joshua collins – Acilius on Dark Shadows

Episode 470: Nonsense about names

Part One. Roger/ Joshua

Much to her surprise, well-meaning governess Vicki Winters came unstuck in time in #365 and found herself in the year 1795. She spent the first few weeks of her sojourn in the past telling all the characters she met about the other roles that their actors played in the first 73 weeks of Dark Shadows, thereby puzzling them and irritating the audience. After a few months, the people of Collinsport had decided to try Vicki on a capital charge of witchcraft. There were no laws against witchcraft in Massachusetts or anywhere else in the English speaking world in the 1790s, but Vicki had got on so many people’s nerves by that point that they were willing to overlook that technicality and sentence her to hang. She was whisked back to 1968 in #461, with so little time to spare before she died on the gallows that she came back with rope burns on her neck.

Throughout the first year of Dark Shadows, the writers used Vicki more than any other character to move the action. Unfortunately, they sometimes moved it by having her do things that served the plot, but that the character had no reason to do. That gave rise to “Dumb Vicki,” and Dumb Vicki was very much on display throughout the whole segment set in 1795-1796.

Now, emigrés from the late eighteenth century are starting to join Vicki in her time. We open today as the clock chimes midnight. Vicki, wearing her nightgown, is coming down the grand staircase in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood, roused by the sound of an unexpected voice in the drawing room. It is the voice of haughty overlord Joshua Collins, master of Collinwood in 1795. Vicki enters the room to find sarcastic dandy Roger Collins carrying on a lively, albeit one-sided, conversation with a portrait. Roger is convinced that he is Joshua, and deals with Vicki in just the lofty way Joshua dealt with her during the costume drama segment. He even brings up Vicki’s frequent confusion with names, something Roger could not possibly have known about. This, therefore, is no mere delusion of Roger’s- Joshua’s ghost really is taking possession of him, manipulated by a force with its own malign intentions.

It is no secret from the audience what that force is. Roger has become obsessed with a portrait depicting wicked witch Angelique, who in the 1795 segment wrought terrible harm to the Collins family. Angelique was responsible, in one way or another, for the deaths of both of Joshua’s siblings, both of his children, his wife, and many other people. Too late, Vicki learned that Angelique was the witch for whose crimes she was being condemned to hang. As we have seen other supernatural beings do on Dark Shadows before, Angelique is using her portrait as a means of projecting her powers into the world of the living.

Roger/ Joshua’s remark about the name trouble reminds us of Dumb Vicki, but that is not the version of the character we see today. Instead, we have a visit from Smart Vicki. When Roger keeps insisting that he is Joshua Collins, Vicki picks up a telephone and shows it to him, declaring that it is something that did not exist in Joshua’s time. Roger looks at the receiver in silence for a moment, then groggily asks “Is it for me?”

Vicki says that she will take the portrait back to the antique store where she bought it so that it can be sold to Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. This is a bit jarring for returning viewers- in #464, Stokes offered Vicki $200 for the painting, and Roger countered with a bid of $50o. Evidently Roger didn’t actually pay Vicki the money, because he doesn’t say that it is his when he urges her to leave it in the house.

Vicki and Roger leave the drawing room. Roger slips back in, takes the painting, and marches out of the house with it. While he does so, a nice little bit of music featuring the harp plays on the soundtrack. I don’t know that it is new, but I didn’t recognize it.

Part Two. Peter/ Jeff

Angelique not only killed Joshua’s son Barnabas, but cursed him to rise at night as a vampire. Barnabas returned to the great estate of Collinwood in 1967. He has been passing himself off to the living Collinses as their distant cousin from England. When Barnabas found that Vicki had visited his native period of history, he bit her in an attempt to keep her from revealing his secret.

Vicki and Barnabas were on their way to spend eternity together when she crashed her car to avoid hitting a pedestrian. In the hospital, the physician on duty when Vicki and Barnabas were brought in, Dr Eric Lang, turned out to be exactly the right sort of mad scientist. He has apparently cured Barnabas of vampirism. It is unclear whether Vicki remembers that Barnabas bit her and sucked her blood, and quite clear that she doesn’t think of him as a monster.

In the 1790s, Vicki met and somehow fell in love with an unpleasant man named Peter. Peter has returned to the present with her; in fact, he was the pedestrian Vicki had to crash her car to avoid hitting. They have seen each other several times since, and for no worthwhile reason Peter keeps insisting he is named Jeff. Peter/ Jeff shows up at Collinwood today. Vicki ushers him into what she alone calls “the living room,” and everyone else calls “the drawing room.” Peter/ Jeff asks Vicki if she loves Barnabas and plans to marry him. She tells him she does not. She says that she doesn’t want to hurt Barnabas’ feelings, but that she will have to break the news to him as soon as possible.

Part Three. Barnabas, Barnabas

Barnabas is still in the hospital. We see him in his room, in the daylight, looking at himself in the mirror. He can’t resist touching his reflection. It is a genuinely beautiful little moment, and an eloquent image. In the contrast between the solidity and familiarity of Barnabas’ standard right profile shot and the fragile little image slightly distorted in the mirror, we see a point of decision. The ghoul has not been destroyed, but a new and very vulnerable human life now co-exists with him in the same body. Wallace McBride says that “On Dark Shadows, your reflection always tells the truth“; this reflection tells a deep enough truth to keep the show going for years.

Barnabas meets Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki visits Barnabas in his hospital room to tell him that she cannot marry him. She thinks that she and Peter might be meant for each other. She also tells Barnabas that there are signs Angelique is making her influence felt at Collinwood again.

Vicki knows that her news about Peter will hurt Barnabas, but she understands that if they are to fight against Angelique, there can be no secrets between them. Barnabas understands this as well. Therefore, he decides to surrender immediately. Right after his scene with Vicki, we see him telling Lang he has decided to revert to vampirism.

That reaction is absurd, but it goes to the heart of the character as we came to understand him in the part of Dark Shadows set in the years 1795 and 1796. He did not believe that gracious lady Josette could love him, so he had a casual fling with her maid, Angelique. He did not believe Angelique cared very deeply about him, so he cast her aside once it became clear Josette was willing to marry him. He did not believe Josette could forgive him for having come to her from a dalliance with Angelique, so he did not tell Josette when Angelique vowed vengeance on them both. At each point, Barnabas’ underestimation of his own lovableness led to disaster. If only Barnabas could have read Jonathan Frid’s fan mail, he and Josette would have had a happy, quiet life and died in obscurity in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Part Four. Vicki

For her part, Vicki spent the first 38 weeks of Dark Shadows growing close to strange and troubled boy David Collins, who tried to kill her more than once, tried to kill his father Roger and frame her for it, who talks to ghosts, and whose mother is an undead fire witch. In the same time, she fell in love with a man named Burke, who spent years in prison for a killing in which Roger had a part but for which he was also very much responsible. While in the 1790s she fell in love with Peter, who committed many crimes and would doubtless have become a killer had Vicki not killed his man before he got to him. So Barnabas’ weird nature and career of homicide hardly guarantee that Vicki will spurn him.

I often wonder what might have been had the show decided to initiate Vicki into Barnabas’ secret. Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy triumphed over some stunningly bad writing to make the story of Vicki’s bonding with David the one consistently interesting thread of the first year of Dark Shadows. Now that there are good writers and other stories that are working, I can only suppose she and Jonathan Frid would have given us something for the ages if they had been allowed to show Vicki coming to accept the true Barnabas.

There are several ways they could have done that. Maybe she gradually learns the horrible truth, can’t go to the authorities right away because she needs Barnabas as an ally against a more immediate threat, and by the time that threat passes decides he’s a good risk. Or maybe she becomes a vampire herself and finds out about his past in the process of being cured.

Or, most daring of all, maybe it turns out Vicki knew that Barnabas was a vampire all along. Sure, she was upset when she thought he’d killed her friend Maggie- why do you think she invited herself to spend the night at his house during that period? She had the guilts because she had failed to save Maggie and wanted him to bite her as punishment. Sure, there were some sleepless nights when it looked like he might be planning to kill David in order to silence him- why do you think she kept making herself available to Barnabas in that period as well, if she wasn’t offering herself as a tool he could use to keep the boy quiet without hurting him?

Episode 460: Lies beyond the grave

In #365, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. Now, Vicki is about to be hanged for witchcraft, and the last of the story threads that have been playing out around her are about to be tied up.

Yesterday’s episode ended in the study at the great house of Collinwood, where naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes shot a wooden bolt from a crossbow into the chest of vampire Barnabas Collins. At the top of today’s episode, Barnabas pulls the bolt out, telling Nathan that the bolt didn’t hit him. Barnabas’ voice is dubbed in over this, clarifying that Nathan missed his heart. We then switch to Nathan’s point of view and see Barnabas approaching for the kill.

After the opening title, we see that Barnabas is still in the study. Time has apparently passed. Barnabas’ father Joshua enters. Barnabas asks him if Nathan has been buried. Joshua says that he has, and lists the stories that he will tell to cover up all the deaths that Barnabas has been involved with over the last few months. Barnabas wants Joshua to shoot him through the heart with a silver bullet right now and destroy him forever. Joshua cannot do that, but he promises that he will put Barnabas out of his misery come daylight, when he is in his coffin. Barnabas asks two more favors of his father, that he free much put-upon servant Ben and that he prevent the execution of the wrongly convicted Vicki. Joshua promises to do these things as well.

Joshua and Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Throughout this scene, actors Louis Edmonds and Jonathan Frid hold back tears. Patrick McCray remarks: “Crying is not the most powerful thing an actor can do on stage. Rather, it is the attempt not to cry that seizes audiences. In these moments, Frid and Edmonds seize. In a medium of love scenes, there is none more poignant.”

The performers have a powerful theme to work with, one that Danny Horn explicates when he considers the question of why Joshua is still alive at the end of this storyline. When she made Barnabas a vampire, wicked witch Angelique decreed that everyone who loved him would die. Yesterday, Joshua confessed that he feared he was incapable of love, and Barnabas told him that such a disability might save his life. But when we see Edmonds and Frid struggling against the urge to weep, we know that Joshua loves Barnabas very deeply indeed, as we have in recent weeks seen that he loved others he has lost. Danny explains:

The reason why Joshua is spared from the curse is that the love he feels for Barnabas isn’t the kind of love that Angelique recognizes, and so he slips under her radar.

Angelique’s love is selfish, and spiteful. She uses it as a convenient excuse for running over anyone who gets in her way. She doesn’t understand love that arises from respect, and strength of character. And she will never feel the kind of deep, honest love that Joshua now realizes for the first time that he is in fact capable of.
Danny Horn, from “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day 16 August 2014

Danny goes on to explain that, while others had love for Barnabas that included a selfless element, there was also something in their feelings that Angelique could recognize, while Joshua’s love for him comes entirely from this higher plane. The portion of Dark Shadows set in the years 1795-1796 turns out to be The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, not only because Joshua has the highest social status among the characters, makes the most important decisions, and is played by one of the best actors, but because he grows into the sort of person who is governed by this kind of love. When the world around him is being ground down into dishonesty and cheapness, largely due to the consequences of his own misguided actions, Joshua discovers a new kind of strength within himself. Even amid the ruins of a world he himself did as much as anyone to wreck, Joshua represents the hope that something better might yet come into being.

After daybreak, Joshua stands beside Barnabas’ coffin in the secret chamber hidden inside the Collins family mausoleum, the pistol in his hand. Joshua cannot bring himself to fire the silver bullets into his son’s heart. Ben enters. Joshua orders him to affix a silver crucifix to the inside of the coffin to immobilize Barnabas there, and then to chain the coffin shut. Joshua and Ben assure each other that Barnabas will never be released. Later, we see Ben in the chamber, alone with the chained coffin. He looks at it and says “Goodbye, Mr Barnabas, goodbye.” Thayer David delivers that line with an unforgettable simplicity.

Returning viewers know that Joshua’s plan to keep Barnabas confined will work only until April of 1967, when Barnabas will be freed to prey upon the living once more. That July, in #276, Barnabas will stand in the hidden chamber and say that, while in chaining the coffin rather than destroying him his father “thought he was being merciful, what he did was no act of mercy.” This remark, combined with a story he told Vicki in #214 about his conflict with Joshua, just may have been the germ from which the whole story of Joshua grew. At any rate, the promise ABC-TV made to its viewers when it aired this promotional spot in November 1967 has been fulfilled:

Back in the study, Joshua frees Ben and gives him a severance packet of $100, worth about $2500 in 2024 dollars. When Ben thanks him for his generosity, Joshua denies that he is being generous. I have to agree with Joshua there- that amount might get a fellow out of town, but he’d have to find a new job pretty fast if he wanted to stay in the habit of sleeping indoors.

Another servant brings a note while Joshua and Ben are in the study. The governor has refused Joshua’s plea that Vicki’s execution be stayed. She will be hanged tonight.

At the gaol, Vicki’s boyfriend, an unpleasant man named Peter, is brought to her cell. The gaoler tells them they have five minutes before Vicki will be taken to her death. It is little wonder Vicki’s last request was to have time with Peter. Spending five minutes with him is like living to a ripe old age. Peter vows to overcome death and reunite with her. The last time we heard that was when Barnabas died the first time. In #409, he used his dying breaths to ask gracious lady Josette to wait for him to return to her. Fool that she was, Josette did, leading to disaster for her. Returning viewers may well wince, not only at the ominous parallel with Josette’s grim fate, but also at the memory of the many tedious scenes in which Josette at first insisted that Barnabas was coming back and was then at a loss when asked to explain herself. Besides, we don’t want to see any more of Peter.

The scene of Vicki’s hanging is quite elaborate by Dark Shadows standards. They’ve built a fairly realistic gibbet, hired several extras, put hats on them, and given them burning torches to hold. They test the equipment with a heavy sack, slowly lead Vicki to the place of honor, ask her if she wants a mask, and command the Lord to have mercy on her unrepentant soul. The camera drifts up to the top of the rigging, leaving Vicki out of the shot. When the time comes, we hear the drop and see the rope tighten.

Swing time for Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This marks the end of the 1795 flashback, but not necessarily of Dark Shadows 3.0. In #437, Vicki told Peter that she often had nightmares in her childhood, so often that she became a connoisseur of nightmares. She would stay asleep throughout the whole process, waking up only at the very moment she was about to be killed. That was a rather heavy-handed way of telling the audience that Vicki would ascend the gallows, put her head in the noose, and find herself back in the 1960s. Once she is back in her own time, what she has learned in the 1790s will have consequences for what she does next. So we can expect an epilogue of some kind before Dark Shadows 4.0 begins.

Episode 459: The means to destroy ’em

Like every episode of Dark Shadows, this one begins with a voiceover by a member of the cast. Unlike all the preceding voiceovers, this one is delivered by a man. Thayer David does the honors.

We open in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. For the first time in months, Barnabas Collins is there. Barnabas died and rose as a vampire in January, and has been concealing his existence since. But now his secret is known to several people in the house. One of those, his mother Naomi, reacted to the knowledge by taking poison. In his agony, Barnabas is pacing the floor, complaining to his friend, much put-upon servant Ben, that the doctor hasn’t come. Barnabas’ father Joshua comes downstairs and announces that there is no longer any need for a doctor- Naomi has died.

Joshua brings the ill-tidings. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Joshua dismisses Ben and talks with Barnabas. He confesses his doubts that he is able to love anyone. Barnabas tells him that such a disability might save his life- the curse wicked witch Angelique placed on him means that everyone who loves him will die. Joshua says that he must end the curse, and will do so by destroying Barnabas. Barnabas asks if he will drive a stake through his heart. Joshua replies that he found a book in Boston that tells of another way. Come morning, he will fire a silver bullet through Barnabas’ heart.

This is the first we have heard that silver bullets will kill vampires. There is some lore that suggests vampires avoid silver, but we know that doesn’t apply to Barnabas- one of his chief trademarks is a cane with a mostly silver handle. The 1941 film The Wolf Man established silver bullets as a means of killing werewolves, and the Lone Ranger fires silver bullets to knock the guns out of the bad guys’ hands, so I guess they might have come to mind in the 1960s if you were thinking of exotic weaponry.

Barnabas has plans for his final night. It was naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes who led Naomi to discover Barnabas’ secret, and who is to that extent responsible for her death. Ben enters to inform Joshua and Barnabas of another item to add to the list of Nathan’s misdeeds. Nathan has evidently apprehended bewildered time traveler Victoria Winters and taken her into town, where she faces death on the gallows after being unjustly convicted of witchcraft. The Collinses knew Vicki to be innocent and had been harboring her since shortly after she escaped from gaol. Joshua and Barnabas are certain that Nathan turned her in solely to collect the reward that has been posted for her capture. Barnabas vows to kill Nathan, and Joshua can’t talk him out of it.

We cut to Nathan in the Eagle tavern, where he is spending the money he sold Victoria for. The Eagle has changed pretty dramatically in the last several weeks. In #419, bartender Mr Mooney greeted a female patron with the announcement that the Eagle did not admit unaccompanied women. Since the Eagle is a public house on the waterfront, the management evidently thought this policy was necessary to keep the place from becoming a headquarters for the sex workers of Collinsport.

Now Mr Mooney is nowhere to be seen, and the only person in the barroom with Nathan is identified in the closing credits as “Barmaid.” She is played by Rebecca Shaw, whom we saw the other day as a streetwalker whom Barnabas was about to bite when good witch Bathia Mapes summoned him away with a magical incantation. She is sitting with Nathan, drinking with him, and flirting with him pretty heavily. A bat squeaking at the window frightens her, and when she catches her breath she announces that she will be leaving him alone in the bar for a bit while she lies down. Nathan replies to that by saying he will see her soon, and she turns to take a look at him, apparently expecting him to follow her to bed. It seems possible she is the same character who was working the docks, now employed in a similar capacity in the Eagle. If this is the person who has taken over from Mr Mooney, the management must have given up the hopes it formerly had for its reputation.

Nathan and the friendly Barmaid. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Once the woman leaves Nathan alone, Barnabas appears. He confronts Nathan about his many crimes. Nathan pulls a gun and tells Barnabas he will take him to the constable and turn him in as the Collinsport Strangler. Barnabas jeers. Nathan shoots, and Barnabas keeps standing there. He declares that Nathan cannot kill him, because he is already dead. He then informs Nathan that he will wait until 9 pm to kill him. Since it is now 8:30, this does not give Nathan a great deal of time.

At 8:45, Nathan appears at Collinwood. He finds Joshua and Ben in the drawing room, and tells them what has happened. They are neither surprised nor sympathetic. Joshua leaves the room, explaining that he would prefer not to see a gruesome murder. Ben is willing to stay for a while. When Nathan asks how Barnabas can be destroyed, Ben decides to have a little fun. He tells him that if he finds Barnabas resting in his coffin after sunrise and drives a wooden stake through his heart, that will take care of it. Ben is quite jolly when he points out that Nathan will be dead long before sunrise, so that this information would seem to be of little practical use to him. Ben then decides that he doesn’t want to watch the murder either, so he also takes his leave of Nathan.

With five minutes to go, Nathan tells himself that Barnabas will not kill him if Joshua is in the room. He finds Joshua in the study. He begs Joshua to stay. As Joshua is refusing, Nathan looks at the wall and sees a crossbow mounted there, with three wooden bolts next to it. Suddenly his cowardice gives way to wild hope. He tells Joshua he will wait in the study for Barnabas. Joshua goes.

Nathan takes a practice shot at the door, then stands waiting. Barnabas does open the door, Nathan does release another bolt, and does strike him in the chest, a bit to the left of the sternum. Barnabas cries out in pain, and as the episode ends it looks very much as if Nathan may have managed to stake him.

Barnabas takes a bolt to the chest. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas is the reason the show is a hit, so we can be quite sure he won’t actually die. Still, the episode is good enough that it feels for a moment that he might. The contrast between the prospect of Joshua killing Barnabas in the stately manner he described earlier in the episode and the idea of Nathan killing him is instructive. Had Joshua carried out his plan or even attempted it, the result would have been what Aristotle was talking about in his Poetics when he described the majestic terror of tragedy. It would have been at once horrifying and awe-inspiring to see a father duty-bound to kill his son. But Nathan is a cheap bum, trying only to save himself so that he can live to abuse and exploit more people. When we root against Nathan destroying Barnabas, we do not want only to continue the pleasure of watching the show. We are rejecting a resolution that would be unworthy of what we have seen so far.

Nathan, indeed, is unworthiness incarnate. When he was first on the show, Nathan was a likable rogue, but in recent weeks he has become both cruel and dreary. So cruel that he has tried to arrange the murder of an eleven year old; so dreary that he works through a conspicuously dim-witted, relentlessly unappealing henchman. Many fans complain about Nathan’s turn, and some speculate that the show just ran out of villains sinister enough to be worthy of Barnabas’ vengeance. On that theory, Nathan’s grave crimes are a last-minute, slapdash invention.

I don’t agree. We met Nathan before Angelique came to Collinwood. In those days, there was room for light comedy, for grand gestures, for dashing heroism, for fairy tale whimsy, and for tender romance. But as her curses have done their work, everyone and everything has been ground down. The ceiling has been lowered, and there is no longer space for the bouncy good cheer of the Old Nathan, much less for the Satanic majesty of villains like Angelique or that Rev’d Mr Trask. The whole world is pervaded by cheapness and sordidness now, and growing more so by the minute.

The only grandeur left is in The Tragedy of Joshua Collins. Were Nathan to destroy Barnabas, that grandeur would vanish, not in sublime pity, but with a taunt. That would be a harsh ending indeed.

Episode 452: What can I say to stop this?

Joshua Collins comes back home to the great house of Collinwood. His wife Naomi asks what he was doing the night before, when she found him at the Old House on the estate. He tells her that he had summoned a woman named Bathia Mapes who tried to exorcise the curse that is upon the family. It’s news to Naomi that Joshua believes in curses, and he explains that so much has happened lately that he feels he has no choice but to believe in such things.

Naomi says that when she found Joshua in the Old House she heard the voice of their son Barnabas in the front parlor. Joshua reminds her that she saw Barnabas’ body after he died. He says that he has come to agree with her that Victoria Winters, the family’s former governess who is currently in the Collinsport Gaol awaiting execution on charges of witchcraft, is innocent. He now believes that Barnabas’ sometime wife, Angelique, was the real witch, and that he will do whatever he can to free Victoria. Naomi insists that Joshua isn’t telling her the whole story. He doesn’t contradict her. He keeps saying that he has told her everything she needs to know, and pleads with her to accept that for her sake as well as his own.

Joshua realizing he has to admit to Naomi that he has been wrong. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Returning viewers know that Joshua is withholding a great deal of information from Naomi. Barnabas did die, but Joshua has learned that at night he rises as a vampire. Bathia Mapes came to lift the curse from Barnabas. When Naomi interrupted the proceedings, Bathia lost her mojo and Angelique struck her dead. Joshua is desperate to protect Naomi from the horrible truth about their son, and he certainly doesn’t want her to know that her action led to Bathia’s death. More than once he stumbles over his words, often seeming to catch himself just in time to keep from telling her everything. In his reticence, we see that he really does love Naomi, but he is so firmly entrenched in his habits of concealment and denial and so attached to the control those habits give him over other people that he cannot stop measuring out the truths he will tell.

Joshua goes to the gaol, where Victoria is with her lawyer/ boyfriend/ etc, an unpleasant young man named Peter. Joshua tells Victoria that he wants to apologize to her for having helped convict her. Peter keeps interrupting with his nasty little shouts, and Joshua keeps looking away from him. Victoria accepts Joshua’s apology, and he vows to do whatever he can to prevent her execution.

Joshua talks with the judge who presided over Victoria’s trial. With difficulty, he brings himself to say that his sister Abigail, who was one of the driving forces behind the prosecution of Victoria, was not a reliable witness because of her preoccupation with the Devil. Regular viewers will understand his difficulty. After Abigail died, we saw Joshua, in #434, utterly despondent, freshly broken in ways we had not expected to see. He had already lost his brother, both of his children, and several other people he cared about, so it was no wonder the death of his beloved sister brought him to such a low state. In #446, he learned that Barnabas was responsible for Abigail’s death. When he has to say things about her to which she would object, all of that anguish comes flooding back. The judge asks Joshua if Abigail was insane; evidently that would make a difference. But he reflexively says “Of course not!”

The judge tells Joshua that nothing he has said justifies a new trial or even a postponement of Victoria’s execution. He asks if Joshua knows of a witness who could give unequivocal testimony that Angelique was the witch. As he had when Naomi alluded to the idea of such a witness earlier, Joshua falls silent for a moment. When they talk about this hypothetical witness, the judge and Naomi are both describing Barnabas. But Joshua, sincerely though he wants to spare Victoria, cannot reveal the truth about his son.

Joshua and Peter return to the cell and tell Victoria that nothing has changed. Joshua bids her farewell, looking more deeply defeated than we have seen him before.

A while later, Peter leaves the cell. Desperate, he steals the gaoler’s gun and forces him to unlock the cell. Victoria objects when she first sees what Peter is doing, but holds the gun for him while he tries to bind the gaoler. The gun goes off in the course of the struggle, injuring Victoria’s arm. Peter beats the gaoler unconscious and leads Victoria out of the cell. They hear the voices of a crowd outside and wander from room to room inside the gaol.

This ain’t the story of Bonnie and Clyde. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Howard Honig plays the gaoler, his first screen appearance. Honig would have a long and distinguished career in television and features from the 1970s to the 1990s. I remember him from the movie Airplane!, where he played a passenger named Jack. In the terminal, a friend greets him with “Hi, Jack!” bringing a bunch of very aggressive security guards. I first saw that movie when I was about 12, and that scene fascinated me so much that for a couple of years my father was reluctant to take me on an airplane, fearing I would try to recreate it.

Episode 451: The pit of my soul

Haughty overlord Joshua Collins and good witch Bathia Mapes decide to take Joshua’s son Barnabas to the deserted Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Bathia has agreed to do battle with the ghost of wicked witch Angelique in hopes of lifting the curse whereby Angelique turned Barnabas into a vampire. Bathia warns Joshua that if she is interrupted, Angelique will defeat her. In that case, Barnabas will remain as he is, and Bathia will die. Joshua assures her that no one will come to the Old House.

Bathia, Joshua, and Barnabas before they go to the Old House. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In the great house on the estate, Barnabas’ mother Naomi talks with fluttery heiress Millicent Collins and Millicent’s new husband, naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes. Millicent’s mental health has always been fragile, and Nathan has been making a concerted effort to shatter it altogether so that he can get his hands on her share of the Collins fortune. Making matters worse, Barnabas bit Milllicent the other day. She has a beautiful mad scene today, one of several that Nancy Barrett knocks out of the park during this storyline. She insists on telling Naomi that she has seen Barnabas. This distresses Naomi, who knows that Barnabas is dead but does not know about the vampire curse.

Millicent gives Naomi enough details to stir her curiosity about what is going on at the Old House. She goes there, interrupting Bathia’s efforts. Joshua manages to hustle Naomi out of the house, but the damage is done. Bathia bursts into flames and dies. In keeping with his habit of covering up compromising information, Joshua has kept everything from Naomi. Once more, we see the cost of this habit. Had he leveled with her about Barnabas’ condition, Barnabas might have been freed.

There is a detailed comparison of the script for this episode with the finished product on a tumblelog called sights9. It is in five parts, the first of them here.

A very famous blooper occurs before Joshua and Bathia take Barnabas from the great house to the Old House. Bathia is supposed to be giving instructions, but falls silent, stares at the teleprompter, and squints helplessly for a long moment. Then we hear the line producer, Bob Costello, prompt her with “Then go to the house” and she picks back up.

Episode 448: On their wedding day

Naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes has succeeded in his scheme to marry fluttery heiress Millicent Collins, only to discover that Millicent has signed her vast fortune over to her little brother Daniel. Nathan comes up with a Plan B. Millicent is Daniel’s legal guardian, and he is Millicent’s husband. So if she is declared insane, he will be able to get his hands on the money.

Nathan drives Millicent out of her mind. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

From her first appearance, Millicent has been established as an extremely fragile person. So Nathan’s gaslighting project doesn’t take much work. She makes a remark in a calm voice, and he expresses dismay that she is so upset. Rather than dismiss this as a tiresomely dimwitted joke, Millicent becomes very agitated. She mentions that there is a light in a window across the way; Nathan denies that he sees it. Rather than wondering if his eyes are going bad, she is reduced to tears by the thought that she might be hallucinating. The whole process takes about three minutes. It’s fine for viewers who have been watching Millicent all along and know how precarious her mental balance is, but people tuning into Dark Shadows for the first time would probably think the scene was pretty silly.

Episode 447: Dear son

Yesterday, haughty tyrant Joshua Collins found out that his son Barnabas is a vampire. Today, he shoots Barnabas in the chest and learns that vampires can’t be killed by gunshots. So Joshua insists that Barnabas come with him to a place where he can be kept until they figure out a way to lift his curse.

Barnabas is always making plans that fail spectacularly the moment they come into contact with reality. Today, Joshua shows that Barnabas inherited his planning abilities from him. The hiding place Joshua chooses for Barnabas is not one of the underground prison cells on the estate or a cabin off in the woods somewhere, but the many-windowed room on top of the tower in the center of the great house. No one in the house can avoid seeing the light of the candle Joshua carries up there.

The tower room has been vacant up to this point, so when Joshua returns to the drawing room his wife Naomi meets him with questions about why there was a light there. He is reduced to insisting that she didn’t see what she clearly knows she saw.

There are a couple of interesting visual echoes today. Naomi and Joshua are played by Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s play reclusive matriarch Liz and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger. Liz was standing at this window when we first saw her in episode #1. Roger approached her there and whined to her about her decision to hire well-meaning governess Vicki. The selfish, cowardly, weak-willed Roger represents the ultimate destination of the path on which Joshua’s habit of denial and concealment has set the family. Joshua’s absurd insistence that Naomi did not see a light in the tower puts him in a position as ridiculous and contemptible as any that Roger brings upon himself.

In their post about this episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri point out that the tower looks very much like the one in F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu. That movie was not widely available in the 1960s, but books about film history were finding a mass audience in those days, and some of them would have had stills from it.

The tower in *Nosferatu*. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 446: You have given me nothing I can understand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 445: Powers of persuasion

Fluttery heiress Millicent Collins has been staying at the great estate of Collinwood as the guest of her second cousin, haughty tyrant Joshua Collins, and Joshua’s wife Naomi. Today, Millicent has news for Joshua and Naomi. She has agreed to marry naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes.

Joshua and Naomi are stunned by this announcement. Millicent had been obsessed with avenging herself on Nathan for some time, ever since she discovered that when they became engaged on a previous occasion he was already married. But now Nathan has apparently rescued her from an attempt on her life by Joshua and Naomi’s son Barnabas, and Millicent no longer holds Nathan’s late wife against him. For their part, Joshua and Naomi are quite sure that Barnabas did not attack Millicent, and suspect that the whole thing was a ruse by Nathan. Joshua forbids Millicent to marry Nathan, and threatens to have her declared insane if she tries to go through with the marriage.

Nathan shows up. He tells Joshua that he and Millicent will not marry without his consent. At that, Joshua agrees to meet privately with Nathan. Joshua withdraws. Millicent tells Nathan that she wishes he had not told Joshua that they would accede to his demands, and Nathan tells her that he has the situation in hand.

In this scene, played out in the entryway and seen from a point of view inside the coat closet, director John Sedwick makes some clever use of a portrait. The portrait, which hangs in the drawing room in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s and which is identified by fans as that of Joshua,* at first mirrors the furious Joshua as he looks at a sheepish Nathan:

Richard Wagner Collins is on Joshua’s side.

Nathan screws up his courage to face his accusers.

As Nathan begins to make his play, his face overlaps with the portrait, creating the momentary illusion of a kiss. Joshua is startled by Nathan’s assertiveness.

When Nathan and Millicent are alone in the entryway, Nathan stands where Joshua had stood. The portrait now mirrors him as before it had mirrored Joshua, suggesting that he is in the process of taking Joshua’s place.

Joshua and Nathan meet in the study. The study was a set that first became prominent during a blackmail story that played out from March to June of 1967, when Dark Shadows was set in contemporary times. Then, seagoing conman Jason McGuire had established the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood as his base, and the study was a place to which his victim, reclusive matriarch Liz, would retreat, only to discover that Jason had even more power over her than she had thought.

Now, the show is a costume drama set in the 1790s, and Nathan is coming to resemble Jason more and more strongly. Joshua is in Liz’ place as head of the household. When Nathan starts talking about a secret he is sure Joshua very much wants to keep from public view, Joshua at first has no idea what he is talking about. He assumes, to his scornful amazement, that Nathan is taking a shot in the dark, hoping that Joshua might have some shameful secret and gambling that he will be able to convince him that he is in a position to expose it.

Nathan shows Joshua Barnabas’ cane with its distinctive wolf’s-head handle. He assures Joshua that Barnabas dropped it when he attacked Millicent. Joshua does not believe that Barnabas had anything to do with the attack on Millicent, for the excellent reason that he knows Barnabas is dead. Joshua cannot share this information with Nathan, since he has insisted on lying to everyone and claiming that Barnabas is alive and well and living in England. In fact, Nathan and a henchman of his did fake the attack on Millicent, but Barnabas’ situation is not so simple as his parents believe. Unknown to them, or to Nathan, or to any of the Collinses, Barnabas has risen from the dead and now preys upon the living as a vampire.

Nathan has Joshua on the hook. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For his part, Nathan knows that his one-time friend Barnabas is in town, and that he is responsible for the many killings that have recently taken place there. He believes that Barnabas is alive and has become a serial killer, and that the family spread the story about England to cover up this new hobby. Nathan presses more information on Joshua about sightings he and others have recently made of Barnabas, and about evidence connecting Barnabas with the murders. Since Joshua himself had seen that Barnabas’ coffin was vacant in #422 and occupied again in #428, he cannot simply dismiss Nathan’s story. Nathan tells him that Barnabas is hiding in the Old House on the estate, and Joshua decides to go there.

While Joshua prepares to go, Nathan makes himself at home in the great house. He pours himself a drink in the drawing room, as Jason McGuire often did. We cut from the shot of him doing that to the study, where Naomi pours her own drink. Longtime viewers, remembering the miserable state to which Jason reduced Liz while blackmailing her, will be apprehensive that Nathan’s blackmail of the family will bring the alcoholic Naomi to an equally profound despair.

At the Old House, Joshua encounters much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, who tries to keep him from going to the basement. Ben has reason to hate Joshua, and often expressed such hatred earlier in the 1795 flashback. But there is no hatred in him today. He sincerely wants to spare Joshua the sight that he knows awaits him downstairs. But Ben is powerless to stop Joshua, and sadly watches him go through the cellar door.

Joshua finds Barnabas’ coffin at the foot of the stairs. The lid opens, and Joshua sees a hand under it wearing a familiar ring. As Jason had inadvertently pushed Liz to discover a secret she had herself not dreamed of when he directed her attention to the basement of the great house once too often, thereby losing his power over her and leading to his death at Barnabas’ hands, so Nathan is about to change Joshua’s awareness of the situation in ways he himself could not have anticipated and which are likely to lead to his own downfall.

*Though actually a reproduction of Hermann Torggler’s 1904 portrait of composer Richard Wagner.

Episode 434: No business to run

Some people have conversations relating to the ongoing witchcraft trial of bewildered time traveler Vicki Winters. The trial itself is a waste of time, so a half hour listening to people talk about what might happen during the trial is a grim prospect. Indeed, none of today’s scenes is necessary to the overall development of the plot or of any major themes. Still, they give the actors an opportunity to show us what they can do, and four of the five members of the cast turn that opportunity to good advantage.

The exception is of course Roger Davis as Vicki’s defense attorney Peter Bradford. Mr Davis was usually tolerable when he delivered his lines in a normal conversational tone, but when he had to raise his voice, as characters on Dark Shadows have to do very frequently, the results were painfully bad. Voice teachers sometimes tell their students to sing from way down in their bodies; the more indelicate among them have been known to tell boys’ choirs that “The music escapes from the testicles.” Such a teacher would be displeased with Mr Davis. When he raises his voice, the muscles he is tensing are not those around the pelvic floor, but the sphincters in his buttocks, with the result that he seems to be having difficulty evacuating his bowels. I realize this is rather a distasteful discussion, but the topic is impossible to avoid when you listen to Davis going through one sentence after another, in each case building up to one word and grunting it out loudly. Yesterday, young Daniel Collins mentioned that repressed spinster Abigail’s personality was that of someone suffering from indigestion, and when today we hear Peter ask untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes (Joel Crothers) “Why did you LIE!” or tell him “You already DID!” he sounds so much like someone struggling with constipation that we can think of nothing else.

The episode opens with a long scene between Peter and Nathan. One of Crothers’ great strengths as an actor was his ability to relax. He stays loose and moves fluidly, never stiffening in response to Mr Davis’ muscular tension, much less reacting to his straining sounds with either a giggle or a misplaced expression of disgust.

Nathan and Peter’s scene involves a fistfight, the first we have seen on Dark Shadows since dashing action hero Burke Devlin fought dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis in #207. The fight is well-choreographed and Crothers does a good job falling down and looking like he has been beaten, but that result stretches credibility. Not only was Crothers the taller man, but his easy physicality would have given him a great advantage in hand-to-hand combat against someone as rigid and awkward as Mr Davis.

Peter and Nathan do battle. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We cut to the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, where Naomi Collins (Joan Bennett) wants to talk to her husband, haughty tyrant Joshua Collins (Louis Edmonds.) Joshua is moping after the death of his sister Abigail, and doesn’t want to talk to Naomi or anyone else. At first they exchange a few words about Abigail. Naomi doesn’t try to hide her dislike of her late sister-in-law, saying that she led a senseless life. This of course offends Joshua, but Naomi stands her ground.

This part of the conversation includes two lines that are interesting to fans who are curious about the details of the characters’ relationship to their society. When Naomi says that it was because Abigail had too few responsibilities that she became a religious fanatic and a dangerous bigot, Joshua says that she did have some things to do. “She had her church,” he says. Not “the church,” not “our church,” but “her church.” This is not the first indication we have had that Abigail differed from the rest of the family in religion, but it is the most definite confirmation. As aristocratic New Englanders of the eighteenth century, presumably the family would be Congregationalists. Abigail might just have gone to the another, stricter meeting within the Congregationalist fold, or she might have joined a different group.

The other line marks Naomi as a remarkably advanced feminist for her time and place. She says that Abigail was “Like a businesswoman with no business to run.” The concept of “businesswoman” was hardly familiar in the days when this episode is set. Even the word “businessman” was not widely known then- the earliest citation of it in The Oxford English Dictionary dates to 1798, two years after this episode is supposed to be taking place, and its first appearance in the modern sense came several years after that. The same dictionary can find no use of “business-woman” until 1827, and then in only a strongly pejorative sense. But the audience, seeing Joan Bennett on this set, will think of her character matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s runs the family’s business enterprises from this room. Naomi is looking towards the future, and she sees Liz.

Edmonds and Bennett are both wonderful in this scene. She is steady and authoritative throughout; he is alternately gloomy, irritated, and sullen. It is as compelling to watch her hold her single mood as it is to watch him navigate from one to the other. Joshua at no point concedes anything to Naomi, and he ends by turning his back on her and going away. But he is not at all in command today, as he has always been in command before. He is hurting too deeply to give orders and compel obedience by the force of his presence.

In the village of Collinsport, Nathan meets with the Rev’d Mr Trask (Jerry Lacy,) visiting witchfinder. The other day, Nathan capitulated to Trask’s blackmail and testified against Vicki. Now he wants Trask to intercede with Joshua and to talk him out of informing the Navy of his many crimes. He tries to sell Trask a bill of goods, claiming that all the things he did wrong were simply the result of his pure and innocent love for fluttery heiress Millicent Collins. The audience knows that this is entirely false, but Trask doesn’t even let him start on it- he responds that “Physical love is beyond my comprehension.” Mr Lacy is an accomplished comic, and he doesn’t fail to get a laugh with this line. Trask realizes that Nathan’s testimony would lose much of its persuasiveness if he were exposed as the scoundrel he is, Trask agrees.

Joshua comes to meet with Trask. Mr Lacy is a great shouter, and Trask is always on full volume. When he insists that Joshua meet with Nathan and forswear his plan to send a letter to the Navy, he builds Trask into a tower of hypocrisy and repression, and we remember all of the scenes where Joshua has demolished people he disdains, Trask among them. But Joshua is not going to demolish anyone now, not while he is mourning everyone he ever loved. He mutters, frowns, and finally caves in to Trask’s demand. The contrast between the overweening Trask and the fusty Joshua is electrifying to returning viewers.

Joshua then consents to meet privately with Nathan. He tells Nathan that he will keep quiet on condition he secure a transfer to another port as soon as possible. Nathan tells some lies and makes some excuses that impress neither Joshua nor anyone who has been watching the show for any length of time, but again, the actors are fascinating to watch together. The chaos and evil Trask represents has turned the world upside down, weakening the strong Joshua and emboldening the degenerate Nathan.

More bad news awaits Joshua when he goes home. Unhappy as Joshua was with Naomi’s insistence on discussing the faults of his recently deceased sister, he is much more upset when she tells him she has decided to go to court and testify in Vicki’s defense. Joshua is appalled she would do this. He is sure Vicki is to blame for the deaths of both of their children, of both of his siblings, and of various other people, some of whom he cared about when they were alive. He threatens to lock Naomi up in her room to prevent her going to court, but she replies that if he does that she will escape, and he will never see her again. The children are dead and she has no work of her own; she has no reason to stay.