“Do you think that what’s happened in this house has deranged my mind so much that I’ll accept your outrageous lies?”
You are asleep, said the voice in the portentous dream. But you hear me. Follow my voice. Follow… Follow… Follow… Follow… Follow…
To be honest, Maggie was already following just fine after “Follow” #3, but voices in portentous dreams usually have a script they need to stick to; a lot of this is automated.
Come in, Maggie, said the voice, as Maggie approached a door. Come into this room, and learn the secret. So Maggie came in.
The table holds the secret, the voice continued. Underneath, beside the ornament. Push the button. Maggie reached the table and found the button, which opened a small oblong compartment.
There before you lies the secret, said the voice in the portentous dream. If your secret is complete, you may wake up now. If you would like another secret, you may select from the following options. Please listen carefully, as our menu has recently changed.
So after all that to-do, it’s not much of a secret, really. Maggie walks over to Angelique’s room, where she finds the table, and she fiddles with the table until the compartment opens, and when she reaches into the compartment, what does she find? Love letters that her husband Quentin wrote to his first wife.
Like I said, not an earth-shaker. Quentin was in love with Angelique, once upon a time, that’s why he married her. Obviously, there was a beginning to that relationship, and it’s not a shock to discover that there are artifacts from that period. And those letters, once Maggie starts tampering with the postal system, are pretty much what you’d expect.
Dearest, they say, for example, when I left you last night, I walked to the docks and sat staring at the sea. How incredible it is to have found you, to know that no matter how long I live, I will never want any other woman but you. So as secrets go, that’s not like a code written on the back of the Declaration of Independence.
But Maggie’s marriage to Quentin has been going through a rough patch which started pretty much right after the wedding, and the main source of contention is the question of whether he’s still in love with his late wife, so even these relatively tame sentiments are somewhat painful for Maggie. This situation is about to get a lot more painful.
Meanwhile, Barnabas Collins is downstairs, dealing with a first wife of his own. The Angelique that he’s talking to today isn’t the Angelique that he married and murdered, back in the late 18th century. This is the alternative version that they’ve cooked up here in Parallel Time, the strange desert otherworld where it’s all the same people, but they’ve made different choices. Barnabas has been trapped in this time band for months now, and by this point, he’s not even trying that hard to get home.
Realistically, he should be keeping a low profile, because a) he’s not from this world and b) he’s a vampire, so maybe don’t go around poking people with sticks. But you can tell that Barnabas isn’t from this dimension, because he’s not making different choices at all. He’s making the same damn choice that he always makes, which is to do the most reckless thing he can think of.
In this case, that means: tease the evil sorceress. This Angelique isn’t quite as witchy as the one that Barnabas knows, but she’s witchy enough. For example, she’s returned from the dead, she’s taken the place of her twin sister Alexis, she sucks the life force out of lawyers, and now she’s sending people portentous dreams.
And Barnabas seems to look askance at that, although ordinarily you’d think that coming back from the dead to return to your lost love would be a super romantic thing to do. At least, that’s Barnabas’ attitude every time it happens to him, which is once every six to nine months.
It’s a fairly low-intensity interaction, really. He finds her sitting by herself in the dark and talking to the fire, and when Angelique gets caught participating in this kind of behavior, she goes into her poor-me Alexis impression, where she claims that she was lonely as a child and her only friends were uncountable nouns, like fire and darkness and advice.
So he asks her a bunch of softball questions like What are you doing here in the dark? and Didn’t it ever frighten you? and Is something wrong? which she can handle without breaking a sweat, and then he rubs his chin and looks at her, and that’s the end of the scene.
But the point is: Barnabas is having scenes with Angelique! There’s another one later on, too, and they’re playing chess in it, which is delightful. Chess is one of those metaphors they use on Dark Shadows when they want to announce We’ve decided we’re using metaphors again! like they do with mirrors and candles and werewolves. This time, Barnabas asks “Alexis” if she brought any of her sculptures with her when she came here from Italy. She says no, and he asks if she’s planning on doing any sculpture while she’s here, and she says she doesn’t know, and he raises a couple eyebrows and says, Isn’t that unusual? as if he expected her to bring several blocks of marble through airport security.
This is the first time that they’ve really pointed Barnabas at PT Angelique, and even if the scenes aren’t super consequential, it’s obvious that they’re positioning him within striking range. So far, the monsters in this storyline — Angelique, Barnabas and Cyrus — have been running on parallel tracks, not really interfering in each other’s business, and it’s time they started mixing things up. As we’ve been discussing in the last several entries, the show is noticeably better this week than it’s been for a while, and a lot of that is due to the writers setting up connections between the separate storylines. So far, they’ve managed to connect both Barnabas and Cyrus to Maggie, who’s been Angelique’s target the whole time, and now Barnabas is having cute chess games with Angelique.
So it’s only fitting that this is the episode when they finally admit that there will be no happy endings, because the central relationship at the heart of the story is fatally, hopelessly flawed. Here’s Quentin, on discovering Maggie in Angelique’s room, reading those damn letters.
Quentin: Well, I seem to have been completely wrong about you, too.
Maggie: Quentin, no!
Quentin: I was just talking about your innocence downstairs!
Maggie: Please, listen to me!
Quentin: Obviously, that “innocence” was something that my deranged mind invented!
Maggie: Quentin, innocence is not the subject!
Quentin: What about trust, or love?
Maggie: Love is something we should talk about.
Quentin: (holding up the letters) Obviously, we have different ideas about it. Now, go to your room!
So: holy cow, right? I’m not even sure what he’s angry about. She looked at a thing that’s in their house. I’m trying to work my head into a space where this is a problem, and I just can’t do it.
Here, let’s have some more.
Quentin: Now, you know how I hate you being in here!
Maggie: I’m sorry I did it, I —
Quentin: So why are you here?
Maggie: I want to understand you.
Quentin: I thought you did understand me. Before we came to this house, before we got married. Obviously, I was wrong.
So that’s three sarcastic uses of the word “obviously” in a single scene, which tells us a lot about how this marriage is going. And the important thing is that this altercation has absolutely nothing to do with the supernatural, or anybody’s wicked schemes. Yes, Maggie got the cheat codes for the hidden table compartment from her portentous dream, but the scene would be just the same if she found the letters any other way.
They’re not being haunted, or hounded by the furies. They’re not being manipulated or star-crossed or voodooed. They just kind of suck, as a couple.
Round two is even worse. He walks into the bedroom, and she says, “Quentin, I’ve been trying to think of something to say that would make it possible for us to be together,” which should work, but doesn’t.
She keeps trying.
Maggie: I think we’ll have to begin by being more open with each other.
Quentin: Are you talking about yourself, or me?
Maggie: You.
Quentin: You still haven’t admitted to me that you lied about the dream.
And then she tries to establish a couple simple facts — that today is the date of Quentin and Angelique’s wedding, and tomorrow night’s annual costume party began as an anniversary party. He responds by shouting, “Maggie, we’re not going to talk about it! Now, that’s all!” and then he runs out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
So he’s just a jerk. Right? Quentin’s been through some challenging times lately — trying to hang himself, a sudden near-fatal voodoo heart attack — but what’s happening right now is just him being unable to handle his own emotions. This has nothing to do with Angelique’s machinations; she might as well just sit downstairs, play chess and talk about her weird kinship with fire. Quentin and Maggie’s marriage will fail — is currently in the process of failing — because he’s still grieving over Angelique, and he shouldn’t have dragged Maggie into the middle of his problems in the first place. And he’s a jerk.
Now, that’s fine — it’s a more complex story this way than it would have been if they treated this like an adventure story, with a perfectly happy couple torn apart by a wicked space vixen. This stops being a story about Good vs Evil, which I’m always suspicious of anyway, and it becomes a story about what happens to this particular set of haunted, unhappy people, when you drop a reckless vampire arsonist into the middle of their costume party.
Tomorrow: Rebecca to the Rescue.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
This one’s worth watching the episode for: Quentin says, “I wonder I ever got the illusion that an hour or two alone would settle one’s all of problems.” There’s a close-up on Angelique at the time, and she visibly reacts to the mistake.
Hoffman tells Maggie, “Miss Stokes has gotten an att– a trunk from the attic.”
When Hoffman approaches Quentin in the foyer, there’s a boom mic overhead.
Maggie tells Quentin, “I was asleep when you come — came home, I guess.”
When Angelique comes downstairs in her gown, you can see the shadow of Maggie waiting for her entrance. Then everyone talks about why Maggie’s taking so long, when it’s obvious that she’s right there on the landing.
Behind the Scenes:
The Smith Brothers mustache portrait is hanging in Alexis’ room. I believe we last saw it back in January, in Professor Osmund’s office.
Tomorrow: Rebecca to the Rescue.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
I remember how annoying this PT Quentin is. Without an ounce of Charm or sex appeal, Quentin is a boring shouty shoutatopolous! Ughhh
“Romantic Quentin” from 1897 — the one wooing Amanda — was far more appealing. This version is supposed to be like “our” Quentin (as Barnabas claims later) but I don’t see it. Even the more aggressive, volatile Quentin we saw with Beth had a Bronte-like charm to him. You understood how Beth fell for him and why she stayed.
Yeah, I hated him in PT, too.
He seems lost here.
He is SUCH. A. DICK. He’s not romantic and haunted and mysterious, he’s just a petulant brat. I keep yelling at Maggie to leave again.
Honestly, a huge part of the problem is that only SIX MONTHS are supposed to have passed since Angelique’s death. That means that Quentin has lost a spouse (he thinks to a stroke but to MURDER) that he had complicated feelings about and was in fact attempting to strangle at the time; he then buried her and apparently left a grieving Daniel home in Collinwood while he ran off, met “Oh hey we all went to grade school together” Maggie, wooed her, wed her, brought her back and started shrieking like Jeb with a toothache pretty much immediately.
I mean, that’s a short, short span of time. I get it’s Rebecca and it was supposed to be this whirlwind courtship and all, but really–aside from everything else, that’s kinda “the first wife was barely cold” in terms of range, right?
At least in Rebecca you hear everything from Mrs. de Winter’s point of view and get to read a few memories of their honeymoon traveling around Europe together–you don’t see any of that with Maggie and Quentin. It’s like they got married in Boston, headed straight to Collinsport and he started right in with the yelling.
Deep in December, it’s nice to remember the fire of September that made us mellow…
Sort of a vampire Pon Farr.
“Now go to your room!” is such a “WTF” kind of line.
I know people are always “post-dating” the beginning of feminism – so some people would say there was no such thing even as late as 1970 – but in the case of “Go to your room” it doesn’t really matter, since I doubt a TV husband has EVER gotten away with that. Let alone on Dark Shadows!
They did a send-up of that sort of thing once on The Odd Couple, where “husband” Oscar Madison says to “wife” Felix Unger: “Did you hear what I said? Go to your room!” And then to save face, Felix says, “I don’t have to take this. I’m going to my room.”
A great episode.
Rob Petrie certainly doesn’t get away with it when he tells Laura he thinks it would be better if she went to her room. Dick Van Dyke plays it as a foolish, pompous moment on Rob’s part when Rob is behaving like an irrational jerk. That DVDS episode was 7 years before the Dark Shadows episode in question and was a flashback to even earlier in Rob and Laura’s marriage.
The audience laughs at Rob’s behavior and Laura makes it clear she has no intention of acquiescing to his neanderthal order. “I’m staying right here!”
Wonder how many times he told Angelique to go to HER room.
Picture any male member of the cast saying that to Julia. Seriously, just try to picture it. The one still second before the carnage would be epic.
My recollection is that David Selby rarely used the teleprompter which is why his use of it here stuck out to me. My other recollection is still true: PT Quentin was a dick. Also, although the Jekyll/Hyde story has evolved to become a non-comedic version of the Nutty Professor, Quentin and Maggie are still in the TV adaptation of Rebecca
Meanwhile, in a parallel blog set in a different time but running concurrently with our own blog, is a different TV show but with the same title, with a strangely similar cast, comprised of some of the same actors, playing almost the same characters, but with many more who are different, who inhabit many of the same sets and listen to the exact same music cues, but who are guided by a different writer to make different choices — choices equally puzzling and sometimes almost as entertaining.
Thanks for pointing me there. It’s already a treasure trove of information. And animated GIFs!
Yeah, now we have two brilliant Dark Shadows blogs. An embarrassment of riches!
The Cyrus\Maggie (Magrus?) thing might have worked better if we saw Angie putting a hex on the gloves. Not to ask for a spoiler, but does that turn out to be the case?
We definitely needed to see more of Romantic Quentin before they started in with Hairy Conniption Quentin. Will there be some explanation (however feeble) for these Mr. Bossypants outbreaks? (Especially since it should turn out that he hated Rebecca, I mean Rebelique, Angecca, er, Angelique.)
Oh, dear.
Gonna wear that dress, Maggie?
The one your good friend Hoffman picked out?
Smart girl.
No way that might turn out badly.
Cyrus secretly in love with his best friend’s wife and using Yaeger to pursue his desires makes more sense narratively than what we’ve seen. There’s inherent conflict that doesn’t exist with Cyrus running off as Yaeger and doing bad things that don’t affect the main cast.
Agreed; Buffie always felt like a place marker (her character was basically Maggie the waitress from pre-Barnabas DS).
But having a ‘love spell’ on the gloves throws in the supernatural, and gives possible inclusion of more cast members – Bruno, Roger, Trask, Chris (well, maybe not Chris anymore), random male day players – and gets Quentin even more worked up as the ‘secret affairs’ come to light. And poor Maggie, suddenly inundated with amours she neither wanted nor encouraged! That’d give Hoffman and Angelique something to cackle about!
Buffie was a place marker, but could have been so much more. Elizabeth Eis did a nice job with little material.
Fascinating differences between Classic Angelique and PT Angelique (less witchy).
PT Angelique seemed to have fewer powers — especially before her death — than Classic Angie, but she managed to accomplish things that Full Witch Angelique wanted but couldn’t achieve:
A) A man to love her.
B) To be mistress of Collinwood.
PT Angelique also seemed nominally interested in the other people around her as well. Her relations with Bruno, Cyrus, Roger and Hoffman weren’t directly tied to Quentin, and best we can tell, she wasn’t casting spells on them. Classic Angie really had no interest in anyone else or anything going on if they weren’t directly connected to her Barnabas obsession.
PT Angelique seemed to enjoy life more. Classic Angie didn’t show an interest in flowers and such unless they were part of a spell.
A meeting between the two Angeliques would have been very interesting.
Add in Alexis.
More like a threesome.
Imagine the logistics of THAT.
That would be wild!
According to Danny, the two most important things about Quentin Prime are that you want to have sex with him, and he’s funny. You probably don’t want to have sex with PT Quentin and he certainly isn’t funny; indeed, he’s such a bastard that it’s hard to take him in large doses. But there is real suspense surrounding the question, “What’s wrong with that guy?” I keep expecting a revelation that will explain why he’s so appalling to everyone.
Alexis is a sculptor? If this was ever mentioned before, I missed it.
It seemed as if Lara Parker was trying very hard to suppress a giggle during the chess game.
I think the Maggie/Quentin/Angelique story could have been on any soap opera, at least since Maggie returned. Angelique’s manipulations hardly required the supernatural and the ball is straight out of “Rebecca”. I think part of the reason I find it dull is that it’s not supernatural enough! They need to leave romantic fiction behind and stick with the horror fiction. Or just avoid parallel time. Neither PT story is good, though 1841 is worse.
I jokingly asked back in 1897 that I wondered if the writers were trying to see how far they could go before Selby’s fan mail numbers dropped. I think they have their answer. If “Go to your room!” didn’t do it, nothing will!
Do you think Sam ever told Grayson to go to her room?
Me neither.
I’m confused about Quentin’s letter about the beautiful baby and desperately wanting a daughter. They only had a son, right? I don’t understand that.
When I watched this episode this morning, my first thought was they were talking about Amy. But I forgot that Amy is Daniel’s cousin, not sister.
Quentin was wrong to order Maggie to go to her room as if she were a child. But he had every right to be angry. She read his private letters, that he wrote to his previous, recently deceased wife back when he was still courting her. That’s an invasion of privacy, almost as bad as reading your S.O.’s diary without their permission. It would be different if she’d come across them in some open, easily accessible place and started reading them before realizing what they were. But they were hidden in a way that was obviously deliberate, so they might as well have been stamped with the word “CONFIDENTIAL” in bright red block letters, and she obviously knew what they were and still chose to read them.
Man Quentin is such a child!! Why would Maggie want to be with him?!
The look on Angelique’s face after he stormed off at the end was priceless!!
Also Seaview Terrace is up for sale!!!
After watching PT Quentin for some time, I can’t imagine that many teenage girls were writing “Mrs. David Selby” in their notebooks.