grayson hall – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1070: Never without you

The sun has set, and vampire Barnabas Collins is opening the lid of his coffin in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Suddenly a cross is thrust in his face. He recoils from it, crying in pain and becoming immobile. The cross is wielded by the sheriff of Collinsport, who announces “I know all about you, Barnabas Collins!”

Before the sheriff can take matters any further, a teenage girl appears nearby. Shocked to see her, he reels away from the coffin. He jabbers at her, saying that he recognizes her and pleading with her not to come closer. Barnabas grabs him from behind and strangles him to death.

Barnabas didn’t have anything against the sheriff, but can’t deny that it feels good to use the old strangling muscles again. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes upstairs and finds his best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He tells Julia that the sheriff’s gun was loaded with silver bullets, and that only the manifestation of the ghost of Carrie prevented his destruction. The police know about him, and more officers will be coming any time. Julia admits that she told the sheriff about Barnabas. Shocked, he says “You betrayed me?” He has said these words many times, always as a prelude to extreme violence. Julia braces herself, expecting the same. But to her amazement, Barnabas is gentle and understanding. He realizes she is under the sway of an evil ghost named Gerard. She says that she will betray Barnabas again and again, and urges him to leave without her. He says he will never do that. She embraces him, weeping, and he comforts her. For most people, a day that begins with the murder of a policeman is a day when nothing goes well, but Barnabas is not like most people. This is far and away the most mature behavior we have ever seen on his part.

The year is 1995; Barnabas and Julia have come unstuck in time and found themselves at Collinwood 25 years after a mysterious disaster wrecked the great house on the estate, ruined its inhabitants, and left Gerard in charge. They believe they can travel back to 1970 and prevent the disaster from ever occurring, if only they can find out what it was. Barnabas’ distant cousin Carolyn left him a note yesterday consisting of six cryptic phrases which he took to be clues, but Gerard killed Carolyn before Barnabas could ask her to explain them.

Barnabas has brought occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes to the Old House. We find Stokes exclaiming to Barnabas “You killed the sheriff?” Barnabas confirms, “Yes, I killed him.” Stokes replies, “Everyone’s going mad. It’s the effect of this place. I’m not surprised at your terrible story. Horrified, not surprised.” One wonders what the story was that Julia and Barnabas told. Stokes’ role in the parts of the show set in contemporary times was always limited, because he is too decent and law-abiding to be a party to the continued existence of a vampire. He could never be allowed to learn the truth about Barnabas. He stays in the room, chatting amiably with Barnabas and Julia, so clearly they haven’t told him now, either. Perhaps they just told him that the sheriff was going to shoot Barnabas, and let him assume that the reason was that Gerard was making him do it.

Be that as it may, Stokes is still aware of the situation. “Do you realize that I will be implicated in all this if the police come here?” he asks. They say that they do, but that they desperately need him to make a third for a séance. He dismisses as hopelessly naive the idea that Gerard would allow a séance to succeed, but Barnabas says that Gerard may not have the power to prevent Carolyn’s spirit coming through and telling them what her note meant. The idea of one spirit trying to block another from emerging out of the supernatural back-world and speaking at a séance harks back to the very first séance on Dark Shadows, in #170 and #171, when undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins used her powers to impede the spirit of the gracious Josette from warning the company about her. Stokes gives in and agrees to participate; Julia, self-conscious because of her compromised position, is reluctant, but Barnabas proclaims that if Carolyn is to speak it will be through her.*

The séance begins. Julia goes into the trance, and starts speaking in what appears to be Carolyn’s voice. If this is Grayson Hall’s Nancy Barrett imitation, it is terrible. Mrs Acilius and I laughed out loud at it. But the voice does not give any useful information, and Julia is under Gerard’s power, so it is also possible she is faking the trance to throw Barnabas off. In that case, it is Julia’s Carolyn imitation, and it reminds us of the ups and downs in the relationship between those two characters.

When the séance is over, Stokes says he feels a presence. He rises from the table, drifts towards the window, and sees Gerard watching him from outside. Gerard touches the pane. Stokes staggers back, descends into a chair, and becomes still. Barnabas finds that he is dead. He looks up and realizes that Julia has fled the house.

Julia has gone to the great house. She is in a mysterious playroom with Gerard. Gerard gives her a dagger. She asks if she “must.” She is reluctant, but finally works herself up to joy as she says that she always knew it would come to this, that now she will be with Gerard as he wants her. She lifts the dagger to stab herself in the heart.

Barnabas enters. He confronts Gerard. As the two beings from beyond the grave stare each other down, Julia drops the dagger. Barnabas tells Gerard he cannot stop them leaving. Gerard looks offended at this. He touches Julia, who collapses. She is not dead, but she and Barnabas fear she is dying. Gerard leaves the room and takes his time locking the door from the outside.

Carrie’s ghost materializes to Julia and Barnabas. She beckons to them, then walks out through the wall. They stare at the wall, and a door appears. They pass through the door, and find themselves on a staircase. They follow the staircase, and come to another door. They exit in the same corridor outside the playroom; they have gone in a circle. In space, anyway- the time appears to be different. The corridor is in severe decay in 1995, but is in good repair now. And they see a girl who looks exactly like Carrie, but is alive. She asks them who they are.

This is the final episode set in 1995. It is also the last we will see of Don Crabtree. Previous sheriffs of Collinsport have been ridiculously ineffective. Crabtree’s sheriff doesn’t chalk up many successes either, but no one else meets with anything but failure in these two weeks. Every death and defeat we see reinforces the sense that the evil which Gerard represents is overwhelming. As the penultimate victim of the 1995 curse, the sheriff is second only to Stokes as someone who would have been able to make a positive difference, if anyone could have, and Crabtree makes us believe that he belongs in that position.

*In the main continuity of Dark Shadows, spirits at séances always speak through a medium of the same sex as themselves. In the séance in #990, when the show was set in a mirror universe, the spirit chose a medium of the opposite sex.

Episode 1068: Almost pleased

I wonder how long the actors had the script before they started taping this one. As unspeaking, barely mobile ghosts Gerard and Daphne, James Storm and Kate Jackson didn’t need much prep time; as lunatics Carolyn Fredericks (neé Stoddard) and Quentin Collins, Nancy Barrett and David Selby probably didn’t need much more. But vampire Barnabas Collins has a lot of dialogue today, and Jonathan Frid rarely seems to be within a country mile of his scripted lines. That isn’t so unusual, but Grayson Hall’s trouble really stands out. Barnabas’ friend, Julia Hoffman, MD, is possessed by Gerard and is pleased that Barnabas keeps meeting with one failure after another. We are supposed to know this, Barnabas isn’t. But she has a huge grin on her face each time she gloats to Barnabas about one of his setbacks. The one time Frid is clearly delivering a line that was written for him, Barnabas tells a conspicuously blissed-out Julia that she seems “almost pleased.” Hall was a highly accomplished actress, and we would expect her to be able to do “secretly pleased” in her sleep. But when this line comes up, she gets a bad laugh.

Far and away the happiest we have ever seen Julia, this strikes Barnabas as “almost pleased.”

The episode ends with Barnabas going to the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood in response to a note from Carolyn. He finds her sitting at the desk there. He talks to her for a moment, then notices that she is not moving. He touches her, and she falls over dead. The episode has its problems, but that is an extremely effective closing curtain.

Episode 1061: Time past or future, our time or parallel

The episode opens with a seldom seen still of the exterior of the mansion representing the great house of Collinwood, suggesting we are going to be seeing things from a new angle today.

This part of the place is in fairly good shape.

Vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have escaped an alternate universe where a fire was raging around them. They find themselves unsinged and in their own timeline, back in the room at the great house where they first passed through the aperture that connects the universes. Barnabas is plunged into self-pity, since he wasn’t able to bring a girl he met while he was in the other universe home with him. She was comatose when they first met, and he goes on about how much he loved that. “She’s the only woman who ever made me forget my dear lost Josette. The moment I saw her, so still, so helpless, I felt a love I haven’t felt since I first met Josette.” Barnabas himself is dead half the time, so necrophilia is not inappropriate or even kinky in his case, but this is still a pretty funny line.

Julia has given up everything in her life for Barnabas’ sake, and she is so deeply implicated in his countless crimes that there is no way she can build a meaningful relationship with anyone else. She has decided to make the best of this, and has fallen in love with him. He does not requite this love in the slightest. When Julia first let Barnabas see how she felt, in 1967, he ridiculed her for it and reveled in showing her that nothing could ever develop between them. Now he is friendlier, most of the time, but still keeps expecting her to assist him while he chases after other women. When he rants about how he has lost his one chance at love, she looks up at him adoringly. She chokes back tears while she says “We forget how rare a life of love can be. You’re not the only one who’s had so little hope. It’s something one learns to live with. We can get used to anything if we have to.”

Barnabas reacts to this anguished little speech with a flash of outrage. He then turns from Julia and resumes lamenting his fate. He seems deeply offended that she started talking about trivial stuff like her feelings when the topic was supposed to be the most important thing in the world, his feelings. Barnabas and Julia’s exchange is not an example of anything that you will ever see described as good scene construction, but between the two of them, as we know them to be, it is magnificently constructed. It’s exactly the kind of non-conversation you would expect to take place between a colossal narcissist and someone who can’t even hope to get free of him.

Barnabas is appalled at Julia’s interruption.

Julia and Barnabas realize that the room is damp and musty, not at all like it was when last they were there. They find that the house is in a state of collapse. The foyer and drawing room is the only permanent set on Dark Shadows; it is extremely impressive by the standards of 1960s daytime TV, and has always looked very solid. Longtime viewers will find the images of it in ruins unforgettable.

Julia left for the other universe only five weeks ago; she and Barnabas cannot imagine what could have caused the destruction they see in such a short period. Julia wonders if a hurricane or a war is responsible for the damage. When they find some note paper that has yellowed and begun to crumble, Barnabas speculates that some kind of radiation may have accelerated its decay. Barnabas grew up in the eighteenth century and takes only a desultory interest in anything more recent than the Washington administration, so it is rather jarring for regular viewers to hear him talking about radiation and wondering if a thermonuclear exchange has taken place.

Barnabas and Julia go to the cemetery to find a coffin for him to spend his days in. They see a freshly dug grave with a marker giving the current year as 1995. That explains how the decay at Collinwood could have happened in the time after Julia followed Barnabas into the alternate universe in 1970. The aperture returned them to their own universe, but to a later period of time. They also find a grave marked as that of strange and troubled teen David Collins, whose date of death is given as 1970.

A gray-haired woman cries out to Julia and Barnabas to leave David’s grave alone. They recognize her as Mrs Johnson, housekeeper at Collinwood from 1966 to 1970. Mrs Johnson recognizes them too, and sees that they have not changed since last she saw them. She takes them to be ghosts, and demands they stop haunting David’s place of rest.

Barnabas and Julia deny that they are ghosts and ask Mrs Johnson what happened after they left. She starts telling transparent lies, claiming that the adult members of the Collins family are alive and well and living overseas. She rushes off, but as she goes she says the name “Fredericks” and “The old shack at Finley’s Cove.” Clarice Blackburn was always excellent, and this scene is one of her very finest turns.

Julia and Barnabas let themselves into a small house at Finley’s Cove. Julia remarks that the house was always vacant when she knew the area. Barnabas says that in the other universe, it was his comatose girlfriend’s house. They notice that the place is chock-a-block with objets d’art from Collinwood. Julia is excited that whoever lives there knew the place; Barnabas surmises that they may have been its destroyers, and that they might have looted the stuff from it. The doorknob turns, and Julia says that they will soon know who lives in the house.

Episode 1057: Not even a memory

Wicked witch Angelique has died, again. While she still dwelt among the living, Angelique locked Julia Hoffman up in a dungeon and left her to die of thirst. Julia’s buddy Barnabas Collins and a dimwitted policeman called Inspector Hamilton are looking for her. She is struggling to stay awake. The episode devotes so much time to a go-nowhere story about a non-character named Roxanne that we can sympathize with this struggle.

Julia nods off just as Barnabas and the inspector pass by the hidden wall of her dungeon. She does not hear them, and by the time she wakes up and starts calling out they are gone.

While asleep, Julia has a dream in which Barnabas and Roxanne decide that she must be dead. They are going to leave for the alternate universe from which Julia and Barnabas originally came. Julia has given up everything in her life to help Barnabas, and she has an unrequited love for him. For his part, Barnabas has conceived a mad passion for Roxanne, who is young and pretty but has no personality. Roxanne’s short red hair, pale complexion, and strong chin make her look like she could be Julia’s daughter. Indeed, when first we saw her it seemed likely she would be revealed to be the daughter of Julia’s counterpart in this universe. Barnabas is so thoughtless about throwing other women in Julia’s face that it would be like him to cast her aside for the daughter she might have had, Grayson Hall would have done a great job playing the anguish this would have inflicted on Julia, and it would have given Donna Wandrey something to work with as Roxanne. It’s a shame they didn’t run with it.

This is Colin Hamilton’s final appearance as Inspector Hamilton. It is always a bad sign when writers give a character the actor’s name; it suggests they don’t trust him to answer to anything else. They may have been right about Colin Hamilton. He will be back as a doctor in #1219. That is the only episode of Dark Shadows of which no video survives. There is an audio recording, so we can hear that Hamilton delivered the doctor’s dialogue in the same bored, impatient tone he used for the inspector.

Inspector Hamilton in his office. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 1043: The temperament to kill

In 1967, vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman settled in on the estate of Collinwood, Barnabas as the master of the Old House on the grounds and Julia as a permanent guest in the great house. Now they have both crossed over to an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” Barnabas has passed himself off to the residents of the great house on this universe’s version of Collinwood as their long-lost cousin from South America, as in the original continuity he persuaded their counterparts he was their cousin from England. He has bitten and enslaved the owners of the Old House, alcoholic writer Will Loomis and Will’s wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Julia met her own counterpart, a Julia Hoffman who never became a doctor or got entangled with Barnabas. This Hoffman was the housekeeper in the great house, and as fanatically devoted to the undead Angelique as the original Julia is to Barnabas. Julia greeted Hoffman by beating her to death, stealing her French maid outfit, and assuming her identity.

Yesterday, Carolyn told Julia that she had realized who killed Angelique the first time. Today, she clams up and refuses to say who it is. Julia tells Barnabas about this. He suspects she is protecting Will. He questions Will, who says he is innocent. Barnabas’ power precludes Will from lying to him, so he turns his attentions to Carolyn. He forces her to say that she believes the killer to be her mother, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Barnabas knows Liz’ counterpart in his own continuity and cannot imagine that any version of her would commit such a crime. Carolyn’s reason for accusing her mother is that the murder weapon was one of her hatpins. Barnabas points out that anyone in the house could have stolen the pin.

Angelique has returned from the dead. Impersonating her identical twin sister Alexis, she is staying in the great house as the guest of her widower, sourpuss Quentin Collins. Quentin is missing at the moment, on the run from the police after being charged with a murder of which he is more or less innocent. Barnabas and Julia know who Angelique is and what she is up to.

Angelique is being maintained in the world of the living by a procedure her father, Tim Stokes, invented. Stokes is keeping a comatose young woman named Roxanne in the back room of his apartment. Stokes has somehow established a remote link between Roxanne and Angelique. This link drains most of Roxanne’s “life force” into Angelique. Roxanne must remain in precisely her current state of debility for Angelique to continue her existence. If Roxanne dies, the force will vanish altogether, taking Angelique with it. If Roxanne regains her strength, the link will be broken and the whole force will revert to her.

Barnabas has devised a cockamamie scheme to take Roxanne’s body from Stokes’ place, hide it somewhere, and have Julia bring her back to life. He reminds Julia that she performed a similar procedure when she cured him of his first vampire curse by constructing a Frankenstein’s monster named Adam. She responds that what Stokes has done is altogether different from what she did, and that she has no idea whether she will be able to figure it out. Barnabas, who has no scientific education beyond whatever he picked up as a boy in the eighteenth century, vows to revive Roxanne himself if Julia will not help.

Julia points out the many flaws in Barnabas’ plan. As she does so, Jonathan Frid’s delivery of Barnabas’ responses gets more and more uncertain. He’s been doing quite well in recent episodes, but he’s so bad in this scene that before long Grayson Hall can no longer keep track of Julia’s lines. When, on his way out of the house, he proclaims that he is ready to do battle with Angelique, he is proposing a two-front war. He is already engaged in desperate combat with the coat rack holding his cane. My wife, Mrs Acilius, said that Barnabas’ plan is so ridiculous it’s no wonder the actors can’t get the words out.

Barnabas takes Will to the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. He explains that there is a secret room there that was used to hide weapons from the British during the Revolutionary War. Will made a study of the Collins legends and is skeptical, but Barnabas opens the panel and ushers him in.

Once they are inside, it is Barnabas’ turn to be surprised. In his universe, he was locked in a chained coffin in the counterpart of this room, undiscovered for 171 years. But here, he finds furniture, a candelabra, a glass of fresh milk, and a drawing of Roxanne signed “Claude North.” Someone has been living there, someone connected with Roxanne. Will says out loud that they can’t keep her there. Barnabas says that they will find another place for her, and they carry on.

Will and Barnabas find the drawing. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas and Will enter Stokes’ apartment. Will assures Barnabas that Stokes won’t come back until after closing time at the local tavern, but a moment later claims that he feels a presence. Barnabas looks around. No sooner had he declared that Will is wrong than the ghostly voice of the late Miss Julia Hoffman fills the room, forbidding them from proceeding with their mission.

Roxanne is played by Donna Wandrey, whose short red hair, pale complexion, and strong chin are reminiscent of Grayson Hall. When we first saw her, we wondered if it would turn out that Roxanne was Hoffman’s secret daughter. The ghostly voice adds substance to the idea that there was something important linking Hoffman with Roxanne.

Episode 1039: This is the body

Dark Shadows spent yesterday and the day before showing us how much her relationship with vampire Barnabas Collins has cost Dr Julia Hoffman. Once a superlatively capable, masterfully poised scientist, Julia has become so ragged and dependent that she reacts to the sight of Barnabas rising from his coffin with a puppyish delight. She has followed him into an alternate universe, cutting herself off from everyone she knows and everything she has. Once in that universe, her first act was to kill her own Doppelgänger, leaving her face to face with a dead version of herself. She has set out to gather intelligence that might help Barnabas in his madcap schemes by impersonating that Doppelgänger, who was the housekeeper at the great house of Collinwood. In that persona, she wears a French maid outfit and disclaims all of her professional and educational attainments. Yesterday, Barnabas was briefly impressed by how much Julia had sacrificed for him; for a second or two, it looked like her love for him might be requited, at least to the extent of one kiss. But he turned his attention elsewhere, and now they are busy on a monster-slaying expedition.

The monster is Angelique Stokes Collins, undead first wife of foul-tempered sourpuss Quentin Collins, master of Collinwood. Angelique’s father, a wizard known as Tim (but he’ll always be “Stokes” to us,) has somehow established an invisible connection between her and a woman he keeps in the back room of his apartment. We learn in the closing credits that this woman’s name is Roxanne. Roxanne is in a coma. Stokes has drained most of Roxanne’s “life-force” into Angelique. Occasionally Roxanne perks up a bit and regains some of her strength. When this happens, Angelique weakens. If Roxanne gets too vigorous, Angelique will die, but that will also happen if Roxanne herself dies. Stokes keeps busy trying to maintain Roxanne in her precise state of debility.

We find Julia and Barnabas in the room with Roxanne. They have learned the secret and come here to kill Roxanne, finishing off Angelique. They talk for a moment about Stokes, who is likely to find another way to revive Angelique if they kill Roxanne. They imply that they will kill him, too. That raises a question. Yesterday Julia saw Angelique collapse and become altogether helpless when Roxanne gained just a tiny bit of strength. If they are going to kill Stokes anyway, why not do that first? Then they can neutralize Angelique by giving Roxanne a little TLC and drop her off at the hospital on their way back to their native universe.

Barnabas doesn’t think of that, but neither does he go through with the murder. He sees Roxanne, raves about her looks, and says in a world full of ugliness they have no right to destroy such beauty. Julia just keeps insisting that they finish her off, and says that if they don’t the blood of Angelique’s future victims will be on Barnabas. That is further evidence of what Julia has lost in her time at Barnabas’ side. Up to this point, she has consistently shown reluctance when he was planning a murder.

Barnabas says that he has never seen a face like Roxanne’s. He’s the only one. With her short red hair, pale skin, and strong chin, Roxanne looks very much like Julia. Indeed, the fans sometimes refer to Donna Wandrey as “Grayson Hall, Junior.” When we see the two together, we wonder if it will turn out that Roxanne is the daughter of the late housekeeper Julia Hoffman. It would be typical of Barnabas to reward Julia’s extreme devotion to him by forgetting all about her and chasing after a girl whose mother she might have been.

There’s also a lot of business today about two minor villains, sleazy musician Bruno Hess and high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Michael Stroka and Louis Edmonds were always fun to watch, but Roger and Bruno are absent and unmentioned for such long stretches that it is hard to believe that anything important is at stake in what they do. Like most of the characters, Bruno believes Angelique’s cover story that she is her identical twin sister Alexis. Acting under this impression, he smacks her around a couple of times. So we can see that he is going to be dead soon, though she will likely make him wish it were a lot sooner.

Roger announces that he has been named executor of the estate of the late Dr Cyrus Longworth. This means he will be coming into some money and perhaps learning some secrets. Quentin’s current wife, the former Maggie Evans, is lonely because her husband is a hopeless jerk. She tries to be friendly to Bruno, and he gets fresh. While he is grabbing her, Roger enters and sneers at Maggie.

Episode 1038: A family that is finished

Julia Hoffman joined the cast of characters in the summer of 1967 as a supremely confident professional, a medical doctor doubly qualified as a psychiatrist and a blood specialist and the head of a private hospital. Julia came to the estate of Collinwood because she had figured out that Barnabas Collins, master of the Old House on its grounds, was a vampire. She had a plan for curing vampirism and believed that if she succeeded she would change the way science defines life and death, thereby revolutionizing medicine.

Julia’s plan was not successful. She came to be so closely entwined with Barnabas and so deeply complicit in his crimes that she could not hope for any future that did not revolve around him. She decided to make the best of this, and set about falling in love with Barnabas. At first he mocked her cruelly for this. Eventually his response to her signs of romantic interest softened into an embarrassed sympathy.

In #980, Barnabas crossed over into an alternate universe, hoping that he would escape his curse there. He found he was still a vampire, and that he was surrounded by strangers. He has now persuaded the Collinses in the great house at Collinwood that he is their long-lost cousin from South America. He has once more established himself in the Old House, this time by biting and enslaving its owners. He quickly made enemies, most notably the undead Angelique Stokes Collins. The housekeeper in the great house was Angelique’s most fanatical devotee and deadliest enforcer. Her name was Julia Hoffman.

Yesterday, Hoffman had learned that Barnabas was a vampire, found his coffin, placed a stake on his chest, and raised a hammer to drive it through his heart. At the last second, a blow was struck from behind, killing Hoffman and saving Barnabas. The killer was Julia, who had made her way into this universe to take her place at Barnabas’ side.

In #351, Julia offered to guard Barnabas during the day. Since Barnabas had previously given this task only to domestic servants, he was shocked to hear a medical doctor volunteer to perform it. Julia smiled and said “I am not offering to be your maid.” Now, Julia is wearing Hoffman’s French maid outfit and posing as her in an attempt to find out what Angelique is up to. Long before Julia killed Hoffman, she had destroyed her old self in the course of her relationship with Barnabas.

Julia is waiting by Barnabas’ coffin when night falls. The lid opens, and she looks delighted. This image is hilarious, but again contrasts with her earlier behavior to show how ragged her personality has become after all this time as a vampire’s henchman. In #289, Julia made her way to Barnabas’ coffin during the day, opened it, looked inside, and staggered back, shivering with a mixture of terror and triumph. She was at once fantastically intrepid and apparently sane. We did not then know what her intentions were, but the daring action combines with Grayson Hall’s masterful performance to persuade us that Julia might be equal to almost any task.

Now, Julia has become so dependent on Barnabas that she neither sees the horror of the situation nor remembers that he is dangerous to her. The very first we saw of Barnabas was his hand darting out of his coffin to choke someone who woke him unexpectedly, and the second time someone did that, in #275, the choking was lethal. Moreover, Barnabas knew that Hoffman was his deadly foe, so even if he’d been up for a while he could be expected to kill Julia before she had a chance to utter a word if he found her in his hiding place dressed as she is.

Fortunately for Julia, Barnabas has developed a habit of standing around and pontificating before his murders. So she has a chance to explain who she is. She shows him the stake and hammer Hoffman was holding when she found her, and he is convinced. He seems impressed that she killed her Doppelgänger for his sake, and they look more like they are about to kiss than they ever have before.

Barnabas and Julia, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!

Julia goes to the great house to report to Angelique, who is staying there in the guise of her identical twin sister Alexis. Angelique irritably asks where Julia has been all day. Julia makes an excuse, and Angelique starts talking about the progress of her evil plans. Before she gets very deep into it, she has a seizure of some kind. Julia asks what she can do to help, and Angelique tells her that she knows very well what to do. The only useful information Julia can get out of her are the word “father” and the sentence “He is doing this!” She decides to call on Angelique’s father, Tim Stokes. She looks Stokes’ address up in the telephone directory, and sets out.

When Stokes answers his door, he expresses surprise, not that Julia is there, but that she bothered to knock before entering. He makes some remarks which Julia cannot even pretend to understand. He says that Angelique must surely have told her about the situation; she says that she did, but that she is very confused about all of it. Stokes ushers her into his back room to give his own explanation.

A blanket covers the body of a woman lying on a table in the back room. Stokes explains to Julia that the woman is not dead. He drained her “life force” to enable Angelique to transcend death, but she retains enough vitality that she keeps pulling that force back to herself from Angelique. That is what causes Angelique to have her seizures. The woman must remain in precisely her current state if Angelique is to exist in the world of the living. The more of her strength she regains, the weaker Angelique will become, and if she dies, Angelique will return to the grave. He has given the woman an injection; he tells Julia that when she returns to the great house she will find that Angelique has recovered.

Julia does indeed find this. She urges Angelique to have Stokes over and repair her relationship with him. Since everyone else is out of the house, tonight would be the perfect time for such a tête–à–tête. Angelique agrees.

While Angelique is mixing martinis for Stokes, Julia is with Barnabas. She goes to the Old House and tells him what she has discovered. He produces a short knife and says that it should take care of the matter. In Stokes’ apartment, he stops and talks about all the time he has spent trying to find Angelique’s vulnerabilities, and wonders that now they have found such a simple method for getting rid of her once and for all. It sounded to my wife as if he was upset that Julia had beaten him to the answer.

In the back room, Julia hands Barnabas the knife. He again goes into a pre-murder soliloquy. Julia peps him up by telling him that the woman isn’t really alive, and that her continued existence means death and destruction for many others. Barnabas agrees. He lifts the blanket and prepares to strike.

The first murder in which Julia participated directly was that of her onetime friend and medical school classmate Dr Dave Woodard in #341. Woodard had learned that Barnabas was a vampire and that Julia was helping him, and was going to expose them both. After resisting the idea for several days, Julia complied with Barnabas’ demand that she prepare a lethal injection for Woodard. She handed him the hypodermic then, as she hands him the knife now. In those days, Barnabas and Julia were not yet friends, and Barnabas replied that she would have to administer the shot herself. In the end, he wound up giving Woodard the fatal dose while Julia stood in the doorway and blocked their victim’s escape. Afterward, Barnabas taunted Julia with her new status as a murderer, making her miserable. Now, they like each other fine, and he accepts the weapon as a matter of course.

It is not surprising that Barnabas, confronted with a problem, chooses murder as the solution. That is always his Plan A, and usually his Plan B and Plan C as well. Indeed, when he wonders what Stokes will do when Angelique is dead he implies that he will murder him too, lamenting that “It never ends does it, when one begins to unravel evil?” Barnabas looks utterly hopeless when he says this. He always feels deeply sorry for himself when he thinks about killing someone.

But this is a new step for Julia. She usually puts up at least a show of reluctance when Barnabas is planning a murder, even if her immediate response when she finds a corpse in his vicinity is to arrange for its secret disposal. What Stokes told her about the “life force” logically entails that bringing the woman out of her coma would destroy Angelique as surely as killing her would. Their resources in this universe are so limited that this may not be a viable course of action, but on her previous form you would expect Julia at least to suggest it. We may wonder if something inside her finally broke when she looked at someone she had killed and saw her own dead face looking back at her.

Episode 1034: Time is our only weapon

Yesterday’s episode ended with a climactic moment in Dark Shadows‘ adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde. Sabrina Stuart, fiancée of mild-mannered scientist Cyrus Longworth, had discovered that Cyrus’ evil alter ego John Yaeger is holding Maggie Evans Collins prisoner in a dungeon outside the village of Collinsport. For some reason she drove to Maggie’s home, the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Cyrus/ Yaeger followed her there and choked her out in the drawing room. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who is Maggie’s sister-in-law and Sabrina’s friend, saw the strangling and screamed. Cyrus/ Yaeger dropped Sabrina to the floor and turned his attention to Liz.

It was unclear at that time if Sabrina was dead or merely unconscious. Today’s opening voiceover says flatly that “Yaeger killed her,” and in the first scene of act one housekeeper Julia Hoffman checks Sabrina’s body and declares that she is dead. Since the narrator and Hoffman are both played by Grayson Hall, longtime viewers will be cautious about accepting these pronouncements. For its first 196 weeks, Dark Shadows was set in an alternate universe. There, Hall played Hoffman’s counterpart, a medical doctor who has many abilities no other member of her profession can equal but who is curiously unreliable when she pronounces patients dead. Julia has been known to erroneously pronounce the same person dead twice in a single episode. So we have to reserve judgment for a bit about whether Sabrina will be wanting breakfast.

Liz locked Cyrus/ Yaeger in the drawing room before he could get his hands on her, and he smashed a window and ran out when he heard her talking with Hoffman in the foyer. Liz and Hoffman find that Cyrus/ Yaeger had torn the telephones in both the drawing room and the foyer out of their wall sockets. We’ve seen telephones in other parts of the house several times, but evidently those are out of order today. Hoffman says that she will go to the Old House on the grounds of the estate, home to Liz’ daughter Carolyn and Carolyn’s husband Will, and call the police from there. Hoffman assures Liz that Cyrus/ Yaeger must have left the estate and that he will present no danger on the fifteen minute walk to the Loomis house.

Hoffman’s confidence on this point puzzles Liz, who watches her leave carrying only a flashlight while she herself crouches in the drawing room holding a pistol. It may puzzle first-time viewers as well. Those who have been watching for several days know that Hoffman is in league with Cyrus/ Yaeger. Hoffman has been acting as a messenger between Cyrus/ Yaeger and her mistress Angelique, the undead first wife of Quentin Collins, who is Maggie’s husband and Liz’ brother. Angelique wants Maggie out of the way so that she can remarry Quentin, and is supporting Cyrus/ Yaeger’s plan to torture her into loving him.

At the Loomis house, Hoffman calls the police and reports exactly what Liz knows. When she is done with her call, she realizes that she is alone in the house. Earlier, she was peeking through the window when Carolyn and Will’s mysterious houseguest, a person named Barnabas Collins, opened the secret panel behind a bookcase. She takes advantage of the opportunity to find out what Barnabas is hiding. She sees a coffin in the chamber behind it. Without hesitation, she opens the coffin. She finds that it is empty. She closes the panel, wondering why Barnabas would keep an empty coffin in a hidden chamber. She is on her way out when Barnabas enters and demands to know what she is doing there. She tells him what happened in the drawing room of the great house, and he rushes out with her.

Cyrus/ Yaeger is in his laboratory. He takes out the antidote. This will puzzle regular viewers. Up to this point, it has seemed clear that Cyrus/Yaeger has only one potion, and that it effects both his Hyde-ification and his re-Jekyllizing. He threw all of that potion away a couple of weeks ago, after he tried to rape Maggie in a dark alley. He cannot make more, since it requires a compound that only one chemist could provide and Cyrus murdered that chemist when he learned his secret. His current Yaegerness is the result of a spontaneous transformation that took place without drinking the potion. So we are at a loss to explain why he still has any of it. He tells himself that there is only enough to change him once. By the time he starts drinking it, the police are knocking at his door.

At length, Cyrus lets the policeman in. He asks what took so long; Cyrus claims to have been asleep. He tells Cyrus that Yaeger has murdered Sabrina; Cyrus responds with genuine shock. The policeman apologizes for not having known that Cyrus was engaged to marry Sabrina, but insists that he answer his questions.

Most of Collinsport’s police officers have been farcically incompetent. The actors have responded to the challenge of playing these useless men in various ways. Dana Elcar, who in 1966 and 1967 was the first of four to play Sheriff George Patterson, kept you hoping that his character was just playing dumb. Some of the others either gave up and let us see their own contempt for the bumblers the scripts had saddled them with, as Vince O’Brien did towards the end of his own time as the last of the Sheriffs George Patterson. Dreariest of all was the first law enforcement officer on Dark Shadows, Constable Jonas Carter, whose flagrant incompetence at his job scarcely exceeded the incompetence Michael Currie brought to the role. This policeman doesn’t solve anything, but Philip R. Allen’s performance makes him seem like the greatest detective we’ve ever seen. Allen is spellbinding as he simultaneously depicts sincere empathy and an unbending determination to get at the facts. It’s too bad this is the only time we get to see this dynamic actor on Dark Shadows.

Outside the great house, Barnabas and Liz are watching the ambulance take Sabrina’s body away. Its flashing lights illuminate their faces. This is the first evidence we have seen that emergency vehicles exist in any iteration of Collinsport. Indeed, when the characters decide that someone is dead they usually take it for granted that there is no longer any point in calling the authorities, that they should just set about digging a grave and burying the body.

Barnabas and Liz watch the ambulance take Sabrina’s body away. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas asks Liz if she knew that Yaeger had threatened Maggie and that he has an unwholesome interest in her. She did not. Maggie had not told anyone at Collinwood about the incident in the dark alley. Barnabas tells her only that he heard about it in town. Regular viewers know that a woman named Buffie Harrington foiled Yaeger’s assault on Maggie when she happened by the alley. Barnabas can hardly tell Liz about his connection with Buffie, since he is a vampire and Buffie is his victim. They decide they must tell the police about Yaeger and Maggie, and they go back to the Loomis house to make a telephone call.

Cyrus is still in his lab. He knows that he might change back into Yaeger at any time. He decides to call Barnabas at the Loomis house and tell him where Maggie is. Barnabas holds the telephone so Liz can hear what Cyrus is saying. Barnabas asks Cyrus how he knows that Yaeger is holding Maggie; he says he can’t tell him. Barnabas and Liz rush out. They don’t think to call the police.

Speakerphone, 1970-style. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Back at Collinwood, Liz tells Hoffman she ought to go to the policemen outside the house and tell them what Cyrus told her and Barnabas. She also frets about Barnabas’ safety. Hoffman says she is quite sure that Barnabas Collins does not need anyone’s protection. Liz does not know what she means, but is in too much of a hurry to question her. Hoffman thinks to herself about how much has happened that she has not had a chance to tell Angelique.

In his lab, Cyrus raises a pistol to his head and puts his finger on the trigger. Before he can fire, he transforms into Yaeger.

Barnabas makes his way to Maggie’s dungeon. He searches it, finding her belongings but not her. She has picked the lock, untied the ropes in which Cyrus/ Yaeger bound her, and let herself out. She is hiding elsewhere in the basement. She can hear Barnabas’ steps, but does not know who it is. She assumes that it is Yaeger. When she hears him leave the basement, she starts to make her way out. Just as she emerges from the shadows, Yaeger appears on the steps and greets her. She screams, and he pounces.

Episode 1026: The spectacle of Barnabas Collins trying to prove anything

Maggie Evans is depressed about her marriage to drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins. In #1016, Maggie was getting ready to call a lawyer so she could put an end to their joyless union, but she changed her mind and decided to give it one more try. That has not worked out, and she has gone from contemplating divorce to attempting suicide. She is about to fling herself to her death from a window high in the great house of Collinwood when Quentin’s sister Elizabeth Collins Stoddard enters the room and talks her out of it. For its first 196 weeks, Dark Shadows was set in an alternate universe, which is in some ways a mirror image of this one. This incident is a case in point. In the original continuity, it was Liz’ counterpart whom people kept interrupting while she was trying to do away with herself,* so she takes the reversed position in this universe.

Most of the episode is devoted to the activities of a visitor from the main continuity, Barnabas Collins. The only thing Barnabas has a motivation to do is to try to get back home, but he seems to have decided he’d rather meddle in the problems the people in this alien universe are having. He suspects that the houseguest at Collinwood who is generally accepted as Alexis Stokes, identical twin sister of Quentin’s late first wife Angelique, is in fact Angelique herself risen from the dead. He also suspects that Maggie’s suicide attempt was the consequence of spells Angelique cast on her.

Barnabas is right about these things, but his grounds for believing them are thin. Angelique’s counterpart in his universe is a wicked witch who has long been the bane of his existence, and so he simply assumes that a woman with her face and voice will be the same. But for three weeks, Alexis really was staying at Collinwood, and Angelique really was in her tomb. Alexis looked and sounded exactly like Angelique. We saw that, while Alexis may not have been a one-dimensional innocent, she was not a witch and was not a direct threat to anyone’s life or liberty. Had Barnabas met Alexis before Angelique came back to life and murdered her, he would have had exactly the same suspicions about her that he has now about Angelique. It is purely a matter of luck that his suspicions coincide with the truth.

In the main continuity, Barnabas’ best friend and most frequent accomplice in his many crimes is mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD. Julia’s counterpart here is the housekeeper at Collinwood. Miss Julia Hoffman is as devoted to Angelique as the original Julia is devoted to Barnabas. As the first Julia shows great reluctance when Barnabas is about to murder someone and shows even greater efficiency in getting rid of the bodies afterward, so this Julia protested yesterday that she would have nothing to do with Angelique’s plan to drive Maggie to her death, but was waiting outside the room when she was about to jump.

After confronting Julia and Angelique, needlessly revealing to them his suspicions, Barnabas decides to get some hard evidence. So he goes to Angelique’s old bedroom and stares really hard at the portrait of her that hangs there. She is in another part of the house, but grows agitated. She runs to the room and screams at him to stop staring into her eyes. He breaks into a triumphant… not grin, exactly, it’s more of a simper. It may be the only triumphant simper ever seen. That suits the occasion. He knows he was right, but Angelique knows that he knows, and it is not clear what he either can do to fight her or what reason he has to want to fight her.

Barnabas’ triumphant simper. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Jonathan Frid’s invention of a facial expression previously thought to be impossible is one of several bits of conspicuously good acting in this episode. He also gets to deliver brief enigmatic responses to a number of questions, such as “Perhaps” and “Did I?,” and he makes each of those words materialize in space in such an arresting way that even his scene partners can’t help but show how impressed they are. As Liz fussing over Maggie, Joan Bennett shows a maternal quality that brings her hitherto undefined character into a very sharp focus. Grayson Hall also adds greatly to Hoffman’s depth. Standing by while Maggie is trying to kill herself, she is bland and detached. When she tells Angelique that it really is better for them that Maggie did not succeed, she is the opposite, torn between a number of emotions, including relief that she has avoided responsibility for a death.

Angelique has several comic lines, for example a wistful lament that she doesn’t get to see Maggie’s corpse mangled on the rocks below her window. And she puts real fervor into her spellcasting directed at Maggie. My wife, Mrs Acilius, remembered that when Lara Parker first joined the cast she wished she were playing an ingenue, so much so that Frid had to keep reminding her that she was the villain. But now she has settled in and become part of the group. So when Angelique abuses Maggie, Parker and her friend Kathryn Leigh Scott turn into two little girls playing make-believe, and they have so much fun at it that they are irresistible to watch, no matter how miserable Maggie is.

*For example, in #266, #267, and #268, and #569.

Episode 1007: Accumulating guilts

Chemist Horace Gladstone has been selling a strange and powerful synthesis of his own invention to Cyrus Longworth, an independent medical researcher. Cyrus refuses to tell Gladstone what he is using the synthesis for. Gladstone has now figured it out for himself. Cyrus has concocted a potion which he drinks to change his appearance, disguising him so effectively that even the people who know him best do not recognize him. In that disguise, Cyrus calls himself “John Yaeger,” spends a lot of money, and indulges his sadistic impulses.

Gladstone comes to Cyrus’ lab and tells him what he knows. Cyrus tries to deny that he is Yaeger, and Gladstone lists the evidence he has collected proving that he is. Gladstone tells Cyrus that he doesn’t believe he can do without the thrills he gets from his activities as Yaeger. The story has been crafted as an account of addiction, so returning viewers are sure Gladstone is right. He says he will go on serving as Cyrus’ connection for the drug he craves, but the price has gone up. He demands $10,000.

Cyrus first learned Gladstone’s name from his late friend Angelique Stokes Collins. Angelique was a woman of vast learning in a variety of fields, much like the title character in Edgar Allan Poe’s story “Ligeia.” Also like Ligeia, Angelique has returned from the dead. She is now back in the great house of Collinwood, impersonating the identical twin sister whom she murdered on the night of her resurrection, and occupying her old room as the guest of her widower, drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins.

Cyrus calls Gladstone a blackmailer. In reply, Gladstone makes a cryptic remark: “Why do you think my number was in Angelique Collins’ phone book? She’s led many lives. Each person only gets one. Good night.” We have indeed been wondering how Angelique came to know Gladstone, and now we wonder if he is aware of just how literally true it is that “She’s led many lives.” It doesn’t make any sense to follow “She’s led many lives” with “Each person only gets one,” but actor John Harkins was so precise in his delivery that I’m sure that was the scripted line. If there was a slip, it came from Sam Hall’s typewriter, not from Harkins’ tongue.

If it isn’t a slip, I think we would have to go out on a limb to explain what Gladstone could mean. Angelique built up a cult around herself, including several people who were firmly convinced that she was going to rise from the dead. When her sister Alexis came to Collinwood, housekeeper Julia Hoffman, sleazy musician Bruno Hess, and Angelique and Quentin’s son Daniel were certain that the prophecy had been fulfilled and they were seeing Angelique redivivus. This was also the first thought that came to Cyrus, to Quentin’s brother Roger, and to Angelique’s Aunt Hannah, though they were more easily persuaded that Alexis was a separate person. The cultists are impressive enough in their certainty that even people outside their ranks were sure Alexis was Angelique returned from the grave. Daniel’s cousin and playmate Amy Collins was horrified to see her for that reason, and Quentin’s second wife, the former Maggie Evans, fled the house in part because she could not shake her belief that Alexis was Angelique.

If Gladstone is familiar with Angelique’s cult and has been involved with it, he might be saying that each person gets to participate in only one of Angelique’s lives. We’ve already seen that is not the case, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t think it is. Angelique may at some point have taught her followers a doctrine like that. While Hoffman, Bruno, and Daniel expected Angelique to come back and rejoin them, Cyrus, Roger, and Hannah were unsure they would see her again, even though they were certain that she was not simply dead. Indeed, Angelique is still telling her most of her devotees that she is Alexis. The only one to whom she has fully revealed herself is Hannah. Perhaps she had a plan to transcend death, but did not know just how it would work. Or perhaps she has decided the rest are not yet ready to be initiated into the esoteric truth of her return.

Sam Hall was a serious Lutheran, so much so that he insisted Shirley Grossman convert from Judaism before she married him and became Grayson Hall. Christian studies in twentieth century academic institutions were largely taken up with speculation about differences of opinion in the church before the codification of the New Testament and the formulation of the creeds. This sort of thing is still prominent in divinity schools today, and is often heard from pulpits in mainline Protestant denominations. Hall must have been familiar with it, so he probably gave it some thought when he spent Easter season 1970 writing scripts about a figure whose followers sort of expected her to rise from the dead and who surprised them by the way in which she actually did so. I doubt he was making any particular point about the various schools of thought that seminary professors postulate in the primitive church, but when he presents Angelique’s cult as divided into several strains of opinion from the start he is developing an idea that he did not have to invent himself.

We cut from the scene between Cyrus and Gladstone to the basement of Collinwood. Angelique leads Quentin to a little chamber hidden behind an alcove. A human skeleton stands in the chamber. You may wonder how a skeleton can stand, but Quentin doesn’t. He is too busy being surprised that he didn’t realize this chamber was in his basement.

The skeleton is that of Dameon Edwards, a friend of Angelique’s who went missing about a year before. Dameon’s ghost has been haunting the place for a couple of weeks. Angelique tells Quentin that Hannah found the skeleton and exorcised the ghost. Yesterday, we saw Angelique exorcise the ghost. Returning viewers know that she is giving credit to Hannah because she is masquerading as Alexis, who did not share her sister’s interest in the occult or her aunt’s. Quentin thinks that Bruno probably killed Dameon. Indeed, the ghost confirmed this yesterday. Quentin very much wants to get rid of Bruno, so you might think he would be interested in bringing a murder charge against him. But he decides that would be too much trouble, and it hurts his feelings when “Alexis” snaps at him that he shouldn’t be wasting his time reporting Dameon’s murder when he isn’t doing anything to investigate Angelique’s. So he calls Cyrus, and the two of them bury the bones on the grounds of the estate.

Meanwhile, two long-absent characters have returned from trips out of town. Quentin sent Hoffman to visit friends of hers in Boston because she kept antagonizing Maggie. Quentin’s sister Elizabeth Collins Stoddard also went away for a long stay in New York, where she visited Maggie. In off-screen reality, Grayson Hall and Joan Bennett were both in Tarrytown, New York with several other cast members, working on the feature film House of Dark Shadows. Liz complains that Hoffman didn’t meet her at the train station with a car, and Hoffman explains that she just got back herself.

Hoffman says she missed Collinwood terribly while she was in Boston; Liz says she can’t understand that. If she were in Quentin’s place, she would sell the house and move to the city. That will interest longtime viewers. For its first 196 weeks, Dark Shadows was set in a parallel universe, where Liz’ counterpart owned Collinwood. When the show started, she was a recluse who hadn’t left the house for eighteen years. Her brother Roger often urged her to sell the place so that they could live someplace less gloomy, but even after she stopped being a recluse Liz wouldn’t hear of that. She was a symbol of the family’s commitment to the house. We have already seen that this Liz is the opposite of her counterpart in other ways, and now we wonder how far they will take that mirror image motif.

Angelique is in the foyer, talking on the telephone to Hannah. Villains on Dark Shadows have remarkably little sense of OpSec, and this is a case in point. Quentin, Liz, and Hoffman are a few feet away from her in the drawing room, and each of them knows that Alexis and Hannah couldn’t stand each other. All Angelique has to do is call Hannah by name and she will raise their suspicions. Yet not only does she use Hannah’s name several times, she uses one incriminating expression after another about how no one will suspect what they are up to. If any of them listens in, or of anyone else in the house happens by on their way to the front door, Angelique will have tipped her hand.

It is Hoffman who eavesdrops on the call. After Angelique catches her, they have an awkward exchange and Hoffman goes upstairs. Angelique then stands at the door to the drawing room and eavesdrops on a conversation between Liz and Quentin. Liz wants Quentin to go to New York and ask Maggie to come home, he throws a tantrum and says that Maggie is too childish for him to do such a thing.

Hoffman is in Angelique’s old room, talking to the portrait of her that hangs there. The members of Angelique’s cult make a practice of coming to the room and carrying on conversations with the portrait; when Alexis was staying in the room, she sometimes walked in on them while they were confiding their thoughts to it. Angelique eavesdrops on the last part of Hoffman’s account that when she was in Boston, she felt a mystic assurance that when she returned to Collinwood she would find Angelique come back to life. When Hoffman says that everything seems to be the same as it was when she left, she is close to tears.

The resurrected Angelique eavesdrops on Hoffman’s conversation with the dead Angelique. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique takes a step forward, and Hoffman realizes she is not alone with the portrait. She apologizes to “Alexis,” and Angelique says she needs a friend she can trust. Hoffman claims to be such a friend. “Alexis” then launches into her reasons for believing that Angelique was murdered. After the first couple of sentences, returning viewers know what she is going to say, so we dissolve to Quentin and Cyrus in the drawing room.

Quentin and Cyrus have just buried the skeleton, prompting Quentin to feel sorry for himself. He then tries to explain to Cyrus something extremely weird he saw the other evening. He went to Angelique’s old room to see Alexis. He opened the door, and saw a space that lacked the room’s furniture, lights, and decor. He saw two children whom he took to be Daniel and Amy, and they said something about Barnabas Collins. The only person of that name of whom Quentin or Cyrus is aware died in 1830, but the children were talking about someone they knew. An invisible barrier kept Quentin from entering the room, and he could not attract the children’s attention. Regular viewers know that Quentin was catching a glimpse of the other continuity, and that the children were not Daniel and Amy Collins, but their counterparts David Collins and Amy Jennings. Cyrus hasn’t been watching the show, so all he can do is suggest Quentin take a vacation.

They’ve been experimenting with videotape editing, and they make a jump cut from the drawing room scene with Quentin and Cyrus to Quentin walking up to the doors of Angelique’s room. The effect is startling, I suspect intentionally so. Quentin opens the doors, and again sees the other universe.

This time Quentin sees the counterparts of Liz and Hoffman. As David and Amy had been, they are talking about Barnabas, who was last seen in this room. Hoffman, whom Liz addresses as Julia, says that they must keep the room open so that Barnabas will have a chance to return to them. She says she wants to stay there, because it makes her feel close to Barnabas. Liz excuses herself, and Julia calls out to Barnabas. As Hoffman had grown emotional talking to the Angelique whom she believed to be absent, Julia grows emotional when she talks to the missing Barnabas. She looks at the hallway, seeing not Quentin but the dark, empty space that is there in her universe. She asks if Barnabas is there, watching her. Grayson Hall plays these two scenes so similarly that we can have no doubt that whatever the one Julia Hoffman feels for Barnabas, the other feels for Angelique.

Quentin calls out to Hoffman’s counterpart, as he had called to Daniel and Amy’s counterparts. As the children had been unaware of his presence, so this other Julia Hoffman is unaware of him. And as Daniel and Amy had come to the hallway and asked why he was shouting for them, Hoffman comes to the hallway and asks why he is shouting for her.