maggie evans – Page 4 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 611: She must come willingly

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair proposes to Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie declines, citing her concern for her troubled ex-fiancé Joe Haskell. Nicholas has a man named Harry Johnson under his power, and a vial of poison he wants to give to Joe. After his disappointing date with Maggie, Nicholas goes home and takes a firm grip on his Harry Johnson. He orders Harry to slip the poison to Joe.

That was all I had to say about the episode, but my wife, Mrs Acilius, had a great deal more. She saw it as an essay about free will.

In the opening scenes, Nicholas talks with Frankenstein’s monsters named Adam and Eve. Adam was created in May, in a procedure that used parts salvaged from corpses and a “life force” extracted from recovering vampire Barnabas Collins. When Nicholas found out about Adam, he came up with the idea of a humanoid species bred from patchwork people and loyal to his master Satan. He schemed to have Eve created as Adam’s mate. Nicholas decided that the donor of Eve’s “life force” should be “the most evil woman who ever lived”; he therefore conjured up Danielle Roget, an eighteenth century homicidal maniac based on Madame DuFarge from A Tale of Two Cities, and assigned her the task. Now he finds that Eve has Danielle’s memories and personality, and that she hates Adam. She has found a man she recognized as the reincarnation of someone she was involved with when she was Danielle, and has made up her mind that they will love each other.

Nicholas is frustrated he cannot control Eve. He turns from her and looks into the camera, as if appealing to the audience for sympathy. Nicholas does not seem to understand what went wrong. He had the basic ingredients for his new species- a male and a female. He had not reckoned on one of them disregarding his plan and choosing a direction of her own.

Adam sees Eve storm out of the house as he is going to see Nicholas. He asks Nicholas where she is going, and is astonished when Nicholas tells him he doesn’t know. Adam is unhappy that Eve does not want him, and thinks that a change of scene would help. Still upset about his conversation with Eve, Nicholas is slow to focus his attention on Adam. When Adam complains Nicholas thinks that he and Eve belong to him, Nicholas turns to him and starts telling him what he wants to hear. Evidently it is dawning on Nicholas that Adam, too, might start to make his own decisions.

The man Eve has chosen is named Peter, but he prefers to be called Jeff. Eve shows up at his apartment, refuses to leave, and tells him that they are going to be together from now on. Roger Davis’ inadequacies as an actor leave this scene flat. Eve keeps talking about signs of doubts and irresolution she sees in Peter/ Jeff’s face, none of which Mr Davis is able to manifest. All he does is yell and pout. But as Eve, Marie Wallace manages to make the point that Eve is no more interested in anyone else’s free will than is Nicholas. She wants Peter/ Jeff to love her, and that is all there is to it so far as she is concerned.

For his part, Nicholas has learned nothing from the failure of his attempt to match Adam and Eve. He thinks all he has to do is get Joe out of the way and Maggie will come to him “willingly.” He even seems to underestimate Harry. He doesn’t bother lying to Harry about what he wants him to do to Joe, and Harry is horrified at the idea of complicity in murder. Harry is a career criminal, and several times we have seen him try to get money out of people by blackmail, extortion, or spying. Nicholas could easily have told him he is about to commit a crime he is used to committing and avoid all resistance. For example, he might have said that the potion was a truth serum and once Joe took it he would have to tell him some secret they could use against him. But it simply doesn’t occur to him to take Harry’s sensibilities into account, and he winds up having to threaten him to gain his compliance. A villain who is supposed to have subtle but irresistible powers loses a piece of his menace every time he resorts to an “or else!,” so this is a significant setback for the character of Nicholas.

Episode 608: The experts

Julia Hoffman, MD, is an authority on vampirism. We first saw her treating Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, who was recovering from her time as the victim of vampire Barnabas Collins. Julia then met Barnabas and transferred her loyalties to him. She used her extraordinary abilities as a hypnotist to erase Maggie’s memories of her ordeal, and conducted an experiment meant to turn Barnabas back into a human.

That experiment failed, but subsequent intervention by another mad scientist did put Barnabas’ vampirism into remission. Since then, another vampire appeared and took Julia as his victim. Barnabas staked him and freed her. Now a third vampire is on the loose. She is Angelique, Barnabas’ ex-wife and once the witch who condemned him to the ranks of the undead in the first place. Angelique has two blood thralls at the moment. One is Barnabas himself. The other is Joe Haskell, formerly a hardworking young fisherman and fiancé to Maggie.

Yesterday Angelique told Joe she didn’t want him anymore. In response, he tried to kill himself. Seeing him bleeding to death, Angelique summoned Barnabas and ordered him to carry Joe off to the woods and leave him to die. Barnabas disobeyed her, and instead brought him back to his house, where Julia treats him.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia spots the puncture wounds on Joe’s neck. She figures out that he is a blood thrall and surmises that Angelique, whom she knows under the alias Cassandra, is the vampire. When Barnabas resists her inquiries, she becomes suspicious of him. At first she bluntly tells him that she wonders if he knows more than he is telling, but when he tries to dismiss her theory about Angelique/ Cassandra she backs away and claims that she is proceeding from “Intuition… I’ve no logical reason… I want to find a solution so badly that I’m willing to accept the idea of Cassandra Collins coming back.” Regular viewers know, not only that Julia has an abundance of logical reasons for her conclusions, but that she is a talented liar. We may well expect to find that she is entirely in control of the situation.

Barnabas brings Maggie over to talk with Joe. Longtime viewers will find this jarring. Joe is in the upstairs bedroom where Barnabas kept Maggie when she was his victim, and she briefly recovered her memory just two weeks ago. You might think that Barnabas and Julia would be taking a terrible risk by letting her see Joe suffer as she did in the room where she did. Oddly, she remembers seeing Joe with Angelique in #599, but does not remember what she knew then, that Angelique is a vampire and that Joe is going through what Barnabas put her through.

Later, Barnabas is alone with Joe when he regains consciousness. Joe figures out that Barnabas is Angelique’s new blood thrall. He vows to kill him, and we cut to the closing credits.

Episode 607: Bedtime

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair wakes Frankenstein’s monster Adam from a nightmare. As we have seen from night-time glimpses of fisherman Joe Haskell and the unpleasant Jeff Clark, it is standard for the young men of Collinsport to go to bed fully dressed, wearing coats, ties, and shoes. Adam is the youngest man around, having been brought to life just this May, but he is wearing pajamas.

Many commenters on fan boards assume that Adam has poor personal hygiene, perhaps because he has spent so much of his short life cooped up in hiding places without running water. But he lives in Nicholas’ house now, and unlike most characters, including Nicholas himself, he has two changes of clothing- the clothes that apparently came with the corpses from which he was assembled, a bright green sweater heiress Carolyn gave him, and his pajamas. So I think we ought to assume that he keeps himself clean.

Earlier this night, Nicholas sicced vampire Angelique on old world gentleman Barnabas Collins in order to keep Barnabas from interfering with his plans for Adam. But he discovers that Adam and Barnabas have a Corsican Brothers-type connection, so that puncture marks have appeared on Adam’s neck. Adam is also weakened, and afraid of Angelique. Nicholas concludes that Angelique will have to leave Barnabas alone. She is deeply disappointed when he tells her of this, but cannot argue, as it is almost dawn and she must get back in her coffin.

We then cut to the Blue Whale, where an unshaven Joe is drinking. Joe is another of Angelique’s victims, and as a result of her power over him has lost his job, his fiancée Maggie Evans, and his self-respect. We were first introduced to Joe in this room, back in #3. In those days, he was a hardworking young fisherman who was too sturdily honest to be tempted by a bribe to spy on the ancient and esteemed Collins family. We have seen him back on this set many times, usually as a stalwart representative of whatever is wholesome and rational. But today he is one of the old drunks leaning on the bar.

Maggie enters. She walks up to Joe. He does not react, and she starts to walk away. She turns back to him and says hello. They have a sad little chat. She says he almost seems to feel about her the way he used to; he says she has no idea how he feels. She tells him what she expects him to say, that he won’t be able to explain to her what’s going on with him; he confirms that it is so. He asks if she is there to meet Nicholas; she says she is, and asks if there is any reason she shouldn’t. He says he supposes not.

Nicholas enters. He asks Maggie if she would like to sit at the bar, but she indicates a table. Joe looks at them, and we hear his thoughts as he wishes he could explain what Angelique has done to him. This gains poignancy for regular viewers, not only because of the contrast between the broken-down figure we see today and the robust young man who so often modeled health and sanity on this same set previously, but also because less than two weeks ago, in #599, Maggie knew all about what Joe was going through. She and Joe were ready to run off together when Nicholas used his sorcery to mind-wipe their knowledge away and reset the story to its current dismal status quo.

Joe leaves the bar and goes to Nicholas’ house to call on Angelique. She is surprised to see him. She didn’t summon him, and she isn’t hungry. She tells him to go away. He says that he’s lost everything because of her, and that she is all he has left. She says he doesn’t have her either, because she is done with him. To make him even more miserable, she takes him to Nicholas’ magical mirror, which can be used to spy on whomever the user chooses, and shows Joe that Nicholas has walked Maggie home. Joe hears Maggie agree that she might fall in love with Nicholas, and watches them exchange a long, passionate kiss.

Joe asks Angelique if she cares that she has utterly ruined his life, to which she replies “Not particularly.” He says that he hates everything he has become, and that he despairs of ever being anything else. He picks up a letter opener intending to stab Angelique. Unable to bring himself to attack her, he sticks it into his own belly.

Angelique makes Joe feel like Mickey Mouse. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Joel Crothers was dissatisfied with the part of Joe and with Dark Shadows generally. In a couple of months, he will leave the show and take a role on another soap. Very few viewers would have been likely to know that was coming in 1968, but Joe was a popular character who was chronically underutilized. He would have had many fans who might have shared Joe’s fear that the show will leave him in the state to which this storyline has reduced him.

Episode 599: If you open it, something terrible will happen

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is wandering in the woods. She is wearing her nightgown and staggering for lack of food. She has just escaped from the hidden chamber in the old Collins family mausoleum, where Willie Loomis had been holding her prisoner for some days.

Willie had abducted Maggie because he wanted to protect her from the evil plans of his master, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, and Barnabas’ friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Because of his choice of hiding place he found that he had a new problem on his hands even after Barnabas and Julia had moved on to another victim. When Barnabas was in the full grip of the vampire curse in May and June of 1967, he had preyed upon Maggie, and the hidden chamber was one of the places he had taken her for torture.

After Maggie escaped from Barnabas, she was taken to a mental hospital. Julia was her psychiatrist, and in August 1967 she abused her position to hypnotize Maggie into forgetting her ordeal. When Willie took her to the hidden chamber, Maggie’s memory quickly came back. Willie is hopelessly dependent on Barnabas and Julia, and could see no alternative to keeping Maggie locked up once she became a threat to them. Yesterday, young David Collins found Maggie and freed her, and now she is trying to find her way to the sheriff’s office to tell her story.

It occurs to Maggie that the sheriff might not believe her once she starts accusing a member of the family that owns the town of being a vampire. He might be particularly skeptical when her psychiatrist comes along and tells them about how she behaved while she was an inmate in the mental hospital. Maggie decides that her ex-fiancé, the lately unemployed Joe Haskell, will believe her story and protect her, so she sets off for his apartment.

Maggie opens Joe’s door to find a blonde woman with her mouth on his neck. She faints. When she comes to, the woman is gone and Joe is apologizing for his inability to explain what is going on. Maggie tells him he doesn’t have to explain. She understands perfectly what has been happening to him, since the same thing happened to her. The woman is a vampire, and Joe has been showing the same symptoms Maggie showed when Barnabas started feeding on her.

Maggie urges Joe to leave town with her, right now. They should get in his car and drive, just drive until they are far, far away. Joe’s eyes are bright and he repeats the key words, clearly excited about the idea. It seems for a moment they might give it a try. A knock comes at the door. Maggie begs Joe not to answer it, but he is compelled to do so. Perhaps this is a symptom of being under the vampire’s power. Or perhaps it may just be a sign that he is a character on Dark Shadows, which usually devotes about 10% of its screen time to people answering doors. At the end of the scene, it is clear that Joe will answer the door, but we do not see what happens next.

Later that evening, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is at home looking at some sketches her late father made. She is wearing a red dress under a smart blue jacket, her hair well-styled. She seems quite=the comfortable. She answers the door, and finds old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and Barnabas’ servant, the high-strung Willie. They tell her that Joe had stopped by their house and brought them a message that Maggie wants to see them.

Maggie happily invites her old friends in. She shows them the sketches, and tells them her late father made them the year before while he was preparing to paint a portrait of Barnabas. She says it occurred to her Barnabas might want the sketches. He accepts them gratefully, and asks if that was the only reason she wanted to see them. Smiling, she says that it was. She mentions that she hasn’t seen Willie for three or four weeks. Willie agrees that she has not seen him in that time. Barnabas says they will have to be going; Maggie is disappointed they can’t stay for a cup of coffee.

Maggie wishes her friends Barnabas and Willie could stay longer.

Returning viewers will already know what Barnabas and Willie figure out in the final scene, that suave warlock Nicholas wiped Maggie’s memory. Unlike the, we are familiar with the plot mechanics that would have motivated Nicholas to do this.

The contrast between the frantic urgency of the scene between Maggie and Joe and the subsequent placidity of the scene in Maggie’s house makes for an effective single episode. The gold standard of anthology series, The Twilight Zone, often drew just that contrast as people would struggle more and more desperately for freedom, that struggle would mount to a fever pitch in a scene that seemed like it just might lead to something, then an event we don’t quite see thwarts them and all of a sudden everything is calm and peaceful and utterly hopeless. Three of my favorite examples are “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You,” “It’s a Good Life,” and “The Lateness of the Hour.” It’s especially piquant to see that scenario play out so much of the story is presented to us from the viewpoint of the villains. Barnabas and Julia generate so much of the show’s interest that none of its fans really wants to see them get their just deserts, and so it makes us squirm a bit when we see that they can evade punishment only by a triumph of evil over good. Writer Ron Sproat deserves credit for developing this structure expertly.

But Dark Shadows is not an anthology series, and as a segment in an ongoing serial, the whole thing is quite frustrating. When Maggie understands what is happening to Joe and can talk to him about it, there is a chance they will be able to make plans and take action that might have consequences for the story. But the mind-wipe just takes the last several weeks of the show and throws them in the trash. All that time we spent cooped up with Maggie and Willie in the hidden chamber? Never mind, it wasn’t important.

In a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day, “Mark Perigard” wonders what might have been:

The scenes between Maggie and Joe are just brilliant. For viewers, it’s like we’re being treated to a seven-course meal we’ve been promised for over a year – and then they snatch the tray away and tell us to suck on crumbs.

How incredible – how daring would it have been to show Maggie fighting for Joe’s sanity and life against the supernatural forces of Collinwood? DS would have a truly proactive heroine. One can imagine Maggie ultimately, reluctantly forming an alliance with Barnabas and Julia against Angelique and Nicholas.

Instead we got another mind-wipe. We was robbed.
Comment left at 11:46 Pacific time, 6 March 2015 by “Mark Perigard,” on “Episode 599: Live, Die, Repeat,” Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day

I can see how that might have played out. Maggie gets to the sheriff’s office and tells him her whole story. He listens intently and instructs his assistant to take notes. When she finishes, he says “Bring her in.” The assistant goes to the door and ushers Julia in. “It’s just as you said, doctor,” the sheriff says. “She has lost her mind completely.”

Maggie would then go back to the mental hospital. While she was there, Nicholas would try to get at her. He would overplay his hand and reveal that he is a warlock. Maggie would realize that Nicholas is responsible for the vampire attack on Joe and that he is at odds with Barnabas and Julia. That’s when she makes her uneasy alliance with her old tormentors and the story really gets going.

Laramie Dean’s Shadows on the Wall posted a scan of the script for this one in August 2016, it’s interesting to see it side by side with a transcript of the dialogue that was actually delivered.

Episode 598: I thought you might be looking for Adam

Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes is searching the room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood where heiress Carolyn has been hiding Frankenstein’s monster Adam since #539 in July. Strange and troubled boy David Collins saunters into the room and greets him with a casual “Hello, professor.” When a flustered Stokes makes up a story about Carolyn sending him to the room to look for some old books, David calmly replies, “Oh, I thought you might be looking for Adam.”

We haven’t seen David since #541. The only time we saw him interact with Adam was when they crossed paths in the woods in #495, and in none of the countless scenes featuring Adam cooped up in this dusty little room has David been mentioned. Yet today he tells Stokes that he visited Adam there many times, and that the two of them became great friends. I take that to mean that Ron Sproat, writer of today’s script, wanted to show us a lot of conversations between David and Adam and was overruled by the producers. It’s a major disappointment Sproat didn’t get his way. David Henesy and Robert Rodan would have been a wonderful pairing. David Collins tells Stokes that Adam told him last night that he would be leaving Collinwood before morning, and that he would never return.

David tells Stokes about Ron Sproat’s good idea. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Carolyn enters the room and tells David to go. He eavesdrops on her conversation with Stokes. He hears Stokes acknowledge that he is in the room without her permission, confirming that he was lying when he claimed Carolyn sent him there. He stays long enough to hear that Stokes is anxious to find Adam because he is afraid he is in danger. He goes off to look for the big guy.

During Carolyn’s conversation with Stokes, it becomes clear that she does not remember the events of the previous night. Since that night stretched over 13 episodes, that is quite a gap. During it, a mate was created for Adam; Carolyn participated in the first attempt at that procedure as the donor of the “life force.” She did that under the influence of suave warlock Nicholas Blair; Nicholas later enlisted her in another task, after which he erased her memory. Perhaps she forgot everything she did while his spell was upon her. That would explain why she doesn’t remember anything about Adam’s mate or about his passionate goodbye kiss. The show was so much more interesting during the little interval when Carolyn knew what was going on that it is almost as big a disappointment to learn of this mind-wipe as it is to hear that we were denied a chance to see a friendship develop between David and Adam.

David goes to Eagle Hill cemetery to look for Adam. He sees Willie Loomis, bedraggled servant of David’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins, emerge from the old Collins family mausoleum. David hides behind a tombstone until Willie is gone.

David wonders what Willie was doing in the mausoleum. He goes inside, and decides to open the panel to the hidden chamber. There, he finds Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, bound and gagged. He calls her by name, and we cut to commercial.

This situation will be familiar to longtime viewers. In #124, David found his governess, the well-meaning Vicki Winters, bound and gagged in a secret room in the Old House on the estate. That time, he panicked and left Vicki still restrained.

After the commercial break, we spend some time with Willie and Stokes in the Old House, where Barnabas now lives. Thayer David plays Stokes. In #124, he played Matthew Morgan, the crazed handyman who was holding Vicki prisoner. Seeing him in this house with Willie at this point in the episode ensures that those of us who saw it will remember #124 and wonder how David’s response to the situation with Maggie will compare to his failure to help Vicki.

Willie then goes back to the mausoleum and finds David sitting on one of the coffins in the publicly known part. He asks David what he is doing there. David answers in a roundabout way. We start to wonder if he may have reverted to his old form and left Maggie where she was. But he eventually gets around to describing how Maggie behaved when he was untying her. Willie is terribly upset to find that Maggie is gone.

Willie abducted Maggie and locked her up in the mausoleum because Barnabas and mad scientist Julia Hoffman were planning to impose the role of “life force” donor on her. While there, she remembered that in May and June of 1967 Barnabas was a vampire who fed on her, imprisoned her, tried to replace her personality with that of his lost love Josette, and tortured her when she resisted. Willie doesn’t see any way to let her out when she has information like that. In the middle of today’s episode, Kathryn Leigh Scott and John Karlen have a big scene in the mausoleum as Maggie defies Willie and he begs her to be nice to him. They do an excellent job, but it is quite a relief to be out of that dungeon.

Episode 593: To face reality

Our story so far…

Frankenstein’s monster Adam has threatened to kill everyone in the great house of Collinwood unless old world gentleman Barnabas and mad scientist Julia create a mate for him. They are to do this by building a woman out of parts scavenged from corpses and draining someone’s “life force” into her. Adam has a crush on heiress Carolyn, so he insisted she be the “life force” donor. Under the influence of suave warlock Nicholas, Carolyn volunteered to serve in that capacity. On Monday, Adam figured out that Carolyn is in love with him, so he told her there was no need to complete the procedure. They could just marry each other. She reacted to that with evident confusion, her own feelings competing with Nicholas’ spell. Nicholas’ influence won out, and Carolyn insisted on going through with the experiment.

The experiment failed to bring the mate to life, and left Carolyn badly injured. After a soulful conversation with Adam in the upstairs bedroom, she lost consciousness. Julia pronounced her dead. Adam then went to Barnabas and declared that he would make good on his threat. He knocked Barnabas down and stalked out of the house. When Julia saw how badly Barnabas was hurt, she went back up to the bedroom to get her medical bag. She found that Carolyn’s body was gone.

Barnabas and Julia wonder where Carolyn’s remains could be and how they can prevent Adam killing everyone. Barnabas’ servant Willie returns to the house to tell them about another crisis. In May and June of 1967, when Barnabas was a vampire, Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, was his victim. He imprisoned and tortured her. In August of that year, Julia abused her position as Maggie’s psychiatrist to hypnotize her so that she would forget all about her ordeal. Now Maggie’s memory has come back, and Willie is keeping her locked up in the hidden chamber of the old Collins family mausoleum. Willie tells Barnabas and Julia that Maggie has figured out how to get out of the chamber, and that she is staying there now only because he knocked her out with chloroform. It’s just a matter of time before she gets away.

Willie also says that he saw Adam a few minutes before. Adam was sitting quietly under a tree. He did not have Carolyn’s body with him. Julia wonders if that means that Adam has decided not to go through with his threats, but Barnabas is not so optimistic.

In the Mausoleum

We see Maggie awaken in the mausoleum. She goes to open the door, only to find Julia standing behind it. Julia blocks the exit and enters. Maggie is afraid Barnabas has sent Julia to kill her. Julia can deny that, but denies nothing else Maggie says. Maggie confronts her as Barnabas’ accomplice and walks toward her; Julia backs away, and Maggie chases her around the coffin in the center of the little space. Julia tells Maggie that she will never get out of the chamber unless she cooperates. Julia tries to hypnotize Maggie, but that only succeeds in reminding her of how Julia erased her memory before. Julia admits that she did that, and tells Maggie her only hope for survival is to let her do it again. Maggie says she would rather die than submit to such a thing. When we first met Julia, she was a doctor whose ambition to treat a vampire led her to betray a patient’s trust, but who could still tell herself that she was serving a greater good. Now, we see that she has lost her moral compass completely. This scene is a showcase for both Grayson Hall and Kathryn Leigh Scott.

A Fanfic Interlude

Julia has been inseparable from Barnabas long enough that it is possible for daily viewers to forget that she was introduced in scenes with Maggie, and that it was by betraying Maggie’s trust that she earned her place as a main character. This scene reminds us of that history, but it doesn’t really make sense. Julia must know that if she calls on Maggie in the hidden chamber where she is being held prisoner, it will be obvious to her that she is in league with her captors. If she wants Maggie trust her so that she can hypnotize her, she will have to deceive her in some way. Julia is the show’s most fluent and plausible liar, so you might assume she would have come up with an effective stratagem.

Mrs Acilius and I came up with a method that might have worked. Imagine an episode that opens with Maggie alone in the hidden chamber. The door opens, and Willie enters. Maggie confronts him with enough information to bring the audience up to date with her situation. Maggie hits him with something, stunning him momentarily. She is opening the door when he grabs her and puts a cloth over her nose. She passes out.

After the opening titles, Maggie comes to in her old prison cell in Barnabas’ basement. She finds that Julia is also there, chained to the wall. Julia tells her that she has only recently discovered the full truth about Barnabas, and that he locked her up to keep her quiet. Maggie knows how close Julia and Barnabas have been for the last year, and is skeptical. At the end of Act One, Maggie is still unsure whether she can trust her.

In Act Two, Barnabas comes in and threatens both women. He lets slip that Maggie found a way to escape from the cell in June 1967. By the time he leaves, Maggie believes that Julia is on her side. In Act Three, Julia asks Maggie how she escaped the year before. That part of Maggie’s memory hasn’t come back, so Julia offers to hypnotize her so that she will remember. Maggie agrees. Julia produces her medallion, and Maggie goes under. We dissolve to the aftermath of the hypnosis. Maggie is asleep on the cot in the cell; she is smiling. Julia is taking the fetter off; it was never locked. Barnabas and Willie open the door; Julia says that Maggie’s memory has been wiped clean again. She will be asleep for an hour, so they should take her home now.

That would not only remind us how Julia began, show us how she has turned out, and explain how Maggie lost her memory, but it would also give us a glimpse of the old, evil Barnabas who first made the show a hit. Barnabas spent his first year as a bloodthirsty ghoul pretending to be a kindly cousin from England; it would be interesting to see the humanized Barnabas pretending to be his old self.

Meanwhile, In the Episode They Actually Made…

Julia leaves the mausoleum and goes back to Barnabas’ house. She tells him the hypnosis failed. At that, Barnabas decides the time has come for him to go to the surviving members of the family in the great house and tell them the truth. Julia tries to talk him out of it, and he says he will do what he can to “exonerate” her from responsibility for the crimes they have committed together. But with Adam and Maggie both at large, he feels he can no longer keep secrets. Just as Julia has lost her conscience it seems that Barnabas, who earlier this week told Julia he would murder Maggie if she couldn’t keep her quiet, may at last have found his.

At the door of the great house, Barnabas wrestles with doubts:

I can’t go through with it. I can’t tell them Carolyn is dead. I’d be forced to tell them about the experiments, Adam, everything Julia and I have done. And if the truth starts to come out, where will it end? Where?… No. I can’t think about that. The family has to know that Carolyn is dead–how she died! I have to tell them no matter what happens to me. No matter what happens. I must tell them!

He finally knocks on the door, and is thunderstruck when Carolyn opens it, looking the picture of health. This might have been an effective surprise if Barnabas’ voiceover soliloquy hadn’t given us ninety seconds to think about who might open the door, and realize there is only one possible candidate.

Episode 588: Remember it after tonight

In August 1967, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, was about to expose old world gentleman Barnabas Collins as a vampire. In the nick of time, Maggie’s doctor, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, hypnotized her and blocked all memory of her time as Barnabas’ victim.

Today, suave warlock Nicholas puts a magical zap on the mind of heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard to induce her to take part in an experiment meant to produce a mate for Frankenstein’s monster Adam. All this mind control makes for a low level of suspense. If traumatic memories can be erased and personal motives overriden by whatever mumbo-jumbo is convenient, there is no reason to suppose that the story’s events will have consequences or that there is any point in getting to know the characters.

This episode includes a tacit acknowledgement of the problem. The other day, Willie Loomis, Barnabas’ bedraggled servant, overheard Barnabas and Julia discussing another evil plan for Maggie. Willie has a crush on Maggie, so he resolved to foil that plan. He has abducted Maggie and is holding her in the hidden chamber inside the old Collins family mausoleum. This turns out to be the worst possible choice of location. Barnabas tortured Maggie there when she was his victim, and in a series of dream sequences those events come back to her. At the end of this episode, Maggie exclaims “I know what Barnabas Collins is!”

Maggie dreams of Barnabas as he was. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Now, Barnabas is not in fact a vampire at the moment. An experiment involving the creation of a Frankenstein’s monster freed him from the effects of that curse. But it would cause a lot of trouble for Barnabas, Julia, Willie, and the plot if Maggie were to go to the police and identify Barnabas as the man who held her prisoner. So Maggie’s closing exclamation might encourage us to hope that the show will swear off its habit of turning its characters into each other’s puppets.

Episode 587: How can you hate yourself so much?

In April 1968, mad scientist Eric Lang promised Barnabas Collins that he could cure him of vampirism. The cure was an experimental procedure modeled on the one in Hammer Studios’ 1967 film Frankenstein Created Woman. A body constructed of parts salvaged from several fresh corpses was to be associated with Barnabas, and when the procedure was complete Lang expected Barnabas’ body to be dead and his mind to awaken in the constructed body. After Lang’s death, Barnabas’ friend, Dr Julia Hoffman, completed the experiment. To their surprise, the procedure ends with both Barnabas and the new man alive. Barnabas named the new man Adam. They take Adam to the dungeon in Barnabas’ house, and keep him there in horrifyingly bad conditions until he escapes. Adam of course hates Barnabas and Julia.

Lately, Adam has been hiding out in a long-deserted part of the great house of Collinwood. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard took pity on him and has been looking after him there. He has fallen in love with Carolyn, to her embarrassment and his frustration. Carolyn has delegated the day-to-day responsibility for looking after Adam to unsightly ex-convict Harry Johnson. Adam’s former protector, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, visits from time to time. Adam’s most frequent and most influential visitor is suave warlock Nicholas Blair. Carolyn and Stokes are good, Nicholas is evil, and Harry is just distasteful.

When Nicholas found out about Adam, he forgot about whatever plans he may previously have had and focused on the goal of founding a new humanoid race. He has talked Adam into demanding Barnabas and Julia repeat the experiment to build a mate for him. Adam threatened to kill well-meaning governess Vicki Winters unless they complied. Now there is a patchwork female corpse and a lot of scientific equipment in Barnabas’ basement. All that is missing is a woman to donate her “life force.”

Barnabas and Julia were plotting to use Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. When Barnabas was a vampire in May and June of 1967, he abducted Maggie and tortured her in an attempt to erase her personality and replace it with that of his lost love, the gracious Josette. When that evil scheme collapsed, Maggie escaped and Julia used her preternatural powers of hypnosis to block her memories. Ever since, Maggie has had no idea of what happened during those two months, and she has thought of Barnabas as a wonderful person. Barnabas wants Julia to use those same powers first to bring Maggie to the basement lab, and then to block her memory in case she survives.

Barnabas’ much-put-upon servant, Willie Loomis, overheard this plan. Willie has a crush on Maggie. He tried to talk Barnabas and Julia out of their fell intentions, and when they would not listen he tried to persuade Maggie to leave town. She wouldn’t listen either, so he took it upon himself to abduct Maggie. He stole some chloroform from the lab, broke into her room, and took her to the hidden chamber inside the old Collins family mausoleum.

We open today in the front parlor of the Old House, where Adam is coolly explaining to Barnabas that he does not want Maggie to donate the “life force” for his mate. Barnabas angrily explains that it must be Maggie, because Julia has proven that she can control her. Besides, Maggie lives alone, so she can go missing for several days before anyone knows she is gone. Barnabas is the chief protagonist of this show, by the way.

Adam says that the only woman whose “life force” he wants to animate his bride is Carolyn. Barnabas says that this is impossible. Adam has been gradually learning the details of the experiment that brought him to life; only now does Barnabas tell him that in the original plan, he would die and come back to life in his body. Adam is bewildered by this. “How could you hate yourself so much that you wanted to change your body?” Barnabas does not want to confess his his former vampirism, so Adam doesn’t get an answer.

Adam meets Nicholas at the gazebo on the grounds of the estate. Nicholas wants him to ignore everything Barnabas said, but Adam is giving deep thought to all of it. It was Nicholas’ idea that Carolyn should provide the “life force,” and Adam enthusiastically agreed, believing this meant that his mate would be like her. He says now that he and Barnabas do not recognize themselves in each other, and Nicholas tries to brush this very apt observation off by saying that Barnabas would hide his similarities. Adam demands Nicholas assure him that Carolyn will not be subjected to any violence. She must want to participate in the experiment. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, that condition is indeed a similarity with his “life force” donor- Barnabas had been preoccupied with the idea that Maggie and his other female victims would eventually come to him of their own will. While Nicholas is trying to quell the big guy’s concern, Willie happens by.

Adam starts to figure everything out, and wants to reason with Nicholas.

Adam hides while Nicholas confronts Willie. He puts a magic zap on Willie to compel him to release Maggie. After Willie goes, Nicholas tells Adam he will use the same painless technique to cause Carolyn to cooperate. Adam is skeptical, but Nicholas assures him that his doubts will be settled when he sees that Maggie is free before daybreak.

That may not quite work out. Willie made the worst possible choice of hiding place when he stashed Maggie in the hidden chamber of the mausoleum. Barnabas took her to that chamber for torture when she was his prisoner, and shortly after she awoke there her memory started to come back. By the end of today’s episode, she remembers that Barnabas was her captor. When Willie returns, he will find that he has quite a problem on his hands.

Episode 584: Terribly familiar

Recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia are under pressure to create a female Frankenstein’s monster. The process they are using requires draining the “life force” from a woman into a constructed corpse. The other day, Barnabas announced they would force the role of donor onto Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town and one of his former victims. When Barnabas’ servant Willie heard of this plan, he was horrified. Willie has a crush on Maggie, and is determined to spare her this fate.

Now, Willie has abducted Maggie and is hiding her from Barnabas and Julia. Barnabas is worried about what will happen if they cannot find another woman to use in the experiment. Julia says “If worse came to worst, I could do it.” Barnabas points out that only she is prepared to operate the equipment, and that she could not do that if she were serving as donor. She makes a feeble suggestion that their onetime lab tech, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff, might run the equipment. Barnabas says that Peter/ Jeff does not have her training. In any case, Barnabas had to fire Peter/ Jeff because he had reason to believe he was trying to sabotage the experiment, so he can scarcely trust him now.

This is not the first time Julia has offered to solve a problem by destroying herself, only for Barnabas to turn her down. In #350, when Barnabas was still a vampire and was desperately thirsty for blood, Julia volunteered herself as his victim. Barnabas was sufficiently moved to address her for the first time as “Julia” rather than with a distinctly contemptuous pronunciation of the title “Doctor,” but he still said the reason he was refusing was that he had use for her medical expertise. Barnabas’ cruel plan for Maggie suggested that he isn’t really any nicer now than he was as a vampire; this echo of that moment would suggest that he hasn’t even stopped seeing Julia, who after all loves him, as a kind of higher servant.

Willie has taken Maggie to the hidden chamber inside the old Collins family mausoleum. It was in this chamber that Barnabas was trapped in his coffin from 1796 until Willie inadvertently freed him to prey upon the living in #210. When she was his prisoner in #248, Barnabas took Maggie to that chamber and shut her up in the coffin there. While Willie tries to assure Maggie that she will be safe as long as she is with him, the memories that Julia used her preternatural powers of hypnosis to erase start coming back.

We see a flashback, not to Maggie’s time at Barnabas’ mercy, but to #283, when she was Julia’s patient at Windcliff Sanitarium. Julia took her on a trip to the old cemetery north of Collinsport, and they went into the mausoleum. Julia did not know about the hidden chamber, and did not understand why Maggie became upset when they were in the publicly known part of the mausoleum. Maggie remembers visiting the mausoleum with Julia, and cannot remember why it frightened her to be there. But the fact that she recognizes the chamber as part of the mausoleum means that her memory of what Barnabas did to her is coming loose.

Maggie’s memory. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This creates a truly suspenseful situation. Maggie is an audience favorite with connections to several other characters, and so it seemed unlikely anything Barnabas and Julia did would result in her leaving the show. But if she remembers what they did to her and tells the police about it, they will go to prison. Since Barnabas and Julia are the source of all the action on Dark Shadows, that would mean the end of the series. So her memory coming back sets up a crisis that might be resolved with a significant change.

Perhaps Barnabas and Julia will force Maggie to donate her “life force” with the consequence that her body dies and she wakes up in the newly created woman, who just so happens to look exactly like her but to have a drastically different personality. That seems plausible, since the long-running storyline of her romance with hardworking young fisherman Joe seems to be over, the minor theme of her relationship with her hard-drinking father Sam had been resolved long before Sam died a few months ago, and we have reason to expect her to move out of her house, which has long served as our window into the working class of Collinsport. If Maggie is running out of story, they may very well decide to keep Kathryn Leigh Scott on as another character.

Closing Miscellany

The flashback is not made of tape cut from #283. It couldn’t be- the show was in black and white then, and is in color now. So they recreate it. It’s kind of adorable to see Julia in her old wig.

This was not the episode they intended to shoot. It was the dress rehearsal. Shooting the flashback scene put them so far behind schedule they didn’t have time to do the episode, and they had to send this footage to the network. I believe that is the only occasion they ever resorted to that desperate expedient. The camera is out of focus much of the time and occasionally does not seem to be pointed in the right direction, the microphones are misplaced so that it sounds at one point like Julia is referring to Maggie as “Greg,” booms and other equipment intrude into the shots, and the actors frequently blow their lines. In other words, it is in no way different from any other episodes.

Episode 583: Act of treachery

Some time ago, mad scientist Eric Lang promised Barnabas Collins that he could cure him of vampirism. His cure involved building a Frankenstein’s monster and draining Barnabas’ “life force” into it. Lang expected that this experimental procedure would end with Barnabas’ body dead and his consciousness awakening inside the newly constructed creature.

Lang died before he could complete the experiment. Barnabas’ friend, Dr Julia Hoffman, picked up where Lang left off. To their surprise, both Barnabas and the new man lived. Barnabas was freed of his curse, but he and Julia turned out to be the worst parents conceivable. They took the new man, whom they named Adam, to the prison cell in the basement of Barnabas’ house and kept him chained to the wall, alone for all but a few minutes a day, with nothing to stimulate his mind. Adam eventually escaped, and quite understandably hates Barnabas.

Adam has fallen under the influence of suave warlock Nicholas Blair. Nicholas persuaded Adam to go to Barnabas and threaten to murder well-meaning governess Vicki and everyone else Barnabas cares about unless he provided him with a mate. Barnabas enlisted Julia to take charge of the process and his servant Willie to steal dead bodies to use for parts. Now there is a constructed female corpse on a table in Barnabas’ basement and an apparatus to use in its animation. All that is missing is a woman to donate her “life force.”

Yesterday, Barnabas’ servant Willie overheard Barnabas telling Julia that he wanted her to hypnotize Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, so that she would submit to the procedure. When Barnabas was a vampire, he took Maggie as his victim, keeping her in the cell where Adam would later be chained. After Maggie escaped from Barnabas, Julia hypnotized her to forget her ordeal. She now believes that Barnabas is just peachy.

Today, Maggie is on the terrace at the great house of Collinwood. She is having coffee with Vicki. The two of them are lamenting the fact that their fiancés have both become strangely distant lately, leading to the end of their engagements. Some of the fan-sites mention that both Kathryn Leigh Scott and Alexandra Moltke Isles have moments during this sad scene when they seem to be stifling laughter. In the years since the show ended, several of the actresses have said that Louis Edmonds had a habit of making wickedly hilarious remarks to them immediately before a taping that would involve a deeply serious scene, and that it would take everything they had not to burst out laughing at the worst possible moments. Edmonds’ character Roger Collins isn’t in this episode, but maybe he was on set for some other reason.

Barnabas shows up and talks with each woman separately. While Vicki is away getting a cup for Barnabas, Maggie tells him she might be leaving town soon. He is distressed to learn she may not be available for the crimes he is planning against her. After Maggie leaves, Vicki mentions that her charge David just left on a camping trip, and “It was quite something getting him off.” On Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day, a commenter named “Chris” remarked on this:

During the outdoor coffee scene after Maggie leaves Vicky with Barnabas, is the funniest blooper ever…….

Vicky, paraphasing: “I was getting David ready for his trip to Boston.”

Actual finish: “It was quite something getting him off.”

And then, she buries her face in the coffee cup, knowing that everyone is holding back laughter, and the awkward pause goes on forEVER.

Comment left by “Chris” at 7:57 AM Pacific time, 21 March 2016, on “Episode 583: Every Woman We Know,” by Danny Horn, on Dark Shadows Every Day (12 February 2015.)

To which I replied, “Vicki, no, he’s only twelve!”

When Mrs Isles is trying not to laugh, she bites her upper lip. She visibly does that before lifting the coffee cup to cover as much of her face as she possibly can, and the pause does go on a long time. So it could be that “Chris” is correct. I can only imagine Edmonds saying that now we know why they stopped showing the audience what goes on when Vicki and David are alone together.

While Maggie was Barnabas’ prisoner, Willie came to be very fond of her. Barnabas eventually framed Willie for his own crimes against Maggie; Willie was sent off to the mental hospital Julia is in charge of. After a few months, he was released. Willie came back. Since his return, Willie has been firmly convinced that Barnabas is his friend. Willie is also in love with Maggie. These attitudes thrust Willie into a crisis when he learns of Barnabas’ cruel plan for Maggie.

At first Willie tries to persuade Julia to refuse to bring Maggie into the experiment; she will not. Then he tries to stab the constructed body. Barnabas caught him before he could plunge the knife in, and threatened to kill him if he tried again.

Later, Willie goes to Maggie’s house and tries to persuade her to leave town immediately because “people” will hurt her if she doesn’t. When she asks what people, he with great reluctance tells her that “Barnabas, he’s involved… Now look, it’s not his fault- but he’s in it whether he likes it or not.” When Maggie expresses disbelief that Barnabas could be a part of any plan to hurt her, Willie says “I’ve got my loyalties to Barnabas, because he’s been good to me. And I’m being as loyal to him as I can be.” Even first-time viewers who do not know that Barnabas was a vampire who fed on Willie, beat him unmercifully, killed his friend Jason and forced him to dispose of the body, etc, will remember the opening of today’s episode when Barnabas greets Willie with a death threat. When we see that Willie sincerely believes that Barnabas has been good to him, we know that we are seeing a man who is as utterly lost as he can be.

After he fails to talk Maggie into getting on the next bus out of town, Willie goes back to the lab and steals a bottle of chloroform. He knocks over a stool; the noise brings Barnabas. Barnabas glances around the room, concludes that he is alone, and leaves. We see Willie cowering behind a table. Barnabas’ brief visit to the lab makes Willie seem even more pitiable. Barnabas doesn’t know where Willie is, does know that he has access to the lab, and has seen him trying to sabotage the experiment. Even so, he has so little regard for Willie’s ability to take action that he doesn’t see any need to do a real search. We hear his thoughts in voiceover as he thinks “There’s no one here.” Seeing Willie making himself small, we might suspect that Barnabas would have the same thought even if he were looking directly at his onetime slave.

Meanwhile, Barnabas encounters Adam on the terrace at the great house. Adam says that he will murder Vicki tonight unless Barnabas returns to the lab and gets back to work.

Willie breaks into Maggie’s bedroom. She awakens to find him pressing a cloth to her mouth. She screams, he apologizes, and the chloroform takes effect. He hears Barnabas let himself into the house and call for Maggie; when Barnabas comes into the bedroom, he finds the room vacant and the French windows open. We first saw this room in May 1967, when Barnabas was a vampire taking Maggie into his power. In those days, her father Sam and fiancé Joe were horrified to find that she had disappeared from it, leaving the windows open. That was because she was answering Barnabas’ call. Now Sam is dead and Joe is estranged from Maggie, and it is Barnabas’ turn to find that Maggie is gone. When he does, Adam’s threat to kill Vicki replays in his thoughts.