Yesterday, the ghost of Jeremiah Collins started to bury wicked witch Angelique alive. Today, we see that he barely got her dress dirty. She’s lying on a mound next to the empty grave when we find her.
This is the one where Angelique marries Barnabas. It ought to be packed with incident. There is a lot of activity, but like the live burial, it doesn’t amount to much. It’s a real disappointment.
One particular weak spot in the episode is the officiant at the wedding, the aptly named Reverend Bland. Actor Paul Kirk Giles does what he can, but as soon as the Rev’d Mr B realizes that something unwholesome is going on he declares that he is getting out of the place. Apparently his conception of the duties of a pastor consists of avoiding people who might need help confronting the spiritual forces of darkness. It doesn’t matter- Bland’s squeamishness disappears after Barnabas orders him to stay and perform the wedding.
After the wedding, Angelique returns to her bedroom. There is a gift that hadn’t been there before. Opening it, she finds a music box. The music box was a big deal in 1967, when Barnabas was a vampire and he thought that a woman who listened to it would turn into his lost love, the gracious Josette. This is the first time we have seen the music box during the segment of Dark Shadows set in 1795. In 1967, Barnabas told various stories about the origin of the music box, but the one thing that remained consistent was that it was meant for Josette.
Barnabas and Josette were engaged when the 1795 segment began, but that ended when Josette and Jeremiah conceived a mad passion for each other and eloped. Unknown to Barnabas, that was the result of a spell Angelique cast in hopes of getting Barnabas for herself. Barnabas responded to the elopement by killing Jeremiah in a duel. He has told Angelique that he still loves Josette and always will, but that he knows there can never again be anything between them. Moments after he had told her that, Angelique agreed to marry him. Evidently it was to be a sham marriage.
Jeremiah’s ghost has been railing at Angelique for raising him from his grave, and apparently he wants to be avenged by making the sham marriage even shammier. When Barnabas comes into the room, he sees the music box, explodes in rage, and storms out.
In life, Jeremiah never knew that Angelique was behind his and Josette’s passion. He has evidently learned that and other of her secrets, and is using them against her. Perhaps Angelique put more of herself into him than she intended.
On The Collinsport Historical Society, Patrick McCray says that this is an important episode because Barnabas and Angelique’s wedding is the basis for some developments much later in the series. That’s true, but by the time he’s talking about the show isn’t very good any more. So I consign it to the ranks of the “Stinkers.”
As I’ve gone along making these notes, I’ve occasionally been moved to tag episodes as “Genuinely Good” or “Stinkers.” Since no episode of Dark Shadows aired 56 years ago today- 23 November 1967 was Thanksgiving Day in the United States, so ABC showed football games instead of its regular programming- I’m taking the opportunity to list the installments to which I gave these labels.
Genuinely Good Episodes
#25. Written by Art Wallace. Vicki finds an incriminating piece of evidence in David’s room.
#32. Written by Art Wallace. Roger and Liz face the fact that it was David who tried to kill Roger.
#50. Written by Art Wallace. Vicki and Carolyn see Bill Malloy’s body below the cliff.
#59. Written by Art Wallace. The sheriff comes to Collinwood and questions Roger.
#68. Written by Francis Swann. Roger encourages David to murder Vicki.
#69. Written by Francis Swann. Mrs Johnson visits Burke in his hotel room.
#87. Written by Francis Swann. Roger finds Vicki in the sealed room and releases her.
#102. Written by Francis Swann. David has a conversation with the portrait of Josette.
#103. Written by Francis Swann. Vicki and Burke investigate Roger.
#112. Written by Ron Sproat. Liz rescues Vicki from Matthew.
#126. Written by Ron Sproat. The ghosts of Josette and the Widows, accompanied by that of Bill Malloy, rescue Vicki from Matthew.
#146. Written by Malcolm Marmorstein. Sam burns his hands.
#182. Written by Ron Sproat. Roger begins to suspect that Laura might really be a supernatural being and a threat to David.
#253. Written by Joe Caldwell. Maggie gives Willie her ring. The first really good episode of Dark Shadows 2.0.
#254. Written by Joe Caldwell. Carolyn and Buzz announce their engagement.
#258. Written by Malcolm Marmorstein. Maggie talks with Sarah.
#260. Written by Ron Sproat. Maggie escapes from Barnabas.
#265. Written by Malcolm Marmorstein. First appearance of Dr Julia Hoffman.
#318. Written by Gordon Russell. Barnabas and Julia hide in the secret room of the mausoleum while Sam and Woodard search the outer part.
#325. Written by Gordon Russell. Sarah comes to David in a dream.
#327. Written by Gordon Russell. David communicates with two aspects of Sarah that don’t communicate with each other.
#333. Written by Ron Sproat. Burke and Woodard search Barnabas’ basement.
#344. Written by Joe Caldwell. David knows what’s going on and has given up hope of changing it.
#345. Written by Gordon Russell. Burke is missing and feared dead.
#348. Written by Joe Caldwell. Julia tries to save the experiment. The first episode of Dark Shadows to fully integrate color into a coherent visual strategy, and probably the best episode of the series up to this point.
#351. Written by Gordon Russell. Barnabas adds Carolyn to his diet.
#363. Written by Gordon Russell. Tony catches Carolyn going through his safe, then Sarah appears to Barnabas.
#364. Written by Gordon Russell. Sarah confronts Barnabas.
#365. Written by Sam Hall. A séance at Collinwood has an unexpected result. This is the final episode of Dark Shadows 2.0.
I credit the writers, because there were only two directors in this period of Dark Shadows, Lela Swift and John Sedwick, and they didn’t differ sharply in approach. The rest of the production staff was the same in every episode, so the writers were the only ones whose names seemed like they might give a clue as to what set the best episodes apart from the worst ones.
I’m very surprised to see Marmorstein’s name in this list three times. Joe Caldwell was making uncredited contributions to the writing from #123 on; #146 is very much in his style, and I suspect he was its true author. But Caldwell was getting on-screen credit by the time of #258 and #265, so I think those must actually have been Marmorstein’s handiwork. Granted, neither of them is all that close to the top of the all-time great list, and the actors and directors do a lot to elevate them. Even so, they do prove that Marmorstein was not the total incompetent he so often seemed to be.
One thing I notice is that many of these episodes feature long-delayed confrontations in which the character learns information they hadn’t expected and can’t use right away. So in #25, David talks with Vicki and for the first time makes an explicit statement about his father’s accident, while Liz talks with Roger and for the first time makes an explicit statement about Vicki’s origins. In each case, the explicit statement is an obvious lie and the person telling it demands that the other go along with it. Hearing the characters talk about issues they’ve been evading for a long time relieves some worn-out suspense, while the actual content of the conversation builds fresh suspense as we wonder what use Vicki and Roger will make of the knowledge that David and Liz are lying. And of course the similarity between David’s behavior and his aunt’s shows that the boy is carrying on a family tradition.
In #32, Roger and Liz finally admit to themselves and each other the fact that David caused the accident. While they set to work covering this up, Roger tells Liz that he isn’t sure David really is his son. Liz refuses to entertain the question, but it sets us up for the storyline centering on David’s mother Laura.
Jumping ahead to #258, the conversation between Maggie and Sarah shows that Sarah is able to interact with the living and suggests that she wishes Maggie well, but is just as inconclusive as were the conversations in #25 and #32. Sarah’s conversation with Barnabas in #364 shows that she is angry with him and trying to rein him in, but also shows that she has little direct influence over him.
Stinkers
#223. Written by Ron Sproat. David runs around and screams.
#249. Written by Ron Sproat. The family looks in the locked room and doesn’t find anything.
#266. Written by Ron Sproat. Liz is depressed.
#268. Written by Ron Sproat. Liz is still depressed.
#272. Written by Joe Caldwell. Liz has revealed her secret, and no one knows what to do about it.
#298. Written by Ron Sproat. It seems as if Maggie is going to remember what Barnabas did to her, but then she doesn’t.
#299. Written by Ron Sproat. It seems as if Barnabas is going to bite Vicki, but then he doesn’t.
#356. Written by Gordon Russell. Julia sticks her notebook in the clock, giving the clock the star turn it has been waiting for.
I suppose the first thing you’ll notice is that I didn’t come up with the “Stinkers” label until after Barnabas joined the show. If I’d thought of it sooner, Malcolm Marmorstein’s name would have graced the list many times. Also, there probably would have been some episodes there that aired on Fridays, as they didn’t really start to make an effort to do anything special at the end of the week until about halfway through Laura’s arc.
But I’m not going to go back and add the label to episodes from the first 42 weeks. I didn’t have any particular thought of making “Best” and “Worst” lists when I put them on; I was just marking some of my posts as raves or pans. So I’d be imposing a false organization on them if I went back through and did that.
Writer Ron Sproat had his strengths, but was blind to what particular actors could and could not do. Grayson Hall, who played mad scientist Julia Hoffman, had one very conspicuous weakness- she could not control the tone of her voice when she raised it above a normal conversational level. She had asthma, and in the course of her performances she was often required to smoke. As a result, her screams, shouts, sobs, and cackles all came with a terrible croaking sound. This episode consists of very little aside from Julia’s raised voice, and it is a disaster.
Julia’s sometime partner in crime, vampire Barnabas Collins, has turned on her and cast a magic spell meant to drive her crazy. She sees some ghostly apparitions that may or may not be the result of this spell. It’s hard to be sure; at the beginning of the episode, she is in the Collins family tomb having an argument with the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah, whom regular viewers know to be real. So it’s not like we can say with confidence that anything is in her head.
Julia’s psychological stress gives Sproat an opportunity to adapt a script he wrote for the show that Dark Shadows replaced on ABC’s daytime schedule, a soap opera for teenagers called Never Too Young. The 18 April 1966 episode of that show was almost a one-woman drama, featuring Jaclyn Carmichael as Joy Harmon, who struggles to keep her sanity while home alone.* While nothing supernatural was going on in Never Too Young, Sproat left many elements intact- both start with confrontations reprised from the previous episode, in which the main character is alienated from the person who represented her last hope; each woman beats on a locked door and calls for someone who is absent to come and let her out; each plays Klondike solitaire; each receives a distressing telephone call; each is terrified at the end of the episode when she sees the doorknob turning. Evidently Sproat regarded the script as his finest work, and wasn’t going to allow Grayson Hall’s physical inability to play the part deprive him of the chance to remake it.
As the 22 minutes unfold, Julia progresses from the mausoleum, where she looks disturbed while we hear her speaking calmly in a recorded voiceover, to the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, where she looks calm while she has a panicked tone in the recorded voiceover, to her bedroom upstairs in the great house, where she both looks and sounds panicked. She’s alone on camera for the great majority of the time, making hideous noises that bring bad laughs.
For over a week, Julia has been trying to escape Barnabas’ wrath. The other day, we heard her ask herself why she didn’t just leave town. There are some strong episodes in this period, but that is such an obvious question that it undercuts them all. This episode is far from strong, and throughout it we are reminded of just how unnecessary it all is. Barnabas decided to kill Julia because she obstructed his plan to seduce well-meaning governess Vicki by planting disturbing images of him in Vicki’s unconscious mind; he had been set on killing strange and troubled boy David because David had caught on to some of his secrets. Julia is alone in the house in part because Vicki and David have gone to Boston for a few days. For all Barnabas knows, David is this very minute telling Vicki everything he wants to hide from her. But as soon as they are off the estate and out of his sight, he stops worrying about them. So all Julia has to do is hop in her car, drive off someplace, and the drama is resolved.
The conflict between Barnabas and Julia is the only story going on Dark Shadows right now. Lawyer Tony Peterson is suing the Collins family business, but when they had a scene about that last week they played it off camera and used the actors’ voices as background noise to cover some of Julia’s doings. Clearly we are not to expect much from that. All Vicki and David have to do to be safe is go to Boston, Sarah is quiet unless murderers come to her tomb and bother her at home, and everyone else is settled in a sustainable situation. So if Julia leaves town, or reconciles with Barnabas, or is killed, it doesn’t seem that the show will have anywhere to go. By all appearances, we are heading directly for a blank wall.
*I learned about this episode from a comment left by “Robert Sharp” on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day. He links to the video I embed above.
Yesterday, mad scientist Julia Hoffman discovered that vampire Barnabas had sent his distant cousin and devoted blood thrall Carolyn to steal the notebook in which she recorded Barnabas’ secrets. Julia knew that this meant Barnabas had decided to kill her, and that only by keeping the notebook hidden could she save herself.
At the beginning of today’s episode, Julia hides the notebook inside the clock in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. At the end, Carolyn notices that the clock has stopped chiming. The foyer clock is a very impressive piece of property, and it’s always nice when it gets screen time.
Vampire Barnabas Collins creeps up on well-meaning governess Vicki from behind. He touches her neck, and she is startled.
Stifling a giggle
This scene plays twice. First, before the opening title sequence, then again immediately after. The first time around, Vicki stifles a giggle when she sees Barnabas. The second, she seems frightened.
Frightened
Barnabas does not bite Vicki. He apologizes for startling her. She says that no apology is needed, and she stands very close to him. They talk about the Moon and the night and about what incredible romantics they both are.
Incredible romantics
In #285 and #286, Vicki contrived to get Barnabas to invite her to spend the night in his house. In #293, she invited Barnabas to tag along on a date she was having with her depressing boyfriend Burke, and while Burke stood there she had eyes only for Barnabas. In this conversation, Vicki reluctantly turns down an invitation from Barnabas so she can go on some more dismal dates with Burke.
Mad scientist Julia Hoffman interrupts Barnabas and Vicki. After Vicki excuses herself to get ready for her date, Julia demands that Barnabas leave her alone. Barnabas says that he means her no harm. This is all too believable- twice before today, we have seen Barnabas enter a room where Vicki was sleeping and leave without biting her. It’s starting to seem unlikely that she will ever have a place in the vampire story. Since the vampire story is the only plot going on Dark Shadows, that leads us to wonder why she is still on the show.
This scene takes place on a new set, a courtyard with a terrace and a fountain. It looks very much like a set in the 1965 film The Sound of Music, the one where the Countess who is supposed to marry Captain von Trapp has the conversations that remove her from the love triangle and leave the path open for von Trapp to marry Maria. That movie was such a big hit that it seems likely that they had it in mind when they designed this set for scenes concerned with the love triangle involving Vicki, Burke, and Barnabas.
Julia’s intervention leads some to believe that there is another love triangle budding in which she will vie for Barnabas’ affections, but I don’t see any trace of that in Julia’s stern manner today. She simply seems to be concerned that Barnabas stop preying on people while she performs the experiments that are supposed to cure him of vampirism.
In later years, Grayson Hall would claim that she decided on her own initiative to play Julia as if she were in love with Barnabas. She said that by the time the writers and directors caught on to what she was doing, they had received so much enthusiastic fan mail that they had to let her go on doing it. In response to this story, Danny Horn makes some uncharacteristic remarks in his post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day:
It’s a great story, especially because it appeals to the audience’s secret belief that the actors really are the characters that they play. We love to believe that, especially for daytime soap opera characters, who we spend time with every day.
But really, everybody who watches television believes that the characters are real. That’s why we love to hear about unscripted moments that were invented during rehearsal. As intelligent adults, we understand that writers and directors and producers create the characters, and then the actors show up and say the words. But there’s a little child inside of us, who wants to be told that Julia Hoffman is real, and she lives inside Grayson Hall.
Danny Horn, “A Human Life,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 2 Jaunary 2014.
As the blog went on, Danny put more and more emphasis on the chaotic process by which Dark Shadows was created. I suspect this passage was something he wrote in haste. Even at this early stage, he had made it clear that he knew that it was not true that “writers and directors and producers create the characters, and then the actors show up and say the words.” By the time he finished in 2021, his main theme had long been that the real subject of Dark Shadows was “a team of under-resourced lunatics desperately struggling every day to make the most surprising possible show.” That team most definitely included actors padding their parts in ways they could do only because the show was done live to tape, with edits never done if not absolutely necessary, and often not done even when they were.
Julia visits Vicki’s room and helps her choose an outfit for her date with Burke. Julia urges Vicki to avoid Barnabas, because he has a crush on her and it would hurt him to encourage him in it. Vicki says that she has never seen any sign of such a crush. Nor have we- he has talked with his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie about a plan to take Vicki as his next victim. Aside from giving her an enchanted music box that is supposed to brainwash her, he has been remarkably leisurely about the whole thing. If anything, she is the one who has been pursuing him.
Vicki and Burke are out by the fountain. He remarks that she has been very quiet, and she refers to having a lot on her mind. This raises our hopes that she is thinking about what Julia told her and is going to ditch Burke and go to Barnabas. They start talking about their wretched childhoods. Previously, we had heard that Burke’s mother died when he was young and that his alcoholic father supported the family by making lobster pots; now Burke tells us that when he was nine his father left the family. It’s hard to see much point in this retcon; most likely the writers had just forgotten about the earlier story.
Vicki mentions that there was one nurse at the Hammond Foundling Home whom she liked. In the early days of the Dark Shadows, she would often reminisce about her ridiculously bleak experiences growing up in this fictional orphanage. Usually she would get a faraway look in her eyes and smile, then tell some story that started with an appalling horror and got worse and worse as it went. This time, she again stares off into the distance and smiles, so that viewers who have been watching from the beginning brace themselves to hear that the nurse turned out to be the worst abuser of all, or that she was murdered in front of Vicki while the other children laughed, or that she ran the kitchen the winter they ran out of food and had to resort to cannibalism. But no, Vicki is just sharing a pleasant little memory. The show is a lot less hard-edged now that it’s about a vampire.
Not that they’ve stopped presenting horrible images altogether. No, they show us Burke kissing Vicki.
When Burke was played by Mitch Ryan, he was a great kisser, a talent he displayed with Vicki among others. But Anthony George does not appear to have seen anyone kiss before he attempts it. As he points his lips at Alexandra Moltke Isles, she stiffens her neck, a move that may have suggested excitement if her partner were doing something recognizable as a sign of affection, but that in this context looks like she’s suffering from whiplash. After his first failed effort, he rests his head on her shoulder and looks miserable.
Attempted kissAfter the failure
We pull back from Burke’s fumbling and see Barnabas at the gate to the courtyard, looking forlorn. I’m sure the writer and director wanted us to take this image as a sign that Barnabas is feeling sorry for himself, but the scene he’s been watching with us is so dreary that we would all have the same look on our faces.
Barnabas has seen the sorry spectacle
Some attribute George’s phenomenally bad kissing to his sexuality. I don’t buy it. Joel Crothers was also gay, and we’ve seen Joe Haskell give convincingly sultry kisses to two actresses. Louis Edmonds was gay too, and when Dark Shadows finally gives him an on-screen kiss two years from now he will do just as well. And the actresses unanimously testified that Jonathan Frid was the best kisser in the cast. Furthermore, the other conspicuously inept kisser on the show was the emphatically heterosexual Roger Davis (whom we have yet to see.) So George’s failures in this department are his alone, and do not reflect on any demographic group of which he was a member.
In the house, Vicki and Burke continue their vain struggle to kiss. Julia walks in and apologizes for intruding. She does not leave, nor does she take her eyes off Vicki and Burke. That makes sense- after all, she is still an MD, and it would appear that whatever is wrong with Burke might require some kind of medical intervention.
Vicki excuses herself to go to bed, and Burke asks Julia to join him in the drawing room. There, he denounces Vicki for her “vivid imagination,” a terrible quality that must be stamped out. He tells Julia that Vicki has experienced two hallucinations recently. We know that these were not hallucinations at all, but actual visitations from the ghost of Sarah Collins. Burke doesn’t know that. However, he does know of another sighting which led him to angrily accuse Vicki of being insane, when she saw Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, walking in a cemetery. At the time, everyone thought Maggie was dead, but now that it has been revealed she is alive, he removes the incident from his bill of particulars against Vicki.
Burke is furious with Vicki for having an imagination and wanting to be part of the story
Burke and Vicki, like most of the other characters, believe Julia’s cover story that she is an historian researching the Collinses for a book about the old families of New England. He asserts that helping Julia with her project is having a bad effect on Vicki, because she must “live in the present.” Julia asks if this means that she must live with him. Burke agrees that it does.
To Burke’s surprise, Julia agrees that Vicki should stop helping her and stay away from anything suggestive of past centuries. The two of them talk about how Vicki must be watched and controlled lest her imagination “run wild.” Julia is a mad scientist in league with a vampire, so this sort of talk is to be expected from her, but Burke is supposed to be on Vicki’s side. His frank intention to crush her imagination, expressed alternately with undisguised rage and airy paternalism, is as repulsive as anything we have seen from Barnabas.
Upstairs, Vicki is asleep. Barnabas opens the door and walks into the room. Again he thinks about biting her, again he doesn’t. He opens the enchanted music box, looks at her a bit longer, and leaves the way he came. If Barnabas doesn’t get off the dime soon, Vicki may marry Burke and become useless forever.
The only story on Dark Shadows at this point is the one about vampire Barnabas Collins. They’re trying to get a second one off the ground, about an old vacant house that has caught the fancy of well-meaning governess Vicki. Vicki’s depressing boyfriend Burke has interpreted her interest in the place as a marriage proposal. He wants to buy the house and live in it with her.
Today, we find out that the house is the property of the ancient and esteemed Collins family. That isn’t a big surprise, since Barnabas clearly knew something about it from his time as a human. It does suggest a partial answer to a question Vicki had when she, Burke, and Barnabas visited the house on Thursday. Barnabas found a handkerchief there bearing the initials “F. McA. C.” and gave it to Vicki. She expressed a determination to find out what those initials stood for. Now she should be able to look at the family’s records and search for a Mrs Collins whose maiden name had the initials “F. McA.”
Burke asks matriarch Liz if she is willing to sell the house to him, and she is perfectly agreeable. Liz’ daughter Carolyn joins them for a tour of the house. There is some startlingly sloppy writing in this scene. Carolyn remarks that the house has a special warmth and speculates that it is the result of so much light reflected into its windows from the sea nearby. A couple of minutes later, Liz complains that the house is terribly cold, and Carolyn says that’s because it is so close to the sea.
Both Liz’ glad willingness to sell the house to Burke and her trip to it signal that storylines from the first year of the show are now behind us once and for all. Burke was introduced in episode 1 as a dashing action hero returning to his home town to wreak vengeance on his old persecutors, the Collins family. The “Revenge of Burke Devlin” arc consisted so largely of talk about people, places, and events we never saw that it didn’t amount to much, and by the time Burke formally renounced his revenge in #201 it had long since fizzled. That left some chance it would flare back up, so in #223 Liz vowed she would never sell Burke any property at any price, but now the door is firmly closed on that old theme.
When Dark Shadows started, Liz was a recluse who hadn’t left home in eighteen years. Since they never showed us anyplace Liz might want to go, that story was an even more total dud than was The Revenge of Burke Devlin. Even after the reason for Liz’ seclusion was exposed as fraudulent in #273, she still made a show of reluctance when her brother Roger suggested she go to town in #277. Now she doesn’t hesitate to hop in a car and go to the house by the sea. In fact, she is the one who urges Carolyn to get out of the house. So that sends another non-starter to the narrative junk yard.
In this episode, the characters refer to “the house by the sea” as “Seaview.” That was an inside joke. The Newport, Rhode Island mansion used in the exterior establishing shots of the great house of Collinwood was known as Seaview Terrace. In 1974, Martin and Millicent Carey bought the house, and it came to be known as the Carey Mansion.
Meanwhile, Vicki is visiting Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie has amnesia, a condition induced by her doctor, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Julia is in league with Barnabas, and has damaged Maggie’s memory to keep her from recalling that Barnabas abducted her and tried to replace her personality with that of his lost love Josette. Vicki is trying to help Maggie regain her memory.
There is another instance of distressingly sloppy writing in this scene. Vicki tells Maggie that she thought she saw her in Eagle Hill cemetery during the period she cannot recall. She tells Maggie that Burke tried to convince her that she can’t have seen her. In response, Maggie asks if Burke saw her, and Vicki again says Burke tried to convince her she hadn’t seen her.
Vicki tells Maggie that she and Burke had gone to the cemetery to lay flowers at Josette’s grave. Maggie reacts strongly to Josette’s name, and Vicki starts telling her about Josette. When she mentions that Barnabas has restored Josette’s room, a light comes on in Maggie’s eyes and she grows very animated. She is about to say something when a knock comes at the door. It is Julia.
There is a strange blooper in the conversation between Vicki and Julia at the door. Julia asks “Would it be all right if I came in and waited?” Vicki responds “Not at all.” My wife, Mrs Acilius, is usually very forgiving of bloopers, but she laughed out loud at this one.
It could be that Julia’s line was “Would you mind if I came in and waited?” Alexandra Moltke Isles was famously accurate with her line delivery, even when her scene partners bobbled, and it could be that she just went ahead and said what Vicki was supposed to say even though it didn’t make sense. In view of Carolyn’s self-contradictory lines about the temperature of the house and Vicki’s repetitious lines about Burke’s attempt to gaslight her, both of which were obviously scripted, it could also be that the actors are working from Ron Sproat’s unrevised first draft.
While Julia looks at some of Maggie’s father’s paintings, Vicki sits back on the couch with Maggie. Julia hears Maggie exclaim “Barnabas!” and get very agitated. It seems she is about to tell Vicki all about what happened when she was missing.
Maggie, remembering
Julia swoops in, asking if they like antiques. Vicki looks bewildered at the interruption, but answers with a polite yes.
Julia interrupts
Julia presses her jeweled medallion on her. Vicki passes it to Maggie, and Julia asks for a cup of tea. Maggie volunteers to make the tea, but Vicki insists on doing it. In #143, the living room and kitchen in the Evans cottage were two parts of an undivided space, but now we hear Vicki close a door when she goes to make tea. Not only is that confusing to viewers who remember the earlier episodes, but since Vicki goes in the direction of the front door it seems for a moment that she is leaving the cottage altogether.
While Vicki is out of the room, Julia hypnotizes Maggie. She commands her to forget everything that happened while she was missing. When Vicki returns, Maggie has indeed forgotten everything.
Reclusive matriarch Liz has spoiled her wedding to seagoing con man Jason by telling everyone that she was only marrying him to keep him from telling that she’d murdered her first husband and he’d buried the body in the basement. Fake Shemp Burke has found a gun and points it at every other character.
Jason denies Liz’ story, knocks the gun out of Burke’s hand, and runs out of the house. Burke runs after him and fires a couple of shots at a figure he assumes to be Jason, though it could be the sheriff or a small child or some other target of convenience for all he knows. The original Shemp Howard might have thought that last display of stupidity was a bit over-the-top for the Three Stooges. On Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn has a bit of fun with Burke’s carelessness. His whole post about this episode is funny.
Out in the woods, Liz’ brother Roger looks directly at Jason, fails to see him, and moves on.
The sheriff comes and tells Liz that he is very sorry for bothering her with all of this, and assures her that his men will do everything they can to catch Jason and make things as easy for her as they can. Meanwhile, he needs some help digging up the body buried in her basement.
Liz has loudly refused to talk to her lawyers, a wildly bad move in our world, but under Soap Opera Law she has every reason to believe that, as a good person who has already suffered for her deeds, all she has to do is to tell the authorities about a bad person who has profited from his iniquity. The sheriff’s attitude confirms this assessment.
Liz tells well-meaning governess Vicki that she often went into the room where Paul is buried and cried. Vicki had heard sobbing coming from that room several times in the early days of the show, as had housekeeper Mrs Johnson on her first night in the house. At first, the show was equivocal as to whether it was Liz crying or a ghost. That equivocation fit with the show’s initial attitude towards the supernatural, which was to hint that there might be literal ghosts in the background, but to use the word “ghost” primarily as a metaphor for unresolved conflicts based on past events. Eventually, they showed us the door to the room locked from the outside while sobbing came from the inside, confirming that it couldn’t have been Liz. This week the show is committing totally to stories of the paranormal, yet they retreat to the idea that The Sobbing Woman was Liz all along.
Matriarch Liz is being blackmailed into marrying seagoing con man Jason McGuire. A couple of days ago, she decided the only way to address this situation was to throw herself to her death from a nearby cliff overlooking the sea. She has been prevented from completing this plan twice, first by her housekeeper Mrs Johnson, then by her cousin Barnabas the vampire.
Today, she tries to say goodbye to her nephew, strange and troubled boy David, and to her daughter, aspiring biker mama Carolyn. David tells her it sounds like she is going someplace. “You’re not, are you?” “Of course not!” she replies. Her storyline certainly isn’t going anywhere, why should she be any different.
David suggests that he and Liz take a walk on the beach. He says he wants to show her a cove he found in the rocks there. This will pique the interest of returning viewers. In #260, Barnabas’ prisoner Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, found a secret panel in the wall of her cell and followed it to just such a chamber, from which she escaped onto the beach. Perhaps David has found the channel that leads into Barnabas’ dungeon.
When Liz tries to have a pleasant conversation with Carolyn, Carolyn responds angrily. She is furious about Liz’ upcoming marriage and insists on voicing her objections to it. Afterward, she has a talk with well-meaning governess Vicki in which she appears to regret her anger. She is worried that Liz might do something desperate.
When Carolyn shares her fears, Vicki asserts that they are groundless. Since both Mrs Johnson and Barnabas had confided in Vicki about Liz’ previous journeys to the edge of the cliff, this seems like a Dumb Vicki moment. But Vicki does go up to Liz’ room afterward. She finds that Liz is gone and she has written her date of death in the family Bible. We cut to the cliff, where Liz is approaching the edge.
The date she wrote was 10 April 1967. The episode was taped on 19 June and broadcast on 5 July; the usual rule of soap opera time is that the events are taking place the day the audience sees them, so that is a puzzling date. All the more so because there was no episode taped or broadcast on 10 April; that date fell on a Sunday, and the actors were in the middle of a strike at that time.
There is some good acting in this one. Joan Bennett does a good job showing Liz having achieved the kind of peace people sometimes reach after they’ve made up their minds to commit suicide, and Liz’ scene with David is especially fine. My wife, Mrs Acilius, was enthusiastic about these performances, but they frustrated me- seeing how good the actors are just made me wish they had a decent script to work with.
Reclusive matriarch Liz is despondent, and no wonder. For months and months, seagoing con man Jason McGuire has been blackmailing her. She hasn’t been able to resist any of his demands; today she tells him that “There is no point in not being agreeable.” She makes a great show of submissiveness towards him, asking his permission to leave the drawing room. They are scheduled to marry in a few days, much to the dismay of everyone except Jason.
In the pre-credit teaser, we see Liz’ dream that she is standing atop the high cliff on her property, looking at the rocks and the sea far below. The ghosts of the Widows who have jumped to their deaths from the cliff over the years are calling her name. The Widows were a big part of Dark Shadows‘ supernatural back-world in its first months, but this is the first we’ve seen or heard from them since #126. In her dream, they call her name and she tumbles headlong over the cliff.
Liz mopes around the house during the day, then goes to the cliff. Housekeeper Mrs Johnson finds her there at nightfall. This is the first time in ten and a half weeks we have seen Mrs Johnson; I don’t usually give spoilers, but we won’t see her again for fourteen and a half more weeks. I suspect she was in this one just to be sure actress Clarice Blackburn would be in the studio when they were taking the cast photo I use as the header on this blog.
Was this photo taken the day this episode was shot?
Mrs Johnson mentions the Widows and tells Liz she doesn’t like hearing the legends about them. So Liz launches a detailed recounting of all of those legends. By the time Mrs Johnson is thoroughly uncomfortable, Liz starts to faint and pitch forward towards the edge of the cliff. Mrs Johnson rescues her, and walks her back to the house.
Liz goes back to bed and has the dream from the opening again. She gets up, opens the window, and tells the Widows she can hear them. As their voices travel in the wind, she repeats a catchphrase from one of the legends- “The sea is my grave. My grave is the sea.”
Seagoing con man Jason McGuire stands outside the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, eavesdropping. The conversation is among heiress Carolyn, Carolyn’s uncle Roger, and well-meaning governess Vicki. Carolyn tells Roger and Vicki that she wants to stop Jason from blackmailing her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, into marriage. She doesn’t know what hold Jason has over Liz, but is sure it has to do with something secreted in a locked room in the basement. Roger agrees to help Carolyn break into the room.
Jason reports this conversation to Liz and suggests they give Carolyn the key to the room. What Liz is desperate to hide is that Jason buried the body of her husband, Paul Stoddard, under the floor there eighteen years ago. Jason tells her that he sealed the floor up well enough that there is nothing to see unless you start digging. Liz is unsure, and Jason offers to go to the room and look.
First-time viewers may not make much of this, but those who have been watching from the beginning will be exasperated. Liz has gone into the room herself many times over the years; Vicki has even caught her coming out of it. When they take us to the room and show us that there is nothing interesting to see there, they are telling us that there was no point to any of the scenes where Liz gets frantic at the prospect of someone going into the room. It’s a slap in the face of the audience.
The cast assembles in the room and pokes around a little. They don’t open all the trunks and cases; there is a big barrel that could hold the remains of several missing husbands, and they never so much as look at that. After this has gone on for some time, Jason declares that it is “The most pitiful exhibition I’ve ever seen.” That’s good, it’s always fun when the villain has a chance to put the audience’s feelings into words. After they go back upstairs, Roger says that he’s never been more embarrassed in his life. Louis Edmonds delivers that line with tremendous feeling, it doesn’t sound like he had to act at all.
The whole miserable mess leads to Liz and Jason announcing their engagement, something Carolyn had been talking about when she lamented for “Poor mother- abandoned in her first marriage, blackmailed into a second.” But Carolyn, Roger, and Vicki all look shocked, a dramatic sting plays on the soundtrack, and the closing credits start to roll, as if this were some kind of news.
Closing Miscellany
On his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn analyzes the action of the episode as a series of devices to prevent anything interesting happening. He also goes through much of the unbelievably repetitious dialogue that clutters it up. He’s hilarious, the post is highly recommended.
When Jason goes to the basement to make sure that there is nothing there worth looking at, he shines his flashlight directly into the camera several times. It’s a flashlight we haven’t seen before, with a bulb mounted on top of a box. I’ve never been a particular flashlight aficionado, but that prop is the most dynamic part of today’s show.
Flashlight mounted on a boxJason enters the basementLooking at an old shirt
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