“I will concentrate on vengeance, and nothing else!”
You know, I’ve been throwing the word “exorcism” around a lot lately, but I’m not sure that’s the correct term for what’s going on here.
This is the situation: A witch was murdered in 1795, but then her restless spirit moved through time to be reincarnated in 1968. A group of well-meaning occult experts held a séance to call on the ghost of an 18th-century witch hunter who was sealed up behind a wall in their basement, and that ghost tied the dead witch to a tree and said a prayer over her to cast out the demons possessing her, which made her crumble into ashes and disappear.
I don’t think there’s a word for that, because it has never occurred to a single person in the history of the world to even imagine that such a thing could take place. Except for the writers of Dark Shadows, obviously, who can’t think about anything else.
Anyway, whatever you call that, just go ahead and stick an “un-” in front of it, because now we’ve got the sorcery supervisor calling upon the powers of darkness to restore the witch to life.
It took him a minute to find the right tree, but once he’s here, the procedure is pretty straightforward. This goes to show that you should always keep the receipt.
So Cassandra reappears, still bound to the tree with rope.
“Nicholas!” she cries. “You found me!”
“With some difficulty,” Nicholas says. “How did you let this happen?”
She looks down, and says, “Untie me, please.”
He says, “All right,” and strolls over to release her, because Nicholas is pretty much the coolest person who has ever lived.
I mean, look at him. He just walked into the woods and turned a pile of ashes into a person, and now he’s doing a performance review.
Cassandra: The spirit of Trask… He brought me here. He destroyed me!
Nicholas: Your power should have been stronger than his.
Cassandra: It wasn’t.
Nicholas: That’s your fault.
Cassandra: Mine?
Nicholas: Yes. You allowed yourself to feel an emotion.
Cassandra: No!
And oh my god, has there ever been a cooler line than “You allowed yourself to feel an emotion”? Nicholas is a baller.
The great thing about introducing Nicholas at this point in the story is that we get to see Angelique in a completely new environment.
Angelique basically ran the table back in 1795, moving the other characters around like toys, and then smashing them on the floor when she didn’t get her way. But she appeared in the present day almost three months ago, and honestly she hasn’t accomplished much.
She kicked off the Dream Curse, which is one of the most tedious storylines we’ve ever seen, and since then, the only thing she’s done is to jump-start the curse after it stalled. She’s the only character with magic powers, and it’s made her lazy.
But Nicholas brings a whole new dynamic, putting Angelique on the back foot. Suddenly, she’s got a lot more to react to.
Nicholas: You still love Barnabas Collins.
Cassandra: I hate him; I will always hate him!
Nicholas: Yet you love him still, because your power is not as strong as Trask’s.
Cassandra: From this moment on, I will feel nothing but hatred in my heart for Barnabas Collins. I will think of nothing but vengeance!
Nicholas: You must… because I will never save you again.
She looks away, defeated.
Cassandra: I will concentrate on vengeance, and nothing else.
Nicholas: Nothing else is possible.
Such a baller. Unbelievable.
He tells her that he found her by hypnotizing Vicki, and having her lead him to the tree. Cassandra asks what happens if somebody sees the entranced girl on her way back to Collinwood, and he leans against the tree and basically says he doesn’t care. Who pays attention to what happens to Vicki?
By the way: the tree. They’ve spent the last several episodes making a big deal about the tree where Reverend Trask tried to exorcise Vicki, back in December. Apparently, Cassandra was tied to the same tree.
That’s a cute callback to a memorable story point, except Angelique killed that tree, leaving it a smoking ruin. This might actually be a ghost tree.
The two conspirators walk back towards Collinwood, and they agree on Cassandra’s cover story explaining why she disappeared a few days ago.
Nicholas: I don’t anticipate any problems with Roger, but you’ve made other members of the household suspicious. That was a mistake.
Cassandra: I can win them over, with your help.
Nicholas: You should be able to do it without my help.
Cassandra: I need your help, Nicholas. The Dream Curse must continue. Nothing must prevent its fulfillment.
Nicholas: I will help you. But only for the sake of our… bargain.
He leans over her, menacingly. He does this a lot; he’s constantly getting up in other people’s personal space.
Cassandra: Yes. Our bargain.
Nicholas: I answered your summons, and returned you to life… because of our bargain. Our bargain means more than anything else to me. Never forget that.
Oh, I like the sound of that. They just said “bargain” four times in a row, to make sure the audience recognizes that there’s some backstory that they’re not explaining to us yet. I think the last time Dark Shadows kept us waiting for a reveal, the secret turned out to be a huge naked dead guy lying on a table. I wonder what this one’s going to be.
So Cassandra walks back into Collinwood, to reunite with her husband and her visiting brother. She explains that she was frustrated by the family’s hostility, so she ran away to Philadelphia for a few days. This is not a particularly convincing explanation, but Roger’s standards aren’t that high.
The big question for me is where she got the coat from; she was wearing a dress when she was on the lawn just a minute ago. Apparently the powers of darkness also handle express delivery of outerwear.
So, here they are: the new power couple of Collinsport. We don’t really know what their relationship is, or where they come from, or what their bargain is — and based on past evidence, I’d say it’s likely that the writers don’t either. I’m going to allow myself to feel an emotion about that.
Tomorrow: Ride, Car, House.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
In the first scene, when Nicholas tells Cassandra that her powers should have been stronger than Trask’s, she says, “It wasn’t.” He hesitates for a moment, clearly trying to remember his next line. He’s just opening his mouth to speak, when Cassandra gives him the cue again: “It wasn’t.”
The audio cuts in and out for a moment when Nicholas and Cassandra are talking about their bargain.
We see Vicki standing and waiting for her cue before she starts walking through the woods, dazed.
When Jeff finds Vicki wandering through the woods, she’s standing in front of the same tree that Nicholas sent her away from. She’s apparently been walking in circles.
When Nicholas closes the drawing room doors and starts his conversation with Cassandra, you can hear people walking around in the studio.
One of the studio lights is reflected in the mirror in Vicki’s room.
Tomorrow: Ride, Car, House.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
It’s a shame they don’t do any more real exterior shots of the house locations. The background projection screen of Nicholas and Cassandra against Collinwood looks so cheap.
I guess they got all the shots they needed in 1966. You can tell they used the same 1966 shots over and over because when they show the Old House toward the end of the series it couldn’t have been newer images, since the actual Old House–Spratt House in Tarrytown, New York–burned to the ground in 1969.
Besides, with the tight schedule for filming, I’m sure they wouldn’t have had the time to send the actors and crew all the way to Newport, Rhode Island, to Seaview Terrace just for that one shot.
As far as I know, all of the film footage was shot before the series started filming. It was one of Dan Curtis’ ambitious ideas to make the show look different from all the other soaps. They filmed some specific scenes that they knew they would need for the early episodes — Roger driving up to Sam’s house, knocking on the door, and then leaving — and then they did a bunch of generic ones, like David leaving the Old House. They used them all up after a year or so, except for some establishing shots outside the Collinsport Inn or the Blue Whale. They stopped using them after the show switched to color.
It’s further implied in this episode that Nicholas is possibly the Devil himself: He refers to his “bargain” with Angelique. I believe a later intro narration refers to Nicholas as her “master.” It’s ultimately revealed that Nicholas is merely a hellish middle manager. There’s no other option but to “demote” him once Blair becomes the primary antagonist of the storyline. Otherwise, how do you “beat” the Devil?
However, something bugged me about the subtle change in Nicholas’s status, and I think my issue is that it feels like a “cheat.” DARK SHADOWS has a habit of bringing in “bigger” monsters to beat the current one. Barnabas’s first act as a vampire is to kill Angelique. Nicholas kills Cassandra but is later “fired” (ha!) by Diabolos. Garth Blackwood kils Petofi and so on. In the example of 1968, there is no organic progression to Diabolos. He’s introduced in order to put arbitrary pressure on Nicholas.
But for now, he’s a delight to watch.
And of course one of the Devil’s nicknames is “Old Nick”. Old Nick =Nicholas Blair?
I think technically to be an exorcism Cassandra would have had to take over someone else’s body or a physical location, not just a physical embodiment of a spirit who can apparently wander at will. I think he’s kind of just killing her, like cutting off the head a Highlander.
That’s a good point about the ruined tree, but even if Angelique hadn’t killed it, a tree that was still alive from 1795 in 1968 would be WAY bigger than that and most likely wouldn’t have made it anyway.
Finally I’ve been thinking about Nicholas and his spell in Vicki. Maybe she had to be asleep and more vulnerable before she could be completely compromised?
Also Cassandra’s green coat always reminds me of Samantha Stephens’s coat. http://www.writeups.org/img/fiche/2269a.jpg
The tree’s roots were still alive.
Sent up a baby twig.
Falls down in 70 years, but the same magical process takes place.
Then, again, etc.
Because the little fake tree that she burned cast that spell on it.
Angelique’s Magic Tree.
That’s so DS….
Yeah, maybe the tree just grew back. Or maybe the writers think we won’t remember or care as they don’t.
“Which tree is it? Are you sure this is the one? The one with the rope around it?”
I’m wondering why Vicki was taking so long to go back through the woods to Collinswood, For someone just put under orders by the likes of Nicholas Blair, she certainly seemed to be dilly-dallying.
Except for the reflection of the stage light, the lighting in Vicki’s bedroom was particularly effective in this episode. Especially interesting is the way Jeff’s face was lit when leaning over Vicki’s lamp.
Too bad Trask’s exorcism fire didn’t burn up that godawful chartreuse and pink caftan and cheap black nylon wig Cassandralique has been sporting. UGH ! We’re they trying to make the gorgeous Lara Parker as unattractive as possible ?
There’s a tape edit when Jeff/Peter and Vicky are talking in her bedroom, right before we see the mirror with the stage light in it.
It tickled me that Nicholas and Cassangelique were having this heavy conversation about vengeance and dark powers and diabolic bargains, all while she was sporting that summery dress with the pretty flowers and butterflies on it.
I wonder if that chromakey scene was maybe meant to suggest that they were on a different plane at that moment, one beyond mortal perceptions where no-one could see them, looking into the earthly sphere. BEWITCHED used to employ something similar–no chromakey, though–with Sam or Endora hovering invisibly around a room, watching and eavesdropping on Darren and Larry Tate.