“How odd it is that I should feel this urge on this night.”
I hope everybody’s excited, because today’s the day that we’ve all been waiting for. It’s Experiment Day!
Yes, after weeks of build-up, we’ve finally reached this historic episode — the day that Barnabas regenerates.
“I want you to come over immediately, and bring your medallion.”
Well, it’s another day in the Land of Shouty Men, where nothing changes, including the volume level.
Yesterday, Dr. Lang was planning to kill his lab assistant Jeff, so he could use Jeff’s head for the monster he’s been stitching together. But then Barnabas — who Dr. Lang is planning to suck the life force out of, to bring the Jeff-headed monster to life — says that he doesn’t even want Jeff’s head, and they have to let him go.
But Lang says that they can’t let Jeff go or he’ll tell everyone about the monster, so now Lang is going to kill Jeff anyway. And if Barnabas gets in the way of Lang killing Jeff, then Lang will kill Barnabas, and then Jeff, and then hopefully you and me, because honestly I don’t think I can explain this all again on Monday. It’s just not going to happen.
“I would not let them be together in life… and they shall not be together in death.”
So far, there have been lots of surprises in the 1795 flashback storyline — some of them pleasant, and some not so much. I think the most disappointing surprise has been the characterization of Josette. She’s supposed to be the heart of the whole story, but as I’ve talked about this week, there’s not much there to hang on to.
Josette is basically just a spoiled rich girl. She never shows any real maturity, or makes any difficult decisions. She’s the blank slate that other characters write on — and not just the supernatural characters. There was that episode where Reverend Trask talked her into a weird, borderline-sexual exorcism ritual, and he didn’t use hypnosis. He just told her what he was going to do, and then he did it.
So, standing here at the precipice, the real tragedy is that Josette’s tragedy doesn’t feel like much of a tragedy. It’s the end of the girl as we know it, and I feel fine.
“Live! What a mockery I make of that word.”
Okay, let’s get this over with. As we begin today’s episode, Barnabas’ little sister Sarah is currently alive. Stay tuned for more updates on this developing situation.
“I’ve often thought it’s very sad that we live in two worlds that are so far apart in time from each other.”
Last night, assistant jailer and aspiring lawyer Peter Bradford sprung accused witch Victoria Winters from the Collinsport Gaol, so she could break into somebody’s house and steal a key piece of evidence in her case. Then he lied to opposing counsel about it, and indicated that he would perjure himself on the stand if required.
This morning, he feels bad about lying, so he’s planning to go to Reverend Trask and apologize.
I think it’s time for somebody to communicate to young Peter that he should stop coming up with new ideas, possibly through the medium of a prison sentence.
“I am defending the right of this girl to be judged innocent until she is proved innocent!”
In the Salem witch trials in 1692, the case for the prosecution mostly relied on what they called “spectral evidence”, which means basically that they believed whatever the screaming girls said. Other techniques included the “touch test” — i.e., having the witch touch a screaming girl, to see if she stops screaming — and looking for a “witch’s teat”, which is just as grim as it sounds.
But you know what they didn’t do in Salem, or in any other witch trial in history? They didn’t tie the accused witch to a tree and leave her there overnight, expecting that the tree would be dead by morning.
They didn’t use this technique for two reasons. For one thing, it’s pretty unlikely that the tree would hold up its end of the bargain. The other reason is that it’s a completely bonkers thing to do, even by the generally loose standards of witch trial sanity.
I’m bringing this up because Dark Shadows is a daytime soap opera, and so obviously a discussion of the Puritan justice system is going to come up at some point. Continue reading Episode 386: Make Like a Tree
“Maybe, maybe! What assurance have I with maybe?”
Okay, it’s Monday, which means that it’s time to check in with our lunatic premise of the week. Unfortunately, the current scenario is so far outside the limits of normal televisual narrative that a thumbnail summary just sounds hopelessly tangled.
Here, I’ll show you. All last week, young David was trapped inside the secret room in the Collins mausoleum. He was brought there by a mysterious little girl named Sarah, who he doesn’t realize is the ghost of one of his 18th-century ancestors. She showed him the trick of getting into the secret room, so that he would see the empty coffin where Barnabas, who David doesn’t realize is a) Sarah’s big brother and b) a vampire, was chained up for 170-odd years until c) Willie let him out.
But Sarah didn’t show David how to get out of the secret room, so he was trapped for a week, until she suddenly turned up again and showed him the hidden door mechanism. As David left the mausoleum on Friday, he ran straight into Barnabas.
Now Barnabas thinks that David knows that he’s a vampire, but he doesn’t, although David does know that Barnabas thinks that David knows more than he’s saying that he knows, which he does. There, that’s you all up to date.
“That night must go… nothing wrong.”
We open today’s pulse-pounding episode with a long scene of two young women trying on dresses that they’re planning to wear to a costume party.
You can tell that the show is running a little low on suspense right now, because Vicki says, “When you said her name, the strangest feeling came over me,” and then we’re supposed to be interested in learning more about that feeling.
“Wherever I am, I’ll be laughing at you, Vicki Winters, and don’t you forget it.”
In the Old House drawing room, Willie is lighting some candles as Barnabas comes downstairs.
“You’ve been up there a long time,” Willie says.
Barnabas replies, “I wasn’t aware of time.”
Then the guy who wasn’t aware of time looks out of the window, and says, “The sun sets, and the sun rises. If only night could become eternal, the blackness with us always.”
In other words: Ladies and gentlemen, will you please put your hands together and welcome back our returning champion, Barnabas Collins!
“Death is fascinating, when one considers the wide possibilities that it offers.”
It’s a new day, bringing another opportunity for Liz to wander over to the cliff on Widows’ Hill. She looks down and sees the waves crashing against the shore, just like in the opening titles. It kind of looks like she’s come outside to watch an episode of Dark Shadows.
Dark Shadows Every Day 