Tag Archives: stalemate

Episode 593: Missing Persons

Gordon Russell, October 1968, ,

“It is true that he tried to kill you, but he was only acting out of fear.”

Carolyn Stoddard is dead, killed by a freak mad science experiment. And that’s just the beginning; the evening gets worse from there.

Choked with rage and grief, Adam the enormous Frankenteen tells Barnabas that he’s heading straight to Collinwood, and he’s going to murder everyone he can find. Then Adam punches Barnabas in the gut, drops him like a bad habit, and makes for the wide open spaces.

Barnabas tries to stagger after the crazed killer, but he can’t even make it to the front door before collapsing into Julia’s arms. She leads him to a chair and tries to help him recover, but Barnabas is desperate. There are three people living at Collinwood — more than that, if you count the help — and they are moments away from being entirely massacred. There’s not a moment to lose.

And hey, you know what? This would be a great moment for somebody to own a fucking telephone.

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Episode 356: Beat the Clock

Gordon Russell, November 1967, , , ,

“You feel that you have no more use for me, and you’re planning to dispose of me. Is that correct?”

Dr. Julia Hoffman is standing in the foyer of Collinwood, clutching a red notebook and emoting. And when Dr. Hoffman expresses emotion, it stays expressed. She has an internal monologue that can be heard up to three miles away, if the wind is right.

This notebook contains the notes on her experiments in curing Barnabas’ vampirism. Barnabas has decided that Julia has betrayed him, and he’s planning to kill her once he’s sure that the notes have been destroyed.

Now, thinking about this situation rationally, there are several options here. For example: Tear some relevant pages out of the notebook, put them in an envelope, and mail them to a friend. Or copy the notes into another notebook, and use this notebook as a decoy. At a pinch, she could even write BARNABAS IS A VAMPIRE on her driver’s license, or in black magic marker down her arm, Memento style.

Julia does not consider any of those options. As far as she’s concerned, the smallest indivisible unit of measure is the notebook.

Continue reading Episode 356: Beat the Clock →

Episode 316: The Big Bad

Gordon Russell, September 1967, , ,

“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.

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