this news. Unfortunately Vicki doesn’t let him believe she went to bed with Barnabas. She tells him she was in a guest room, and that Barnabas was “a perfect gentleman.” Burke demands Vicki never go to the Old House again, and she refuses to make any such promise.

Julia takes the book of portraits to the Old House and insists that Barnabas look through it. While he grudgingly complies, Julia opens her compact. She finds that Barnabas does not cast a reflection in its mirror. This confirms her suspicion that Barnabas is a vampire. In #241 and #278, we had seen his reflection, but perhaps those were slip-ups and they were planning all along to use the idea that vampires do not cast a reflection.

Barnabas catches Julia studying her mirror and angrily asks what she is doing. She smiles and chirps that even historians have their share of feminine vanity. He glowers at her. The camera holds on his menacing look for quite some time, leading us to think that Julia has signed her own death warrant. But she doesn’t seem to think she is in any great danger. She is still smiling when she leaves.

Back in the great house, Vicki wanders up to the portrait of Barnabas that hangs by the front door. Apparently she is planning to stare at it as she resumes her dream of having something to do on the show. It worked for dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis- after a couple of long sessions staring at the portrait, Barnabas summoned him and next thing he knew he was securely established as his sorely bedraggled blood thrall, a core member of the cast. So Vicki is trying to take a proven path to success.

Before Vicki can get any high-quality staring done, Julia enters. Vicki asks her how it went with Barnabas, and Julia exults that she may have learned everything she needed to know.

*My wife, Mrs Acilius, noticed this and had a lot to say about it. I will refer to her insights in later entries, as they would contain spoilers at this point in the run of the show.

Episode 264: In the shadows

In its first months, Dark Shadows spent a fair bit of time on the business interests of the ancient and esteemed Collins family. In those days, the Collinses were running out of money and their old nemesis, Burke Devlin, had come back to town with a plan to strip them of their remaining assets and drive them into poverty. The “Revenge of Burke Devlin” storyline never really took off, and was eventually subsumed into the tale of blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Shortly after Laura disappeared, Burke formally gave up on his revenge. With that, the business stories ended, and there was no particular reason for Burke to stick around.

On Tuesday, Burke was recast. However little his character may have had to do on the show or however much he may have had to drink before he arrived at the studio, Mitch Ryan was always interesting to watch. Anthony George couldn’t match Ryan’s charisma, but by 1967 he had been a familiar face in feature films and primetime television for years. The original audience, even if they couldn’t remember George’s name, would have recognized him as a famous actor and assumed that his casting meant that something big was in store for Burke.

Today, we have two hints that business stories might be making a comeback as well. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire is blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz into marrying him. Vampire Barnabas worries that the cozy little home he has made for himself in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood might be threatened if Jason takes control of the family’s holdings. He asks Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, to look at the original deeds for the Old House and the great house to see if there is some provision he might be able to use to defend his interests against Jason. That Barnabas asks about the deeds would suggest that he has acquired some form of ownership in the Old House. We’ve never seen him buy the house from Liz or receive it as a gift from her, but if both deeds are still in Liz’ name, he could hardly use their wording to claim a right to stay there. So when Roger goes off to look for the deeds, there is a chance he will come back with a story about real estate.

The second hint comes in Barnabas’ confrontation with Jason. Barnabas takes a very aggressive tone with Jason, who responds by asking Barnabas where he goes in the daytime and where his money comes from. “You have no accounts in the bank in town, and I know you don’t operate a business…” If Barnabas is going to be on the show for the long haul, as the ratings clearly indicate we should expect him to be, Jason will not be the last person to ask these questions. We might wonder how exactly he will forestall them.

If we have been watching from the beginning, the likeliest answer would involve Burke. When was a major character, Burke was presented as an inexhaustibly rich man who knew his way around some of the shadiest places in the world. If Burke happens upon Barnabas’ secret, we could expect Barnabas to bite him and thereby bring him under his power. With his money, Burke could set up plenty of bank accounts and businesses in Barnabas’ name. With his contacts in the demimonde, he could secure whatever papers Barnabas needs to establish his identity. Even a photo ID- Burke could easily hire a Barnabas lookalike to pose for a British passport.*

During the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” arc, Burke bought up a lot of Liz’ debts. In particular, he held enough notes payable on demand that she feared he might be able to put her out of business at any time. That hasn’t been mentioned for a long while, but if Barnabas takes control of Burke he could take those notes and exchange some of them for outright ownership of the Old House.

Barnabas could also compel Burke to fabricate some fraudulent papers that would make it look as if he were deeply in debt to Barnabas. When Barnabas got around to killing Burke, those papers would come to light. Liz and Roger would be grateful to Barnabas for taming their old adversary and clearing out some debts that posed a danger to their financial position, while well-meaning governess Vicki would be grateful to him for helping her boyfriend save his face after his business went south. As a result, his position at Collinwood would be unassailable.

Closing Miscellany

There is a location insert of Roger walking to the Old House, a flashlight in hand. I don’t think we have seen this footage before.

Until today, Barnabas has tried to be very suave with everyone who doesn’t know that he is a vampire. Since he has nothing to say to Jason that will intimidate him, he might as well continue that approach in his scene with him, or at least play dumb. But instead, he is openly, and self-defeatingly, hostile. This will become a pattern in future episodes. Time and again, Barnabas will greet a potential adversary with an immediate declaration of war, often before the adversary even knows who he is, thereby forfeiting whatever element of surprise he might have on his side.

Barnabas catches a glimpse of the ghost of his sister Sarah. He only sees her as a figure moving in the distance as he is looking out the window, and has no idea who she is. But it does confirm that he is able to see her, something we had not known he could do.

*I laid all this out two years ago in a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day.