timothy eliot stokes – Page 2 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 636: The old Adam

Unique among the narrative arcs in Dark Shadows, the story of Frankenstein’s monster Adam has a clear structure. It consists of a prologue and five acts, with an interlude between the second and third acts.

The prologue is about the process of building a patchwork man and animating him. It begins when mad scientist Eric Lang meets vampire Barnabas Collins in #466 and ends in #490, when Barnabas and another mad scientist, Julia Hoffman, bring Adam to life.

The next two weeks make up Act One of Adam’s story. Vampires and mad scientists are both metaphors for extreme selfishness, and so it is unsurprising that Barnabas and Julia turn out to be the worst possible parents. Though he has the body of a grown man, Adam has just begun to live. Barnabas and Julia lock their newborn in the prison cell in the basement of Barnabas’ house and leave him alone there for hours on end, chaining him to the wall. Robert Rodan’s facial expressions convey the heartbreak of this horrific act of child abuse unforgettably. We can’t help but take his suffering seriously. This is the first major difficulty for the storyline. Barnabas and Julia are the core of Dark Shadows, so that if we feel bad about them, we feel bad about the show.

Act Two begins at the end of #500, when Adam escapes from his cell and fights Barnabas. Adam can speak only a few words, has no idea how people interact with each other, and does not know his own strength. As a result, he hurts everyone he meets. He makes one friend during this period, blind artist Sam Evans. In a moment of confusion, Adam hits Sam in #515, causing an injury that leads to Sam’s death. Again, we pity Adam throughout this period, but can see no way he will be able to contribute anything to the story but more death and sorrow.

In #518, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes persuaded Adam to come home with him. Adam stays in Stokes’ apartment for some time, learning to talk, to read, and to do various other things. Aside from a few glimpses of these lessons, Adam is off-screen and not involved in the action during this period. That is why I say his time as a guest at Stokes’ place is an interlude, not an Act.

Act Three begins in #539, when Adam has to leave Stokes’ place to avoid the police and heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard lets him live in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. In this period, Adam falls in love with Carolyn. She is attracted to him, but struggles against her feelings. This situation may sound more likely than either severe child abuse or lethal awkwardness to lead to an engaging story, but it suffers from its setting. Week after week, we see Adam cooped up in his dusty little room, alone with books and a chess set. The Creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reads The Sorrows of Werther, Plutarch’s Lives, and Paradise Lost; Adam reads the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the works of Sigmund Freud. He is marginally better off than he was in Barnabas’ basement cell, but he is still a prisoner, and it is still depressing to be confined along with him.

In Act Four, Adam is under the influence of suave warlock Nicholas Blair. In #549 Nicholas talks Adam into trying to rape Carolyn; that attack draws a line under their budding romance. By #551, Nicholas has talked Adam into confronting Barnabas and demanding that he build a woman to be his mate. Adam tells Barnabas that if he does not comply, he will murder everyone who lives in the great house of Collinwood, starting with well-meaning governess Vicki. Longtime viewers remember that Vicki spent the first 38 weeks of the show befriending strange and troubled boy David Collins, healing the psychological wounds David had suffered in his early years with his own unsuitable parents. If anyone could help Adam recover from the abuse he himself suffered from Barnabas and Julia in his first two weeks of life, it would be Vicki. His threat to kill her therefore shows just how little hope there is for Adam.

The project to build Adam’s mate reached its climax in #596, when she came to life and was given the name Eve. This began Act Five, which was all about Eve’s unconcealed hatred for Adam. Nicholas persuaded her to pretend to like him in #624; there is a jump cut in that episode which suggests that they may have had sex. Adam found out that she had been faking her interest in him, and murdered her in #626. Nicholas then persuaded him that if Barnabas and Julia could bring Eve’s body back to life, she would have a sweeter temperament. Adam renewed his demands upon them, and they ran the experiment again in #633/634, but it was a total failure, destroying Eve’s body so that it no further attempt would be possible.

Deranged with fury, Adam went to Vicki’s bedroom in the great house to abduct her. Carolyn found him there; she saw him hit Vicki in the face and flatten her. This not only alienated whatever sympathy Carolyn might have retained for Adam, it also shows how far he has come since the days when he was a danger because he didn’t know his own strength. The blow he delivers to Vicki is the same as the one he dealt to Sam, but while Sam wound up in the hospital and eventually died in part because of it, Vicki is only knocked out. He is still a deadly menace, but now he kills intentionally. This is emphasized when he chokes Carolyn in the same way as he had Eve, but she makes a full recovery a bit later.

Adam took Vicki to the laboratory in Barnabas’ basement where the equipment is still set up and Eve’s charred remains are still on a bed. He hooked Vicki up to the equipment and was trying to use it to torture her to death when Barnabas and Julia made their way to him. He laughs at Barnabas. Since the laboratory is only a few steps from the cell where Adam was kept in his early days, it was clear that this was closing the loop on the child abuse theme of Act One. Barnabas shot Adam in the shoulder, ending the threat to Vicki, and Adam escaped.

Stokes is the last friend Adam has left, and he sneaks into his apartment today. The telephone rings; Adam picks it up but does not say anything. Adam had done the same thing in #521, during the interlude when he was staying with Stokes. In those days, he didn’t know what a telephone was. But now, he is consciously trying to be stealthy. He recognizes the voice on the telephone as that of an intensely unpleasant man known variously as Peter and Jeff, and a moment later he picks up a knife. This is a perfectly understandable reaction to any reminder of Peter/ Jeff.

Stokes comes in, and Adam puts the weapon down. Stokes sees his gunshot wounds, and goes to call a doctor. “Not Julia!,” Adam objects, to which Stokes replies with the assurance that “Dr Hoffman is not my resident physician.” Before Adam can explain how he came to be shot, Stokes announces that “I won’t even ask you what has happened. Curiosity is the most boring obsession.” He telephones a doctor whom he calls “Carl,” and says that he knows he can count on his discretion. That Stokes knows a doctor who will come to his apartment, treat a fugitive from justice for a gunshot wound, and as a matter of course keep the matter between them is a sign that he is someone who will be able to look after Adam quite well.

Stokes gives Adam a new shirt. Adam tells him that he despairs of ever being loved because of the prominent scars on his face. Stokes introduces him to the concept of plastic surgery and tells him that the scars should be easy enough to correct. He is talking to Adam about the prospect of a new life when a knock comes at the door. Adam exits, never to be seen again.

Plaid Adam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

One of the big surprises for me on this rewatch of Dark Shadows has been how good an actor Robert Rodan really was. The Adam story was such a downer that Mrs Acilius and I hadn’t liked anything about it before, and Rodan was caught up in our overall rejection of it. But he was excellent every step of the way. Whatever is going to happen to Adam after his exchange with Stokes will happen far from Collinsport, which is to say, not on Dark Shadows, so when we wish for more Rodan on the show we are wishing he could have been cast later as another character. I think his height- 6’6″- probably kept that from happening. Two other actors who are almost as tall as Rodan would become major cast members later. One of those, David Selby, will join the cast in just two weeks, much too soon for Rodan to reappear as someone else. The other, Christopher Pennock, won’t show up until #936, by which time Rodan had moved to Los Angeles.

Rodan did some commercials for Cheer detergent when he was in California. Here he is in a Star Trek themed bit where he wears pointed ears. Evidently he was the laundry officer aboard a Vulcan ship.

Episode 605: Ordinary people like us

Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins has determined to let himself into a house occupied by suave warlock Nicholas Blair. He knows that Nicholas is harboring Frankenstein’s monsters named Adam and Eve, that Eve is the reincarnation of a homicidal maniac, and that Nicholas has sinister plans for the pair. Once in the house, he intends to kill Eve.

Most of the episode is taken up with Barnabas’ preparation for this mission. He works with his friends, mad scientist Julia Hoffman and occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, to ensure that Nicholas will be out of the house when Barnabas gets there. When he goes into the room where he expects to find Eve, Barnabas discovers that she is not there. Instead, he is greeted by his erstwhile wife, Angelique. Angelique is now a vampire. We end with her baring her fangs at him.

Beneath all the homicidal and fantastic elements is a classic situation of farce. A man sneaks into a house hoping to meet a young woman, only to come face to face with his ex-wife. There are several notes of intentional comedy. Keeping Nicholas distracted, Stokes gives him a long lecture about the history of the Collins family. When he starts in on the details of their shipping interests, Nicholas squirms, jumps up, and thinks of someplace else he ought to be. Stokes and Julia destroy that excuse, and Nicholas sinks sadly back into his chair, bracing himself to hear more.

It dawns on Nicholas he will have to listen to the rest of Stokes’ disquisition. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Barnabas first enters Eve’s room, he thinks he sees a figure in her bed, only to find that there are pillows piled up under the covers. Angelique pulled that on him in #403, and Julia did the same thing in #291. Longtime viewers are left wondering when he will fall for the same trick a fourth time.

I do wish writer Gordon Russell had called on his frequent collaborator Violet Welles for help with this one. There are four or five nice laughs, but the tone immediately subsides back to seriousness between them. Welles had a gift for glittering dialogue that could have kept us chuckling throughout.

Episode 596: She can speak

An experimental procedure has killed one woman and brought another to life. Yesterday someone identifying herself as Leona Eltridge turned up out of the blue and volunteered to be the “life force” donor who would help animate a bride for Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Mad scientist Julia and old world gentleman Barnabas capitulated to Adam’s insistence and went through with the procedure. Leona died, but the Bride, whom Adam has taken to calling Eve, is alive.

After a few minutes in a daze, Eve starts talking. This surprises Julia, Barnabas, and Adam. When Adam came to life, he didn’t know any words or anything else. They puzzle over the difference. Even after Eve starts alluding to her previous existence, they do not remember the original plan when Adam was created. Barnabas was Adam’s “life force” donor, and it was expected his body would die and his spirit would awaken in Adam. Evidently this is what has happened with Eve. Her memory comes back in bits and pieces; she is bewildered to find herself in Barnabas’ basement, and is quite anxious for an explanation as to how she got there. Eve faints, and Adam takes her to the upstairs bedroom. Julia examines her there, and concludes that she will be all right.

Meanwhile, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes has come to the house. In Friday’s episode, he reacted to the name “Leona Eltridge” by rushing off to do something terribly important. Today, we see that what he had to do was reenact a scene from Rosemary’s Baby. In that film, released 12 June 1968, Rosemary uses Scrabble tiles to figure out that two names are anagrams of each other. In this episode, recorded 30 September 1968, Stokes uses alphabetic refrigerator magnets to figure out that “Leona Eltridge” is an anagram of “Danielle Roget,” the name of an eighteenth century homicidal maniac. Barnabas and Julia don’t get to the movies much, so they don’t realize that this is proof positive that Eve is now the reincarnation of that hyper-violent personage.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In the upstairs bedroom, Eve demands a kiss from Adam. He is shy at first, but obliges. After he leaves her alone to go downstairs and confront Barnabas, Julia, and Stokes, spooky music plays, wind blows the bedroom door open and lifts the window treatments, and we hear chimes. Eve is standing in front of a portrait of gracious lady Josette, who like Danielle Roget was a Frenchwoman of the late eighteenth century; when Eve reacts to the ghostly manifestations by saying “I remember you!” we might think that Josette’s ghost, a major presence in the first year of Dark Shadows, has returned to do battle with an old foe. Eve rules this out when she addresses the ghost as “mon petit,” not “ma petite.”

As soon as Marie Wallace starts delivering lines, it is obvious she is going to be on the show for a while. She is firmly in command of a larger than life acting style of the sort the directors liked, and she dominates every shot she is in. She also solves another riddle. Thursday and Friday, Erica Fitz played Danielle/Leona. A technical description of Miss Fitz’ approach to that role would be quite similar to one of Miss Wallace’s approach to Eve. Each woman speaks her lines one word at a time, often giving a special inflection to a particular word in the middle of a sentence. Their posture and basic facial expressions are also similar. But while Miss Fitz did a stupefyingly bad job, Miss Wallace holds the audience’s attention easily, and leaves us with the sense that we are seeing a character with a coherent set of motivations. I suspect Miss Fitz must have seen Miss Wallace rehearsing, and made a woeful attempt to mimic her style.

Miss Wallace’s prominence in this episode adds a special piquancy to the reference to Rosemary’s Baby. In a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day, “Rob Staeger” points out that “Marie was in Nobody Loves an Albatross — which is actually one of the plays Rosemary’s husband had in his credits in Rosemary’s Baby!” Which is true- Rosemary says that Guy “was in Luther and Nobody Loves an Albatross and a lot of television plays and commercials.” That only two titles are given makes it quite a coincidence that one of the thirteen members of the opening night cast of one of them has her first lines in an episode that references the movie.

(I should mention that Barnard Hughes, a very distinguished actor who appeared in #27, was also in Nobody Loves an Albatross. I don’t know if he and Marie Wallace ever ran into each other and compared notes about their subsequent work on Dark Shadows.)

Episode 575: This rotten collection of death

How Revolting and Disgusting You Really Are

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has a job for a woman. Talking to his subordinate, vampire Angelique, he says that the job must go to “the most evil woman who ever lived.” At this, Angelique breaks into a smile, then raises her head proudly. Nicholas then says, “Someone like Lucrezia Borgia.” At this, Angelique’s face falls, and she protests that Lucrezia is dead.

Angelique, flattered when she thinks Nicholas is describing her as “The most evil woman who ever lived.”

Nicholas brushes this objection off, saying that “The spirit of evil can be made to live again.” Longtime viewers may have been wondering whether Lucrezia Borgia would make an appearance, since her name has come up more than once. In #152, sarcastic dandy Roger insulted his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, by comparing her to Lucrezia; in #178, Roger insulted his niece, heiress Carolyn, in the same way; and in #523, Carolyn brought up Lucrezia to insult Angelique, whom she knew when Angelique was calling herself Cassandra and was married to Roger. Perhaps we might have imagined some kind of story where Roger turns out to have some kind of supernatural connection to Lucrezia.

Nicholas continues teasing Angelique, bringing up the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, alleged serial killer and blood drinker of the 16th and 17th centuries. Angelique calls that lady “a vile woman,” in a tone that suggests she knew her personally. From November 1967 through March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and Angelique was its chief villain. She was not a vampire then, but a witch. Her spells were very powerful, but she was quite clumsy in her use of them, suggesting that she was a young woman new to witchcraft. Perhaps this line is meant to open the door to a retcon, one which will make it possible to tell stories about Angelique set in even earlier periods than the 1790s segment.

Nicholas agrees that the countess was “a vile woman,” and repeats that epithet as the first in a list of her qualifications for the job he has in mind- “ambitious, cunning, devious, unprincipled, decadent!” He finally concludes his teasing of Angelique and tells her that he will not hire her for the job. She is disappointed, as one of the benefits of the job is release from vampirism. She leaves the room. In the corridor, she flashes a smile which regular viewers recognize as a sign that she is going to defy Nicholas and try to seize what he would not give her.

The Only Filthy Way It Could Be Done

The job is an unusual one. Nicholas has persuaded Frankenstein’s monster Adam to confront old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman with a threat. If Julia and Barnabas do not repeat the procedure that created Adam and produce a woman who will be his mate, Adam will kill everyone in and around the great house of Collinwood. Subjected to that extortion, they undertake the project.

The procedure not only involves building a body from parts of corpses and running electrical charges through it, but also requires that the body be somehow connected to a person who will serve as its “life force.” It is energy drained from this person that will animate the body. Barnabas was Adam’s “life force.” Before the procedure, Barnabas was a vampire. Serving as Adam’s “life force” put his vampirism into remission. Nicholas talked about this with Angelique, raising her hopes that he would let her escape from vampirism the same way, only to dash those hopes cruelly.

Julia completed the experiment that brought Adam to life after the death of another mad scientist, Eric Lang. Lang had built the body and the apparatus, and had left detailed notes. Julia had studied those notes for some time before she knew which switches to throw and which dials to turn. Under Adam’s threat, Julia has rebuilt the apparatus in Barnabas’ basement and she has a cadaver there which she is using for parts. Barnabas has ordered his servant Willie to help with the grave robbing. Barnabas has also enlisted the aid of Lang’s former grave robber, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. The equipment needs a lot of tending, and Peter/ Jeff is the lab tech on that detail.

A Nice, New, Clean Slab of Flesh

Peter/ Jeff is by himself in the basement lab when Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes walks in. It’s news to Peter/ Jeff that Stokes is aware of the project, but he tells him that he knows everything about it. Stokes stays so calm as he examines the apparatus and looks at the cadaver that one supposes he must know a great deal.

Stokes asks Peter/ Jeff how the equipment runs when Barnabas’ house has no electricity. Peter/ Jeff says that Julia installed a generator. This must be some unusual kind of generator, since it runs in absolute silence. Later in the episode, Stokes will have a conversation with another character about how Barnabas doesn’t have a telephone.

When Barnabas was a vampire, he didn’t want meter readers or other workers dropping by unannounced and he had no use for modern conveniences. So of course he did not connect his house to the electric grid or to telephone service in those days. As for other utilities, it is a fairly prominent bit of lore that vampires cannot tolerate running water, so of course he wasn’t going to have any plumbing. But he’s been unvamped for almost six months now, so he may as well just update his house. Stokes’ lines today lampshade the problems he creates by refusing to do so.

Another unannounced visitor interrupts Stokes’ conversation with Peter/ Jeff. It is Adam. He is upset to find Stokes in the lab. Stokes once took Adam in and taught him English, and in those days Adam considered Stokes to be his best friend. But Stokes shocked Adam when he broke the news to him that he was an artificially constructed man, and has thoroughly alienated him by trying to talk him out of the violent lifestyle Nicholas has persuaded him to adopt.

Adam goes on a self-pitying rant when Stokes tries to reason with him. Peter/ Jeff interrupts and tells Adam something Stokes left out of his birds and bees talk, that he was built out of parts of dead bodies. Peter/ Jeff taunts Adam about this in a speech that is full of such gems that I suspect it was written, not by the credited author of today’s script, Gordon Russell, but by Russell’s frequent uncredited collaborator Violet Welles. Welles’ name will start to appear in the credits in 711, and fans of the show recognize the sparkle that marks her dialogue.

Peter/ Jeff tries to stab Adam. Adam easily disarms him and holds the knife at his throat. Stokes tells Adam that without Peter/ Jeff the project will be delayed. Adam then flings Peter/ Jeff to the floor. Peter/ Jeff is played by Roger Davis, an actor who had a big television career and was irritating in every part. Mr Davis is so annoying on Dark Shadows that Mrs Acilius and I can’t be the only ones who are disappointed when Adam doesn’t kill his character off the show and who cheer when he throws him to the floor.

Peter/ Jeff gets up and leaves the lab. Adam demands Stokes bring him back to resume working. Knowing how violent Adam is, Stokes follows Peter/ Jeff to the great house of Collinwood. Peter/ Jeff is meeting his fiancée, well-meaning governess Vicki, there, planning to take her out for a date. Stokes tells him that they will be in grave danger from Adam unless he goes back to the lab at once. Peter/ Jeff looks out the window, and sees Adam peering in. Adam actually opens the window and reaches into the drawing room while Vicki and Peter/ Jeff are there; it is hard to understand how Vicki doesn’t notice him. Peter/ Jeff makes an excuse, and goes back to the lab.

We see him back at work. The camera pans up to a mirror. It holds on the mirror for several seconds while we see Angelique’s reflection. Previously, they have stressed that vampires do not cast reflections. There have been several moments when actors have missed their marks or other production faults have occurred that left us seeing a vampire in a mirror, but this is obviously intentional, and it is jarring to regular viewers.

Angelique and Peter/ Jeff talk for a moment, then she bites him. Evidently she plans to enslave him and use his access to the laboratory to force her way into the role of “life force” for Adam’s mate. So far, almost every victim of a vampire we have seen has been left unable to do the work s/he was doing before being bitten, so regular viewers might suspect that Angelique’s ploy will simply incapacitate Peter/ Jeff from helping with the project. This expectation becomes all the more substantial when we remember the many times Angelique’s schemes have blown up in her face. The less likely it seems to us Angelique will succeed, the less effective this week-ending cliffhanger will be.

Episode 557: Unannounced visitors

Act One consists of recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia standing around Barnabas’ front parlor recapping various ongoing storylines.

Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode to a detailed analysis of this scene. He shows that Jonathan Frid’s performance and Grayson Hall’s are open to many objections. They fall short in such technical categories as “knowing their lines” and “standing on their marks” and “having the slightest idea what is going on.” But they are fascinating to watch nonetheless. Danny declares that “[t]he point of these scenes is to see how long two adults can stand around in a room saying preposterous things to each other.” Frid and Hall operate at such a high level of tension that the prospect of either of them breaking character generates enough suspense to keep us on the edge of our seats.

Patrick McCray wrote two separate posts about this episode. In the one that went live 13 September 2017, he too focuses on the performances in Act One. He writes:

Poor Jonathan Frid. He must have had a rough night. I am usually oblivious to his infamous (and completely understandable) line trouble, but in this one, it is so palpable that I totally understand why he retired from TV after DARK SHADOWS left the air. In his early dialogue with Grayson Hall, you can see sheer terror in the eyes of both performers as Barnabas haltingly recalls a trip to the hospital. This is followed by the “Frid Surge,” where Barnabas becomes far more committed and energetic when he turns to face the teleprompter. Of course, this gives him that great sense of vulnerability that was the secret to Barnabas’ success.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 13,” posted on the Collinsport Historical Society, 13 September 2017.

This is the only post on the Collinsport Historical Society tagged “Frid Surge”; that’s too bad, I’d like to see that phenomenon tracked throughout the series. I should also mention that Patrick goes on in this post to express his “confidence that Frid could have acted the doors off the collected ensemble had the poor guy just been given another frickin day to study his sides.”

Barnabas and Julia’s recap scene ends when an unexpected visitor barges in. He is an unpleasant man named Peter, who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff is fiancé to well-meaning governess Vicki, whom Barnabas and Julia know to have been abducted by Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Adam came to Barnabas’ house yesterday and threatened to kill Vicki unless Barnabas and Julia created a mate for him.

Peter/ Jeff was assistant to Eric Lang, the mad scientist who created Adam, and he knows that Barnabas and Julia were connected to the experiment. He does not know for sure that Adam is Lang’s creation, that Barnabas and Julia brought Adam to life after Lang’s death, or that Adam has abducted Vicki. He does, however, have grounds to suspect that each of these things might be true. In this scene, he announces his suspicions to Barnabas and Julia. They huddle in one corner of the room while he shouts his lines in his singularly irritating voice. They deny all three of his points. One of the commenters on Danny’s post, “Straker,” summed up their reaction admirably:

Frid and Hall were too professional to show it but I sensed they were both annoyed when Roger Davis marched in and started yelling. It’s kind of like how you feel when you’re at a party and the host’s five year old son throws a tantrum. Sort of an embarrassed tolerance.
Comment left by “Straker” at 6:21 am Pacific time 31 July 2020 on “Episode 557: A Race of Monsters,” by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, 1 January 2015

Roger Davis as Peter/ Jeff, in one of the most subtle moments of his performance. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After Peter/ Jeff’s scene, it is Barnabas’ turn to be an unwelcome guest. He calls on occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Barnabas and Julia suspect that Stokes may be the evil mastermind who has turned the previously gentle Adam toward evil plans. When Stokes hears Barnabas knocking on his door, he looks up and rasps to himself “Go away… No one is home…” This is one of my favorite lines in the whole series. Stokes was quite cheerful when he first involved himself in the strange goings-on, but as he has found himself drawn deeper and deeper into the unholy world of Collinsport he has come to regret his decisions.

Stokes is quite impatient with Barnabas’ demands that he tell him what he knows and his refusal to reciprocate with information about himself. It is only because Vicki is in danger that Stokes tells Barnabas anything at all.

Stokes already knows how Adam came into being, and Barnabas tells him about Adam’s conversation with him. This brings up a question about the scene with Peter/ Jeff. Why couldn’t Barnabas and Julia have trusted Peter/ Jeff with as much information as Barnabas here gives Stokes? Peter/ Jeff can no more go to the police than Stokes can, he will not tell Vicki anything about Lang’s experiment, and Barnabas and Julia have no reason to suspect him of being behind Adam’s turn to evil. These questions don’t come to mind during the scene with Peter/ Jeff, partly because he is so disagreeable a presence that we want him off screen as soon as possible, and partly because it has long been Barnabas’ habit to tell his enemies everything he knows while he zealously guards his secrets from potential helpers.

Patrick McCray’s second post about this episode, published 30 July 2018, includes an analysis of Thayer David’s portrayal of Stokes:

Professor Eliot Stokes gains fascinating dimension in 557. Normally, jovial and helpful, we see his protectiveness of Adam reveal an irascible and sternly just man within. Anton LaVey extolled “responsibility to the responsible,” and there are few other places where Barnabas gets both barrels of that. Stokes is perhaps the most inherently good man in Collinsport since his fellow freemason, Bill Malloy, took his last diving lesson. (Ironically, at the hands of Thayer David’s first character.) Stokes’ prime reason for siding with Adam and not Barnabas? The former vampire and Julia have withheld vital information for months. Yes, they have necessary trust issues, but this is Stokes we’re talking about. Adam may be a wildly unpredictable man-beast, capable of leveling Collinsport to sand before breakfast, but he’s also (until later in the episode) a prime graduate of Rousseau’s Finishing School for Noble Savages. He’s nursed greedily on the milk of morality that spurts abundantly from the ripe and straining teat of of Eliot Stokes’ moral tutelage. It takes a Nicholas Blair — so often Stokes’ foil — to teach him the less savory lessons in humanity. Stokes knows that there’s only so much danger in which Adam can find himself… Victoria Winters is another matter.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: Episode 557,” published on The Collinsport Historical Society, 30 July 2018

Barnabas passes the baton to Stokes, who becomes the third character in the episode to pay an unwelcome visit. He goes to Adam. He asks the big guy who has taught him to be cruel and amoral, and gets nothing but lies in return. He tries to persuade him that he must not hurt an innocent person, and Adam angrily declares that it is “fair” for him to make Barnabas watch him kill Vicki if Barnabas will not make a mate for him.

In Patrick McCray’s 2017 post, he praises Robert Rodan’s performance as Adam:

Robert Rodan issues a highly cerebral, emotionally packed performance. Rodan never receives the credit he deserves. Much of Adam’s stint on the show finds him equipped with an eloquent, even sesquipedalian command of the language. His inner conflict is as existential as it gets… Where do you turn? Rodan balances this absurd chimera of conflicts with effortless aplomb that makes Cirque du Soleil look as clumsy as a Matt Helm fight scene.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 13,” posted on the Collinsport Historical Society, 13 September 2017.

Patrick amplifies that praise in his 2018 post:

Robert Rodan is an unsung hero of an actor, delivering his existential angst with passion and truth. It’s a shame that his identification with an eventually unpopular character was probably a factor in Rodan not being recycled by Dan Curtis, despite being the dark-haired, blue-eyed “type” that typified the ruggedly handsome, DS norm (such as Selby, Lacy, Crothers, George, Ryan, Prentice, Storm, Bain, etc.)
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: Episode 557,” published on The Collinsport Historical Society, 30 July 2018

While I always found the sight of Conrad Bain a guarantee of a fine performance, I can’t say it ever occurred to me to class him as “ruggedly handsome” in the way that one might class the other men Patrick lists. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.

Episode 550: Much given to melodrama

Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes is just the person to consult if you need to know what kind of amulet will ward off the spells of the nearest wicked witch, but as a committed bachelor and a workaholic, he does not have a very sensitive touch when called upon to give advice in matters of the heart. We saw this in #544. Stokes’ friend Adam had questions for him. Adam is a mysterious man who has no memories prior to ten weeks ago and no conception of human relationships beyond a vague happiness associated with the word “Friend!” and an intense rage associated with the word”Kill!” He wanted Stokes to explain what was wrong with his attempts to kiss his patroness, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Stokes, usually the most self-assured of men, reacted with a sudden display of insecurity, squirming a bit before admitting that his solitary lifestyle left him at a loss for answers to Adam’s questions.

Yesterday, Adam took the advice of suave warlock Nicholas Blair and assaulted Carolyn. He forcibly kissed her and pushed her to the floor of the room where she is hiding him from the police. We ended the episode unsure how far Adam took his attack. As we open today, we see Carolyn in the main part of her house looking shaken and with her hair mussed, but with her clothes intact. Perhaps she managed to stop Adam before he went beyond what we saw, or perhaps he didn’t try to go further. Not since the references to strange and troubled boy David Collins’ uncertain paternity in #32 and #147 has it been clear that sexual intercourse even exists in the universe of Dark Shadows, and it doesn’t seem that anyone would have told Adam about it. So he may have stopped with kissing because he doesn’t know there is anything more involved in a rape.

Carolyn telephones Stokes and asks him to come to the house at once. By the time he gets there, she is unavailable. Well-meaning governess Vicki greets him, explaining that Carolyn is in the kitchen mediating a dispute between housekeeper Mrs Johnson and Mrs Johnson’s son Harry. Vicki smiles, laughs a little, and describes this dispute sarcastically as a potential tragedy, suggesting a condescending attitude towards the Johnsons that doesn’t really fit with her character as it has been developed up to this point. Stokes flatly tells Vicki that he is not interested in her, and she turns to go. He apologizes, and she comes back. They talk a little about some recent plot points. When Carolyn comes in, she and Stokes dismiss Vicki.

Carolyn tells Stokes what Adam did, and he goes to the big guy’s room in the long deserted west wing of the house. Stokes decides that the time has come for a birds-and-bees talk. This is not the standard version. Adam does not have parents; he is a Frankenstein’s monster. When Stokes tells him what he knows of the circumstances of his creation, Adam is horrified. He tells Stokes they are no longer friends and orders him out of the room. Once he is alone, Adam looks in the mirror, focuses on the scars where he was stitched together, and pronounces himself ugly. He smashes the mirror, picks up a knife, and declares that because no one will ever love him, he must die.

Broken Adam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In 2020, Wallace McBride wrote that “On Dark Shadows, your reflection always tells the truth.” But the characters do not always interpret their reflections correctly, so that they sometimes miss the truth. When Dark Shadows began, Vicki was on a quest to find out who her parents were. As Wallace McBride points out, that story was hobbled from its beginning. In episode #1, reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard opens the doors to Vicki, and the resemblance between Joan Bennett and Alexandra Moltke Isles is so strong that it looks like the two women are reflections of each other. Indeed, Mrs Isles was cast as Vicki largely because she looked so much like Joan Bennett, and Bennett famously mistook Mrs Isles for her daughter when she first saw her. As the show went on Liz came to treat Vicki so much like a daughter that it would have been hard to find a point in a story confirming that she really was, and so the whole question of Vicki’s parentage fizzled out.

As Vicki failed to interpret the reflection that told her the truth about her origins, so Adam misinterprets what his reflection means about someone who came into the world as he did. It’s true he has conspicuous scars and some odd coloring, but you get used to that pretty quickly, and aside from those he is movie star handsome. So “I am ugly!” is a misinterpretation. Stokes told Adam in so many words that at the rate he has been learning he will soon be indistinguishable from people who were born and grew to maturity; regular viewers have seen him acquire so many skills so rapidly that we cannot doubt this is true. His attempt at suicide, like his decision to take Nicholas’ advice and try to rape Carolyn, is the result of his underestimation of his own capacity to develop. That underestimation, in turn, is the result of his failure to fully absorb the information about himself his surroundings are reflecting back to him.

Adam’s plight is thrown into stark relief for us by a scene that took place before Stokes’ visit to him. He looks out the window of his room and sees the terrace, where Vicki is with her boyfriend, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff proposes marriage to Vicki, and she receives the offer warmly. Peter/ Jeff, like Adam, has memories that go back only a few months. As Stokes has told Adam of his unusual origin and elicited a deeply hostile response from him, so Vicki has told Peter/ Jeff that she has reason to believe he has a supernatural origin, and he reacted just as bitterly. Peter/ Jeff is surprised that Vicki would marry someone with his background, but she makes it clear it doesn’t bother her at all. If Peter/ Jeff could find love with Vicki, then there must be a woman somewhere who would love Adam.

Episode 544: An incomplete man

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman and suave warlock Nicholas Blair each want to find Frankenstein’s monster Adam before the other does. Julia is sure that occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes knows where Adam is; while he sits at a chessboard and plays both sides of a game, she asks Stokes to tell her. He says he wants answers to some questions of his own, but the audience knows that the information he wants is just what Julia will never tell him.

Nicholas takes a less conventional approach. He raises the ghosts of a couple of the dead men whose corpses supplied the raw materials from which Adam’s body was constructed. One lacks a right arm, the other a head. He asks them where Adam is, and they turn in unison to point with their left arms at the great house of Collinwood. It’s such a smoothly coordinated move that it looks like they must be spending their time in the afterlife starting a boy band.

The Boneyard Boys showing off their signature move, the Postmortem Point. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The arm donor is played by David Groh, who less than a decade later would become a star as Joe on the sitcom Rhoda. Groh was such a charismatic performer that it’s hard not to think of speaking parts on Dark Shadows that other actors played badly and wonder what would have happened had he played them instead. I went on about that in a comment I left on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day in 2020; here, I will just mention that if Groh, instead of the lamentably unaccomplished Craig Slocum, had played ex-convict Harry Johnson, we would probably have seen a red-hot love triangle in which Harry vied with Adam for the affections of heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard.

Earlier in the episode, Adam had asked Stokes why it was not allowed for him to kiss Carolyn. Thayer David makes the most of this scene. Stokes freezes and looks up when Adam starts posing his questions, then seems genuinely shaken when he says that he is inadequate to the task of answering them, since he himself has never raised children. We can see that, in that moment, Stokes feels as incomplete as Adam. It’s touching to see Stokes’ usually supreme self-assurance give way to shamefaced uncertainty. When Stokes tells Adam to put away his budding sexual desires and to concentrate on his books, we catch a glimpse of the tragic side of Stokes’ own celibate, scholarly life.

Stokes feels inadequate. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

But not even a father of twenty would be prepared for this situation. In the ten weeks he has been alive, Adam has become fluent in English and able to read with facility; he has the body of a grown man and moves with agility and force. Yet he knows absolutely nothing of human relationships beyond a basic understanding of the words “Friend” and “Kill!” It is hard to imagine that anyone has ever lived who needed the instruction Adam needs now.

Episode 538: Usually without reason

Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, expert on the occult, finds himself laboring under the direction of Julia Hoffman, MD. Stokes does not understand why Julia insisted on leaving the long abandoned shack where a very tall, very mysterious man named Adam seemed to be suffocating, he does not understand why Julia has buried her friend Barnabas Collins in an unmarked grave in the woods, and does not understand why Julia has concluded that Barnabas is alive and they must dig him up. Julia tells Stokes she will answer his questions when the exhumation is complete. Stokes keeps digging. They reach a coffin. They open it to find Barnabas. Julia detects a faint “pulsebeat” in his wrist. Before Stokes can raise his questions, Julia says she wants to be alone with Barnabas and reminds Stokes that Adam needs attention.

Gravedigger in a three piece suit. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Back in the shack, Stokes finds heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard with Adam. Earlier, Carolyn was distraught, unable to find a “pulsebeat” in Adam’s wrist, but now he is up and moving, apparently quite well. Stokes says that Julia is on her way, and Adam becomes agitated. He hates Julia and Barnabas, but has never explained to Stokes or Carolyn why. Carolyn decides to hide him in the long-deserted west wing of her family’s home, the great house of Collinwood. Stokes sees many drawbacks to this plan, but can suggest no alternative.

Only Stokes is still in the shack when Julia comes. He will not tell her where Adam has gone, and she will not answer any of his questions. With a smile, he tells her that he looks forward to understanding Barnabas’ secret. At this, she looks uneasy, clearly not welcoming that prospect.

Barnabas was, for 172 years, a vampire. His curse went into remission earlier in 1968, and he has been virtually human since #490, when he took part in an experiment that brought Adam to life as a Frankenstein’s monster. Julia ordered Barnabas’ servant Willie to bury him the other day, because she was afraid he was about to become a vampire again, but yesterday she figured out that Adam’s existence was keeping that from happening.

When Barnabas is unearthed, he is afraid that he has reverted to vampirism. Julia shows him his reflection in her compact mirror, proving to him that he is still human. The first time they did the vampire/ mirror bit was in #288, when Julia saw that Barnabas did not cast a reflection in a compact mirror and thereby confirmed her suspicion that Barnabas was a vampire. That led him to try to kill her. Now they are fast friends, and the same gimmick, with the opposite result, brings them a moment of shared joy.

Barnabas goes to the great house, and sees wicked witch Angelique/ Cassandra standing on the terrace. She was the one who cast the spell that prompted Julia and Willie to think they ought to bury him, and Julia had told her that he was dead. She is rather surprised when he shows up. He taunts her with the failure of her attack on him, she pretends not to know what he is talking about, and he goes along his merry way. Alone, she vows that she will soon regain her power over Barnabas.

Episode 537: Reason to stay

Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is dead, and this time it seems like he might stay that way. At least it seems so to his friend Julia Hoffman, MD, and his servant Willie Loomis; they’ve buried him, and are talking about what to do next. Julia decides they should tell people Barnabas went on a long trip, and that they themselves should leave the area before dawn. They will go to a sanitarium called Windcliff. Julia will resume her duties as its chief, while Willie will take a job there doing whatever he can handle.

Julia orders Willie to pack his things; he asks if he should pack Barnabas’ things also. Julia is impressed that Willie thinks of this. Perhaps he is remembering his onetime friend Jason McGuire, whom Barnabas killed in #275. Jason was hated by all and was under orders from the sheriff to leave town when he fell afoul of Barnabas, and so it was easy for everyone to assume he had simply gone away. Still, in #277, sarcastic dandy Roger wondered why Jason hadn’t taken his clothes or his shaving kit. No one ever tried to tie up that loose end, but perhaps Willie learned of the problem and made a note of it for the next time he had to conspire to conceal a death.

Willie goes directly from Barnabas’ freshly dug grave to Maggie Evans’ house. Willie has an unwholesome preoccupation with Maggie. Longtime viewers will remember Willie’s menacing approach to her in #202 and #207, before Barnabas got hold of him and turned him from a dangerously unstable ruffian into a sorely bedraggled blood thrall; those who are mindful of the period when Dark Shadows first became a hit will remember May and June of 1967, when Maggie was Barnabas’ prisoner and Willie tried desperately to lessen her suffering; and first time viewers will be startled by the beginning of the scene, when we see Willie peeking through the window at Maggie. When Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission, his former victims tended to return to the personalities they had before he bit them. Willie has not quite become the rapey goon he was in his first two weeks on the show, but neither is he the first man a woman would choose to be alone with.

Since she is The Nicest Girl in Town, Maggie has long since forgiven Willie what he did when he first came to Collinsport. And Julia used a magical version of hypnosis on Maggie to induce amnesia covering the whole period of her involvement with Barnabas and to leave her with warm feelings of goodwill for him. But it’s late at night, so when Willie knocks, she is reluctant to let him in. He insists, and she relents.

Willie tells her he will be going away soon to take an exciting new job. Maggie says that she is sure everyone will miss him. At first he repeats the story that Barnabas is going away on a long trip, but then he starts crying. When Maggie asks why, he tells her Barnabas has died. He asks her to keep this secret, but the most she will agree to do is to wait until he leaves town to start talking about it.

Meanwhile, Julia has gone to the great house of Collinwood, where she has been a houseguest for about a year. Before she goes upstairs to pack, she stops and tells Roger’s wife Cassandra that Barnabas is dead.

Julia knows that Cassandra is actually Angelique, the wicked witch responsible for Barnabas’ woes. It would seem that the whole point of covering up Barnabas’ death would be to keep Angelique/ Cassandra from finding out about it. Yet Julia not only goes out of her way to tell her, she also declares to her that she will continue to fight against her.

Angelique/ Cassandra spits out that Julia is in love with Barnabas, to which Julia replies “Not nearly as much as you are.” For some time, the show has been developing the theme that Julia would like Barnabas to be her lover. In their post about the episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John Scoleri said “So Julia’s true feelings are finally on the table.” To which Christine Scoleri replied, “Where have you been? Julia’s feelings have been on the table, the wall, the floor…pretty much everywhere for a long time.”

Willie’s visit to Maggie and Julia’s to Angelique/ Cassandra mark a difference between the first year of Dark Shadows and its later phases. When the show started, the characters were too good at keeping secrets, with the result that very little happened. They took this to such an extreme that one of the two principal storylines with which the show began- well-meaning governess Vicki’s attempt to find out who her parents were- died out altogether because reclusive matriarch Liz and her lawyers, the only characters who knew anything about it, would never talk.

Now, the characters involved in the action don’t keep secrets from each other at all, with the result that events comes thick and fast, but it is hard to build complex alliances or to explore nuanced relationships. They still conceal information from Vicki, Liz, Roger, and other characters left over from the early days, rendering them background figures with little to contribute to the story. Video game enthusiasts might call them “NPCs”- non-player characters.

Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, occult expert, enters. Stokes tells Julia that a man named Adam appears to be dead. Julia goes with him to an abandoned shack in the woods where she examines Adam’s body and pronounces him dead. When Stokes tells her that Adam exhibited sharp pains in his neck starting at about 11 PM, that he called out for Barnabas, that his strength appeared to ebb for no apparent reason, and that he then died, Julia’s eyes widen. Suddenly Adam comes back to life. He starts gasping for air and miming a struggle against an invisible barrier just above his face. Julia tells Stokes she will have to go. He protests that she must stay with her patient. What she says next doesn’t mean much to Stokes, and would mean less to a first-time viewer:

JULIA: He is suffocating- I may know why. No, it’s impossible! But it may be that they are the same. Experiment- perhaps Adam is why-

STOKES: What are you talking about?

JULIA: Barnabas- I buried him- alive!

Regular viewers know that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster created in an experiment begun by mad scientist Eric Lang. Shortly before he died of wounds inflicted by Angelique/ Cassandra, Lang recorded an audiotape in which he explained that as long as Adam lives, Barnabas’ vampirism will remain in remission. Julia has not heard that tape, but the audience has, time without number. We also know that when Barnabas was sealed up in a wall from #512 to #516, Adam experienced the pains that Barnabas suffered. In these lines, we see Julia for the first time beginning to understand the true nature of the connection between Adam and Barnabas.

Stokes’ approach to Julia is as indiscreet in its own way as were Willie’s to Maggie and Julia’s to Angelique/ Cassandra. Adam hates Julia and Barnabas, because they abused him shockingly in his first weeks of life, and forbade Stokes to bring her. Julia’s closing outburst is also an extreme indiscretion, as Stokes is basically a law-abiding person who could not be expected to help Julia and Willie cover up their many crimes. Again, we have come a long way from the days when the show would drop a major story rather than have a recurring character breach attorney-client privilege.

Like the Scoleris, Danny Horn was in good form when blogging about this part of the show. His post on Dark Shadows Every Day about this episode makes a number of penetrating observations about the connections between Julia and Willie’s opening scene at the grave and absurdist plays like Waiting for Godot and Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Episode 536: Now we’re gonna hear the dogs howlin’ again!

A magical bat has bitten recovering vampire Barnabas Collins on the neck and Barnabas appears to have died. Barnabas’ friend Julia and his servant Willie have a conference to discuss their next steps. Barnabas had expected such an attack, knowing that the witch who made him a vampire in the first place has been working to renew her curse. Willie laments the situation, crying out, “Aw, now we’re gonna hear the dogs howlin’ again!” Evidently that’s the bad part.

No more quiet nights for Willie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas had directed Julia and Willie to drive a stake through his heart once it had stopped beating. They can’t do it. They decide to bury him in the woods instead. Willie mentions a cross; a silver cross inside the lid of his coffin had kept Barnabas immobilized for the 171 years before Willie inadvertently released him to prey upon the living in April 1967, so perhaps that’s how they plan to show mercy to their friend.

Once Willie has dug the grave and put Barnabas’ coffin in it, he and Julia decide to pray. She takes the lead, kneeling and throwing dirt, presumably including stones, onto the coffin. Dark Shadows avoided the topic of religion almost completely until repressed spinster Abigail Collins made her first appearance in #367; she and the Rev’d Mr Trask, introduced in #385, presented a wildly unfair, highly entertaining lampoon of eighteenth century New England Congregationalism. Recently the show has been lurching towards a vaguely friendly attitude towards Christianity. If Julia keeps strewing stones onto the grave once it is filled in, we might think that this friendliness extends to Judaism as well.

Julia praying. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, a very tall man named Adam is having a bad time. Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster, and when he was created he drew the effect of the vampire curse from Barnabas. He does not feel the effects of that curse, but he does suffer pain when Barnabas is injured. When heiress Carolyn calls on Adam at the old shack in the woods where he is hiding, she finds that his neck hurts where Barnabas was bitten. When Julia declares Barnabas dead, we cut back to the shack, where Adam has stopped moving. Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes has joined Carolyn; he feels Adam’s wrist, and in a bit of Collinsport English that is becoming increasingly prominent on the show says that he can find no “pulsebeat.”

Barnabas was bricked up in a wall from #512 to #516, and Adam felt his pain during that period. So it is no surprise to returning viewers that Adam suffers along with Barnabas now. We also have heard countless repetitions of something neither Julia nor Willie has ever heard, an audiotape in which Eric Lang, the mad scientist who created Adam, explains that as long as Adam lives Barnabas will be free of vampirism. So we doubt that Barnabas’ curse will return, and hope that Adam’s suffering will be the clue that leads Julia and Willie to rescue Barnabas from being buried alive. Since Julia and Willie have no idea where Adam is and Adam hates them both, it’s as difficult to see how they could find out what he’s going through as it is to see how Barnabas could get out of the grave any other way. In that difficulty is the suspense with which the episode ends.