“I was concerned, because people that are highly sensitive are usually very receptive to supernatural phenomena.”
And on top of that, she’s psychic, too, so now we have another reason for Hallie Stokes to stand around looking breathless and unwell, and we don’t even get a weird theremin sound or the scent of lilacs or anything.
“You know those strange feelings I get sometimes?” she says, so here we go; it’s one of those. Hallie’s telling Quentin about unexpectedly running into Barnabas and Julia in the hall earlier this evening, an experience which has shaken her to the core.
“I guess the reason I was frightened was the way that they looked at me, and talked to me,” she grouses. “They said things that made me think that they’d seen me someplace before, and I know I’ve never seen them before!” She tries to catch her breath, which appears to be a constant pursuit. “But then when I brought them downstairs, I had the awful feeling that something terrible was going to happen!”
But something terrible is already happening, thinks Quentin. It’s you.
Barnabas and Julia were on vacation for a couple months, seeing the sights of a parallel dimension and a post-apocalyptic nightmare future, and you know what happens when you take your eye off Collinwood for more than five minutes; another monster moves in.
Hallie Stokes is a new resident at this no-kill shelter that the Collins family appears to be running, for the benefit of orphan girls with lookalike ancestors. She’s the niece of Professor Stokes, who’s apparently been on the show long enough to park his relations wherever he likes.
I’ve been saying recently that Dark Shadows is approaching a thermodynamically problematic state where not enough new energy is entering the system, leading to entropy and stasis and the heat death of the universe, and I suggested going out and finding some long-lost relatives to spice things up. But I specifically placed an order for one of Quentin’s sexy illegitimate children. Nobody said anything about spare Stokeses.
Yes, I’m spending another day complaining about Hallie, but Dark Shadows has decided that this is the rocket sled to success that they need right now. They just did an attention-getting time travel trip into the future, which was a fairly thrilling adventure, compared to the usual pace of Dark Shadows, lots of deaths and betrayals and sudden bursts of violence, with some of the best actors on the show at center stage.
That was Friday. This is Tuesday.
Hallie: David, I’ve got to talk to you.
David: Well, I’m in for it, if Maggie catches you here.
Hallie: Don’t worry, she won’t. And it won’t take long.
David: Well, what is it?
Hallie: David, something terrible is going to happen in this house!
David: What do you mean, something terrible?
Hallie: I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I heard them talking about it!
David: You heard who?
Hallie: They were all in the drawing room. Barnabas was saying the strangest things.
David: Yeah, and you were eavesdropping.
Hallie: You needn’t sound so self-righteous! You’re not above eavesdropping now and then!
David: Okay, okay. What else did they say?
Hallie: Well, I couldn’t hear everything they were saying. But every once in a while, Barnabas talked of a disaster that was going to happen. What do you think he was talking about?
David: Well, you were the one listening. Didn’t you hear?
Hallie: I told you, I couldn’t hear everything! But I will tell you one thing. Your aunt Elizabeth was pretty upset by it all.
David: Oh, you scare too easy.
Hallie: I didn’t say I was scared!
David: You are, though. I can tell.
Hallie: No, I’m not!
So what are we supposed to make of that? Every step of that conversation is painful, just arrant speedbumpery. Let’s run through the concerns.
#1. “David, I’ve got to talk to you.” — “Well, I’m in for it, if Maggie catches you here.”
David does not like this girl.
#2. “It won’t take long.” — “Well, what is it?”
The fact that you have to say “Well, what is it?” at the beginning of your scene is not adequate screenwriting. Characters should not have to remind each other to say interesting things.
#3. “Something terrible is going to happen.” — “What do you mean, something terrible?” — “I don’t know, but I heard them talking about it.” — “You heard who?” — “They were all in the drawing room.”
Come on, y’all. We should not be having pronoun trouble like this. Talk in sentences.
#4. “Yeah, and you were eavesdropping.” — “You needn’t sound so self-righteous! You’re not above eavesdropping now and then!”
These children hate each other. Also: why was she eavesdropping? She’s been in two episodes, and practically the only thing we know about her is that she can’t mind her own business. Or talk clearly.
#5. “What else did they say?” — “Well, I couldn’t hear everything they were saying.”
So why are you telling us about it? Get better at eavesdropping, or find a new hobby.
#6. “Every once in a while, Barnabas talked of a disaster that was going to happen. What do you think he was talking about?” — “Well, you were the one listening.”
Yeah, good point. Why are you bothering people with this?
#7. “Didn’t you hear?” — “I told you, I couldn’t hear everything!”
Oh my god, seriously, this girl.
#8. “Oh, you scare too easy.” — “I didn’t say I was scared!” — “You are, though. I can tell.” — “No, I’m not!”
Well, then why did you come to David’s room to tell him about a scary thing that you’re not scared of? Jesus.
So David clearly does not like this girl. He’s not happy to see her, he’s frustrated with her conversation style, and he doesn’t trust her judgment. This discussion is clearly impinging on his personal time.
It’s true that David and Amy used to quarrel now and then, but their first scene together wasn’t a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-style dumpster fire. These characters are going to spend a lot of time together in the coming days and weeks, and I for one am not optimistic.
As longtime readers know, there are three steps to getting the audience to accept a new character: make a friend, make a joke, and make a plot point happen.
Making a friend shows that the new character has value in the narrative, because somebody we trust is willing to vouch for her, and show interest in her well-being. It’s easy for the vampire to kill random streetwalkers at the docks, because nobody cares about those characters, and whether they live or die has no consequence in the story. If everyone shrugs and says, yeah, Hallie’s here, she’s a pain in the ass, then we don’t have to care about her.
And they know how important that is, because they make a big deal about how much Quentin likes her. She knocks on his door in the middle of the night, like apparently she does all the time, and he is unbelievably patient and kind.
Quentin: Hallie, it’s past your bedtime, isn’t it?
Hallie: I’ve got to talk to you, Quentin.
Quentin: Why? You have trouble?
Hallie: Yes, but I don’t know what it is.
Quentin: (chuckles) Come on, you’re going to have to do better than that.
Hallie: You know those strange feelings I get sometimes?
Quentin: Yes.
Hallie: Quentin — those two people who came back to Collinwood today —
Quentin: Barnabas and Julia?
Hallie: Yes. Do you think — what I mean is — are they good people?
Quentin: Now, you’ve seen them. What do you think?
So that’s adorable, right? He takes her seriously, he listens to her troubles, he fills in gaps in her story, and when she asks him a lunatic question, he indicates that she can work it out for herself.
And later on, Quentin reinforces the point when he talks to Barnabas.
Quentin: Listen to me, have you said very much to the girl?
Barnabas: No, Julia and I felt she wouldn’t understand.
Quentin: Good, because I don’t want her to know anything that you’ve told Elizabeth and myself. She’s a very sensitive child, she frightens quite easily.
Barnabas: I understand that her parents died quite recently.
Quentin: About six months ago. She was living with relatives, and Stokes brought her here. We’ve become very fond of her.
That’s apparently an opinion that her relatives don’t share, by the way, because they couldn’t stand to have her around for more than six months.
But this is exactly the correct way to integrate this new character into the cast. Quentin exhibits concern and patience with her, and then goes out of his way to inform Barnabas that the family has accepted her. The audience loves Quentin, and Quentin loves this girl, and that should be enough for us.
So they’ve taken care of the “make a friend” step, except for the obvious fact that David despises her, and you can check off “make a plot point happen” as well. This entire week is about Barnabas, Julia and Quentin trying to figure out the nature of the catastrophe that will destroy Collinwood, and Hallie’s the one who triggers every step of that process.
Hallie says that she feels like they’re being watched, and pretty soon, Carolyn and David share that feeling. Hallie finds an antique dress on her bed, and hides it, and then puts it on and walks out to the gazebo in a trance. She appears in David’s dreams, dancing around in weird outfits. David is part of this as well, but he’s lived in this house all his life, and Gerard and Daphne didn’t take an interest until now. This is Hallie’s problem.
Barnabas and Julia stand around in the drawing room obsessing over the impending disaster, but they don’t actually make any progress in their investigations. Meanwhile, Hallie is upstairs, upsetting everyone and destroying the world. Hallie makes plot points happen.
So the problem, obviously, is that she never makes a joke. All she says is, “I have the strangest feeling!” and “Oh, Carolyn, I’m scared!” and “I woke up, and I went to get a glass of water, that was all!” She’s always upset, and she has no personality outside of her role as a haunted child.
Now, the “make a joke” step isn’t necessarily about making everybody funny and turning everything into a comedy. It’s a courtesy extended to the audience, a way for the character to acknowledge that entertaining you is an important part of her job description.
And that’s just not happening here. Hallie starts out breathless and unwell, and she continues in that vein for the next six to eight weeks of our lives. Now that I’ve done two hate posts in a row, I’m going to try and lay off for a while, and find something else to talk about. But that is not a license for her to get any more annoying than she currently is; if she acts up, then we are going to have another conversation about this.
So I’m afraid this isn’t an easy re-entry back into present-day Collinwood. At least we can look back and reminisce about the good old days, twenty-five years from now, when Hallie was silent and somebody else.
Tomorrow: Steer the Stars.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
When Barnabas opens the drawing room doors to find Carolyn crying, the boom mic is very clearly in view, and it stays there for about five seconds.
Barnabas says, “You’re looking well, David. You think you’ve grown a bit!”
Nancy Barrett’s name is spelled “Barret” in the credits.
Behind the Scenes:
We see David’s room again this week, which I’m obsessed with. In Parallel Time, it was Daniel’s room, which had some of the same stuff — the concert posters, the ship in a bottle, the robots, the cars, the girl and dog protestors, and the box with spots — but it was missing a lot of items, including the US map, the kite, the sailboat, the football player, the nutcracker soldier thing, the cat picture, the radiometer and the globe.
This week, I’m happy to say, they’ve brought back the map, the globe, the football player and the nutcracker soldier thing. Still no sign of the kite, sailboat, cat picture or radiometer, but I’m sure they’re still around somewhere. Try to stay calm.
Tomorrow: Steer the Stars.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Two days’ worth of complaining about Hallie is the bare minimum she has coming.
This is around the point where I notice something missing in David Henesy’s performance. It seems flat, rote, one-dimensional, as if he’s annoyed to be playing the part, and David, the character David Collins, does come across that way in this and upcoming episodes more often than not — bored, impatient, etc.
Knowing what I now know about the reasons David Henesy left the show, which is only a few months from now, it seems the frustration the actor had with the character’s lack of progression is starting to show.
From his earliest of appearances on Dark Shadows, David Henesy always proved to be one of the more interesting and talented actors in the cast. He had facial expressions, great inflections of voice, the whole bit.
But now, there is such a lack of emphasis when he does his lines that it sounds almost like you would when called on in class to read aloud passages from a book.
Another thing you notice is that his room hasn’t changed one iota since 1967, or even from 1966. It’s still very much a room for someone who’s nine or ten years old, rather than that of an adolescent, just full of children’s toys.
It’s obvious the writing team wasn’t putting any thought into the development of the character by this point.
The character of David Collins is another casualty in the special effects spook show roller coaster ride through time that Dark Shadows irrevocably became.
What have you seen about David Henesy’s frustration? I know a couple of quotes from Barnabas & Company and that’s about it.
Just my impression, in comparing his performances from the first two years of the show when he seemed more into the role than at this point in 1970.
It would be really interesting if you could get an interview with David Henesy, but done as the sort of “live” call-in you did for the post on HODS, where you’re both simultaneously watching the last episode he was in (1165) and then maybe he could talk about his time on Dark Shadows and what led to his decision to leave.
But I doubt that could happen, as he seems content to distance himself from the DS fandom.
Ahhhhh and of course still prominently featured on David’s dresser … there he is: the polka-dotted purple orange dog thingie holding that picket sign. I swear the cardboard figurine is playing with us, holding his sign up just out of focus again and again, right in the middle of 1000+ DS scenes in 100+ episodes.
Dog Thingie “David’s room, DS prop #???,” with your elusive message: you haunt and taunt us so. I begin to suspect you hold the very meaning of the Universe deep in the cardboard fibers of your big yellow eyes and the picket sign you never let us read.
file:///storage/emulated/0/Download/20210911_230620.webp
Whoops, sorry … I still don’t know how to post an image here. That was my fault this time more than the Dog Thingie’s tendency to be elusive. But 7:45 mins into this episode (the screen shot I tried to share above), there are many blurry closeups of the dog and his sign, chilling behind Barnabas, David, and Hallie.
Not to be crass, but I know exactly what David Collins is having a problem with. He’s a young teenage boy, dressed in his jammies, alone with a girl in his bedroom, and all she can focus on is an adult conversation that she had no business listening in on. And this is where I got my first pre-teen information about boy-girl relationships. I’ve suddenly self-analyzed the root of my own relationship issues and can begin to unravel them. LOL.
I love this site!
Mr. Horn — congratulations to you sir! You have a new Victoria Winters in your life to haunt your DS viewings — and this time she comes with a blond-girl, Jan-Brady vibe.
Because you’re from a younger generation, I’m not sure you can fully appreciate what Hallie brings to the table. But she’s a true classic for her time. Young teen gals like Hallie were the apex of young teen girldom in 1970. I know it’s very hard to believe, but we couldn’t have ask for much more.
oh my god I didn’t even think of the Jan Brady connection
I don’t like to generalize, but along with Jan Brady, she seems to remind me of countless OTHER early ‘ 70’s TV girls (just as William says). All that’s missing is the pair of boots.
They share fantastic hair, at the very least. I was always so so jealous of Jan’s hair, and when I watched BB reruns I could not understand how someone with a waist length sheet of locks like that could be unpopular.
“we couldn’t have asked for much more.”
Couldn’t you, though? A brain, a heart, maybe some courage?
Quentin asks Hallie if it isn’t past her bedtime. Is she 15 or 5?
Go take off your bra, put on your jammies and go to bed.
So, wait, isn’t she wearing a nightgown? That bilious green thing is a dress? Oh, those fashion forward folks at Ohrbachs!
Oh, is that a nightgown? The way they’re talkin’, I figured Hallie wore pj’s with feet in ’em.
Well, it IS two thirty in the morning. Which for longtime inhabitants is lunchtime around here, but Hallie’s apparently from the normal world where people aren’t walking around fully dressed, made up and accessorized every damn hour of the night, so she still is supposed to be sleeping.
I think Hallie might be the larval stage of the fake Carolyn from episode 578. Seriously, though, David Selby does wonderful work in the scene with her – such lovely warmth. Shame he has lines that treat her like she’s seven…
I thought Tom Jennings was interred in a mausoleum; or was he just renting while he was a vampire? No wonder the old caretaker at Eagle Hill is so confused, graves appearing and disappearing, someone keeps moving the nameplates in the Collins vault, changing dates and writing on gravestones with magic marker, folks wafting in at all hours, zombies popping up, talk about the unquiet dead! Who has time to trim the shrubberies?
You’re right – Quentin is being very kind to Hallie and he should be since her parents were killed 6 months ago. She’s pretty fragile and I should stop pickin’ on her. She can wear Droopy Dog pj’s with feet if she wants to!
So, if Barnabas and Julia could have gone back another six months in time, they could have prevented whatever killed her parents and Hallie would never have come to Collinwood.
Sympathise deeply with her loss; I am perfectly willing to give young Ms. Stokes a chance, but she needs to hold up her end – at least make faces that don’t look like she’s nauseous all the time, and go somewhere outside nasal whining with that vocal range.
Too bad that other Brit Collins cousin, Davey Jones, didn’t make it by for a guest appearance. That would have perked Hallie’s spirits up considerably. Why should Marcia Brady get all the attention?
Maybe it’s already been mentioned here, but Kathy Cody DID appear with Davy Jones in an episode of Love, American Style.
Kathy Cody was in an episode of The Partridge Family. In the beginning Danny thinks she is a mermaid!
She was on The Partridge Family, but the girl Danny thought was a mermaid was Meredith Baxter.
Henesy is upset with the bad dialogue on both sides of his conversation.
I’d argue that “make a joke” is the most important element in a successful character. If nothing else, it’s what sticks the landing: Quentin killing Ezra by way of a puckish prank, Chris’s gallows humor about his condition, Julia and Stokes’s clever wit. Even early Barnabas cracked jokes.
I could go on. The characters I like least (Vicki, Hallie…) just weren’t funny. I prefer Judith to Elizabeth because Judith is snarkier.
BTW: Did Elizabeth reopen the West Wing just so Quentin could live in his old room? And how does one even begin to make someplace fit for human habitation when a rotting corpse has sat in there for decades?
I totally agree. I much prefer the funny characters like Nicholas Blair and all the Reverend Trask incarnations. Jerry Lacey didn’t have to do anything more than roll those Trask “crazy eyes” and I’d be in stitches – and on his side.
I thought Jerry Lacey was wonderful, but I hated the first Trask so much! I was delighted when Barnabas walled him up.
Me, too! I loved “the Revs” but, I knew they all had it comin’.
I think one of Joan Bennett’s best moments was when she was torturing ol’ Gregory Trask on the telephone after she had HIM walled up.
Oh yes! Judith – you go girl! He had it coming.
As for humor, I loved Count Petofi. His sense of humor was the best!
My personal favorite is Naomi giving Trask the slap he so deserves.
That was real slap he took.
I believe Julia did ditto.
Was it on Nicholas?
Yes! Oh, I loved Judith. Lacey really was delightfully awful. I mean that in the best way. I thought he was one of the finest actors on DS. I really wouldn’t have hated Trask(s) so much if he weren’t.
Except for PT Trask, I kept expecting some outbursts of Traskulinity from him, but he was duller than drying paint. Just can’t get good help anymore.
Traskulinity! I kept watching him, too, just waiting for the butler to do it.
That was awfully disappointing, wasn’t it? Just not smackable enough.
They totally caned him and Bruno in the knees storyline wise–I still don’t know what they thought they were doing with the whole Daemon Edwards storyline.
Daemon was the WORST GHOST. You know the widows and assorted random undead guys from Eagle Hill used to hold him upside down and shake his lunch money out of his pockets while Josette cheered them on.
I was about to write the same thing about Quentin. When did Quentin start living at Collinwood? Sometime during Parallel time I guess. Did we ever see Quentin being introduced to Elizabeth during Leviathan?
Must have been Parallel Time. It would have been great to see the look on his face when he found Gregory Trask on the chair and realized what Judith had done! That was a scene worth seeing!
Liz might have opened up the west wing for Quentin to live in his old room, but she didn’t go so far as to have electricity installed there. He’s still using candle light.
I could go on. The characters I like least (Vicki, Hallie…) just weren’t funny.
Maybe that’s why Classique and PT Sabrina fell flat as well.
Try Vicki in the beginning….you’ll love her.
Or at least, hate her less. ;-p
Vicki was always awful. The show’s worst character, played by the show’s worst actor.
I’ve been rewatching the first episodes with Barnabas and I realized that he’s been on several times and hasn’t made any jokes, though he did make himself laugh during a conversation with Vicki so maybe that counts?
When I first watched this story, I fascinated with the Multidimensional Playroom that would appear in a small closet that was next to an outside wall. But they dropped that angle eventually and stopped talking about how the playroom couldn’t possibly exist.
Too bad, I’m sure the playroom’s existence must have something to do with Quentin’s stairway through time, since the stairs appeared in the impossible playroom.
It makes me wonder if Barnabas and Julia ever really made it back to “Their Own Time”. It would explain all the continuity errors that are about to star cropping up in the next few months if they didn’t.
I think that stairway took them to a parallel 1840.
Time paradox continuity problems don’t trouble me much, not now, as they did in my youth. I like to think the playroom was originally destroyed in 1840, returning as its own ghost in 1970. I have always thought the metaphysical stairway through time was a brilliant conception in that 1840 Quentin seems to have constructed it without implementing the supernatural.
Hallie is actually Laura Palmer. You can hear someone calling “Laauuuuura” if you play the DVD backwards
Is she wrapped in plastic?
But I liked Laura, poor messed-up dead chick.
One of the problems I had with the 1970 disaster plotline is that once again the writers painted themselves into a corner. Because the “catastrophe” was imminent it felt like they rushed it. And yet some elements just dragged. At least the wrap up of the dream curse-Adam-Nicholas plotines were woven into haunting of Collinwood story
That’s a good point, Tony. But that was when DS was about as good as it was going to get. By this point everyone seems to be burned out. There are interesting concepts, but not the creative writing to bring it to life.
My particular theory is that Hallie’s parents aren’t dead. They are simply in the Witless Protection Program.
I always called this series of episodes ‘David gets a babe’
“ She appears in David’s dreams, dancing around in weird outfits.”
I think that’s probably the most normal thing that’s happened to David, being a young teenage boy, in the last 5 years.
You can pick on Hallie as much as you like. I was off to college without a TV when these episodes first aired so my initial exposure to Hallie was during my recent reviewing. My first reaction was Huh? Where did they get her? And WHY? (Why, David? Why?) I loved Denise Nickerson–she was totally believable to me as a traumatized orphan. This girl, not so much. She really should be a little more of a hormonal, moody teen-ager. Heaven knows I was a master whinger in my day, but I didn’t go about like Nan Bobbsey. And as for that green garb: I think it’s a summer robe, but why does everyone run about Collinwood in their jammies? It’s a formal drawing room people, put some clothes on!
Everybody else but Quentin, in his own room, IS dressed, though! It’s four thirty in the damn morning and Maggie’s in Hallie’s room, in the drawing room with Liz, hanging out in the foyer, full garbed and made up (as is LIz!)
I know they have to do a lot of scenes at “night” because Barnabas can’t be out during the day, but what’s wrong with eight p.m.? Like, A NORMAL TIME for people to be dressed and talking about vague curses and how much they miss their dead Leviathan husbands?
My theory (which I just thought of);
Carrie doesn’t do anything to start up the haunting in this story!
When Barnabas and Julia come back to 1970 via the staircase, THEY provide the conduit that Gerard (or Judah, oh whatever) follows back through. Or maybe it’s his control over Julia’s mind that acts like a homing signal?
There’s support for that in the text- when Barnabas and Julia are making their way to the staircase in #1070, they show us Gerard looking on with a smile in his face.
I was going to suggest that David Collins seems to have adopted PT Quentin as his role model when dealing with women, but what Prisoner observes up top makes much more sense: David Henesy was just getting fed up. That’s really not too surprising considering his age and the length of time he’s been on the show. I don’t even want to think about what a pain in the ass I would’ve been at that age having to hang around a TV studio all day.
On the other hand, I will continue to defend Hallie Stokes to my dying breath and perhaps beyond.
It’s Hallie’s yellow side-burn curls that make me crazy