We reprise the final scene of Friday’s episode, in which vampire Barnabas Collins catches his prisoner Maggie Evans trying to stab him. He flashes his fangs at her.
The first time around, this had been the climax of a number of powerfully realized scenes, so it still carried a punch despite the silliness of the fangs. From a standing start, though, the result is a bad laugh.
In the 45 seconds following the first commercial, ABC staff announcer Bill Rice* summarizes the action of the previous week’s episodes.** This recap comes so close to exhausting every event we saw in those 110 minutes of scripted drama that regular viewers will have another unintended laugh.
The recap was inserted because many ABC stations preempted Dark Shadows to cover a United Nations debate about the Vietnam War. The show was about as resolutely disengaged from contemporary politics as it was possible to be, but conjoining US policy in Vietnam with a character like Barnabas, who combines a vast capacity for killing with a desperate need to be loved, does bring certain thoughts to mind.
Barnabas and Maggie have a conversation about his inclination to kill her. Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood-thrall Willie Loomis joins in, saying that Barnabas will have to kill him first. This would not seem to present Barnabas with any difficulty at all. Willie wouldn’t be missed- everyone else on the show remembers Willie from the days before he met Barnabas, when he was dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis, and has been urging Barnabas to get rid of him. Nor would it be especially difficult for Barnabas to replace Willie- he just has to bite someone else, and that other person will become his new slave. But Barnabas stands around arguing with Willie and Maggie. When someone knocks on the front door, he scolds Willie for failing to keep it locked, such a humdrum complaint under the circumstances as to bring another bad laugh. Barnabas leaves Willie and Maggie in the basement while he answers the door. Before he goes, he sticks out his lower lip, a facial expression known as “pouting.”
The visitor is well-meaning governess Vicki, who tells Barnabas that the sheriff has ordered that no woman go out alone at night. Some think it strange to send a woman out alone at night to carry this message to a man who is indoors, but considering what we’ve seen of the sheriff, doing the exact opposite of what he commands would seem always to be the wisest course.
Vicki notices an antique music box on a table in Barnabas’ front parlor. Vicki admires its tune and makes a few not-very-coherent remarks about “the past” while it is playing. Barnabas has been using this music box as a tool to hypnotize Maggie into believing that she is his long-lost love Josette. After Vicki leaves, he opens it again, then looks at the door through which she left. He turns his head and smiles, looking very much like someone who has just had an exciting new idea.
Meanwhile, Maggie and Willie talk to each other in the basement. The two of them had one of the most electrifying scenes of the entire series down there Friday. The last traces of that energy have been piddled away by the time Barnabas comes back downstairs and resumes his conversation with them.
Willie urges Barnabas to look at Maggie and see how beautiful she is. Barnabas says “No” and looks away. Coming at a moment of high dramatic tension, this might have been powerful. When we sit down as an audience, we enter into a sort of agreement that if the show includes something worth seeing, we will look at it. So when we see a character refusing to look at a sight as well worth contemplating as was the young Kathryn Leigh Scott,*** we might be shocked. But there has been too much idle chatter, and the memory of Barnabas’ pout is so fresh, that all we can think of is a petulant child saying “I don’t wanna look at her!”
Barnabas announces that he will not kill Maggie right away. He tells her that he will make her suffer torments worse than anyone has ever known so that death will finally come as a blessed relief, then locks her up in the prison cell in the basement of the house. What, your house doesn’t have a prison cell in its basement? It’s a standard feature of homes in Collinsport, as we will come to see in future episodes.
Barnabas goes to the great house of Collinwood and talks to Vicki. He brings a handkerchief that, legend has it, was a gift from the queen of France to Josette. They babble about “the past” and Barnabas invites her to drop in at his house “some day.” He says “day,” even though he’s busy being dead every day until sunset. And doesn’t specify when- any old time, if she hears screams coming from the basement she’ll probably just ignore them.
Evidently Barnabas is thinking of Vicki as a backup Josette in case Maggie doesn’t come around. This marks a retreat from #240 and #241, when strange and troubled boy David Collins, who has seen Josette’s ghost many times, saw Maggie in the gown Barnabas gave her and said that she must have been Josette because she looked “exactly the same” as he had seen her before. That suggested, not only that Barnabas chose Maggie because of her looks, but also that he might be right in thinking that she is Josette’s reincarnation. This storyline is modeled on the 1932 Universal film The Mummy, in which Imhotep’s idea that Helen Grosvenor is the reincarnation of his lost love Princess Ankh-esen-amun is substantiated when Zita Johann plays both roles. If Vicki and Maggie are interchangeable, then all of that goes by the boards.
*Presumably no relation to the main character of Gene Roddenberry’s 1963-4 CBS TV series The Lieutenant, one episode of which was written by Art Wallace.
**As transcribed by the Dark Shadows wiki:
For those who have missed the last few episodes of Dark Shadows: Elizabeth Collins [Stoddard,] at Jason McGuire’s insistence, has taken Vicki, Carolyn, and Roger into the basement room and convinces them that it holds no mystery. They don’t realize that beneath the flagstones on the floor is concealed the room’s secret—the body of Elizabeth’s husband, Paul. Elizabeth, now realizing that the secret can never be told, announces to the family that she and Jason will be married. Maggie Evans escaped from Barnabas and attempted to get to her father, but was recaptured and told by Barnabas that unless she assumes the identity of Josette Collins, she will die. Realizing that she can never escape, Maggie attempts to destroy Barnabas.
***Or for that matter as is the not-so-young Miss Scott of today, she’s one of the best looking octogenarians around.
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