“I don’t know what lies beyond the grave… but I hope you will have some kind of peace.”
When we last left our undead psychopath hero, Barnabas Collins, he was walking into the Collinwood study, intent on murdering his old friend, Nathan Forbes. I forget exactly what brought this on, but it’s not like it matters. Sometimes you just decide to kill a guy.
But Nathan makes a plan of his own, grabbing a crossbow off the wall and shooting Barnabas as he enters the room. This is probably why you don’t see a lot of people hanging up decorative crossbows anymore.
And so we start out today with one of the strange cliffhanger resolutions of our time. Nathan shoots Barnabas, who screams — and then pulls the arrow out of his torso, and snarls, “You didn’t hit my heart! It didn’t hit me!”
Now, that can’t really be a surprise, because we’ve seen Barnabas getting up out of his coffin in 1967, a hundred and seventy years from now. If Nathan’s aim was just a little bit better, then we wouldn’t even be here — we’d still be in the present, probably watching Maggie and Joe eat dessert again. This episode is the last possible moment for the show to change history, which it’s been threatening to do all along.
So we can return to the essential question of time travel stories — is there such a thing as free will, or is everything predestined, and the characters are just following the path laid out for them? This has been hanging over the 1795 storyline the whole time, especially with Vicki specifically trying to correct the parts of history that she found upsetting.
Now, in one sense, the question of “free will” in fiction is absurd. Fictional characters aren’t real people — they’re controlled by a writer, who arranges their destiny. Whatever decisions they make, whatever circumstances and surprises and coincidences lie ahead of them — it’s all been designed by a creator, to bring them to the climax and resolution of the story.
But in a long-form serialized narrative, this relationship between character and creator is more complex. If the audience sees the beginning of the story, and the creator hasn’t written the ending yet, then that creates a gap where the characters’ destiny can be changed.
That’s especially true on a daily soap opera, which is by necessity produced by a revolving-door team of writers under serious time pressure. On a show like Dark Shadows, the all-powerful deities determining the fate of the Collins family are just making things up as they go along, responding to unexpected circumstances more or less in real time. A new writer comes in, a popular actor leaves the show, the ratings rise or fall — or maybe they just come up with a better idea on the fly, and decide to do something different.
So the 1795 storyline has asked some legitimately challenging questions about the story that we thought we knew. There were a few things that they absolutely had to include, or else the 1967 story wouldn’t make sense, and the audience would feel cheated. Barnabas becomes a vampire, Josette jumps off a cliff, Sarah dies as a young child, the monster is sealed in a chained coffin — those were the fixed points that couldn’t be changed. Everything else was up for grabs.
After all, we knew that the Collins family history book wasn’t 100% accurate, because the book said that Barnabas went to England, and we knew that wasn’t true. The game has been discovering how much free will the characters had after all.
So after the big fight, Barnabas and his father get together for a post-game wrap-up, which gives us the final score on what really happened and what didn’t.
Here are some headlines: Ben has buried Nathan in the woods, and Joshua will tell everyone that he’s left Collinsport. Millicent’s lost touch with reality anyway, and she hardly even remembers Nathan. Joshua will have their marriage annulled, and as far as history is concerned, Millicent never married. So that’s all cleaned up.
But there’s a messier item on the agenda.
Barnabas: You have the silver bullets, haven’t you?
Joshua: Yes.
Barnabas: You have your pistol.
Joshua: Yes.
Barnabas: Then use it.
Joshua: I can’t. Not here… not now.
Barnabas: You must, or I will go on destroying.
Joshua: I know that.
Barnabas: Then take out your pistol, and fire the silver bullets through my heart, and end Angelique’s curse forever.
And there it is, if you’ve been waiting for it — the ten seconds that Barnabas is “redeemed”. It goes by pretty fast, but this really is his one moment of emotional maturity.
At long last, Barnabas finally acknowledges that he is the problem, the source of all the darkness and tragedy that’s consumed the family. And finally, for once, he’s decided that sparing other people’s pain is more important than prolonging his own existence.
Joshua’s reluctance here is interesting, and heartbreaking. He knows that his son has become a rabid animal, who needs to be put down. But he can’t do it while Barnabas is just standing there in their house, discussing the situation calmly. One after the other, Joshua has lost his brother, his daughter, his sister and his wife. Barnabas might be an undead ghoul, but he’s the only member of the family left that Joshua can talk to.
And Louis Edmonds’ performance, as always, is just beautiful. He’s been grimacing with pain pretty much non-stop ever since Joshua discovered Barnabas’ secret, and every moment of it has worked. There’s so much going on just in the way that he holds himself — he’s constantly raising his chin in a proud, stiff-upper-lip pose, and then allowing it to gradually fall as he’s assaulted by painful feelings that he thought he’d never experience.
We’re also getting some serious work out of the director today. This is the week that executive producer Dan Curtis decided to try directing for the first time, and Tuesday’s episode was just a free-for-all of gimmick shots, pulling the camera from two-shots to close-ups and back again, just to see what it looks like.
Dan got another chance to play at the beginning of this episode, with some gimmick shots from the characters’ point of view — first seeing an out-of-focus Nathan as Barnabas struggles to get the arrow out of his chest, and then seeing Barnabas from Nathan’s perspective, as he moves in for the kill.
But Dan’s holding himself back with this scene. The focus now is on these two men, bound together by love and regret, making plans for the future.
Joshua: In the morning, when you’re in your coffin, I’ve instructed Ben and Riggs to carry your coffin back to the secret room in the mausoleum. At sunrise, I want you to go there.
Barnabas: And then, you will do what you must.
Joshua: Yes.
Barnabas: And I’ll know peace. Eternal peace.
Joshua: I don’t know what lies beyond the grave… but I hope you will have some kind of peace.
Barnabas: And what will happen to you?
Joshua: I’ll survive.
And yeah, I guess he will. That’s what the Collins family does, as we’ll learn many times over the next few years. People do terrible things, and then those terrible things come to life and do more terrible things, but the Collins family survives. They pull themselves together, and they find a way to carry on.
Barnabas: Millicent?
Joshua: She probably won’t recover. I’m going to take care of her as if she were my own daughter.
Barnabas: And Daniel?
Joshua: I intend to make him my legal heir. I will adopt him. I hope that I will be a better father to him than I was to you and Sarah.
And you know what? I bet that’s true. Joshua has learned a lot over the four months that we’ve known him.
Actually, it kind of turns out that this was Joshua’s story, all along. In a house packed to the rafters with lunatics and children, Joshua has managed to build himself an arc — and really, he’s the only character who has.
Everybody else in the 1795 story is still exactly the same as they were when they started, except now most of them are dead. Abigail died just as crazy as ever; Nathan died a desperate schemer; Naomi couldn’t face reality, and finally drank herself to death.
Even the characters who’ve managed to hang on past their demise haven’t learned a damn thing. Angelique is out there in the ether somewhere, still running on jealousy and rage. And Barnabas, the only mildly “redeemed” vampire, is really still the same self-centered nightmare that it turns out he always was.
But Joshua is struggling towards a new way to live his life.
Joshua: Barnabas…
Barnabas: Yes?
Joshua: I was never known… to be able to show much affection.
Barnabas: Well, don’t show it now. Forget that I am your son. After today, forget that I ever existed.
Joshua: I can’t do that.
Barnabas: You must. Goodbye, father.
So it turns out that they were wrong yesterday. Barnabas said that Joshua was safe from Angelique’s curse, because she only cursed the people who love Barnabas, and Joshua is incapable of love.
That is obviously not true. The reason why Joshua is spared from the curse is that the love he feels for Barnabas isn’t the kind of love that Angelique recognizes, and so he slips under her radar.
Angelique’s love is selfish, and spiteful. She uses it as a convenient excuse for running over anyone who gets in her way. She doesn’t understand love that arises from respect, and strength of character. And she will never feel the kind of deep, honest love that Joshua now realizes for the first time that he is in fact capable of.
Now, it would have been nice if he’d figured that out a while ago. He might have been able to save some of the people who are now lost to him forever. But at least he’s figured it out, which is more than anyone else has. And now he has the rest of his life to reflect on that, and to try to be a better man, for Daniel’s sake.
So let’s circle back to the beginning for a moment. If you remember the promotional bumper that ABC ran in the week leading up to the 1795 trip, there were a couple big promises.
The announcer said, “This Friday, you and Victoria Winters begin a strange and terrifying journey into the past, back to the year 1795, to discover the origins of this man, and the secret of the chained coffin.”
We learned about the origins of Barnabas and the vampire curse a while ago — and in the six weeks since Josette jumped off the cliff, it felt like the storyline was in overtime, just dragging out the journey beyond what we really needed to know.
But it turns out that this wasn’t just Barnabas’ story after all. The other half that they promised us was the secret of the chained coffin — and that’s not a secret about Barnabas. It’s Joshua’s secret.
In the end, Joshua can’t shoot his son, even while he’s lying in his coffin in the mausoleum. Joshua knows that Barnabas is dangerous, and can’t be allowed to roam free, but he loves him too much to shoot him through the heart. So Joshua decides to chain up the coffin, confining Barnabas to eternal sleep, and then he goes and tells everyone that his son went to England.
That’s the secret of the chained coffin — that Joshua Collins is capable of love. This might be one of the more exotic ways of showing it, but that’s what’s happening here.
And as we reach the end of this strange and terrifying journey into the past, this is the image that remains — a good man facing an impossible decision, who makes the right choice, and loves his son.
Monday: Leave Me Hanging.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
There’s a great one at the top of the show today, which is so bad that they had to do post-production work, which is very rare for Dark Shadows. Nathan shoots Barnabas with the crossbow, and Barnabas pulls the arrow out of his chest. As he advances on Nathan, there’s the dramatic shot seen above of Barnabas reaching out to strangle him.
As originally recorded, Barnabas says, “It didn’t hit me, Forbes! It — didn’t — hit me!” This sounds very silly, because the arrow obviously did hit Barnabas; we just watched it happen. So after recording, they added an off-camera line from Barnabas: “It didn’t hit my heart!” There’s an obvious difference in the sound quality of the two lines.
Also: In the scene just after Ben chains up the coffin, you can see the secret room door silently opening on its own behind him. And the coffin’s facing the wrong way, compared to its orientation when Willie opens it in 1967.
Behind the Scenes:
They go all out with the extras for Vicki’s big hanging scene. Howard Honig plays the Gaoler, and James Shannon plays the Hangman. The spectators are Timothy Gordon, Paul Craffey and Scott Upright.
Monday: Leave Me Hanging.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Louis Edmonds really hits it out of the park. Without a doubt my favorite actor on this show – as Diana Millay (Laura Collins) said in one of her DS interviews ‘we love you, Louie’…
How true this is the most interesting view on Joshua and the love part of the cursed I have read in Dark Shadows commentaries.
I agree, Cynthia! Danny really hit it out of the park with this original and insightful analysis.
Was Louis a comedian at one time? He was funny to me. Simply can’t believe what the hell was going on with Barnabas.
“He was my son! He was my heir! The heir to everything I’ve tried to acomplish all my life! Whatever… has happened to him, I couldn’t forget that.
ok, Mad marks
What memorable lines. That scene always moves me, as well as Joshua and Barnabas’ touchng goodbye to each other.
This is a little philosophical approach so, I guess folks are less interested in thinking why Joshua was not effective by the cursed but I liked things like this.
The question as to why Angelique’s curse did not affect Joshua is one that has been asked since 1968 and I think Danny sums it up best. What Joshua feels for his son and, well, for everyone in his family (Naomi, Millicent, Daniel, and so on) is not the type of love that Angelique would understand or even comprehend enough for her curse to include it.
Even Sara and Naomi’s love for Barnabas is within Angelique’s comprehension. But the selfless love that comes from duty and that can lead to tough decisions is beyond her.
One key character moment (and major plot revelation) is that Barnabas voluntarily faces death. Prior to this, the image in most viewers’ minds was of people discovering his secret and chaining him in his coffin against his will. It is hard to imagine the Barnabas of early 1967 choosing to go to the mausoleum at sundown and accepting his destruction. This was the guy who’d rather kill a child than end his own miserable life.
Good point. To Angelique love is very highly emotional.
Stephen, he was willing to accept his destruction. He was not willing to be chained in a coffin for two hundred years. If he had been aware, even at intervals, it would have been torture. He might not have cared to repeat the experience.
True, its no fun to be locked in a coffin eitehr
“He was not willing to be chained in a coffin for two hundred years. If he had been aware, even at intervals, it would have been torture.” Right. Despite Danny’s great insightful analysis of Joshua, I don’t believe he made the right decision for this very reason. It was much, much more inhumane for condemn Barnabas to an eternal life chained in a coffin. The more humane approach would have been to destroy him. Joshua couldn’t bring himself to do that, but a greater love would have destroyed Barnabas. (But, of course, we realize from a plot and show perspective, we can’t have Joshua make that choice.)
Love how you wrapped this one up, Danny. So true. All along this has been about more than just Barnabas, and that’s what makes Dark Shadows stand apart — it has a wonderful hidden humanity that most other shows are lacking.
I also loved it that right after agreeing that it was right and proper for his father to destroy him with silver bullets, Barnabas asked his father to free Ben and help Vicki. Barnabas is facing his imminent end with grace and thinking about other people.
Excellent point!
Exactly!
Wow – how did you find out the names of the extras in the hanging scene? If there were closing credits in that episode, their names were not listed.
The Dark Shadows Almanac: Millennium Edition has a comprehensive list of every actor on the show, including extras and day players.
That list doesn’t say exactly which episodes each person is in, but we can cross-reference with The Dark Shadows Program Guide, which lists the characters but not the actors. So we can figure out just about everything but the Blue Whale customers from 1966 and ’67.
If you care about DS credits, you should own the Almanac; it’s amazing and currently ten bucks for the Kindle edition: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Shadows-Almanac-Millennium-ebook/dp/B0097DHW6Q/
Howard Honig is a recognizable actor. He appeared five times on Barney Miller between 1975 and 1981.
It was uneven, but overall, still a huge fan of 1795. I thought the second half (after Angelique died) had both the best and worst episodes. A list of my favorite characters in order. It’s easy to pick the top three and the bottom four. The middle is hard, and the middle is, for the most part, pretty good:
Ben Stokes
Joshua Collins
Barnbas Collins
++++
Naomi Collins
Nathan Forbes
Natalie du Pres
Abigail Collins
Rev. Trask
Millicent Collins
Angelique (I know, pretty low as the single biggest player of 1795, but I got tired of her. I didn’t find her as interesting as I remembered from decades ago)
Bathia Mapes
Suki Forbes (If they had been on more, Bathia and Suki would have been higher on my list I suspect)
Josette du Pres
Jeremiah Collins
Sarah Collins
Daniel Collins
++++
Andre du Pres
Victoria Winters
Peter Bradford
Noah Gifford
I was glad to get back to present.
I read somewhere that Joshua was actually Edmund’s favorite character to play. I was really confused at that at first since he played Roger for so much longer, but this episode makes it obvious why. I think I like him better too. Just too bad the writers missed the mark for Roger’s development. Could have happened without changing to plot too much. If he had just taken charge along with Carolyn when Liz fainted that one time, and confessed boldly when Burke approached him. Plus one or two episodes with him and Burke to wrap it up, and all’s well.
Mumford and Sons’ song “Little Lion Man” always makes me think of Joshua
I think Louis Edmonds was the best male actor on the show. He and Joan Bennett could go from reasonable siblings to a affection challenged married couple in the transition of a single episode.
“So we can return to the essential question of time travel stories — is there such a thing as free will, or is everything predestined, and the characters are just following the path laid out for them?”
It’s not either/or – everything that happens in the story is the result of people making choices. When you’re looking at it from the perspective of a 1960s governess, it’s history. From the perspective of the same governess, plopped down in the middle of the story with a copy of The Idiot’s Guide to Collins Family History, it looks like predestination. But either way, for those characters, it’s choices they’re making in the present, and we’re just looking back at the effects; it’s no more predestined than yesterday’s dinner, or tomorrow’s breakfast.
I looked for Barnabas’s moment of noble self-sacrifice, I really did, but I couldn’t find it. The closest I saw was the bit where he tried to put the blame for any crimes he might commit in the future onto his father, as part of an attempt to get someone else to sort his mess out for him. Again. Did I miss a scene where he tries to shoot himself and Joshua stops him?
(Honestly, all it would take to fix this is a single line of dialogue – that part of the curse is that he physically cannot take his own life. I don’t think that’s been said, but then, I might have missed it – I’ve been so distracted by my concern for Violet Winner and Patrick Bradley, or whatever they’re called.)
Speaking of the curse – I like your explanation for why Joshua survives. My own theory was that the “everyone you love will die!” part of the curse was either a) Angelique’s prediction of how the whole vampire thing would turn out (as in: “I’mma make you a vampire; bet you kill everyone!”) or b) bollocks from the mouth of a desperate, dying witch. Either way, I never assumed it was a literal “I will arrange the deaths of all your loved ones, so I will!” kind of deal.
But let’s end with the two best things about the episode: Louis Edmonds, and Violet’s fabulous new neckwear. In particular, that rather intense last shot of the rope…
Clay: In an earlier episode, Barnabas had decided to walk into the rays of the morning sun in order to end his accursed existence. Then, Ben talked him out if it by convincing him that news of such an action would be too much for his mother to endure ( how would she have found out, though?). At any rate, that strongly implied that a vampire can, theoretically, commit suicide.
Also, either in this episode of a different one, he again contemplates destroying hlmself because he tells Ben he hates his undead existence so much, but he then instantly backtracks and insists, “No, that can’t be right. There must be something within me that urges me to go on, even as I am.”
“Honestly, all it would take to fix this is a single line of dialogue – that part of the curse is that he physically cannot take his own life. I don’t think that’s been said, but then, I might have missed it.” In addition to the two instances that Dale brings up, I seem to remember that at some point Angelique told him directly that he would not be able to destroy himself.
So why does Barnabas hate his father so much in 1968. Is it because he chained him up or because he didn’t kill him and free him. I guess 160 years is a long time to stew over stuff so maybe Barnabas just made up his mind to hate Jeremiah and Joshua for no real reason.
Ed: In one of Barnabas’ first episode, be back in 1967, when he’s alone in the Old House, he soliloquizes about how Josuah thought his chaining his son to his coffin had been an act of mercy, but that “What he did for me that day was no mercy.”
His hatred of Jeremiah before the shift to the past is particularly inexplicable. In 1795, once he understood that Jeremiah and Josette were compelled to act as they did by Angelique, he felt nothing but love for Jeremiah and regret over the duel. I’m curious to find out whether this will be acknowledged when the action returns to 1968.
“His hatred of Jeremiah before the shift to the past is particularly inexplicable. In 1795, once he understood that Jeremiah and Josette were compelled to act as they did by Angelique, he felt nothing but love for Jeremiah and regret over the duel. I’m curious to find out whether this will be acknowledged when the action returns to 1968.” No, that contradiction/inconsistency is never resolved in the series. We just have to chalk it up to the writers changing the story.
Well, after you’ve been brooding on something for 130 years your perspective gets a little warped. Goes along in the same direction as the mind.
wow, Danny Horn. “Barnabas might be an undead ghoul, but he’s the only member of the family left that Joshua can talk to.” … “That’s the secret of the chained coffin — that Joshua Collins is capable of love.” wow.
Again I’m wrong. I thought Joshua would indeed shoot Barnabus and either realize it didn’t work and use the chain as a fallback, or think that the job was done and add the chain as insurance.
Upon reflection, I see why I was wrong. That Joshua just couldn’t shoot Barnabus, after having previously trying to kill him, argues that Joshua’s perception of Barnabus has shifted far away from simple monster to his honorable yet cursed son who outright asks to be put to death. Really great characterization and growth.
Once the really bad stuff starts happening (Barnabas & Sarah dying) and Joshua starts stepping up, he becomes one of the best things about the rest of 1795. All the scenes with Joshua and Barnabas have ranged from interesting to amazing and the wrap-up is phenomenal.
And this review brings it all home:
“That’s the secret of the chained coffin — that Joshua Collins is capable of love.”
Excellent!
The supreme moment of this episode is when Barnabas is leaving for the mausoleum and pauses, so father and son can take one last look at one another. The pain on both their faces is truly heartbreaking. It is perhaps the single finest scene Jonathan Frid and Louis Edmonds played out together in this show.
I love the characters of Joshua Collins and Ben Stokes. Joshua particularly made so many leaps and bounds in character development over this story line. And Ben – how could you not love him? I love that the chaining of the coffin was saved until the very last…I mean it makes sense but sometimes some of the stuff they’ve done on DS doesn’t make sense. I love that Ben was released and more so that Barnabas requested it. It brings humanity to the vampire. I have to admit that Vicki’s scene leading up to her hanging got me all anxious even though I don’t care for her character. And it was sweet that Peter told her he’d find her no matter where she went.
I agree about Vicki and Peter’s last moments together in her cell–very touching scene.
Well this solves one longstanding mystery for me – why Barnabas couldn’t just use his superhuman strength to break free from the coffin. The silver cross was holding him in place. Very good.
I’m not entirely convinced that the blurred POV shot of Forbes as Barnabas struggles with the crossbow bolt was intentional. Curtis has given us too many unintentionally blurred shots for me to make that assumption.
Poor Vicki Winters goes to her death in a scene filled entirely with day players. Sad, yet somehow fitting.
One gaffe in an otherwise excellent episode was Josuah’s telling Barnabas,”I want to go to your coffin at sunrise.” Well, it wasn’t as if, as a vampire, he would have had any choice in the matter!
Everyone who loves him will die. Well, that’s the way of the world, isn’t it, if one lives long enough? And Barnabas is now effectively immortal.
I think it would have made more sense as a curse if she said everyone he loved would die. He loved Josette, Sarah and Naomi. His relationship with his father was more problematic. In 1968, Julia loves him but he doesn’t love her. She lives. Perhaps Elizabeth, Carolyn and Vicki are only rather fond of him because they’re fine.
It’s still a great episode thanks to Edmonds.
My wife, who has generally been anti-Barnabas at this point, gave a thumbs-up when he took care of Forbes.
Joshua’s secret. Joshua cleaned it all up in the end, to the best of his ability. How he continued to live in that house I just don’t know. How did he restrain himself from changing his mind and releasing his son? Duty. Honor. Love. He must have lived out his days heart broken, and had it not been for raising Daniel, Joshua might have died of a broken heart.
Louis Edmonds is so good as Joshua, I will miss Joshua. Joshua is the best character so far out of them all.
“Fictional characters aren’t real people — they’re controlled by a writer, who arranges their destiny. Whatever decisions they make, whatever circumstances and surprises and coincidences lie ahead of them — it’s all been designed by a creator, to bring them to the climax and resolution of the story.”
Any fiction writer can tell you… that’s definitely not true! Writing would be a lot easier if that was the case.
Peter’s “Last of the Mohicans” speech to Vicki makes me think that the writers were so inspired by the freedom they finally realized they had, with a show that could incorporate time travel into its plots, that they began to come up with ideas for stuff that might happen way down the road. And if a show can go back and forth in time, and suggest reincarnation, nothing’s off the table. Dark Shadows–in space!