PT quentin collins – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1027: A look of surprise

Vampire Barnabas Collins discovers that the woman introduced to him as Alexis Stokes, identical twin sister of the late Angelique Stokes Collins, is in fact Angelique herself risen from the grave. He confronts Angelique, and the two find themselves at a stalemate. Angelique calls her stepfather, Tim Stokes, tells him who she really is, and enlists his help against Barnabas. Angelique’s widower, drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, comes home to the great house on the estate of Collinwood and refuses to have an adult conversation with his current wife, the former Maggie Evans, about his temper tantrums and other bad habits that are ruining their marriage.

Meanwhile, mad scientist Cyrus Longworth, who has been conducting a Jekyll and Hyde experiment on himself, transforms into his Hyde form in front of his fiancée Sabrina Stuart. She tries to reason with him, and he responds with a lot of sneering and threats. Cyrus sneaks into the great house and lets himself into the master bedroom while Maggie is asleep there. He tricked Maggie into meeting him on the waterfront last week, and tried to rape her there. Apparently he has decided to make another attempt.

Writer Joe Caldwell takes a surprising approach to tying this big bundle of disparate content together. In each encounter, he has the characters talk about the way they are looking at each other. This sounds extremely unpromising, like a recipe for the dullest possible essay about literary theory, but when they put the script on its legs it works well enough.

Barnabas learns Angelique’s secret by going to her old bedroom in the east wing of the great house and staring really hard at the eyes in the portrait of Angelique that hangs there. “Alexis” comes running in, wailing that he is staring into her eyes and it burns. Barnabas goggles at her and she admits to being Angelique come back to life. He refuses to explain his powers of remote viewing.

The eyes of Angelique S. Collins. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique telephones Stokes, who was named in #981 as her father but whom we see for the first time today. He thinks she is Alexis. He wearily tells her there is no point in the two of them having a conversation. She tells him she has something to tell him about Angelique, and he comes right over.

In her room, Angelique identifies herself to Stokes. He is overjoyed that the twin he liked is alive. She tells him that when she rose from the grave, she drained the warmth from Alexis’ body, killing her. Stokes frowns and says he didn’t want Alexis to die. He seems genuinely sad for a period. I timed this period; it lasts precisely four seconds. That season of mourning complete, Stokes and Angelique are again beaming and laughing and moving about in a circular pattern that looks very much like a dance around the May pole.

This scene includes some deeply puzzling information. Stokes says that he was stepfather to Alexis and Angelique. The other day, Angelique told Barnabas that her family’s burial grounds is the final resting place of her namesake, a woman named Angelique who came to Collinwood in the late eighteenth century as a domestic, and that another servant at Collinwood in those days, Ben Stokes, was her several times great-grandfather in the male line. Perhaps Angelique’s remarks about Ben and her namesake are being retconned away, but there doesn’t seem to be any point in doing so.

For its first 196 weeks, Dark Shadows was set in an alternate universe. The show insists on calling the current continuity “Parallel Time.” Stokes’ counterpart in the other universe, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, is a descendant of his version of Ben, though that Ben never married his coeval Angelique. Professor Stokes is an expert on the occult and a good guy, and it was he who first explained the theory of “Parallel Time” when characters started catching glimpses of it through a warp in Angelique’s bedroom here. Now the same warp is making the original continuity visible to the current characters, and it falls to Tim Stokes to explain the same theory to his (step)daughter. The Parallel Time phenomenon, like Barnabas’ remote viewing of Angelique through her portrait, is a case of one-way visibility. When the warp occurs, people can see into the other universe, but the people they are watching are not aware of them.

Shortly before dawn, Stokes lets himself into the Old House on the estate, where Barnabas is staying. Barnabas sees Stokes in the parlor. Barnabas asks Stokes who he is and what he is doing alone in someone else’s house at such an unusual hour. Stokes responds to these questions as he sees fit, then asks if he and Barnabas have met before. He characterizes Barnabas’ look upon seeing him as one of recognition. Barnabas replies that on the contrary, it was the shock of non-recognition. One does not expect to see a stranger in such circumstances. This little conversation about the act of seeing turns out to be the main part of the scene.

Quentin shows up in the master bedroom and stares at Maggie while she sleeps. She wakes up and is relieved to see that he is back. Then they have their frustrating little conversation. Maggie may as well have kept sleeping; at least Quentin wasn’t making things between them worse when she didn’t know he was there.

After he attacked Maggie on the docks, Cyrus threw away the potion that turns him into his Mr Hyde form, which he calls “John Yaeger.” He does not have the means to make more of it, since he murdered the chemist who alone was able to supply one of the key ingredients. He uses the same potion to re-Jekyllize himself, and since he had already transformed spontaneously once before it seems pretty reckless to throw it out. Sabrina is with Cyrus in his laboratory when the transformation happens again. She is horrified to discover that Yaeger, whom she has met and has reason to hate, is in fact Cyrus in disguise.

In the other universe, Sabrina’s counterpart was engaged to another murderous shape-shifter, a werewolf named Chris Jennings. When the other Sabrina saw Chris change into his lupine form, her hair turned white and she lost the power of speech for several years. This Sabrina is more resilient, and she tries to reason with Cyrus. He keeps telling her how dumb she is, then leaves. At the end, we see him standing where Quentin had stood earlier, at the foot of Maggie’s bed, watching while she sleeps. We hear his internal monologue as he tells himself “Now, John Yaeger, now!”

This episode was made not long after the feature film House of Dark Shadows finished principal photography. The very large number of story points crammed into its 22 minutes may show the influence of that production. It wouldn’t be unusual to see this much action in two reels of a theatrical release, but it is far more than we are accustomed to seeing at 4 PM on weekdays.

Episode 1025: Go to the window

Maggie Evans Collins is upset. Her husband, drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, has stormed out of the house yet again, as usual for a reason he refuses to explain to her. Quentin’s brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, taunts her with invidious comparisons to Quentin’s first wife, the late Angelique. Housekeeper Julia Hoffman keeps setting Maggie up to remind Quentin of Angelique, one of the most reliable methods of triggering his tantrums. Worst of all, but unknown to Maggie, Angelique herself has come back to life and is casting spells on her. Angelique murdered her identical twin sister Alexis and took Alexis’ place as Quentin’s houseguest. Maggie is desperate for a friend and keeps behaving as if “Alexis” were one, leaving her exposed to attack. We end today with Maggie standing at an open window, hearing Alexis’ voice urging her to jump. The angle makes it look like Maggie is already in her coffin and is opening its lid.

Maggie looks for escape. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.

Dark Shadows was unusual among soap operas in that Friday’s episode was often the least eventful of the week. This one is a case in point. It doesn’t feel slow, though. The dialogue is well-crafted and expertly delivered, leaving us with the feeling that we are getting to know Maggie and each of her tormentors better with each scene.

Episode 1024: Chance and Mrs Stoddard are identical twins

When Dark Shadows began in June 1966, its biggest draw was movie star Joan Bennett as reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz was highly capable, and Bennett made her compelling to watch. When in #25 Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, grudgingly complimented her on her “neat way of managing people,” we could see that he was putting it mildly. But the show didn’t handle Liz’ storyline very well, and she soon became a blocking figure. As the owner of the estate of Collinwood and of the Collins family businesses, as a central player in all the stories they had started with, and as the powerful personality Bennett had created, Liz was such an important part of the show that when she became a brake on the action, there was a constant danger that it would be impossible for anything to happen ever again.

The arrival of Roger’s estranged wife Laura Murdoch Collins in #123 marked Dark Shadows’ transformation into a supernatural thriller. By the time Laura went up in smoke in #191, her story had absorbed two of the four original narrative themes, “The Revenge of Burke Devlin” and well-meaning governess Vicki’s growing friendship with strange and troubled boy David, and had undercut whatever interest we might still have had in the other two, the mystery of Liz’ decision to become a recluse and Vicki’s quest to learn her true identity. The emerging Dark Shadows 2.0 had little room for Liz, and she subsided to the margins. When the show traveled back in time and became a costume drama from November 1967 to March 1968 and again from March to November 1969, Bennett played other characters and was able to make a substantial contribution, but Liz would never again be a suitable vessel for her great talents.

For the last eight weeks, the show has been in another time travel segment. Now it has traveled, not back in time, but sideways. They are in an alternate universe. The show insists on calling this universe “Parallel Time.” It is 1970 here, as it is in the original continuity, but a different 1970 where people with the names and faces we already know are living very different lives.

The Elizabeth Collins Stoddard of Parallel Time is not the mistress of Collinwood or an effective businesswoman. This Liz entrusted her inheritance to her brother Roger, who turned out to be just as feckless as his counterpart in the original continuity. As the penniless Roger we met in 1966 lives in Liz’ house as her guest and works in Liz’ business as her employee, so this Liz and Roger both live at Collinwood as the dependents of their brother, drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins.

In the original continuity, Quentin was not Liz and Roger’s brother, nor did he own anything. We got to know him when Dark Shadows was set in 1897, and he was a charming rogue, the younger brother of Judith and Edward Collins, who like Liz and Roger were played by Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds. So the parallel lines representing the two versions of 1970 take a bit of a swerve into that other epoch.

Today, Liz is busy organizing a costume ball to be held in the great house of Collinwood. They had such a ball every year at this time when Quentin was married to his first wife, the late Angelique Stokes Collins, and Liz thinks that having another one would be the perfect occasion for Quentin to introduce all of his friends to his new wife, the former Maggie Evans. Liz needs help getting this party going. She comes bustling into the drawing room today and addresses herself to Angelique’s identical twin sister, Alexis Stokes, announcing that the party is tonight and 14 of the guests have failed to RSVP. She bemoans her inability to get anything organized and pleads with Alexis to help her. Alexis agrees to do so and excuses herself from a chess game she had been playing with Barnabas Collins, a man who recently showed up and introduced himself as a distant cousin of the Collinses of Collinwood.

Quentin enters the drawing room and orders Liz to cancel the ball. She says that it is too late to do that. Quentin stalks off and goes outside. Liz turns to Barnabas and asks him to reason with Quentin. Barnabas is unsure that he is the right person, but he goes to the door anyway. He opens it just in time to hear Quentin peeling away in his car. Maggie appears at the head of the stairs and asks if Quentin has gone. Barnabas has to say that he has, and Maggie looks crushed. Liz is unable to help in any way.

Later, Liz returns to the drawing room in the middle of a conversation between Quentin and Maggie. She is carrying an enormous decanter containing some sherry and congratulating herself on calming the cook’s nerves by her bartending. Quentin excuses himself to go get into his costume.

Liz brings the party. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Liz finds that Maggie has not yet chosen a costume. She urges her to do so at once. Maggie says she supposed that Angelique always picked out her costume weeks in advance. Liz knows that Maggie is intimidated living in Angelique’s shadow, and does not know what to say in response to that remark. She quickly changes the subject. She brightens, and says that Alexis has brought many lovely dresses down from the attic. She urges Maggie to go to Alexis’ room and choose one of them.

As the time for the guests to arrive comes near, Liz and Barnabas meet in the foyer. A portrait of the Barnabas Collins who died in 1830 hangs on the spot on the wall next to the front door where earlier this week we had seen a metal doodad that looks like a coat of arms. Barnabas is wearing the same outfit, and looks just like the man in the portrait. Liz is wearing a dress of the same vintage. She is overjoyed, and tells Barnabas that the period suits him. He thanks her, and returns the compliment. Quentin is wearing a blue federal coat; Liz and Barnabas tell him that he, too, is suited to the early 1800s. Alexis comes downstairs in a blue dress, and she receives the same commendation. Lastly Maggie makes her appearance. When Quentin sees her dress, he becomes very tense. He tells her to take it off, orders her never to wear it again, and smashes his glass on the floor. The camera pans from Barnabas’shocked expression to a flickering look of pleasure on Alexis’ face; Liz stands between them, and unfortunately we only see the top of her head.

What Liz does not know is that the person she thinks is Alexis is in fact Angelique risen from the grave. Angelique murdered Alexis, took her place, and is conspiring with housekeeper Julia Hoffman to drive Maggie and Quentin apart. The story is a souped-up version of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, in which the dead first wife is not only a memory that triggers anxiety in her successor but a supernatural being who rises from the dead to torment her directly. There is a scene with Maggie looking out the window of the drawing room that is an exact recreation of a shot in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film of Rebecca, and when Angelique and Hoffman trick Maggie into wearing the same dress Angelique wore to last year’s ball, prompting Quentin’s outburst, most grownups in the original audience would remember the same thing happening to the second Mrs de Winter in that film.

Angelique is the villain, and Maggie is the heroine. Still, we rather like Angelique. The sister-murdering is bad, of course, but Quentin is such a lousy husband that she is doing Maggie a big favor by trying to bring their intolerable marriage to its end as soon as possible. For example, today Quentin finds Maggie reading his old love letters to Angelique. He might justifiably have objected that those are private and say he wished she’d asked before reading them, but he doesn’t do that or anything else one adult would do when disappointed in another. Instead, he flies into a rage, accuses her of a variety of things she hasn’t done, and orders her to, and I quote, “Go to your room!”

Later, in the room they share, Quentin is still scolding Maggie for failing to admit that she was lying about how she found the letters. We know she had in fact told the truth. When she tells him so, he dismisses her with a shake of the head. When she brings up the fact that it is the anniversary of his wedding to Angelique, he shouts that she is forbidden to discuss the subject, then storms out and slams the door. This is when he goes downstairs, tells Liz to cancel the party, and drives away. We have never seen Maggie have a happy day with Quentin. He sometimes manages to be pleasant in the intervals between his tantrums, but even then he can’t let go of his habit of talking to Maggie as if she were a child and he were her somewhat weary guardian. If Angelique can hasten their final split, Maggie will owe her an enormous debt of gratitude.

Barnabas is not in fact a descendant of the man whose portrait now hangs in the foyer. He is a visitor from the main continuity. Angelique’s counterpart there is his great enemy, so it is fun to see him talking with this Angelique and playing chess with her.

David Selby has a problem with one of his lines, when Quentin winds up saying “I wonder where I got the illusion that an hour or two alone would settle one’s all of problems.” This is a fairly minor stumble by Dark Shadows standards, but it comes when Angelique is in closeup and Lara Parker’s left eyelid twitches when she hears “one’s all of problems.” That reaction is worth a laugh.

Episode 1022: Do any of us know where our dreams come from?

Angelique Stokes Collins, late wife of gloomy sourpuss Quentin Collins, has risen from the grave, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and taken Alexis’ place as Quentin’s houseguest in his mansion, the great house of Collinwood. Impersonating Alexis, she has been busy with a lot of cackhanded schemes to drive a wedge between Quentin and his new wife, the former Maggie Evans. As recently as yesterday, Quentin and Maggie were keeping their cool and showing signs that they might catch on to what “Alexis” was up to, but today they both melt down completely. Quentin has a fit when he sees Maggie reading a book about witchcraft that Angelique left in the drawing room, and Maggie goes to Quentin’s friend Cyrus Longworth to ask some questions about Quentin’s role in Angelique’s death.

Cyrus is pretty nutty himself. He is a mad scientist who has developed and become addicted to a Jekyll and Hyde potion. When he drinks it, his appearance changes so drastically that even the people closest to him cannot recognize him. Thus disguised, he goes by the name “John Yaeger” and indulges his sadistic impulses.

Cyrus assures Maggie that Quentin did not murder Angelique. She leaves his laboratory feeling relieved. She forgets her gloves. He picks them up, and spends eight seconds rubbing them on his face, sniffing them, and looking ecstatic. Eight seconds is quite a long period to devote to that particular pastime.

Buffie Harrington comes to Cyrus’ lab. When he is masquerading as Yaeger, Cyrus’ favorite hobby has been beating Buffie and ridiculing her. She has a self-destructive streak that led her to submit to that treatment. Unknown to Cyrus and unmentioned in today’s episode, Buffie has a new dominator. Vampire Barnabas Collins has bitten her, made her his slave, and ordered her to find out whatever she can about Yaeger from Cyrus.

Buffie is very much in charge of her scene with Cyrus. She runs through a long list of emotions- anger and impatience with Cyrus, attraction to him and pity for him, contempt for Yaeger and admiration for him, pity and anger towards herself, all portrayed clearly and convincingly by Elizabeth Eis. Returning viewers who realize that Buffie is on a mission from Barnabas to get Cyrus to tell her what he knows about Yaeger will be impressed that Buffie is as good an actress as Eis was. She is looking for the note that will crack the glass holding Cyrus’ secrets, and striking each one perfectly.

When Buffie finds out that the gloves are Maggie’s, she mentions that she knew Maggie when they were growing up in the village of Collinsport. She says that Maggie was always a special person, obviously destined for greater things. Looking at herself in the mirror, Buffie says that Maggie probably doesn’t hate herself when she sees her reflection. Buffie may still be acting, trying to elicit Cyrus’ sympathy, but we don’t see his reaction when she says these things, only two images of her face. And her words do fit with the self-destructive streak she has shown in her relationship with “Yaeger.” Not only Elizabeth Eis’ extraordinary good looks, but also her forceful and intelligent manner, make it shocking to see Buffie looking at herself and hear her saying such things. The show never explains where Buffie’s urge to destroy herself came from, but Eis makes us both believe that it keeps overwhelming her and wish that she could escape it.

Cyrus stops by Collinwood to return Maggie’s gloves. When she sees him, Maggie brightens up and starts moving fluidly from the hips up in a way that suggests sexual attraction. She is disappointed he won’t stay. Considering how close Cyrus got to Maggie when they were in his lab and how he gazed longingly into her eyes until she asked him if something were wrong, it’s hard to see how he can fail to find her excitement encouraging.

Cyrus drinks his potion. Once Yaegerized, he telephones Maggie. He refuses to identify himself, but says that if she meets him at the docks at 6 PM sharp he will give her information about Angelique’s death. Maggie is initially appalled by the idea of a strange man asking her to meet him at the docks, but she is still carried away with the suspicions Angelique planted in her mind that Quentin is a wife-killer. She can’t resist.

Yaeger is at the docks when Buffie happens by on her way to work at the Eagle tavern. She speaks to him. He jeers at her until she leaves. Cyrus keeps telling himself what Buffie told him in their scene today, that Yaeger enjoys life. All I can say is that there are far more enjoyable things to do with a beautiful young woman than to beat her, insult her, and drive her away. Yaeger seems to me to be an utterly miserable sort, as strongly bent away from life towards death as is Buffie.

Maggie shows up shortly after Buffie has gone. Yaeger doesn’t tell her anything she doesn’t know. He moves in close and starts talking about wanting her favors. She says she will be going, and he grabs her from behind. He puts his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams while he does a series of pelvic thrusts. His facial expression gets more and more distorted until his tongue pops out.

Cyrus, in his “John Yaeger” disguise, rapes Maggie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

I suppose Cyrus/ Yaeger is rather an intelligent depiction of a rapist. He craves cruelty for its own sake. Any sexual thrill he may get is a side effect of the pleasure he derives from hurting women. Cyrus is engaged to a lovely young woman who is devoted to him, his lab assistant Sabrina Stuart. Sabrina’s name doesn’t even come up today. When Buffie was under his influence, she would have gone along with just about any sort of relationship he wanted to develop, either as Cyrus or in the guise of Yaeger. All he wanted to do was use her as a punching bag and then laugh at the bruises he left on her. Maggie is clearly attracted to Cyrus today, and however loyal she may be to Quentin is at the least available for some very pleasant flirting. But all Cyrus can think to do is to conceal his identity so that he can humiliate her in the alley where the streetwalkers pick up their johns.

The conceit that Cyrus and Yaeger are different people helps writer Joe Caldwell make today’s script into an essay about rape. Had Maggie recognized Cyrus in the alley, he might have claimed that he took her earlier response to him to be an invitation to sex. It is certainly easy to imagine a husband as uncharitable as Quentin taking such a claim seriously. But when Cyrus disguises himself as Yaeger, he shows that he has no wish to accept an invitation of any kind from Maggie. All he wants is to avoid punishment for the crime he is planning to commit against her. Indeed, when she sees Cyrus as Yaeger, Maggie shows nothing but distaste and a desire to flee. Cyrus evidently prefers those reactions to the enthusiasm Maggie showed for him when he was being sweet and friendly.

The Yaeger makeup is not very consistent from day to day. This time, the hairline is so high that he kept making me think of John Cazale as Fredo Corleone. Also, Christopher Pennock’s acting is not up to its usual standard; he overacts so severely that he keeps stumbling over his words. He even botches the opening voiceover. Perhaps he was too nice a guy to really get into a character who is the distilled essence of Rapist. At this point, Cazale had done only one TV show, a guest spot on NYPD, a series made in New York that featured Dark Shadows cast members in about half its episodes. Maybe Cazale would have been available for the role of Cyrus/ Yaeger. He too was a famously nice guy, but was perhaps a more accomplished actor than Pennock and better able to handle a part like this one.

Episode 1021: At the window, looking in

The opening voiceover tells us that vampire Barnabas Collins is about to “find an innocent victim, who will not only add to his grief and guilt, but also to his immediate peril.” Innocent victims can be so inconsiderate that way.

Barnabas has taken barmaid Buffie Harrington back to her apartment. She asks if she can give him a drink. He moves closer, and she takes him in her arms. He takes a drink, all right. She screams and collapses. As she hits the floor, Cyrus Longworth, MD, lets himself into the room and makes eye contact with Barnabas.

Barnabas claims that he ran into the room when he heard Buffie’s scream, which is not one of his more convincing lies. Cyrus insists on examining Buffie. In the nick of time, Buffie wakes up. She agrees with Barnabas that she is fine. Barnabas offers to stay with her. Cyrus does the same, to which Barnabas replies that he must have some business to attend to if he is in this part of town so late at night. Cyrus can’t deny that, and leaves.

Barnabas gives his new blood thrall some quick instructions, including strict orders to stay away from Cyrus. The next evening, Cyrus drops by Buffie’s place again, and she is as cold and unfriendly as Barnabas could have wished. As Cyrus is going, Buffie asks if he has heard from his friend John Yaeger lately. He says he hasn’t, but that she will be the first to know if he does. He leaves.

Barnabas materializes. Buffie is surprised that he was eavesdropping. Now that he knows Cyrus is close to Yaeger, he rescinds his order for her to avoid him. He says that Yaeger knows where his coffin is, and he wants to know everything he can about Yaeger for his own protection.

The next evening, Cyrus is back at Buffie’s. He is surprised she invited him. She says she hadn’t meant to be so rude the evening before. She asks about Yaeger, explaining that she has some things of his and is keen to get them back to him as soon as possible. Cyrus says only that he is sure Yaeger will be back soon. He leaves, and Buffie asks herself why Cyrus is protecting Yaeger.

Returning viewers know what Buffie and Barnabas do not. Yaeger does not exist. Cyrus has developed a potion which alters his appearance so drastically that even those closest to him do not recognize him when he is under its influence. Thus disguised, he calls himself “John Yaeger” and indulges his sadistic impulses. With this episode, the show sets Barnabas and Cyrus on a collision course. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde meet Dracula, here we come.

In the great house of Collinwood, another bizarre imposture is underway. Angelique Stokes Collins, the late wife of Quentin Collins, has returned from the dead, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and taken Alexis’ place as a houseguest. Her goal is to alienate Quentin from his new wife, the former Maggie Evans, and return to her previous place as mistress of Collinwood.

“Alexis” has been telling everyone that Angelique was murdered, which she in fact believes herself to have been. Since the coroner’s report ruled Angelique’s death the result of a stroke, Quentin does not take this idea seriously. “Alexis” has managed to persuade Maggie to do so, however, and when first we see them they are having a testy exchange over the question.

“Alexis” is happy to overhear this conversation. When the drawing room doors open, she presents Maggie with a bunch of flowers she has picked from the gardens on the grounds of the estate. Since the estate belongs to Maggie and Quentin, this is rather a childish gesture, but it pleases Maggie. “Alexis” goes to fetch a vase.

Cyrus shows up. Maggie goes upstairs while Cyrus and Quentin go to the drawing room. The men talk about Larry Chase, an attorney who represented both of them. Larry died in the foyer at Collinwood yesterday. At that time Quentin and Maggie were out together, so Larry was alone with “Alexis.” Cyrus says that Larry somehow froze to death in the foyer.

Angelique is alone with the flowers. She casts a spell causing them to shrivel and die. She then turns to the camera, looks directly at the audience, and gives her best “Ain’t I a stinker?” look.

In #346, Barnabas touched a bouquet of flowers, causing them to shrivel and die. That embarrassed Barnabas, as if he had lost control of his gastrointestinal system for a moment. It also alarmed well-meaning governess Vicki, but she never mentioned it again, and it certainly didn’t tip her off that Barnabas was a vampire. This incident shocks and befuddles Quentin and Maggie, but when he brings it up in their bedroom later she has already forgotten all about it and he agrees it wasn’t very important.

Even if it had made as big an impression as Angelique was hoping it would, destroying the flowers would probably not have advanced her goal of making Quentin suspect that Maggie is a supernatural force of darkness. He does notice the similarity to what happened to Larry, but since Angelique was with Larry when he died and Quentin and Maggie were together somewhere else, and since Angelique was in contact with the flowers for far longer than Maggie was, any suspicion it would raise would most logically be directed at herself.

“Alexis” has more success persuading Maggie to suspect Quentin of the murder of Angelique. Maggie has a dream about the séance at which Angelique died. It ends with Quentin choking Angelique. She wakes up screaming that he shouldn’t have murdered his wife.

In fact, Quentin did choke Angelique at the séance, but Angelique has discounted that as a possible cause of her death. She thinks that someone else drove a pin into her head while Quentin was busy strangling her. How the autopsy missed that, she hasn’t told us.

Last week the show credited its videotape editors for the first time, the team of Danny Rosenson and Robert Steinback. Today is the first credit for another pair of videotape editors, Chuck Gardner and Indra Sadoo.

The music under the closing credits sounds quite different than it has the last couple of years. We were wondering if it was an old tape, and then, about halfway through, came the voice that used to end every episode- ABC staff man Bob Lloyd intoning “Dark Shadows… is a Dan Curtis Production.” I was delighted to hear him again, if only on an old recording used by mistake.

Episode 1019: Engaged in a war of nerves

Quentin Collins finds a voodoo doll in his wife Maggie’s suitcase. She tells him she hasn’t seen it before. At length it dawns on him that it is physically possible for a person to place an object in someone else’s suitcase. He remembers that housekeeper Julia Hoffman was in the room for no good reason last night while Maggie was sleeping. Several weeks ago, he was able to see the abundant evidence that Julia was trying to drive Maggie out of the house. He knows that Julia was fanatically devoted to his late wife Angelique and must know that Angelique was involved in black magic, so that Julia would be the obvious suspect in an awkward situation concerning Maggie and a voodoo doll.

The next day, Quentin talks the situation over with Cyrus Longworth, his physician and an expert in black magic. Later, he confronts Julia; she denies leaving anything in the room. He does not have any further evidence to use to challenge her denials, so he leaves it at that.

What Julia knows that Maggie, Quentin, and Cyrus do not is that Angelique has returned from the dead. She murdered her identical twin sister Alexis and took Alexis’ place as Quentin’s houseguest. Julia and Angelique are conspiring to drive Maggie and Quentin apart so that Angelique can resume her place as Quentin’s wife and the mistress of the great house of Collinwood. Julia and Angelique keep congratulating themselves on how upset Maggie is getting, apparently not noticing that Quentin is suspicious of Julia and thinking of firing her.

Angelique, masquerading as Alexis, calls on Maggie in the master bedroom. She says that she realizes her presence in the house has been stressful for Maggie, and offers to leave if she wants her to do so. Maggie says that she is not stressed now, because she realizes that she is Alexis. She describes herself as childish and hysterical in her initial reaction, when she thought she was Angelique returned from the dead, and tells her to stay in the house as long as she likes. “Alexis” takes this statement at face value, and goes on to explain her belief that Angelique was murdered and her determination to find the person responsible.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out that there is more going on in this scene than Angelique knows. Quentin has a habit of calling Maggie childish and hysterical, and she rejects those labels. So when she applies them to herself, regular viewers know that she is not giving her sincere opinion.

Moreover, being accepted as Alexis is not the winner with Maggie that Angelique believes it is. In #985, Maggie found Quentin and Alexis in Angelique’s old bedroom. Alexis was wearing Angelique’s frilly nightgown, pressing herself to Quentin, stretching her hand to him, looking into his eyes, and saying softly “Perhaps we can comfort each other.” Maggie ran from that sight to the drawing room, followed by Quentin. He tried to tell her she did not see what she saw. She told him that she would no longer be treated like a child, and left to spend the next six weeks at her sister’s place in New York. Angelique was in her grave at that time, and neither Alexis, Quentin, nor Maggie told her about it. So she does not know that by impersonating Alexis she is inviting Maggie’s distrust. She does not understand the warning Maggie is giving her when she tells her that she knows she is Alexis.

Maggie’s view of Alexis as a rival for Quentin also explains why she characterized her decision to go to stay with her sister as motivated solely by her own irrationality. Alexis is the last person with whom she wants to discuss her differences with Quentin, so of course she claims total responsibility for their earlier rift.

Angelique’s resurrection can last only so long as she can keep warm, and she can do that only by draining heat from the bodies of the living. Now the cold comes up on Angelique again. It strikes her during her scene with Maggie. Maggie can see that “Alexis” is ill, and reaches a friendly hand towards her. Angelique says this is just something that happens to her occasionally, and that she has to get under some blankets as soon as possible. She rushes out.

Maggie is concerned for “Alexis.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When she is in this condition, all Angelique has to do is touch a person and they will be an icy corpse. It is interesting that she chooses to pass up her chance to kill Maggie. Perhaps she is afraid that doing so would lead to her exposure. Alexis was her first unwilling heat donor; a handyman named Fred, who had the ill fortune to cross Angelique’s path in #1003, was the second. Angelique has concealed Alexis’ death by impersonating her, and Fred was due to leave town anyway. So no one has missed either of them. But there would be no covering up Maggie’s death.

Through the first half of the scene, Lara Parker’s hair and Kathryn Leigh Scott’s keep fluttering. The window on the set is closed, so that just makes us wonder how high the air conditioning was in the studio. After they come back from commercial, that problem is solved, but it was conspicuous enough to add a bad laugh to Angelique’s heat vampire symptoms.

Angelique runs down to the foyer, crying out for Julia. When she comes, Angelique orders her to fetch a victim whose body heat she can consume. Julia refuses, and Angelique tells her that if she doesn’t provide someone else she will herself be the next donor. Julia goes.

A moment later, Angelique feels she is about to succumb to the cold. She sees the doorknob turning, and resolves to claim whoever is about to enter. “Who will it be?” she asks, “Who… will… it… be?” There aren’t many candidates. There have been periods when the show had a bunch of characters in reserve who were not directly connected to any ongoing stories, but there are only a handful of those now, and only one or two would be likely to let himself or herself into Collinwood.

Five and a half years ago, I defended the episode in a comment I left on Danny Horn’s great blog, Dark Shadows Every Day. This segment of Dark Shadows is set in a different universe than the one where the first 196 weeks took place; the show insists on calling it “Parallel Time.” So the letters “PT” are sometimes put in front of the characters’ names to differentiate them from the versions of the characters we met in the original continuity. Danny and many of his commenters were getting impatient with Parallel Time by this point, and some compared it unfavorably to the trips the show took back in time within the main continuity, especially the costume drama segment set in the 1790s that ran from November 1967 to March 1968.

I’m liking it.

PT Angelique’s harebrained scheme isn’t really any worse than were most of Angelique-Prime’s schemes. So the difference between PT Maggie and Quentin on the one hand and 1795 Josette and Jeremiah on the other is that Maggie and Quentin have some brains. They talk to each other about what they’ve seen, confront Miss Hoffman, and consult with the resident Doctor of Spookology. For viewers who had seen 1795, that must have come both as a relief- thank goodness they aren’t going to simply recycle that story- and as a source of suspense- when Angelique sees her first evil plan fail, what other, even more evil plan will she devise?

Comment left by “Acilius,” 12 January 2021, on Danny Horn, “Episode 1019: Peer at a Prop,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 7 May 2017

I would have gone on to talk about all the stuff between Maggie and Angelique, but Mrs Acilius only pointed that out to me this time through. I’m sure that while I was watching the scene I responded emotionally to the nuances in Miss Scott’s performance, but I didn’t have it in mind after the episode was over.

The closing credits still bill Lara Parker as “Alexis Stokes,” a month after Angelique killed Alexis and took her place. Mrs Acilius explains this by reminding me of all the times when actors have strolled onto the set during the credits. She imagines someone walking on, seeing the credit that identifies Angelique, and reacting with shock.

Episode 1018: The doctor’s verdict

Dave Woodard, MD, was on Dark Shadows from April to November 1967. Woodard was introduced as physician to Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie was the victim of vampire Barnabas Collins. Woodard was the show’s answer to Dr John Seward, the commonsensical local physician in Bram Stoker’s Dracula who called in his old mentor Dr Van Helsing when he found that his patients were suffering maladies he could not explain. Woodard’s call went to his medical school classmate, Dr Julia Hoffman. As Van Helsing was an incredible polymath, equally at home in several branches of medical science, of esoteric philosophy, and even in the law, Julia was dually qualified as a blood specialist and a psychiatrist and just so happened to have a theory about curing vampirism.

This Van Helsing proved a traitor to her patient and to her friend. In order to persuade Barnabas to agree to cooperate with her experiment, Julia betrayed Maggie, using her magical powers of hypnosis to erase Barnabas’ abuse from Maggie’s memory. As time went on, Woodard figured out Barnabas’ secret and Julia’s complicity in his crimes. To keep him quiet, Julia prepared a lethal poison and helped Barnabas administer it to Woodard in #341.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows traveled back in time and was a costume drama set in the 1790s, the period when Barnabas first became a vampire. It was then that we were introduced to wicked witch Angelique, who often caused pain to her victims by sticking pins in dolls. When suspicion spread that witchcraft was going on, Angelique framed well-meaning governess Victoria Winters for her own crimes.

Now, the show has traveled in time again, not backward but sideways. Barnabas has gone to an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” Maggie’s counterpart in this universe is married to drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, master of Collinwood. Angelique’s counterpart was Quentin’s first wife. She died last year, but has risen from the grave. When she was alive, Angelique built a cult around herself, some members of which reacted to her death with the firm conviction that she would come back to life. Now that she has done so, she has kept most of her devotees in the dark. She has told only two of them who she really is. Everyone else, friend and foe alike, thinks she is her identical twin sister Alexis.

One of the two people who knows Angelique’s true identity is her aunt, Hannah Stokes. Angelique forced Aunt Hannah to act as her henchman from #1003 until we saw her for the last time in #1014. In #1015, Angelique revealed herself to her most devoted follower, the housekeeper at Collinwood. This person is named Julia Hoffman.

Alexis really was staying at the great house of Collinwood from #984 to #1001, when Angelique rose from the dead, murdered her, and assumed her identity. When Alexis showed up, she found that Maggie was uncertain of her position in the house because everyone was so obsessed with Angelique. Hoffman deliberately and very blatantly worked to exacerbate Maggie’s insecurities, in the manner of Mrs Danvers in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Unlike Maxim de Winter in the novel, Quentin caught on to what was happening and sent Hoffman away for a time. And unlike the second Mrs de Winter, Maggie refused to put up with Quentin’s miserable behavior, including his alarmingly affectionate relationship with Alexis, walked out on him and went to stay with her sister in New York. The absences of Hoffman and of Maggie coincided with the work Grayson Hall and Kathryn Leigh Scott, along with the other survivors from the summer 1967 cast, did in the feature film House of Dark Shadows.

Today, we open in Quentin and Maggie’s bedroom. Quentin is in the hospital, so Maggie is alone in bed. But she is not alone in the room. Barnabas is there, about to bite her. He bared his fangs and plunged his head into her pillow in the last scene of yesterday’s episode; he does the same in the opening reprise. But when we come back from the title sequence, he is showing us his teeth again, and there is no blood on them. Evidently he just wanted to rub his face in Maggie’s pillow for a second while he worked up his appetite.

Barnabas is going in for a second round when the doorknob starts to turn. He retreats into the shadows, then turns into a bat and flies away. Hoffman enters. Maggie wakes up. She is startled to find Hoffman in the room. Hoffman explains that she thought she heard a prowler. Maggie tells her she doesn’t believe her.

Indeed, it is hard for us to believe Hoffman. The only sound we could hear Barnabas make was his squeaking in his bat form. Any sounds of footsteps the microphone did not pick up must have been much quieter than the squeaking that was going on while Hoffman was already in the room. Hoffman does not appear to have heard the squeaking, so it would not seem she could possibly have heard anything that would lead her to believe there was a prowler. Later, we hear Hoffman on the telephone to Angelique, gleefully reporting that Maggie was unnerved to find her in her room. So apparently she did not hear Barnabas. She went into the room to advance her plan of making Maggie look foolish. When she brought up the idea of an intruder, she was only accidentally pointing towards the truth, not saying something she believed or had reason to believe.

In the hospital, Quentin meets with his doctor, Cyrus Longworth. Quentin had severe chest pains the night before, so bad that Cyrus was for a time certain he had only minutes to live. Cyrus is deeply disturbed when he comes into the consultation room. He tells Quentin that he has run every relevant test, and that the results prove beyond a doubt that there is nothing physically wrong with him. Quentin asks how that can be, and Cyrus says that his chest pains were probably the result of a supernatural influence. His preliminary diagnosis is that a witch pushed a pin into a doll. This is correct. Angelique did indeed push a pin into a doll representing Quentin.

It took Woodard months of exposure to a pile of evidence before he would use the word “supernatural” without hesitation. All Cyrus needs is to see a man who is sick one day and healthy the next, and he’s right there. In #985, we learned that Cyrus had worried his friends by presenting a paper on black magic at a scientific conference. He was a member of Angelique’s cult, and at her suggestion he devised a Jekyll and Hyde formula that he has used to indulge his sadistic desires, which include murder. He is a mad scientist, less Woodard than Julia.

Back at Collinwood, Maggie gets dressed and opens the front door. She finds Barnabas standing there, about to knock. She says she is on her way to the hospital to visit Quentin. The telephone rings, and she finds that Quentin is on his way home. Barnabas asks to stay with her while she waits for her husband to return, and she agrees.

The two have a remarkably cozy conversation. They are so close together that her hair bounces in his breath. My wife, Mrs Acilius, said it looked like Barnabas was about to kiss Maggie at any moment. “You mean bite her,” I said. “Same thing,” she responded.

This conversation includes one of the most interesting of all the show’s countless bloopers. Maggie confides her insecurities about succeeding Angelique as Mrs Quentin Collins. Barnabas asks “Did Quentin really love Josette?” We cut to a closeup of Maggie. For half a second, Kathryn Leigh Scott visibly struggles not to laugh. Cast members almost never corrected each other on camera, just delivering their next scripted line no matter how bad the preceding miscue had been, but this one was so extreme that she improvised “Josette? I think he loved Angelique.” Once she had contained her laugh, she slipped right back into character. It really sounds like Maggie is caught off guard by Barnabas’ stumble, not like Miss Scott is caught off guard by Jonathan Frid’s. And when we cut back to Barnabas, his face is just as it was when we cut away to the closeup. That is an impressive bit of professionalism.

Quentin comes home, and Barnabas excuses himself while he and Maggie have their joyous reunion. Maggie tells Quentin that she wants him to dismiss Hoffman. When she describes the awkward moment in her room, he grows impatient and irritated. He refuses to dismiss “someone for walking into a room!” Hoffman enters. Quentin orders the two of them to feel better about each other.

This is puzzling in a way. Before Maggie left, Quentin had caught on to what Hoffman was doing, and he seemed to be thinking of firing her. But regular viewers will not be entirely surprised. The confrontation that led to Maggie’s departure was all about Quentin’s habit of treating her like a child, and the whole time she was away he kept saying that he was not going to indulge her childish behavior. Quentin has got so deep into the habit of belittling Maggie that he cannot resist doing it even when he knows that she is in the right.

In their room, Maggie is getting ready to go back to bed while Quentin looks in her suitcase. He finds the voodoo doll there. As Mrs Acilius pointed out, Maggie was still in New York when Quentin’s pains started, so she is not very likely to be the witch. Also, the room has been open and vacant all night, so anyone could have walked in and left the doll. No reasonable person could take this as any kind of evidence against Maggie, but Angelique and Hoffman don’t have to concern themselves with reasonable people- their target is Quentin.

Episode 1016: Fire, be my kinsman now

Maggie Evans Collins is staying with her sister Jennifer in New York.* She writes a letter to her estranged husband, Quentin Collins. Maggie says that there is no point in being married if they aren’t going to live together, so she is going to talk with Jennifer’s lawyer. She crumples the letter up and tosses it in the wastebasket. A moment later, the telephone rings. It is Quentin’s sister, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz tells Maggie that she must come home immediately.

Maggie at Jennifer’s place in New York. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin appears to be having a heart attack. Liz found him writhing in pain in the drawing room. He was accompanied by someone Liz had never seen before. Eventually this person identified himself as Barnabas Collins, a distant cousin of theirs. Barnabas told Liz that Quentin had collapsed with severe chest pains, and urged her to call a doctor. She telephoned Cyrus Longworth, a friend of Quentin’s.** Cyrus doubts that Quentin will recover. Barnabas suggested Liz call Maggie, saying that she could get a flight and be at the great house of Collinwood within hours.***

The source of Quentin’s trouble is his first wife, the late Angelique. Angelique has risen from the dead, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and taken Alexis’ place as a houseguest at Collinwood. Angelique wanted Quentin to bring Maggie back to Collinwood so she could make them fall out of love with each other and reclaim her old place as his wife. To that end, she stuck a pin in the heart of a voodoo doll representing him. When that results in a possibly fatal cardiac event, she picks up the doll and cries that “You failed me!” She pulls the pin out. Cyrus’ prognosis that Quentin would die within minutes is thus defeated, but he is still gravely ill.

The camera settles on the clock in the foyer. It is 6:00. The shot lasts for five or ten seconds; they really want us to know it is 6:00. Barnabas has been in the house for several hours. He only exists when it is dark, since he is a vampire. When this episode premiered on 18 May 1970, the sun rose in central Maine at 4:29 AM and set at 8:00 PM. We may be able to believe that the date of broadcast doesn’t match the dramatic date, and accept that Barnabas can still be around at 6:00 AM. But it is not clear why they are asking us to do this.

We cut from the clock’s big closeup to another room, where Liz and Angelique are talking. Liz says that Cyrus was called away to attend another emergency. Angelique asks who is with Quentin. Liz says that Barnabas is. That left us wondering if the writers somehow forgot that Barnabas is a vampire. Why on earth would he agree to keep a vigil at an hour when the roosters are already crowing?

Maggie enters. She assumes Barnabas is the doctor. He tells her he is not. She apologizes; he dismisses it as a logical mistake. He hangs around when Liz and Angelique return and talk with Maggie. He accompanies Maggie when she goes in to the drawing room to see Quentin. He is still there when Quentin regains consciousness. He takes it upon himself to tell Quentin that Maggie is there. Quentin shouts that Maggie must not stay in the house. She does not go anywhere, but neither does Barnabas. He gives a shocked reaction, and is still lingering when the credits roll.

It is understandable that Barnabas would take a risk if it meant he could meet Maggie, and even more understandable that he would be reluctant to part from her once he had. He is not in fact related to anyone in this episode at all, not even as the extremely distant cousin he claims to be. In fact, he is from an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” He knows another Maggie Evans there, one who looks and sounds just like this one but who is not married to Quentin. Barnabas had a long and fraught history with that Maggie. When he left his own continuity to come here in late March, he and the Maggie he knew had been moving towards a romance for several weeks. There was a bit of a bump in the road when Angelique’s counterpart cast a spell causing Maggie to fall in love with Quentin’s counterpart, but that was something that came and went. Barnabas never found out about it. So of course he wants to connect with this Maggie in some way.

*Presumably the city, though they never specify.

**Some in fandom protest that Cyrus is not a medical doctor. But he wrote a prescription for his fiancée, Sabrina Stuart, in #989, and in #1015 he resolved to give up his evil ways and “be a doctor again.” So I think these protests are ill-founded.

***Nowadays the idea of going to the airport in the middle of the night and buying a ticket for the next flight to central Maine seems to be of a piece with the most fantastic elements on Dark Shadows, but it wouldn’t have in 1970. Not that I can remember 1970- it was the year I was born, if you want to know- but well into my adult years it was still possible to show up at an airport gate with a handful of cash and buy a ticket for a plane that was already waiting there. I never did that myself, but I saw it done many times.

Episode 1015: A debt to be paid

Vampire Barnabas Collins has left the universe where the first 196 weeks of Dark Shadows took place and found himself in a universe chiefly populated by counterparts of people he knows. His own counterpart lived a quiet life and died in 1830, so he won’t be running into him.

In his own universe, Barnabas had an affair with wicked witch Angelique Bouchard in the 1790s, dooming his chance to find happiness with his true love, the gracious Josette. We saw the events associated with this disaster from November 1967 to March 1968, when Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in those days.

That Angelique came to the estate of Collinwood as a lady’s maid. In #372, she met much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes. Ben thought Angelique had a romantic interest in him, only to find that she had cast a spell to turn him into her slave in furtherance of her scheme to take Barnabas away from Josette.

In the current universe, it is 1970. Angelique’s counterpart was born in the village of Collinsport in 1939 and died at Collinwood in 1969. Three weeks ago, she came back to life, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and took her place as a houseguest at Collinwood. Angelique and Alexis’ maiden name was Stokes; their father is Tim Stokes, counterpart of Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, who is Ben’s descendant. Today, Barnabas talks with Angelique, who tells him that a Ben Stokes who was an indentured servant at Collinwood and an Angelique who came to the house as a lady’s maid in the 1790s are her ancestors. She also says that the Angelique of the 1790s is buried among the Stokes family. So we learn that we are in a “time-band” where Barnabas left Angelique alone and Ben wound up married to her.

The main event today is that Angelique reveals her true identity to Miss Julia Hoffman, housekeeper at Collinwood and most fanatical member of the cult Angelique built around herself in her lifetime. When Angelique admits she is not Alexis, she addresses Hoffman as “Julia,” the first time anyone has called her this. Julia admits that she is afraid of Angelique, since she is dead. Angelique orders Julia to hold her hand and feel her warmth. When she does, Julia asks how she managed to defeat death. Angelique resists telling her, but Julia insists. She dwells on the lack of sensation during the period when she was physically dead. In response to Julia’s continued prodding, Angelique says that her tomb was opened by her widower, drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, with assistance from his friend, mad scientist Cyrus Longworth. Finally Julia can’t conceal her jubilation at the resurrection, and they cackle gleefully as they start discussing their plans to reestablish Angelique as Quentin’s wife and therefore as mistress of Collinwood. Angelique manages not to tell Julia that she murdered her sister.

Reunited at last. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The episode number “1015” signifies that this was the last episode of the 203rd week of Dark Shadows. There were some days in 1966-1971 when no episode of the show premiered on the ABC network. They skipped episode numbers on those days to keep the Friday episodes divisible by five. So far, there have been fifteen of these preemption days. That makes this the one thousandth episode aired. And therefore the one thousandth I have reviewed. A bit of a personal milestone, that.

Episode 1014: Violence in love

Wicked witch Angelique has returned from the dead, murdered her twin sister Alexis, and assumed Alexis’ identity. Angelique’s widower Quentin had already welcomed Alexis as a more or less permanent guest at the great house of Collinwood. Quentin’s new wife, the former Maggie Evans, has left him. Angelique wants Quentin back, but has decided that she cannot overcome his obsession with Maggie unless Maggie returns to Collinwood, where she will be able to fight her directly. So she has cast a spell on Quentin to inflame his feelings for Maggie. Angelique expects this will cause him to bring Maggie home. Once she is there, Angelique will be able to complete her evil plan, which the writers don’t seem to have come up with yet.

Angelique’s spell goes awry. At the beginning of the episode, Quentin slashes a portrait of Maggie; at the end, he believes he has killed her, and is getting ready to hang himself so that he can join her in death. In between, he goes off and tells his friend, mad scientist Cyrus Longworth, how miserable he is. Angelique and Cyrus have a conversation about how sad Quentin is.

The performances are all good, but the only one that serves a purpose in the story is Christopher Pennock’s as Cyrus. Cyrus has devised a potion that changes his appearance so drastically that even the people who know him best do not recognize him when he is under its influence. This is supposed to be a Jekyll and Hyde story in which the innocent Cyrus is being consumed by his evil alter ego, “John Yaeger.” But it is all too obvious that Yaeger is just a disguise Cyrus puts on when he has decided to commit acts of rapine and slaughter. Today, Pennock really makes Cyrus seem like a well-intentioned nerd. When he puts the potion back in his safe and resolves never to become Yaeger again, we can believe that he is a better person when his hair is red than he is when it is dark.

Cyrus resolves to break his addiction to “Do Not Touch” juice. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Also, he and Lara Parker have a fun moment when Cyrus and Angelique are talking about Quentin’s feelings. He gets carried away with a mad scientist rant about the horrible evil that dwells at the base of every human heart, prompting her to give him a puzzled look. It’s an effective comic take.

This episode marks the last appearance of Paula Laurence as Angelique’s aunt, Hannah Stokes. As Hannah, Laurence imitated some of the most recognizable mannerisms Parker incorporated in her portrayal of Angelique. This helped longtime viewers believe she was related to Angelique, and when she had scenes with Alexis the contrast showed us that Parker really was playing a different character. But the show isn’t big enough for two Angeliques, so Hannah’s days have been numbered for a while.