The only story going on Dark Shadows is about the doings of vampire Barnabas Collins. So the only characters we will see in action are those connected to Barnabas. That puts the audience in the odd position of hoping that characters we like will become his victims or his accomplices.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has been an audience favorite since she was introduced in episode 1. Months ago, Barnabas bit Maggie and held her prisoner for a long time. After the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah helped her escape him, Maggie had amnesia and became a patient at a mental hospital run by mad scientist Julia Hoffman, who is now in league with Barnabas. Sarah helped Maggie escape from the hospital and return to the town of Collinsport. Her amnesia lifted, but Julia erased Maggie’s memory before she could expose Barnabas.
The audience is tempted to accept Julia’s crime against Maggie as a convenient resolution of its own conflicting desires. On the one hand, we like Maggie and don’t want Julia to lock her up or Barnabas to kill her. On the other, Barnabas’ destruction would leave Dark Shadows without any stories to tell. That would lead to the show’s cancellation, taking Maggie and all the others with it. With Maggie’s memory mutilated, the show can stay on the air and Maggie can stay on it.
Our conflicting desires and divided loyalties create suspense. In his post about this episode on his blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn analyzes a scene in which Sarah visits Maggie in her room today, and shows how it keeps us from simply accepting what Julia has done:
Maggie keeps making closing statements like, “Well, the important thing is that wherever I was, I’m back, and everything is going to be just like it was.” There’s an opportunity here to just wrap everything up in a bow and go do something else, the way they did with the blackmail storyline a month ago.
But then there’s Sarah, the weird little ghost girl who helped Maggie escape from the vampire’s dungeon, and then brought her home from the sanitarium…
It’s not clear whether Sarah actually has a plan to expose Barnabas as the vampire… But for today, at least, she seems to be dropping in purely for a social call.
She stands at the open French windows and watches Maggie read. Maggie looks up, and notices that she has a visitor.
Maggie: So, I see. Well, would you like to come in?
Sarah: Thank you.
And she strolls in, with a big smile…
Maggie is acting like a good-humored, friendly adult who’s meeting a strange child for the first time…
The penny drops. Maggie bends down, and looks Sarah in the eyes.
Maggie: Little girl… Sarah… Do you know anything about what happened to me?
Sarah: Will you tell me the truth?
Maggie: What truth?
Sarah: Do you remember me?
Maggie: The honest truth? No, I don’t.
Sarah pulls away.
She says, “You’ve forgotten me. Just like everybody else. You’ve forgotten me.”
Now, she’s not a great actress, and I’m not saying that she is. She’s nine years old and she has a strong Philadelphia accent,* and sometimes it sounds like she’s learned her lines phonetically. But right now, she’s a nine year old kid whose best friend suddenly doesn’t recognize her.
And it’s legitimately heartbreaking. Sarah is really important. She visited Maggie, and showed her how to escape, and told her father where to find her. Then she listened and concentrated for weeks, until she figured out where the sanitarium was, and then she helped Maggie escape from there, too. Sarah’s been faithful, and clever, and she truly believes that Maggie is her very best friend.
So Maggie’s memory loss isn’t just a magic reset button that wraps up this story thread. Sarah feels hurt, and with good reason. It really feels like a betrayal.
Sarah says she wants her doll back, and then she walks out, muttering, “Only my doll remembers me. Only my doll.”
…The important thing that happens in this episode is that Sarah is a lonely little girl who’s made one friend in the last hundred and fifty years, and Barnabas and Julia took her friend away.
That was a very bad mistake. Sarah is pissed. There will be consequences.
The reference to “the blackmail storyline a month ago” shows what is at stake for Maggie. When that story ended, Barnabas killed the character who drove it, seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Jason will be mentioned a couple of times in the next weeks, and then forgotten forever. If the show decides to “wrap everything up in a bow and go do something else,” there won’t be any way to fit Maggie into the only story they have. In the opening scene, Maggie’s father Sam and fiancé Joe are talking about leaving town. And rightly so- if Maggie no longer has unsettled business with Barnabas, either she and Joe will get married and move away, or they will simply fade into the background. Either way, they will be forgotten.
When Sarah goes away and takes her doll, we wonder if she will no longer protect Maggie. If so, we might see Maggie’s death very soon. Yesterday’s episode ended with Barnabas saying in a soliloquy that he didn’t believe Julia’s mumbo-jumbo would work, and that he would kill Maggie the following night. That night is tonight, and Barnabas is knocking on the door of the Evans cottage.
Sam and Maggie are happy to see Barnabas. Sam asks Barnabas to sit with Maggie while he goes to deliver a painting he has completed. Barnabas and Maggie chat about the gap in her memory. Barnabas says that he wishes people wouldn’t be so persistent with questions about it, a very credible statement. When Maggie says she thinks there is a chance her memory will come back bit by bit, he reacts with a look that tells us he has decided to come back later and go through with his plans.
Barnabas comes into Maggie’s room while she is sleeping. He picks up a pillow, intending to smother her. Why he doesn’t just drink her blood, I don’t know, maybe he’s on a diet or something. Suddenly Sarah’s voice rings out singing her signature song, “London Bridge.” Barnabas calls to Sarah and asks what she wants. She just keeps singing. He backs away from Maggie, then leaves. Sarah may be disappointed in Maggie and unwilling to let her keep the doll, but she is still watching over her.
In an entry in the “Dark Shadows Daybook,” Patrick McCray goes into depth about Sarah’s part today. I won’t quote any of it, because it is full of spoilers stretching right up to the final episode, but it is well worth reading if you have already seen the whole series.
*I don’t see any reason to object to Sharon Smyth’s accent. I’m sure a dialect expert could tell you all about the difference between the accents of eighteenth century Mainers and those of Baby Boomers from Philadelphia, but no one else could. Besides, the show gave up on having its actors sound like they were from Maine during its first month on the air.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has come back to Collinsport. This is bad news for vampire Barnabas Collins, who kept Maggie prisoner and fears she will expose him. Barnabas’ new accomplice, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, has erased Maggie’s memory and assures him she is no longer a threat to him.
Barnabas is unconvinced that Maggie’s amnesia will last. As he grows more agitated, Julia grows calmer. This contrast reaches its climax when Julia blithely lights a cigarette from Barnabas’ candelabra and he reacts with stunned bewilderment.
Julia tells Barnabas he has no choice but to trust her and leave Maggie be. He says that it would seem so. It doesn’t seem so to the audience- we know all Barnabas has to do is bite Julia to bring her under his power.
Julia shows herself out, a spring in her step. Once Barnabas is alone, he hears a rooster announce the dawn. He mutters that Maggie is safe for the moment, but that he will kill her tonight.
By now, there are three groups of characters on Dark Shadows: those who know Barnabas is a vampire; those who do not know this, but do know that supernatural doings are afoot; and those who think the show is still the Gothic romance/ noir thriller it was in its first weeks. Those in category one can move the story along very quickly, those in category two can nudge it forward a bit, and those in category three are blocking figures who slow things down.
When she was Barnabas’ victim, Maggie was in category one. Now she’s fallen back into category three. She has even resumed her vocal habits of showing herself to be happy by starting every statement with a laugh in her voice and of exaggerating the stress on whatever words have a rising intonation. She had those classic Adult Child of an Alcoholic mannerisms in the early days of Dark Shadows, when her father’s drinking problem was a story element. Months ago they revised him as a social drinker, so it’s like she’s been spliced in from tapes of old episodes. The question of Maggie’s memory therefore generates suspense, not only because we don’t want Barnabas to kill her, but also because we don’t want her to end up in a narrative dead end and fade from the foreground of the show.
It’s chiasmus week on Dark Shadows. Chiasmus is when the last thing that happens in a story resembles the first thing that happened. Usually that causes the audience to look back on that first thing in a new light. Sometimes chiasmus gets very detailed, and the first several things are mirrored by the last several things.
On Wednesday, we began with well-meaning governess Vicki asleep in vampire Barnabas Collins’ house on the estate of Collinwood. Barnabas crept into her bedroom and stood over her, but did not bite. Then it was morning, and Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie delayed Vicki as she was leaving the house. Vicki took our point of view with her to the great house on the estate, where we started to see events through the eyes of visiting mad scientist Julia Hoffman. That episode ended with Julia going to Barnabas’ house. Willie delayed Julia entering the house, and Barnabas and Julia met. Their scene was tense, but Barnabas did not use any of his powers against Julia. That chiasmus marked the transition from Vicki to Julia as the audience’s main character to identify with.
On Thursday, we began with Barnabas spying on Vicki through her window, then entering her bedroom and standing over her while she slept. He again left the room without harming her. We ended with Julia spying on Barnabas through his window, then entering his house, opening his coffin, and looking at him. The parallel is completed when we see today that she left the coffin room without harming Barnabas. That chiasmus showed that Julia is capable of turning the tables on Barnabas.
Today’s episode begins with a reprise of yesterday’s cliffhanger, showing Julia gasping when she opens the coffin. So returning viewers suspect that it is likely to end with Barnabas in Julia’s room, and the suspense comes as we try to figure out how he will get there and how she will escape his malign power.
We see Julia in the drawing room of the great house talking to her friend, addled quack Dave Woodard. Dr Woodard says that her failure to report to him on the progress she has made with their common patient, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, coupled with her presence at Collinwood, a hundred miles from the hospital where Maggie is, has forced him to remove Maggie from her care. Julia lies to him, claiming that she has no progress to report and that the whole thing is impossibly boring. This somehow convinces Dr Woodard to leave Julia on the case.
Julia is at Collinwood pretending to be an historian studying the old families of New England, and Vicki has volunteered to help her in her research. Now Vicki is terribly afraid that if she gets involved in what Julia is doing, she will become involved in things that are too interesting for her to handle, and she wants to withdraw before she forever loses contact with tedium and drabness.
Barnabas tells Vicki that she has nothing to fear from “the past,” which at this point on Dark Shadows means the plot. While he is reassuring her, the set catches fire. We hear fire extinguishers and other noises in the background, but Jonathan Frid and Alexandra Moltke Isles don’t break character for an instant. The scene is a dreary one, marking as it does the doom of Vicki as a major part of the show, and the lines are poorly written, but they are absolutely committed to their work.
Barnabas does not believe Julia’s cover story, and is quite sure she represents a threat to him. He meets with her in the drawing room to reiterate his refusal to cooperate with her project. When Julia says that she is particularly interested in his “namesake”- actually himself- Barnabas airily asserts that he was by all accounts a dull fellow. Julia may have been able to sell that line to Dr Woodard on this same set a few minutes ago, but Barnabas doesn’t make any impression on Julia with it. The two of them continue to argue as they pass from the drawing room through the foyer. The dialogue isn’t really any better than what Barnabas and Vicki had in the previous scene, but because Frid and Grayson Hall have a lively relationship to depict- two people who each of whom knows more about the other than they are willing to say, and each of whom knows that the other knows much of what they are holding back- they make their whole sparring match seem to glisten with wit and style.
Barnabas agrees to meet Julia at his house the next evening. After he leaves, Julia tells his portrait that she can’t wait that long for their next encounter, and she knows he can’t, either.
We cut to Julia in her bedroom. Vicki pays a visit, during which we hear another depressing conversation about Vicki’s newfound fear of narrative relevance. Julia assures her that “There is nothing for you to fear.” After Vicki leaves, Julia looks at her clock and sees it is a quarter to one in the morning. We dissolve to the foyer, where the hall clock reads 2:00. Barnabas appears in Julia’s bedroom and approaches the bed, where he prepares to uncover Julia. We then hear Julia greeting Barnabas by name. She emerges from the shadows on the other end of the room, and tells Barnabas she has been waiting for him a long, long time.
A storm is keeping everyone awake at the great house of Collinwood. Well-meaning governess Vicki is having a particularly hard time falling asleep, since she has the feeling someone is staring at her. When heiress Carolyn comes into Vicki’s room, Vicki points out the window and asks Carolyn if she sees a figure standing behind a tree. Carolyn doesn’t know what Vicki is talking about. We cut to the yard, but we see a figure crouching in the bushes, not standing by a tree.
The crouching figure is vampire Barnabas Collins, and he looks ridiculous. Barnabas has been meaning to bite Vicki for weeks now, and keeps getting sidetracked. Earlier this week she even invited herself to spend the night in his house, and come morning she still had all her blood.
After Carolyn leaves the room, Vicki goes to bed. Barnabas finally materializes and approaches her bedside, but again can’t bring himself to go through with the bite. Instead, he opens the music box he gave her and disappears. The music awakens her.
Carolyn comes back in and tells Vicki the power is out. Vicki says she doesn’t understand how the music box could have been opened while she slept, and says she had a feeling that something dangerous had been in her room. Barnabas’ pusillanimity makes him dangerous indeed to Vicki- if she doesn’t get a place in the vampire story soon, Vicki will be at risk of becoming irrelevant to the show.
Vicki and Carolyn go downstairs and find Julia Hoffman awake and reading some old books. Julia is a mad scientist who has learned that Barnabas is a vampire and has come to study him, but she has told the family that she is an historian working on a book about the old families of New England.
Julia questions Vicki about Barnabas. She had learned about Barnabas in her capacity as a doctor treating his previous victim, Maggie Evans, and Vicki’s answers explain what Maggie meant when she remembered that she heard “a tinkling melody” and smelled a “sweet fragrance” during her captivity. As Julia continues to probe, Vicki becomes upset and hastens back to her room. Vicki has been Julia’s main advocate in Collinwood, as she was the main advocate for Dark Shadows‘ first character derived from Professor Van Helsing, Dr Peter Guthrie, who helped in the fight against undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins last spring. Julia’s unbothered reaction to her angry departure suggests that she isn’t planning to take Vicki into her confidence and doesn’t think she needs her help.
Julia and Carolyn chat for a moment, then go back to bed when the power comes back on. John Scoleri has a fine summary of this part of the episode: “So in Collinwood they drink coffee when they can’t sleep, get up when the power is off, and go back to bed once it comes back on. Maybe they’re all vampires…”
At home in the Old House on the estate, Barnabas is staring out the window feeling sorry for himself. Julia sneaks up near the window. She listens to him talk to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie.
Barnabas tells Willie to go to Portland, Maine to buy some necessities and to come back as soon as possible so that he can keep Julia away from the house. He says he is worried about who Julia really is and what she wants. He tells Willie that the sun is about to rise, so he might as well leave right away while Barnabas goes to the basement.
Once the front parlor is clear, Julia opens the window, a process we see from the inside. Just three weeks ago, we saw seagoing con man Jason McGuire enter through the same window. Jason would fight Willie, go to the basement, find Barnabas in his coffin, and be killed.
Julia has made sure Willie is gone, but she does go to the basement. Like Jason, she finds Barnabas’ coffin, opens it, and sees him inside. We see her reaction. For the first time, there is a trace of fear on her face.
Julia is now the first person to learn that Barnabas is a vampire otherwise than by becoming his victim. As the episode began with Barnabas spying on Vicki through her window, then entering her room while she was unconscious and looking at her, so it ends with Julia spying on Barnabas through his window, then entering his inner sanctum while he is unconscious and looking at him. This chiasmus suggests that Julia is capable of turning the tables on Barnabas. It remains to be seen whether the parallel will be complete, and she will choose to leave him be as Barnabas left Vicki be, or she will try to do something against him.
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