Tag: spellcasting

Episode 392: This great democracy of yours

In episode 368/369 of Dark Shadows, haughty overlord Joshua Collins of Collinsport, Maine told his house-guest, the Countess DuPrés, that he was surprised she still chose to “affect a title,” since in this year of 1795 “France has followed our example and become a republic.” After the countess handed Joshua his head, he fumed to his wife Naomi that her snobbish Old World ways offended him, since he is such a devout believer in human equality.

It was immediately clear to any viewer that Joshua was being hypocritical. He tyrannizes his family and treats his servants as domestic animals that have unaccountably, and rather inconveniently, gained the power of speech. When he says that all men are equal, he means that he, personally, is the equal of anyone in a sufficiently lofty position, and the superior of everyone else.

Audience members who know something about the history of the late eighteenth century in the USA and France will find more to savor in Joshua’s preposterous position. By 1795, the French Revolution had gone through its most radical phases, and was anathema to everyone in the USA other than some of the nascent political tendency led by Thomas Jefferson, a tendency known in the southeast and New England as the Republican Party and in the middle states and the west as the Democratic Party. When Joshua says with great satisfaction that “France has followed our example and become a republic,” he is identifying himself with the most militant factions of the Jeffersonian party, and when he tells Naomi that “all men are equal” he is echoing the most famous passage of Jefferson’s most celebrated writing.

Ridiculous as it is to hear Joshua invoke the egalitarian rhetoric for which Jefferson was so well known, as a major landowner in a rural area far removed from the major cities he was perfectly typical of the most important backers of the Democratic/ Republicans. Jefferson himself was a member of this category, and he displayed both a remarkably sophisticated understanding of the leftwardmost theorists of the French Revolution, as demonstrated for example in the edition of the works of Destutt de Tracy that he prepared for publication in 1817, and a dismally cruel approach to his livelihood as a slave-holding planter.

When Dark Shadows was on the air in 1966-1971, the party that traced its origins to Jefferson was undergoing a revolution of its own. The coalition he forged between working-class groups in the north and rich slave-owners in the south had been an inspiration to the Democratic Party from the days before the Civil War right through the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. After World War Two, the African American freedom movement finally scrambled this unlikely coalition, winning Black southerners the vote and challenging the dominance the heirs of the slave-owners had long held in the Democratic Solid South. Thoughtful Americans, seeing this change, might well think back to the origins of the Democratic Party and to the ridiculous incongruity of Jefferson’s soaringly egalitarian words coming out of his and other oligarchic mouths.

At the top of today’s episode, Joshua is very thorough about betraying all of Jefferson’s ideals. He tells Naomi that the common folk of the town must not know that their son Barnabas killed his uncle Jeremiah in a duel. Naomi replies that everyone already knows; Joshua insists that they do not, and declares that they will believe what he tells them to believe.

The philosophe in his salon. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

One of the major themes of Jefferson’s correspondence, as indeed of Destutt de Tracy and other Enlightenment philosophes, was what Karl Marx, a close reader of Destutt de Tracy, would call “false consciousness,” the tendency of the oppressed classes to see the world in categories generated by the ruling class, and that if false consciousness were erased the oppressed would rise up and sweep away all manner of social evils. Joshua’s determination to keep the working people of Collinsport in the dark about what is happening on the estate of Collinwood puts him at the opposite extreme from the beliefs his leader Jefferson professed. In his own life, Jefferson himself set about enforcing regimes of lies on more than one occasion, as for example when he used his office as president of the United States to cover up the crimes of General James Wilkinson. Even viewers who hadn’t read Jefferson’s letters and who were unaware of Jefferson’s less inspiring actions may well have known, in 1967, that the confidence which the Declaration of Independence expresses in what will happen if “the facts be submitted to a candid world” sat uneasily with the lies on which slavery in particular and white supremacy in general rests.

Joshua begins dictating to Naomi a fictitious story that sounds oddly familiar to regular viewers. Before well-meaning governess Vicki was plunged into her uncertain and frightening journey into the past, we had heard several versions of the Collins family history, none of which resembles the events that we have actually seen play out so far. As Joshua tells Naomi what he has decided people should believe, for the first time the outlines of the Collins family history published in the 1950s come into view. That history is not only sustained by false consciousness, but has its origins in a brazen lie.

Joshua is busy fabricating when Naomi interrupts him with more bad news. Barnabas has decided to marry Angelique, maid to the Countess DuPrés and to the countess’ niece, Barnabas’ former fiancée Josette. The great egalitarian Joshua is thunderstruck that his son would fall into the clutches of an “adventuress.”

Joshua sends Naomi to fetch Barnabas. He thunders his disapproval of the marriage, and Barnabas stands his ground.

Later, we see Josette in the cemetery, at Jeremiah’s grave. Barnabas spots her, and wonders whether he should tell her about his engagement to Angelique. He doesn’t want her to hear of it from someone else, as she surely will very soon. But the place could not be less appropriate. He approaches her; they have an awkward little talk, in the course of which he urges her to hate him for killing her husband. She says she cannot. She tells him not to say any more. He is helpless.

Angelique arrives and tells Josette that her carriage is waiting. Josette invites Barnabas to ride back to the manor house with them; he declines. Josette leaves the two of them alone for a moment; with a note of jealousy that belies her agreement to a sham marriage to a man who will always love Josette, she asks Barnabas if she interrupted something. He says that she did not. That’s true- he had already given up the idea of telling her about their engagement when Angelique joined them.

Back in the manor house, Joshua summons Angelique to the front parlor, where he offers her $10,000 to relinquish her claim on Barnabas and go back to the island of Martinique. It is difficult to compare prices between 1795 and 2023; to get a sense of proportion, we might remember that when Joshua offered Vicki a job as governess to little Sarah Collins in #367, he offered her a salary of $4 a week, and that this was rather a generous rate of pay for the position. So it would take even an upper servant 2500 weeks, that is to say almost fifty years, to earn the amount of money Joshua is offering Angelique.

Angelique refuses Joshua’s bribe. He says he is prepared to offer more, but when he sees that she is firm in her refusal he switches to threats. Naomi intervenes and says that she does not want to break ties. With Naomi’s promise of friendship, Angelique agrees to wait until the mourning period for Jeremiah is complete before marrying Barnabas.

What returning viewers know that Joshua, Naomi, Barnabas, the countess, and Josette do not is that Angelique is not only a maid, but is also a witch. It was under her spell that Josette, though in love with Barnabas, conceived a mad passion for Jeremiah, that Jeremiah, though a loyal friend to Barnabas, reciprocated that passion, and that the two of them, though they struggled with their consciences, eloped. That elopement prompted the jilted Barnabas to challenge his uncle to a duel, and his bewilderment at his own actions prompted Jeremiah to delope and let Barnabas kill him. Angelique and Barnabas had had a brief romantic fling before he became engaged to Josette, and she believed that once Josette was out of the way Barnabas would return to her.

It hadn’t quite worked out that way. In her frustration at Barnabas’ continued preference for Josette, Angelique cast a spell on Sarah, sickening her and threatening her life. When she saw how upset Barnabas was by his little sister’s illness, Angelique said that she could cure it, and extorted his promise to marry her if she did so. She released Barnabas from that promise in #390/391. When he told her that Josette would always come first for him, even though he knew there could never again be anything between them, she said she would marry him anyway. Apparently thinking he wouldn’t be likely to find another woman willing to enter a sham marriage on that basis, Barnabas proposed, and Angelique accepted.

In their conversation in the parlor, Joshua tells Angelique that he knows about the promise she extorted from Barnabas with her ability to cure Sarah. Evidently Barnabas told Naomi about that. There are those in the house who believe that witchcraft is afoot; indeed, Vicki is in hiding, having been accused as the witch. This story would seem to be proof positive that Angelique, not Vicki, is the guilty party, and she does widen her eyes when Joshua brings it up. But he and Naomi don’t make the connection.

Back in the graveyard, Angelique is holding a miniature coffin and casting a spell.

Where did she get that miniature? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In her bedroom, Josette hears Angelique’s disembodied voice, saying that Jeremiah is not dead. She runs to the front door, where Naomi sees her. Unable to dissuade her from going out in the night, Naomi follows Josette to Jeremiah’s grave. Josette keeps hearing the voice; Naomi does not hear it. But when Jeremiah’s hand bursts out of the soil, both women see it.

Jeremiah waves to the ladies. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In the parts of Dark Shadows set in the twentieth century, Joan Bennett played matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Of all the major characters, Liz was the most reluctant to acknowledge the existence of supernatural forces, and she was the one who was least likely to see the evidence of such forces that abounded in the world around her. So when we see her as Naomi watching Jeremiah’s hand reaching out of his grave, it is the first time we have seen her react to an incontrovertible sign of the paranormal. It makes us wonder how far back in the Collinses’ past the roots of Liz’ denial extend.

Episode 378: Cat got your tongue

Wicked witch Angelique is trying to prevent young gentleman Barnabas Collins from marrying his fiancée Josette. To that end, she has cast a spell on Josette and on Barnabas’ uncle Jeremiah, causing them to conceive a mad passion for each other. Jeremiah resists the feeling, and is resolved to leave town until Barnabas and Josette are safely wed.

Angelique decides that she will keep Jeremiah around by causing his brother, haughty overlord Joshua, to disappear. When she makes this decision, she is with Ben, an indentured servant of Joshua and bewitched thrall to Angelique. Ben is miserable when Angelique compels him to act against Barnabas, since Barnabas has always been most kind to him. However, Joshua treats Ben with relentless cruelty, and when Angelique announces that she will transform him into an animal, Ben is gleeful at the idea of the tyrant getting his comeuppance. Ben pleads with Angelique to make Joshua into a jackass, so that he can whip him while they plow the fields.

Ben gleefully suggests Joshua be made into a jackass. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique ignores Ben’s idea, and makes Joshua into a small cat instead. This transformation takes place while Joshua and Jeremiah are in the front parlor, arguing about Jeremiah’s plan to go away. Jeremiah turns to look out the window for a second, and when he turns back Joshua is gone and the cat is in his place.

The cat formerly known as Joshua. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When I was a graduate student in Classics lo those many years ago, I made a study of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, more commonly known as The Golden Ass, an ancient novel about a man who trifles with a witch and is transformed into a jackass in consequence. So I was more interested than most would likely have been by Ben’s suggestion.

We can see why it had to be a cat rather than a jackass. For one thing, they didn’t have the budget to get a jackass into the studio at 433 West 53rd Street in Manhattan. But there are other reasons. A jackass is a large animal, not graced with the gift of stealth, and if one had materialized out of thin air in the front room it would have been obvious that magic was at work. That would have been bad for the plot, because the characters would have had no choice but to admit that witchcraft was a likely explanation. Even Jeremiah and Josette might well have realized that their sudden attraction was the result of a spell, and have set about fighting it directly. By contrast, a cat is a small creature, known for silence, and on a rolling estate bordering on the wilderness any number of them would be likely to slip into the manor house on a cold night. Its presence would attract little notice from anyone not already convinced witchcraft was in progress.

In addition to the plot trouble that would have resulted had Angelique turned Joshua into a jackass rather than a cat, there would also have been a tonal misstep. At this point they are still developing stories that show us what life was like around the Collins estate before Angelique came. Those are comedies of manners, tales of romance, melodramas about family tensions, and other genres that generate light amusement. That light amusement can keep going if the uncanny phenomena people see are little oddities that elicit impatient demands for a Logical Explanation, but if Angelique conjures up something as big and distinctive as a jackass the natural reaction would be terror, a strong enough feeling that everything else would feel irrelevant until it was resolved.

Also, jackasses have large, expressive eyes. It is difficult to look at the face of one and not to think you know how it is feeling. Joshua is enough of a villain that we simply laugh at the idea of him being put out of the way in this bizarre fashion, and the enigmatic face of a cat does not undercut this laughter. But if we look in the animal’s eyes and see longing and sorrow, which are always easy to find in the eyes of a jackass, we would feel pity for him. That pity would sound a discordant note at this point in the story, distracting us from the suspense about how Angelique’s evil plans will work and our interest in the other story elements we will be seeing.

It is true that there is nothing very catlike about Joshua. For Danny Horn, that is a flaw, one so severe that the whole story of Joshua’s catification “doesn’t work.” He writes:

The cat thing just doesn’t work. But it doesn’t work for interesting reasons, so let’s break it down a little…

A truly satisfying witch-vixen scheme needs to get two things right — it needs to make sense tactically, and it needs to be metaphorically coherent.

For example, spiking Josette’s rose water perfume with love potion totally works, on a strategic level. Josette and Jeremiah find themselves drawn to each other, but they have no idea why. There’s no evidence that leads back to Angelique; everybody just thinks they’re unable to control their forbidden attraction to each other…

And then there’s the cat. Tactically, this is another clear mistake. Yes, Angelique’s goal was to keep Jeremiah from leaving town, and striking Joshua down is an effective way of doing that.

But the actual circumstances don’t allow for any kind of cover story — Joshua apparently disappeared in the middle of a conversation in the drawing room. He wasn’t even walking in the woods, or alone in the basement. Jeremiah knows exactly where Joshua was at that moment, and there’s no way that he could have silently left the house, even if he had a reason to, which he didn’t. Again, this just puts everybody on guard, and hunting around for a malign influence.

And as a metaphor, it’s even worse… What does “cat” mean, in this context?

There’s no sense in which Joshua was a “cat”; the concept doesn’t connect to anything. There’s no symbolic resonance that would make it narratively satisfying, and so it just feels random and silly.

Danny Horn, “Episode 379: Nine Lives to Live,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 24 April 2014

I disagree. Jeremiah is the only person who knows that there is no possible way Joshua could have left, and Angelique’s plan is that he himself will soon run away with Josette, a circumstance which will render his testimony about anything suspect. Further, Joshua and Jeremiah’s sister Abigail and Josette’s aunt the Countess DuPrés are already “hunting around for a malign influence,” prompting everyone else to think they are being ridiculous. If those two seize on Jeremiah’s account of Joshua vanishing and being replaced by a cat, that division within the household will only deepen, bringing greater confusion and setting Angelique’s victims against each other.

The characters look at Joshua and see a tyrant who dominates their lives. We know enough about the major events upcoming to know that he will be utterly powerless to influence them in any way. So when we see his attempt to impose his will on his brother come to an abrupt end when he is reduced to the form of a furry little animal, we see the whole logic of the story in a nutshell.

Moreover, Joshua is played by Louis Edmonds, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. The contrast between Roger and Joshua marks the decline of the Collinses from the zenith of their power in the eighteenth century to its nadir in the twentieth. Roger has many of Joshua’s mannerisms, most of his sense of superiority, and all of his taste for expensive things and grand surroundings. But where Joshua is a dynamic businessman, a dominating patriarch, and a self-righteous advocate of Jeffersonian republicanism, Roger has squandered his entire inheritance, lives as a parasite upon his sister, and is frankly and shamelessly nihilistic. Joshua would be shocked if he were told that his commanding self-assurance was an outgrowth of narcissism; Roger cheerfully admits that he is utterly selfish. Joshua may see himself as the lion of upper New England; Roger endears himself to us with a talent for sarcastic remarks that might well be called catty. So when Angelique turns Joshua into a house cat, she is doing what we already know history will do to his descendants.

Episode 373: Not a lady yet

Angelique, lady’s maid/ wicked witch, has cast a spell over kindly indentured servant Ben Stokes, making him her slave in an even deeper sense than he was already Joshua Collins’ slave. She gives Ben various tasks in support of her current project, black magic that will make the lovely Josette forget her fiancé Barnabas and conceive a mad passion for Barnabas’ uncle and dear friend Jeremiah. Most notably, she needs an unbroken spider web from an oak tree, and Ben brings her one.

Unbroken web. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, cousin Millicent Collins has come to the estate of Collinwood. Millicent is giggly, afraid of germs, and very, very rich. Joshua means for his bachelor brother Jeremiah to marry Millicent, a prospect that repels Jeremiah.

Joshua suggests Jeremiah show Millicent upstairs. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Time-traveling governess Vicki enters. When she sees Millicent, Vicki calls her “Carolyn,” because she is played by Nancy Barrett, who plays a character named Carolyn in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the twentieth century. The makers of the show wanted Vicki to keep the audience up to date on the cast members’ resumés, even though it makes all the other characters think she is a lunatic.

Alone with Vicki, Jeremiah confides that he does not want to marry Millicent. Vicki had studied Collins family history when she was living in the 1960s and has an idiotic compulsion to verbalize her every thought, so she declares that Millicent will never marry. Jeremiah remarks that she says the strangest things.

This scene is more tolerable than the others in which Vicki blurts out information she wouldn’t know if she belonged in 1795 because of the casting of Anthony George as Jeremiah. George was a cold actor who kept the audience guessing what was going on inside his characters’ heads. That made him a disaster as the second to play the hot-blooded Burke Devlin, but when we see him as Jeremiah we take his ready acceptance of Vicki’s bizarre behavior as a sign that he has something up his sleeve. If they can stop giving Vicki such tiresome lines, Jeremiah might be a promising love interest for her.

Episode 372: He took a liberty

Time-traveling governess Victoria Winters sees a man fueling the fireplace in the front parlor of the manor house on the estate of Collinwood. As she has done several times since arriving in the year 1795, she jumps to the conclusion that he is the character the same actor played in the 1960s. In fairness to Vicki, a couple of the people are the same- young gentleman Barnabas Collins will become a vampire and meet her in her own time, and Barnabas’ ten year old sister Sarah will die soon and her ghost will haunt Collinwood and its environs in 1967. So it’s tricky to handle the repertory theater aspect of the rest of the cast, and, by having Vicki freak out and shout about the main time period every time she meets someone, the show has chosen the most irritating possible way of addressing this problem.

The man Vicki meets today is indentured servant Ben Stokes, and the man she mistakes him for is gruff groundskeeper Matthew Morgan. Since Matthew held her prisoner in this very house and tried to decapitate her here in 1966, her misidentification of Ben leads Vicki to scream and holler and bring the master of the house to ask what is going on. Ben responds that he did nothing at all, Vicki volunteers that it was all her fault and tries to explain.

The master, haughty overlord Joshua Collins, is ever mindful of Ben’s status as a felon entrusted by the state to his custody, and declares that Ben is forbidden to speak to any woman for any reason. Vicki is appalled by this, but as governess she is a servant herself, so Joshua orders her to be silent. Besides, her protestations don’t make any sense to anyone who didn’t see episodes #108-#126 of Dark Shadows. Since it is 1795, Joshua doesn’t have access to the show on streaming or even on cable. He tells Matthew he won’t get the day off he’d asked for tomorrow.

Before Joshua dismisses Vicki to return to her duties, he mentions that his second cousins Millicent and Daniel Collins will be arriving soon and staying for the month leading up to the wedding of Joshua’s son Barnabas to Josette duPrés. Daniel is a child the age of Joshua’s daughter Sarah, and will be joining Sarah as Vicki’s charge during his stay at Collinwood. Joshua mentions that Millicent is a lovely young woman, and that from her early childhood it had been understood that she would marry Joshua’s younger brother Jeremiah. Joshua is quite pleased with this prospect, not least because Millicent has inherited a considerable fortune.

Vicki’s compulsion to keep the audience up to date on the resumés of the actors is mirrored by a compulsion to blurt out information she knows only because she comes from 1967. She had studied the Collins family history, so when Joshua talks of Millicent’s prospective marriage to Jeremiah she shouts “Millicent never married!” Joshua is puzzled by this idiotic remark, but quick to accept Vicki’s explanation that she had read a novel about a spinster named Millicent and couldn’t help but yell about it.

Joshua irritated by Vicki’s outburst. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

During the first year of Dark Shadows, Vicki was, on balance, one of the smartest characters and was the one who made the most important things happen. So it is distressing to see her verbalizing her every thought, including irrelevancies about the actors’ other roles and information that would tend to expose her secret. If she is going to survive in this past world, she’s going to have to regain enough brain power to keep her mouth shut. Moreover, even when she was at her smartest Vicki was always a conspicuously inept liar. Joshua is fundamentally uninterested in a person of her apparently low social status, and so he accepted the story she made up to cover herself this time. But someone more willing to pay attention to her might very quickly conclude that Vicki is a strange and dangerous person.

Meanwhile, lady’s maid/ wicked witch Angelique is in the woods gathering noxious weeds to use in an evil potion. Ben catches her there, and warns her that the plants she has in her basket are poisonous. She drops them, thanks him, and strikes up a conversation. He tells her Joshua has forbidden him to talk to women. She says this is horribly cruel, and Ben agrees. He goes, and she picks the deadly leaves back up.

In the servants’ quarters, Vicki enters Angelique’s room. She sees some things of Barnabas’ that Angelique had used to cast a spell on him the other day. When Angelique comes in, Vicki tells her that Josette was asking for her. Vicki then asks how Barnabas’ things got to be in Angelique’s room. She says she doesn’t know, then puts the blame on Sarah. Vicki says she will scold Sarah for carrying Barnabas’ things around the house, and Angelique begs her not to. She says she is afraid that if she does, Sarah won’t visit her anymore.

Angelique has no way of knowing it, but this is the perfect lie to tell Vicki. For months before she left 1967, everyone was eager for Sarah’s ghost to come and visit them. Indeed, Vicki was at a séance called to contact Sarah when Sarah took possession of her, said through her that she would tell the “story from the beginning,” and yanked her back to this time. So, when Angelique presents herself as afraid that Sarah will stop visiting her, Vicki cannot refuse her request.

Angelique decides she needs a helper to keep herself from being suspected. We cut between the outdoors, where we see Ben chopping wood, and the servant’s quarters, where Angelique is mixing up a potion. Vicki comes to Ben, and we wonder which of them will be Angelique’s target.

Vicki apologizes to Ben. He just wants her to go away- he’s got into enough trouble for talking to her once, the last thing he wants is to be caught repeating the offense. She says that she knows that Joshua “can seem stern,” to which Ben reacts with disbelief. He says that Joshua is far worse than stern.

Again, this is Vicki failing to distinguish characters from the actors who play them. Louis Edmonds plays Joshua in 1795, and high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the twentieth century. For the first 25 weeks of the show, Roger was the villain, and he tried to kill Vicki once or twice. By the time his ex-wife Laura went up in smoke in #191, Roger was no threat to anyone. When Sarah brought Vicki back here, Roger had long since been reduced to occasional comic relief.

Joshua is as selfish and cold as Roger at his worst, but where Roger is cowardly, weak, and shameless, Joshua is bold, imperious, and utterly convinced that he is right. Roger is what Joshua might become after a long period of continual degeneration and degradation, a grotesque parody of his ancestor. He has Joshua’s style, but none of his strength. He is reminiscent of the “Last Men” in Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, who were strangers to every consideration but their own immediate comfort. Even so, enough of Louis Edmonds’ wit and personality come through that we always enjoy seeing Roger, and we can understand why Vicki likes him. Edmonds is so good that we are sure we will enjoy watching Joshua as well, but he is clearly never going to become a lovable squish.

Ben is trying to orient Vicki to the current phase of the show when we cut to Angelique in her room. She calls Ben’s name. Suddenly Ben seems to have taken ill. He finally persuades Vicki to leave him alone before he gets caught talking to her again. Once Vicki is gone, he sees a vision of Angelique calling to him and sets off.

When Ben gets to Angelique’s room, he tells her he has no idea what he is doing there. She tells him he is there because she wanted him. This means only one thing to him, so he lifts his arms and steps forward, obviously intending to brighten the day with some rapid love-making. She pulls back and tells him to take a drink first. The beverage she offers him is readily identifiable to a modern audience as Coca-Cola.

The real thing. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In the 1960s, Coca-Cola may have been the pause that refreshes, but in 1795 it had more drastic effects. After Ben drinks it, he staggers back and Angelique tells him that he no longer has a will of his own and will be her slave forevermore. He doesn’t make love to her, either, so no matter how tasty the Coke was the visit would have to be reckoned a loss from Ben’s point of view.

Episode 370: Foreign to both of us

On Wednesday, we met a new arrival from Paris by way of the island of Martinique. She is Angelique, maidservant to the Countess DuPrés and onetime bedfellow of rich young gentleman Barnabas Collins. Barnabas is engaged to marry the countess’ niece Josette, and is anxious to keep Angelique in the background. Angelique does not share either of Barnabas’ goals.

At rise, Angelique meets Barnabas’ uncle Jeremiah in the front parlor of the manor house of Collinwood. She has found a toy soldier and asks Jeremiah about it. When he identifies it as one of the toys Barnabas was most fond of in his boyhood, he volunteers to take it to the playroom himself. She asks to keep it for a while, so that she can study its workmanship. He doesn’t object, and exits. Once she is alone in the parlor, Angelique starts talking to herself. She says that she will use it to cause Barnabas unimaginable pain. This is the first direct suggestion we have seen that Angelique is involved in witchcraft.

Time-traveling governess Vicki enters. She tells Angelique that they should be friends, because they are both servants in the house, and it is a foreign setting to both of them. Angelique asks what Vicki means by describing herself as foreign, since she is an American. Vicki realizes that she can’t tell someone she has just met that she is a time traveler thrust here from 1967 by the ghost of the little girl she is supposed to be educating, and so she mutters something about how Angelique wouldn’t understand. After they part, we hear Angelique musing that Vicki has no idea what she understands. At no point does Angelique show any interest whatever in becoming friends with Vicki.

Later, we see Angelique alone in her room with the toy soldier and Barnabas’ handkerchief. She is talking to herself about her evil plans again when she is interrupted by a knock at the door. She hides the things and answers it. Barnabas enters.

Barnabas renews the effort he made at the end of Wednesday’s episode to friendzone Angelique. Again, she isn’t having it. After he leaves, she takes the soldier and the handkerchief back out and tells them that she has decided to wait for Josette’s arrival to enact her revenge on Barnabas.

She won’t have to wait long. Josette’s father, André, is entering the parlor, grumbling about the lack of servants at Collinwood. He beckons his daughter, and she follows him into the house. She is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott.

A major cast member of the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s as Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, Miss Scott has played Josette’s ghost more than once. She created the part in #70, when she was the shimmery figure who emerged from Josette’s portrait in the very house we are in today and danced among its pillars. She reprised the part in #126, again in this house, when Josette led the other ghosts in rescuing Vicki from crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. For some months Barnabas, who is in 1967 a vampire, held Maggie prisoner here and tried to replace her personality with that of Josette. Barnabas often seemed convinced that Maggie really was Josette, and when strange and troubled boy David saw Maggie wearing Josette’s dress in #240 he said that her face was “exactly the same” as it was on the many occasions when he had seen Josette’s ghost.

Barnabas’ plan to Josettify Maggie is drawn from the 1932 film The Mummy, in which the undead Imhotep (Boris Karloff) is released from his tomb, holds Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johanns) prisoner, and tries to replace Helen’s personality with that of his lost love Princess Ankh-Esen-Amun. In that movie, there is a flashback to ancient Egypt, where we see that Zita Johanns also plays Ankh-Esen-Amun and we realize that Imhotep’s crazy plan was rooted in some supernatural connection between the two women. The connection between Josette and Maggie has been equivocal until now- Miss Scott was always veiled when she played Josette’s ghost, and stand-in Dorrie Kavanuagh was the one wearing the dress in #240. Moreover, after Maggie got away in #260, Barnabas soon turned his attentions to Vicki, and decided he would try the same gimmick with her. But now we see that Barnabas really was onto something with regard to Maggie, and we wonder where it will lead. I remember the first time we watched the show, my wife, Mrs Acilius, reacted with great excitement to Josette’s entrance in this episode and exclaimed “Of course! Maggie is Josette!”

Vicki spent the first three days of this week telling the actors what parts they played in the first 73 weeks of Dark Shadows, an annoying habit. But there is a reason for it. She knew Barnabas and Sarah as supernatural beings in 1967, so she will recognize them as the same people here. And Josette’s looks reveal her connection to Vicki’s friend Maggie, so she will recognize that. Since only Angelique, of the characters we have met so far in 1795, is played by someone who did not appear previously, the writers are in a difficult position with regard to all of the other members of the company.

I wish they had solved that problem by having Vicki show up in 1795 unable to speak. The suggestion I made in my post about #366 is that she could have materialized in the midst of the accident that upset the carriage bringing the original governess, Phyllis Wick.* Vicki could have sustained a slight injury that left her mute for a week or so, could have had voiceover monologues registering her recognitions of Barnabas, Sarah, and Josette/ Maggie, and would not have had audible monologues when she saw the others. By the time she could talk again, Vicki would know that she was supposed to pretend to be Phyllis Wick.

Clearly Vicki is supposed to get into some kind of trouble in 1795; she is still the heroine, and the first rule of all soap operas is that the heroine must always be in danger. But she is supposed to be seeing the events that started the phase of the Collins family curse that involves Barnabas’ vampirism, and those events did not involve a governess who went around calling people by the wrong names and blurting out information she learned from reading the Collins family history. The logic of the plot requires that whatever trouble Vicki gets into is more or less the same trouble Phyllis Wick would have got into, and the appeal of the character requires that the audience watch to see what kind of con artist Vicki might turn out to be. Both of those imperatives demand that she try to masquerade as Phyllis.

Vicki does manage to keep herself from telling André and Josette that they are being played by the actors who took the parts of Sam and Maggie Evans in other parts of Dark Shadows. She can’t help staring at Josette, however. Josette is quite cheerful when she asks Vicki why she is staring; André, a more conventional aristocrat than his relaxed daughter, is visibly annoyed with Vicki’s impertinence.

Josette asks Vicki why she is staring at her. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There was an opportunity here for Vicki to show some quick thinking. She could have told Josette that Barnabas has gone on at length about her appearance, and that she is amazed at the accuracy of his descriptions. That would have endeared her to Josette as the bearer of the message that her fiancé is very much in love with her, and would have reassured her that, while Vicki is an attractive young woman who lives under Barnabas’ roof, she is not a rival for his affections. As it is, Vicki just mumbles something about not having known she was staring.

Angelique enters. She and Josette rush into each other’s arms and speak French. Miss Scott tells a funny story about that moment. She and Lara Parker had talked about the script and agreed that two Frenchwomen excited to see each other after a long separation ought to greet each other in French, and they persuaded the producer of their point. Only when they got the revised script with the dialogue in French did it dawn on them that neither of them could speak the language. Fortunately, several other members of the cast were fluent in it, and coached them through.

We can see that Josette really regards Angelique as a friend. Viewers who have been with the show from the beginning will remember Josette’s ghost as a powerful and stalwart force for good, and will also know that Maggie is The Nicest Girl in Town. So whatever grievance Angelique may have against Barnabas, and however unjust may be the social system that has exalted Josette and subordinated Angelique, when we see Angelique faking friendship for Josette while planning to make her watch her lover suffer, we know that she is really evil.

Barnabas enters. Josette tells him that her long, difficult journey was worthwhile now that she is with him. This is a very sharp retcon. In #345, mad scientist Julia Hoffman asked Barnabas if Josette ever came to him of her own free will, and he responded with a silent grimace that left no doubt as to the answer. Now, we see that she has gladly sailed from Martinique to central Maine in late autumn to be with him.

Barnabas and Josette are alone, and he wants to kiss her. She is bashful and says that their parents might be upset if they don’t wait for the wedding. He says they might pretend to be, but that in reality it is expected. That is a sweet little conversation, and it ends in a sweet little kiss.

Angelique is back in her room. She twists Barnabas’ handkerchief around the neck of his toy soldier.

Angelique casts a spell. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas starts choking and collapses.

Barnabas collapses. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The episode ends with Barnabas on the floor, apparently asphyxiating, while Josette looks on in horror.

Wednesday, Barnabas made it clear that he had his affair with Angelique because he didn’t think Josette could love him. That gives Angelique a perfectly understandable motive for seeking revenge on him. A rich man exploited his position to trifle with her, a servant, giving no thought to her feelings or interests.

The selfishness and entitlement Barnabas exhibited thereby is jarring in the mild-mannered, apparently egalitarian fellow we have seen so far this week, but it fits perfectly with his behavior as a vampire in 1967. Seen from another angle, his behavior is consistent with everything the Collinses have done to get themselves in trouble since we first met them. He was tempted to take advantage of Angelique because he had underestimated his own lovability and despaired of making a real connection with Josette.

Barnabas is still underestimating himself and Josette now. Never once does it occur to him to come clean to her about what he did with Angelique. While Josette would no doubt be saddened to learn that her beloved fiancé had dallied with her pet servant, as a rich French girl from Martinique she has after all lived her whole life among wealthy men surrounded by enslaved women, and so could hardly have been shocked by what Barnabas had done. Surely she would have decided to go ahead with the wedding, and she would have known to be wary of Angelique.

By failing to trust Josette with the truth about his misdeeds, Barnabas puts her and himself at Angelique’s mercy. We think of 1966, when matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, were both prisoners of shameful secrets they dared not share even with each other. In 1967, when those secrets were finally laid bare to the whole world, Liz and Roger found they were free to go on about their business as if nothing had happened. In Barnabas’ petrified silence, we see all of the shadows that have kept his relatives in darkness for so long.

*Whom Dorrie Kavanaugh played in her brief appearance at the end of #365.