“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.
“He will not be a monster then — unless, of course, you consider me one. I’m sure you do.”
Julia Hoffman has seen too much.
Yesterday, Julia went into Dr. Lang’s secret murder lab without permission, and found the monster that he’s been assembling out of corpses and bits of string. She knows that the monster still needs a head, which means one more person has to die to finish the project. This is dangerous knowledge. Julia must be stopped.
Now she’s locked herself in Lang’s parlor, and she’s calling the police. She’s also screaming and sobbing quite a bit. Barnabas and Lang are banging on the door, desperate to stop her. Lang has pulled his gun — he’ll kill to protect his experiment, if he has to.
In a last desperate bid to halt this disastrous chain of consequences, Barnabas shouts through the locked door to his hysterical friend.
“Julia, remember!” he cries. “Remember someone!”
“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.
“Then the combat would take place in the deepest recesses of the deepest darkness!”
Okay, it’s Monday; the start of a new week. Now, where did we leave off?
Oh, right. Barnabas was choking the crazy Irish witch lady. Obviously.
“The tarot cards give us access to knowledge of the occult which cannot be transmitted either orally or in writing.”
On Friday, a vengeful Angelique cast a spell on Josette and Jeremiah, sending them like sleepwalkers to a forbidden tryst, outside in the moonlight. Josette was followed by her aunt, the Countess Natalie, who was an eyewitness as the spellbound couple embraced, and pledged their love.
Now it’s the next morning, and Natalie does the only sensible thing she can do — she brings Josette’s father, Andre, out to the spot where the lovers met, and tells him that they’re being menaced by an evil force.
That doesn’t necessarily sound like the logical next move, but soap operas are approximately 90% information management. If somebody does something, then the next day, everybody has to stand around and talk about it. And if it’s a secret, then there’s all kinds of extra information management activity, including eavesdropping, speculating and making up excuses. Frankly, we’re lucky anything ever happens at all.
Oh, and we’re still in the past, by the way. Remember how we were in the past? Well, we’re still there.
“I killed Paul Stoddard, and that man was my accomplice!”
We open this week with everybody standing in a line and facing forward. On Friday, Liz interrupted her wedding with Jason to confess that she killed her first husband. Now everyone has to stay very still, because there isn’t enough room for them all to react on camera.
They don’t usually have seven characters in the same scene, and this is why. They’ve only got three cameras. They’re using one for the front of the room, one for the side, and the third is dedicated to helping us keep track of the handgun Carolyn just dropped on the floor.
“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.
“Now, look here. There is no such thing as a mystery in science.”
You think you’re having a hard day? Try being Dr. Woodard for a minute. He made several house calls, examined the patient, asked questions, ran tests, played with his glasses and organized an impromptu blood transfusion. Then his patient was kidnapped right out of the hospital, and he doesn’t even have a diagnosis.
And now Burke comes into the office — without an appointment, thank you — and demands answers. This is what health care used to be like, just everybody scolding each other.
“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.
Dark Shadows Every Day 