“They just kept asking me questions, nothing but questions!”

So here’s the thing about soap operas: just because it’s on every day doesn’t mean you’re actually supposed to watch it every day. I mean, you’re allowed to have a life of your own. It’s 1967, you’re probably tie-dyeing something.

You can tell how often you’re supposed to watch a soap by seeing how far back they’ll recap the story for you. If the characters are still standing around talking about something that happened two weeks ago, then you can probably just show up on Fridays and you won’t miss much. In the early 2000s, NBC had a soap opera called Passions, which was so glacially slow that the optimal viewing schedule was one episode every three weeks. Or, preferably, not at all.

Now, it’s true that the current storyline on Dark Shadows is unusual enough to justify a yellow-alert level recap schedule. It doesn’t help that the only character who actually understands what’s going on is the vampire, who for obvious reasons doesn’t participate in the recap conversations.

So at the moment, we’re getting plot summaries from Maggie, who’s been hypnotized and/or sleepwalking during all the interesting parts. To be fair to the writers, these must be difficult scenes to write. They’re certainly difficult to watch.

But it seems like Maggie’s just as sick of it as we are. She does the “what’s going on, was I dreaming” thing for a while, but then she hears a howling dog and she clams up. Her eyes get cold, and she tells Joe to go away — she doesn’t ever want to see him again.

Disturbed, Joe calls Vicki at Collinwood and fills her in on the situation, which means we get to go through the whole thing again, this time on the telephone.

Vicki promises Joe that she’ll go to the Evans house and look after Maggie. There’s a huge burst of lightning as Vicki gets ready to leave — a storm has broken. Jason tells Vicki that she should stay home until it blows over. Vicki explains that her friend is very ill, which makes for another recap opportunity.

So far, this episode is basically a game of telephone, including the use of an actual telephone.

Vicki turns away from Jason while they talk, and they do some backacting. People are always backacting with Jason. I wonder if sometimes he forgets what people’s faces look like.

As she leaves, she mentions to Jason that they found Maggie in the cemetery. This sparks a connection for Jason, and he hurries off to visit Willie.

We get a nice long pause between scenes, because Jason has to hurry over to the Old House set. They usually try to avoid having the same actor in subsequent scenes when they have to be on a different set, but admittedly they don’t try very hard.

According to the sound effects department, there’s a huge raging storm outside, but Jason is completely dry; he doesn’t even bother pretending to shake off his coat.

The makeup department is keeping busy, too — check out the huge welts on Willie’s face after Barnabas beat him with a cane the other day. Jason wants to know what’s going on — if Willie is mixed up in something that attracts police attention, then that puts his blackmail schemes at risk.

Sadly, when Jason talks to Willie, he’s much less interesting than usual, because he doesn’t have to be charming and funny. He’s just angry and threatening, and paradoxically, he seems less threatening when he’s actually trying to project menace. This turns out to be another dull scene, and the lightning sounds don’t make things any better.

Now back to the Evans house, where Vicki and Maggie talk about the storm, and Joe, and everything. Maggie starts going on about how she never realized how much she loves the night. I guess at a certain point you’ve got to say something to keep the conversation going. This dialogue is basically the verbal equivalent of dognoise and thunder.

Then the lights go out, the French windows swing open, and you can see Barnabas’ silhouette framed in a flash of lightning. I wish I could say that we’ll pick it up from here tomorrow, but we’re actually going to jump back a couple minutes and do this whole scene again. Sorry.

Tomorrow: All Wet.

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Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:

When Maggie is talking to Joe in the first scene, she refers to “Doc Woodward” instead of Woodard.

Vicki tells Jason, “The other night, she was found wandering up in the cemetery on Eagle’s Hill.” Jason replies, “The cemetery, on Eagle Hill?” Jason is right.

At the end of act 2, the climax is that Jason sees the wounds on Willie’s face, but the music cue for the dramatic sting comes in too early. Jason says his line, and then you can hear the music cue being “rewound” manually before playing again at the right time.

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Behind the Scenes:

The Shadow is played by Alfred Dillay, who also doubles for Barnabas’ hand in July. Dark Shadows is Dillay’s only credit on imdb.

Tomorrow: All Wet.

Dark Shadows episode guide – 1967

— Danny Horn