dark shadows before i die – Page 46 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 334: Help the boy

High-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins was the first of Dark Shadows’ icy, calculating villains, and Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David, was the first of its adorable homicidal maniacs. By the time David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, went up in smoke in #191, well-meaning governess Vicki had converted David from evil to good, and the subsumption of the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” storyline into Laura’s arc had set Roger on the path to becoming occasional comic relief.

Now, bumbling vampire Barnabas Collins combines the roles Roger and David pioneered. Barnabas has been so inept at keeping his secrets that David has learned some of them and is frantically trying to warn the adults about him, but he has shown enough calculation in his damage control that most of the adults receive David’s warnings as signs of mental illness.

The highlights of today’s episode are two sequences in which Roger makes himself remarkably vulnerable to his old nemesis Burke Devlin and family doctor Dave Woodard. Early on, Burke and Woodard are telling him that David is a frightened boy, and Roger answers them with a speech in which he claims that all boys live in constant terror. “I was a child in this house. I was terrified of the darkness in the corners and frightened to walk along the corridors by myself. I used to think that all the people in these Collins portraits… all those dead people… stared at me wherever I went… looked at me with piercing eyes… hated me! Well, I outgrew it, and so will David.” Burke and Woodard simply ignore Roger’s speech- evidently they are true New England men, and cannot imagine talking to each other about their feelings. After Burke and Woodard leave Roger, he looks at the portrait of Jeremiah Collins above the fireplace in the drawing room, and recoils in fear.

Roger, alone with the portrait of Jeremiah Collins, and still scared out of his wits. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After Burke and Woodard have talked with David a while, they come back to ask Roger’s permission to take the boy to look for a secret chamber he says can be found in the Collins family mausoleum. Roger says in reply that they should forget about looking into tombs and get a psychiatrist who can look into David’s mind. He says that David “is like a person on a thin wire, very high off the ground… Any minute he may fall and plunge downward- out of our reach forever.”

Again, Burke and Woodard don’t react to Roger’s speech at all. Viewers who have been with the show from the beginning, though, will see these two scenes as a significant retcon. For the first 38 weeks of Dark Shadows, Roger openly hated David, was eager to get rid of him, and exploited his troubles for his own advantage. Perhaps the single most shocking scene in the entire series came in #68, when Roger coolly manipulated David into making an attempt on Vicki’s life. But now Roger is a caring father whose concern for David drives him to make the most astonishing emotional displays.

In the scene between Roger’s speeches, David told Burke and Woodard about two vacant coffins he has seen. Woodard, who is inclined to believe David is onto something, can’t help but try his hand at psychotherapy, and asks David if he isn’t terribly afraid of coffins. Again, long-time fans will remember that matriarch Liz went eighteen years without once willingly leaving home, because she thought that the murdered body of her husband Paul Stoddard was buried in the basement. In #275, it turned out that Stoddard’s supposed grave held only an empty trunk. Burke was there when that came to light, and Woodard probably knows about it too. So he might well imagine that David would have a lot of unresolved feelings surrounding the image of a vacant coffin. The Liz-is-a-recluse story was a dud from the beginning, so it is understandable it hasn’t been referenced in months, but it’s a shame Woodard doesn’t have the chance to clue new viewers into what may well be on his mind.

Also in that scene, David tells Burke and Woodard he will have to break a promise he made to his friend, the ghost of ten-year-old Sarah Collins. When he says this, the wind blows the window to his room open, and the strains of “London Bridge” play on a wooden flute. When David asks the men if they can hear the music, they make it clear that they can. He tells them that it is Sarah objecting that he ought not to share her secret, but that he has no choice.

He takes them to the Tomb of the Collinses, where Sarah and her parents are buried. He tries to open the panel to the secret chamber, but it has been locked. When Burke and Woodard tell him they don’t believe that there is a secret chamber, he finds Sarah’s flute on her mother’s crypt. This is enough to convince Woodard that there is something to David’s story.

In life, Sarah was Barnabas’ sister. Her current relationship to Barnabas echoes Liz’ relationship to Roger, and the relationship developing between Barnabas and mad scientist Julia Hoffman. She tries to prevent him from committing crimes, but she will not allow him to be caught once he has committed them. At the moment, the crime Barnabas is busiest committing is an attempt to spread the idea that David is insane and to trick the adults into giving him inappropriate psychiatric treatment. So Sarah leaves her flute where it will give David’s doctor evidence that he is not ill at all. On the other hand, Barnabas has reason to fear that if the secret chamber becomes generally known, he will be exposed and destroyed. So she swears David to secrecy about it, and is upset when he is going to violate that secrecy. The usual Dark Shadows dynamic, seen in both the Liz/ Roger and Julia/ Barnabas relationships, is that of Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother; Sarah is Barnabas’ little sister, and she isn’t exactly bossy, but the end result is similar.

Episode 332: Worse than a nightmare

Strange and troubled boy David Collins stands outside the drawing room at the great house of Collinwood and overhears his father, Roger, talking with permanent house-guest Julia Hoffman. Roger and Julia are discussing David’s fear of his cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, and his belief that Barnabas is hiding something terrible in the basement of his home in the Old House on the estate. Roger takes it for granted that Barnabas is above reproach, and has therefore concluded that David is suffering from some sort of mental disorder. Julia encourages Roger in this conclusion, and urges him to send David away to boarding school. Roger is amenable to this idea, but tells Julia that his sister, matriarch Liz, will never allow it.

The last time David overheard his father in the drawing room saying he wanted to send him away to school, he attempted to murder him. But that was in episode #10, almost fifteen months ago. Since then, David has been through a lot, and has decided he wants to align himself with good against evil. So he doesn’t try to kill Roger this time. Instead, he steals a set of keys to Barnabas’ house that Liz keeps in her study and sets off to gather evidence with which he can prove himself right.

Returning viewers will recall that David’s friend, the ghost of ten year old Sarah, has repeatedly warned him not to go near the Old House, and especially to stay away from the basement. David remembers her words, but makes his way into Barnabas’ basement regardless. There, he sees an open coffin. While David is looking the other way, Barnabas comes up behind the lid and slams it shut. David turns, and Barnabas glares at him. Since Barnabas is a vampire who has spent quite a bit of time thinking of killing David, this would seem to leave the boy in something of a pickle.

David caught in the act. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Closing Miscellany

There are three firsts in this episode, all relating to voice acting. This is the first time Alexandra Moltke Isles appears in an episode but does not read the opening voiceover. Sharon Smyth appears only through the pre-recorded voice of Sarah; her name does appear in the closing credits, the first time a performer is credited for something other than an on-camera appearance. And the closing titles end with Grayson Hall saying “Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production,” the first time someone other than an ABC staff announcer* has delivered that line.

*Usually Bob Lloyd, though someone else filled in for Lloyd in #156 and #167.

Episode 331: Not always sure of the answers

Strange and troubled boy David Collins is at his wit’s end. A bat entered his room and menaced him. He can’t even convince the adults in the great house of Collinwood that the bat existed. Still less can he get a hearing for his correct surmises that his cousin, courtly gentleman Barnabas Collins, used magical powers to send the bat against him.

David’s aunt and father call the family doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard. Woodard gives David a sleeping pill, waits a few minutes, and starts asking him questions. David tells him about his friend, mysterious girl Sarah. He asks if Woodard believes that Sarah is a ghost. Several times, the audience has seen Woodard wrestle with evidence pointing in this direction, so we know that he is telling the truth when he answers David’s question with “I don’t know what I believe.” Robert Gerringer does a fine job of acting today, and draws the audience into Woodard’s struggle to come to terms with the idea that he lives in a world where supernatural forces are at work.

Later, Sarah wakes David up. She says she’s angry with him. In her last apparition, she specifically told him to stay away from Barnabas’ house, but the very next morning he went there, sneaked in through a window, and was trying to get into the basement when Barnabas’ co-conspirator Julia Hoffman caught him. He keeps asking for more information, and she complains that he asks too many questions. She keeps insisting that he stay away from Barnabas’ house.

The messenger. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Sarah gives David an antique toy soldier and tells him to keep it with him. She says it belonged to someone who played with it long ago, and that it will keep David safe as long as he has it with him. Returning viewers know that Sarah is the ghost of Barnabas’ sister, so the “someone” must be Barnabas himself. Also, we saw Sarah give a doll of her own to Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, with the same instructions, so we know this is her usual mode of operation.

When Sarah is complaining that David asks too many questions, she says that she isn’t always sure of the answers. This makes an interesting contrast with Woodard’s earlier remark that she seems to know everything. It also brings up a mystery from recent episodes. In #325, David had a dream in which Sarah led him to a basement where they saw Barnabas rise from a coffin. This must have been a dream visitation, since it includes information only she would have. But in #327, David sees Sarah in the woods and surprises her when he tells her about the dream. Later in that same episode, she makes it clear that she does not want him to know the information he gained from it.

The sight of Sarah in the corner of David’s room, lit from below, might cast the minds of regular viewers back to the first supernatural being to make an entrance in that spot. David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, drove the story from #126 to #191. In the early part of the Laura arc, the show made a great deal out of the uncertainty about how the various events and appearances associated with her related to each other. There was a more or less substantial, apparently living woman who comes to stay in the cottage on the estate of Collinwood; an image of the same woman that occasionally flickers on the lawn of the estate; and a scorched corpse in the morgue in Phoenix, Arizona. These three, and an undetermined number of other phenomena, might all be aspects of the same being, or they may not. They may be pursuing the same objective, or they may be working at cross-purposes. They may be organs of a single mind, or they may be entirely unaware of each other. As the story went on, Laura became an ever-more dynamic personality, but it was never made altogether clear just how many of her there were.

The difference between the Sarah who led David to Barnabas in his dream and the Sarah who demands that he stay away from Barnabas when he is awake raises the same question. Sarah used to be a little girl, and she still looks and sounds like one. But she isn’t really that, nor is she anything else that belongs in our world anymore, and she can’t be expected to follow any rules we can understand. She is a focal point around which uncanny phenomena gather, and through which information passes into our world from an alien plane of existence. Sarah is not only a messenger- she is herself the message.

The uncertainty Sarah admits to today, along with our uncertainty about how her various manifestations fit with each other, show that David is wrong if he finds her a reassuring presence. She is part of a world in which the living have no place, and her irruption into David’s experience thrusts him into the company of the dead. David cannot fully understand Sarah’s world, much less control it. If he keeps trying to find his own way to safety, he will quickly meet his doom.

Episode 330: bat by Bil Baird

Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis spent a week staring at the eighteenth century portrait of Barnabas Collins in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood back in April, then tried to rob Barnabas’ grave. That turned out to be an awkward situation when Willie found that Barnabas wasn’t entirely dead. Barnabas was a vampire who bit Willie, turned him into his sorely bedraggled blood thrall, and had lots of conversations with him. Yesterday, Willie was written out of the show.

Today we open with strange and troubled boy David Collins staring at the same portrait. As Willie was obsessed with the idea that there were jewels hidden in the Collins mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town, where in fact Barnabas’ coffin was hidden, so David is preoccupied with the idea that Barnabas has something terrible stashed in the basement of the Old House on the estate, where in fact his new coffin is hidden. As Willie sneaked off to the cemetery on his ill-starred expedition, David will sneak off to the Old House today and try to search Barnabas’ basement.

Unlike Willie, David is not driven by greed. He is afraid of Barnabas, and his friend, the ten year old ghost of Barnabas’ sister Sarah, has told him that he must not go to the Old House. But his aunt Liz and his father Roger dismiss his attempts to warn them about Barnabas, and he thinks it is his duty to provide them with evidence. So he screws up his courage and makes his way across the property.

David lets himself into the Old House by opening the parlor window. Not only have we seen David do this before, but Willie’s sometime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, got into the house the same way in #274. Barnabas would kill Jason when he reached the basement in #275, so you might think he’d have put a lock on that window by now.

Jason’s fate is certainly on the minds of returning viewers when David tries to open the basement door. It comes as a relief when he finds the door locked. Barnabas’ co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, catches him there.

Julia demands to know what David is doing in the house, and he tries to brazen it out. He claims that he has a right to be there, since it belongs to his Aunt Liz. This is a bit of a murky point- we never see Liz transfer title to Barnabas, but she and others act as if he owns the place and its contents. Julia doesn’t clarify it when she responds that Liz gave the house to Barnabas- she doesn’t deny that it still belongs to Liz, only says that it also belongs to Barnabas.

Back in the great house, Roger is banging away at the piano. We saw Liz play the piano in #47 and #91, a reference to the conception of her character writer Art Wallace developed in his original story bible, titled Shadows on the Wall, in which she, like similar characters in a couple of TV plays he wrote in the 1950s under the title “The House,” gave piano lessons. Since then, Liz’ daughter Carolyn tried her hand at “Chopsticks” in #119 and used the piano as a prop in a teen rebel scene in #258, and Jason poked at a few keys in #198. Roger isn’t exactly Vladimir Horowitz, but he’s the first one we’ve seen who actually achieves a melody.

Liz comes in and tells Roger that David isn’t in his room. They fret over David’s attitude towards Barnabas. Julia brings David home and tells Liz and Roger where she found him. After an angry scene between father and son, David goes upstairs, and Liz scolds Roger for his inept parenting. In these as in all of Liz and Roger’s scenes together, we see a bossy big sister who tries to govern her bratty little brother, but who ultimately abets all of his worst behavior.

In the Old House, Barnabas notices that Julia is troubled. He keeps asking what’s on her mind, and she has difficulty deflecting his questions. This is odd- Julia has been established as a master of deception, and Barnabas is the most selfish creature in the universe. All she has to do is start talking about something that does not affect him directly, and he will lose interest at once. Rather than talk about her personal finances, or the job from which she is apparently on an indefinite leave of absence, or some ache or pain she might have, or how sad she is to miss her Aunt Zelda’s birthday, she brings up Willie. That does get Barnabas’ mind off her tension, but it also reminds him of David. He thinks David knows too much about him, and is thinking of murdering him. Julia assures him that the boy doesn’t know so very much, that whatever he does know he hasn’t told anyone, and that if he does say something his reputation as an overly imaginative child will lead the adults to ignore him.

From the beginning of the series, we’ve heard people say that David is “imaginative.” The audience finds an irony in this, since we have never seen David show any imagination whatsoever. All his stories of ghosts are strictly literal accounts of apparitions he has seen. We’ve seen some drawings he has done and heard quotes from some essays he has written. Some of these are technically accomplished for a person his age, but they are just as literal as his ghost stories. And when he tells lies to cover his various misdeeds, he tells simple little tales that fall apart at once.

In #327, well-meaning governess Vicki became the first character to dissent from the “David is a highly imaginative child” orthodoxy. Liz and local man Burke Devlin were dismissing David’s laboriously accurate account of his latest encounter with Sarah as a sign of his “imagination,” and Vicki interrupted with “I don’t think it has anything to do with his imagination.” Now, Barnabas goes a step further. After pronouncing the word “imaginative” in a truly marvelous way that makes it sound like something I’ve never heard before, he tells Julia that she has given him an idea. Frightened, she asks what he means. All he will say is “You’ll see.”

Roger goes to David’s room and has a friendly talk with his son. Throughout the conversation and afterward, David is thinking intensely, trying hard to figure out what his next step should be.

Once he is alone in the room, the window blows open and a bat enters. More precisely, a bat-shaped marionette is brought in on clearly visible strings by a pole that casts a shadow we can see the entire time, but no one who has been watching the show up to this point will doubt for a second that David’s fear, as depicted by David Henesy, is fully justified. David tries to flee from the bat, but he cannot open the door to escape from his room. His back against the door, David slides onto the floor and screams as the bat comes near him.

David finds that he cannot escape. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

David helpless before the bat. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Barnabas is about to attack someone, dogs start howling. Sometimes this works to his advantage, but it so often puts his intended victims on their guard that it doesn’t really seem to be something he is doing on purpose. So this bat represents something new. Perhaps Barnabas is using magic to control a bat- if so, it marks the first time we have seen Barnabas use magic to project influence over something other than a human mind. Or perhaps he himself has assumed the form of a bat. If so, that is the first indication we’ve had that he has shape shifting powers. In either case, Barnabas’ powers have just gone up a level.

Closing Miscellany

The bat was created by famed puppeteer Bil Baird. Most famous today for the puppets he created for “The Lonely Goatherd” sequence in The Sound of Music, Baird was a frequent guest on television programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, and Jim Henson cited Baird’s own TV series, the short lived Life with Snarky Parker, as a major influence on the Muppets. In December 1966, Baird opened a marionette theater in New York City, at 59 Barrow Street in Greenwich Village; it operated until 1978, and many leading puppeteers, including dozens who would go on to work with Henson, were members of its company in those years.

Bil Baird’s bat-credit. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The original string wasn’t quite so conspicuous. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This is the last episode to end with ABC staff announcer Bob Lloyd saying “Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis production.” We do hear the announcement again in February of 1969, but that won’t be because Lloyd has returned- they used an old recording for the music under the closing credits that day, and they picked one with him on it.

Fans of Dark Shadows will often talk about “the early episodes” which ended with Lloyd making that announcement. So I suppose #330 is the last of “the early episodes.”

Danny Horn’s post about this one on Dark Shadows Every Day includes a morphology of episode endings. He divides them into five categories, Haiku,* Restatement of Threat, ** New Information,*** Crisis Point,**** and Spectacle.***** It’s an intriguing scheme, and he makes a good case for it.

*Danny explains that “Haiku” “aren’t necessarily recognizable as endings in the traditional sense, because nothing is resolved and no progress is made. It’s just a little moment when a character pauses, and possibly has a feeling about something… In some extreme cases, the audience may not realize that the episode is over until halfway through The Dating Game.”

**Restatement of Threat, at this period of Dark Shadows, usually means Barnabas looking at us through his window and saying that someone or other “must die!” Which of course means that you can safely sell a million dollar life insurance policy to that character.

***”A New Information ending provides an actual plot point, which either advances the story another step, or tells us something that we didn’t know.”

****”The Crisis Point cliffhanger is the big game-changer, and for best effect, it should come at the end of a sequence that’s been building up for a while. This is a big turn in the story, and it should feel satisfying and thrilling… The defining feature of a Crisis Point ending is that the resolution marks a change in the status quo, ending one chapter and setting up the next.”

***** “Obviously, plot advancement is always welcome, but every once in a while the show needs to set its sights a little higher. These are the moments when the show goes above and beyond, in order to surprise and dazzle you… The point of a Spectacle is: You can’t take your eyes off the screen. Housewives in the audience have put down the iron, and switched off the vacuum. Teenagers have stopped swatting at their siblings… A Crisis Point cliffhanger will bring you back for the next episode, because you want to see what happens next. But a Spectacle cliffhanger is bigger than that — you’ll be coming back for the next episode, but it’s because you can’t believe what you’re seeing, and maybe tomorrow they’ll do it again.”

Episode 329: The truth about Willie

We open in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, home to courtly gentleman Barnabas Collins. In a bedroom there occupied by Barnabas’ servant Willie, Sheriff George Patterson and artist Sam Evans have found evidence that convinces them they have solved the case of the abduction of Sam’s daughter Maggie. They found Maggie’s ring hidden in a candlestick. The room is in Barnabas’ house and he has unlimited access to it. Further, the house is the only place Willie could possibly have kept Maggie if he had held her prisoner. But for some unexplained reason, they are sure that the ring proves that Willie and only Willie abducted Maggie. When Barnabas says that he feels somehow responsible, Sam rushes to tell him that he mustn’t blame himself.

The sheriff says that he will be going to the hospital, where Willie is recovering from gunshot wounds the sheriff’s deputies inflicted on him when they were looking for a suspect. Barnabas hitches a ride with him.

At the hospital, Willie’s doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, is conferring with his medical colleague Julia Hoffman. When he steps out of the room for a moment, we hear Julia’s thoughts in voiceover. She is thinking about killing Willie before he can regain consciousness and tell a story that will make it impossible for her ever to practice medicine again. She thinks of Barnabas’ voice demanding that she kill Willie. She is reaching for the catheter through which Willie is receiving fluids when Woodard comes back in. She tells him she was checking it, and he is glad when she confirms it is working correctly.

Returning viewers know that Barnabas is the one who abducted Maggie and committed the other crimes of which Willie is suspected, that he is a vampire, that Julia is a mad scientist trying to cure him of vampirism, and that in pursuing her project she has become deeply complicit in Barnabas’ wrongdoing. We also know that she has several times told him that she will draw the line at killing anyone herself, but that she has involved herself in so many other evil deeds that it was just a matter of time before she found herself on the point of crossing that line.

Barnabas and the sheriff arrive at the hospital. In the corridor, Barnabas is bewildered to find that the sheriff will not allow him to be present while he questions Willie. The sheriff has been so careless about treating miscellaneous people as if they were his deputies- for example, enlisting Sam yesterday to help him search Willie’s room- that Barnabas’ puzzlement is understandable. The conversation goes on for quite a while.

Note the poster that reads “Give Blood.” That’s a message Barnabas could endorse. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The sheriff enters Willie’s room, and greets Julia as “Dr Hoffman.” Woodard thinks Julia has come to Collinsport to investigate Maggie’s abduction, and so he has agreed to keep her professional identity secret from most people in town, including the sheriff for some reason. Therefore, she is startled at this form of address. Woodard explains that now that Maggie’s abductor has been identified, he doesn’t see a point in keeping law enforcement in the dark.

Julia meets Barnabas in the corridor. When she tells him that she didn’t kill Willie, he fumes and calls her a “bungling fool.” He says he will do the job himself, but Julia points out that Woodard and the sheriff are in the room with Willie now. They wind up staring at the clock for hours.

Willie regains consciousness. He doesn’t recognize Woodard. When the sheriff shows him Maggie’s ring, his eyes gleam and he claims that it is his. Returning viewers will remember that before Willie ever met Barnabas, he was obsessed with jewelry. He is terrified when he learns that it is night-time, and says that he knows why he is afraid.

The sheriff and Woodard go out into the corridor to talk with Julia and Barnabas. Woodard tells Julia that she was right- Willie is hopelessly insane. Apparently when they asked him what he was afraid of, he mentioned “a voice from a grave. Nothing else made more sense than that.”

Julia and Barnabas go into Willie’s room. He looks at Barnabas and asks “Who are you?” Barnabas shows surprise that Willie doesn’t know him. Willie asks if he is a doctor. “Yes,” replies Barnabas. “I am a doctor.”

Sheriff Patterson is played by Dana Elcar today. It is Elcar’s 35th and final appearance on Dark Shadows. He would go on to become one of the busiest and most distinguished character actors of his generation.

Elcar had his work cut out for him with the part of Sheriff Patterson. If a police officer on the show ever solved a case, or followed any kind of rational investigative procedure, or interpreted a clue correctly, the story would end immediately. So all the sheriffs and constables and detectives have to be imbeciles. Elcar reached into his actorly bag of tricks almost three dozen times, and always came out with some way to make it seem as if something more was going on in Sheriff Patterson’s mind than we could tell.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, exclaimed “I’m so glad Dana Elcar is playing this scene!” when Barnabas and the sheriff had their long conversation in the hospital corridor. This week’s episodes were shot out of sequence, so yesterday’s was made after Elcar had left. It featured Vince O’Brien as Sheriff Patterson. O’Brien was by no means a bad actor, but he didn’t make the character seem any smarter than the script did. Elcar seems so much like he has something up his sleeve that Jonathan Frid’s insistent pleading makes sense as a cover for a mounting panic. Without Elcar to play against, it might just have come off as whining.

With the conclusion of Willie’s story, this is John Karlen’s last appearance for a long while. Beginning shortly after Barnabas’ introduction to the show in April, his conversations with Willie have been the main way we find out what he is thinking and feeling. More recently, Willie and Julia have been having staff conferences in which they come up with new ideas and add a new kind of flexibility and dynamism to the vampire storyline. From time to time, Willie’s conscience gets the better of him, and he adds an unpredictable element to the story as he tries to thwart one of Barnabas’ evil plans. For all these reasons, removing Willie from the show drastically reduces the number of possible outcomes in any situation they might set up involving Barnabas. His departure, therefore, seems to signal that some sort of crisis is at hand.

In fact, Karlen wanted to leave Dark Shadows because he had a better offer from a soap called Love is a Many Splendored Thing. But the producers knew that no one else could play Willie after the audience had got used to Karlen, and so they wrote the character out until they could get him back. Still, losing Willie puts Barnabas’ story on a much narrower track. So far, each development has led us to speculate about an ever-growing list of directions the story might possibly take. From now on, we are entering a phase where we will often be stumped as to what might be coming next.

Episode 328: My entire career

In the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, vampire Barnabas Collins frets that his sorely bedraggled blood thrall, Willie Loomis, is failing to die. A couple of weeks ago, the police shot Willie and jumped to the conclusion that he was responsible for the abduction of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, among many other crimes that Barnabas actually committed. He’s been in a coma ever since, and if he dies, Barnabas will be off the hook.

Barnabas tells his co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, that he will go to the hospital and murder Willie. Her assurances that Willie will soon die of natural causes don’t stop Barnabas, but her news that the sheriff is on his way to the house does. Barnabas then orders her to go to the hospital and carry out the murder, but she refuses.

Meanwhile, Sheriff George Patterson, addled quack Dr Dave Woodard, and Maggie’s father Sam are hanging around Willie’s hospital room recapping the story so far. The sheriff wonders where Willie could have kept Maggie during the weeks she was held prisoner. Willie lives in Barnabas’ house and does not appear to have access to any other building. You might think this would be grounds for suspecting Barnabas of involvement, but no such thought crosses the minds of any of the three luminaries keeping Willie company. They just take it for granted that no crime could have taken place in Barnabas’ house.

George, Dave, and Sam, or their intellectual equivalents.

Back in the Old House, Barnabas has had an inspiration. He took a ring from Maggie in #253, and today he hides it in a candlestick in Willie’s bedroom. When the sheriff and Sam come to search that room (but no other part of the house,) Barnabas watches until they’ve given up, then knocks the candlestick over and exclaims in a ridiculously fake voice “Look! A ring!” Sam recognizes it as Maggie’s, and he and the sheriff are convinced it is conclusive evidence of Willie’s guilt.

For her part, Julia has made her way to Willie’s hospital room. She is there with Woodard when Willie shows signs of regaining consciousness. Woodard rushes out to tell the deputy to get the sheriff, and leaves Julia alone with Willie. She looks at Willie’s IV and remembers Barnabas urging her to kill him.

The sheriff and Sam are leaving Barnabas’ house with the ring when the deputy comes to the front door. He announces that Willie is coming to and is likely to start talking at any moment. We end with a closeup of a horrified Barnabas.

Closing Miscellany

In his post about this episode on The Collinsport Historical Society, Patrick McCray gives a fine analysis of the intentional comedy that runs throughout it. In his post on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn presents an equally fine analysis of the maybe not quite so intentional comedy of the thick-headed Dave, George, and Sam.

During the opening titles, announcer Bob Lloyd tells us that the part of Sheriff Patterson will be played by Vince O’Brien. This week’s episodes were shot out of broadcast sequence, so we will see Dana Elcar as Patterson one more time. O’Brien was on the show four times in January and February of 1967 as the second actor to play Lieutenant Dan Riley of the Maine State Police, an officer attached to an investigation concerning undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Patterson isn’t much of a character, and even an actor as distinguished as Elcar had trouble making him interesting. If we remember O’Brien from his time as Dan Riley Number Two, we know that he was a competent professional, but we won’t have much hope that he will outdo Dana Elcar.

O’Brien does show beyond all doubt that he belongs on Dark Shadows, though. While the closing credits are rolling, he strolls onto the set behind technical director J. J. Lupatkin’s name.

Screenshot and annotation by Danny Horn at Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 327: Snap! Like that.

For the last eight weeks, Dark Shadows has been presenting a riddle about strange and troubled boy David Collins. In #288, he wondered if mysterious little girl Sarah might be a ghost. Since then, he has seen her several times, and every time she has given fresh evidence to corroborate that hypothesis. When he isn’t with Sarah, David is either looking for her or fielding questions from adults who are anxious to make contact with her, and in the course of every search and every question he finds still more reason to suppose that she is a ghost. David had always been the first character to believe in ghosts, yet he kept resisting the obvious conclusion that Sarah was one.

Friday, David had a dream in which Sarah told him that she died when she was ten years old. In that same dream, David saw his cousin Barnabas rise from a coffin, greet Sarah warmly, and threaten him with his cane. Yesterday, David woke up and told his well-meaning governess Vicki that he now understood everything about Sarah, because he knew that she was a ghost. Vicki listened carefully to his dream. Much to his frustration, she tried to talk him out of taking it literally. But today, when David is out of earshot, Vicki twice shows the other adults that she regards David’s dream with the utmost seriousness.

In the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, mad scientist Julia Hoffman tries to hypnotize David so that he will stop making trouble for her co-conspirator Barnabas. Before she can induce the trance, David recognizes her medallion as the one a faceless woman held before his face in the dream. He flees from Julia and calls out for Vicki.

Vicki and matriarch Liz ask Julia what happened. Julia tries to play dumb, but Vicki recognizes her medallion both as the one David described when he was telling her about his dream and as the one Julia showed her and Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, when she dropped in on them at Maggie’s house in #298. During that visit, Vicki briefly left Julia and Maggie alone together. Before she left the room, Maggie was about to remember who abducted her and held her prisoner; after she came back, Maggie’s amnesia had returned in full force. During the interval, Julia had used the medallion to do a little emergency hypnosis, restoring the memory block that keeps Maggie from identifying Barnabas as her captor and as a vampire. Julia has reason to squirm when she realizes that Vicki has connected the medallion both with that incident and with David’s dream.

Vicki goes to David’s room to again try to talk him out of a supernatural reading of his dream. She finds him gazing into his crystal ball, looking for Sarah. He pleads with her to allow him to go look for Sarah. She resists, but he tells her that he saw Sarah in the crystal ball and that it won’t take him long to find her. He promises to tell Vicki what he and Sarah talk about. She lets him go, on condition that he be back within an hour.

The riddle of David’s long refusal to acknowledge that Sarah is a ghost is matched by the riddle of Vicki’s attitude. She has seen and interacted with ghosts on many occasions, a fact that is no secret from David. Both her recognition of Julia’s medallion and her acceptance of David’s claim to have seen Sarah in the crystal ball show that she knows she is operating in a world where supernatural forces are at work. Yet she keeps urging David back into “logical explanation”-land. Perhaps she has read Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw,” and doesn’t want there to be any ambiguity about whether the boy saw the ghosts himself or his crazy governess put the idea into his head.

David goes to the woods, hears the familiar strains of “London Bridge,” and sees Sarah. She tells him that she knows he saw her in his crystal ball. When he asks how she knows he was looking into his crystal ball, she answers only “I know lots of things.” He asks her about his dream; apparently that is not among the things she knows about, because it all comes as news to her. David tells her that in his dream, she told him that she was very sick when she was ten years old. She excitedly replies “That’s true!” He then says that she told him she died of that sickness. Even now, after the dream, after telling Vicki that Sarah is a ghost and shouting with frustration when she won’t agree, he follows up the idea that Sarah has died with “That isn’t true, is it, Sarah?”

Before Sarah can answer, Vicki’s depressing boyfriend Burke lumbers onto the scene. He hears David and Sarah’s voices and shouts “David!” Sarah then becomes alarmed and declares she has to go away. David asks her to stay, and goes to tell Burke to wait. By the time they turn around, Sarah has vanished.

Burke used to be an interesting character, back when he was a dashing action hero played by the charismatic Mitch Ryan. In fact, he was the one who gave David the crystal ball in the first place, back in #48. But he hasn’t had much to do on the show since his major storyline evaporated in #201, and now he is played by Anthony George, an actor whose cool, understated approach was the exact opposite of Ryan’s tendency to red-hot, larger than life reactions. In the scripts written by Ron Sproat, the part of Burke still depends on Ryan’s strengths, and George is entirely at sea with it. Today, Gordon Russell’s script takes advantage both of George’s actual abilities and of the dimwitted impression he has made previously.

David tells Burke that he doesn’t think Sarah will talk to anyone other than him from now on, not because she is shy, but because she doesn’t want anyone else to know that she is a ghost. Burke gives David a smug little speech about how foolish it is to believe in ghosts. David asks how Sarah got away so fast. Burke admits he doesn’t know. David gives Burke some details about Sarah’s way of vanishing into thin air, and he is left speechless.

“You don’t know much about Sarah, do you?” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Back in the drawing room, Burke tells Vicki and Liz that David thinks Sarah is a ghost. Liz reflexively asks if he ought to be taken to a doctor. Burke suavely says that he doesn’t believe it is as serious as all that, that David is just letting his imagination run away with him.

Vicki speaks up. She says that she disagrees with Burke on two points. First, she thinks the matter is very serious. Second, she doesn’t believe it has anything to do with David’s imagination. Sarah really is a ghost.

Burke starts giving another sanctimonious speech about how one oughtn’t to believe in ghosts. Some weeks ago, Sproat and recently-departed, never-lamented writer Malcolm Marmorstein had given Burke some angry speeches in which he demanded Vicki stop taking the supernatural seriously. Those speeches would have marked Burke as bad news had Mitch Ryan delivered them, but at least they might have suggested that he was going to become an interesting villain- coming from an actor as cold as Anthony George, they were just pointless nastiness. Vicki’s attempts to comply with Burke’s gaslighting campaign also did a lot of damage to her character in the audience’s eyes, presenting her as weak-willed and empty-headed.

But today, Gordon Russell doesn’t write Burke as a loudmouth or Vicki as an aspiring doormat. Instead, he lets George make a reasonable-sounding case in the quiet, detached manner in which he excelled, and he has Vicki surprise him with an equally quiet but unyielding disagreement. She tells Burke to hire all the private investigators he likes to use and tell them to search for Sarah. If they can produce the girl in the flesh, she will admit that she is mistaken. But she tells Burke that won’t happen, because “David is right- that little girl is a ghost.”

If we remember Vicki’s earlier attempts to submit to Burke’s gaslighting, this scene answers the riddle about her. She knows that there are a lot of Burkes and a lot of Lizzes in this world, and that if you want to get along with them you have to be able to present yourself as someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts. She is trying to teach David how to play the role of the practical-minded fellow who takes it for granted that what we can see in the plain light of day is all we have to concern ourselves with. If she and the other adults can shelter him from enough of the uncanny doings that she knows full well are afoot all around them, perhaps he might get through his childhood actually being something like that fellow. It worked out that way when David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, came to Collinwood to claim him- the storyline around her drew him deeper and deeper into the world of the occult, but once Vicki had rescued him and it was all over he didn’t remember anything about that side of it.

Upstairs, David is trying to sleep. Sarah appears in the corner of his room, lit from below. Laura stood on the same spot, in the same lighting, when she visited David while he slept in #150. His mother had called his name in a whispering voice and had a subtle message for him, but Sarah yells “David!” and says she’s ready to answer more questions.

“You said you had more questions to ask me.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

David doesn’t ask her if she died. Perhaps when he told Burke that she doesn’t want anyone to know that she is a ghost, he meant that he has realized it is a sensitive subject for her. He does ask about the coffin he saw in his dream. She says she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He says it was in a room that he felt he’d been in before, and she says maybe it was. He says he doesn’t know where it is, and she tells him that’s good- she doesn’t want him going anywhere near it.

David keeps talking about the coffin, and it dawns on him that it is in the basement of Barnabas’ house. She insists that he stay away from Barnabas’ house, that it isn’t safe for him there. She won’t answer any of his questions about that, but she keeps insisting that he stay away from Barnabas’ house.

David asks Sarah if Barnabas’ servant Willie really was the man who abducted Maggie, as the police think. Sarah answers, “Oh no, poor Willie only went to Maggie’s house to warn her.” David asks what he was trying to warn Maggie of, and Sarah says that she has to go away. She repeats that he must stay away from Barnabas’ house. He pleads with her to stay, but she dematerializes in front of him. This is the first time we’ve seen a ghost vanish in this way since #85, when the ghost of Bill Malloy appeared to Vicki, sang a sea shanty, and then disappeared. It’s also the first time Sarah has let David see her dematerialize. Evidently, she’s more relaxed about these things now that she’s out to him.

Closing Miscellany

There is a particularly funny blooper 14 minutes and 20 seconds into the episode, when Burke comes out of the door that leads to the bedrooms at Collinwood, an off-camera voice calls out “Go in!,” he turns around, goes back in the door, then comes out again with exactly the same expression on his face.

Burke and Vicki have a little conversation about why Julia spends so much time at Barnabas’ house. Burke guesses Julia might have “a mad crush on Barnabas.” Vicki reacts as if this is absurd. The same idea had occurred to Julia’s old acquaintance Dave Woodard, MD, in #324, and Julia had been delighted to find that she had inadvertently acquired a cover story. That Burke came up with the notion independently leads us to wonder if we will be hearing more about it, and that Vicki regards it as so self-evidently preposterous reminds us of the times she has seemed more interested in Barnabas than in Burke. Perhaps the Vicki/ Burke/ Barnabas love triangle has a future after all.

Episode 324: They shot the wrong man

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

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

David troubled. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 323: Partly responsible

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has amnesia and can’t remember who abducted her in episode #235 and held her prisoner until #260. So the police started a rumor that her memory was returning, camped out in her yard, shot the first guy who strayed into it, and declared him to be the guilty party.

The man with five bullets in his back is Willie Loomis, servant to Old World gentleman Barnabas Collins. Sheriff Patterson tells Maggie, her father Sam, and her boyfriend Joe that he will be going to visit Barnabas and break the news to him about Willie. Maggie expresses sympathy for “poor Barnabas,” who will no doubt be heartbroken to hear ill-tidings about Willie. Sam is sorry to hear the sheriff will have to blight the dear fellow’s night, but the sheriff says Barnabas must be told. Willie lives in Barnabas’ house and, so far as anyone knows, has no access to any other building. So if he held Maggie prisoner for five weeks, you’d think the sheriff would have more to do on a visit to Barnabas’ place than simply deliver a message.

As it happens, Barnabas is the one responsible for Maggie’s plight. Willie was trying to get to Maggie to warn her that Barnabas had heard that her memory was coming back and was on his way to kill her. When the sheriff gets to Barnabas’ house, he finds him with his co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Julia explains that she just came to the house to borrow a book. It’s four o’clock in the morning, by the way, but the sheriff takes that in stride and tells them what happened to Willie. He apologizes for disturbing them and says he can come back later if they would like. Barnabas says he wishes he could talk to Maggie, and the sheriff offers to take him and Julia to the Evans cottage. They accept this offer, and the sheriff goes outside to wait for them. Barnabas has long since cleaned up the evidence left over from Maggie’s weeks in his dungeon, so he doesn’t have to spend the time the sheriff so thoughtfully provides in tidying up. He and Julia can devote all of it to further conspiring.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Only Julia knows that Barnabas was the one who abducted Maggie in May, and only she knows that he has been planning to kill her ever since. But the sheriff and the Evanses drift into their own odd little conspiracy to shelter Barnabas from accountability.

Barnabas tells Maggie that he can’t help but “feel partly responsible” for what happened to her. She and Sam fall over themselves assuring him that he has nothing to feel bad about, that it was wonderful of him to try to rehabilitate Willie and that everyone was very impressed with how far he seemed to have got with that project.

Barnabas goes home. Julia accompanies him. She assures him that Willie will probably die, and urges him to relax, because he is “completely in the clear.” He bids her goodnight, by which I mean he grabs her throat and threatens to kill her if she is wrong. Once he is alone in the house, he thinks of the various people who might be able to bring his secrets to light. He settles on his ten year old cousin David, and resolves that “something must be done to keep him from exposing me, and it must be done soon!”

There is a touch of social satire in the deference everyone pays Barnabas. In #26, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins wanted a particular service from Sheriff Patterson’s predecessor, the hapless Constable Jonas Carter. He told Carter that “My family is responsible for over half the jobs in this town,” and made a dark reference to an upcoming election. In #32, Carter went along with the Collins family’s cover-up of a case involving David, and in #272 and #273 Sheriff Patterson himself showed a mind-bending amount of solicitude to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard when she called to report that she had murdered her husband and that his body was buried in her basement.

Among the jobs for which the town has the Collinses to thank was an important one of Sam’s. In #222, Barnabas commissioned Sam to paint his portrait. When he offered to pay $1000, Sam and Maggie’s electrified reactions showed that this was more money than they had seen in a long time. They have good reason to think as highly of Barnabas as they possibly can.

Not only is Barnabas a member of the Collins family of Collinsport, but he is, again unknown to any of his protectors but Julia, a vampire. As such, he is a symbol both of extreme selfishness and of the dead past holding back people who want to make a new future. Dark Shadows does not often explore political themes in depth, to put it mildly. But today it does give us a glimpse of the way working people can find themselves defending the position and privileges of their very deadliest enemies.

Closing Miscellany

Barnabas looks at a “portrait” of his little sister Sarah, who died in 1796. We’ve seen this “portrait” many times, but usually it was at something of a distance from the camera, often at an oblique angle, and rarely shown for more than a brief moment. The typical TV set in 1967 would have allowed the viewer to believe it was a painting. But this time it fills the screen and is stationary for several seconds. Even though this episode only survives in an especially low-quality kinescope, it is impossible to overlook the fact that it is a photograph of Sharon Smyth, the child actress who plays Sarah’s ghost, taken at least 30 years before Joseph Nicéphore Niépce built his first camera.

This episode has an unusually large cast. In addition to the six regular actors, three of Sheriff Patterson’s deputies appear. None of them is credited, but the Dark Shadows wiki names them as Ed Crowley, Ted Beniades, and Dennis Johnson.

Episode 322: Trust games

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, suffered from a mysterious illness beginning in episode #227; she was missing and feared dead beginning in #235; her father Sam found her on the beach in a state of complete mental and physical collapse in #260; she was confined to a sanitarium run by mad scientist Julia Hoffman until the permanently nine year old ghost of Sarah Collins helped her escape in #294; and in #295, Julia hypnotized her and induced a profound amnesia covering all of these events.

The author of Maggie’s woes is vampire Barnabas Collins, currently resident in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Julia has come to Collinwood disguised as an historian studying the old families of New England. Her true goal is to cure Barnabas of vampirism. In the course of that project, she has time and again shown an extraordinary callousness towards Maggie. She keeps trying to dissuade Barnabas from killing Maggie, but whenever it looks like he might do it anyway she exclaims that he will ruin all her work.

Today, Barnabas has heard that Maggie’s amnesia is lifting, and he has resolved to go through with the murder. He opens the door of his house to depart for his fell mission, only to see Julia standing before him.

Julia tells Barnabas he will ensure his own destruction if he kills Maggie. Barnabas says that he won’t be caught, and Julia laughingly agrees that he could easily get away with the crime. But she claims to have left a letter with a friend that will be opened and sent to the authorities in case either she or Maggie dies. Barnabas acquiesces in Julia’s insistence that he let Maggie live unless her memory does come back. Yesterday, she thought that she had persuaded Barnabas and was so impressed with herself that his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie could barely get through to her that he was setting out to kill Maggie. When Barnabas tells her that she has again gained “the upper hand” at the end of this scene, she flashes another look of self-satisfaction.

Julia leaves the Old House for the great house on the same estate, where she is the guest of the living members of the Collins family. There, Willie is waiting for her on the terrace. She tells him of her success at deceiving Barnabas, relishing the details and exulting when she tells him that Barnabas was frightened when she told him about the letter.

Willie is unconvinced that Barnabas really believed Julia, and in a lengthy interior monologue debates with himself about what he can and will do. He grows more and more miserable as he contemplates the prospect that he will continue to serve Barnabas while he kills everyone around him.

Barnabas has his own long interior monologues. He ruminates on Julia’s story about the letter and is sure that she would not expose him and give up her project simply because he had murdered Maggie. He does think that she might have taken some sort of precaution to protect her own life, but remembers that Julia said nothing about a letter on the previous occasions when he threatened to kill her. He concludes that she was lying, and sets out to complete his task. Before he can leave the house, “London Bridge” plays on the soundtrack, indicating that Sarah is present. In life, Sarah was Barnabas’ beloved baby sister, and he is desperate to see her again. He transforms instantly from a remorseless murder machine to a lonely man pleading for his dear little one to come to him.

Unknown to Barnabas, Julia, or Willie, the story that Maggie’s amnesia is lifting is false. Her friends have spread it to bait a trap. They hope that her abductor will hear it, panic, come to the Evans cottage, attract the attention of the many police officers hiding on the lawn, and then… it gets kind of fuzzy what they hope will happen at that point, but it is supposed to end the threat to Maggie.

Maggie’s boyfriend Joe shows up today with an antique doll. He says that before he came within twenty feet of the front door he was surrounded by police. Sam happily says that they would have shot Joe if he hadn’t come out of the house to vouch for him. Having told Maggie that the police are so trigger-happy that they will shoot anyone approaching the front door, Sam urges her to go to sleep. Apparently that is the sort of news that is supposed to bring sweet dreams.

We see two policemen on the lawn. They see a figure approaching the house. He is creeping in the darkness, not going towards the front door as Joe had done, nor is he carrying an antique doll. So they wait to see where he’s heading.

A shadow appears in the French windows of Maggie’s bedroom. We hear the police cry “Halt!”

The figure retreats from the windows, complying with that command. Evidently the reason they wanted him to stop was that they weren’t sure they could hit a moving target, because as soon as he does they open fire. A policeman comes into Maggie’s room and tells her she doesn’t have to worry any more, because they shot the man in the back at least five times.

So now we know what the plan was. Wait until someone wanders onto the Evans property, shoot him, and declare him to be the man who abducted Maggie. Case closed!

The episode leaves us in suspense as to who the police shot. Barnabas is presumably still at home pining for Sarah. The figure at the window didn’t look like Julia, and the policeman who enters refers to the victim as “he.” Joe and Sam are in the room with Maggie, and the police probably would have noticed if they’d shot one of their own men. So the only character who appears in the episode and is not accounted for is Willie. He wanted to warn Maggie, but thought he would be unable to do so. Perhaps he overcame Barnabas’ power and tried to go to her, or perhaps we will learn tomorrow that the man who has been shot is some other luckless schlub.