“You must try to expect nothing from me!”
Angelique Collins was murdered. We all agree on that, right? Stroke, no; murder, yes.
It’s not our Angelique, of course. I’m talking about the Parallel Time alt-universe Angelique, who was murdered six months ago, at a midnight seance in the drawing room. We know that she was murdered, because last week, they re-enacted the seance, and a ghost-possessed dental hygienist pointed at Angelique’s identical twin and shouted, She’s dying, she’s dying, murder, murder, murder. Apparently the spirit speaking through her was re-enacting too.
The other reason that we know Angelique was murdered is because of course she was murdered, this is a television show and they’ve been talking incessantly about her death for weeks. ABC Television isn’t funding this daily blastoff into the uncharted regions of tormented space just to tell the story of a woman who happened to die of a stroke.
After the seance, everybody did what people do in Collinwood after an accusation of murder; they went about their normal activities. If the Collins family stopped to investigate every single mysterious death that happens on their property, life as we know it would grind to a halt. When somebody dies, that means there’s one fewer person in the cast to have conversations with, and the survivors have even more on their plates.
So Quentin and Alexis have been going on as usual, grooming houseplants and making up excuses for things. In this version of reality, Quentin used to be Angelique’s husband, until she was murdered, and Alexis used to be her twin sister, until ditto, unless it turns out that Alexis actually is Angelique, back from the dead to reclaim her rightful place at Collinwood, which would mean that everybody needs to update their entries on Dark Shadows Wiki.
Restless spirits try to stay busy at Collinwood, so Alexis walks into her sister’s old suite, and finds the piano playing Angelique’s theme song, all by itself, because in Parallel Time, Dark Shadows is actually a spin-off of Scooby-Doo.
Alexis screams, and Quentin rushes in, and then she starts firing off random postulates.
Alexis: It must be Angelique! It must be, I know it is!
Quentin: I can’t believe it! It can’t happen!
Alexis: I can’t believe it either! But it’s true!
Quentin: You’re sure it was Angelique?
Alexis: As sure as I can be of anything!
Then she launches into one of those ghost jags, where every sentence ends with an exclamation point: “I came into the room, and there was a fragrance! I remembered it from long ago! It was Angelique’s favorite perfume! I thought it was my imagination! But it didn’t go away!” This is followed by “Slowly, as I was writing, I began to feel — something! I can’t describe it! A presence!” That’s usually how these ghost scenarios work, perfume and a presence.
She closes with “How can a murdered spirit be at rest until the murderer’s been found?” which is fine, but doesn’t really explain the piano.
Quentin isn’t sure how to respond. He asks, “Should I call in the authorities, have the body exhumed, what?”
“No!” Alexis screams. “No! They’d laugh at us! They’d think we were being hysterical!”
But we are being hysterical, Quentin thinks. So what now?
And they’re off, picking up speed as they round the turn, heading into their own hysterical universe, and taking us along for the ride.
This episode was written by Joe Caldwell, one of my favorite Dark Shadows writers, who rejoined the writing team last week to replace Violet Welles. Caldwell hasn’t written for the show since 1967, back when ghosts mostly kept to themselves. The last ghost storyline that he worked on involved little Sarah, a well-mannered ten-year-old spirit who was so low-key that almost everyone who saw her thought she was just a regular little girl in an old-fashioned outfit.
Back then, the lead writer was Ron Sproat, who believed in taking things nice and slow, mostly walking in circles and stopping to recap every ten minutes. But when Caldwell left the show, he was replaced by Sam Hall, who embarked on a relentless campaign to make the show louder, faster and way more interesting. Sproat drifted away, eventually, and this is Hall’s show now.
So Joe Caldwell is coming back to a very different Dark Shadows than the one that he knew. One of the first things that Hall did was introduce Angelique, this weird witch who grabbed hold of the show, and still has a pretty strong grip on it. Caldwell doesn’t know Quentin, either. In fact, all of the characters and cast members that he knew are in Tarrytown for six weeks, filming House of Dark Shadows. Basically, the only thing that he recognizes is the drawing room set.
There’s no girl governess to frown and disapprove of bad behavior, no courageous doctor trying to unlock the dark secrets surrounding the estate, no sheriffs or painters or business tycoons who spend all their time telling each other things that they already know. There are no good guys at all, in fact, unless you count Sabrina, which I don’t. This is a show without a moral center, or any sense of restraint. Let’s see what Caldwell can make out of that.
While I’ve been discussing the writing staff, Alexis and Quentin have taken a second to calm down and get ahold of themselves. The screaming has stopped, for now, and they’re talking things over.
Alexis wants to move out of her sister’s room, which was kind of creepy anyway, and Quentin is all smiles. “We have many rooms at Collinwood,” he assures her, “and there’s no reason for you to stay in this one, if it disturbs you.” Everybody’s relaxed and rational now, and the piano is keeping its opinions to itself.
“Come on,” Quentin says, “I’ll show you one of the rooms.” And then they take six steps out into the hall.
Now, the reason why they can’t get very far is that they’re really hurting for studio space in Parallel Time. Angelique’s room is enormous, for a Dark Shadows set, and Cyrus’ lab is pretty big too, so between those and the standing sets for the Collinwood foyer and drawing room, there’s hardly any space for anything else.
Later on in the episode, there’s going to be a scene where someone just stands motionless in a corner, and talks on the phone. If there are any more scenes after that which require a different set, they’ll have to go outside the studio and do them on the sidewalk.
So Quentin is lying; we do not have many rooms at Collinwood. We’re going to need the ghost to intervene, before Alexis walks off the set and into the sound booth.
She stops short, and looks around. Quentin asks what’s wrong, and she says nothing, and then she manages another four steps.
“Oh, don’t you feel it?” she says. It’s another presence, I guess; Collinwood is lousy with presences. Then she cries, “There’s something — someone following us!” But there can’t be, obviously. They don’t have the storage capacity.
Quentin’s decided not to play. He tells her, “Everything’s going to be all right,” and then they take another four steps, and that’s the room she’s staying in. I’m not sure why this room is any better than Angelique’s room. She’s still got a direct line of sight on the ghost piano.
The room change doesn’t accomplish much, so Alexis goes over to Cyrus’ lab, because if she doesn’t feel like going to the drawing room, then the lab is literally the only other place she can go. She wants to talk to Sabrina about what happened at the original seance where Angelique died, because their re-enactment didn’t really explain very much.
Alexis: I know that a spirit spoke through you, a man. He said some things that enraged Quentin, about Bruno and my sister. Am I right so far?
Sabrina: Yes, that’s right.
Alexis: And then Quentin began strangling Angelique, and the lights went out. When the lights came back on, my sister was dead. Is that right?
Sabrina: That’s right.
Alexis: But there was more, wasn’t there?
So hold on, wait a second. Quentin was strangling Angelique. Why do you need more? This sounds like an open and shut case to me. Why is he not in prison?
Alexis: And that’s what you saw in the second seance?
Sabrina: I began to see it all over again — Quentin and Angelique in the dark, the noise and the shouting, and —
Alexis: Yes?
Sabrina: There was someone else near Angelique!
Alexis: Who?
Sabrina: I don’t know! I wish I had seen the person, but I didn’t.
Alexis: Sabrina, you know that whoever it was near Angelique must have murdered her!
But we know who it was, it was Quentin, and he was near her because he was strangling her. What is the matter with you people?
Then Quentin calls in Aunt Hannah. That’s how bad things have gotten, he actually invites the weird tarot lady into his house, to see if she has anything to contribute. He appears to think she’s some kind of un-exterminator.
She asks what he wants her to do, and he says, “Whatever is necessary to rid this house of whoever, or whatever, is in it.” I’m hoping this doesn’t include the domestic staff.
“Hmmm,” Hannah says, strutting over to the windows. “That isn’t always easy.”
“Will you try?” Quentin demands, and then things get interesting again.
The lights go out, the windows blow open, and suddenly Hannah is screaming, because a ghost is strangling her.
It’s been literally two minutes since Sabrina told Alexis that Quentin strangled Angelique, and here we are again, more shrieking and choking, and it’s only been fifteen minutes since the piano was playing itself. There’s more happening in this episode than any given three weeks in 1967.
Back then, the conversation between Alexis and Sabrina would have taken up at least a whole episode. Sabrina would have gone through the events of the seance in painstaking detail, telling us the names of all the people who were there, and then Alexis and Sabrina would have run down the guest list together, talking about each person’s relationship with Angelique, and speculating about who could have killed her. Then Alexis would say, “Let’s review the case,” and they’d do it all over again.
And that’s nothing compared to the piano sequence, which would have gone on forever, and then there’d be a week of describing it to every single character.
The windows wouldn’t spring open, nobody would choke, and it wouldn’t be crazy Aunt Hannah standing there anyway. It would probably be Burke.
And that’s not even all! There’s a commercial break, giving Hannah a moment to recover, and then less than a minute into act 3, she cries, “Look!” and the desk drawer opens by itself, revealing a copy of Bruno’s sheet music, with blood smeared on it. Ghost blood!
So every single scene in this episode is absolutely cracker-barrel insane. The piano, the presence, the strangling, the more strangling. These people can’t even walk down the hall without feeling a presence. Shit has come unstuck.
Quentin picks up the music, and there’s a message written on it: “It must be tonight.” Hannah asks who wrote the message, and he says, “I can’t make it out, it’s printed.” What does that mean? What the hell is going on?
It’s all too much for Hannah, who announces, “I must leave this house!” Quentin asks if she can explain any of this, and she says, “I’m too frightened to try! Now, please, please! I must go!” That’s how crazy this episode is, the characters are abandoning ship.
Quentin grabs her by the arm, and snarls, “Now you listen — if you find out any more about this, you will let – me – know!”
“Yes!” she cries, squirming out of his grasp and backing hurriedly out the door. “But — you must try to expect nothing from me! Nothing from me at all!”
And then thirty seconds later, the phone rings, and it’s Hannah. They did a little time compression in the middle, fading from one clock to another, and that was long enough to get her into a tiny alcove with a phone.
“I have read the cards!” she announces. “There is danger at Collinwood!”
“Danger?” Quentin shudders. “What kind of danger?”
“All I know is danger!” she says. “The cards do not lie! Danger, for all of you!”
And then the drawer opens again! And the windows blow open! And the music plays! And Alexis vows that she can’t leave until her sister’s murderer is found! And Quentin rushes back and forth, from the drawing room to the foyer and back again, shouting, “Appear to me, will you? Appear to me!”
And then he sees something — something that turns his blood to ice!
So that’s what Joe Caldwell has concocted for us today, a half-hour of thrills and music and special effects and shocked expressions. And to think, they used to stand around in this room and drink sherry.
Tomorrow: Polterguest.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
The piano keys continue to move, after the music has stopped.
When Alexis tells Quentin, “The feeling began to grow,” the camera pulls back too far very briefly, and you can see another set.
There’s a green cabinet at the back of Cyrus’ lab that has a rose painted on it. It’s lovely and interesting-looking for a girl’s bedroom, but it’s totally out of place in a basement murder lab.
When Quentin is walking Alexis down the hall, she stops and says, “There’s something — someone following us!” Quentin says, “Something following us?” and Alexis says “Yes!” — and then just stands there with her hand over her mouth for six seconds, while Quentin waits patiently for his next cue. He smiles and says, “Everything’s going to be all right then,” and they move on with the scene.
Alexis tells Sabrina, “I know a man — a spirit spoke through you, a man.”
Behind the Scenes:
On Monday, the Ralston-Purina lamp was in the Collinwood study. Today, it’s over at Hannah’s place, in the weird little corner where she lives.
Tomorrow: Polterguest.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Another good read. You stir up my selective memories of living through this era as an adolescent. I seem to recall this was during the height of pop culture interest in the supernatural…in comics, movies, TV shows, etc. that seemed to last through the mid-70s. DS might have survived another couple years because of this but it also was no longer unique either
He means it’s not in cursive, so he can’t identify whose handwriting it is.
Love the teaser image; I’m usually the one hanging out on Haunted Mansion fan sites talking about Dark Shadows.
And although I hate to keep piling on Sabrina, she simply cannot carry off the lab coat with the popped collar like Julia can.
Of course, Julia can pull off everything better than everyone else.
Right–Hannah asks Quentin, “Who’s hand is it in?” meaning who’s handwriting (meaning cursive).
I had a dental hygienist like that for a while – okay, so I didn’t floss twice daily, Mindy! Just chill out. I found another dentist. Doctor Bernie’s assistant isn’t so judgemental. 🙂
I get why 1897 Quentin would hang around Collinwood but not 1970 Quentin. When all that weird stuff started happening, why didn’t he grab his kid, swing by to pick up Maggie and move his family to Hawaii? No more Maine winters (or summers), no more haunted mansion with nothing but bad memories, no more boring, inbred, village of the damned social life. He’s rich, he can live anywhere – why in the hell would he choose Collinsport?
Same reason(s) why Maxim de Winter didn’t just dump Manderley and go live in the South of France. Easier to wait for that white elephant to get torched, pick up a big insurance bonanza, and buy something a bit smaller. Someplace that doesn’t need a housekeeper.
Right – and there’s also an element of stubborn male pride involved. Or childish male pride in Quentin’s case – he’d rather pout at Collinwood than be with his beautiful young Bride.
And by that I mean the Bride that’s alive!
I always wondered the same thing about Liz in our time. Once the Paul Stoddard mystery was solved, move to Florida or Hawaii and be done with the gloomy stuff. But wait! Then we wouldn’t have a story.
Well, we would – we just wouldn’t have a ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood Star to play in it. Hmmm; wonder if Paulette Goddard’s available…or see if you can get Jean Arthur on the phone.
But The Family!!!
It’s Carolyn And David’s Birthright, And I Still Care About That Kind Of Thing, Even If Some People Don’t (Even Carolyn And David (Well, Actually, David Would Probably Be Pretty Bummed If He Had To Go Live Someplace Without Ghosts)).
Good point! I suppose that Daniel’s birthright is a(nother) reason for Quentin remaining at Collinwood in PT.
No one could play Liz like Joan Bennett.
Certainly no one has; not Jean Simmons, not (I’m guessing) Michelle Pfeiffer…
And there’s also Naomi and Judith and Flora (oh, my!)
I always felt sorry for David that his only friends were a ghost kid and the local werewolf’s little sister. And let’s face it, neither Vicky nor Maggie was much of a teacher.
But there’s no chance Roger would ever consider moving David to more normal surroundings.
PT Quentin though – he’s young enough and modern enough to realize Daniel needs more than the daily Collinwood routine – breakfast, lunch, séance, dinner.
I know we wouldn’t have a show if they all peeled out but – damn!
Right. There’s no evidence that the parallel Collinses have the kind of knotty roots the nonparallel Collines do. For all we know, the only unusual thing about this Collins line is the occasional moody bastard like Barnabas or Quentin. They married into the weirdness fairly recently with That Stokes Girl.
not so, Melissa. for they descended from the bloody insanities of 1680 and 1840 parallel time.
Let’s not forget David’s little Leviathan pal, who was three friends in one!
We never heard anything about Carolyn’s early schooling, did we? Though there was some mention about ‘the other kids’ calling Elizabeth a witch, back in the early days.
And was any mention made of just why David wasn’t attending Collinsport Public School? Just because he’s a Collins?
They did mention it early on, but in a very cryptic manner. I don’t remember the exact wording.
I know they’re not everybody’s cup of tea, but I really feel that the pre-Barnabas episodes are essential to understanding David as a character.
Early DS was more to do with the Collins family – after Barnabas’ introduction, they lost the ‘edge’ the first shows gave to them. They made things happen in the first stories; later on, things happened to them (active became reactive). They were still interesting, but they were separate, ‘The Normals’ in the increasingly supernatural storylines.
Another thing about those early episodes is the strength of the female characters — Liz, Carolyn, Vicky, Maggie, and even Mrs. Johnson in the beginning — none of them are pushovers, and the men in their midst don’t stand a chance. Long before Mary Tyler Moore and even before That Girl!, the female characters on Dark Shadows are written with strength and tenacity as well as discerning intelligence. They have solid core values.
But then you get to the spook show era post-Barnabas, where many of the female characters tend to be weak and submissive — the dimness of Vicky in 1968, the inconsistencies of Carolyn in 1969, and the simpering hysteria of Sabrina in 1970.
With the men shouting all over the place (ie, Quentin). When Burke Devlin raised his voice it was for dramatic emphasis and was done with Shakespearean elocution.
In the transition from real-world narrative to roller coaster thrill ride, a certain depth of character was sacrificed, where it seemed that actors acting was all but beside the point. Just so long as you have a decent body count.
I’d argue that we do get Julia, Angelique, Judith, and Samantha… all of whom are strong and compelling characters.
Julia was especially progressive in the sense that she’s sometimes the most active character in the series (the clear protagonist of the first part of the Leviathans and even the latter part of Adam/Eve).
Well, OK, if you consider conflict of interest and complicity in kidnapping and murder as character strengths. 🙂 Julia is a single-minded career obsessive who will even sacrifice her oldest friend for the sake of protecting her “research” that may one day be valuable to “medical science”.
Angelique? Well, she is a slave to romantic emotions, who after casting a spell in a fit of pique will then seek to reverse it (Barnabas choking, Barnabas bitten by the bat). Again, another trait of sociopathic selfishness and megalomania (see Julia, above).
Judith? Well, yes, she does eventually fight back against Gregory Trask, but only after having been manipulated by him into a sanitorium. Elizabeth Stoddard, who would go toe to toe against Burke Devlin at the drop of a boom mic shadow, would never have allowed this to happen to her — she only allowed Jason McGuire to blackmail her because of having believed she and the whole Collins family would suffer as a result. In episode 98 she counsels David on the meaning of values, advising him that family comes first, then friends, then everything else.
Samantha? I had to think of that one for a moment, because in these past months I’ve been spending so much time in the first 2 years, that is, Collinwood 1966-1967-1795-1968, but I gather you mean the character played by Virginia Vestoff Her Dress Off Everything Off? Another emotionally hysterical woman driven to murder by jealousy, as if she couldn’t find anyone else because one solitary male had wronged her.
So, no, none of these characters, as much as they are revered in Dark Shadows “fandom”, can really hold a candle to the truly balanced assertive strength of how the original female characters were first written in 1966, when the show was in fact just an effective real-world personal narrative of characters you really cared about and wanted the best for.
More and more from 1967 on, it’s just a case of the old world “females in peril” scenario. The more it went on, the more chauvinistic Dark Shadows became. Which is perhaps a good reason that Dark Shadows ended when it did. Because if it hadn’t degenerated into self-parody, if it had survived too long into the seventies it would have become the subject of parody — god forbid, even as an SNL skit.
Imagine all those kids who had run home from school in 1969, instead in 1976, in college laughing at what no longer intrigued and scared them, but rather merely amused them.
Likewise, you wouldn’t wanted to have seen the Beatles or Jim Morrison in 1976, still trying to put on the same old act, would you?
DARK SHADOWS becomes a “monster show” in a sense after Barnabas’s arrival. For me, that’s a good thing — bad guys are more interesting.
I’d also argue that even the most popular male characters (Barnabas and Quentin) are hopelessly flawed and often driven to selfish acts out of a combination of love, lust, or just-plain stupidity.
Of the “Murder Club,” I think Julia is the one who is the least like her initial version. Barnabas and Angelique, for example,are both motivated by love, no matter where their loyalties are aligned at the moment or how awful or relatively benign their actions are.
Julia’s early motivations, though, don’t resurface. She is just as likely to snoop or lie but it’s never again for her own glory. I’ve suggested before that she becomes the “Nancy Drew” character that Vicki was prior to Barnabas’s introduction.
That’s the reason Joel Crothers gave for why he left the show: more emphasis on spectacle leaving last time for character development. And, boy howdy, did he go out on an amazing character moment for Joe!
Yes. Absolutely.
David went to school when his mother and father were living in Augusta. In one episode when David complains that no one believes him about anything, as he runs from the drawing room he exclaims, “Just like at school”!
By the time the series begins, David and his father have been back living at Collinwood for around a month and summer vacation has already begun or is very nearly approaching. David wasn’t attending the school in Collinsport at that point because Elizabeth had decided instead to hire a governess (Vicky) to attend to his studies. In one early episode Elizabeth reveals to Carolyn that she had actually engaged the governess for her, so that she wouldn’t be so alone at Collinwood (and, presumably, so that she could get to know her half-sister Vicky [Hanscombe?] before she leaves to marry Joe Haskell).
Carolyn’s early schooling would not have been relevant, as when the series begins she is 6 months from turning 18 and presumably has just completed her general education.
The school in Collinsport is mentioned only once, when Joe and Maggie are at the Blue Whale as they are first getting close and Joe recounts that in a school football game he had scored the only touchdown (episode 78).
I meant in terms of social interaction, not necessarily “The 3 R’s”. But Carolyn does mention in Episode 344 that she grew up alone most of the time, and mentions her imaginary friends, and the lovely story about Randy and the sea-glass. And there seem to be more people around Carolyn’s age living in the town, which makes her lonely childhood even bleaker. Maybe there aren’t any kids in Collinsport anymore. That would fit in with the creepiness of DS. (Unless, of course, Collinsport’s sister city is in Vulgaria, and all the children are imprisoned.)
So Carolyn and Liz were living at Collinwood all alone while Roger and his family lived in Augusta. Knowing that makes Liz’s fear of leaving the house even more tragic – for herself as well as Carolyn. It also makes Paul Stoddard even more of a villain. Not to mention Jason McGuire!
Knowing the back story really does help fill in some gaps.
It also makes it sting a little harder when Tony Peterson and others assume that Carolyn is just a spoiled rich girl. She may have gone swimming at the country club, but without any hired help she probably grew up doing her share of chores around that big old house. And probably without a lot of modern conveniences like automatic dishwashers, too.
Before Mrs. Johnson showed up with her “famous boiled dinners” to burn everything to death, including toast, Liz cooked the family dinners herself. Vicky and Carolyn are shown in episode 5 fixing their own breakfast, and Vicky offers to do the dishes as a thank you to Carolyn for listening to her story about growing up in the foundling home. Later in the episode Carolyn is shown in the breakfast room with an ironing board ironing her own clothes.
They played up the “spoiled rich girl” thing with Tony Peterson, when Carolyn walks in with a horse riding outfit, even though the only thing she had ever ridden, as far as we can see, was the back of Buzz’s motorcycle. Original writer Art Wallace had a bit of fun early on sending up the cliche about the inbred nature of rich, important families by portraying Carolyn as having a crush on her uncle.
But, mostly, the present day Collins’ of Collinsport seem more upper-middle class and also more down to earth than their ancestral predecessors.
Well at least Collinwood had plenty of indoor space to hang the washin’ inside on rainy days.
No wonder David had such crummy toys.
The Collins are definitely played as upper-middle-class in the early episodes — though the grand mansion and the town named after them would hint at ancestral aristocracy. It’s apparent that the family had fallen on hard times (perhaps explained by the Great Depression — I often wonder if Tom and Daisy Buchanan wound up jumping out of high windows in 1929).
Barnabas’s backstory (and the man himself) demanded a stellar history for the family — and that exalted social status is consistent in every flashback.
Though it’s also made clear that the Collins’ seclusion and “hard times” were self-imposed by Elizabeth 18 years prior after Paul’s disappearance, and not necessarily the result of financial problems. If I recall, that was when she got rid of all the help and sealed off most of the house. I remember someone talking (I think Sam) about how grand the house used to be. So I think it’s less Great Gatsby and more Great Expectations.
I thought the family fell into hard times when they stopped building boats out of wood and had to switch to making canned tuna.
Yeah, the 2012 film (five years already?) ran with the idea of Barnabas having been “entombed” at the family’s aristocratic peak and returning to find it in shambles. (I also enjoyed the idea of Angelique being behind a lot of the Collins family problems).
The Barnabas of 1897 is a less insular, less overtly self-involved* character so he reacts more on how the family is compared to his expectations.
*The 1967 Barnabas is self-involved in the sense that he literally doesn’t care much about other people. It makes him a more static and later a reactionary character. As his whole agenda becomes self-preservation. The post-1968 Barnabas is a selfish drama queen certainly but he’s very much “up in everyone’s business” — even if it’s often to his own ends, as well.
Matthew Morgan would have been on the property and since Elizabeth was handling all of the business without leaving Collinwood Bill Malloy and others would have been frequent visitors. And since Bill Malloy never got over his youthful infatuation with Liz he would have kept an eye out for her safety, I’d assume.
The modern Collinses do have a bit of similarity to the Crawleys of the later episodes of Downton Abbey about them, when the Abbey is getting too big for them and they’re cutting staff and giving tours to raise money. In DS there’s the business about Liz establishing trusts for David and Carolyn to protect them if things really start to go south. I believe that’s in the pre-Barnabas days.
Liz establishes a trust for David, for which banker John Harris shows up at Collinwood so that she can sign the legal papers to that effect (episode 44), but warns her that the means in which she had done it were demand notes and could be called at any time. She never sets up such a trust for Carolyn. She only does it for David because he is the last Collins heir, and she is worried about the threat Burke poses to the Collins empire.
I always assumed she had done something similar for Carolyn when she was David’s age, but that’s just my headcanon.
Oh, and also there was episode 94 when Carolyn and Joe are sitting in the Blue Whale with Maggie and Sam, and Carolyn recounts for Joe how they used to take long walks up by “Eagle Point” and Joe mentions how it had been a long time since they had done that, since they were both in high school. So presumably they were high school sweethearts, and in later episodes, when searching for Vicky when Matthew’s got her captive there Joe mentions to Burke how as kids Joe and Carolyn would explore the Old House together.
I think there was a mention of Carolyn, Joe, Maggie (and later Chris) all attending the same school, once in the early days and then later when Chris showed up.
Thinking on it…in Augusta, David would have been ‘just another kid’ in his school; okay, he has a crazy mom who’s a Phoenix, but that’s what makes life interesting.
But in Collinsport, he would be ‘One Of The Collins Family’, living in the big house on the hill, in the town named for his ancestors. Public school would have been rough, especially for a boy. And Liz had been through the problems already with Carolyn, she wouldn’t have wanted David to go through that as well (though it probably would have been better for him in the long run).
Crazy Mom who’s a Phoenix and a drunk Dad who’s pretty free with the back of his hand, from the sound of tnings. Roger didn’t really start to mellow out until after David almost died in the fire.
Rather surprised by how fast Roger got over that “tampering with the brakes on the GTO” episode. Given that Laura had spent time in a mental institution, I’d think he’d have put David in therapy…
David’s shenanigans with the bleeder valve on the master break cylinder wrecked Roger’s Mustang — the 1966 Pontiac GTO was the replacement.
Of course. (Geez, I’m from Detroit, I should know these things!) 🙂
Besides, the ashtrays were getting full on the ‘Stang, anyway, guess Roger didn’t want to mess with getting it repaired. And that GTO had more horsepower, too.
Say, what did Carolyn drive?
Carolyn tooled around in the GTO as well. You see her park it in front of the Collinsport Inn during episode 40, where she meets Burke Devlin to retrieve the ring she “accidentally” left behind. It’s the same two-door convertible that Roger pulls up to Collinsport Inn with during episode 20, where he brings Vicky to back up his accusations against Burke. The convertible is first mentioned in episode 19, and was there in the garage the night of the crash. The Mustang was totaled, but the insurance covered it (episode 22).
But when characters are shown behind the wheel and driving, where we see the interior of the car only, everyone — Burke, Roger, Frank Garner, Vicky, Joe Haskell, even Dr. Guthrie — is driving the same thing, the Dark Shadows standard studio model that never actually moves an inch. 🙂
I just had a closer look at Carolyn’s car from 1966, and it wasn’t Roger’s GTO. When she is seen in episode 40 arriving at and leaving Collinsport Inn, she is driving a Plymouth Fury.
One thing all the cars in the Collins family garage have in common, though — the New York state license plates. 🙂
Roger had a Ford, then a GM, Carolyn drove a Chrysler; I’ll bet Liz had a Cadillac. Wow, so no automotive sponsorship on DS – of course, it would have been mentioned in the credit roll, like Ohrbachs.
Getting back to the “how much money do they have in 1966” question, a Mustang or GTO was closer to a working class sports car than, say, a Corvette or, if he really had money to throw around, something foreign like a Ferrari or Maserati. Of course he didn’t really control the money so I could just see the scene after the Mustang was wrecked…
Interior – Collinwood drawing room – Night
Roger: Liz, I think I’ll replace the Mustang with a Ferrari.
Liz: Oh no you won’t.
Roger: Come now, Liz.
Liz: Roger, tomorrow you will go to the car lot in town and pick an appropriate replacement. Is that clear?
Roger: Oh, all right. But I don’t know what the point of all this hard work is if we can’t enjoy ourselves now and again.
Liz: We won’t discuss this any further. Now, go find Vicki. I need to discuss David’s lessons.
(Roger downs drink, sets glass down loudly on table and exits, muttering.)
Roger told Liz at least once that he wanted David put in an institution, but Liz said no way. Since Roger was dependent on Liz for his income, he was in no position to cross her.
Yeah I just always assumed he wasn’t put in school because he was “disturbed”.
Oops! Sorry…that comment above was me, I forgot I was on Zibethicus’ computer and didn’t even check the login details below my post. Damn this no editing business.
David wouldn’t be allowed near a public school. He probably cut his teachers’ brake cables or something. He used to enjoy that sort of thing!
At least Liz gave the impression that she took her duties seriously–the whole town relied on Collins family businesses for jobs. So she ran everything even as a stylish recluse. But Quentin? Like he gives a rat’s patoot.
Didn’t a comedian (Eddie Murphy?) make a joke about how white people never leave at the first sign of a house being haunted?
Quentin: “Well, I really don’t subscribe to a belief in the occult. All that you have to know is that there does seem to be a restless spirit here in this house.”
Okay….
I guess that’s one of the great advantages of being the handsomest man in the world – Quentin doesn’t have to make sense when he talks.
I bet all his teachers gave him A’s just for sitting in class, lookin’ fine.
Ha! Probably true.
Of course, we could speculate that Quentin is so frazzled, he can’t think straight. I wouldn’t last a day at Collinwood, myself.
Reasonable enough. Quentin may not have been a believer, but he’d seen enough weird stuff in the previous few days to keep an open mind. He’s not the ostrich that Liz and Roger generally were.
Well, I know it’s two years (and some) later, I’m wondering whether the current storyline was originally intended to be without Alexis. With very little change so far, they could just have had Maggie getting freaked by the supernatural goings-on in her new house (not unlike in Night of Dark Shadows);
SPOILER ALERT
although granted, Angelique would need a double to pull off her upcoming switcheroo, they could have just had Maggie get possessed instead. But then, we wouldn’t have had Lara Parker wafting about Collinwood in that pink nightgown with the marabout trim, so never mind.
Hannah on the phone seems to be on the Old House set in the corner by the louvered doors. That may be the first time the Ralston Purina lamp was on the Old House set.
What a wild ride of an episode! And I love the recap!
For the first time I noticed that David Selby had pockmarked cheeks! Are at least that’s what it looked like in the beginning of the episode.
Aunt Hannah is such a strange but wonderful character. It is a shame that Clarice Blackburn didn’t play her though. I miss Clarice.
Ok, so I’m loving Hannah Stokes
…and your entries get more entertaining all the time, Danny.
After Hannah Stokes leaves Collinwood, there is the sound of fast heeled shoes. Then there is a dissolve to a clock and then to Quentin and Alexis. I suspect it was the sound of Lara Parker walking quickly to her mark in the drawing room to do her scene with David Selby.