chess – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1110: A room filled with toys

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has escaped from a band of zombies who were wrecking the great house of Collinwood. From her perspective, it is a few moments after she saw her friend, vampire Barnabas Collins, wrestling with the zombies and urging her to save herself by walking down a mysterious staircase. But she soon discovers that she has left the year 1970 and made her way to 1840, when both the zombies and the ghosts who have triggered their destructive actions were living human beings.

Julia enters the staircase from a playroom that is only intermittently present in 1970 and walks down its two flights. She exits into the same playroom, which is a normal presence in 1840. We saw this same distortion of space in #1070 and #1071, when Julia and Barnabas used the staircase to escape from the far-off future year of 1995 and return to 1970. It was an effective way of expressing the magical nature of the staircase and the playroom then, and is still effective the second time.

When they opened the playroom door on their return to 1970, Barnabas and Julia saw a girl in the corridor. That girl appeared to be a ghost named Carrie whom they had met in 1995, but turned out to be a living girl named Hallie Stokes who had moved into Collinwood while they were away on their bizarre cosmic journey. Now, Julia opens the door and sees the living Carrie in the same corridor.

Hallie was the niece of occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes and therefore a descendant of much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes, whom we got to know from November 1967 to March 1968, when the show was set in the 1790s. We learn today that Carrie is Ben’s granddaughter, and that he and she are staying in the great house as the guests of Daniel Collins.

We saw Daniel in the 1790s segment. He was played then by David Henesy, who was eleven years old at the time. Mr Henesy looked a lot older in September 1970 than he had three years before, and he was an accomplished young actor. But it would likely have been beyond even his abilities to play a character well into middle age, so when we see Daniel from the knees down later in the episode we can be fairly sure he will turn out to be someone else.

Julia sees a confrontation between Carrie and a tall young man in a wheelchair. The man turns out to be Daniel’s son Gabriel. He insists Carrie open the door to her grandfather’s bedroom and push him in. Carrie objects, and Gabriel sneers that she is not to tell a Collins what to do at Collinwood. He berates her, saying that while others may indulge her because they are impressed by her good looks he sees only her impudence. She capitulates to his demands.

In the room, Gabriel turns his abusiveness against Ben. He orders Ben to break some bad news to Daniel. Word has come that Daniel’s son Quentin and Quentin’s son Tad have been lost at sea. Ben protests that Daniel is in no condition to receive such news. Gabriel digresses and says that he cannot make his own living; Ben tells him that many men in worse condition than he is have done, which only makes him angrier than he was to start with. Gabriel regrets his inability to stand up and strangle Ben. We can see that he’s a true Collins; they are a strangley bunch. He then says that he is now likely to become Daniel’s heir, and threatens to evict Ben and Carrie from Collinwood when he does. He menaces Ben with the prospect that he will use his position to make Carrie’s life difficult if he does not obey him now. Ben gives in.

Gabriel bullies Ben. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Ben returns to his room he finds Quentin’s wife, Samantha Drew Collins, waiting for him there. He tells her that the news did not prompt Daniel to change his will. She is still in line to inherit the estate when Daniel dies.

Samantha goes to the drawing room, where she finds Gabriel playing a one-handed game of chess. She is smugly pleased with his dismayed reaction to the news that Daniel has not changed his will. She exits and later returns with word that Daniel has escaped from the tower room. The Collinses have always made a practice of keeping mentally ill family members in that room, and Samantha and Gabriel are so frightened by his escape that we can assume Daniel’s illness disposes him to violence.

Julia emerges from the shadows in Ben’s room. Ben is alarmed to see her, and horrified when she identifies herself a friend of Barnabas’. She claims that she is not a monster, which is a defensible claim, given a very narrow definition of “monster.” When she tells him about traveling back in time from a future period when Barnabas is free to prey upon the living and she is his best friend, he says that she is mad. She denies being mad, which is what a person would do when they are as far from sanity as she is. Ben is leery, but agrees to help her. He escorts her back to the playroom and tells her to stay there until morning. Of course she leaves the room very shortly thereafter, and as soon as she enters the corridor Daniel grabs her by the throat.

The drawing room is downstairs; Ben’s room and the playroom are upstairs. No one seems to be helping Gabriel get from one floor to another, and there is no sign of any ramp or other contrivance that would make it possible for wheelchair users to get themselves from one floor of the house to another without help. Odd as this is, it is not a first on Dark Shadows. In January and February 1970, strange and troubled boy David Collins used a wheelchair in a few episodes because David Henesy had actually suffered a leg injury. David kept going up and down stairs by himself, without explanation of how such a thing was possible. I suppose they got few enough letters complaining about the illogic of that movement that they decide they could get away with it again.

Carrie has three scenes. In addition to her encounter with Gabriel, she talks with Samantha in the playroom and with her grandfather in his room. As Hallie, Kathleen Cody was in a state of maximum nervous tension from the start, so that she had nowhere to go in response to anything that might happen. As Carrie’s ghost, she often swung to the opposite extreme, being so blandly cheerful that she made no impression at all. She did put in a few good performances in the 1970 segment, however, and she is quite good as Carrie today.

Samantha is played by Virginia Vestoff, making her Dark Shadows debut. Vestoff was a distinguished performer who is now remembered chiefly for her role as Abigail Adams in the original Broadway cast of 1776 and of the 1972 film based on that musical. The Broadway cast also included several other Dark Shadows alums- David Ford (Sam Evans #2, Andre DuPres) as John Hancock, Emory Bass (Mr Best) as James Wilson, Daniel F. Keyes (The Cemetery Caretaker) as Josiah Bartlett, and Peter Lombard (Oberon) as a stage manager and understudy for the roles of Stephen Hopkins and Thomas Jefferson. All of those, aside from Lombard, also appeared in the film. Vestoff died of cancer in 1983, aged 42, a major loss to the world of the theater.

A great deal of emphasis is placed today on Samantha’s maiden name, Drew. We have in the last few months met two characters named Roxanne Drew; we can take it that Samantha will turn out to be related to one of those in some way.

Longtime viewers, learning that Daniel and Ben are in the 1840 story, will readjust their expectations. Most of what we saw in the ten weeks leading up to this uncertain and frightening journey into the past was recycled from a story that ran from December 1968 to March 1969 and culminated in a trip to the year 1897. So we may have come in thinking there would be a retelling of 1897. But seeing Ben and Daniel, we have the prospect of a sequel to the 1790s segment. That does sound like a fresher idea.

The episode is certainly structured very differently than were the first episodes of either the 1790s segment or the 1897 segment. Those featured a relatively wide variety of brightly lit sets full of busy people, getting us off to a fast start in a new world. Today most of the action takes place in the playroom, Ben’s room, and the corridor between them, with a couple of brief glimpses of the drawing room. We keep cutting to Julia standing very still behind one partition or another as she eavesdrops on the dialogue. We are operating within a very small space, but hearing about people who are far outside that space and whom we are confident we will meet soon. So rather than leading with the equivalent of a panorama of our new surroundings, they are opening the space up for us a little bit at a time. That makes it easier to keep the action moving rapidly and clearly, and also leaves us wanting more.

Episode 1031: Some way of getting there

In 1968, vampire Barnabas Collins fell into the hands of mad scientist Eric Lang. Like Julia Hoffman, the mad scientist into whose hands Barnabas had previously fallen, Lang wanted to cure Barnabas of vampirism. Unlike Julia, Lang had a plan that actually worked. First, he gave him a treatment that temporarily arrested the symptoms of the curse. Then he built a Frankenstein’s monster which he planned to bring to life with an infusion of Barnabas’ “life force.” Wicked witch Angelique killed Lang before he could complete this experiment. Julia took over, and succeeded. The monster, named Adam, drained Barnabas’ affliction from him permanently.

Julia and Barnabas turned out to be the worst parents imaginable, and Adam grew to hate them. The big guy found kindness in the form of Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, an expert on the supernatural. Stokes taught Adam to speak and to read, and tried to introduce him to the social graces. In #636, Adam was in Stokes’ apartment when an enemy knocked on the door. Stokes told him to hide in the back room. He did, and was never seen and barely ever mentioned again. Only in #933, when another guest of Stokes’ had an unfortunate experience in that room, did we get confirmation that Adam wasn’t still waiting there.

Now, we are beginning the eleventh week of an arc set in a different universe than the one where the show spent its first 196 weeks. Barnabas, again a vampire because of a new curse, had discovered that a particular room in the long-disused east wing of the great house of Collinwood sometimes changes its appearance. Standing in the hall and looking through the door, he could see, not the bare dark walls that are there in his world, but a fully furnished, richly decorated, brightly lit room. People with the same appearances and voices as those he knew would come and go in that room, but they could not see or hear him, nor could he pass through the invisible barrier in the doorway to join them. Stokes explained the many-worlds hypothesis, which he calls “Parallel Time.” Hoping that he might be freed from his curse if he could enter the other universe, Barnabas stood in the room while it was in its normal state. It changed around him, and he found himself in that other continuity.

Barnabas was disappointed to find that he was still a vampire. He bit and enslaved the first person he met. Now he has come to know many people, among them counterparts of Angelique, Julia, and Stokes. Angelique is a wicked witch here as well. She has returned from the dead, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and taken Alexis’ place as a permanent houseguest at Collinwood. He knows who she really is and she knows that he knows, but neither is in a position to fight the other. He does not know that Angelique killed Alexis, nor does he know that she, like he, is a vampire. She does not steal blood from the living, but warmth. And her attacks, when they provide her with enough warmth to keep her going, are invariably fatal.

Julia is Angelique’s most fanatical devotee. She is reluctant to bring victims for her to quick-freeze, but is happy enough to serve her in every other way. The portal occasionally opens in the room on this side too, so that inhabitants of the current timeline can catch glimpses of the main continuity as those in the main continuity can catch glimpses of what is happening here. That’s given the show opportunities to contrast this Julia with the one we first met. They have made it very clear that this Julia has the same feelings for Angelique that the original Julia has for Barnabas. Since we know that the other Julia has been Barnabas’ constant helper through all his murders and other activities, we can assume that this Julia will be Angelique’s deadliest enforcer.

Stokes has played a parental role in Angelique’s life. Originally he was identified as Angelique and Alexis’ father, and that is how he is described today. In between there were a couple of days when he was their stepfather, but that didn’t fit with other information we had, and we can hope they will drop that point. At any rate, Stokes disliked Alexis and forgot all about her four seconds after Angelique told him she had killed her. He delights in Angelique. He is an evil mirror image of his virtuous opposite number in the other universe.

Yesterday, Stokes and Angelique were in his apartment, which is the same as the one his counterpart occupies. He told her that he used his unsurpassed mastery of the occult to make it possible for her to return from the dead. Angelique wanted him to cure her of the need to steal the warmth from the living, but he said neither he nor anyone else knows how to do that. When he told her that someone else was involved in the process, she brightened and asked to meet this other person. Stokes looked sad, even ashamed. He indicated that the person is in the back room of his apartment, and Angelique went to its door.

Today, Angelique enters the room. She finds a blanket covering a woman’s body. Stokes enters. Angelique asks if the woman is alive; Stokes says she is more alive than Angelique is. He took much of her “life force” to make it possible for Angelique to overcome death. She retains enough of this force to stay alive. If she dies, all of her “life force” will disappear, including the portion which animates Angelique. But as long as she lives, the woman will keep pulling that portion back to herself. At moments when the woman is drawing on it most effectively, Angelique is overwhelmed with the desperate need for warmth and can right herself only by consuming a victim.

Was this your card? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This story is the reversed mirror image of Adam and Barnabas. As Adam cured Barnabas of vampirism by absorbing his “life force” and coming to life, so the unnamed woman causes Angelique’s heat vampirism by reclaiming her own “life force” and staying alive. Adam had a female companion, an intended Bride of Frankenstein named Eve. Eve was played by Marie Wallace. The original audience was in a position to know that whoever is under the blanket, she will not be played by Miss Wallace. Somerset had premiered opposite Dark Shadows on NBC at the end of March, and she was an original member of its cast.

Evidently, the show does not want us to miss the echo of Adam. Angelique goes back to the apartment later in the episode, and finds Stokes playing chess against himself. First-time viewers will recognize this as a symbol of Stokes’ attempt to manipulate those around him for the sake of an elaborate plan, but those who have been with the show for a long time will also remember Adam’s habit of passing the time with solitaire games of chess.

Meanwhile, in the original continuity, Julia is looking into the room where the portal between universes sometimes becomes visible. She sees her own counterpart talking with Angelique. She is horrified to hear them decide that they must destroy Barnabas, and despairs that she cannot pierce the invisible barrier that separates the two worlds.

Later, Barnabas is in the room. He finds Angelique’s diary and turns to her account of how “he” has a plan to defeat death. Barnabas wonders who “he” is, and decides to take the diary someplace where he can study it. He sets it down. When he looks up, the room is dark and bare. He is back in his own universe, without the diary. Julia enters and welcomes him home.

Without missing a beat, Barnabas exclaims that he must not stay. He has discovered that Maggie Evans Collins, counterpart of someone important to him in his own world, is in danger, and he has to go back to the other universe to rescue her. This is a typical moment. Julia has given up everything she has and any hope of a meaningful relationship with anyone else in her devotion to Barnabas, and in return he keeps throwing other women in her face. The story in “Parallel Time” is getting more complicated and the sufferings of the characters there are getting more urgent, so we can be sure Barnabas will find a way back. But longtime viewers will remember that when Barnabas traveled back in time to 1897, Julia eventually found a way to join him there. So when he travels sideways in time and returns to the other continuity, we can hope that Julia will somehow manage to take her place at his side.

The closing credits bill Grayson Hall twice, once as “Julia Hoffman” and once as “Dr Julia Hoffman.” Julia was in hundreds of episodes before the “Parallel Time” story began, and has appeared a couple of times in episodes where Miss Hoffman the housekeeper also figured. This is the first time her degree makes it on screen.

Episode 1024: Chance and Mrs Stoddard are identical twins

When Dark Shadows began in June 1966, its biggest draw was movie star Joan Bennett as reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz was highly capable, and Bennett made her compelling to watch. When in #25 Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, grudgingly complimented her on her “neat way of managing people,” we could see that he was putting it mildly. But the show didn’t handle Liz’ storyline very well, and she soon became a blocking figure. As the owner of the estate of Collinwood and of the Collins family businesses, as a central player in all the stories they had started with, and as the powerful personality Bennett had created, Liz was such an important part of the show that when she became a brake on the action, there was a constant danger that it would be impossible for anything to happen ever again.

The arrival of Roger’s estranged wife Laura Murdoch Collins in #123 marked Dark Shadows’ transformation into a supernatural thriller. By the time Laura went up in smoke in #191, her story had absorbed two of the four original narrative themes, “The Revenge of Burke Devlin” and well-meaning governess Vicki’s growing friendship with strange and troubled boy David, and had undercut whatever interest we might still have had in the other two, the mystery of Liz’ decision to become a recluse and Vicki’s quest to learn her true identity. The emerging Dark Shadows 2.0 had little room for Liz, and she subsided to the margins. When the show traveled back in time and became a costume drama from November 1967 to March 1968 and again from March to November 1969, Bennett played other characters and was able to make a substantial contribution, but Liz would never again be a suitable vessel for her great talents.

For the last eight weeks, the show has been in another time travel segment. Now it has traveled, not back in time, but sideways. They are in an alternate universe. The show insists on calling this universe “Parallel Time.” It is 1970 here, as it is in the original continuity, but a different 1970 where people with the names and faces we already know are living very different lives.

The Elizabeth Collins Stoddard of Parallel Time is not the mistress of Collinwood or an effective businesswoman. This Liz entrusted her inheritance to her brother Roger, who turned out to be just as feckless as his counterpart in the original continuity. As the penniless Roger we met in 1966 lives in Liz’ house as her guest and works in Liz’ business as her employee, so this Liz and Roger both live at Collinwood as the dependents of their brother, drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins.

In the original continuity, Quentin was not Liz and Roger’s brother, nor did he own anything. We got to know him when Dark Shadows was set in 1897, and he was a charming rogue, the younger brother of Judith and Edward Collins, who like Liz and Roger were played by Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds. So the parallel lines representing the two versions of 1970 take a bit of a swerve into that other epoch.

Today, Liz is busy organizing a costume ball to be held in the great house of Collinwood. They had such a ball every year at this time when Quentin was married to his first wife, the late Angelique Stokes Collins, and Liz thinks that having another one would be the perfect occasion for Quentin to introduce all of his friends to his new wife, the former Maggie Evans. Liz needs help getting this party going. She comes bustling into the drawing room today and addresses herself to Angelique’s identical twin sister, Alexis Stokes, announcing that the party is tonight and 14 of the guests have failed to RSVP. She bemoans her inability to get anything organized and pleads with Alexis to help her. Alexis agrees to do so and excuses herself from a chess game she had been playing with Barnabas Collins, a man who recently showed up and introduced himself as a distant cousin of the Collinses of Collinwood.

Quentin enters the drawing room and orders Liz to cancel the ball. She says that it is too late to do that. Quentin stalks off and goes outside. Liz turns to Barnabas and asks him to reason with Quentin. Barnabas is unsure that he is the right person, but he goes to the door anyway. He opens it just in time to hear Quentin peeling away in his car. Maggie appears at the head of the stairs and asks if Quentin has gone. Barnabas has to say that he has, and Maggie looks crushed. Liz is unable to help in any way.

Later, Liz returns to the drawing room in the middle of a conversation between Quentin and Maggie. She is carrying an enormous decanter containing some sherry and congratulating herself on calming the cook’s nerves by her bartending. Quentin excuses himself to go get into his costume.

Liz brings the party. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Liz finds that Maggie has not yet chosen a costume. She urges her to do so at once. Maggie says she supposed that Angelique always picked out her costume weeks in advance. Liz knows that Maggie is intimidated living in Angelique’s shadow, and does not know what to say in response to that remark. She quickly changes the subject. She brightens, and says that Alexis has brought many lovely dresses down from the attic. She urges Maggie to go to Alexis’ room and choose one of them.

As the time for the guests to arrive comes near, Liz and Barnabas meet in the foyer. A portrait of the Barnabas Collins who died in 1830 hangs on the spot on the wall next to the front door where earlier this week we had seen a metal doodad that looks like a coat of arms. Barnabas is wearing the same outfit, and looks just like the man in the portrait. Liz is wearing a dress of the same vintage. She is overjoyed, and tells Barnabas that the period suits him. He thanks her, and returns the compliment. Quentin is wearing a blue federal coat; Liz and Barnabas tell him that he, too, is suited to the early 1800s. Alexis comes downstairs in a blue dress, and she receives the same commendation. Lastly Maggie makes her appearance. When Quentin sees her dress, he becomes very tense. He tells her to take it off, orders her never to wear it again, and smashes his glass on the floor. The camera pans from Barnabas’shocked expression to a flickering look of pleasure on Alexis’ face; Liz stands between them, and unfortunately we only see the top of her head.

What Liz does not know is that the person she thinks is Alexis is in fact Angelique risen from the grave. Angelique murdered Alexis, took her place, and is conspiring with housekeeper Julia Hoffman to drive Maggie and Quentin apart. The story is a souped-up version of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, in which the dead first wife is not only a memory that triggers anxiety in her successor but a supernatural being who rises from the dead to torment her directly. There is a scene with Maggie looking out the window of the drawing room that is an exact recreation of a shot in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film of Rebecca, and when Angelique and Hoffman trick Maggie into wearing the same dress Angelique wore to last year’s ball, prompting Quentin’s outburst, most grownups in the original audience would remember the same thing happening to the second Mrs de Winter in that film.

Angelique is the villain, and Maggie is the heroine. Still, we rather like Angelique. The sister-murdering is bad, of course, but Quentin is such a lousy husband that she is doing Maggie a big favor by trying to bring their intolerable marriage to its end as soon as possible. For example, today Quentin finds Maggie reading his old love letters to Angelique. He might justifiably have objected that those are private and say he wished she’d asked before reading them, but he doesn’t do that or anything else one adult would do when disappointed in another. Instead, he flies into a rage, accuses her of a variety of things she hasn’t done, and orders her to, and I quote, “Go to your room!”

Later, in the room they share, Quentin is still scolding Maggie for failing to admit that she was lying about how she found the letters. We know she had in fact told the truth. When she tells him so, he dismisses her with a shake of the head. When she brings up the fact that it is the anniversary of his wedding to Angelique, he shouts that she is forbidden to discuss the subject, then storms out and slams the door. This is when he goes downstairs, tells Liz to cancel the party, and drives away. We have never seen Maggie have a happy day with Quentin. He sometimes manages to be pleasant in the intervals between his tantrums, but even then he can’t let go of his habit of talking to Maggie as if she were a child and he were her somewhat weary guardian. If Angelique can hasten their final split, Maggie will owe her an enormous debt of gratitude.

Barnabas is not in fact a descendant of the man whose portrait now hangs in the foyer. He is a visitor from the main continuity. Angelique’s counterpart there is his great enemy, so it is fun to see him talking with this Angelique and playing chess with her.

David Selby has a problem with one of his lines, when Quentin winds up saying “I wonder where I got the illusion that an hour or two alone would settle one’s all of problems.” This is a fairly minor stumble by Dark Shadows standards, but it comes when Angelique is in closeup and Lara Parker’s left eyelid twitches when she hears “one’s all of problems.” That reaction is worth a laugh.

Episode 577: I imagined we would discuss Freud

Heiress Carolyn came running when her mother, matriarch Liz, woke her with her screams. Liz was having a nightmare about being buried alive. She tries Carolyn’s patience and ours with her obsession that this will in fact happen to her.

Liz tries to call her lawyer, Richard Garner. Whoever answers the phone tells Liz that Garner is not available, hardly surprising since it is the middle of the night. She responds that if he doesn’t call back within the hour, he need never call again. Since we last saw Garner in #246, and his name hasn’t been mentioned since #271, it seems like he may as well get some sleep.

Liz then calls Tony, a young lawyer in town who used to date Carolyn. Tony comes over and Liz hires him to help with some changes to her will. She dictates excerpts from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial” by way of a codicil protecting her from being buried alive, and he tells her he thinks she’s being weird.

The most prominent reference to Poe on Dark Shadows up to this point was in #442, when vampire Barnabas reenacted the plot of “The Cask of Amontillado” by bricking the fanatical Rev’d Mr Trask up in an alcove in his basement. Like Tony, Trask was played by Jerry Lacy, so it is possible that the writers hope the audience will recognize the connection.

Poe wrote punchy little short stories each of which leaves the reader with a single horrifying image. “The Cask of Amontillado” worked well as the basis for an episode, and the bricking up of Trask is one of the most enduring images in all of Dark Shadows. “The Premature Burial” could have made for the same kind of success, had Liz’ obsession begun and ended within one episode. But it has already gone on longer than that, and there is no end in sight. Each time we come back to it, the situation becomes more familiar and less urgent.

Meanwhile, Carolyn takes a glass of milk and a sandwich to Adam, a Frankenstein’s monster she is hiding in the long-deserted west wing of the house. Adam has little to do but read, and he has become quite intellectual. He is playing both sides of a game of chess when Carolyn arrives, pretending that she is his opponent. When she comes, he attempts a joke, pretending she has left him alone so long he does not remember her name. She is distressed about Liz’ obsessive fear of being buried alive, and so does not recognize that he is joking.

Carolyn looks at the chessboard and asks Adam who he is playing. He says that he is pretending to play her. He is smiling and relaxed when he admits this, and he starts joking again as he tells her about their imaginary games. Adam’s pretending that he did not remember Carolyn’s name was a weak joke, but he is actually pretty funny when he tells her that when he pretends they are playing, she doesn’t do as well as he does. She still does not realize that he is kidding, and reacts with horror. She says she doesn’t play chess; in #357, her uncle Roger mentioned that she does, but that she usually loses to him. Perhaps in the 44 weeks since then, she has given up the game altogether.

Adam wants Carolyn to play with him for real. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Adam shows Carolyn the book he has been reading, a volume of Sigmund Freud’s works, and is disappointed she has not already read it. When she tells him she is worried because of Liz’ condition, he invites her to sit down and says “Tell me about your mother,” suggesting that he is ready to set up shop as a psychoanalyst. Adam is being serious now, but this part of the exchange is hilarious.

Carolyn goes out to the terrace and looks at the night sky, wondering if Freud could help her understand what is happening with her mother. I live in the year 2024, and so I have difficulty imagining how people could ever have taken Freud seriously. But he was very very big in the 1960s, and in its first year Dark Shadows gave us a lot of heavy-handed Freudian symbolism and a number of storylines with obvious psychoanalytic themes. Longtime viewers will find it a reassuring sign of continuity that Freud is still around as the thinker “every twentieth century man should read.”

Tony joins Carolyn on the terrace. He greets her and sees that she has a book about Freud. “I don’t have to ask why you’re reading him,” he remarks. Carolyn asks if he is referring to her mother, and Tony’s response is so indiscreet he may as well spinning his finger around his temple and saying “Cuckoo, cuckoo!” It is clear enough that the concept of “confidential communication” is alien to the lawyers in Soap Opera Land, and now we see that “basic respect” is also very much on the optional list. Carolyn tells Tony to do whatever Liz asks, and starts crying.

I was startled by Carolyn’s crying turn, because it is the first time in the two hundred or so episodes she has appeared in thus far Nancy Barrett has given a subpar performance. The actors all had to work under virtually impossible conditions, so I rarely mention it when one of those who usually does well has a bad day at the office, but the 20 seconds or so she spends very obviously not crying in this scene mark the end of an extraordinary streak.

Tony embraces Carolyn and kisses her. Adam’s room in the west wing overlooks the terrace, and he spies on them while they kiss. After Carolyn excuses herself and goes back into the house, Adam comes up behind Tony, grabs him, forbids him to touch Carolyn, and throws him to the ground.

Episode 510: One passion in death

Yesterday, wiggéd witch Angelique/ Cassandra sent her cat’s paw Tony to kill sage Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes pulled “the old switcheroo” on him, and Tony drank from the glass into which he had put Angelique/ Cassandra’s poison. Today, we learn that Stokes gave Tony an emetic to save his life. Stokes calls mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD to examine Tony and assist with the next stage of the battle against Angelique/ Cassandra.

Recovered, Tony has no idea why he obeyed Angelique/ Cassandra’s command to kill Stokes, and is ready to surrender to the police. Stokes tells him he is under the power of a witch, and enlists him in the battle against her.

Stokes takes out the memoirs of his ancestor Ben, who was Angelique’s cat’s paw in the eighteenth century. He does some automatic writing in Ben’s hand and finds that they must contact the spirit of the Rev’d Mr Trask, a witchfinder who inadvertently helped Angelique in those days. Fortunately, Trask, like Tony, was played by Jerry Lacy, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of him. Stokes also finds that Trask was walled up in “the coffin room,” which Julia tells him is for some mysterious reason a nickname given to the space at the foot of the stairs in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Stokes decrees that he, Julia, and Tony must go to this room and hold a séance there.

On his way to the Old House, Tony follows Stokes’ instructions and stops at the main house on the estate and tells Angelique/ Cassandra that Stokes is dead. This follows a scene between Angelique/ Cassandra and her husband, sarcastic dandy Roger, in which Roger complains about her lack of interest in him. Her mind isn’t on the game of chess they are playing, she hasn’t been attentive to him for several nights, and she refuses to go on a honeymoon. Angelique/ Cassandra ensorcelled Roger into marrying her so that she could have a perch at Collinwood, and he seems to be slipping out of the spell’s power.

Stokes, Julia, and Tony gather in the coffin room. They begin the séance. This is the fifth séance we have seen on Dark Shadows, but the first that does not include well-meaning governess Vicki. In four of the previous five, it had been Vicki who went into the trance. On the other occasion, it was strange and troubled boy David who became the vessel through which the dead spoke to the living. The first three times Vicki served as the medium, she channeled the gracious Josette Collins, and when David filled that role he gave voice to David Radcliffe. In those days, Vicki was closely connected to Josette, perhaps a reincarnation of her, as David was another version of the cursed boy David Radcliffe. The final time Vicki spoke for the dead, she spoke for nine year old Sarah Collins, with whom she was no more closely connected than were any of a number of other characters. Sarah has no present-day counterpart, so her appearance at a séance suggested that Dark Shadows was moving away from its use of necromancy as a way of connecting characters from different time periods.

This time, Tony goes into the trance. In #481, Angelique/ Cassandra told Tony that she chose him as her cat’s paw because he resembled Trask, so when he is the medium through whom Trask speaks we are returning to Dark Shadows‘ original conception of how séances work. Trask mistakes Stokes for Ben, as Angelique did in a dream visitation last week. The brick wall behind which Trask’s remains are hidden bulges and is about to crumble when we fade to the credits.

True fans of Dark Shadows know that the episode’s real climax comes during those credits. Thayer David strolls onto the set under Louis Edmonds’ credit for Roger. He even looks into the camera when he realizes what he has done.