“Send someone to Collinwood for my medical kit, if your servants haven’t destroyed everything.”
Sky: Would you care for a glass of sherry?
Julia: No, I would not.
Sky: You don’t mind if I have one, do you?
Julia: I don’t care what you do.
Sky: Good evening, Dr. Hoffman. How nice to see you again!
(Julia stares at him.)
Sky: Of course, you don’t think so.
Julia: No, I do not. Why have I been brought here?
Sky: Now, now, doctor. No questions! You are here, and fine. Just enjoy it.
Julia: That’s impossible, Mr. Rumson.
Sky: What an impatient woman you are! Always so eager to get to the bottom of things.
(Julia kills him.)
Julia: Those men — those men that brought me here — are dead!
Sky: That should satisfy your curiosity, I would think.
Julia: I don’t know what powers you have, Mr. Rumson —
Sky: Very few, unfortunately.
Julia: — or who has the power to raise the dead. Nicholas Blair, I suspect.
(Instead of answering, he sighs, and says “but –“, and turns around to see the teleprompter.)
Julia: I suppose it would be Jeb, then.
(Julia has no time to waste on your boring line. She moves on.)
Julia: Why have I been brought here, and why are you the one to greet me, and where is Jeb Hawkes?
Sky: Oh, he’s here. Don’t worry. Jeb is here.
Julia: Is that his — his new room?
Sky: Yes.
Julia: Why have you told me all this? Does that mean that you’re going to kill me?
Sky: Don’t worry, I won’t kill you if you do what I ask.
Julia: I will never tell you where Barnabas Collins’ coffin is, if that’s what you want to know.
Sky: You never stop thinking, do you, doctor?
(She keeps on thinking. Thinking is not optional for Julia.)
(She hears breathing, from the next room.)
Julia: He’s in there, in his other form!
Sky: Would you like to see what he looks like, doctor?
Julia: No. No!
(She briskly steps as far away from the door as she can, and still stay in her light.)
Sky: I believe you’re afraid.
Julia: I have seen what he does to people.
Sky: I’m sorry you’re not interested; it would make this much easier. You see, you’re going in that room, doctor.
Julia: No.
Jeb: Thought I was going to kill you, didn’t you, doctor? Well, I may; it depends entirely on you. So play it cool.
Sky: I think you’ve confused the good doctor, Jeb.
Jeb: You can go to Collinwood. Find out if Megan’s back.
(He turns to Julia.)
Jeb: You didn’t know Megan was missing, did you, doctor?
(She did.)
Julia: No! No, I didn’t.
(She watched her best friend kill Megan with his teeth.)
Jeb: Somehow, I thought she might be at the Old House. But she wasn’t, no one was.
(Julia adopts a quizzical expression.)
Julia: But why would she be there?
Jeb: Why don’t you tell me?
Julia: The only reason she would be there would be if you’d sent her there.
(She stares him down. He sends Sky to Collinwood.)
Julia: Why did you let me in that room? Did you think I’d be so terrified that I’d die of shock, as Paul Stoddard did?
Jeb: No! I want you alive.
Julia: Why? What do you want of me?
Jeb: I know what you’re doing for Barnabas. You’re curing him. You did it once before.
Julia: And you — want me to stop doing it?
Jeb: If you want to help Barnabas, you’re going to help me!
(And the storyline instantly becomes more interesting. This is a service that Julia offers.)
Julia: Help you?
Jeb: You saw me in that room, didn’t you? You think I like being like that? Well, that’s it, doctor. That’s the ball game.
(She approaches him. She’s not scared of him, now. He’s not a threat, he’s a puzzle, and Julia likes solving puzzles.)
Jeb: You know I go in that room. I can’t help myself! I change into that — that —
Julia: You’ve no control over it?
Jeb: No! I mean, sure, I can hold it back for five minutes, or ten, but then I can’t. I mean, I just used to accept the way I was. I got kicks from it! But now I never want to be that again. Not since I saw a look in someone’s eyes, when she saw me like that. I don’t ever want to go to that room again.
(All right, Julia thinks. So it’s one of those.)
Julia: They make you go in there?
Jeb: Yeah, they do now.
Julia: And — and you want to be human, like us? You want to lose your powers?
(Because at this point in the series, you have to define the word “human”.)
Jeb: I don’t want my powers, I want to be human!
Jeb: I want you to help me!
Julia: I can’t help you.
Jeb: Don’t say that, please!
Julia: But I don’t understand anything about what happens to you in there! Obviously, there’s some kind of chemical change…
Jeb: Look, you didn’t know about vampires, did you?
Julia: Well…
Julia: There might be certain experiments we could make. We could try hypnosis… there might be some chemical way of prolonging the periods before you change. I don’t know.
Jeb: Just tell me that you’re willing to try, please.
Julia: If you’ll promise to do something for me, and keep your word.
Julia: Leave Barnabas Collins alone.
Jeb: All right. I’ll leave Barnabas alone.
Julia: Send someone to Collinwood for my medical kit, if your servants haven’t destroyed everything. I’ll need some blood samples, to see what can be done. I’ll have to set up a table and work here, in this house.
(And that’s it. The show is fixed, at least for today. Tomorrow, as always, is somebody else’s problem.)
Tomorrow: Wedding Crashers.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
There is a truly epic blooper in this episode, one of the all-time greats. In the Collinwood drawing room, Quentin sidles over to the wall, where there’s a decorative display of two crossed swords. Suddenly, he grabs one of the swords, takes it off the wall, and points it at Sky’s throat. At this point, the other sword falls off the wall and crashes to the floor, taking a lamp with it. You just get a second to see the sword wobbling above the lamp, and then the camera moves away, and you just hear the unholy SMASH! as the lamp hits the floor. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.
During the sword sequence, you can also see a big set light sitting on the floor in the foyer.
Jeb says a line twice: “Thought I was going to kill you, didn’t you, doctor? Well, I may. It all depends on you. It depends entirely on you.”
When Jeb is confessing to Julia, he says, “I don’t even — I don’t even ever want to go to that room again.”
Also, I corrected this line above — what Jeb actually said was, “Look, you did know about the vampires, didn’t you?” when he should have said “Look, you didn’t know about vampires, did you?”
Another line that I corrected: Julia says, “If you’ll promise me — to do something for me, and keep your word.”
In the credits, Geoffrey Scott is credited as Geoffery Scott, and Fashions by Ohrbach’s is misspelled Orhbach’s.
Tomorrow: Wedding Crashers.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
I’ve always wonder what Dan Curtis and company were thinking here. Were they winging it here all along or did they have some master plan with the whole Leviathan storyline that they had to dump when the ratings tanked? Has this ever been discussed?
I discuss this basically all of the time. They were winging it all along — not just here, but in every storyline, always.
I figured as much. Being a latecomer to your blog I still have to go back and catch up. Winging it plotwise could have worked if they stuck to some concepts that ad become established.
They did, kind of…but just in a general way. Sometimes details from an episode were forgotten in the very next show, occasionally something from months back suddenly cropped up again. I suppose it’s all part of Dark Shadows‘ wacky charm (plus, it gives us things to discuss, fifty years later – who says the writers weren’t thinking ahead?) 😀
Or, in this story, Nicholas reappears after an absence of about a year, and Paul Stoddard returns after only being seen briefly in one episode years before.
Yeah, they misspelled Ohrbach’s quite a bit, even in the earlier days. At the time, Ohrbach’s provided the fashions for all of the ABC soaps (including General Hospital, which is produced in LA) and some on NBC as well.
This is truly a “monster” episode. I always wondered what would have happened had the monsters shown up earlier in the series, bearing down on Collinwood while Liz and Bill Malloy were having business discussions in the drawing room. That was truly in a different DS universe.
I did it for the kicks, baby. I did it for the kicks.
I guess Jeb’s insurance has better paranormal conversion coverage than Chris’s.
Kicks just keep gettin’ harder to find,
And all those kicks ain’t bringin’ you peace of mind,
Before you find out it’s too late
You better get straight…
Paul Revere & The Raiders
Yes, Quentin’s lamp smashing blooper, they don’t make ’em like that anymore — but David Selby does seem to have made one exactly like that once before, in 1897, with Barnabas standing in almost exactly the same spot as Sky Rumson.
Jeb’s “It all depends on you. It depends entirely on you” line reminds me of the oft-used “…most unfortunate. Most unfortunate, indeed” line that was a favorite of Professor Stokes.
Jeb Has now entered that Great Hall of Dark Shadows villains who fooled around and fell in love, with a human, and that was their downfall.
Starting with Tom Jennings, the Hoffman Slalom is a rite of passage for every new hot guy. Julia rules.
No-tie Sky!
Must be ‘Casual Friday’ at the Leviathan main office.
Or is it just so that Megan won’t have to bite through a collar?
Quentin, Quentin. Always with the sword! You’re in Collinwood, where every side table has a loaded pistol or a hooded cobra, but you just gotta get the scimitar. Such a drama queen! And SEE what happens? You’re just lucky that it wasn’t the Ralston Purina lamp.
Roger would have used subtlety.
“Mr. Rumson, would you like to see my harpoon collection?”
And Roger doesn’t just go around showing his harpoon collection all over town.
Yeah – except for the occasional naked dance in the backyard when the DEA helicopters are about to discover his marijuana patch!
Well, I’ll admit it – I feel sorry for Jeb and have for some time.He’s a sad little monster that just wants to be loved.
He reminds me of the mean little boys in my son’s preschool class who weren’t being raised too well at home – no boundaries, discipline or CARE going into their upbringing. They’d act out at school cause even negative attention is better than no attention. Jeb is like that. Megan and Philip need a visit from the school psychiatric social worker regarding their utter lack of parenting skills.
Yes, Jeb was such a child that when he wasn’t actively monstering it was hard not to feel sorry for him. Trying not to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, (is that something we do here?) but that’s why what eventually brings him down seems so fitting, because it’s something a little boy would be afraid of.
Oh my gosh, that is so true! I’ve never thought about the “thing” that ultimately brings Jeb down being something a child would fear.
Good question – how spoilerish are we allowed to be? I don’t want to break any rules.
Just give warnings of
+++SPOILER ALERT+++
but it’s usually best to avoid such altogether; some readers can be touchy…
Jeb is horrible and stupid.
Ha! That pretty much covers it.
…and he’s a dreadful project supervisor. He’s constantly alienating his loyal staff by calling them “stupid” or “incompetent.” I’m glad I never worked for a boss like that, but I’ve known people who did.
Quentin is positively Isadora Duncan-esque in his need for his every action to be a striking tableau.
If you listen for it, you can hear the broken lamp being swept up, off camera.
Ha – fantastic! THIS is the kind of stuff I live for.
Even though we don’t always see Mrs Johnson, she’s always on the job.
Good help is SO hard to find.
She is one of Collinwood’s treasures.
I LOVED THAT. It was the most Dark Shadows moment ever.
FYI, Hulu just added a ton of episodes all the way through 1897 and into the first few weeks of the leviathan plot,
FYI Hulu has added a ton of new episodes all the way through 1897 into the first weeks of the Leviathons.
Oh, thanks for the heads-up. Unfortunately, it looks to me like they took out some stuff at the same time — they had DVD sets 1-2 and 9-13, and now they’ve swapped that for 1-2 and 14-18. I guess they’re only licensed to have a certain number of episodes up at any given time, so they’re letting people catch up and then move on? Silly Hulu.
But, regardless 🙂 — Glenn, thank you for the news!
In the last screen cap, there is a small chandelier shown over Quentin’s shoulder – I don’t remember seeing it before in the ‘present day’ drawing room, though it has appeared in another time period. A quick image search for ‘Collinwood drawing room’ shows no hanging fixture in the room, except for 1840 and (I think) Parallel Time. Maybe Mrs. Johnson has to raise and lower it for cleaning. Just what a room needs, when Quentin is on the loose with a sword – more breakables.
Say, THAT could be the explanation for the story discrepancies; the show is switching randomly between two (or more) extremely similar Parallel Times, and they forgot to tell us!
It’s a big regret, getting older and realizing there isn’t enough time to grow up and be Dr. Julia Hoffman.
I mean, when they called me mad at the University, I thought it was a good sign, but it turns out that’s not actually a great predictor.
Be content… you might have ended up with a Harry Johnson. (Buh-dum-bum!)
What was the purpose of Harry Johnson? I guess he was just another gay friend of Barnabas who needed something to do.
I wanted to grow up and be Dr. Julia Hoffman when I was a kid. Planned on going to med school and studying hematology. Then I got sidetracked and when the AIDS epidemic came around I was full of regret that I hadn’t pursued that career path.
I hate to beat up on the actors, but Geoffrey Scott’s interpretation of Sky Rumson is so wooden that I had to wonder how Julia could distinguish between him and the zombies.
The Leviathans segment is where it really is a shame that they operated on such a shoestring. We’ve all seen enough movies and read enough stories about vampires, witches, werewolves, Frankenstein monsters, etc, that when those are in the spotlight they can count on us to fill in a lot of gaps and make up our own little stories to gloss over inconsistencies. But even a Lovecraft fan like me needs a much more thorough explanation of what the Leviathans are all about. If they’d had a head writer, a story editor, five senior writers (one responsible for each day of the week,) and three associate writers, they could have planned things out in advance and could have structured each week of episodes so that it’s clear what’s going on, but with only two or three writers making a mad dash for an impossible deadline there’s just no way to make something that complex and exotic work.
Jeb goes from “Kill them all” to “I never want to be that again” in record time. Sorry, I didn’t believe in that transformation either.
Nor do I. The entire wrapup of this story falls apart for me because I absolutely cannot buy into Jeb and Carolyn’s Great Love.
It’s not the performances–Nancy just kills it in every scene, naturally, and I really like Christopher’s through line of, no matter how much he changes in his goals and desires, he is still just a little kid emotionally with absolutely no inner resources to help him withstand any obstacle or frustration. It’s really well done.
But it also makes it that much harder for me to accept Carolyn taking him seriously for a single second. Even after all this “I wanna be human” stuff, he’s still making the precise same demands he did when he was Cock of the Octopus Space Monster Walk: Marry me RIGHT NOW and don’t ask any questions, especially about your dead father.
That lamp crashing scene was hilarious!! And kudos to the actors for not breaking character! And thank God it wasn’t the Ralston-Purina lamp!
I love vampire Megan. Super sexy.
On this same evening ABC aired Bewitched episode #194: “The Generation Zap” where a hot young college girl gets zapped by cousin Serena I to falling in love with Darrin.
Yeah—that lamp crashing to the floor was a real blooper. And immediately after, it sounds like one of the stage hands rushed in and started picking up the pieces.
And has anyone ever noticed the weird electrical phenomena that seems to be constantly hovering over Collinwood? Lots of lightning and thunder—but never any rain. Maybe they should call in the National Weather Service…..