“I hope Jeb had presence of mind enough to put the coffin back in the grave.”
They had something, presumably, when it all began. She was a beautiful, self-sufficient woman. He was a wealthy, ambitious man. She had fire in her eyes — deeper and hotter than he realized, but it seemed warm and inviting, at the time. He surprised her with little gifts, just to show her that he was thinking about her.
That probably had a lot to do with it, actually. Not the trinkets, just the fact that he thought about her. He was the first man she’d ever dated who wasn’t mostly in love with somebody else.
It’s one of those mixed marriages between the fantastic and the mundane, or at least it was supposed to be. A hard-driving captain of industry with a publishing empire falls for a blue-eyed cover girl, who’s cooling her heels while she waits for another demonic space-time fissure to jump into. A man of the world meets a spirit of the woods, and she enchants him. He gathers her up carefully, and carries her home.
This fairie queen has been lazily drifting her way through time, starting in the late 19th century and heading in the general direction of now.
All of her friends were gone, in one way or another, and she was on her own, traveling through the decades one step at a time. She may have passed through some powerful families along the way, wiping out the occasional dynasty, just to keep in practice.
There were others traveling along the same route, from 1897 to 1970, doing all the things one needs to do when the world grows old without you. They created aliases, invented new histories, accumulated a new stack of interests and peer groups. Those friendships were based on lies, of course, but not so anyone would notice. I mean, do you know exactly what your 30-year-old friends were doing, 45 years ago? It doesn’t come up that often.
And after seven decades, you’re a different person anyway. You’d have to be. You’ve seen wars, and depressions, and astounding new inventions. You’ve lived more than a lifetime, according to the average life expectancy, back when you had one.
Of course, if anyone recognized her, as she bobbed and weaved her way through history, they might ask awkward questions — the kind that usually get answered with holy symbols and fire. So she became a model for fashion magazines, just to be on the safe side. There was another eternal creature traveling along the same timeline, who tried to blend in by becoming a famous actress. Some people just aren’t very good at keeping out of sight.
He saw her picture in one of his magazines, and it was love at first sight — on his end, naturally, not the magazine’s. He showed up at her next shoot, and asked her to dinner. The next day, he sent flowers, with another invite. Tasteful things started arriving by messenger. He was persistent.
She’d gotten used to being alone, after all this time. She was only allowed to stay in this world if she found a man who would fall in love with her, but for all these years, it never clicked.
This woman, looking exactly like this, with this charm and intelligence and self-possession, and it took seventy years to find a man who would fall in love with her. Now you tell me one.
What does he see, when he looks at her? Not the real thing, astonishing and unimaginable. She offers up a mirrorball to dazzle and delight, dozens of little shards of twinkling glass, an ever-changing surface — but it’s just catching the light, and reflecting it back. Everything that he knows about her is made up of little excerpts of him — his assumptions, his desires, his needs — bouncing off her surface, and boomeranging back to his lovestruck eyes.
And what does she see, this Valkyrie with clipped wings? The culmination of a journey that started in the West Indies, all those years ago?
She claims that the Dark Lord challenged her to find a man, to fall in love and get quietly hitched, so she could give up her powers and experience normal human life. Obviously, the Dark Lord said no such thing. That doesn’t even sound like him. This is her own self-inflicted punishment, dressed in a blue suit, and if she can endure him, then she deserves to pretend to be happy, for as long as she can hold it together.
Now, among the wealthy, there are those who know how to create things, and those who know how to acquire things. He’s one of the acquirers.
He saw her in one of his magazines, which apparently doubles as a catalog; he placed an order, and here she is. Now he buys her expensive little tchotchkes, which she sees as evidence of his boundless generosity. It hasn’t occurred to her that they live in the same house, so he gets use out of them too. There’s always a loophole, with rich people.
She’s one of his acquisitions, a part of the decor that happens to be soft and warm and smells nice, imported from the island of Martinique. When she spoils, he can throw her away, and find another. Not that he ever would, of course. She’s the love of his life, for now.
Anyway, one of these days, he’ll submit to his inhuman masters, and metamorph into an indescribable nightmare creature that poisons and rapes the world. This is another thing that rich people do, although usually in a more metaphorical way.
But her life is just as likely to spin out of control as his. It’s tough to bury your past and forget it, especially when it stretches back a couple centuries. She’s got a lot of mistakes buried out in the yard, and if she wanted them to stay buried, then she shouldn’t have spent all that time teaching them to sit up and play fetch.
Anyway, if she wanted a life where everybody stays quiet and keeps their secrets to themselves, then she shouldn’t have married a publisher. She could have held out for a tycoon who makes noise-cancelling headphones. Well, it’s too late now, I suppose.
So when it all goes bust, it’s hard to figure the proportionate blame. They fell madly in love with the outside of each other, spending so much time worrying about their own masquerade that they forgot about due diligence.
Better the devil you know, they say, but if you both know the same one, then things can get messy. And it all falls to pieces, over the course of a single cocktail hour.
And here we are in the penthouse, far from the world, settling things the way that rich people do.
She looks into his eyes, and she sees everything. He meant it when he said that he loved her, but he only meant it at the time. That’s in the past now, along with all of their other terrible mistakes.
And as he picks up a flaming torch and advances on her, planning to sear the life from her bones, she thinks: My god, he’s a psychopath. After all this time, we finally have something in common.
Tomorrow: Once Again.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
On the terrace, Barnabas shouts, “Megan!” at the same time that she calls, “Is someone there?”
In act 2, when Angelique asks Sky to tell her about the important visitor, people are talking in the studio, and we can hear someone shushing them.
About twenty seconds after that, we can see Marie Wallace passing by, reflected in the mirror on the wall.
When Sky comes back into the room, he and Angelique talk over each other.
Tomorrow: Once Again.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
The reunion of Angelique and Nicholas is one of my favorite moments in all of Dark Shadows. It’s another loose story thread revived years later to great effect, like Paul Stoddard’s return.
And a beautiful woman and distinguished mature man vie for the affections of a pretty guy — it’s like Dark Shadows scooped the movie “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by a year.
Yes, that is a great moment. And I say that as someone who was all the jazzed about Nicky Blair’s first run nor Angelique’s random appearances.
But their scenes were just fantastic in this episode were phenomenal.
I liked the whole episode. The Leviathan storyline has plenty of good individual episodes — they just don’t add up to a good story arc like 1795, for instance.
“Everything that he knows about her is made up of little excerpts of him — his assumptions, his desires, his needs — bouncing off her surface, and boomeranging back to his lovestruck eyes.”
This is brilliant writing. Love it.
i second that, Allison
Agreed.
It makes the very stiff Mr Rumson almost watchable.
He doesn’t act.
He says lines.
But Danny’s analysis is spectacular, as always, and created a spot of empathy inside me on Sky’s behalf.
I think Sky might be one of the least likeable characters on the entire show. He’s not in the league of Harry Johnson or Dr. Lang, but he’s in the next tier down.
The acting doesn’t help — he really cannot play the role of a brilliant businessman. But beyond that, his role is to make Angelique act normal, which is not what we want from Angelique. And the turn from “love of my life” to “die, Angelique!” is way too fast for us to ever sympathize with him.
And there’s also that moment a couple weeks ago, when he opens the door for the Jeb creature, and then does an exaggerated sneak off screen, giggling, like he’s in a cartoon. I shouldn’t hate him for that as much as I do, but it is hateful.
Did you ever have a “memory” of something that never happened? I bet most of you have. I have a doozy of one related to Dark Shadows, and something that Danny writes above in his comments reminded me of it.
I distinctly “remember” Harry Johnson being killed by the ghost of Quentin Collins back during the “Haunting of Collinwood”/The Turn of the Screw storyline. Yet it never happened!
Maybe Harry was so awful, both (in my opinion) as an actor and as the character he portrayed, that I wanted desperately for him to become a victim of Quentin’s ghost. So my mind created a false memory — a wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Wayne
Maybe Sky is as good as Noah Giffords.
I think Dan Curtis’s particular genius was hiring, 99% of the time, the right actor for the job. They may not be a good actor, in fact, they may be terrible, but he somehow snags the correct version of terrible.
Sky Rumson is, as I’ve said, a JC Penney’s catalog model come to life. He walks like a windup toy, he never knows what to do with his arms, he talks like he memorized his lines phonetically–but it works for this particular character, both as a good looking brick who owes the entirety of his success to actual charisma machines like Nicholas Blair, and the kind of blank slate that Angelique, the dope, needs to convince herself that she’s truly fallen for. She only understands love as suffering–thus, her endless minuet of torture and pleading with Barnabas–and after several centuries, four deaths by burning and numerous stints in Hell has decided that maybe this isn’t working. So she just goes for the opposite.
A big good looking lug who openly acquires his desires with money and gifts, and is so blatant about it that it’s clear he’s not some suave tomcat of a guy with multiple female conquests on the string. She will be his most valued possession, and since trying to make Barnabas her possession never had lasting results, this must be the answer, right?
He’s the living definition of Hired For His Face. He wasn’t any good in the DVD interview, either….I mean did they hear him read for the part? I’m thinkin’ no.
Geoffrey Scott is the ocular equivalent of eating a whole can of chocolate frosting; no nutritional value, but oh! just tastes so good! No acting value, but so nice to look at.
Hard to believe that anyone wanted to let him have a flaming torch…especially on that bedroom set, with that canopy!
Did he ever have occasion to handle fire in his other acting gigs, I wonder? Since that’s the one distinctive skill in his repertoire.
He also has the skill of wearing clothes well (well, navy blue double-breasted suit jackets, at least).
I don’t think he’s that much to look at, either.
Many, many moons ago (in the early 80s) I was working out on one of the machines at my gym in Studio City when I looked at the person next to me and it was none other than Geoffrey Scott. No, I didn’t say, Hi Sky!!! He did have a stint on Dynasty around that time, though, and it really surprised me since his acting was so wooden on DS. But then again Chris Bernau was pretty wooden too but he was great on Guiding Light.
The hardest part is trying to believe Angelique would be attracted for one second to that piece of driftwood, much less that he is suddenly the love of her life.
I suppose that the Dark Master was right. No human man could truly love her.
But then I see him bust in with fire.
And I knew that it was true love, after all.
That boy is kinky.
He’ll drift away soon.
What’s REALLY infuriating is that the original deal with Satan/Diabolos/Whatever was that she had to make Quentin specifically fall in love with her. It’s why she was so ferocious about marrying him and insistent that he’d come around, despite him telling her, repeatedly, to her face that he despised her and loved Amanda.
I guess after a few years of her pissing and moaning and flopping around Hell the Dark Lord went FINE, WHATEVER, I don’t care which mortal you pick, just go do your thing on Earth and shut up for a while already.
Personally I think the Dark Lord just got bored with Angelique and plumb forgot all about her. But of course her ego wouldn’t allow her to even entertain that idea.
Geoffrey Scott played the role of David McAllister on General Hospital around 1989. And the same thing that happened with the actor playing Dr. Woodard happened to his character. Two weeks before he was killed off, another actor (Patrick Strong) replaced him.
Noir Shadows.
Such a beautiful story. And that black dress looks amazing.
I haven’t seen this ep yet, but it’s reminding me of ‘House And Garden’ from Batman The Animated Series, only with the wrong one burning.
Oh my god! Paul Stoddard has come back as one of the Smiling Dead!
“There was another eternal creature, traveling along the same timeline, who tried to blend in by becoming a famous actress.” I’m not sure – is that a reference to a Dark Shadows character?
Either way, it sounds like the plot of “Queen of the Nile,” one of the less famous Twilight Zone episodes (even though I’ve always been very fond of it).
Yes, Amanda Harris/ Olivia Corey.
Thank you.
Angelique seems to be packing the same suitcase Maggie had some episodes ago. A suitcase that Barnabas and Julia remarked that they had never seen before.
A “Valkyrie with clipped wings” is a poetic way to describe Angelique here. Danny’s writing is just so good! He’s taken a character I hardly remembered and made him more interesting than his creators did. The Courtship of Angelique Bouchard and Sky Rumson now has some substance. Well done!
I think some other actors appeared in this episode besides Lara Parker, but for some reason I really can’t remember them…
When Angelique makes her entrance and she and Nicholas look at each other for the first time since the last time, the expressions on both their faces are priceless. This is typical soap opera fare, of course, but for those who know the supernatural history of these two it’s on a whole other level.
Oh Angelique and Nicholas Blair…back together again! That is awesome! And Angelique has never looked more beautiful than she did in this episode.
This same evening ABC aired Bewitched Episode #192: “Serena Stops the Show” where Serena books Boyce & Hart to play at the Cosmos Cotillion but only after making them totally unpopular to mortals. Boyce & Hart were responsible for most of the Monkees songs. And on the soap opera note, Bobby Hart is the one who wrote the “Days of Our Lives” theme song!
That is one of my top ten favorite Bewitched episodes. I liked Serena’s performance of the song even better than B & H’s.