gay subtext – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 900: Precious possession

We open with the sight of a man (Dennis Patrick) sitting nervously on a chair placed in the middle of a pentagram marked on a rug. At each point of the pentagram there is a candle. The man is Paul Stoddard.

Paul’s precarious pentagram perch. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Regular viewers will remember #752, in which Quentin Collins was told to sit on a chair in the middle of a similar pentagram. Quentin’s friend, amateur warlock Evan Hanley, told him that by doing this he could keep from turning into a werewolf. Paul isn’t afraid of turning into a werewolf, and he doesn’t have a friend like Evan. His worry is vague, but urgent- he knows that someone is after him, that if that someone catches up to him they will do something horrible, and that whoever it is keeps sending him messages that it is time for him to pay his debt. But he has no idea who that is, what they will do, or what the debt they are talking about. Sitting in the pentagram was a suggestion that came from a sailor who ~~cruised him in a gay bar~~ met him in a local tavern.

Paul’s pursuers are a cult associated with mysterious beings known as “the Leviathan people.” It has been made clear to us that both Paul and his daughter, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, are, unknown to themselves, part of its orbit. In #888, Paul and Carolyn ran into each other at a cairn that is the cult’s ceremonial center and looked at it. Carolyn had been on its site many times, and could not understand why she had not seen it before. In #894/895, the cult’s acting leader, Carolyn’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins, took antique shop owner Philip Todd to the cairn. Philip told Barnabas he had walked past the site a few days before and that the cairn was not there then; Barnabas explained that only those connected with the Leviathan cult can see it. Barnabas has also been highly solicitous of Carolyn’s well-being since he became part of the cult, and he keeps telling her that he knows she has an extraordinary future ahead of her. So we know that the cult has plans for her, and Paul’s distress suggests that they have less attractive plans for him.

Paul sees the doorknob turning. He is terrified. Instead of the enemy Paul expects, Carolyn enters. He yells at her to leave. She stays. When he is unable to explain what he is afraid of, but that the pentagram on the floor will protect him, she notices that it is the same as the symbol she has been wearing on a chain around her neck. Barnabas gave it to her some days ago and urged her to wear it always. The audience knows, but she does not, that he intends it to protect her from the local werewolf. When she sees the similarity, the show invites us to wonder what the Leviathans have to do with werewolves. Carolyn tells Paul that if the symbol will protect him from his enemies in the form of chalk or gaffer tape on the floor, it will also protect him when it is composed of a silver pendant. He puts the pendant on and declares that he feels much better. He can no longer hear the voices that have been telling him his payment is due immediately. He embraces Carolyn and tells her he trusts only her.

When Carolyn mentioned Barnabas to Paul, he responded “Who is Barnabas?” Carolyn seems surprised he does not know, since she saw him near Barnabas’ house. Indeed, we saw him enter Barnabas’ house and wander through it the night he first returned to Collinwood, after an absence of twenty years. But he doesn’t remember anything about that.

Not that Carolyn’s own long acquaintance with Barnabas is all that enlightening to her just now. Ever since the Leviathans adopted him as one of their own, he has not been himself at all. We see him in his front parlor with mad scientist Julia Hoffman, who has for a year and a half been his inseparable best friend. She is trying to interest him in some information she has gathered about another storyline, and he makes it clear he could not be less interested in it or in her. She demands to know what he is interested in, and he refuses to answer. Carolyn enters, and suddenly Barnabas is all ears. Julia, frustrated, snaps that now she can see what he does care about.

In the autumn of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire and Julia had failed in an attempt to make him human again. He bit Carolyn and made her his blood thrall. He also decided that he would kill Julia to prevent her exposing him. Julia soon learned that Carolyn was both a wily operator and a most devoted servant. Julia had already realized that she was in so deep with Barnabas that she would be unlikely ever to make a life with anyone else, and so she conceived an unrequited love for him. In her dealings with Carolyn in those days, terror mingled with jealousy. Her bitter remark when she sees that Barnabas, who has been so dismissive of her, is now so concerned with Carolyn, reminds longtime viewers of that jealousy. Combined with the story of a daughter reunited with her long-absent and none too respectable father, this faint suggestion of a love triangle is enough to remind us that we are watching a daytime soap.

For her part, Carolyn was freed of her subservience to Barnabas as soon as he was freed of the effects of the vampire curse in March 1968. For some time, Nancy Barrett went out of her way to play Carolyn in a way that left us wondering if Carolyn remembered her time in his power. The scripts didn’t give her a lot of support in that endeavor, but the closeness she feels towards him combines with Julia’s jealousy to bring it back to our minds.

Carolyn has come to ask Julia to help Paul. Julia is back in the great house of Collinwood getting her medical bag to take to Paul’s hotel room when Paul himself bursts in. He demands to see Carolyn. Julia tells him that she left a little while ago to go to his hotel, and is probably there now. The telephone rings. Julia answers it, and tells Paul it is for him. This doesn’t strike her as odd, even though he hasn’t set foot there in twenty years, not since the night he left his wife Liz thinking she had killed him. Julia hands the phone to Paul. He expects to hear Carolyn, but instead hears the same voice that has been taunting him, saying that his bill is due now. He hangs up, and it starts ringing again. He forbids Julia to answer it, and runs out. We cut to his hotel room, and see that this time it is Carolyn trying to reach her father. Later, Carolyn will come home and Julia will tell her that Paul doesn’t seem to want help, however much he may need it.

Paul goes back to his room, and hears the phone there ringing. Terrified, he runs out, returning to the bar where he’d ~~picked up trade~~ met a new friend the night before. He sees another stranger sitting at a table, looking him over and beckoning him by rolling back one finger. The stranger is Barnabas.

Barnabas beckons Paul. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Paul reluctantly goes to the table, and Barnabas introduces himself. Paul says he doesn’t know Barnabas, but Barnabas makes it clear he knows all about Paul. He asks him to think back to the night he left Collinwood in 1949. We dissolve to a flashback.

Paul is at the bar, and another strange man strikes up a conversation with him. The man encourages him to assume that he has the power to grant any wish Paul might make in return for a price they would agree on. Paul says that in that case, he will ask for twenty years of boundless prosperity. At the end of those twenty years, Paul will give up anything he has, even his “most precious possession.” They shake hands on this deal. Paul laughs, and says he has won the game. He said that he would surrender anything he has, present tense- not anything he might gain in the course of his successful future, but anything he has as of 4 December 1949. On that date, Paul assures the man, he has nothing anyone could possibly want. The man laughs, and wants to drink to congratulate Paul on his cleverness.

Back in the present, Barnabas is laughing as heartily as the other man did twenty years before. He finds it preposterous that Paul could have forgotten such an important encounter. Paul can’t see anything important in it- it was just a silly little game, and its only consequence was that a strange man bought him a drink. Barnabas says that on the contrary, the bargain he struck was quite real. The Leviathans kept their side of it by giving him the success he has had over the last twenty years. Now that the twenty years are up, the time has come for them to claim the most precious possession he had the night he fled Collinwood.

Paul says that he supposes Barnabas is talking about his soul. He laughs heartily at that, and tells Barnabas that he is welcome to it. He is telling Paul that that is not what he meant as Carolyn enters. Paul is still laughing, and is delighted to see his daughter. She says she is relieved that the two of them found each other, and he tells her everything will be all right now. Barnabas says that Carolyn is her father’s most precious possession.

The scenes of Paul rushing around in a steadily mounting panic he is unable to explain are highly reminiscent of The Twilight Zone. The last line is a twist worthy of that classic series, especially as delivered by Jonathan Frid. His icy performance as Barnabas in these early episodes of the Leviathan arc not only recalls the malign representatives of alien powers on that show, but is superb in itself. He stumbles a little over his words in Barnabas’ scene with Julia, but is perfectly composed otherwise, and the effect is quite frightening.

I remarked on the gay subtext of the barroom scenes in the comment thread on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day:

So far, this has been the gayest storyline the show has taken on yet.

In 899, the sailor offers to buy Paul a drink, and Paul shouts “I buy my own drinks!” This isn’t subtext- any man getting that reaction in a bar will know that the other fellow has interpreted his offer as including more than the drink. Paul apologizes and becomes friendly, indicating that he is willing to abandon that interpretation and set aside the hostility that accompanied it.

In this episode, we’re back in the same bar. Barnabas beckons Paul to his table with his index finger. I invite any man who doesn’t think we are intended to read this as a reference to a sexual come-on to try that move on a homophobic tough guy in a bar.

Paul’s face shows his inner struggle as he tries to resist Barnabas’ advances, but he can’t. Barnabas coaxes him into reminiscing about yet another night in the same bar, when a casual encounter with yet another guy led to something that seemed at the time like a little harmless tomfoolery, but that has now grown into a threat to his relationship with his family, his standing in the community, his physical well-being, and everything else.

Comment by “Acilius,” left 12 December 2020 on Danny Horn, “Episode 900: The Long Con,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day, 18 July 2016.

In response to someone who said some kind words about that comment, I made a remark that I no longer think is very good:

Thanks! It’s a bit of a puzzle- so far as I know, none of the writers on the show at this time was gay, so I’m not sure why they decided to go so deep into these themes just then.

Comment by “Acilius,” left 11 April 2021 on Danny Horn, “Episode 900: The Long Con,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day, 18 July 2016.

What I think now, and probably would have thought then if I had stopped and considered it for a minute before I hit “Post Comment,” is that the writing staff’s sexuality has nothing to do with it. They were worldly, sophisticated people with long experience in the theatrical profession in New York City. They all probably had many gay friends, and when they are called upon to write a story about people being drawn into a secret underworld and learning uncomfortable truths about themselves in the process their minds will naturally turn to themes having to do with closeted homosexuality. Granted, that doesn’t fully account for Christopher Bernau’s decision to play Philip as a much queenier version of Paul Lynde, but it is hardly a “puzzle” that the writers would draw on motifs suggestive of the closet when that’s the story they have to work with.

The man who met Paul in the bar in 1949 is unnamed in today’s dialogue, but will later be referred to as Mr Strak. Strak is played by John Harkins, who appeared in #174 as Lieutenant Costa of the Arizona State Police and in #878, 879, 880, 881, and 883 as Garth Blackwood, formerly the keeper of England’s Dartmoor Prison, and by that time a creature raised from Hell to wreak vengeance on an escaped prisoner and anyone else who caught his attention.

Strak’s name may remind longtime viewers of another minor character whom we saw in episodes #1 and #2, Wilbur Strake, private eye. We saw Strake in this same bar, where he gave reports about Carolyn and other members of the Collins family to his employer, Burke Devlin. Like Strak, Strake was a rather smug, sardonic sort. Add to this the rarity of the names “Strak” and “Strake” and the fact that they sound so much alike, and it seems obvious that there is an intentional reference of some kind. Paul’s presence in this storyline is the result of the writers reaching back to the show’s early days to find a loose end they could attach to this storyline to incorporate it into the Collins family saga, so they probably were looking through the scripts from the first week. Still, I can’t imagine they thought many people would remember Wilbur Strake by this point. Likely the reference is an inside joke, but who was on the inside and what the point of the joke was, I can’t begin to guess.

I wasn’t writing detailed posts with background information when I covered the first weeks of the show, so I will mention here Strake was played by Joseph Julian, who later became a regular on Somerset, a soap that aired on NBC opposite Dark Shadows for the last year of its run. The cast of Somerset included several Dark Shadows alums, including Dennis Patrick, Joel Crothers, and Christopher Pennock in major roles, and, as day players, Dolph Sweet and Humbert Allen Astredo.

Episode 899: How well I remember that charm of yours

When Dark Shadows debuted in June 1966, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett) had not left the estate of Collinwood in eighteen years. We soon gathered that Liz was afraid that if she strayed far from the house someone might open the locked room in the basement and discover that her husband Paul was buried there, dead of a blow she dealt him when he was trying to run off with a chunk of her patrimony.

Liz’ reclusiveness was a major theme of Dark Shadows‘ first 55 weeks. After the show committed itself to becoming a supernatural thriller with the story of Laura the humanoid Phoenix, which ran from December 1966 to March 1967, they brought in Paul’s old friend and partner in crime Jason McGuire (Dennis Patrick) as an in-betweener to sweep away the few miscellaneous this-worldly narrative threads not already subsumed in the Laura story and to help introduce the next uncanny Big Bad, vampire Barnabas Collins.

It turned out Jason was the one who agreed to bury Paul for Liz, in return for the money Paul had been trying to steal from her. Upon his return to Collinwood, Jason blackmailed Liz with this information. Time and again she caved in to his demands. Liz let him stay in the great house, gave him money, hired him for a lucrative non-job in the family business, let his rapey sidekick Willie Loomis stay in a room just down the hall from those occupied by her daughter Carolyn Stoddard and her all-but-acknowledged daughter, well-meaning governess Victoria Winters, and was in the middle of a wedding ceremony meant to unite her with Jason when she finally burst out with the truth. When she did that, Carolyn dropped the loaded pistol with which she had planned to prevent Jason becoming her stepfather. For his part, Jason said that Paul wasn’t dead, and that he hadn’t buried him. Perhaps the whole thing started when Jason said “cranberry sauce,” and Liz misheard it as “I buried Paul.” With that, the wedding was off, and a few days later Barnabas killed Jason. Since Jason was on his way out of town and had no friends left, no one missed him. He has barely been mentioned since.

Now, Paul himself has come back. Like Jason, he is played by Dennis Patrick. He has charmed Carolyn into thinking he had nothing to do with faking his own death, and she is falling over herself in her eagerness to establish a relationship with the father who left the family when she was an infant. Carolyn and Liz are on their way out the front door of the great house, heading to a committee in charge of raising funds for the hospital, when the phone rings. It is Paul, asking Carolyn to come to his hotel room at once. She agrees. She gives her mother a vague excuse, irking her, and the women leave the house separately.

In the hotel room, Paul tells Carolyn that he is in some kind of trouble that he can’t explain. Someone is trying to do something terrible to him, but he does not know who or what. Carolyn takes a firm tone when she urges him to tell her what he does know, and when she tells him that whatever is happening she will help him.

Father and daughter embrace, and Liz enters. She is furious to see Paul. She demands Carolyn leave the room. Only when Paul says that he and Liz need a moment together does Carolyn comply. The ex-spouses have a confrontation in which Liz gets to voice her righteous indignation with Paul. She tells him that she expects him to be on the next train out of town. She lists some of the people she will call if he isn’t. Among these is the proprietor of the hotel, who will presumably throw him out in the street at her behest.

In its first months, Dark Shadows tended to attract an aging audience, largely composed of people who still thought of Joan Bennett as the star she was in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Now, with its cast of vampires and werewolves and witches and ghosts and zombies and mad scientists and heaven knows what, it is more of a kid’s show. By the end of the costume drama segment set in the year 1897 that ran from March to November of 1969, viewers over the age of twelve would find themselves reacting to more and more episodes with little more than an indulgent chuckle.

Now that they have returned to contemporary dress, they have swung sharply back towards an adult audience. Carolyn was supposed to be a teenager when the show started; Nancy Barrett was significantly older than the character, and they let Carolyn catch up to her age after a while. But having her spend her evenings serving alongside her mother on the hospital’s fundraising board suggests that they’ve aged her up quite a bit further than that, foreclosing any youth-oriented stories. The conventionally soapy situation the Stoddards find themselves in today is of course something that will be of little interest to the elementary school students who are running home to see the show at this period. And while the main overall story is supernatural, about a cult controlled by unseen beings called the Leviathans that assimilates to itself one character after another, it is understated in tone, allegorical in development, and densely allusive in its relation to its literary antecedents. However many older viewers the show may have lost in the second half of the 1897 segment, they are in danger of shaking off an even larger number of their very young fans if they continue down this road.

In Art Wallace’s original story bible for Dark Shadows, titled “Shadows on the Wall,” the blackmail story was to be followed immediately by Paul’s return. Wallace called for Paul to be a man pursued by dark forces from his past. They made major changes to “Shadows on the Wall” long before they taped the first episode, and it has been almost entirely forgotten for years now. Indeed writer Ron Sproat, who was with the show from October 1966 to January 1969, said that executive producer Dan Curtis told him when he joined the staff that they were going to be leaving “Shadows on the Wall” behind and never let him see it. But they did dip into it in the case of Paul’s return- he is indeed being pursued by dark forces from his past. The Leviathan cult is after him.

After his confrontation with Liz, we see Paul sitting at the bar in the Blue Whale tavern. The jukebox plays a tune familiar from the early days of the show, when the Blue Whale was a frequent set and there were usually extras dancing in the background. Today the only people we see there are Paul and a middle aged sailor sitting next to him.

The sailor keeps looking at Paul. We hear Paul’s thoughts as he wonders if the sailor is “one of them.” Paul irritably asks him why he is looking at him. The sailor says that he wants to buy Paul a drink. Paul angrily snaps back that “I buy my own drinks!” After some sharp words, the two men warm to each other. They wind up getting handsy with each other and disappear for some private time together.

Paul and his new fella. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This scene turns out to be motivated by the two men’s mutual awareness of the Leviathan cult. Over the years, I’ve seen lots of guys in bars interact with each other in exactly this way. I don’t know what that’s all about, maybe the Leviathans are real.

Since I mentioned “Shadows on the Wall” above, I should say that the tavern figures in there as well. Only it isn’t called “The Blue Whale,” but “The Rainbow Bar.” I don’t know, somehow I think Paul and the sailor might not have got off to such a rocky start if the show had gone with that name. Sounds friendlier, somehow, at least to lonesome sailors and the mature men for whom they want to buy drinks.

Paul’s new buddy, unnamed in the dialogue, is identified in the closing credits as “Jack Long.” He is played by Kenneth McMillan, in his first screen credit. In the 1970s and 1980s, McMillan was one of the busiest television actors in the USA. I always mixed him up with Dolph Sweet, who was a similar physical type. Sweet appeared on Dark Shadows once, in #99. He played Ezra Hearne, the most loyal employee at Liz’ cannery. Sweet was a tremendous actor, McMillan a very good one, and they occasionally worked together. So long as they are doing normal soap opera stuff, it would have been nice if they could have had a little story about Ezra’s reunion with his long-lost cousin Jack. Maybe Jack could have introduced Paul to Ezra, we could have seen how he’d fit in with the family.

Episode 810: Not with pity

Charity Trask is in the drawing room of the great house on the estate of Collinwood trying to call the police when her abusive step-uncle, Quentin Collins, comes out of a secret panel and takes the telephone from her. He tells her that there is no longer any point in telling the police about Tessie, the injured woman upstairs. Tessie won’t be telling them anything. She has died. Apparently the sheriff of Collinsport is the same in 1897 as are his counterparts in other periods when Dark Shadows has been set- if you’re already dead, it’s too late for them to take an interest in you.

Charity says that Quentin killed Tessie. Charity knows that Quentin is a werewolf. He locks the door to the room and asks “Are you afraid to be locked in alone with a beast, a murderer, a creature of the supernatural?” This would seem to be rather an odd question, especially since he spent yesterday’s whole episode threatening to kill her.

Charity says that her father, Gregory Trask, will see to it that Quentin is brought to justice. Quentin takes a paper from his pocket and shows it to Charity. It is a confession to the murder of Charity’s mother, signed by her father. Charity claims that it was fabricated by Satan, which is what her father told her when she first saw it, and that Trask repeatedly tried to destroy it. This only convinces Quentin that the confession is true. He says that if either Charity or her father tells the police about him, he will hand over the paper. He adds “Now, Charity, I may hang for murder, but your father will be dancing at the end of a rope, too.”

Dark Shadows is set in the state of Maine, which in our universe abolished capital punishment in 1887. That used to be true in the show’s universe, as well. In #101, broadcast and set in November 1966, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins told his son, strange and troubled boy David, that “They don’t hang people anymore. Not in this state, anyway.” But by the time the show left the 1960s for its first costume drama segment a year later, characters were already afraid of being sentenced to death. The morbid fascination of the gallows is so much of a piece with the show’s exaggerated melodrama that there must be a death penalty, no matter when or where the action is supposed to be taking place.

Quentin tells Charity that there is a chance- a small chance, he concedes- that he will be cured of lycanthropy before the next full Moon, so that she need not feel that she is an accessory to murder if she doesn’t turn him in right away. Miserable, frightened, and confused, she takes this seriously enough that she remains quiet at least through this episode.

We cut to a hiding place where a man known as Aristide is looking at himself in a mirror and primping his hair, moving his fingers through it with an exaggerated daintiness. We pan to broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi , who impatiently asks “Did you send for me so there would be two of us to admire you?” Aristide has some business to discuss relating to plot points not directly involved in this episode, and he and Magda trade menacing insinuations about the danger each faces from the various supernatural forces at work in the area. Magda says that what the ziganophobic Aristide calls her “Gypsy cunning” will protect her, and Aristide says that an amulet he wears around his neck will protect him.

Magda replies “All right, we’ve both got something to protect us. I go now,” and starts to leave. Aristide stops her, and says that she must recover the severed hand of Count Petofi. She says that a man named Tim Shaw stole the hand and ran off with it, and she has no way of knowing where Tim is. Aristide says she must find out and bring it soon, “before time runs out.” She asks “Before time runs out for who? You mean when Petofi comes back!” In fact, Aristide means more than that- his master, 150 year old sorcerer Count Petofi, will die in a matter of days unless he is reunited with the hand that was cut from his right arm a century before, in 1797. If he does recover the hand in time, he will become immortal. Magda fears Petofi and hates him, and would doubtless make any sacrifice to keep the hand away from him if she knew these were the stakes. So Aristide is mortified that he let slip the phrase “before time runs out,” and is anxious to avoid saying anything else.

Back at Collinwood, Quentin confers with a Mrs Fillmore. Mrs Fillmore has been looking after the twin children Quentin’s wife Jenny bore him after he left her and before he murdered her. This is the first time we have seen Mrs Fillmore. It is also the first confirmation we have had that Quentin has seen Mrs Fillmore. He didn’t know about the twins until #798, when the boy twin was already dead as the result of a curse that a woman named Julianka placed on Magda, who is Jenny’s sister. Now Mrs Fillmore tells Quentin that the girl is suffering the same symptoms the boy showed before he died, and that the doctor is at a loss what to do for her. Quentin says he will look for someone who might be able to help, and they both exit.

Charity is alone in the drawing room, making an earnest effort to get drunk. Magda enters and expresses surprise that the unbendingly prudish Charity has been drinking. Charity replies that she merely ate some chocolates that were filled with brandy. At the sight of an empty snifter, she says that after eating the chocolates she poured herself a small brandy. She then picks up and drinks another, regular-sized brandy. Charity starts talking about how terrible life at Collinwood is. Magda mentions Tim Shaw, who was once Charity’s fiancé and who was framed for her mother’s murder. Charity wonders if Magda can use the Tarot cards to find Tim and bring him back. She asks if Tim will have to tell the truth if he comes back, and Magda assures her that he will. Magda may assume that the truth Charity wants is about the end of her relationship with Tim; she does not know that Charity is desperate to revert to believing that Tim, not her father, murdered her mother.

Magda asks Charity to tell her as much as she can about Tim. Charity says that when Tim was a boy, his closest friend was named Stephen Simmons, and that “He and Stephen Simmons used to always say they would go to San Francisco when they grew up.” Magda asks where Stephen Simmons is now, and Charity says she thinks he lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. She goes to her bedroom to look for a Christmas card Stephen sent her last year, hoping it may have his current address.

Quentin returns and finds Magda. He asks Magda how she knew about his daughter. She asks what he means. When Quentin tells her that the girl is suffering the same symptoms that her brother showed immediately before his death, they rack their brains to come up with a potential defense against Julianka’s curse. Magda remembers Aristide’s amulet. It is capable of warding off vampires and witches- perhaps it will defend against Julianka as well. Magda tells Quentin where Aristide is hiding, and he decides to go to Aristide and rob him of the amulet.

Aristide is asleep when Quentin arrives. He awakens before Quentin can take the amulet, and declares “This pendant protects me from witches, warlocks, and unnatural spirits.” Quentin asks “How does it do against flesh and blood, Aristide?” Aristide draws a curvy piece of wood with no sharp edges and replies “For flesh and blood, I have The Dancing Lady.” The piece of wood is supposed to be a knife. When Aristide first displayed it in #792, he called it “The Dancing Girl.” Perhaps this is a case of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, and in a couple of weeks it will be The Dancing Dowager, then The Dancing Crone. At any rate, Quentin replies “Then let her dance, Aristide, let her dance.” Quentin wins the subsequent fistfight. He knocks Aristide senseless, then takes the amulet from him.

Quentin and Magda go to Mrs Fillmore’s house, the first time we have seen this set. Appropriately for a member of the Collins family, the baby sleeps in a cradle shaped like a coffin.

Collins coffin cradle. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin talks with Mrs Fillmore about little “Lenore,” a name we have not heard before today. The only other girl of Lenore’s generation in the Collins family is the daughter of Quentin’s brother Edward, and she is named Nora. Since the name “Lenore” became popular outside Greece because speakers of English and French thought it was an alternative form of “Nora,” that would suggest rather a limited imagination regarding girl’s names on the part of whoever chose them.

But it is appropriate that Quentin and Edward have children with similar names. They are two variations on Dark Shadows’ first archvillain, Roger, whose evil largely expressed itself in his amazingly bad parenting of David. Edward’s attentive and caring interactions with Nora and her brother Jamison show that he is a less villainous Roger, while Quentin’s frequent assaults on his adult family members are among the evidence that he is an even worse version of the same character. Jamison is the only child we have seen Quentin interact with, and he is fond of him. But while we were still in the 1960s, Quentin’s ghost was possessing and killing the children at Collinwood, and in #710, only two weeks into the 1897 flashback, he and his fellow Satanist Evan Hanley used Jamison as a “sacrificial lamb” in a ritual meant to exploit his innocence for their own sinister purposes. Clearly, Quentin is no more to be trusted with the care of a child than was the early Roger.

Quentin asks Mrs Fillmore to leave him and Magda alone with Lenore. They apply the amulet, and it does not seem to work. Magda tries to raise the spirit of Julianka. After some pleadings and whatnot, there is thunder, wind, and other signs of ghostly presence. Magda cries out in hope that Julianka has come with pity. A figure materializes and says “Not with pity, Magda.” But the figure is not Julianka. It is Jenny.

In #804, we saw a photograph of Jenny in Quentin’s room. It was a full length picture in a period-appropriate costume, not just Marie Wallace’s professional headshot, raising a hope that we would see Miss Wallace again before too long. But after a week and a half, those hopes had begun to fade. Perhaps they took the picture months ago and never got around to using it when Jenny was on the show. If they had done that, they wouldn’t be above sticking in a scene of Quentin looking at the picture and discussing it with his distant cousin Barnabas the vampire so that they could get their money’s worth out of it. When Miss Wallace does in fact return, the show sends us out on a high note.

Episode 804: He is a gem, isn’t he

The evil Count Petofi, a 150 year old sorcerer, has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins and is wreaking havoc in the great house of Collinwood. Due to Petofi’s spells, Jamison’s father Edward thinks he is a valet recently separated from the service of the Earl of Hampshire. Edward’s brother Quentin tries to explain to him what is actually going on, but Edward merely concludes that he is Quentin’s valet now. When Quentin follows the Collinses’ long-established protocol for dealing with mentally ill family members and locks Edward in the tower room, Edward bangs on the door and protests that he won’t be able to do his job if he is locked up. “And I will do it!” he vows.

Charity Trask, disastrously uptight step-daughter of Quentin and Edward’s sister Judith, falls under Petofi’s influence and is possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Pansy was on the show briefly in June. The childlike Carl Collins, brother to Judith, Edward, and Quentin, was engaged to marry Pansy before she was killed by vampire Dirk Wilkins. Pansy and Charity never met; when Carl asked Charity if she had seen Pansy, the scene was staged to make it seem absurd that the two women could exist in the same universe. Now, they exist in the same body.

Ta Ra Boom De Ayyyy… Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

If Petofi has caused startling changes in Jamison, Edward, and Charity, the change in Quentin is perhaps the most jarring of all. He has been a ghost, a homicidal maniac, a Satanist, a zombie, and a werewolf, but always and everywhere a source of total chaos, who destroys all recognized order and is perfectly at home in the midst of sheer madness. Today, Quentin keeps making earnest attempts to restore everyone to their right minds and reestablish the proper and respectable relations within the household.

First time viewers will immediately catch on that the preteen David Henesy is not the actor who would usually play a 150 year old Hungarian nobleman, and when Nancy Barrett suddenly takes on an East London accent and enters wearing a garish costume and doing a dance with lot of hip shaking and pelvic thrusts, they will know that Charity is turning into someone else. The dialogue in the scenes involving Edward explains what is happening to him. They may not know that Quentin is not supposed to be the defender of the status quo. That information is supplied in two scenes. Charity/ Pansy receives a psychic message from the world beyond telling her that Quentin was involved in the murder of Carl, and she announces this information. Also, Quentin calls for help, and the helper who materializes is his distant cousin, Barnabas Collins the vampire.

At the end of the episode, Barnabas lays hold of Jamison/ Petofi and drags him into the secret passage leading from the drawing room to the west wing. It is usually bad news when a vampire abducts a child and shoves him into a dark space, but David Henesy brings such joy to the role of Jamison/ Petofi that we can hardly doubt that what comes next will be equally fun to watch.

Meanwhile, a painter named Charles Delaware Tate has presented himself. Tate’s first appearance will cause a sinking sensation in longtime viewers; he is played by Roger Davis, a terrible actor who delivers much of his dialogue by shouting while clenching the sphincter muscles in his buttocks, and who routinely assaults the women and children in the cast while on camera. We may have hoped we had seen the last of Mr Davis when his most recent character, Dirk, was destroyed shortly after murdering Pansy. But evidently Pansy’s return in the form of another actress has come at the price of Mr Davis’ return in the guise of another character.

For much of 1968, Mr Davis played a man known variously as Peter Bradford and Jeff Clark. His approach to characterization consisted of shouting “My name is Jeff Clark!” When this technique was played out, he took to shouting “My name is Peter Bradford!” He doesn’t shout today, mercifully. But he does say the name “Charles Delaware Tate” quite a few times.

Today’s story about Tate is potentially interesting. Jamison/ Petofi finds him when he answers the front door. Tate asks to see Jamison Collins; Jamison/ Petofi confirms that despite his appearance, he is indeed the person Tate has come to see. Tate accepts this with a blandness that suggests that he knows he is dealing with a magical personage.

Jamison/ Petofi gives Tate a photograph of Quentin and says that he wants a portrait of him. When Quentin comes to the drawing room and finds Tate sketching, he asks who he is. Again, Quentin adopts a stern tone which suits someone defending the sanctity of private property against an unknown intruder. Tate introduces himself and shows him a handwritten letter which Quentin instantly accepts as the product of his grandmother Edith. He tells Tate that Edith has been dead for some time and that he is not interested in a portrait of himself. Tate says that he has already accepted the commission and the money that Edith sent with it, and so he will rent lodgings in the village of Collinsport and finish the job regardless. Quentin does what viewers have hoped everyone who shared a scene with one of Mr Davis’ characters would do, and throws him out.

The forged letter is a fascinating touch for returning viewers. Petofi made himself welcome as a guest at Collinwood by showing Edward forged papers creating the impression that he shared Edward’s friendship with the Earl of Hampshire. That he has also created papers that Quentin immediately accepts as coming from Edith, who died long before Petofi had any reason to come to Collinwood, suggests that his powers of forgery are very extensive indeed.

Tate not only seems to know that Petofi has magical powers; he also shows an acquaintance with Petofi’s henchman Aristide.* When Tate mentions Aristide, he calls him “Aristeedy,” a sort of pet name with a diminutive suffix. This is probably just a blooper on the part of Mr Davis, but since Petofi is continually telling Aristide how lovely he is and how he is more attractive when he doesn’t speak, it does remind us of the gay subtext that runs through their scenes together. We might suspect that Petofi and Aristide’s sexuality is in one way or another one of the reasons they are connected to Tate.

The script opens all of these questions about Tate. Had he been played by an actor who was capable of depicting depth and highlighting ambiguity, it could have been a lot of fun to speculate about just what their answers might be. In #137, future movie star Frederic Forrest was a featured extra on the dance floor at The Blue Whale tavern; it’s easy to suppose he would have taken a speaking part. So when the show puts Mr Davis in front of us, I like to make the time a little more tolerable by imagining what Forrest might have brought to the role of Tate.

*His name is spelled “Aristede” in the closing credits, but it was “Aristide” in the original scripts.

Episode 798: A gift from the unicorn

In the first few decades of commercial television, ambitious shows tended to imitate live theater; since, they’ve tended to imitate feature films. Today’s episode is one of Dark Shadows’ stagiest, and it is a strong one.

The rakish Quentin Collins has lost his hopes of being cured of werewolf-ism, and is moping in the gazebo on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. He is staring at a revolver, trying to talk himself into committing suicide. He hears two men approaching, and takes cover in some nearby bushes. The men are known to Quentin by the names “Aristide” and “Victor Fenn Gibbon.”* The set is so small that the actors are only a few feet away from each other, but we are supposed to believe that Quentin can’t quite hear what Aristide and Fenn Gibbon are saying. So when the camera is placed at Quentin’s point of view, Michael Stroka and Thayer David vigorously mime the act of talking.

Quentin listens in from a great distance. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin sees Fenn Gibbon slap Aristide’s face. Aristide responds, not with violence of his own, but with a continuation of the talking he had been doing before, showing Quentin that Fenn Gibbon is Aristide’s boss. The other day, Aristide tied Quentin to a table and tried to kill him by reenacting Poe’s “Pit and the Pendulum,” so this tells Quentin that Fenn Gibbon is his deadly enemy.

We hear some of Aristide and Fenn Gibbon’s dialogue. Fenn Gibbon and Aristide are based on Gutman and Wilmer from The Maltese Falcon. In their previous appearances, Aristide has been eager to connect with every attractive young woman he sees, suggesting that we would not see the strong suggestions of a sexual relationship that come with Gutman and Wilmer both in Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel and the 1941 film. But today, Aristide’s unshocked reaction to Fenn Gibbon’s slap shows that he is accustomed to robust forms of physical contact with him, and when Fenn Gibbon tells Aristide that “I’m aware of your charms, my dear Aristide, but I know only too well conversation is not among them,” we can see that there is going to be a substantial gay subtext.

Fenn Gibbon is one of two roles Thayer David plays today. He appears in the opening teaser as broad ethnic stereotype Sandor Rákóczi, husband of the even more offensively conceived Magda. Yesterday, Magda was placed under a curse. At that time, the curse was that everyone who loved Magda would die, but today it is that everyone she loves will die. When Magda talks about the curse with visiting vampire Barnabas Collins, he says that he is under the same curse, which is exactly true- in #705, he was told that everyone who loved him would die, and from the next episode on it was said that everyone he loved would die. Whichever way the curse is put, one would expect it to strike terror in Magda’s heart regarding Sandor. They are a happily married couple, the only one we ever see on Dark Shadows, and so one would expect him to be the first victim of the curse.

The curse was supposed to start when Magda heard three knocks on the front door of her home, the Old House at Collinwood. She hears the knocks, opens the door, and sees Sandor. She immediately falls into the same pattern she exhibits every time she sees Sandor, accusing him of infidelity, accusing him of coming back to her only because he has run out of money, telling him not to bother to lie to her, and generally having a wonderful time. But he is standing rigidly still, his eyes are glazed over, and he can speak only a few words, none of them the usual insults they exchange. He falls dead, a knife in his back. Barnabas touches his body, and says that it is cold, as if he had been dead a long time.

Later, Magda goes to Mrs Fillmore, a woman in the village of Collinsport. Quentin’s late wife Jenny was Magda’s sister. Unknown to Quentin, Jenny gave birth to twins after he left her, and his brother Edward decreed that the twins would be raised by Mrs Fillmore. Magda has never seen the twins, but she loves them nevertheless- the boy twin, anyway; she tells Barnabas that “Gypsies do not prize girls.” When she comes back to the Old House, Magda tells Barnabas and Quentin that the boy twin is dead. Mrs Fillmore said he was perfectly healthy that evening, then she heard a mysterious scream from the children’s bedroom and she found him dead in his crib. His body was cold, as if he had been dead a long time. Quentin is numb, bewildered to learn that he was a father and simultaneously to learn that he has outlived his son.

There have been other episodes in which an actor played one character as a living being and another as a ghost. There have also been episodes that jumped between two periods in history, and in those there were actors who played one character in one time frame and a different one in the other. Thayer David’s doubling as Sandor and as Fenn Gibbon makes this the first episode in which the same actor plays two living beings contemporary with each other in the same episode.

Sandor’s death and Fenn Gibbon’s ascent to prominence mark a transition in the show. They are in the middle of a bloodbath, killing off a great many of the characters who have defined the first twenty weeks of the 1897 flashback. Previously, that has meant they were getting ready to reset the show and go back to contemporary dress. But 1897 has been such a hit that a transition need not mean a return to the 1960s. There is still enough going on in this period that they can introduce a bunch of new characters, develop some new stories, and get a new phase of Dark Shadows started right here in the late Victorian era. Who knows- if they play their cards right, this period might be the new home base for the show, and the 1960s might be an afterthought.

The contemporary world does make one appearance today. Before their encounter at the gazebo, Fenn Gibbon meets Quentin in the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood. Quentin is studying the Moon. The two of them have a little exchange about Quentin’s fascination with the Moon; considering that this episode aired a few hours after Apollo 11 lifted off on the journey that would put the first crew on the Moon, that fascination must have been pretty widely shared by the original audience.

*In this episode, everyone says “Fenn Gibbons,” which we have heard before. But the credits read “Fenn Gibbon,” so I’m sticking with that version.

Episode 794: The hand doesn’t always bring out the best in people

Soap operas usually have at least one set representing a public gathering place where characters can meet one another unexpectedly. By this point in the development of Dark Shadows, the population of its universe is so heavy with monsters and witches that unexpected meetings usually take place in graveyards, or basements, or out in the woods someplace. But for the first seventy three weeks of the show, one of the most important meeting places was a tavern called The Blue Whale, and as the bartender Bob O’Connell was a significant, though almost always silent, presence.

The Blue Whale has been mentioned occasionally since those days, most recently in #704, shortly after vampire Barnabas Collins traveled back in time to the year 1897. Today is the first time we visit the Blue Whale in the 1897 segment, and the first time we have seen Bob O’Connell as the man pouring since #439, when Dark Shadows was set in the 1790s. In those days, the tavern was called The Eagle and O’Connell’s character’s name was Mr Mooney.

When we arrive at the tavern today, there is only one customer, a young man sitting at a table. When the bartender sets a drink in front of him, he orders a Chartreuse. The bartender moves to take the drink he has just served, apparently thinking the young man changed his mind, but the young man explains that he is waiting for someone else. This man, a heavyset fellow with gray side whiskers, enters a moment before the bartender brings his liqueur.

The bartender wonders if Aristide still wants the drink he originally ordered. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The younger man is known to returning viewers as a knife-wielding criminal named Aristide, the older as his master, who calls himself Victor Fenn Gibbon. The two urgently discuss a woman named Angelique. Fenn Gibbon tells Aristide that he can almost forgive him for being so distracted by Angelique’s beauty that he allowed her to take “the Hand” from him, and furthermore that she appears to have magical powers. He says that he showed forged papers to one Edward Collins, and that on the basis of those papers Edward concluded that he was “a member of the British aristocracy” and invited him to stay at the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Aristide will have to stay in the village of Collinsport, since Fenn Gibbon does not want their association to become known to the Collinses. Aristide is bitterly disappointed.

This will remind longtime viewers of seagoing con man Jason McGuire and his sidekick, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis. Jason turned up in March 1967 with a sinister plan and soon took up residence as a guest at Collinwood. Shortly afterward, Willie joined him. At first Jason insisted Willie stay in town. He made that insistence while sitting at virtually the same spot Fenn Gibbon and Aristide occupy today, and Willie reacted with the same disappointment Aristide shows when he was told to stay in a flophouse when his co-conspirator was to be a guest in a mansion.

When Fenn Gibbon tells us that the letters he showed Edward were forgeries, he raises the question of his real name. He seems to have a whimsical sense of humor, and a double barreled name that sounds like a species of small ape found in a peat marsh would appeal to someone trying to test the credulity of an American impressed by the naming conventions of the British upper classes. And indeed, returning viewers know that Edward lacks a sense of humor, is quite a snob, and displays all the tell-tale signs of a hopeless case of Anglophilia.

A small young woman takes her place at the bar. Fenn Gibbon recognizes her as of Romani extraction. He becomes agitated and leaves, but directs Aristide to get to know her. Aristide, whom returning viewers saw meet with misfortune when he tried to pick up Angelique, gladly complies. She responds to his initial approach with a flat declaration that she isn’t interested, but when he mentions the other Romani people in the area, she perks up. She gives her name as Julianka, and asks if he knows a woman named Magda. He says he has met her.

This will intrigue returning viewers. The other day, Aristide robbed Edward’s brother Quentin of the legendary “Hand of Count Petofi,” a severed appendage which broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi had stolen from Romani chieftain/ organized crime boss King Johnny Romana and which she plans to use to lift a curse she had placed that made Quentin a werewolf. When Quentin told Magda what had happened, he described Aristide only as a “young man.” If Magda really has met Aristide, Quentin’s reticent reply would have cost him an opportunity to help Magda figure out who her enemies really are.

Whether or not Aristide has met Magda, he does know where she lives. He escorts her to the grounds of the Old House at Collinwood. He does not offer to accompany her into the house, but asks her to meet him later at the Blue Whale. As Angelique had responded to Aristide’s overtures by choking him within an inch of his life, Julianka responds to them by drawing a dagger. Aristide just doesn’t have game.

After Aristide parts from Julianka, the werewolf pounces on him. He is about to be devoured when Fenn Gibbon shows up. The sight of pretty little Julianka drove Fenn Gibbon away in a barely concealed panic, but the werewolf doesn’t scare him a bit. He talks calmly to the werewolf, and says that he has orders for him. The werewolf docilely complies. This would be a much bigger surprise if the werewolf were not an adorable little doggie wearing a tidy suit with a watch fob, but it still sends the message that Fenn Gibbon has very extensive powers.

In the Old House, Julianka meets Barnabas. She says that she can use the Hand of Count Petofi to cure Quentin. She also says that Magda’s husband Sandor is in Montreal. This point will be of interest to regular viewers. We haven’t seen Sandor since #750. We may well have been wondering whatever happened to him. We are particularly likely to have been wondering about that this week, since Thayer David, who plays him, is playing Fenn Gibbon. They don’t usually double actors within a time period, and so Fenn Gibbon’s introduction might have suggested they wanted us simply to forget about Sandor. If they are going to take the trouble to tell us he is in Montreal, perhaps we can hope he will return before long, and simply not share scenes with Fenn Gibbon.

Barnabas is in a glum mood. He always is, more or less, but especially so when he has had to deal with Angelique. She told him earlier that she has moved on from her centuries-long fixation on him and now wants to marry Quentin. Barnabas responds with disbelief, declaring that the only reason she would do that is to spite him. Since her obsession led her to turn him into a vampire and kill everyone he ever loved, you can see that Barnabas would have mixed feelings when she tells him that she is looking for a fresh start. On the one hand, it suggest the possibility that he might achieve some kind of freedom. But he’s still a bloodsucking ghoul, his sister and mother and true love and uncle and aunt and countless others are still dead, and the person behind all that doesn’t even care about it anymore.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, points out that it is only appropriate that Angelique made Barnabas a vampire. Angelique too is phenomenally selfish, and whatever she creates becomes a replica of herself. So of course her greatest achievement is to turn a man into a metaphor for extreme selfishness. Barnabas’ selfishness tempers his rage at Angelique’s news; when Julianka comes to him, he is deep in thought, no doubt brooding about what it all means for him.

In his post about this episode at Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn shows that the relationship between Fenn Gibbon and Aristide is modeled on that between Gutman and Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon, and he and his commenters demonstrate that that novel and its 1941 film version included explicit hints that Gutman and Wilmer were occasional sex partners. Aristide has been so eager to connect with the ladies that it’s hard to see much gay subtext between him and Fenn Gibbon so far, but it’s early days for them on the show. Moreover, the echo of Jason and Willie reminds us of the hints the show dropped that those two had shared more than a firm handshake at some point in their seafaring days. The original series bible and the early drafts of the first scripts had referred to The Blue Whale as “The Rainbow Bar”; maybe Aristide and Fenn Gibbon are destined to bring that name back.

Episode 556: A pocket in time

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has turned his subordinate Angelique into a vampire. Nicholas tells Angelique that she will bite only those people he orders her to bite.

Nicholas leaves Angelique in his house. She answers a knock at the door and finds a sheriff’s deputy asking questions related to a local man who recently suffered some mysterious neck wounds. Angelique identifies herself as Nicholas’ secretary and answers some questions. She invites the deputy to sit on the couch. He asks why, and she responds that it is because they are obviously attracted to each other. Within seconds, they are locked in an embrace. Angelique is about to bite his neck when Nicholas enters and breaks things up. The embarrassed deputy clambers to his feet and straightens his uniform. He asks Nicholas a few cursory questions about the injured man, then hastens away.

Angelique seduces the deputy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Some of the commenters on the various fan sites point out that the deputy’s behavior does not conform to law enforcement’s conventional best practices, and others compare the scene to porno movies they have watched. I think the strength of the scene is that it shows how quickly an encounter between two people can take a turn in an utterly unexpected direction, perhaps with drastic consequences.

The deputy seems competent enough when first we see him, and for all we know he might have been a model policeman for years up to this point. But all he has to do is get lost in Angelique’s eyes for one second, and there he is in her arms, about to become her breakfast. When Nicholas interrupts them, the deputy’s reaction shows that he knows he is misbehaving and risking his job; the audience is clearly supposed to know that police officers are not supposed to act this way.

I don’t know about the porno movies, but a resonance with them would reinforce the same point. The movies those commenters describe begin with fully clothed people delivering dialogue and establishing scenarios, as if they were in domestic dramas or situation comedies. But then the clothes come off and the unsimulated sex starts, and they jump into a different genre, one from which there is no return. The deputy may act like a character in a police procedural, a genre in which Dark Shadows dabbled in its first months on the air. But it is a horror story now, and he comes within an ace of becoming someone who could fit only into such a story.

Nicholas chastises Angelique for ignoring his commands. He is holding well-meaning governess Vicki prisoner in another room in the house, and orders Angelique to go to that room and terrorize her. It turns out that he also wants her to persuade Vicki to give her her engagement ring. Vicki was unconscious when Nicholas claimed her and took her to his house, so if he simply wanted the ring he could have taken it then. Perhaps the people who bring up the porno movies are onto something about Nicholas’ motivations, and he is hoping to drop in on another seduction scene.

Vicki knows Angelique and knows that she has died. Vicki suspects that Angelique is a ghost; Angelique offers her hand as proof that she is not. This rather chilly contact is the only moment the two women touch.

Not hot enough to draw Nicholas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

As it happens, Vicki has had extensive experience with ghosts, most of it quite friendly. During her first captivity, when strange and troubled boy David trapped her in a room in the west wing of the great house of Collinwood, the ghost of local man Bill Malloy appeared to her, sang, and dripped seaweed on the floor. That frightened her at the time, but led to the breakthrough that ended David’s hostility to her. During her third captivity, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan kept her in a secret room in the Old House on the same estate, the ghost of gracious lady Josette appeared to Vicki, told her not to be afraid, and led other ghosts, including Bill’s, in scaring Matthew to death before he could kill her. Vicki and Josette’s ghost teamed up to lead the opposition to David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, when she came back to Collinwood and tried to lure David to his death. So Angelique might be missing a chance to ingratiate herself to Vicki when she shows her that she is not a ghost.

Angelique asks Vicki for her ring and promises to give it to Vicki’s fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki refuses, explaining that the ring is the only possession she has in this latest captivity to assure her that she is still connected to the world outside. Angelique says that if she does not give her the ring, she will spend eternity in the room.

Some time ago, Vicki spent nineteen weeks in the late eighteenth century, during which time she learned that Angelique was an enormously malign being responsible for the deaths of any number of people. She was herself accused of and sentenced to be hanged for some of Angelique’s crimes. Since she returned to the present, Vicki and the people she most cares about have suffered further agonies at Angelique’s hands, and Vicki knows about this, too. There is absolutely no reason why she should trust her, and she explicitly tells her she does not. Yet she does give her the ring at the end of the scene. The performers do what they can. Alexandra Moltke Isles’ steady gaze and trembling body do suggest that Vicki is so worn out, confused, and desperate that she might turn for help even to her bitterest enemy. But the script just does not give her enough support to make this interpretation stick.

Mrs Isles is facing another script problem that makes her character look like that old bane, Dumb Vicki. There is a window in the room with a Venetian blind in front of it and a shutter behind. Vicki looks at the window, but we do not see her even try to open it. The room is full of all sorts of objects, and she has a bed covered with blankets. Even if the window is sealed shut, she could easily cover it with a blanket and use some of the junk to smash the glass and beat on the shutters. That it does not occur to her to do so makes it all too easy to believe Angelique is telling the truth when she says Vicki will be in the room forever.

Episode 485: His last night on Earth as himself

Mad scientists Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) and Eric Lang (Addison Powell) are conferring in Lang’s lab. Lang is putting the finishing touches on a Frankenstein’s monster into which he plans to transfer the “life force” of recovering vampire Barnabas Collins. Julia, Barnabas’ best friend, has been opposed to this experiment, but now has accepted that she can’t stop Barnabas and Lang from going through with it. She volunteers to assist.

Lang is having trouble concentrating because of a nightmare he had last night. Unknown to him, the nightmare was part of the Dream Curse, a dead end storyline about wicked witch Angelique sending a dream that each of a series of people will have. When the last person has the dream, Barnabas is supposed to revert to full-on vampirism.

Lang tells Julia about his nightmare. He says that she was in it. When he tells her that she did not speak, she smiles comfortably and says that that was proof that it was a dream. This is not only a genuinely funny line as Grayson Hall delivers it, but it is an extraordinary moment of self-awareness from Julia, a character who usually exists at the outer edge of heightened melodrama. It’s a shame that Addison Powell doesn’t know how to get out of Hall’s way for the half second it would take for it really to land with the audience.

Barnabas and his ex-blood thrall Willie are at home in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Willie is smirking and Barnabas is rigid with embarrassment while the dogs howl outdoors. Willie laughs a little as he makes a remark about how Barnabas hasn’t changed as much as he thought he had. This exchange reminds us of the moment in #346 when Julia and well-meaning governess Vicki noticed that some fresh flowers Barnabas touched had died and shriveled up. Like the howling of the dogs when Barnabas feels bloodlust, the shriveling of the flowers was a consequence of his vampirism, effectively a bodily function that he cannot control. He squirmed when Julia and Vicki looked at him then, and he is stiff and flustered when Willie laughs at him now.

Willie is amused by Barnabas’ incontinence. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas orders Willie to take a letter to matriarch Liz at the great house on the estate. It will explain that he is going away on a long trip, and that Adam Collins, a young cousin from England, will be coming to stay in the Old House. Willie is alarmed by this.

Willie asks what Barnabas will do if Liz won’t let him stay in the Old House when he is in the form of Adam. Barnabas is sure she will, and dismisses Willie’s doubts. This is an interesting sequence to regular viewers. The show has never made it clear whether Liz still owns the house or has signed it over to Barnabas. A whole year ago, in #223, Liz was talking to strange and troubled boy David as if the Old House and its contents were Barnabas’ legal property. Since then, there have been moments that tend to confirm that impression, as when Barnabas takes Liz’ keys to the house away from David and does not give them back to her, and other moments that conflict with it. Willie’s question and Barnabas’ response would seem to prove that the house still belongs to Liz.

Another question we might ask is why Barnabas doesn’t go to Liz himself. Certainly she will be unhappy that he went away without saying goodbye to her. Moreover, when he showed up at the great house in April 1967, Barnabas told Liz that he was the only survivor of the English branch of the family. Liz will be skeptical if another member of this imaginary branch presents himself and expects to take possession of a big mansion on her property. She has had unpleasant experiences with Willie, so much so that a letter he delivers seems unlikely to allay that skepticism.

When Willie gets to the great house, Angelique herself opens the door. She is living there under the name Cassandra. She has cast a spell on Liz’ brother, sarcastic dandy Roger, and married him so that she will have a residence at Collinwood while she works to restore Barnabas’ curse to its full potency. Showing his typical degree of strategic ability, Barnabas has not bothered to tell Willie about any of this.

Angelique/ Cassandra ushers Willie into the drawing room, sits him down, and chats with him. Willie answers her questions about Barnabas, not realizing that he has any more reason to be discreet with her than with anyone else. He tells her that Barnabas has been spending his days with Lang. Angelique/ Cassandra already knows that it was Lang who gave Barnabas the treatments that put his vampirism into remission and that Lang is preparing further treatments for him. Barnabas should know that she knows this, since she went to Lang’s house and tried to kill him. Willie also tells her that sometimes Barnabas doesn’t seem to have changed as much as you might expect. Angelique/ Cassandra’s reaction makes it clear this is new information to her, and that it might help her in her efforts.

The scene raises yet another question. Barnabas had expressed the hope that once the experiment was complete, Angelique would see that his old body was dead, would assume that meant that he no longer existed in any form, and that she would then go away and leave him alone. But he knows that she knows about Lang, and now he is planning to come back to Collinwood, where she lives, as another “cousin from England.” The question is this- how dumb does Barnabas think Angelique is?

Back in the lab, Lang and Julia are preparing for the experiment. Barnabas shows up. When he talks with the doctors, his face is reflected in the mirror above Lang’s creature. Not only does this suggest the idea of his personality moving into the creature’s body, it also reminds us that until Lang gave him his first course of treatment, Barnabas did not cast a reflection. The whole idea of Barnabas’ reflection will remind longtime viewers of #288, when Julia first confirmed her suspicion that Barnabas was a vampire by peeking at the mirror in her compact and not seeing him. That draws a contrast between Lang, whose initial success with Barnabas appears to be leading to disaster because his impersonal, hyper-masculine approach leaves him unable to recognize the threat Angelique poses, and Julia, whose own attempts to cure Barnabas of vampirism did not match Lang’s spectacular results, but whose femininity, as symbolized by the compact, represents a fighting chance against the forces that really govern this universe.

Barnabas reflected above Adam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas takes his place on a bed. He tells Julia he is glad she is with him, and she smiles at him with the sad tenderness of someone saying a final farewell to a loved one. As with her self-deprecating joke in the opening part of the episode, this smile shows a new side of Julia. For a time in October 1967 she tried to launch a romance with Barnabas, and he rejected her. Hall played Julia’s unrequited love in the same larger-than-life style that the rest of her action called for. Her feelings seemed to be an outgrowth of despair- she was by that point so deeply entangled with Barnabas that there was little hope she could ever make a life with anyone else, so even though he was an active vampire, she had little to lose by committing herself to him. But this sweet little exchange is played so gently that it opens a window on a more complex inner life for Julia.

As Lang starts the experiment, we cut to Angelique in the drawing room at Collinwood. She is talking to a clay figure, calling it “Dr Lang,” and saying that it cannot overcome her powers, for they were a gift to her from the Devil himself. She jabs at the clay figure. In the lab, Lang writhes in pain, interrupting the experiment.

It was not until #450 that Dark Shadows let on that there might be anything to Christianity. In that episode, good witch Bathia Mapes held Barnabas at bay by showing him a cross. Up to that point, Barnabas had many times strolled comfortably through the old cemetery north of town, where half the grave markers are in the shape of the cross, and they hadn’t bothered him a bit. The only representatives of the faith who figured in the story were repressed spinster Abigail Collins and fanatical witchfinder the Rev’d Mr Trask, both of whom were fools whom Angelique easily twisted to her own purposes. Now we have a character named Adam, a New Adam through whom a resurrection is supposed to take place, and he is wearing a headpiece that is photographed to look like a crown of thorns. Angelique’s reference to the Devil suggests that she can be defeated only through the aid of a being more powerful than the Devil, and since we haven’t heard about Ahura-Mazda or any other non-Christian deities who represented a supreme principle of good pitted against an otherwise irresistible evil, it looks like we’re drifting Jesus-ward.

The New Adam, in whom all are made alive, wears his crown. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

It is daring to take that direction, even if it is only for a little bit. Vampire legends are pretty obviously an inversion of the Christian story, in which a man comes back from the dead, not having destroyed the power of death once and for all, but only to die again every time the sun rises. While Jesus feeds us with his body and blood in the Eucharist and thereby invites us to share in his eternal life, the vampire feeds himself on our blood and thereby subjects us to his endlessly repeated death. That’s why Bram Stoker’s Dracula has all those crosses and communion wafers, because it is a religious story of the triumph of the promise of resurrection in Christ over the parody of that resurrection that the vampire has settled for. It also explains why Dark Shadows so studiously avoided Christian imagery for so long. Christianity is such a powerful part of the culture that once you let any of it in, it tends to take over the whole story.

There are many reasons the makers of the show would want to avoid that fate. Not least is the tendency of religions to fracture and stories based on their teachings to become sectarian. Dracula itself is an example of that; the vampire is a Hungarian nobleman from Transylvania, connected with the Szekely clan. There really was such a clan, and like other Hungarian nobles in Transylvania its members were Calvinists, supporters of the same version of Christianity that Abigail and Trask represented. Stoker was a Roman Catholic from Ireland, a country where most Protestants are Presbyterians, a tradition that grew out of Calvinism, and so his depiction of the vampire is clearly driven by sectarian animus. The Collinses have an Irish surname, settled in New England when that region was officially Calvinist, and did very well there. So it would be easy to present their troubles as a cautionary tale about Calvinism. That would seem to be a surefire way to shrink the audience drastically. Not only are there millions of Calvinists whom it would offend, there are billions of people to whom Calvinism means nothing at all, and they would be utterly bored by a denunciation of it.

The episode is daring in several other ways as well. When Barnabas and Willie were first on the show, ABC-TV’s office of Standards and Practices kept worrying that viewers might interpret their relationship, which was founded on Barnabas’ habit of sucking on Willie and swallowing his bodily fluids, as somehow homosexual. Not only is the scene between them at the Old House reminiscent of the scenes that attracted memos from that office in the spring and summer of 1967, but the whole idea of Barnabas draining his “life force” into the body of Adam would seem to invite the same concerns.

The experiment scene would only intensify such concerns. The experiment is a medical procedure that is supposed to bring a new life into the world, which by 1968 was how Americans usually thought of the process of birth. Barnabas is the patient, he is lying down, and the doctors sedate him. Thus he takes on all the medicalized marks of a mother-to-be. Julia asked Lang if the process would be painful for Barnabas; he does not disappoint, but ends the episode screaming in response to labor pains. Not only does turning Barnabas into Adam’s mother invert the expected gender performance, but it also introduces a homosexual side to Barnabas’ relationship with Lang, who is Adam’s other parent.

Somebody ought to be there telling Barnabas he’s doing great and urging him to push. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Christian imagery and gender-nonconformity would have been rather a queasy combination for most Americans in 1968. That’s unusual, in historical terms. Before modern times, Christians didn’t hesitate to discuss ways that familiar gender roles break down in the relationship of humans to Christ. The “Fathers of the Church,” the prominent Christian intellectuals of the fourth and fifth centuries, talked about that all the time, going into depth not just with the image of the Church as the Bride of Christ but of each human soul, whether male or female, as one of Jesus’ wives, and of the physical contact between humans and Jesus in the Eucharist as a consummation of their marriage.

For their part, Calvinists tended to be skeptical of the physical aspect of the sacraments, but that didn’t mean that they shied away from conjugal metaphors to describe the relationship between the soul and Jesus. John Donne, like most priests in the Church of England in the 16th and early 17th centuries, was basically a Calvinist, yet his sonnet “Batter my heart, three-person’d God” is one of the most vivid and uncompromising statements of the ancient idea of an erotic dimension to Christian life that transcends the binaries between masculine and feminine, male and female. That tradition makes today’s conjunction of Christian and homoerotic themes all the bolder- imagine if Dark Shadows wrote itself into a corner where they had no choice but to explain nuptial imagery and mystical eroticism in the writings of Saint Ambrose. The whole audience could fit into a seminar room.

Closing Miscellany

Lang and Julia wear white lab coats. This is the first time Julia has worn a white coat. Her previous lab coat was light blue, which looks white on the black and white TV sets most households had in 1968, but now that the show is being produced in color they are buying costumes and props for color televisions.

The idea of a machine that would cause a person to go to sleep in one body and wake up in another was a big deal on TV in the 1960s. Just today I saw this screenshot from The Avengers on Tumblr:

This episode marks the first appearance of Robert Rodan. When Adam was a nameless heap of flesh under a blanket, he was played by a stand-in named Duane Morris. Rodan had a few small parts on TV shows in 1963 and 1964 and was in a couple of commercials between 1964 and 1968. Adam was his first, and last, recurring role on a series. In 1969, he appeared in a little-seen feature film called The Minx, then spent the rest of his life selling real estate in Southern California.

Episode 446: You have given me nothing I can understand

Haughty tyrant Joshua Collins goes to the basement of the Old House on his estate and finds his son Barnabas rising from a coffin. Barnabas explains to his father that he has become a vampire.

Joshua and Barnabas in the coffin room. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This scene prompts considerable discussion in fandom about gay subtext. In his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn points out that actors Jonathan Frid and Louis Edmonds were both gay, and speculates that this fact might have had some influence on the way they play Barnabas’ coming out to his father. “I’m not suggesting that this situation is intended to be a metaphor for a gay child talking to his father about his terrible, shameful secret life… But the ‘keep the secret, don’t tell my mother’ part — there’s some resonance, isn’t there? At least, it’s a hook into the story that helps us to get closer, and really feel some of the horror of this moment. A father hands a gun to his son, and says, Kill yourself, so that your mother never finds out.”

Even this tentative raising of the question, with its “I’m not suggesting” and “some resonance” and “at least,” is too much for Patrick McCray. In his Dark Shadows Daybook post about #446, he concedes that “homosexuality is the obvious choice” for an interpretive lens through which to read the scene, but goes on to flatly assert that “this isn’t a veiled metaphor for something like homosexuality.” For him, as for Danny, Barnabas figures in the scene as a murderer first and last, and Joshua as a man finding himself irrevocably severed from the world of rationally explainable phenomena.

For my part, I think that we have to remember that intentionality is always a more complicated thing in a work of art than it is when lawyers are interpreting a contract or cryptographers are cracking a cipher. Certainly the scene is not simply a coming-out scene played in code. Barnabas’ murders do not map onto any metaphor for sexual encounters. While the vampire’s bite is often a metaphor for the sexual act, Barnabas presents his acknowledgement in this scene that he has murdered three women in terms of the secrets he calculated he could keep by killing them and maintains a cold, matter-of-fact tone while doing so. When in the course of the scene Barnabas exasperates Joshua by attempting to murder him, there is nothing erotic between the men. No doubt the scene is at one level meant to be what Danny Horn and Patrick McCray say it is, the point when Joshua realizes he is part of a supernatural horror story and the audience realizes that Barnabas is a cold-blooded killer. As such, it is one of the key moments that defines the 1795 flashback as The Tragedy of Joshua Collins.

But there are other levels of intentionality here as well. One has to do with the word “vampire.” When Barnabas is trying to tell his story to Joshua, his first approach is to give him the facts and leave it to him to apply the correct label. But the facts are so alien to Joshua that they only deepen his confusion. Seeing his father’s bewildered reaction, Barnabas’ frustration mounts until he finally shouts “I am a vampire!”

We have heard this word only once before on Dark Shadows, when wicked witch Angelique mentioned it in #410, but it figured in the show as a metaphor for outness long before it was spoken. In #315, Barnabas’ associate, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, urges him not to murder strange and troubled boy David Collins. She catches herself, breaking off after saying that David deserves better than “to die at the hands of a-” Barnabas grins and teases her, asking “At the hands of a what, doctor?” He dares her to say the word and taunts her for her faux pas in coming so close to using it. Julia and Barnabas have a tacit understanding that they will discuss his vampirism only in euphemisms and circumlocutions. To say the word would be to push beyond the limits of Barnabas’ outness to Julia.

When he tries to avoid calling himself a vampire, Barnabas is trying to establish a relationship in which his father will know enough that he is no longer inclined to ask questions, but not enough to achieve any real understanding of his feelings. When he realizes that he cannot keep from using the embarrassing, ridiculous, utterly necessary word, Barnabas is forced to come out to Joshua in a way he had desperately wanted to avoid.

Moreover, Jonathan Frid’s performance as Barnabas departs starkly from anything else he does on Dark Shadows. After he calls himself a vampire, Frid’s whole body relaxes. His neck, shoulders, and hips are looser than we have ever seen them; even his knees bend a little. His voice shifts a bit away from the old-fashioned mid-Atlantic accent he typically uses as Barnabas, a bit toward twentieth century Hamilton, Ontario. At that point, he is not playing a murderer or a creature from the supernatural or an eighteenth century aristocrat- he is playing himself, enacting a scene from his own life.

Barnabas’ coming out to his father is not today’s only story about information management. Joshua rules his corner of the world by parceling out just that information he thinks people ought to have. We have seen this habit lead to disaster after disaster. In his scene with Barnabas, we see another such instance. Joshua has come to the basement because naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes told him that he had seen Barnabas at the Old House, and that Barnabas had attacked Joshua’s second cousin Millicent. After Barnabas admits to his various murders, Joshua brings up the attack on Millicent. Barnabas denies that he had any involvement in that attack, sparking an angry response from Joshua. When Barnabas later asks Joshua why he came to the basement, he swears that Barnabas will never know why.

Had Joshua told Barnabas that Nathan sent him to the basement, the two of them might have figured out that Nathan faked the attack on Millicent as part of his scheme to trick her into agreeing to marry him and to blackmail Joshua into consenting to the marriage. That in turn might have helped Joshua find a way to prevent Nathan from carrying out his evil schemes. But his parsimony with information leaves Joshua believing Nathan’s story about the attack, and therefore puts him and the rest of the Collinses entirely at Nathan’s mercy. When we see the effect that the radical honesty of coming out as a vampire had on Barnabas, we can’t help but wonder how many misfortunes the Collinses might have avoided if they had not lived according to Joshua’s code of truthlessness.

A voice comes from the upstairs. Naomi Collins, wife to Joshua and mother to Barnabas, has entered the house. Joshua leaves his gun with Barnabas and tells him to do the honorable thing, then hastens up to meet her.

Naomi tells Joshua that she he came to the Old House because Nathan told her he had gone there. She insists that Joshua explain what is going on; he pleads with her not to ask. She tells him to think of her; a quiver in his voice, he says “I am thinking of you now.” Naomi is as mystified and as frustrated by Joshua’s refusal to explain himself as Joshua had been with Barnabas’ story, but even as she plays these reactions Joan Bennett also shows us Naomi softening towards her husband. She catches a glimpse of the lover hidden beneath the lord of the manor, peeking out from below the massive superstructure of his pride.

Back in the great house, Nathan is sprawled on the sofa, his boots resting on a polished table, guzzling the Collinses’ fine liqueurs. When Joshua and Naomi return, Nathan offers Joshua a snifter of brandy and invites him to drink it with him in the drawing room. Joshua reacts indignantly, protesting that he is not accustomed to a guest offering him the hospitality of his own house.

This exchange is familiar to longtime viewers. From March to June of 1967, when Dark Shadows was set in contemporary times, the great house was dominated by seagoing con man Jason McGuire, who was blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz. Several times, most notably in #200 and #264, Jason poured himself a drink and invited Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, to join him. Roger would protest that he was not accustomed to being offered a drink of his own brandy in his own house, often drawing the rejoinder that it was Liz’ brandy and Liz’ house, and that he was as much her guest as Jason was.

Roger and Joshua are both played by Louis Edmonds. Roger represents the final stage of decay from the height Joshua represents. He has squandered his entire inheritance, committed acts of cowardice that cost the lives of two men, and let a more or less innocent man go to prison in his place. In #4 he tried to sneak into well-meaning governess Vicki’s room while she slept, and when Liz caught him he told her he didn’t want to be lectured on his “morals,” leaving no doubt that he was looking for some kind of cheap sexual thrill at Vicki’s expense. He openly scorns his responsibilities as a father, cares nothing for the family’s traditions, and the one time we see him working in his office at the headquarters of the family’s business all he does is answer the telephone and tell the caller to contact someone else instead. He drinks constantly, is always the first to give up on a difficult task, makes sarcastic remarks to everyone, and backs down whenever he faces the prospect of a fair fight. In #273, he even admitted to Liz that, had he known what Jason knew about her, he probably would have blackmailed her too.

Joshua’s relentlessly dishonest approach to life may be rooted in fear, and it is never difficult to see that its end result would be to produce a man as craven as Roger. But Joshua himself is as strong as Roger is weak. It is impossible to imagine Roger shaking off an attempt on his life as Joshua shakes off Barnabas’ attempt to strangle him today. While Roger is prepared to sacrifice any member of his family for his own convenience, Joshua will go to any lengths to protect Naomi from the truth of Barnabas’ horrible secret. Nor does Joshua take the easy way out even when he is knuckling under to Nathan. In their scene today, Nathan makes it clear that he is willing to accompany Joshua back to the Old House. Had Roger known what Joshua knows about that basement, he would never have missed an opportunity to send Jason there and let Barnabas do his dirty work for him. But Joshua cuts Nathan off the moment he raises the subject.

Joshua does go back to the coffin room, and he finds Barnabas standing around. He is disappointed that his son has not killed himself. Barnabas tries to explain that he cannot die by a gunshot, but Joshua dismisses his words. He takes the gun himself and, with a display of anguish, shoots Barnabas in the heart. Only thus, he believes, can he keep the unbearable truth from coming to light.

Episode 394: Not a simple woman

The ghost of Jeremiah Collins has gone to the newly built great house of Collinwood and made a terrible mess in the bedroom that was to be occupied by a house-guest of the Collins family, the Countess DuPrés. Among those who discover the mess is Angelique, who was the countess’ maid before she became the fiancée of Jeremiah’s nephew, Barnabas. Not everyone in the house knows of the change in Angelique’s station, so it is unclear whether she ought to stick with her former role and clean the room herself or start functioning as a member of the family by calling for a servant to do it. Since Angelique is also the wicked witch who raised Jeremiah from the grave, putting her in this awkward position would seem to be a passive-aggressive way for him to get back at her.

Messy room. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Repressed spinster Abigail Collins, sister of the master of the house, comes into the room. She insults Angelique’s former master, the countess’ brother André, prompting him to leave the room in a huff. Angelique begins to follow André, but Abigail orders her to to stay.

Angelique has taken no care to cover her tracks, and it is obvious to all that something very unusual has been happening around the estate of Collinwood since she arrived. Most of those who have witnessed the strange goings-on are rational, modern people who are reluctant to believe in the supernatural, and the rest have settled on the idea that eccentric governess Victoria Winters is the witch. But Abigail has learned of Angelique’s engagement to Barnabas, has realized that every bizarre occurrence has contributed to making it possible, and has concluded that Angelique is in league with Vicki and the devil.

Up to this point, Abigail has been a figure who did ridiculous things but whom we came to respect as we saw that a person of her time and place might well have interpreted the information available to her as she does. In this scene, she isn’t ridiculous at all. She is mistaken about Vicki, who is a well-meaning innocent. But she has figured Angelique out long before anyone else has even begun to suspect her. Abigail emerges as a character who is smart enough to turn the story in fresh and surprising directions.

Abigail interrogates Angelique. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Once Abigail has left the room, Angelique summons Jeremiah and tells him she has something for him to do before she will let him return to his grave. Jeremiah has already gone beyond the instructions she gave him, not only in befouling the countess’ room but also in repeatedly showing himself to Naomi Collins, the lady of the house. But I suppose Angelique has such a limited staff she can’t afford to let someone go for overenthusiasm.

We see Barnabas in his new room in the great house. His friend Nathan comes and asks him about the report that he is going to marry Angelique. Barnabas confirms that it is true, and assures Nathan that Angelique is not pregnant.

Nathan is puzzled that Barnabas wants to marry Angelique. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

As written, the scene is a bit of a throwaway, but the actors flirt with each other pretty blatantly throughout the scene. As the screenshot above shows, it begins with Nathan thrusting his crotch into Barnabas’ face while Barnabas smiles appreciatively, and it continues along that line. Considering that Nathan is puzzled that Barnabas wants to marry a woman, even a beautiful one, and that viewers know that Barnabas intends it to be a sham marriage, the flirty tone makes it hard not to recognize a comment on a familiar closet situation. Jonathan Frid and Joel Crothers were both gay, but they had many scenes together and never seemed to be flirting at any other time, so perhaps this comment was intentional on their part and that of director John Sedwick.

After Nathan leaves, Jeremiah appears in Barnabas’ room. He denounces Barnabas for killing him in a duel over the gracious Josette and vows to haunt Barnabas and Josette forever if they marry.

This does not at all reflect the attitude Jeremiah had in life. Jeremiah and Josette married under the influence of a spell Angelique cast on them, and they deeply regretted the pain their elopement brought Barnabas. In his last conversation with Josette before the duel, Jeremiah made it clear that he was going to let Barnabas kill him and that it was all right with him if Josette and Barnabas went on to marry. Jeremiah’s rantings to Barnabas today are Angelique’s words, not his own. This leads us to wonder if she is simply manipulating him as a puppet, or if some fragment of her personality took up residence in Jeremiah when she raised him from the dead. We’ve seen several times that supernatural beings on Dark Shadows are complex phenomena made of parts that work independently and often at cross-purposes with each other, so perhaps when Angelique casts a spell she is dividing herself into parts that will thwart each other’s goals.

Regular viewers know that the segment of the show set in 1795 will show us Barnabas becoming a vampire. We assume that Angelique will be responsible for this transformation. Since the Barnabas we knew in 1967 showed many of the personality traits that Angelique has shown in 1795, seeing her at least use Jeremiah’s reanimated corpse as a mouthpiece for her words and perhaps turn it into a part of herself makes us speculate if the vampiric Barnabas we thought we knew was really Angelique all along.

After Jeremiah leaves Barnabas’ room, Angelique comes in. She tells Barnabas that Abigail is making trouble for them, he tells her about Jeremiah’s apparition, and they decide to marry at once. This three-part sequence in Barnabas’ room- his scenes with Nathan, with Jeremiah, and then with Angelique- mirrors a sequence in Josette’s room in yesterday’s episode, in which she is visited by Jeremiah, then by the countess, then by Angelique. That sequence ended with Angelique telling Josette that she and Barnabas were to be married and thus represented a step towards the wedding. The echo of its structure at the end of today’s installment gives us a sense that the wedding is approaching with irresistible momentum.