“The spirits keep coming in and out of here, taking things!”
a circle. Do you know what I mean? It’s like
we’re waiting for something to happen, just like David and Hallie, sitting on the stairs in the foyer. They’re talking about the ghosts, which they usually do upstairs in David’s room, but apparently today they got halfway up the stairs, and just couldn’t bear to move another step.
David says, once again, that Carrie promised to tell them what the ghosts are planning to do to them someday, when they get around to it. Hallie offers various contradictory objections, along the following lines:
Hallie: Gerard won’t let her tell us!
David: She promised that she would.
Hallie: Well… if Gerard wants us to know, then he’ll be mad at me if I don’t go. And I don’t want him to punish me again! Oh, David!
David: We’ve got to go!
Hallie: No, David, I don’t think we should! I don’t want to find out what’s going to happen, ever!
Now, that just seems unfeasible. I mean, at some point, you’re going to find out what’s going to happen, because it’ll be happening. Right?
And that’s not really a question that interests the audience, anyway. We don’t care what’s going to happen. We’re just wondering
why it’s taking so goddamn long. It looked like we were going to make some headway on this vampire subplot, but Maggie managed to shake Julia in the woods somehow, despite being only about three steps ahead when they started. This happens a lot with the hypnotized; as soon as they stagger off-camera, they suddenly turn into champion sprinters.
So Julia’s just aimlessly wandering around in the dark, listening to the dogs howling and peering vaguely at nothing in particular, when she runs across Barnabas, who’s doing exactly the same thing. What are the odds?
They talk about locating the vampire who’s attacking Maggie, and then a little Fridspeak festival breaks out.
Barnabas: Go back to the house, Julia! I can protect myself. Now, come, we must hurry. I’ll take you there.
Julia: I’ll be all right, I have the cross!
Barnabas: No — the person who is vicious — now, I can — protect myself. There are many crosses that have been gotten rid of. Now, come.
Which, honestly, makes just as much sense as anything does, right now. This is one of those periods where dialogue is just another
kind of sound effect, something that the characters emit because you can’t just play dramatic music cues for twenty-two minutes a day. It doesn’t really matter what they say, because two minutes later, they’re going to switch sides and start over.
David says, “Maybe it won’t be as bad as we think, what they’re going to do.” They’re still on the stairs, stressing out.
“You don’t believe that!” Hallie yells. “Sometimes you’re just as frightened as I am! And you are right now, aren’t you? Admit it!”
“All right,” David says, “I am a little frightened.” This is what they do all day, just sit around and quantify how frightened they are.
Then David hears the spectral voice of Carrie, aka Dead Hallie, saying, “David… David…” which is exactly what Live Hallie says all the time.
“Where are you, David?” says the ghost. “We’re getting ready now. David… David…” Sometimes I wonder if it’s even worth trying to keep track of which one we’re looking at. It doesn’t seem to make
much of a difference. They made a song and dance about whether Julia should wait at the house, but Barnabas walks in a minute later anyway, dragging Maggie by the shoulders. “She’s very weak, we must get her to her room!” he says, because sure, why let her stay down on the first floor, where she might recover? Might as well haul her upstairs. Characters are just
props these days, arriving in shipping containers wherever they’re supposed to be. David and Hallie apprehensively enter the playroom, where they discover: nothing. The room is empty, except for the usual toys and bric-a-brac. I thought Dead Hallie said they were getting ready. I guess this is one of those “on-time arrivals” where they take off forty-five minutes late, and then pretend they’re going to make up the time by taking a shortcut.
“Carrie, where are you?” David cries. “Why won’t you come to us? We want to see you! We want to know what’s going to happen! You told us that you’d come!” It really is an extraordinarily rude way to treat invited guests, but there’s nothing much they can do, I suppose, except wait
and see if something happens. This is strike two for Barnabas and Julia’s attempts to keep the vampire from attacking Maggie, and there may be nothing they can do except prepare for the next one.
She needs a transfusion, but obviously they can’t take her to the hospital, so Julia says, “I’ll go to town and get what I need.” Julia has her own private blood supply that she keeps in her safety deposit box.
Barnabas wants to talk things over, but Julia says “We can’t waste time, Barnabas!” which I have to admit is
pretty hard to believe, because here we are, openly running out the clock.
“Why don’t they come to us?” Hallie wails. “What kind of a game are they playing? They don’t intend to tell us anything! They just want us to come into this room!” The producers are apparently under the impression that Hallie shouting about nothing is inherently dramatic.
David and Hallie do a whole sequence about the lights coming on in the dollhouse, which doesn’t seem to go anywhere in particular. It’s not clear why Carrie wanted them to cool their heels in the playroom for the whole episode, but that’s how the story goes, these days.
The only possible excuse for this kind of narrative incompetence is that waiting scenes are
supposed to be suspenseful, except that’s not how suspense works.
“Suspense” means that the audience knows something is going to happen that will change the story in a meaningful way, but we don’t know what it’s going to be. You build up suspense by violating formerly-established rules, like sending your main characters to 1995 for two weeks and killing all their friends.
When Barnabas and Julia discover that they’re in 1995, it’s a suspenseful moment, because the audience has no idea whether this is temporary, or an actual change in the status quo of the show. The show signals that this moment is important by filling the sets with trash and timbers and fallen branches — we know it isn’t just a dream sequence, because they’ve clearly gone to a lot of trouble to make this special.
It was the same with the crazy mad-science experiments that resulted in Adam coming to life, or when Barnabas first discovered Angelique’s suite in Parallel Time. The show obviously invested time and money in those special effects, and therefore something important and dangerous is about to happen. In the case of the Adam experiments, they actually made a convincing case that Jonathan Frid might leave the show, and get replaced by Robert Rodan.
In today’s episode, unfortunately, they keep trying to signal that
something important is going to happen, and then they negate it. The ghost of Carrie directly calling David was something we haven’t seen before, but it just leads to another static playroom scene. And then there’s the supernatural awareness.
Julia: You’ve always had the ability to summon those that you control. Isn’t it possible that there’s some link between you and whoever is controlling her, some supernatural awareness?
Barnabas: No, I don’t think so. There would only be a link if I caused that person to exist.
Julia: Barnabas, if you concentrated, do you think you might be able to summon the one who’s controlling her, to come here?
This is actually a new power for Barnabas — we’ve never seen him try this before — and that’s a signal to the audience that maybe there’s going to be some plot development after all. They let him get all the way to the window before Julia stops him.
He actually says, “Let me try, Julia,” but she’s determined to avert suspense today.
“I can’t let you do it,” she explains, “because then that person will know about you. We can’t take that chance.”
Yeah, because that would have been interesting, and today is all about
giving up, and accepting that nothing will ever happen again. David and Hallie are just sitting there in the playroom, staring into space, hoping that someone will write a script for them.
“There’s nothing we can do!” Hallie screams. “Nothing!”
And David says, “Just wait. That’s all.”
So this is the opposite of suspense; they’re suggesting that we
should lose hope completely. Julia sits down and starts to read another book, a regular pastime that has so far failed to turn up anything of consequence.
Julia: If we only knew what Gerard’s connection with the family was! If he wasn’t a servant, he wouldn’t be living here. But the original Quentin’s diary doesn’t mention him as a friend. I’ll go into town and check the real estate records again. I am sure, of all the clues, Rose Cottage seems to be the most important.
Barnabas: I’m not sure it is. The murder fascinates me. You’d think there’d be some record of it in one of the diaries, but there hasn’t been.
Julia: If we find out about Rose Cottage, we’ll know about the murder, too. I don’t know why I feel so strongly about it, but I do.
And then they sit back and listen to the dognoise some more. Boy, I can’t wait until morning, when Julia goes to check the real estate records.
That dialogue is super opaque, because they appear to believe that “the murder” — one of the clues that Carolyn wrote down in 1995 — is supposed to be something that happened back in the 1840s, while all the rest of the clues have described events in 1970. But it’s hard to grab hold of anything, because the characters keep
flip-flopping on everything. David finally gets tired of waiting and says he wants to leave, and Hallie objects, “But you were the one that wanted to stay!” Right, he was, but you’re the one who wanted to leave, so now that he agrees with you, shouldn’t you be heading towards the door?
Carrie’s promises turn out to be a letdown, anyway, when she finally shows up and says something. “Don’t go,” the voice suggests. “They’re ready now.”
“We don’t want to see!” David yells, because some people are born to be speed bumps.
“You must,” Dead Hallie commands. “Look in the house. Rose Cottage. You asked what would happen to you. Find out.”
They don’t look, so Carrie starts repeating herself. This is another bad sign. “Find out,” she insists. “You must, now. Look through the window. Look through the window.”
So they look through the window, and what they find out is
that they’re going to sit around, looking bored. This isn’t what’s going to happen; it’s already happened, and it’s happening right now. The whole storyline is gently revolving in
Tomorrow: The Shrinking Shares.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
Hallie puts a weird pause in “Are you sure Gerard will let her, tell us?”
Barnabas says, “Julia! Why aren’t you with Ju– with Maggie?”
Julia almost clocks herself with a bedpost as she walks around Maggie’s bed.
At the beginning of act 3, Hallie yells, “What makes the light, David?” She’s supposed to say “what makes the light go on?” She says it correctly about twenty seconds later.
Julia tells Barnabas, “The police will think this is — will link this up to the other cases.” She also says, “I keep thinking that perhaps we misread some of Carolyn’s things, in 1995.”
Hallie blows a line, and David has to prompt her. He says, “It doesn’t make sense,” and then she looks at him, helplessly. “Remember?” he prompts. “Remember our dream?” And then she says, “In our dream, when we were in the dolls’ house…”
When David and Hallie try to leave the playroom, they open the door and then stand in the doorway, waiting for the sound clip of Hallie telling them to stay.
Tomorrow: The Shrinking Shares.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Where’s Gerard when you need him?
At least the Maggie subplot isn’t linked to the Gerard haunting plot. That gives Barnabas and Julia something to at least attempt to be successful at.
Actually… it has been a long time but I think the vampire chewing on Maggie IS somehow linked in 1840 to Gerard. I don’t want to go into it for fear of spoilers and/or digging myself a hole that Barnabas can’t dig me out of.
It’s linked to 1840, but not Gerard. And it is very timey wimey.
Barnabas wouldn’t take you out; he would just make Willie do it.
Willie’s vanished again–you can’t get dependable thralls these days.
Barnabas: No — the person who is vicious — now, I can — protect myself. There are many crosses that have been gotten rid of. Now, come.
What do you suppose this line was actually written as, what it was meant to be before it was Fridspoken? (This may be my new favorite Fridspeak mangle; but then, there’s a lot to choose from!)
When Julia steps on the twig, the burlap “grass” bunches and wrinkles; also, the sound effect does not quite match up with the action, and the twig doesn’t break.
Does Julia call Barnabas “Barnas” when she suddenly objects to the idea she just had, about trying to make contact with the other vampire?
Did a boom microphone pass over the playroom set in the wide shot when David walked across the floor?
I SO TOTALLY want Hallie to wear her hair just like the Carrie doll has hers!! Lady Gaga, eat your heart out!
Hallie’s “David” count is at eighteen, once every minute and thirteen seconds. I’m not counting the seven times Carrie calls him; that would bring it to every 52.8 seconds we hear it. The writers must fear that we’ll forget who he is…
And does it make the mystery more mysterious if nobody writes down Gerard’s name, just referring to him as “G”? Maybe it’s just to make up for the number of times David’s name is being used.
I know, I know, it’s just a sound effect – but I’ve heard dogs baying and the noise varies a lot. Evidently there are only two dogs in the greater Collinsport area, and they have matched howls.
Those writers must have had an ongoing bet to see how many times they could make that dumb blonde girl say “David” before Dan Curtis noticed and made them stop it.
Wouldn’t we all love to have the Fridspeak calendar featuring a garbled bit of Barnabas dialogue for every day of the year? I’m sure there are easily 365 great examples to choose from! Long Live Fridspeak!
And with the Fridspeak-A-Day Calendar, a picture of one
of Julia’s facial expressions. But how to choose only 365?
John, maybe we could personalize our calendars to include extra pics of Joe Haskell!
As long as Julia’s cutting his shirt off, take my money!
So. Grayson Hall perfected the various wincing looks of discomfort. She could convey the cold inclement weather with a wincing look and the collar held to her neck. The sense of present evil. If you think about it Grayson perfected the “smell the fart” acting well before Joey Tribiani
Maybe Gerard will come tomorrow. I will wait.
“We’re waiting for Gerardot.”
“Let’s go.”
They do not move.
“But David, the heat death of the universe is in ten minutes.”
“We’re going to wait for Gerard. Got that Hallie?”
Mr. Gerardot told me to tell you he won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow.
You’re merciless.
Decades Channel is binging DS this weekend! Carolyn’s bringing her pistol to Jason & Liz’s wedding…
Right now Liz whacked Paul with the poker. “I saw the blood gushing from his head. I ran from the room, I didn’t know what to do.” Oh, good! Her husband’s friend Jason is gonna help her. He can fix it so no one will ever know. Poor Liz.
Woke up and switched on the TV – Vicki, Burke, & The House By The Sea (aka The Story To Nowhere, aka Plot Thinner). They argue, they kiss, they argue, they kiss some more, they walk around empty rooms. And Barnabas finds a hankie. This could have used a Gerarding! Or at least some Daphnezation…why didn’t this place turn out to be Rose Cottage?
The set for the Seaveiw foyer had been long gone I’d assume.
The Seaview set is one of the most reused redressed of all the sets, first as Roger’s office at the cannery in 1966, then later as Professor Stokes’ apartment in 1968, etc. We’ll see it again before the series is through.
Flora would have been House By The Sea.
Rose Cottage, an afterthought.
Funny, how these semi-rich Collinses didn’t know much about their property.
That is something you get taught by your father before the age of 12!
Seaview and The House NY the Sea are two different houses on the Collins property. The former is the one Vicki wanted to live in with Burke, and the latter is the one rented by Nicholas Blair in 1967 and used as a school by Gregory Trask in 1897 after his own school building burned down.
House BY the Sea, obvs. I need Julia to come around and give Autocorrect some sedatives.
You are right, of course.
Was The House By The Sea also called Blair House?
What Time Hop Be There Send all correspondence Black How?
(I let Spell Check guess that one…)
Back when the show was watchable.
Just got home in time for Joe (sigh) Haskell rockin’ that plaid flannel; Willie just took five shots in the back for trying to help Maggie. Uh, say, that cop just barged right into Maggie’s room – don’t those doors have a lock?
Oh boy, now we’ll get “Willie Loomis – must DIE!”
WHY do all the Normals think Barnabas is such a nice guy? Stupid goldfish.
Did the opening credits change when they went to color? They used to be just the title, now they’re the “fluttering” title.
Yep, the titles changed to the animated text when the show went to color.
I hate to complain, but I was hoping to see the 1786 storyline but they always start these marathons with Barnabus getting out of the box.
I know.
I would like to see the Quentin 1890s ones, myself.
And less ads for Super Beta Prostate and Titanium cookware!
What time does it start? Did I miss it, already?
“She needs a transfusion, but obviously they can’t take her to the hospital, so Julia says, “I’ll go to town and get what I need.”
I was taking a sip of tea when i watched that scene and almost choked because i started laughing. My first thought was, “Yeah…i usually just run down to the Dollar General Store. They’ve got a good deal going now on AB-.”
I’ve been watching the DS binge and shaving on commercials. Sometimes you just have to take Dark Shadows in small doses, walking away once in a while. lol
Sadly, this was just at the point when Vicki lost her edge and started saying “I don’t understand” a lot.
Absinthe?
She stops by Wyncliff to drain a patient or two of a pint.
We have a theory that ever since Julia left her post, for all practical purposes, for her exciting new career of following Barnabas Collins through time and space while making faces, that her staff has turned the place into a model, world famous hospital. Cure rates have skyrocketed, client referrals are through the roof, they’re in the black every quarter…
Of course she shows up at random every now and again and they all look away and hum while she stuffs her bag with sedatives and blood. It’s a small price to pay.
Oh, we ARE definitely getting close to the episode that constitutes my earliest childhood memory of Dark Shadows. Boy, girl, a strange room they’re not supposed to be in – David’s striped shirt was one of the final keys I needed to lock it down.
Would love to see Hallie and David on absinthe!
Drop script, and finally have a go.
The scripts are killing them so fast that there’s no need for Gerard.
And why, after 130 years, is all this happening just now?
I know, right? Would have been great having Quentin, Beth, Gerard & Daphne duke it out over who gets haunting rights!
Oh, we could have the match on WWE…
Might end up being more like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, when Quentin and Daphne are involved.
The ghosts/vampires/other monsters had to take a number. Gerard’s number was called in the summer of ’70.
I think you CAN see them, in that last shot above.
Those are two kids who got into the opium drawer in the drawing room.
As long as Beth doesn’t speak.
I liked her in the beginning.
Just like Hallie.
But, casting for a face as they seemed, they got stuck with what they got.
New York. Manhattan. Your fault.
And the writers.
Just wait, they’ll get stuck with pretty boy Jeremy Grimes, which the “actor” Tapper would have gotten a Razzie.
The rest of the country must be upset that NYC(Manhattan) ……..rules.
Well, not so much, these days.
But it is true, you have to be better than……….just to live there.
Grown-ass David in that playroom set on a goddamn rocking horse is the most absurd thing in an otherwise lovably absurd show.
Hallie, meanwhile, looks 17, and her ghost “body abductor” come from a time when she’d either be married or even working as a governess herself.
Agreed – after watching the “Cousin David…MUST die!” (Dun dun duuuuun!) storyline, this playroom silliness would have worked so much better when David Henesy was younger; or with younger children (perhaps three Stokes orphans). Then David and Hallie could be trying to figure out why the wee’uns were suddenly acting like wierdos while discovering their own first groovy romance.
Nah, Dan Curtis wouldn’t have budgeted to hire two more kids – and good child actors are tough to find anyhow.
Yeah, Stephen, but look at all the good things: the writing, the talent…the…uh…oh.
I watched a few episodes on Decades channel as they did their DS weekend blitz. It covered some of the episodes where Barnabas was biting Maggie, and Willy Loomis was blamed for the attacks and shot in the back. (Didn’t catch how he got out of that) While the plot move-ment was at the pace of a 10000 year old glacier, the writing was more coherent.
I’m still trying to figure out what i like about DS. Maybe it’s just to see what Danny’s responses are.
Julia: If we only knew what Gerard’s connection with the family was! If he wasn’t a servant, he wouldn’t be living here.
What?!
Julia, you’re not a servant, and you’re fairly a permanent resident.
Amy wasn’t a servant, and she stayed quite awhile.
Hallie isn’t a servant, and she seems to be making herself at home. She even gets good night kissies from Liz.
That’s the best laugh I’ve had all month!
The freeloaders outnumber the family members at this point! Especially since Roger’s still “in Europe.”
An amusing blooper: While Julia is sneaking up on Maggie in the “forest”, we pan down to watch as she steps on and snaps a twig, tipping off Maggie of course. When Julia steps on the twig, the ground cover carpet actually slides under Julia’s shoe. They should never have pointed the camera at the floor in any outdoor scene. Just let the foley do its work.
I thought I had guessed who the secret vampire is until somebody said it has to do with 1840. Has the character I think is the vamp got a doppelganger in 1840? We’ll see.
Stalling is one big plot blunder. I sometimes fantasize about an edited version of DS that would remove the blunders (the plot blunders – I’d leave in most of the dialogue bloops), but it would be hard to do.
There must be something going on behind the scenes that they are leading up to, but they can’t go there yet.
I am actually up to episode 1099 as I write this. I accidentally skipped episodes 1094 and 1095 without realizing it because there is only one important thing that happens during the missing episodes that impacts the subsequent episodes (it has to do with Carolyn), but everything else in episode 1096 is about the same as it was in episode 1093.
Julia leaves the room and Barnabas tries to summon the other vampire. The vampire doesn’t show but instead Adam enters the room wearing an ascot and a tweed jacket. Apparently he and Roger have taken up residence in a neighboring county…
There is one good minute in this episode. It’s toward the end. David and Hallie are in the playroom, and Hallie is struggling to ward off a panic attack. Kathy Cody does a really good job with the anxious twitching!
It’s a well-known fact that all convenience stores in Maine have a supply of fresh plasma in the cooler, usually between the Yoo-Hoo and the Moxie. I’m sure it was true in 1970 as well. Julia probably gassed up and maybe bought some peanut butter cups to munch on.
Bring back Ron Sproat!
Nothing happened in any of his episodes either, but at least we could have had a scene of Quentin and Stokes having a recap conversation in the Blue Whale summarising the story-so-far for those of us who are losing the will to live.
“She needs a transfusion. I’ll go to town and get what I need.” SERIOUSLY? Is Julia going to stop by the Collinsport 7-11 and grab a few quarts of O-negative?