Category Archives: Violet Welles

Episode 766: You Have to Admit She’s Got a Point

“Do you think it’s right, to pray for a cursed thing like this?”

So it all turns out okay, obviously, it’s Quentin, of course it’s going to be okay. It takes more than a silver bullet to the chest to stop a phenomenon like Quentin. At this point, the only thing that could destroy the audience’s interest in Quentin Collins is a 95-minute MGM motion picture where he tries to drown Kate Jackson in a swimming pool. And what are the odds of that?

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Episode 762: Dark Shadows’ Agents of THEY

“Who are ‘they’, Mrs. Trask?”

Let’s start at the middle, and work backwards from there.

Mrs. Minerva Trask — devoted wife and helpmeet of the celebrated Reverend Gregory Trask of Worthington Hall — arrives at Collinwood with a jar of damson plum preserves, and proceeds to make herself comfortable — or, at least, as comfortable as Mrs. Trask ever allows herself to get.

She’s come over to give the preserves to Judith Collins, because that’s what you give to a multi-millionaire who lets you operate a for-profit business in her back yard rent-free. But instead, she ends up talking to Judith’s dissolute brother Quentin, who’s currently dissolving in the drawing room.

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Episode 757: Drunk History

“I’m not here because I want to see your face, or you want to see my face.”

So let’s see if we can get a handle on this. Laura Collins — alias Laura “several middle names” Collins — has vowed to destroy Quentin, Barnabas, her children, Worthington Hall (nailed that one) and as of today, Angelique. Her malevolent scheming keeps getting sidetracked by her inability to decide who she’s scheming against.

In fact, today’s episode is the clearest possible example of this unfortunate character flaw. Laura is literally just about to destroy Barnabas, holding the hammer aloft and ready to drive the stake through his chest — when suddenly Angelique grabs her wrist, and sets her off on a whole new branch of furious revenge.

But that’s how life is here in 1897, where the popular catchphrase is “I have to kill her, before she kills me.” Every person on this show wants to kill every other person, before each of them kills any of them first.

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Episode 756: I Know You Are But What Am I

“I’m sure that book has a name for whatever you are!”

Curtain rises on a dark cemetery, and dark deeds. Furtive grave-disturbers have unearthed a moldy coffin from its resting place, and found a secret journal hidden in the casket.

As they reach for the book, a bolt of lightning sears across the sky with an angry blast. The man looks worried, but the woman chides her companion. “It’s just a storm, that’s all!”

“Is it?” the man asks. “Is it just a storm?”

So that’s where we start today’s episode. That’s step one.

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Episode 752: The One Where Evan Ruins the Carpet

“I’m not going to be inside any pentagrams. I’m going to be doing something that makes sense!”

In the morning, Beth finds Quentin stumbling into the house, exhausted and dirty, his clothes ripped to pieces, and with no memory of what happened to him.

“Quentin!” she cries. “Where have you been? How did you get like this?” Yeah, and how do we get you to do it again?

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Episode 744: Crazy Little Thing

“Wait for me, Quentin! I’m coming — to KILL you!”

Crazy Jenny has been in the attic and out of her mind for a couple of years now, and to be frank with you, she’s sick of the whole experience. Her husband, the adorable antihero Quentin Collins, skipped town a couple years ago with his sister-in-law, Crazy Laura, and Jenny took it pretty hard. In fact, she’s gone entirely loco, in that unspecified way that people on television always do, babbling maniacally and ready to kill at a moment’s notice.

As it happens, Laura is also in a murderous mood, so she gets her new boyfriend, Groundskeeper Dirk, to let Jenny out of her cell, give her a knife, and point her in a Quentin-facing direction.

Obediently, Dirk supplies Jenny with a dagger that he’s selected from the random assortment of murder weapons that the Collins family keeps in every room in the house. But then he hears the boss coming, so he bundles Jenny into the drawing room and closes the door, which is pretty insensitive considering how she’s spent the last couple years.

Judith walks in and finds Dirk, who’s desperately trying to look like someone who didn’t just adopt a pet Tasmanian devil. She gives him a couple of cursory orders, but he’s finding it hard to focus.

Judith’s puzzled by Dirk’s odd behavior, but the servants at Collinwood are always distracted by one thing or another. We never see most of the people on the payroll, but they probably each have their own weird schemes going on that we don’t happen to see. I bet the cook is currently consulting her crystal ball to check on her late brother, the chauffeur, who’s been reanimated with the spirit of the upstairs maid. Meanwhile, the gardener scuttles through the back passageway on all fours, desperate to escape from that dream, that terrible dream!

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Episode 733: Pretty People are the Devil’s Playthings

“It would break his heart, just as it would break your neck!”

Rachel Drummond, girl governess and Nancy Drew cosplay enthusiast, has had just about enough of this nonsense. She’d just managed to put her difficult past behind her and move on with her life, when who should walk in but her difficult past, and his wife.

Rachel is an orphan, as all governesses are, and she was raised at Worthington Hall, an oppressive work camp run by the odious Reverend Trask. After years of confinement, she managed to sneak past the barbed wire and light out for the territory, and now, by some grotesque mischance, the gendarmes have found her at Collinwood, and they want to drag her back to the Hall.

But Rachel has no patience for this. She has no intention of going anywhere with these people, and she’s ready for a fight. So it turns out that Rachel has a personality after all; it must have been stuck in baggage claim when she first arrived.

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