julia hoffman – Page 2 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1045: Have you a medical degree?

We open in the room atop the tower of the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Wicked witch Angelique, enemy of the mysterious Barnabas Collins, confronts Will Loomis, Barnabas’ henchman. She demands Will tell her Barnabas’ secret. Returning viewers know that Barnabas is a vampire, and Will is his blood thrall. When Will tells Angelique that he is incapable of betraying Barnabas, we know that he is making a literal statement of fact. But Angelique has power over Will, too. Caught between these opposing forces, Will does the only thing he can. He opens the window and flings himself to his death.

John Karlen plays Will, Lara Parker Angelique. In his post about this episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn observes that Karlen approached all of his parts as if he were in a play by Tennessee Williams. In a comment I left under that post, I said that while most of Karlen’s scene partners stuck with their own distinctive styles of acting while playing opposite him, resulting in surprisingly effective mashups of techniques that you wouldn’t think could coexist on any stage, Parker followed his volcanic lead in today’s first act. Will’s anguish and Angelique’s vehemence both go way over the top, but the result is far from hammy. Orson Welles famously said that hamminess is not overacting, it is false acting. There is nothing false between Will and Angelique today.

Just before Will jumped out the window, Julia Hoffman entered the room. Furious that Will has died without telling her what sort of creature Barnabas is, Angelique accuses Hoffman of startling him and ruining everything. Wondering if Will may have survived his fall, she orders Hoffman to accompany her to the foot of the tower. Hoffman kneels down and says that Will’s spinal cord snapped on impact resulting in instant death. Angelique says that she is intrigued by Hoffman’s diagnosis. “Have you a medical degree?”

Unknown to Angelique, the true answer would be yes. Angelique believes herself to be with Hoffman the housekeeper, her most fanatical devotee. In fact, the woman is Hoffman’s counterpart from an alternate universe, Dr Julia Hoffman, MD. Julia has followed her best friend Barnabas into this continuity and is assisting Barnabas in his battle against Angelique. Julia killed Hoffman and assumed her identity. Julia responds to Angelique’s puzzlement with a story about an incident when she saw a man fall from a roof and land in the same twisted position Will now holds. She remembered the words the doctor said when examining that man and merely repeated them when she saw Will’s distorted neck. Angelique compliments Julia on her extraordinary memory, and proceeds as if she were telling the truth. There seems little else she could do.

I remembered the line “Have you a medical degree?” from the first time Mrs Acilius and I watched Dark Shadows. Angelique has noticed that Julia is different from the Hoffman she knows, and has been showing signs of impatience with her. But she has not suspected she is a different person, only that she is going soft on her enemies. “Have you a medical degree?” makes it seem that might be changing. Julia may be in grave danger before long.

Barnabas rises from his coffin in the basement of Will’s house. He goes upstairs and finds Angelique waiting for him. She says she came, not to see him, but to console the widow Loomis. Thus Barnabas learns that Will has died.

Barnabas tells Angelique that he will avenge Will’s death upon her, but she tells him that he is the one to blame. It was because his power over Will matched hers that Will could respond to her commands only by killing himself.

Angelique’s counterpart in Barnabas’ own universe placed the curse that first made him a vampire. She was also wholly or partially responsible for the deaths of his mother, sister, aunt, uncle, fiancée, and many other people he cared about. So he reacts to the sight of this Angelique with barely controlled rage. For her part, she has no idea who he is, and does not know why he is hostile to her. She, therefore, is much cooler. The contrast is fascinating to watch, far more interesting than are the scenes between Barnabas and the other Angelique and one of the joys of the “Parallel Time” segment.

Julia and Barnabas are busy with a science project. They have learned that Angelique returned from the grave because her father, evil barfly Tim Stokes, somehow established a remote connection between her and a woman named Roxanne whom he keeps in the back room of his apartment. This connection, whatever it is, drains most of the “life force” from Roxanne into Angelique. This creates a delicate situation. If Roxanne dies, all of her “life force,” including that which animates Angelique, will vanish. But if she regains any of the force that has been taken from her, even enough to flutter her eyelids, Angelique will collapse and, unless Roxanne is brought back down to the prescribed level of debility, re-die.

When Julia and Barnabas first came upon Roxanne, they planned to kill her to finish Angelique off. Barnabas put the kibosh on that when he saw how pretty Roxanne was. Then they thought of destroying Angelique by reviving Roxanne, but, for reasons too silly to explain, they’ve decided they want to keep Angelique around. So now Barnabas has decreed that they will manipulate Roxanne’s condition to slow Angelique down. They have taken her from Stokes’ place and put her on a table in Will’s basement, somewhere away from the coffin. They have connected her to a lot of mad science equipment that is supposed to act on the “life force.” Longtime viewers know all about this equipment, because Julia had it in 1968 when she was building a Frankenstein’s monster as part of a project to cure Barnabas of vampirism.

The doctor is in. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia runs the equipment. Roxanne’s condition does not change. Julia tells Barnabas that Angelique is expecting her back at the great house. In her absence, Barnabas takes Roxanne’s hand and stares at her. She opens her eyes and sits up. In the great house, Angelique weakens and collapses.

Many fans wonder where Julia could have got the “life force” equipment. In her own universe, she is a medical doctor and the head of a private hospital, so she could order anything she needed from a medical supply house. Here, her only identity is her imposture as Hoffman the housekeeper, who did not have a prescription pad.

I don’t see why people are so concerned with this. In 1968, the equipment originally belonged, not to Julia, but to another mad scientist, Dr Eric Lang. Barnabas and Julia simply stole it from Dr Lang’s house after he died. In this continuity, we haven’t heard about Dr Lang, but we hadn’t heard about him in the main continuity either until Barnabas fell into his clutches, at which point he already had all of his equipment. So we can presume Barnabas and Julia just found out when his counterpart would be out of the house and raided the place.

Will’s death marks his final appearance, but John Karlen will be back in a couple of months as Willie Loomis, the version of him we met in the main continuity. He will play other characters later, when the show will be set in other periods.

Episode 1044: A girl I’d like to meet

The whole idea of the supernatural is that what appears to be weak is able to overcome what appears to be strong. So, as far as we can tell the dead are infinitely weaker than the living, yet it is two dead characters, vampire Barnabas Collins and wicked witch Angelique Stokes Collins, who dominate all the living people they interact with today. Even dead characters who barely appear utterly outclass live ones. In the opening sequence, Barnabas and his blood thrall Will Loomis hear the voice of late housekeeper Julia Hoffman. Hoffman’s ghost does not manifest visibly; she is such a subtle presence that Will can’t tell the difference between her and a stray piece of purple cloth. Even so, he is helpless against the dead Hoffman. Only the equally dead Barnabas can talk her into getting out of their way.

As far as we can tell, people have more influence over each other when they are close together than when they are far away, and if one person is going to resuscitate another they have to be in physical contact. But Angelique’s father, a wizard known as Tim, somehow connected her to a girl named Roxanne when Roxanne was in the back room of his apartment and Angelique was sealed up in her tomb, miles away. That unexplained connection drained most of the “life force” from Roxanne into Angelique, allowing Angelique to move among the living and reducing Roxanne to a vegetative state. Roxanne must remain in precisely her current state of debility, or Angelique will die again. Whenever Roxanne regains even a minuscule amount of strength, Angelique collapses. If Roxanne were herself to die, the whole of the “life-force,” including the share which animates Angelique, would vanish. The first and third letters of Roxanne’s name specify what she is to Angelique, the ℞ prescribed for her.

As far as we can tell, the actions we take in our lives have consequences while the actions we do not take have none. But 13 weeks ago Barnabas crossed over into an alternate universe where counterparts of the people he knows are living with the consequences of actions he did not take when he met his universe’s counterpart of Angelique in the 1790s. In his life, Barnabas had an affair with Angelique, then spurned her when he found that the gracious Josette was available to him. In revenge, Angelique turned him into a vampire and brought death and misfortune to many others. In this continuity, Barnabas’ counterpart left Angelique alone, married Josette, lived a quiet life, and died a natural death.

Hoffman’s counterpart in Barnabas’ native universe is as devoted to him as Hoffman was to Angelique. This Julia Hoffman is a medical doctor and a mad scientist. She has crossed over to the current continuity, killed her counterpart, and assumed her identity. She is working with Barnabas against Angelique.

Barnabas and Will take Roxanne from Stokes’ apartment to Will’s house on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. Barnabas wants to control Angelique by periodically stimulating Roxanne a little, knocking Angelique out each time he does so. His original plan was to revive her altogether, destroying Angelique, but he has decided that if he does this he will have less of a chance of proving that Angelique, not foul-tempered sourpuss Quentin Collins, was responsible for the death of a man called Bruno Hess. As far as we can tell, people who can move around and talk are better able to defend their reputations than are those who are rotting in their graves, but Barnabas seems to think that it is the other way around in Angelique’s case.

Julia has refused to aid Barnabas in this nonsensical scheme, but now that Roxanne is in the house she acquiesces. Before she can get to work, they hear a knock on the front door. Will leaves Julia and Barnabas with Roxanne in the secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor. Angelique herself is the visitor, asking to see Barnabas. Will tells her that Barnabas is not in and that he won’t be back for some time. She goes to the bookcase and appears to be reaching for the lever that exposes the secret room, but simply takes a book. She sits down to read while she is waiting for Barnabas. Will claims that he has resolved to stop drinking and resume his work as a writer, and that he has to be alone to do so. Angelique can’t think of anything to say to that, so she goes.

Once Angelique has returned to the great house, Quentin’s young cousin Amy Collins comes to her in the drawing room to say that she saw a man scurry across the grounds and climb in through a window, and that a few minutes later she heard a man outside her bedroom door. She could not see the man, but thinks he might be Quentin. Angelique tries to persuade her she did not see what she saw. Amy has given up when Angelique grows faint, the result of what is happening to Roxanne. When Angelique’s head clears, she asks Amy in a very serious tone to repeat exactly what she told her. Any inclination the girl may have had to believe that she was mistaken vanishes with this.

We next see Amy exploring the long-disused west wing of the house. She hears someone moving around among the cobwebs and bric-a-brac. She does not find this person, but does discover the statuette Angelique used as a voodoo doll when she cast the spell that killed Bruno, Bruno’s scarf still tied around its neck.

Julia, masquerading as Hoffman, returns to the great house. Angelique scolds her for neither being at hand when she wanted her nor keeping close enough track of Barnabas to prevent him taking Roxanne away from her father’s apartment. Julia answers the first of these complaints by referring to her other duties. She answers the second by trying to say that another of Angelique’s enemies might have made off with Roxanne. Angelique has no patience with either of these statements.

Will comes to the great house. Amy tells him about the man she saw on the lawn, says that she believes he was Quentin, and shows him the statuette with the scarf around its neck. Regular viewers not only remember Angelique using the statuette to strangle Bruno from afar, but will also remember that her counterpart in the main continuity used the same statuette in the same way to cast a choking spell on her husband Sky Rumson in #955, when Sky was trying to set fire to her (theirs was an imperfect marriage.) But out of that context, there does not appear to be anything sinister about the statuette. That isn’t a flaw in the prop- it’s the whole point. As a supernatural intervention, the voodoo doll is not supposed to look like it could have anything to do with the consequences of the spell it is used to cast.

Amy shows Will the statuette. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Will recognizes the statuette as a voodoo doll, as his wife Carolyn had done when Maggie showed it to her the other day. That’s a breach of faith with the audience. Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced form of technology is indistinguishable from magic. If the implements of witchcraft are things that could be sent off to the police lab for forensic analysis, they are not sufficiently advanced to stay outside the category of technology, and you are not telling a story about magic at all.

Will retraces Amy’s steps through the west wing, hoping to find Quentin and offer him his support. He makes his way to the tower room. The door opens, and he is startled to see who is entering.

Denise Nickerson was a splendid young actress. When she first joined the cast as Amy Jennings in the main continuity, she was central to the plot for months, and did a great job. We remember those days when she goes to the west wing looking for Quentin. It was Amy Jennings who, on her first night in the great house, entered the west wing and went straight to the room where the ghost of that universe’s version of Quentin was waiting for her. But she has been seen less and less. This is Nickerson’s first appearance in eight weeks, and it is hard to be optimistic that we will see much more of her in the future.

Episode 1043: The temperament to kill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 1042: Used as a voodoo doll, to cast spells

Vampire Barnabas Collins has crossed over from the universe where Dark Shadows took place for its first 196 weeks and established himself as a character on another soap opera with the same title, made by the same people and broadcast in the same time slot. His best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, has joined him in the cast of this new show. Barnabas is pretending to be a descendant of another Barnabas Collins, who in this continuity lived a quiet life and died a natural death in 1830. Julia is impersonating another Julia Hoffman, who was the housekeeper at the great house of Collinwood and a fanatical devotee of the undead Angelique until our Julia beat her to death and stole her French maid outfit.

Barnabas has taken three victims. These are alcoholic novelist Will Loomis; Will’s wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard; and masochistic barmaid Buffie Harrington. Will and Carolyn own the Old House on the grounds at Collinwood, which in his own universe was Barnabas’ home. He lives there now as their unwelcome guest. Buffie has not been seen since #1023, and is mentioned today for the first time since #1028. Will discovered Julia next to Barnabas’ coffin shortly after she killed Hoffman; when he saw the corpse, he realized who Julia was and was delighted to meet her. It becomes clear only today that Carolyn also knows who Julia is. It is Carolyn who brings up Buffie’s name in her conversation with Julia. Carolyn says that Buffie was working at Collinwood the previous year. She assumes that Julia will recognize Buffie’s name in connection with something other than her former employment on the estate, so it is plausible that she knows that she has been inducted into the sisterhood of the scarf, but it is not made explicit.

Staff conference. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Carolyn and Julia are talking about the séance at which Angelique died the first time. This séance was reenacted in #990. They made a big deal at that time about how everyone involved in the original séance was in attendance at the reenactment, with only two exceptions. Foul-tempered sourpuss Quentin Collins, Angelique’s widower, refused to have anything to do with it. And since Angelique herself was in the tomb at that time, her identical twin sister Alexis sat in for her. Neither Carolyn nor Buffie was there; since someone has to tell Julia about the séance, it makes sense to retcon her into attendance. It is not immediately obvious why they have chosen to insert Buffie into it. Regular viewers may hope that means that we will see more of Elizabeth Eis’ fine performance in this role, but she doesn’t turn up today.

Two weeks after the reenactment of the séance, Angelique rose from the dead, murdered Alexis, and took her place. She has been impersonating her ever since. Barnabas and Julia know that the “Alexis” who is staying in the great house as Quentin’s guest is really Angelique, though they do not know about the sororicide. The conversation between Julia and Carolyn is the first time it is confirmed that they have shared their information with the Loomises.

Angelique suspects that Quentin killed her, and has decided to get revenge on him by annihilating his family (except for her own son by him.) As part of that plan, she used witchcraft to finish strangling a man named Bruno whom Quentin had just been choking. When a policeman in whose presence Quentin had a few minutes before vowed to kill Bruno with his bare hands strolled in and found Quentin over the body, he arrested him. Yesterday, Angelique talked Quentin into assaulting that policeman and escaping from jail so that he could interfere with the investigation into Bruno’s death. Apparently Quentin thinks courts love it when you do those things.

Angelique keeps needling Quentin’s current wife, the former Maggie Evans, by alternately describing the evidence of Quentin’s guilt and urging her to have total faith in his innocence. Maggie is already close to a breakdown, and this doesn’t help. Julia finds her outside Angelique’s old bedroom, where she is convinced she heard the piano playing. They enter the room, and find it vacant. Longtime viewers will remember early 1969, when supernatural forces tormented the living by making a sickly little waltz resound throughout the house, and will assume that Angelique is using magic to make Maggie to hear the music.

Julia urges Maggie to get out of the house for her sanity’s sake. As Maggie is starting to think that might be a good idea, Angelique enters. Angelique looks askance at Julia. Hoffman the housekeeper had not only been dedicated to her, but was barely able to control her loathing for Maggie. So far Angelique has not suspected that Julia is not who she appears to be. When she sees Julia’s sincere concern and hears a suggestion that Maggie do something other than fall into a trap, she wonders what is going on.

Julia returns to the Loomis house in time to see Carolyn have a vision of the fateful séance. When Carolyn comes out of the trance, she declares that she knows who killed Angelique.

Episode 1039: This is the body

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 1038: A family that is finished

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 1036: I am who I am

Housekeeper Julia Hoffman, fanatical devotee of the undead Angelique Stokes Collins, has discovered that Angelique’s enemy Barnabas Collins is a vampire. Hoffman is standing at Barnabas’ open coffin. In one hand she holds a stake on his chest, in the other a mallet upraised.

As Hoffman is about to rid the world of this loathsome abomination from beyond the grave, another woman strikes her dead. This woman appears to be Hoffman’s identical twin. Regular viewers know that she is another Julia Hoffman, a Doppelgänger intruding here from another universe. This Julia is a medical doctor by qualification and a mad scientist by vocation, and she is as committed to Barnabas as Hoffman is to Angelique.

Julia kills Hoffman. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia sees her own face on a corpse of her own slaying. She leaves the secret chamber and closes the panel that hides it. A man enters the house. He takes Julia to be Hoffman, and demands to know why she is there and why she is not wearing her French maid uniform. Julia says that she was running an errand, and that she is on her way into town. The man remarks that she does not seem like herself; she replies that “I am who I am.” The man does not give any sign that this assertion reminds him of either Popeye the Sailor or the God of the Book of Exodus. Longtime viewers will already have noticed more than a few parallels between Julia and each of these characters.

The man says he has come to the house to see its master, Will Loomis. He wants to ask Will for money so that he can leave town. When Julia says that Will is sleeping and may not be up for hours, the man turns his request to her. He says that he, Angelique, and others had paid her plenty over the years in return for her discretion, and he asks for $500. She says she doesn’t have any money with her. Indeed, she is not carrying a purse, and her bank account and other liquid assets are all located in a different universe. The man leaves.

Julia is back in the secret chamber trying to figure out what to do when Will comes home. He pulls a gun on her. He is one of Barnabas’ blood thralls, and is in charge of protecting him during the day. He knows that Hoffman and Angelique are Barnabas’ enemies. Thinking that Julia is Hoffman, he is prepared to kill her. She denies that she is Hoffman, and tells him that if he looks in the secret chamber he will know she is telling the truth. He does, and a look of recognition comes on his face. “You are Julia!” he says, delighted. Barnabas had told Will about her and others in his own universe, and he couldn’t be happier to meet her.

Julia decides to masquerade as Hoffman. She says that if she could fool the man who came by earlier, whose name is Bruno, she should be able to fool Angelique and the others. Will points out that fooling Bruno for a few minutes is not the same thing as fooling Angelique for an indefinite time, but Julia is nothing daunted.

Julia passes the first test. Angelique finds her in her room and demands where she has been all day. Julia says she was following Barnabas, as per her orders. That is the right answer. Angelique asks what she was talking about last night when she said on the telephone that she had discovered Barnabas’ big secret and would tell her what it was when they were face to face. Julia says that she thought she was onto something while following him around, but in the light of day it turns out to be pretty vague. Angelique is frustrated and orders her to resume snooping on Barnabas.

Meanwhile, Bruno has learned that his acquaintance Cyrus Longworth the mad scientist is dead. Cyrus had kidnapped Maggie Evans Collins, second wife of Angelique’s widower Quentin Collins. Barnabas killed Cyrus while rescuing Maggie.

Bruno knows that Cyrus kept a big wad of cash in the wall safe in his laboratory, in the sum of “thousands!” of dollars. He goes to the lab and rummages through the papers on the desk, certain that the combination to the wall safe is there. That seems like bad OpSec, but Cyrus wasn’t very shrewd, so it is no surprise that Bruno turns out to be right. He finds that the cash is gone. All that is in the safe is a notebook. Bruno is furious at the sight of the notebook, exclaiming “Why aren’t you money!?”

Bruno sees that the notebook is marked to be delivered unread to Quentin Collins in the event of Cyrus’ death. Bruno reads it and laughs joyously. He says that he was mistaken when he said there was no money in the safe. There is far more money than he hoped for.

Bruno telephones Angelique. Like almost everyone else, Bruno believes Angelique to be her identical twin sister Alexis. Angelique rose from the dead and murdered Alexis, who was already established as Quentin’s permanent guest in his home, the great house of Collinwood. Alexis was convinced that Angelique was murdered and was trying to investigate when Angelique killed her. For her part, Angelique knows she was murdered and very much wants to complete that investigation. Bruno happily tells “Alexis” that he knows who murdered Angelique.

Bruno’s claim that the notebook represents far more money than he had hoped for narrows the range of possible suspects to one. He hoped for thousands of dollars, so whatever message Cyrus wanted to deliver to Quentin must be something that can be leveraged for hundreds of thousands or millions. Quentin himself is the only person we’ve seen who has resources like that. He is too selfish to pay blackmail to conceal anyone else’s guilt, even that of his closest family members, so the notebook must contain an accusation against Quentin. Whether that accusation is correct, of course, remains to be seen.

Episode 1035: Terrified at his own duality

Since #1021, Barnabas Collins has been trying to figure out what links mild-mannered scientist Cyrus Longworth with a strange and violent man known as John Yaeger. Yesterday, Cyrus telephoned Barnabas and told him that Yaeger was holding Maggie Collins prisoner in an old farmhouse. Today, Barnabas finds Yaeger choking Maggie in the basement of that farmhouse.

Barnabas orders Yaeger to unhand Maggie, saying that he will kill him if he does not. Maggie gives an ecstatic look, then Yaeger flings her to the floor. He and Barnabas start fighting. Yaeger’s weapon of choice is a heavy cane that conceals a bayonet. The other day, Barnabas was looking at his own heavy cane and thinking about what an effective weapon it is, setting us up to expect a cane fight between him and Yaeger. Returning viewers will therefore be puzzled that Barnabas doesn’t even have his cane. Barnabas’ cane is one of his signature gimmicks, so maybe the makers of the show didn’t want to risk damaging it.

Yaeger exposes the bayonet in his cane and stabs Barnabas with it. Barnabas pulls it out of his chest and keeps coming. Yaeger asks “What kind of creature are you?,” to which Barnabas replies that he will never know. Barnabas strangles Yaeger to death. Barnabas’ threatening statements to Yaeger combine with the fact that he keeps choking him well after he becomes unconscious to leave us no label for this act other than willful murder.

Maggie gets up and goes into the room where Barnabas has just finished killing Yaeger. As she does so, there is a bad goof in the production, as a gap in the panel behind her exposes another set, the one representing the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. Watching Dark Shadows is an education in how resilient an audience’s suspension of disbelief can be, but the idea that the farmhouse is very far from the great house is so important to the suspense that this one really does undercut the rest of the episode.

Maggie should just have clicked her heels and said “There’s no place like home.”

Maggie and Barnabas watch in amazement as the dead Yaeger transforms into Cyrus. Once they have absorbed the implication that Yaeger was just Cyrus in disguise, Barnabas takes Maggie home to the great house.

Maggie is walking when Barnabas gets her in the front door, but she is unconscious by the time he puts her on the couch in the drawing room. Housekeeper Julia Hoffman and Carolyn Stoddard Loomis, a cousin of Maggie’s husband Quentin, are astounded to see them, and have many questions. Barnabas confirms that Yaeger was holding Maggie prisoner and that he is now dead, then orders Hoffman to bring a blanket for her mistress.

Quentin comes home. Barnabas tells him they must go to the farmhouse at once. There, they see Cyrus’ body. Thinking of what Barnabas and Maggie saw, Quentin realizes that the experiment Cyrus had been so secretive about must have been the creation of a Jekyll and Hyde formula. He decides that they should tell the police everything, in spite of the damage it will do to Cyrus’ posthumous reputation and the risk that Barnabas might be inconvenienced in some way for having murdered him.

Quentin has only known Barnabas for a few weeks, and has been wary of him. He has been especially impatient over the last several days with Barnabas’ insistence that Maggie was in danger when he was under the impression that she had merely left the house. This scene shows us Quentin’s remorse at having disbelieved Barnabas, and marks the beginning of a friendship between the two.

Back in the great house, Hoffman is in a brightly lit, richly decorated room, making a telephone call. She is telling the person on the other end of the line that she has learned a crucial secret about Barnabas, and that this secret might be just what they have been looking for. She promises to tell the other person what the secret is once they can talk face to face. Returning viewers know that Hoffman is talking to Quentin’s undead first wife, Angelique, who has been staying in the great house in the guise of her identical twin sister Alexis. The two of them have been scheming to split Maggie and Quentin up so that Angelique can remarry Quentin and resume her place as the mistress of Collinwood. They were in league with Cyrus/ Yaeger, and are afraid that their enemy Barnabas may have picked up some information from him that he can use against them.

Later, Hoffman is on her way back to the same room, perhaps to place another call to Angelique. She finds she cannot pass through the doorway. A phenomenon is occurring that others have seen before. Hoffman sees, not the room that is in that space as she knows it, but dark, bare walls. There are two people there, whom she can see and hear though they are not aware of her. They appear to be herself and Quentin, and they are talking about Barnabas. The man says that Barnabas will be doomed if the “people in that other time” find out that he is a vampire.

Regular viewers know that the man and woman are Julia Hoffman and Quentin Collins, but not the Hoffman and Quentin we have come to know over the last eleven weeks. They are part of another universe altogether. For its first 196 weeks, Dark Shadows was set in that universe, and most of the current characters are counterparts of characters we met there. Barnabas crossed over from that continuity to this one in the futile hope that by doing so he would escape the vampire curse and become human again. Hoffman’s counterpart in the original continuity, Julia Hoffman MD, is as devoted to the undead Barnabas as Hoffman herself is to the undead Angelique. Quentin’s is best friend and confidant to Barnabas and Julia, and is neither the master of Collinwood nor married to his world’s version of Maggie, who is the governess at Collinwood.

Earlier this week, Barnabas popped back to his own reality for a few minutes and talked with Julia. It is his fault that she and Quentin are talking about his vampirism where Hoffman can hear them. He knew that the room as it is in the original universe occasionally becomes perceptible to people in the current universe, since he and Quentin themselves saw it when Julia was standing there talking about him. He just did not think to mention that fact to her.

In the foyer, Barnabas tells Carolyn to stay with Maggie. Carolyn points out that her husband Will Loomis is going to be away until mid-morning, so Barnabas will be alone in their house for several hours. He says he will be all right. While she eavesdrops on this conversation from the drawing room, Hoffman uses the mirror in Carolyn’s compact to confirm that Barnabas does not cast a reflection.

This is precisely the same method Julia used in the original continuity, in #288, to make sure Barnabas was a vampire. The feature film House of Dark Shadows wrapped principal photography several weeks ago; Julia does the same thing there. It is somewhat undercut for returning viewers, not so much by the many times Jonathan Frid’s reflection is inadvertently captured in the many mirrors that decorate the sets in this “mirror universe,” but by the deliberate choice the show made in #1033 to show us an inverted reflection of Barnabas in a magnifying glass in Cyrus’ laboratory. Also, longtime viewers will remember a period in 1968 when Angelique’s counterpart in the main continuity was a vampire. They went out of their way to show us her reflection several times. They never explained what point that was supposed to be making, but it was obviously intentional. If we were confused then, we will be confused again this week.

Julia learned earlier this week that Barnabas keeps an empty coffin behind a secret panel in Carolyn and Will’s house. So she knows where to go this morning. She opens the coffin, places a stake on Barnabas’ chest, and raises a hammer to drive it through his heart. Roll credits!

This cliffhanger leaves us wondering who will interrupt Hoffman and save Barnabas in the first scene of act one on Monday. Carolyn and Will are Barnabas’ victims and are in charge of protecting him, so it would be logical for one or both of them to come home earlier than expected. That would be an anticlimax, but the characters are on the show so rarely and the actors are so dynamic that it would have its compensations. Barnabas has a third victim, Buffie Harrington. We haven’t seen Buffie since #1023 or heard her name since #1028, but regular viewers were reminded of her yesterday when Barnabas mentioned an incident he could have learned about only from her. So it would make sense for her to show up, and it would certainly be nice to see her again.

There are also a few long-shot possibilities. The show spent much of 1969 explaining how Barnabas and Quentin became friends; today Quentin’s counterpart accepts Barnabas as a friend. Perhaps this continuity’s Quentin will somehow save Barnabas. Also, Barnabas’ brief visit home suggests that the barrier between the universes is getting leakier, so we can’t discount the possibility that the original Quentin, the original Julia, or perhaps Will’s counterpart or another character from the old days may happen by.

Episode 1034: Time is our only weapon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 1032: The presence of two

A mysterious rupture in space and time occasionally appears in a room in the east wing of the great house of Collinwood. In the universe where Dark Shadows was set for its first 196 weeks, this room is vacant, bare, and dark. In another universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time,” the same room is brightly lit, fully furnished, and richly decorated. When the rupture occurs, people standing in the doorway in one universe can see and hear what happens in the other universe, but they cannot enter it, and the people they observe are not aware of them.

Vampire Barnabas Collins crossed over from the original continuity in #980, and pops back today. His best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, welcomes him home. He declares that he cannot stay. He has learned that Maggie Evans Collins, whose counterpart in their universe has been important to Barnabas and Julia, is in danger and he feels a responsibility to rescue her. Julia says that she saw her own counterpart and that of wicked witch Angelique in the room earlier in the evening, and that they were plotting to destroy Barnabas. She says that he must stay in his native universe for his own safety. He disregards this and orders her to lock him in the room so that he can cross back over to the other continuity the next time the phenomenon occurs. Soon, he is back there, himself imperiled and with no idea how to help Maggie.

Maggie is the prisoner of Cyrus Longworth, a mad scientist who has developed a potion that alters his appearance so drastically even those who know him best do not recognize him when he is under its influence. Thus disguised, Cyrus calls himself “John Yaeger” and sets about beating some people, raping others, and murdering still others. As “Yaeger,” Cyrus is keeping Maggie in a dungeon and telling her he will not let her out until she falls in love with him. She has a fever today. He brings her an antibiotic and tells her how to use it. As he is giving the instructions, his voice and facial expression are so typical of Cyrus that it is a bit odd Maggie does not suspect that he and Yaeger are one and the same. She tells him that she has given up on returning to her previous life and is willing to go off and make a new one with him. Cyrus is overjoyed at this, and talks about how wonderful things will be from now on.

Watching the episode, I had a number of things to say about Barnabas and the two Julias. Then I read Danny Horn’s post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day, and found that he had already said them. The only big difference is that Danny doesn’t like this part of the show and I do, but once you’ve figured out that he and I are not the same person, not even counterparts in alternate universes, that isn’t an especially interesting fact.

Danny does make one claim about the difference between the Julia Hoffman, MD whom we know from the original continuity and the housekeeper Julia Hoffman we’ve been getting to know in recent months that I would dispute:

But there is a difference, an actual reason why Actual Julia is better than Parallel Julia, which is that Julia is a higher social class than Hoffman, and this gives her more power to impact the story.

I know, that sounds awful, but it’s true. Julia is a doctor, and doctors are incredibly powerful on soap operas. When there’s a crisis, you call the doctor, and then everyone literally stands around and waits for the doctor character to tell them what to do. Julia can examine people, and make treatment decisions. Those decisions are mostly sedative-related, but still, she’s an active character in the scene.

As a doctor and permanent house guest, Julia also has complete freedom to go anywhere she likes, at any hour. She can leave the house and go meet fashion models and art collectors, or dig up a grave, or pretend to write a book. She can shop for antiques, and boss policemen around. There is no limit to what Dr. Julia Hoffman can do, as long as it makes the story more interesting.

And Hoffman is a housekeeper. She has no freedom, no social power, and nobody asks her for advice. There’s just no contest.

Danny Horn, “Episode 1032: The Curse of Blinovitch,” posted 6 June 2017 on Dark Shadows Every Day.

Julia’s status made it easy for her to establish herself on the show in 1967, but at this point Hoffman has as much potential for development as Julia had then. As the housekeeper, Hoffman has the run of Collinwood, which is where all the action takes place. That gives her all the authority she needs to become involved in any story. It adds an interesting wrinkle that she often has to take orders from characters who are less powerful than she is. Occasionally she gives orders to women who are nominally her superiors, and seeing a woman in a French maid outfit dominate rich ladies is no doubt deeply satisfying to certain people. Angelique is as firmly established as the main driver of the action now as Barnabas was when Julia first joined the cast of characters, and Hoffman’s relationship with her is in every way the same as Julia’s relationship to Barnabas. So I think Hoffman is Julia’s equal as a story generator.

I was also going to make fun of Cyrus’ extreme gullibility when Maggie says she will leave with him, but I then I read John and Christine Scoleri’s discussion in their post at Dark Shadows Before I Die, and found that they had beaten me to that. They even included a link to the Warner Brothers cartoon of the big monster saying that “I will love him and squeeze him and call him George”, and captured a screenshot of Maggie rolling her eyes at Cyrus’ dopey reaction:

John: Boy, Yaeger is as dumb as he is sleazy. That he would so quickly buy Maggie’s story seems completely out of character. Of course, he’s so caught up in how he’s going to hug her and pet her and squeeze her and rub her and caress her… Though he probably won’t call her George.

Christine: I was worried Maggie was going to be the dumb one and not try to convince him that she was willing to leave with him so she could attempt to escape. I wonder how far they’ll get before she slips up and he brings her right back.

John and Christie Scoleri, “Dark Shadows Episode 1032: 6/9/70,” posted 9 June 2020 on Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Cyrus’ stupidity might make us sympathize with Barnabas’ determination to continue to try to rescue Maggie in spite of everything. Regular viewers know that Cyrus has a devoted fiancée who fell in love with him even without being kidnapped, and that she has vowed to stand by him even while he is in the guise of Yaeger. So Cyrus’ abduction of Maggie cannot be attributed to any form of loneliness, only to a lust for power and cruelty for their own sakes, and his reaction to her pretense of surrender is a sign that he is even more demented and therefore less predictable than we might have assumed. The dungeon scenes have already been relentlessly bleak, and when we see how unhinged Cyrus really is they promise to become even harder to watch.