joan bennett – Page 4 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Pre-emption Day: Adam in New York

No episode of Dark Shadows premiered 56 years ago today. That was Thanksgiving, and ABC was showing football at 4 PM.

At this point, Alexandra Moltke Isles had left the part of well-meaning governess Victoria Winters, marking the last step in the character’s long decline from her original position as the show’s chief protagonist. Vicki spent her childhood in a foundling home where she was left as a newborn with a note reading “Her name is Victoria. I cannot take care of her.” During Dark Shadows‘ first months, Vicki was on a quest to find out who her parents were. The show hinted pretty heavily that her mother was reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her father was someone other than Liz’ long-missing husband, the scoundrelly Paul Stoddard, but the whole thing was dropped without any real resolution long ago.

In yesterday’s episode, Frankenstein’s monster Adam was on his way to Vicki’s room, apparently meaning to kill her. We understand Adam’s violence too well to regard him as a very cold villain. Most of the harm he has done is the result of his not knowing his own strength, and the rest is the predictable consequence of the abominable education he has received from his creators, mad scientist Julia Hoffman and recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, and from suave warlock Nicholas Blair. To longtime viewers, Vicki has been important enough for long enough that we do not see any prospect that a character as sympathetic as he is will become her murderer. On the other hand, Nicholas has now left the show, and there is nowhere for Adam to go within any of the ongoing storylines. If he simply disappears, he will be another significant loose end.

In September 2023, I left a long comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day describing a fanfic idea that would at one stroke answer the questions of Vicki’s origin and of Adam’s fate. Below is a lightly edited version of that comment:

Here’s an idea I had today for a story that would save Vicki.

It would be a TV movie airing late in 1969. Start with a prologue set in Collinwood at that time. Adam returns, looking for Barnabas and Julia. He’s very well-spoken and accomplished now, but still socially awkward, still prone to fits of anger, and in need of help to get papers that he needs to establish a legal identity.

He finds that Barnabas and Julia are gone. He also happens upon some mumbo-jumbo that dislocates him in time and space.

It plops him down in NYC in 1945. With his facial scars, everyone assumes he’s a returning GI injured in the war. He meets a young woman, supporting herself working at a magazine about handheld machines, trying to establish independence from her wealthy family back in Maine. This woman, played by Alexandra Moltke Isles, is Elizabeth Collins.

Adam and Elizabeth slide into a love affair. She has another boyfriend, a dashing young naval officer named Paul Stoddard (Ed Nelson.)

Dennis Patrick as the Paul Stoddard of 1969

Elizabeth is frustrated with both Adam and Paul; Adam refuses to talk about his background, and while Paul says many words when asked about himself, he doesn’t really give significantly more information than Adam does. Paul is slick, charming, and familiar with all the most fashionable night spots, but he does show signs of a nasty side. Besides, he rooms with a disreputable young sailor named Jason McGuire (John Connell) who keeps turning up at the most disconcerting moments.

From #143, John Connell, suggesting the Jason McGuire of 1945

Dennis Patrick as the Jason McGuire of 1967

For his part, Adam is sincere, passionate, and attentive, but given to quick flashes of anger. He’s just as quick to apologize and sometimes blubbers like a giant baby with remorse for his harsh words, but he’s so big and so strong that when he is carried away in his fits of anger Elizabeth can’t help but be afraid of him. Besides, he’s not a lot of fun on a Saturday night. He doesn’t have a nickel to his name, and his idea of an exciting weekend is an impromptu seminar on Freud’s TOTEM AND TABOO, followed by a couple of games of chess.

Elizabeth’s mother (Joan Bennett) comes to town. Mrs Collins is appalled by Adam’s scars, impatient with his refusal to discuss his background, and contemptuous of his obvious poverty. Paul’s effortless charm and sparkling wit, packaged in the naval dress uniform he makes sure he’s wearing when she first sees him, fit far more tidily into her vision of a son-in-law. Mrs Collins presses her daughter to spurn Adam and pursue Paul, and for a time Elizabeth tries to comply with her wishes.

Yet she cannot forget Adam. Paul realizes this, and sees his chance at an easy life slipping away. We see him in a dive in Greenwich Village telling Jason McGuire that Elizabeth and her inheritance are going to end up with the scar-faced scholar. He and McGuire review Adam’s weaknesses, and decide they can exploit Elizabeth’s concern about his temper. They trick her into believing that Adam is on the run from the law, having beaten his wife to death. They lead her to believe that it’s just a matter of time before his occasional verbal outbursts give way to physical abuse, and that when that happens it will be too late- he will kill her. Believing this, Elizabeth gives Paul another chance, but still cannot break things off with Adam.

Adam does not know what Paul and Jason have led Elizabeth to believe. He knows only that she has become distant from him, and that she is still seeing Paul. He becomes angry and shouts at Elizabeth. He reaches for an object; she believes it is a blunt instrument with which he will kill her. In a moment of panic, she grabs a gun she has been studying for an article the magazine has assigned her to write and shoots him. As he lies motionless on her floor, she discovers that he wasn’t reaching for a weapon at all- he was reaching for a love letter that he had written to her. She realizes that he was no threat to her, that she has shot him for no reason.

She flees to Paul and Jason’s apartment, telling them that she has killed Adam. Paul calms her and promises to take care of matters so that she will not be suspected of any crime. Paul and Jason go to her apartment and find it empty. There are bloodstains on the carpet where Adam fell, and a trail of bloodstains leading down the hallway out the front door. They follow the stains and find Adam nursing a serious, but clearly not fatal, wound. They lead Adam back to Elizabeth’s apartment. They draw on their naval training to remove the bullet, clean and dress the wound. After a conversation. Adam admits that there is no point in his pursuing Elizabeth, and he agrees to leave town. Paul gives Adam some money and promises to tell Elizabeth that he is all right and that he doesn’t hold a grudge. Adam shakes Paul’s hand and leaves.

Paul and Jason clean the bloodstains. They then return to their own apartment. On the way they exchange a look that begins as nervous, and ends with two broad grins. Elizabeth asks why they were away so long. They tell her that it takes quite a while to dispose of a corpse. She sobs. Paul holds her.

Paul and Elizabeth announce their engagement. A few weeks later, the doctor informs Elizabeth that she is pregnant. The child must be Adam’s. Paul is not interested in raising any child, and certainly not interested in splitting the estate with a child not even his own. He orders Elizabeth to give the baby up. She refuses. He points out that she wouldn’t be able to do much mothering if she were in prison for murder. She sobs. In the final scene, we see Elizabeth outside on a snowy day, holding a basket and writing a note. In voiceover, we hear the contents of the note: “Her name is Victoria. I cannot take care of her.”

Episode 624: Difficult adjustment

Today, we open with well-meaning governess Vicki in her room in the great house of Collinwood, wearing her wedding dress. Matriarch Liz enters, gives her a peck on the cheek, and tells her what a lovely bride she will be. Everything in their words and actions suggests to first-time viewers that they are mother and daughter; the strong resemblance between Joan Bennett and Alexandra Moltke Isles would tend to corroborate this impression. In a later scene, we hear Vicki call Liz “Mrs Stoddard.” Thus we learn she is one of the household staff.

Meanwhile, Frankenstein’s monsters Adam and Eve share a moment. Eve was created to be Adam’s mate, but she has wanted nothing to do with him. She has gone so far as to tell him to his face that she hates him and will kill him. Today, suave warlock Nicholas has ordered Eve to make nice with Adam, and so she tells him to forget all about her previous remarks. They sit facing each other on the floor in front of the fire, the first time we have seen potential lovers do that on Dark Shadows. They kiss.

Adam and Eve look at each other. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

A jump cut indicates the passage of time, and we see Adam and Eve snuggling on a little sofa and being pleasant to each other. We are free to surmise that they had sex. Perhaps there will be Frankenbabies after all. Adam leaves. In his absence, Eve again says that she cares nothing for him, but only for someone named “Peter.” Since Peter is the man Vicki is supposed to marry today, that sets up a conflict.

Back at Collinwood, Vicki opens a wedding gift she finds disturbing. The card enclosed is simply labeled “Peter” in all caps. In fact, Eve sent it, but Peter is such a tedious character that it is easy to imagine that he has never learned to use lower-case letters or to write more than his first name, so we can understand Vicki’s reaction.

Episode 610: You are the angel of death

A woman named Eve sees a man standing on the terrace of the great house of Collinwood. She addresses the man as “Peter Bradford.” Regular viewers know that this is indeed his name, but we also know that he prefers to be called “Jeff Clark.” Peter/ Jeff has died and came back to life since he was first known as “Peter Bradford,” so I suppose you could say that’s a case of deadnaming. But while most transfolk tend to be patient when people inadvertently deadname them, Peter/ Jeff is a huge jerk about correcting people who use his former name. Yesterday twelve year old David Collins called him “Peter Bradford,” and he grabbed the boy and shook him until it looked like he had given him a concussion.

Eve is also a returnee from the world of the dead. Doubly so; her body is a Frankenstein creation made of parts salvaged from corpses, while her memories and personality are those of eighteenth century homicidal maniac Danielle Roget. Peter lived in that same era, and when Eve/ Danielle recognizes him we learn that they knew each other then. Peter/ Jeff doesn’t assault her as he did David; she’s his own size. He doesn’t recognize her, which she attributes to the fact that she looks different than she did when they knew each other. He keeps whining that his name is “Jeff Clark,” but she isn’t having it.

Meanwhile, Peter/ Jeff’s fiancée, well-meaning governess Vicki, is in the drawing room, having a conversation with matriarch Liz. There is a blooper in the middle of this conversation. Liz is supposed to say something like “Then you’ve resolved all your difficulties,” but Joan Bennett stumbles over the words. Alexandra Moltke Isles improvises a response that makes sense of it. That response is smooth enough, but she delivers the rest of her lines very quickly and with unusually little eye contact with her scene partner. Perhaps that is because she was afraid the improvised line was going to put the scene over time, or maybe she realized she had called attention to Bennett’s flub and was nervous because she had embarrassed a big star.

Or maybe Mrs Isles was nervous because her next scene was going to be with Peter/ Jeff, and she knew it would involve Roger Davis putting his hands on her. As they exit, Peter/ Jeff clutches Vicki by wrapping his arms around her in a remarkably awkward fashion, and she visibly squirms. This is most likely Mrs Isles’ discomfort arising from Mr Davis’ habit of physically assaulting his scene partners. A charitable viewer just might be able to believe that it is Vicki’s discomfort because Peter/ Jeff just spent the whole scene telling her transparent lies. He doesn’t want to tell her about his encounter with Eve/ Danielle, and makes up totally unconvincing excuses for his distracted state. Perhaps Mrs Isles channeled her unhappiness at being yoked with Mr Davis into her expression of Vicki’s dissatisfaction with the loathsome little man she is engaged to marry.

Once Vicki and Peter/ Jeff are gone, Eve/ Danielle emerges from the bushes whence she had been spying on them. Liz comes out to the terrace and sees Eve/ Danielle. She asks who she is. When she does not answer, Liz tells her that she knows- she is the angel of death. Eve/ Danielle is startled by this, and hurries away.

The next scene takes place in the house of suave warlock Nicholas Blair. Nicholas has been keeping Eve/ Danielle there since she came to life. She has returned from Collinwood. Nicholas is upset with her for going out without his permission. She taunts him, and he slaps her. He threatens to kill her, and she says that while she does not know what his plans are, it is clear to her that she figures too prominently in them for him to do that.

Coming so shortly after we saw an actress give strong signs of unease at contact with Roger Davis, Nicholas’ slap to Eve/ Danielle’s face is a lesson in how professional actors handle scenes involving physical violence. Eve/ Danielle is relaxed before the slap and in shock after it. Her reaction gives the scene its energy. If Marie Wallace had reason to believe Humbert Allen Astredo would actually hit her, she may well have been as tense before the slap as Mrs Isles was before Roger Davis slithered his arms around her, and the scene would have dribbled out as lifelessly as does Peter/ Jeff’s scene with Vicki.

Once Nicholas concedes that Eve/ Danielle is important to his plans, she relaxes again and decides she may as well tell him about her encounter with Peter/ Jeff. Nicholas is intrigued, and disturbed. He tells Eve/ Danielle that “If it is true that they are one and the same, then there are forces at work here that I don’t know about.” Eve/ Danielle’s memory of her previous existence is very incomplete, and she wants Nicholas to help her to learn more about herself. Once he has heard about Peter/ Jeff, he is eager to oblige. He hypnotizes her.

At this point, my wife, Mrs Acilius, expressed frustration. “He’s going to hypnotize her and afterward she won’t remember anything! It’s only interesting if she remembers.” Eve/ Danielle does have a flashback to 1795, but at the end she seems to come out of the trance on her own. She turns to Nicholas, calls him by name, and says that she remembers Peter Bradford and she loves him. Since Nicholas doesn’t give her a post-hypnotic suggestion and snap his fingers, it seems likely she will remember her past with Peter.

When Danielle was introduced, I assumed that the name “Roget” was a case of deadline-induced selection. She is based on Madame DuFarge from A Tale of Two Cities, so she had to be French. But the writer didn’t have a list of French surnames at his fingertips, so he looked at his desk, saw a copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, and went with that. Perhaps that was what happened, but today Eve/ Danielle lives up to her namesake and goes into the synonym business. She calls Peter/ Jeff by his original name. She is on the receiving end of synonymy from Liz, since “the angel of death” is as good a name for her as any. And one of the memory gaps Eve/ Danielle wants Nicholas to help her fill is her previous name.

Marie Wallace plays Danielle in the flashback, even though she had mentioned in the first act that she looked different in those days. This occasions much discussion on the fansites. Here is the debate on the Dark Shadows Wiki:

During the fiashback scene, Danielle Roget should have been played by Erica Fitz instead of Marie Wallace. Fitz had previously portrayed Danielle Roget in episode 594, so it would have made sense and for character continuity to continue using the same actress. [Addendum: There are strong reasons to argue otherwise as well. One could argue that this is a memory that Nicholas is conjuring in Eve, so it’s from Eve’s perspective, and she would naturally see herself in her current guise, not even knowing what Danielle Roget looked like. This is also a reasonable place for dramatic license to prevail. The scene is very short, and it wouldn’t have been especially practical to have an additional actress. It’s also possible that viewers may have been confused if another actress was in the scene–Erica Fitz was on the show for only two episodes, so viewers at the time might not even have seen or not fully remembered what she looked like. Aside from that, it’s also possible Erica Fitz was not available.]
Discussion under “Bloopers and Continuity Errors” in “610” on The Dark Shadows Wiki.

In a comment on his own post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn puts it more succinctly:

Yeah, I think the in-universe explanation is that the flashback pictured at the top of this post is Eve’s hypnosis-assisted memory of the event, so she’s picturing herself as she is now.

The real-world explanation is that Marie Wallace is playing Eve/Danielle now, and exactly nobody wants Erica Fitz to come back and appear in the flashback.
Comment left 23 March 2015 by Danny Horn on “Episode 610: Inexplicable You,” Dark Shadows Before I Die, 21 March 2015.

For my part, I’m sure Erica Fitz Mears is a very nice lady, and we should all give her money to help with her health problems. But no, she was not a good actress and I do not regret that she did not get more work on screen. Since Mrs Mears was only in two episodes, today’s flashback might have been an opportunity to give some other actress a chance to show what she could do as Danielle. But Miss Wallace does a very good job, and rounding the episode with two confrontations between the same pair of performers does a great deal to strengthen its structure. It would probably have been a mistake to cast anyone else in the flashback.

The flashback scene does come as bad news to longtime viewers, for reasons that have nothing to do with the casting of Danielle. When in November 1967 the show needed to develop a backstory for vampire Barnabas Collins, it took us back to 1795 and introduced Angelique, a maniacal ex-girlfriend who was determined to disrupt Barnabas’ new romance. That was a triumph that turned Barnabas from a stunt that boosted their ratings sufficiently to ward off cancellation into one of the major pop-culture phenomena of the 1960s, and Angelique herself became one of the show’s most important characters. That they are trying the same tactic with Peter/ Jeff, right down to a dramatic date of 1795, leads us to fear that they see him as a permanent part of the cast, and that they want to tie Eve/ Danielle as closely to him as Angelique is tied to Barnabas.

Episode 576: Enough to occupy your mind

Well-meaning governess Vicki is engaged to marry an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki knows that Peter/ Jeff has some kind of job that keeps him busy during the day. She does not know that he has been spending all night working at a second job. He is helping to build a Frankenstein’s monster. This second job is unpaid; his incentive is that if the monster is not built, an already existing Frankenstein’s monster named Adam has said that he will kill Vicki and everyone else in the great house of Collinwood.

As we open today, Peter/ Jeff is bitten by vampire Angelique. After Peter/ Jeff regains consciousness, Angelique starts giving him orders. He ignores them, and she bites him again. After that, he seems dazed and agrees to do whatever she commands. She wants him to hook her up to the body under construction and to use her “life force” to animate it. He tells her that he doesn’t know how to do that, and that the body isn’t ready to come to life in any case. Turns out she needn’t have bothered.

Meanwhile, Vicki gets some news. Roger, brother of matriarch Liz, tells her that he wants to send Peter/ Jeff on a six-week training program along with two junior executives from the Collins family business, and that if he works out there will be a job for him at the end of it. Vicki is dazzled by the offer.

Peter/ Jeff comes by. Roger meets him alone in the drawing room to make the offer. Peter/ Jeff can neither leave the Frankenstein project nor tell Roger about it. He has to turn the offer down without explanation, leaving Roger offended. Vicki then asks Peter/ Jeff what he was thinking, and he can’t explain the situation to her, either. She is frustrated that she tells him everything about herself, but she can’t get any information from him. She says that the offer must have represented a “family decision” on the part of the Collinses, implying that Peter/ Jeff’s refusal will reflect badly on both of them in their eyes.

When Dark Shadows started in June 1966, Vicki was its chief protagonist, Roger its most menacing villain, and the Collinses’ business interests a major part of the story. Vicki receded to the margins after her most interesting storyline, her difficult relationship with her charge David, was resolved in March 1967, and by that time Roger had become harmless and the business had long since ceased to be a source of interest. When we hear Roger talking about a job for Peter/ Jeff, for a moment it seems that he and the business might once again be important, and that Vicki might again have something to do with the plot. Vicki’s disappointment in her beau reminds us that the character doesn’t really have a place on the show any more.

Upstairs, Liz is taking clothes out of her closet and talking about them with her daughter Carolyn. They jar longtime viewers when they look at a particular dress and reminisce that they bought it on a trip to Boston. For the first 55 weeks of the show, Liz was a recluse who hadn’t left home since Carolyn was an infant. I suspect Liz had worn that dress during that period, and wish I’d looked for it when we were on those episodes during this watch-through. There certainly hasn’t been enough time since then for the trip to Boston to evoke the nostalgic tone in which they describe it, or for the dress to have fallen so far out of fashion that the ladies agree it is time to throw it away.

The Liz-is-a-recluse story was never exciting, and once they ditched it the show was quick to give us scenes of Liz happily going out. It is sometimes said that Dark Shadows is what Star Trek would have been if they had replaced space travel with agoraphobia, and Liz’ seclusion was the first exploration of this topic. Following the deep cut into the early days of the show in Roger’s offer to Peter/ Jeff with a moment when such a prominent part of its first year is simply forgotten is so typical of this period’s episodes that I wonder if some of the dialogue was written by uncredited contributors who weren’t up to date on bygone story points.

Carolyn is glad that Liz, who just recently escaped from a mental hospital, is taking an interest in her wardrobe. Liz lets her down hard when she says that she wants to get rid of as many belongings as possible in the short time before her death. Carolyn tries to tell her that she isn’t dying, but Liz refuses to listen. She demands that Carolyn promise to have an open casket at her funeral.

Liz was in the mental hospital because of a psychological disturbance with which Angelique afflicted her some months ago. When she did that, Angelique was a witch. Since then, Angelique has been stripped of her witchly powers, killed, and brought back to the world as a vampire. You might think Angelique’s spells would all have been broken when she was de-witched; that has been the pattern on Dark Shadows previously. For example, when blonde fire witch Laura vanished in #191, the spell she had cast that caused Liz to mope around and be obsessed with death until she was sent off to a hospital was broken. Longtime viewers wonder if Liz’ continuing obsession with death and her paranoid fear of being buried alive are natural symptoms of the trauma Angelique put her through, and if she just needs better therapy than she was getting in the hospital.

Liz has a dream. It opens with Angelique looking directly into the camera. Angelique is wearing the same costume she wore in the scene with Peter/ Jeff and laughing. When Liz knew Angelique, she never dressed that way, she wore a black wig, and so far as the audience knows she never let Liz hear her signature evil laugh. So it seems that Liz’ current troubles are indeed a part of Angelique’s ongoing spell.

Facing us, Angelique tells Liz that she will be plagued by her obsessions until she dies. This is enough to trigger PTSD flashbacks in regular viewers. Twenty weeks ago, in #477, Angelique was looking at us when she described “The Dream Curse,” an abysmally repetitious, ultimately pointless storyline that dragged on for months. Joan Bennett was a fine actress and a great star, but there was only so much even she could do with a character who just mopes around and talks about death, and Dark Shadows has already made her do it more than once. In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about this episode, I wondered if Angelique couldn’t have cast a spell on Liz that isn’t just a retread of one we’ve seen before, and suggested one that would give her “a compulsion to put on a top hat and tails and sing and dance.” Here’s an animated gif of a cartoon showing Joan Bennett’s sister Constance dancing with Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford; it has more entertainment value than did the entire Dream Curse, and might serve as a consolation to those of us left shaking by Angelique’s threat to clog up the story again:

Episode 571: Bring me a mirror

In #210, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis found an old coffin and broke into it, hoping to reap a harvest of hidden jewels. Instead a hand darted out, and Willie became the sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins.

The next person to open Barnabas’ coffin was Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Barnabas was keeping Maggie prisoner in his house on the great estate of Collinwood as part of his plan to persuade Maggie to forget her personality and turn into his lost love, the gracious Josette. In #250, Maggie decided to drive a stake through Barnabas’ heart, but had the bad luck to set to work a moment before sunset. He awoke, and spent the remaining two weeks of her captivity treating her even more cruelly than he had previously.

In #275, Willie’s onetime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, made his way to Barnabas’ basement and found the coffin. As Willie had done 13 weeks before, Jason jumped to the conclusion the coffin was full of jewels. Willie tried to tell him this was not the case, but could not stop Jason looking inside. As when Maggie made her attempt to stake Barnabas, it is sunset. Again Barnabas’ hand darts forth; this time, he strangles Jason to death.

The first time someone opened Barnabas’ coffin during the day was in #289. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman had collected substantial evidence indicating that Barnabas was a vampire. As final confirmation, she slipped into his house one morning, made her way to the basement, opened the coffin, and reeled away, simultaneously shuddering and giving a look of triumph.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In #410, wicked witch Angelique had just turned Barnabas into a vampire. She went to his coffin with a stake and mallet, regretting her curse and trying to cut its effects short. As Jason and Maggie would do in 1967, Angelique waited until sunset to open the coffin. Barnabas awoke, demanded to know what was going on, and killed her.

Since then, Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission and he and Julia have become fast friends. As we begin today, Barnabas is engaged in a desperate battle for Julia’s sake. The new vampire on the block, Tom Jennings, has been feeding on Julia. She is near death, and will herself rise as a vampire unless Tom is destroyed and she is freed from his influence. Barnabas has found Tom in a crypt next to a coffin, and the two of them have an embarrassingly awkward fight scene. The sun rises, and Tom has to leave Barnabas and get into his coffin.

Barnabas stands over Tom’s open coffin with a mallet and stake. He wonders if anyone ever looked down on him in his coffin when he was a vampire. He tells himself no one could have, for they would have destroyed him if they had. This is a strange thing for him to think. Julia eventually told him that she had sneaked a peek at him in his coffin, and he must remember Willie, Maggie, Jason, and Angelique.

Julia is back at Barnabas’ house. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of Collinwood and escaped mental patient, is watching over her. She is telling Julia that Barnabas left her to die and that she will be dead any moment. This cheery behavior is the consequence of Liz’ fixation on death and her obsessive fear that Julia and others are part of a conspiracy to bury her alive.

As Barnabas drives the stake through Tom’s heart in the crypt, Julia cries out from her bed, then suddenly gains strength. She asks Liz to bring her a mirror; Julia is delighted to see that Tom’s bite marks are gone.

Evidently Julia’s mirror is possessed by a far-right internet troll of the 2010s. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas comes back, sends Liz away, and tells Julia that she will be safe from Tom now. Barnabas and Julia are starting to get uncharacteristically mushy over each other when we cut to the downstairs, where Liz looks out the window and sees her brother Roger approaching.

Roger wants to send Liz back to the psychiatric hospital from which she escaped. Liz believes Roger is part of the conspiracy to bury her alive, and that sending her to the hospital will further that goal. So she hides behind an armchair.

In #10, Liz and Roger had a conversation in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood while Roger’s son David hid behind an armchair. In that conversation, Roger declared his belief that David should be sent to an institution, a plan which Liz forbade him to pursue. After Liz left the room, Roger caught David behind the armchair.

David found the prospect of institutionalization so terrifying that his next stop was the garage, where he tampered with the brakes of his father’s car in what very nearly turned out to be a successful attempt at patricide. Liz is too upset to develop such an intricate plan, and doesn’t seem to have David’s skills as an auto mechanic. But she shares her nephew’s horror of institutionalization. So after Roger and Barnabas have talked for a moment, she jumps up from behind the chair and starts making accusations.

Liz tells Roger and Barnabas that she saw Julia in a crypt in the family burial ground nearby, and that there was a coffin there. Barnabas is alarmed, since this is the coffin in which Tom’s staked remains now repose. Roger agrees to go to the crypt and to see if there is a coffin. Barnabas offers to go with him.

The suave Nicholas Blair shows up at the front door with a bouquet of flowers. We know that Nicholas is a warlock and that he is behind the renewed outbreak of vampirism, that he was watching while Barnabas staked Tom, and that he is also responsible for some other plots involving Barnabas and Julia. For their part, Barnabas and Julia have every reason to suspect that this is so, and have talked about their suspicions more than once. Nicholas tells Barnabas, Roger, and Liz that he has heard that Julia is ill and has come to visit her. At Liz’ insistence, Barnabas lets Nicholas see Julia while he and Roger go to the crypt.

Nicholas expresses his relief that Julia’s recovery will enable her to return to work soon. The only work Julia has done in the year she has been a houseguest at Collinwood has been in association with the supernatural goings-on she and Barnabas have been entangled in; currently, an agent of Nicholas’ is forcing them to build a Frankenstein’s monster. Nicholas may as well say explicitly that he is behind that scheme and the vampire troubles too. He tells Julia that he thinks he might fall ill and need her help as a doctor; she says that he seems indestructible, a word he receives with pleasure.

Barnabas comes back and tells Julia that the coffin has disappeared. He mentions that it is strange that Nicholas turned up when he did. Julia suggests that Nicholas may be the one who moved the coffin. All of a sudden Barnabas seems to forget everything he knows about Nicholas and dismisses that idea. It’s one of those frustrating moments when the characters seem to have the memory of a goldfish, and it ends the episode on a sour note.

Episode 570: Are you being profound?

When we first met Willie Loomis in March 1967, he was a dangerously unstable ruffian who came to the town of Collinsport and eventually to the great house of Collinwood in the train of seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Willie was such a violent and unpleasant fellow in those days that it was difficult to see why even a villain like Jason would choose to be associated with him.

The next month, Willie inadvertently freed vampire Barnabas Collins from his coffin. Barnabas bit Willie and transformed him into a sorely bedraggled blood thrall. That version of the character was so heavily beaten down and so sincerely remorseful that it was easy to wish him well, but he was so thoroughly dominated by Barnabas that no one else could get close to him.

In March 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. His other victims regained their old personalities and apparently forgot about their time under his power. It is unclear just what effect Barnabas’ re-humanization has had on Willie. In #483, his first episode after Barnabas’ cure, Willie ran through the whole range of behavior he had shown in the preceding year. For a time, it seemed he might not remember that Barnabas had been a vampire. During that period, Barnabas assumed that Willie remembered everything, treated him as if he did, and after a couple of weeks of that treatment Willie and Barnabas were having the same kinds of conversations they had in the old days. Perhaps Barnabas accidentally gave Willie the therapy he needed to get his memory back.

Today, we open with Barnabas and Willie bickering in the front parlor of Barnabas’ house. They have been out hunting Tom Jennings, a vampire who has been feeding on Barnabas’ friend Julia. Willie says Barnabas has a reason for being so concerned about Julia, and Barnabas says that of course he does. He describes Julia’s current functions in the plot, and Willie says that isn’t what he’s talking about. Barnabas gets flustered, then asks “Are you being pro-fouuuund?”

Jonathan Frid lingers on the second syllable of “pro-fouuuund” until the whole audience is likely to be laughing. The whole scene is funny, because it shows us sides of Barnabas and Willie that we always suspected existed, but that we never expected to see. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, Barnabas has been so phenomenally selfish for so long that it is excruciatingly difficult for him to admit that he is willing to put a friend’s interests ahead of his own. And seeing Willie tease him about his feelings shows that the former slave and master are now buddies. Willie is neither menacing nor cringing, but is sympathetic enough and self-confident enough that anyone could enjoy his company. At long last, we know why Jason fell in with him, and what Willie lost, at first by his descent into criminality, and later as Barnabas’ victim.

Willie needles his old pal Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

An unexpected visitor drops in. It is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of Collinwood and escaped mental patient. Liz tells Barnabas that she saw Julia in a room with a coffin. Barnabas takes a while to put the pieces together, but it finally dawns on him that Liz is describing Tom’s lair. He goes there, and finds Julia unconscious on the floor next to the coffin.

Barnabas carries Julia into his house. Liz announces that Julia is dead. Barnabas assures her that she is still alive. Even though she is clearly breathing, Liz refuses to believe him.

Later, Liz goes up to Julia’s bedroom. She sits by Julia and tells her that she knows she was part of the conspiracy to bury her alive, but that she forgives her. The whole story of Liz’ fixation on this supposed conspiracy is pretty dull, but Joan Bennett was an extraordinary talent. When she has a scene like this, she can sell Liz as effectively as if she were at the center of an exciting arc.

Just before dawn, Barnabas and Willie go to Tom’s coffin with a mallet and stake. Willie keeps pointing out that the sun isn’t up yet, but Barnabas opens the coffin anyway. It’s empty. Willie panics and runs off. It’s unclear why Barnabas opened the coffin- maybe he turned in early in his time as a vampire, and assumed Tom would do the same. At any rate, the episode ends with a lot of rather awkward stage business as Barnabas and Tom wrestle and Tom bares his fangs. This poorly choreographed fight scene leaves us with a laugh as sour as the laughs from the intentionally funny scene between Barnabas and Willie at the opening were sweet.

Episode 569: Call me a superstitious woman

When housekeeper Mrs Johnson was first on Dark Shadows in September 1967, she was hyper-intense, determined to exact vengeance on the ancient and esteemed Collins family for the death of her longtime employer, Bill Malloy. In #69, she told the Collinses’ nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, that “I believe in signs and omens!” and that the signs and omens she could see showed that reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her family had Bill’s blood on their hands.

“I believe in signs and omens!” Mrs Johnson with Burke Devlin in #69.

As the storyline centered on Bill’s death petered out, Mrs Johnson forgot about her hostility to Liz and her family, and became their devoted retainer. Her new personality was that of a friendly old busybody who kept advancing the plot by blabbing all the information she has to whoever can use it to make the most trouble. Since Mrs Johnson opened the front door to the great house of Collinwood in #211 and admitted Barnabas Collins, she has become an intermittent presence on the show, but Clarice Blackburn plays her with so much style that her occasional appearances are always a highlight.

Today, Mrs Johnson lets suave warlock Nicholas Blair into the house. She informs Nicholas that Liz has escaped from Windcliff, the mental hospital where she has been staying for the last nine and a half weeks. She gets very worked up as she declares that Liz’ aberrations are no ordinary psychiatric problem, but are the product of a hostile supernatural force that plagues the Collinses. Her voice is fearful and she shies away from eye contact with Nicholas, a contrast with the anger and boldness she had shown with Burke Devlin 100 weeks ago, but she again underlines her point with exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions.

Mrs Johnson tells Nicholas about the curse on the house. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For regular viewers, it is surprising that Nicholas doesn’t seem to have known about the details of Liz’ trouble. His subordinate, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra, had sent Liz mad by placing a spell on her shortly before he arrived on the scene. He’s still keeping Angelique/ Cassandra around his house- he stripped her of her powers, turned her into a vampire, and has been using her to attack various men he wants to silence. You’d think he would at some point have asked her what happened to the lady who owns the town he has settled in. But, evidently his curiosity did not extend that far.

Liz’ brother Roger comes home and invites Nicholas to join him for a brandy. As they are headed for the drawing room, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman enters. She is pale, unsteady on her feet, and talking with great distress about her inability to find Tom Jennings. Roger points out that Tom is dead, and Julia faints.

Nicholas carries Julia to the couch in the drawing room. While she lies on it unconscious, he sneaks a peek under her scarf and finds bite marks on her neck. Thus he learns that Tom, whom Angelique turned into a vampire at his direction, has been feeding on Julia.

Liz has not been an active part of any major storyline since #272, when it turned out that her belief that she had killed her husband was mistaken and she did not in fact have any terrible secrets to conceal. So Nicholas’ lack of interest in her might just be a sign that he doesn’t want to waste time on irrelevant details. But Julia is indispensable to Nicholas’ plan to found a new race of artificially constructed human beings. She is a medical doctor, and is the only person Nicholas can coerce into building a mate for the Frankenstein’s monster she recently helped bring to life. She hasn’t been able to work on the project since Tom bit her, and apparently won’t be able to resume work until she is freed of his influence. If Nicholas lets his projects get in each other’s way to this extent, one can draw no conclusion other than that he is a bad manager.

Julia recovers and refuses to see a doctor. She goes to bed, and Roger tells Nicholas he thinks Liz might be on the grounds of the estate. The two of them go out to look for her. Of course Liz is there; of course she sees Tom; of course it is only when Roger and Nicholas approach that Tom vanishes and she is spared his bite.

It has been established that Windcliff is about 100 miles north of Collinsport; in #294, the ghost of Sarah Collins performed one of the most stupendous of her many feats when she transported Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, from Windcliff to Collinsport on foot in about an hour. Liz has had 24 hours since she went missing from her room, and people used to hitch-hike in those days, so it wouldn’t necessarily have required a supernatural agency to get her home in that time. It still would have been quite a trip for an escaped mental patient to make by herself, without bus fare, as the subject of a state police all points bulletin, on the roads running through the woods of central Maine.

Back in the house, Liz makes it clear that she is not herself when she only gradually recognizes Mrs Johnson. She is also obsessed with a fear of being buried alive. Roger concludes that she has to return to the hospital, and goes off to get the car. Julia comes downstairs, and Mrs Johnson asks her to keep an eye on Liz while she goes off to telephone the hospital.

Liz asks Julia, who is the nominal director of Windcliff and a qualified psychiatrist, to examine her and see that she is sane. As she is about to respond, Julia hears dogs howling outside and goes into a trance. She opens the window and stares out into the night, saying that the dogs are calling to her and that she must go to “him.” While she does this, Liz asks her what she’s talking about, but clearly still wants her to serve as the standard of sanity. The first time we saw Liz, in #1, she was standing where Julia stands in this shot, looking out the window with Roger behind her. Liz reprised that pose many times in the first year of the show, and it became her signature. It is incongruous to see Julia in Liz’ customary place as Liz looks on. The whole encounter is so funny that I suspect the humor must have been intentional.

Liz begins to doubt that Julia will be able to help her.

Julia rushes from the house; Liz follows her out. Julia goes to the crypt where Tom’s coffin is kept; evidently Tom’s hunger is getting the better of him, and he has decided to DoorDash it tonight. Liz follows her in. Julia sees Liz and demands that she leave. Liz sees the coffin and asks if it the one in which she will be buried alive. Julia tells her it has nothing to do with her, and repeatedly yells at her to “Get out!” She complies. Tom appears, and opens his mouth to bite Julia.

Julia’s expulsion of Liz from the crypt is an effective turn, but it is also a sad one for longtime viewers. When Dark Shadows started, the presence of Joan Bennett in the cast was probably its single biggest ratings draw, and all the way through her name appears at the beginning of the credits under the word “Starring.” But for a year now, the show’s whole attitude towards Liz has been one of active hostility. They simply will not let her be involved in the action. When Julia shouts “Get out, get out, get out!,” she is speaking with the voice of the story conference.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day details how Liz has been pushed to the margins and kept there as the show has evolved. Danny makes a point of not discussing the first 42 weeks, when Liz was enough of a part of the action that Joan Bennett had some chance to show what she could do, but in this post at least he seems to realize that the makers of Dark Shadows were squandering a considerable resource.

Episode 519: Poor suffering servant of Satan!

Roger Collins is on the telephone in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. He is assuring the caller that it will be fine if Maggie, whom returning viewers know to be The Nicest Girl in Town, comes to stay. He says that he and Cassandra will be glad to have her for as long as she wants to be with them, and that he is sure Liz will approve. First time viewers thus learn that Roger has a wife named Cassandra, and that they live as guests in a house belonging to someone called Liz. A moment later, Liz enters, and is too distracted to hear anything Roger says to her.

Roger ends the phone call, and follows Liz into the drawing room. She stares out the window and makes a gloomy remark about death. He says he understands she must be very upset about Sam Evans. Returning viewers know that Sam was Maggie’s father, and that he died in yesterday’s episode. Roger goes on about how it is natural to be grieved at the loss of a friend like Sam, but soon learns that Liz’ mood has nothing to do with Sam’s demise- it’s news to her that he is dead.

Roger’s lines will startle longtime viewers. For the first 40 weeks of the show, Roger and Sam were united by a deep and abiding mutual hatred, and since then they have had no contact at all. Roger’s words about Sam as a family friend are so far from what we have previously seen that they should be considered a retcon.

Liz and Roger spend several minutes in the drawing room. She keeps going on about the all-pervasive reality of death, and he keeps urging her to see a doctor. There isn’t much to their lines, but Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds were such extraordinary screen performers that it’s always fun to watch them together. This scene might be a particular pleasure to longtime viewers, who have rarely seen Roger as the responsible adult in any encounter.

We dissolve to a bedroom where a young woman in a black wig is sifting through some powders, looking directly into the camera, and telling Liz that her obsession with death will become even worse than it already is and will have dire consequences. Liz will believe that she is someone else, a woman who lived and died in another century, and may die by the same poison that killed that person.

There is a knock at the door. It is Roger. The woman hides her powders and lets him in. He addresses her as Cassandra and asks why the door was locked. Thus first-time viewers learn that she is his wife, that this is their room, that she is a witch, and that Liz’ problem is the result of a spell she has cast.

Cassandra tells Roger that she locked the door because David kept pestering her about Sam’s death and she wanted a moment to herself. With that, first-time viewers find out that David is Roger’s son, that Cassandra is his stepmother, and that she expects Roger to consider locking him out of the room an appropriate response to his grief about Sam.

Roger does not so consider it, and is bewildered by what Cassandra tells him. He tells Cassandra that Liz is in a bad way, and he is worried about her. Cassandra says she did not know that Roger was so concerned about his family. Baffled by this, Roger says that of course he is concerned, Liz is his sister. This tells first time viewers both what Roger’s relationship to Liz is, and that Cassandra has so little sense of family that she cannot imagine how other people feel.

Regular viewers will learn more. In the first year of the show, Roger’s keynote was his lack of loyalty to the family. That has now been set aside once and for all, and his normal attachment to his son and his sister provide a contrast with Cassandra’s apparently sociopathic coldness. Further, we saw a great deal of Cassandra from November 1967 through March 1968, when the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s and she was called Angelique. We saw then that Angelique had no conception of family or friendship, and that her idea of love begins and ends with her control over a person.

Cassandra promises to join Roger downstairs for a game of bridge in half an hour. He leaves, and she gets back to work spellcasting. As she does so, a figure in a black cassock materializes behind her. She turns, and the figure vanishes. In a quizzical tone, she says Roger’s name, revealing that she did not see the figure or realize that it is a supernatural presence. Together with her locking the door, scrambling to hide her magical paraphernalia when Roger knocked, lying to cover what she was doing, and failing to understand what a person with a reasonable amount of human empathy would consider acceptable behavior, her puzzlement shows that whatever her powers may be, they have definite limits.

Back in the foyer, another young woman with black hair lets a man into the house. She calls him Joe, and he calls her Vicki. Joe and Vicki talk about Sam’s death and about Maggie. Joe says that he wants to marry Maggie as soon as possible and to move away. Vicki is all for their marriage, but does not want them to go. Joe talks about how close he and Sam were. Longtime viewers will remember that when Sam and Roger were enemies, Sam was the town drunk. Even then, Joe was always happy to help him in whatever way he could, and did not see his condition as any obstacle to marrying Maggie.

Liz enters and angrily addresses Joe as “Lieutenant Forbes.” Joe has never heard of Lieutenant Forbes, and cannot understand why Liz, who knows him well, would not recognize him. Vicki clearly does know who Liz is talking about, and manages to calm her down. After Liz apologizes and hastens away, Vicki answers Joe’s questions only by saying that Forbes is someone from “the past.” Since we heard Cassandra talk about Liz taking on the personality of someone who lived in “another century,” this suggests that Vicki, too, has an unnatural familiarity with that same century.

Joe wants to go upstairs to the room where Maggie is sleeping so that he will be the first person she sees when she wakes up. Vicki is about to lead him to Maggie when Cassandra insists she join her in the drawing room to talk about David. Vicki tells Joe which door to open, and complies with Cassandra’s directions. This shows that Vicki is a member of the household staff whose responsibilities have to do with David. Regular viewers know that she is his governess, and that they are very close.

Cassandra tells Vicki that David has been asking about Sam’s last words. Vicki says that he addressed them to Maggie, not to her, and implies that she did not hear them. When Cassandra continues probing, Vicki protests. She asks if Cassandra can’t see that she is upset. Considering how clueless Cassandra was about human feelings in her conversation with Roger, it is entirely possible that she cannot. Vicki tells her that Liz is deeply depressed; Cassandra feigns ignorance. Vicki says in a cold voice, “You wouldn’t know anything about that,” then leaves.

Longtime viewers know that it was Vicki who came unstuck in time in #365 and took us with her to the 1790s. During her nineteen weeks in the past, Vicki came to know not only Forbes, but Angelique. She knows perfectly well that Angelique and Cassandra are the same person, that she is a witch, and that she is a deadly menace to everyone. She likely suspects that Liz’ depression is the consequence of one of Cassandra’s spells, and the tone of her parting remark would suggest that she does. Further, those who saw the show yesterday know that Vicki is lying about Sam’s last words. They were addressed to her, and she heard them clearly. She is choosing not to repeat them to Cassandra lest Cassandra use them for her nefarious purposes.

Cassandra is alone in the drawing room for only a few seconds. She is joined there by the same figure who had appeared in her room. This time she sees him. He confronts her.

Regular viewers know that the figure is the Rev’d Mr Trask, a fanatical witchfinder who mistook Vicki for the witch in the 1790s and sent her to the gallows. He tells Cassandra that he now has the opportunity to correct that error. He shows her a cross, from which she recoils. We cut to a scene in the woods. Trask has tied Cassandra to a tree and performs an exorcism on her. This is Trask’s go-to technique; he tied Vicki to a tree in #385 and performed an exorcism on her in #386. Since Cassandra actually is in league with the devil (or as Trask would say, THE DE-VILLL!!!,) he has more success this time. Cassandra vanishes and leaves the ropes hanging on the tree.

Trask exorcises Cassandra. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

A first-time viewer might take this climax as an indication that Dark Shadows is a Christian show and Trask is its hero. Not only is Trask going after the right target, he is clearly making some headway. He says all the right things about casting the evil out of Cassandra and saving whatever good is left in her. His delivery of his lines is so fervent that Mrs Acilius, a vigorous Christian, cheered him on. In fact, Trask’s wild incompetence throughout the 1790s segment led to one disaster after another, and was of a piece with the show’s light regard for religion. Not until #450 did a cross provoke a reaction from a monster; that was the first suggestion the show gave that there might be anything to Christianity, and the scenes between Cassandra and Trask today are the second.

Dark Shadows borrows story points freely from all sorts of books, plays, movies, and folklore. So far, it has steered clear of Christianity as a source. For obvious reasons- most of the audience is at least nominally Christian, and Christianity is, in one way or another, a live option for the rest. So it’s a topic that can take over very quickly once it is introduced. I suppose a specifically Christian version of Dark Shadows could have worked, but I can’t imagine that the staff they had would have been particularly interested in making a show like that. So when it looks like they are going to let Trask have even a temporary win, we see the show running one of its boldest risks yet.

Episode 513: The woman in the window

Wiggéd witch Angelique/ Cassandra and her reluctant cat’s paw Tony are on the terrace at the great house of Collinwood, quarreling about Tony’s failure to complete his latest mission. Angelique/ Cassandra talks about the punishments she is capable of inflicting on Tony, and decides that she will force him to fall hopelessly in love with her. This punishment will begin as soon as she has kissed him.

This is not the first time Angelique/ Cassandra has found a reason to kiss Tony. The last time she did so, in #489, her stepson David caught them, and she had to scramble to come up with a spell to wipe his memory. This time, her sister-in-law Liz catches them, and she curses Liz to become obsessed with death. As she is casting the spell, she tells Liz that the obsession will make her life less empty. It does not promise to make it more interesting for the audience to watch.

Joan Bennett as The Woman in the Window. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 504: A talent for making everyone feel guilty

Well-meaning governess Vicki was the main character of Dark Shadows for its first year, but has been receding further and further to the margins since. Today she returns after a 14 day absence, the first time she has been off screen so long.

Vicki is in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood with her employer, matriarch Liz. Liz is distraught because her daughter Carolyn has been abducted by a strange man. Liz fears that Carolyn is dead or dying; Vicki urges her to set those fears aside. The police telephone; they have captured the man, but Carolyn was not with him, and he has not answered any of their questions. Liz and Vicki set out for the gaol to see him.

They are accompanied by a sheriff’s deputy. The Collinsport police are exceptionally useless, but even by their standards this deputy is a low performer. Though the man is so strong that it took twenty men to subdue him and bring him in, the deputy enjoys taunting him. He sticks his service revolver in the cell; the man is shackled to the wall, but he is so tall he sweeps his hand into contact with the gun. If the script didn’t say otherwise, he could easily take it from the deputy. Liz orders the deputy to stand back out of the man’s line of sight. Since she owns most of the town, he grudgingly obeys.

The deputy puts his weapon within Adam’s reach.

Yesterday, Liz went looking for Carolyn at the Old House on the estate, home to her distant cousin Barnabas. She found Barnabas’ servant Willie on the ground, suffering from a fresh head wound. Willie told her that the man had been by a few minutes before, and that he had been carrying the unconscious Carolyn. He also referred to the man as “Adam.” When Liz asked him why he used that name, he denied that he did and began jabbering about some bad dream that had frightened him. Today, Liz addresses the man as Adam, and he responds, proving that Willie does in fact know more about him that he will admit.

Liz and Vicki tell Adam that they will treat him as a friend if he tells them where Carolyn is. Adam knows the word “friend.” He repeats it, and adds “food!” Again he says “Friend, food!” The women do not know what he is driving at. They give up and go home.

Returning viewers know that Adam has stashed Carolyn in an abandoned structure that looks exactly like Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s house, that he calls Carolyn “Friend,” and that he had gone out to look for food for her when he was captured. He is dejected when he cannot make it clear that she is hungry.

Liz and Vicki return to Collinwood. They spend several seconds taking off their coats in unison. In the early days of the show, there were a number of scenes designed to emphasize Liz and Vicki’s resemblance and to present each as the other’s reflection in support of a storyline that led us to believe that Vicki was Liz’ unacknowledged daughter. That storyline was forgotten long ago, and it isn’t entirely clear what director Jack Sullivan is getting at here.

Back in the drawing room, Liz tells Vicki her reasons for believing that Barnabas knows a great deal about Adam. Apparently the doors separating the drawing room from the foyer amplify sound, because as the camera takes us from the drawing room to the foyer Liz and Vicki’s conversation only becomes more audible. Liz’ new sister-in-law is in the foyer. This woman calls herself Cassandra, but regular viewers know that she is in fact wicked witch Angelique. Vicki knows that perfectly well. Vicki traveled back in time in #365 and spent nineteen weeks living under the same roof as Angelique while Angelique wrought havoc on the Collins family of the 1790s and framed Vicki for her crimes. Angelique’s only disguise as Cassandra is a black wig- otherwise, she looks, sounds, and moves exactly as she had when Vicki knew her in the eighteenth century. As a result, Vicki is very much on her guard around her.

Angelique/ Cassandra enters the drawing room. Liz excuses herself, and Angelique/ Cassandra demands to know why Vicki doesn’t like her. When Vicki says that she resembles someone she didn’t get along with, Angelique/ Cassandra proclaims that she isn’t that person, bursts into tears, and runs out. Vicki stays in the drawing room, but the camera follows Angelique/ Cassandra to the staircase, where we see her smile gleefully.

Liz returns, and Vicki tells her she may have misjudged Cassandra. It doesn’t speak well of Vicki’s brainpower that a single display of crocodile tears would override the memory of their long and painful acquaintance, but since Barnabas and the others who are doing battle with Angelique/ Cassandra refuse to accept Vicki’s help, she may as well forget everything she knows. Liz tells her that she doesn’t think she misjudged Cassandra, and says she doesn’t trust her either.

Back in the gaol, the idiotic deputy goes back to Adam’s cell to taunt him some more. When Adam protests, the deputy opens the door and waves his baton at him. He places himself within easy reach of Adam, who grabs him and knocks him unconscious.

Yesterday, the high sheriff said “I’m not a stupid man.” He may not have been as stupid as is this grinning imbecile, but it is on his responsibility that he has a badge and a gun.

Another deputy enters. He sees his moronic colleague on the floor, the bars twisted in the window, and no sign of Adam.

Adam is 6’6″, so it’s difficult to see how he could fit through this opening. Perhaps he is not only tremendously strong, but is also a contortionist.