“You should try drinking before lunch, Mother, it makes the day just sort of float along.”
It really takes something to shock the people in this house. People can kill each other, jump out of windows, they can curse and hate each other, and nobody seems to mind. But to be a morning drinker — that shocks people!
It happens I find that drinking is my sole means of support. It’s the only way I can live with the terrible secrets.
Wouldn’t you like to know? Wouldn’t you just like to know some of the things I know? I bet you’d give your last cent to hear some of the things I could tell you!
It’s really quite funny. You loved Angelique so, and yet when she comes back, you don’t even recognize her!
If you will check, dear uncle, you will find the place beneath her skull where that hatpin —
You have never liked the truth, Uncle Roger. It’s too real for you.
I can’t! To tell you how I know would mean revealing another secret, and one more would be too many for you, you’re upset as it is.
Oh, it’s a house filled with secrets! You simply brought some of them to light! But there are many, many more. Oh, so many more. More than even you know about.
But now I know them all, every one! What a funny feeling, to know all the secrets!
Oh. I keep thinking that Will will be there waiting for me. He isn’t. I suppose I’ll accept that, eventually.
No lecturing, mother. I am a recent widow and may do as I like with my life.
I’m only sorry now that I let Will’s drinking bother me. I should simply have joined him.
But I know who killed her. Yesterday and today have been very interesting.
It’s my secret! I have lots of secrets, I’ve even seen Quentin! And if I tell one secret, then another secret will come out. And then another, and another…
Yes, mother. I will be your good little girl again. Except I do know who the murderer is. And tonight, when evening comes… I’ll do something about it.
Tomorrow: The Fault in Our Stars.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
When Liz tells Angelique that she thought she heard Quentin outside her room, she starts to say “The footsteps –” and then realizes that Angelique is still saying her line. When she’s done, Liz says, “The footsteps were real!”
When Carolyn finds Trask in front of the tower room door, a cobweb gets stuck on her shoulder, and she has to brush it away in the middle of her confrontatio.
Behind the Scenes:
This is Denise Nickerson’s last episode on the show. Don Briscoe, who played Amy’s brother Chris, left the show abruptly in April, and Lisa Richards, who played Chris’ girlfriend Sabrina, left a month ago. When we get back to regular present-day Collinwood, it’s mentioned that Chris, Amy and Sabrina all left town together. After leaving Dark Shadows, Nickerson played Violet Beauregarde in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. During the 1970s, she appeared on CBS soap Search for Tomorrow, and on the PBS educational show The Electric Company as one of the ensemble of kids known as the Short Circus. In 1974, she appeared in a Brady Bunch episode about Peter and an identical transfer student. When she turned 21 in 1978, she left acting and became a nurse.
In 2014, Nickerson appeared as a new character in two of the Big Finish Dark Shadows audio plays — Carriage of the Damned and The Darkest Shadow. Stephanie Ellyne has been playing the grown-up Amy Jennings since 2013, most notably in the Bloodlust miniseries.
Amy Jennings, now played by Stephanie Ellyne, has appeared
This is also Jerry Lacy’s last episode as the Parallel Time Mr. Trask. He’ll return to the show in October as Lamar Trask, in 1840.
The terrifying stuffed pig weasel from the Todds’ antique shop has a prominent cameo in act 3, on a credenza outside the tower room. The scene begins with a close-up on the pig weasel, and slowly pulls back to show Trask walking past.
Tomorrow: The Fault in Our Stars.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
The Parallel Trask was wasted. You can count on one hand the number of times he appeared and he never had any bearing on the plot.
I don’t think of him as a parallel Trask. I think he’s a parallel Tony Peterson. By the I have my theory about the Peterson family being descended from the Trasks. More to come…
I am absolutely on board with this theory, but then again I also wonder sometimes if (classique) David’s real father wasn’t really maybe Grant Douglas, so who even knows what’s up with me.
(But shouldn’t he have been a werewolf, then? But if that was the case, shouldn’t Joe Haskell and Tom Jennings have been werewolves?
…Do we KNOW that Joe Haskell and Tom Jennings WEREN’T…
Okay, I guess we know Joe wasn’t, since we saw him during the full moon…
…So maybe David…
Then again, he’s too young. Maybe David just isn’t a werewolf YET.
Help me)
Then would that have made classique David a werewolf AND a Phoenix?
A werewolf soaring through the sky on wings of fire is too awesome a concept for any band of time!
I asumed Joe was Chris and Tom’s cousin on the non-refundable side.
But I do have a pet theory about Andre Dupres having a very enjoyable journey up the East Coast to Maine.
How the heck did auto-correct change “werewolf” to “refundable,” and more importantly, why?!?
We’re Way Outta Le Funds.
All sales are final. No refunds.
No fangs, no claws, no fur – no service.
“There wolf. There castle.”
Igor, in Young Frankenstein
Can I get store credit on a slightly scuffed wendigo?
My theory –
Mrs. Jennings made a deal with Mr. Best, to spare one of her twin sons the curse. That’s why Chris sometimes became a werewolf when there was not a full moon, because he essentially had a “double” curse.
Mrs. Haskell had an affair, and had Joe, who she and Mr. Haskell passed off as their own to avoid scandal. Joe never knew of this.
David’s two curses, Phoenix and werewolf, cancel each other out (somehow – don’t ask me how these things happen. What am I, a gypsy?).
I’m sure that if the DS writers had bothered to ask ME, this would all have been explained much sooner.
That’s BRILLIANT. Especially the “eldest” part.
I think they revised Magda’s curse saying that it was eldest son of succeeding generations who would become werewolves. If Chris and Tom Jennings were twins then we can assume Chris was born a few minutes earlier.. BTW the implication was that Burke was really David’s father but given his resemblance To Daniel, Tad, & Jamison that theory is done. Also Joe is related to the Chris, Tom & Amy on the Jennings side. Remember Lenore (Quentin’s daughter) is Chrs’ grandmother. And she likely had a daughter who married a man named Jennings This guy had a sister who married a Haskell..Joe’s father.
Then it was Haskell who had the affair (possibly with Betty Hanscomb. She was philandering on a level with JFK (with whom she also had an affair)), and took the baby in; again, to avoid scandal, he and his wife claimed the infant as their own.
That’s BRILLIANT (too). I meant to put the “especially the ‘eldest'” part here.
Didn’t they use the term “male heir?” Primogeniture is still a tradition even if it’s not the law, so it’s not that big of a stretch.
“ the implication was that Burke was really David’s father but given his resemblance To Daniel, Tad, & Jamison that theory is done”
Not necessarily. Remember David and Jamison had the same mother, irrespective of who their fathers were (Roger marrying his own reincarnated grandmother!).
Who knows how many times Laura married one of Roger’s incestors… I mean… ancestors.
I wonder if Burke Devlin didn’t have a older brother who died in infancy, and if both of them were Mrs Devlin’s sons by Quentin.
Surely Reverend Trask (1795) was a single gentleman?
Do you suppose HE had a twin brother?
Or perhaps the good Reverend Trask was not as pious as he pretended…since plainly there are later Trasks. Who bear great resemblance to a maverick lawyer in present day Collinsport.
I’m sure that Reverend Trask left behind a wife and at least two sons: Lamar and someone who would become Gregory Trask’s father. Okay, so here’s my theory. Gregory’s only child was Charity and she was permanently possessed by Pansy Faye (or her spirit was displace by Pansy). Tim Shaw would marry her post-1897 and would have several children. They’re descendants were Sebastian Shaw on one side and Tony Peterson on the other side
1897 Trask said the 1795 Trask was his great-great grandfather.
Ooh, I just had a flash of the Reverend and his good lady wife, procreating. If you thought he was a shouter when he was hunting witches… 😀
^ Works for me!
Did I just blink, and miss a good murder?
He and Bruno both. They were supposed to be a major part of the Dameon plot, obviously, but once that was literally walled up in the basement and forgotten they had no reason to stick around.
At least Bruno wrote that never ending tune and had enormous hair, but Trask wasn’t even shown butlering. I assume they couldn’t afford to pay Tony to say “Yes, Mrs. Stoddard” and close doors.
Is it my fancy,
or does PT Pigweasel look melancholy?
With all it’s seen, and all the places it’s been,
It seems to me to have an ennui.
Maybe it’s just the lighting.
Sore and sad and I’ll at ease’ll
Be the Parallel Pigweasel.
PT Pigweasel–it and the afghan are the only ones who hold all the secrets. Carolyn thinks she does, but it’s the brandy talking.
PT Carolyn had the best lines: “I’m only sorry now that I let Will’s drinking bother me. I should simply have joined him.”
PT Uncle Roger clearly doesn’t hold the same level of affection for PT Carolyn that Classique Roger does for Classique Carolyn. He never calls her kitten.
PT obviously does not have an Agatha Christie; Carolyn says the one thing that is certain to get her killed. (It does in all the books.)
“I know who the murderer is!”
But then, she has been drinking a great deal.
It’s not just limited to Agatha Christie novels… I expect Carolyn is as doomed as doomed can be!
“But I’m not going to tell until tonight! Until then I’ll just drop a lot of drunken hints around obvious suspects who have killed and will kill again. Cheers!”
Yes, this episode plays like a classic mystery series episode, complete with red herring in Trask. Speaking of Trask, the butler keeps his coat by the front door?
That was one of the few good things about Pre-B Roger.
Everything’s in a holding pattern until Claude North.
Don Briscoe leaving the show was sad and Denise Nickerson unfortunate. She could nail just about any emotion they asked of her. I wonder if they knew she was leaving before the 52 hour meeting that came up with “let’s do the Turn of the Screw again”? As always Danny, I love reading your blog. Never miss an entry.
After establishing PT Roger Collins as a combination fey Clifton Webb/Waldo Lydecker & George Sanders/Jack Favell type it sure didn’t ring true here that Louis Edmonds would be more like the “real time” Roger all of a sudden.
I found it jarring to see him in a 3-piece suit and tie instead of an ascot. It’s a wardrobe change to go with the character’s change.
His tie, pulled to the left, is a giveaway.
Exactly how did Carolyn figure out who the killer is? Is PT Booze brainjuice or something?
The writers told her who the murderer was…
She found out by accident…she snuck into their room looking for more booze, and while she was in there she read that stack of papers.
Danny, there’s some kind of editing problem in the “behind the scenes”…like the 3rd paragraph was supposed to have been deleted, or something.
The Pigweasel is actually a musk deer. A deer with fangs. Completely appropriate for DS.
I find it interesting, albeit mundane, that they showed (something that attempted to look like) an actual kitchen in two scenes, complete with a mixer! Very rare to show a room other than foyer, drawing room, David’s bedroom, etc.
Even though it’s been a while since the blog, it’s bothering me that the “Short Circuits” on The Electric Company were identified as the “Short Circus”, autocorrect?
Carolyn looks FANTASTIC in that black top and blue scarf! And while half drunk at 9:00 AM no less!
The last few episodes have been basically The Nancy Barrett Show and if Dan Curtis had spun that off into a separate program it might still be running today.
Denise Nickerson had a supporting part in a little gem of a film from 1975 called Smile. It’s about a small town beauty contest and she plays one of the contestants. Worth seeking out if you’ve never seen it. Her life after that was very up and down and by the time she died in 2019 she was practically unrecognizable.
I was feeling a little annoyed by Carolyn’s boozy theatrics the past few episodes and then suddenly today the “morning drinker” sequence was simply amazing. I was not expecting to see her come to that horrific end.
That pig weasel must have been either someone’s beloved albeit mangy-looking pet, or some third-rate hunter’s dubious prize, or an aspiring taxidermist’s practice roadkill animal, or a suspected cryptid for anyone to have bothered having it stuffed.
So I’ve been watching the series on Tubi and today when I pulled up Tubi, one of the recommendations (along with DS) is the 2009 movie “The Turn of the Screw”! I thought that was cool considering…
It’s sad that Trask didn’t have more to do in PT. But I gotta say, I’m tired of PT. It feels pointless to care about any of the characters because it’s not our characters, just ones that look and sound like them.
Farewell Denise! You were great!
Yes, Farewell Denise. I’d love to wish you a happy life but I know how it turns out. Thanks for the performances.
Are we just not going to talk about the LAPELS on Angelique’s mustard colored pantsuit??
That equipment Julia is working with has to be from Cyrus’ lab. They couldn’t have lugged it over from Regular Time without some Parallel Time Bekins movers.