“No, I can’t be Josette Collins. I’m someone else.”
It’s been two months since we were introduced to Barnabas Collins, and we’ve gotten to know a lot about him, including his hobbies, his diet and his refreshingly straightforward approach to dating.
But you can’t say that you really know a guy until you’ve seen the dungeon in his basement. That’s gonna happen today.
“Thank you anyway, for whatever it is you were trying to tell me.”
Yesterday, Jason told Liz that they’re going to get married. You can tell that this is a dramatic situation, because there are a lot of follow-up questions.
Liz: You can’t be serious.
Jason: Can’t I?
Liz: Why, it’s impossible.
Jason: Is it?
“Why do you say my name in such a curious fashion?”
Last week, David found Maggie, the Local Girl who has Mysteriously Disappeared, at his cousin Barnabas’ house, dressed up like the dead ancestor that he considers his closest friend. Yup, just the same old thing.
Maggie pauses on the stairs, and David runs up to the bannister, yelling, “Josette, it’s me! It’s me, David! David Collins!” Okay, kid, it’s you; why are you screaming at me? You’re like six inches away.
“And if that girl turns up dead, I’m going to book you… on suspicion.”
Soap opera cops have a pretty hard life. Somebody gets murdered, and it turns out that over the last couple weeks, eight different people have been walking around saying, “That guy makes me so mad I could kill him!” — often at the top of their lungs, in crowded restaurants. But the soap opera format requires the cops to be slow and methodical, chasing blind leads and arresting at least two innocent people before they find the killer. The night-time cops on CSI can solve a case in one hour; daytime cops have to go the long way around.
By comparison, the Collinsport police have it unbelievably easy. Three new people have shown up in town in the weeks before Maggie’s disappearance, and all three are currently involved in at least one crime. They have nonexistent alibis, and one of them can’t even produce a birth certificate.
And if those aren’t enough people of interest, then there’s also Burke Devlin, who recently came back to town after serving a five-year prison sentence for manslaughter. That’s not a bad place to start; maybe Sheriff Patterson should bring Burke in for questioning.
“Vicki… could it have been one of those things you think you saw?”
It’s been exactly a month since Willie opened the coffin, and it’s started to sink in for the producers and writers that they might want to keep the vampire around for a while.
Originally, the plan was for Barnabas to be on the show for six weeks. Dr. Woodard, the Van Helsing substitute that they’ve recently introduced, would find something nasty in Maggie’s blood samples, lead the townspeople to Barnabas’ door with torches and stakes, and put an end to the whole silly mess.
But now the first trickle of fan mail has started to arrive. This is a new experience for the Dark Shadows team. Nobody’s writing in to say how much they love the Jason/Liz blackmail story, but the dead guy is getting some response. They should keep this storyline going.
The writers have figured out a really good plot point for Friday’s cliffhanger. Now they only have two problems. They’re called Wednesday and Thursday.
“How did you happen to come by these wounds in your throat?”
Maggie’s not feeling very well after her trip to the graveyard last week, and by not feeling well I mean she’s unconscious and somebody’s perforated her jugular vein. Sam and Joe hover around her bed, fretting and recapping. A dog howls, and Maggie starts moaning restlessly.
For a minute, it looks like the entire episode is going to be Sam and Joe standing around looking at Maggie. (Spoiler alert: That kind of is the entire episode.)
“Things are getting deeper and deeper, and people are saying and doing things for no reason at all!”
Maggie’s overslept again; she’s been out all night consorting with demons. It’s actually not clear what Barnabas and Maggie have been getting up to. We don’t see much on screen — for all we know, they could be going to nightclubs and working their way through the Kama Sutra.
However. At a certain point we’re just watching a girl sleep.
“That sea air is the most unhealthy thing in the world to breathe.”
Here’s another strange thing about 1960s daytime TV: Videotape was so expensive that when they reprise yesterday’s cliffhanger at the top of the episode, they don’t use a clip — the actors just go ahead and do the scene over again.
This is so different from modern television that it’s hard to even think about it. Imagine if every episode of a show started with “Previously, on Mad Men” — and then the actors performed all the clips live, including costume changes and running around to different sets.
Now that I think about it, that would be kind of amazing.
“Willie and I have an understanding.”
Yesterday, we left David at the Old House, hearing snarling dogs and banging on the front doors. There’s not as much turning of the doorknob as you might expect, just banging and yelling.
Then the dognoise suddenly stops and everything is fine, which says a lot about how seriously they’re treating cliffhangers in this period of the show.
“Hello, Miss Evans. The expression on your face is one of surprise.”
It’s evening at the Evans’ house, and it’s time for more acting. We hear running feet, and then Maggie comes through the front door, panting. She locks the door behind her, and then looks around the room. She takes a few careful steps forward, breathing heavily, and turns on a lamp. Then she looks back over her shoulder at the locked door.
Now, I’ve seen people acting before, and in my opinion, what Maggie is trying to express is that she’s afraid of something outside.
Dark Shadows Every Day 