“Why do I always have to be the one to talk sense?”
I know that this will be impossible for you to believe, but everything I tell you is true.
Months ago, on a plane of existence that you’ve never seen, you and I fell madly, hopelessly in love. All it took was one look at you, unconscious on the table of the mad scientist who was using you to animate his murdered daughter’s corpse, and I knew that I couldn’t go through with my plan to stab you while you slept.
You were like a perfect china doll, pure and lovely and utterly helpless. You couldn’t be another casualty in the endless occult space war that I wage against my ex-wife in multiple dimensions. I spared you from the brutal execution I’d planned for you, and that is why you love me.
When I carried you from the house, you were silent and remote. I brought you to a secret room in a deserted mausoleum, and watched as you moved about the room, reacting to objects that you recognized. Then I took you to my home, to my own basement, where I hooked you up to several machines and worked tirelessly on your behalf. Even though you had been cruelly used, I didn’t bring you to the hospital or the police, because they could never understand the special connection between us.
There was another man in your life, my dearest, who tried to ensnare you with his hypnotic control. Happily, my hypnotic control over you was stronger than his, allowing you the freedom to choose the man who deserved your love. He saw you as a plaything, an object that he could own, but I knew the truth — that you were mine, forever, from the moment I saw you. Shortly after this, he was murdered, and I buried his body in the woods, so that the police investigation would no longer be an impediment to our love.
How can I descibe the agony I felt as you burned, in that ghastly fire? You screamed my name, begging me to rescue you from the flames. That was the last time that I saw you, my love, and you cannot imagine the suffering I have experienced.
My name is Barnabas Collins. I am the most dangerous person that you have ever met. This is our love story.
Once again, we learn that you should never underestimate a storyteller’s ability to surprise you, if he really, truly has no idea what he’s going to do from one moment to the next. The sky’s the limit. At least, that’s my interpretation of this new chapter in the saggy love saga of Barnabas Collins and Roxanne Drew.
It’s early days — she’s just walked in the door, according to the screenshot directly above — but I feel confident in saying that the writers don’t have a single clue about what they’re doing with this character. How is she related to the Roxanne that we briefly knew and cheerfully discarded at the end of the Parallel Time storyline? What role does she play in the current struggle against the ghosts of Gerard Stiles and Daphne Harridge? Is she the true, destiny-approved soulmate that Barnabas jumped to the conclusion of, two months ago?
Those questions cannot be answered, because the show has drifted away from all known rules of narrative. Characters no longer have motivations; they just have attitudes and props.
But she’s friendly, this new Miss Drew, you can say that for her, plus she doesn’t speak in that weird Parallel Time jungle girl patois — “I am afraid when I am not with you,” she said — so that’s a plus. Beyond that, I can’t help you.
Roxanne: Who are you?
Barnabas: Barnabas Collins!
Roxanne: We haven’t met, and yet you know my name. How?
Barnabas: I knew someone exactly like you, but in another time. Her name was Roxanne — Roxanne Drew.
Roxanne: But that’s my last name! Where did you say you knew this girl?
Barnabas: Very near here… but in another time.
Roxanne: Another time? Well, you mean many years ago.
Barnabas neither confirms nor denies this interpretation. It’s nice when people can supply their own explanation for whatever crazy thing comes out of Barnabas’ mouth; it saves wear and tear on the vampire.
But this version of Roxanne is primed to accept almost any bafflegab you throw at her; she works with Sebastian in some capacity, and he’s an astrologer, a line of work where you spend half your time making up meaningless jargon, and the other half scolding your clients for not appreciating the purity of your calling.
So the idea that there was another Roxanne Drew absolutely delights this girl; she practically runs a lap around the living room.
Roxanne: Incredible! Sebastian has told me about astral twins!
Barnabas: Astral twins?
Roxanne: Yes! People who are born in different parts of the country — usually at the same exact moment! Their horoscopes are the same. Very often, they have similar names! Their lives parallel each other to every detail! I never thought I had an astral twin!
This is a world where ghosts conspire to steal the bodies of their descendants, where grieving lovers call their departed spouses from the grave, where secrets are revealed in dreams and buried in basements, where death himself pauses to spare the life of a beautiful young woman who emerged newborn from an artist’s sketch pad. And even here, in the Upside Down, this “astral twins” thing sounds like bullshit.
Barnabas and Roxanne go on to have a conversation about the current plotline that isn’t currently germane, so I won’t trouble you with it. Then he turns on the charm.
Barnabas: Roxanne… can we discuss this further?
Roxanne: No.
Barnabas: But I want to see you again. I’m fascinated by the idea of astral twins! We have much to discuss. Can I see you again?
Roxanne: Of course.
Barnabas: Are you free later this evening? We might have a late dinner.
It’s two o’clock, by the way, according to the clock on the mantelpiece. It stays in shot for a while, too; that is an unequivocal two o’clock. I don’t know why this happens on Dark Shadows as often as it does. They can clearly see that the clock is in the shot, and it would be the work of a moment to turn the hands to seven-thirty. But no.
Roxanne: Mr. Collins —
Barnabas: Please.
Roxanne: All right.
Barnabas: I’ll pick you up at ten.
Roxanne: No, I’ll meet you there.
Barnabas: Until ten, then.
He kisses her hand, clicks his heels three times, turns into a bat and flies away, leaving us with a single question: Where did you just agree to meet, exactly?
But this is what happens when you leave yourself open to Roxannes in your life; the shape of your day gets irreparably twisted. At that point, there’s only one force in the universe powerful enough to save us: Julia Hoffman’s eyebrows.
Julia gets involved when she takes a message from Roxanne, who calls to tell Barnabas that she won’t be able to join him for dinner tonight — possibly because it’s two in the morning, and the next available suppertime is two ten o’clocks from now.
Julia knew Roxanne in Parallel Time too, and she’s aware of the entirely hairbrained romance that Barnabas thinks he cooked up with original flavor Roxanne. (“I know why you follow me!” said the jungle girl, offering up prayers to the river god.)
So Julia is super not impressed when Barnabas comes home and starts gabbling about how he found another lookalike girlfriend. “Julia!” he cries. “The most incredible thing has happened! Roxanne –”
“I know,” Julia says. “I know, you found her.” She’s dealt with this kind of thing before, and she knows that it usually ends with a trip to Home Depot, to get a shovel and a whole mess of paper towels.
She tries to indicate, gently, that he’s being an idiot, and the time to stop being an idiot is now.
“Julia, you have not met her,” he says. “She’s exactly the same!”
“Well, I assume she is, but she’s not the same person.”
He insists, “Julia, from the few times I’ve been with her, I know that that’s Roxanne!” He’s only been with her once. Maybe he’s counting each minute as a separate encounter.
“Why do I always have to be the one to talk sense?” she sighs. This is going to take a minute; talking sense to Barnabas is a lengthy procedure.
She puts on one of her eighteen patient facial expressions.
“Barnabas,” she says, “do you remember me, in Parallel Time?”
“Of course.”
She looks him square in the face. “I am not the same person as that Julia Hoffman.”
“That has nothing to do with it!”
“It does!” It actually does. “You do not know this Roxanne.”
“Julia,” he says, “I know this is Roxanne, I know it!”
And, oh, the look she gives him.
“All right, Barnabas,” she says. “We’ll just have to wait and find out.” Then a car explodes behind her.
He goes back to see her, of course; for Barnabas Collins, a broken date is an invitation to try even harder. She says that she’s not free to go out, and she never will be. She offers him her hand to shake. He kisses it, indicating that being free is not a factor.
“We shall see each other again,” he says. “I assure you of that.” The clock behind him still says two o’clock, of course, and in our hearts, it always will.
Tomorrow: Your Dark Shadows Horoscope.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
The opening narration calls Sebastian an “astrologist,” a word that they also used yesterday. It’s possible that this is an actual alternative term, but I refuse to accept it.
Barnabas says to Roxanne, “Well, since that — you work together, perhaps you could finish it yourself.”
When Barnabas enters Collinwood and hangs up his coat, he says, “Ah, Julia! Did you have any luck with the, uh,” — one mississippi, two mississippi, three — “with the records?”
The camera pans from the boy mannequin to Hallie, and we can see the blue screen on the window behind her, just before the Chromakey effect.
Tomorrow: Your Dark Shadows Horoscope.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Underneath a big clock at the corner of 5th Avenue and 22nd Street
I stood and waited for a girl I knew at the spot where we agreed to meet
It was four minutes of two
At four of two, I stood waiting for the girl I was four minutes early for the date we had planned I was planning to say I was in love with her
Just as soon as she showed for a two o’clock date And the clock said four of two
At four of two, I was staring into space She was not yet late, according to the clock
I was feeling nervous so I kept looking up
At the clock sticking out of the side of the building
And it still said four of two
At four of two, I began to feel tired
And I rubbed my eyes, and again I checked the time It seemed as if the sky was growing dark… But I felt reassured when I looked at the clock
And it still said four of two
I lay my head down on the sidewalk so in case she were coming I would have a better view
But no one was there so I stretched out and closed my eyes for a second or two
It was four minutes of two
At once I awoke to a futuristic world
There were flying cars and gigantic metal bugs I’d grown a beard; it was long and white
But I knew that the girl would be coming very soon
For though everything had changed, there was still that clock And it still said four of two
–They Might Be Giants, “Four of Two”
“My name is Barnabas Collins. I am the most dangerous person you’ve ever met. This is our love story.”
CHUNG CHUNG!
I could not help but hear that whole narration in Jonathan Frid’s best sepulchrally seductive tones, trailing final S’s and everything. It’s savagely brilliant.
Julia’s expressions say it all, really! 😜
I just love that look on her face.
Not only does her facial expression say…”You jackass. Here you go again chasing somebody that don’t want you. Go on and step on your dick again and let me know how it feels. I will be here to pick you up or maybe I won’t.”
Julia and I occasionally merge souls.
Her listening to Barnabas babble about his latest crush manifestation was one of those times. He just never hears himself, does he? He goes on and on about changing time and avoiding catastrophe, never seeing that without doing those two exact things he’d have no reason to live.
One silver lining to Roxanne: Each version was an improvement over the next one, though that’s admittedly a low, Sabrina-esque bar.
PT 1970 Roxanne was the worst.
Classique 1970 will turn out to be more interesting.
PT 1841 had some qualities I liked.
There was no PT 1841 Roxanne
Tony, you’re so right! I should have written Classique 1840 Roxanne!
I’m watching PT 1841 right now.
1840 Roxanne was gone way too soon from the plot. Also DS basically repeated the Barnabas-Rachel-Angelique triangle from 1897
I think she was, too. I thought the Drew siblings held much promise that didn’t get mined.
I thought the 1840 triangle, in some ways, was better. Roxanne was much more feisty than Rachel. And the addition of Lamar Trask, who had some level of genuine feeling for Roxanne, added a layer of complexity than 1897 never had.
In general, the 1840 women had more gumption. I think that’s in part that the women’s liberation movement was more potent at the end of DS’s run than the beginning. Things were changing fast in the culture and you get hints of that in the show.
The 1897 Barnabas-Rachel-Angelique triangle of 1897 was never a triangle I took seriously. Rachel never had a developed love story with Barnabas– he was just, inevitably, interested in her because she looked like you-know-who– and her life other than her interaction with Barnabas had such strong, awful issues that it completely blunked out the new-Josette thing. Tim Shaw was her true love, Gregory Trask was her lifelong oppressor, their story was what was real, and Barnabas’s contribution to her life’s arc was to set in motion a chain of vampire/victim events that made her tertiary collateral damage. It was one of the most depressing things on the show, actually.
1840 Roxanne had a real relationship with Barnabas. Can it be that something in 1840 was better than something in 1897? Say it ain’t so! No, just the limited value of Barnabas’s go-nowhere love stories.
Classique Roxanne 1970’s greed and plotting were a huge and refreshing change. I mean, I know Barnabas can white horse any damn thing and will set himself to “changing” her into a Good Person/His Dream Girl Victim, but I love her bossing Sebastian around and openly cackling about Elizabeth’s money.
Why does Julia put up with this? I wouldn’t blame her for just leaving town at this point. I don’t even remember the pretext under which she is staying at Collinwood anymore. Still writing a history on the Collins family?
She should have left when Barnabas asked her to help him make a Frankenstein monster so he could marry Vicky. But, then things got complicated what with being blackmailed my Barnabas about the murder she helped him commit
.
I don’t think the Julia Hoffman we first met in 1967 would ever put up with this shit.
Julia needs to take the magic staircase forward a few years and read the Metafillter Emotional Labor discussion thread.
Julia needs to wait until sunrise, and get a mallet and a large wooden stake, and pound that stake into Barnabas’ forehead.
What this story needs is for Buzz Hackett to come roaring in on his ‘bike, having picked up a chick hitching a ride; a girl named Suki.
…lol @ poundng him in the head with the stake…lol.
Melissa and what is up with Julia’s hair bouffant? Is this her 1840 hair prep?
Did Sam Hall ever explain his reasons for writing Julia as a hapless victim of unrequited love? It was an extra cruel slap to Julia that Barnabas kept pursuing younger, supposedly more beautiful women every chance he got. If my husband was writing my role that way, we’d be discussin’ it at home – a lot.
I don’t think Barnabas ever had chemistry with the other women the way he did with Julia, either. I just found the incessant Roxanne pairing awkward and irritating.
If I recall correctly, the idea of Julia having feelings for Barnabas originally came from Grayson herself.
Julia’s love for Barnabas adds a tragic and compelling dimension to the 1967 cure storyline. However, she is a formidable ally and antagonist to Barnabas during this period, and her feelings are played less as a schoolgirl crush. Also, and this is important, the 1967 Barnabas is himself not an object of anyone’s true affection. Vicki sees him as “just a friend” and it’s clear that his love Josette rejected him if she ever loved him.
By 1968, the love angle is less interesting to me because Barnabas has become this “romantic leading man.” Arguably, Angelique assumes the role the 1967 Julia played and Julia becomes the “hapless victim of unrequited love.”
It’s also certainly not the writer’s intent but Julia also feels like the “sexually frustrated” best female friend of a gay man. Vicki, Maggie, Roxanne might as well be the young men Barnabas pursues while Julia pines for him.
It’s not much of a spoiler to say that Barnabas and Julia will “play” brother and sister at some point and frankly, post-1967, their relationship dynamic feels best in that context.
All true. I just wished they’d ended Julia’s infatuation with Barnabas after the cure story line. By 1970, her ongoing crush just makes her look foolish.
I imagine Julia giving Sam hell making her out to be longing for Barnabas who is very ungrateful and undeserving. I don’t like Julia in this context and am becoming pissed off. Julia is too strong for this. How his this good for her?
She is waaaaay too good for him.
But he always comes back to her after the love quests fail where Julia knows they fail every time.
First of Julia has taken too much shit off of Barnabas including trying to strangle her 19 times. He would not have strangled me more than once without me kicking him where he lives. Then to have to put up with his horrible attitude. I would have told him to get lost a long time ago and I wish she found a guy to at least date. I thought she would finally tell him to F&*k off during the Leviathan business.
Christine Roxanne is aggravating as hell.
Julia and Quentin have great chemistry and he’s actually older than her! I really wish they would have hooked up and just watched Barnabas mope and pine for reasons he can’t understand, but he feeeeeels deeply.
Roxanne’s clock reminds me of a movie my friends and I made in high school. It was a film noir parody, and we had this one scene where the hardboiled private detective and his client have a drink in his office. Zoom in on the clock, fade out, fade back in on the clock to show hours have elapsed, and then zoom out to show the two actors completely smashed.
However, it was one of those really fancy antique clocks where the little hand is only slightly shorter than the big hand. I messed it up, and we didn’t notice until we warched the final cut that the clock showed them only drinking for 17 minutes before they could barely lift their heads off the table.
It’s perfectly possible to get smashed in 17 minutes, i would say. Let me try it as an experiment.
Apparatus: One bottle of Laphroaig.
Method: Consuming the above, ie: putting it in me.
Diagram: (Drawing of a stick man falling over)
Results: Fun / Mess.
Conclusion: Rrrssttn frrgggn mrrrnnd.
I have just finished the last episode of DS! I now have seen every single one. And now I must go to work. REALITY.
Our little William, all grown up! I’d sing a chorus of “Sunrise, Sunset,” but both sunrise and sunset can be problematic in the DS universe.
Good gosh, William, this could warp one’s perception of reality! (lol) Go figure, I watched as a young boy, then got in trouble when I bit a girl on the neck…and I didn’t watch every single episode. A person could wind wondering about building supernatural staircases, or seeing if they could stuff their kids into doll houses. 🙂
No staircases or doll houses, but I do have a strong impulse to go hunting for some lost jewels. Rumor has it there are some buried in a coffin.
And I had a nightmare last night that was very, very scary. Could I tell you what happened in it? I’d feel so much better if I could.
Have you seen my pen anywhere? I left it around someplace…
I’m doing up my car and need a bleeder valve. Any going spare?
John: Check under that clump of seaweed in your attic.
Jay: I’m sure Collins Automotive Repair ‘n’ Scare has a spare.
Meanwhile, I do have something to do in my post-DS life. Art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons has contacted me and would like to buy some of my work. She really likes to ones I did where a woman is surrounded by flames. Funny — I don’t even remember painting them!
Oh well — anything to make a buck.
Do you happen to have the recipe for Minerva’s plum preserves? Or Mrs. Johnson’s Indian pudding?
The secret to Mrs. Johnson’s Indian Pudding is…use only FRESH Indians.
And then boil them.
Seaweed in the Attic was V.C. Andrews’s and H.P. Lovecraft’s weirdest collaboration.
There’s a long weekend coming up; I think I’m gonna just listen to the three songs on the jukebox at the neighborhood bar, and then just putter around the house putting wigs on skulls and weeping in the basement.
I keep channeling Mrs. Johnson, trying to perfect my boiled dinner recipe. On the bright side though, I’ve completely stopped doing any house cleaning and nobody’s even noticed.
She also burns everything!
Even the mayonnaise!
I was curious and looked it up. Boiled dinner is indeed a dish, associated with New England. It’s corned beef (or some other meat, especially if you’re not Irish) cooked in the same pot with cabbage, potatoes, and carrots or other vegetable variants. So it saves time since you’re fixing everything at once.
The Crock Pot concept – see? Mrs. Johnson was way ahead of her time. Martha Stewart would have been proud.
There’s an Andy Griffith episode from 1964 wher Aunt Bea tells Andy there’s going to be a “boiled dinner” down at the firehouse that night – with Cribbage afterwards.
Oh, yeah! I never realized that was in questio I never realized that was in question. Boiled dinner was my paternal grandmother’s specialt Boiled dinner was my paternal grandmother’s specialty, and we had it at home quite a bit, too. We used ham instead of corned beef, but Mom put peppercorns in the pot.
Yankee pot roast! There no cooking smell like it to zap me back to every holiday at my grandparent’s house from 1958 to 1976 in Haverhill. When there is family ranging in age from 102 to 6 years old and 26 people to feed, it’s in the stock pot on the Tappan fold out electric range.
She probably didnt add any seasoning or drain the grease off the corned beef. Sounds good though if done right but you cant eat that shit everyday though.
I found a boxful of glass eyes you can put in the skulls.
I’m for going antiquing, the shop in town is having a fire sale and they have a slightly singed stuffed pigweasel I have an eye on. (You know, last time I was there, some crazy fool drove right up onto the sidewalk, almost hit me! People around here drive so badly.) I’d better hurry, it’s starting to thunder – it may rain (though it almost never does) and I want to stop at Ohrbachs (er, Orhbachs?) for their big close out, trenchcoats and turtlenecks are 70 percent off!
Okay – just promise you won’t go upstairs in that antique shoppe.
No worries! There was some creepy kid on the stairs, wouldn’t let anyone go up.
Got a couple of smoke soiled afghans and a nice lamp with a checkerboard shade. And some vintage harpoons for my collection. About all they had left, too, apart from some broken figurines and a carved wooden box (also broken).
Melissa — you know how to have a good time. Let me introduce you to my friend Buzz … I think you’d get along.
Ahhh, skull on a stick…it’s been so long…
Write it down in this family history, it’ll turn out to be very important.
Or not.
Reality is for those who can’t handle Dark Shadows.
As I commented somewhere else recently, “DS fandom means never having to say, ‘Do I seem too crazy?'”
There must be a rational explanation.
Let’s consult the gypsies–watch out, a hand’s coming at ya!
Ben…lol…you bit a girl on the neck.
I would’ve gotten in so much trouble when I staked him!
I don’t understand!
You’ve GOT to believe me!
It must be your imagination.
Find the center of this crystal and just relax.
Don’t be naive.
You’ve gone mad!
Don’t be absurd.
You were just dreaming.
I know you don’t understand right now, but listen to me! I will explain it to you later!
You’ve explained the entire arc of DS!
It will be an exercise in futility.
I am frightened!
You’ll be fine. Have a drink alone in the dark and I’ll be right back. No scarves!
You all need a sedative.
Oh Roger!
Why is this happening to us?
All of you need to take your sedatives.
But I MUST! I will not fail!
I’m positive this plan will work!
You’re a good kid Joe, you just don’t drink enough.
thank you, everyone. this was fabulous.
But do you believe us???
Roxanne looks like Jane Fonda.
Ewww.
All gratitude to Mr. Horn for writing about the episodes I never wanted to see so I don’t have to.
Roxanne’s hair is cut like Jane Fonda’s, but her coloring, the shape of her chin, and the shape of her nose all make her look distinctly like Julia. I wonder of they were having a bit of fun with the fans, casting an actress who looked enough like Grayson Hall to be her daughter as Barnabas’ latest hopeless crush.
Also, the brother/ sister spat between Julia and Barnabas in this episode features his single funniest line: “I have very rarely been wrong about people!” He who is always wildly wrong about everyone and everything!
Barnabas’s scenes with Foxy Roxy are the creepiest since his infamous “Comfort me” encounter with Carolyn so many moons ago. It’s yet another example of how the writers have lost their way – the girls are supposed to chase him! Otherwise it just looks like, well, an old goat hitting on a hot girl.
The little domestic scene with Julia is the funniest thing they’ve done in God knows how long – maybe ever.
And Roxy looks fantastic in that outfit!
Julia always comes to the rescue to speak for the audience “Why do I always have to be the one to talk sense!?” sums up everything we’ve been feeling since the return from 1995. That line could very well be the core of the entire show.
I’m curious about the large cross-shaped pin Julia is wearing. It’s an interesting choice considering I think Barnabas is currently a vampire again, right?
Who knows? Lost that train awhile ago
I got the impression that Roxanne got an “eww, creepy old man” look on her face and then did her best to put him off without having to say “no.”
So is this Willie’s fiancee, then, the unseen Roxanne?
I always felt that way about the [very] old man creeping on the younger women. It’s a neverending episode of Midsomer Murders where everyone’s named Roxanne instead of Bella.
Every once in a while Danny throws a word at us that I swear he must have made up, until I verify its authenticity in a dictionary. This time he’s done it twice–“bafflegab” and “gabbling”. As for “astrologist”, it seems to be an alternate form of astrologer which didn’t stand the test of time. It’s kind of like “pulse beat” in that way, I suppose. Remember that? Apparently Julia didn’t make it up. I just heard it the other day while watching the MST3K Turkey Day Marathon–I think it was in the movie “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” a.k.a. “The Head That Wouldn’t Die.”
“Mannequins by Ohrbach’s.”
Everybody is soaring so high in these comments that I hesitate to return to Danny’s wonderful words to cavil, but I must. Parallel Roxanne did not burn! She was stuck OUTSIDE the Parallel Time Room calling to Barnabas ACROSS a barrier of flame, then the room changed. But then Classique Quentin saw her INSIDE the room calling vainly for Barnabas amid smoke, not flames. Clearly, then, the flames died down and she got into the room, risking only smoke inhalation, not death by burning. This also means part of Parallel Collinwood survived. Maybe only the East Wing?
And who was left for Parallel Roxanne to make a new life with? Quentin and Maggie, who were a closed unit and presumably left town, and nobody else but Buffie Harrington (who could, one supposes, teach her a few things) and the substitute lawyer? Good heavens.