“Did you ever try to find the exact center of a piece of fine crystal?”
The doctor is advising prudence. She asks the patient, “Are you sure you want it this way?”
“I am through arguing the point,” he sniffs. “The treatments must be accelerated without further comment.”
She reminds him that she will not accept responsibility for the consequences.
“If we don’t hurry,” the patient says, “it will soon be morning. Now, begin the treatment.”
And then she fastens the straps on his electric chair.
“I’d like you to tell me a little more about Maggie’s neck wound.”
Okay, everybody pipe down; Burke Devlin is on the phone. He appears to be conducting business from Dr. Woodard’s office today, because they don’t have a set for Burke’s office. All he has is a hotel room, and we haven’t even seen that for months. Lately, he’s been doing all his business from the pay phone at the Blue Whale, so I guess we should be glad he’s still indoors.
We only get this end of the conversation, so it’s all questions and no answers. “Any word from London yet?” he asks. “Who’d you talk to? Is the guy you spoke to the last word on birth records in London?”
So, assuming that the answer to that question is “yes” — then today’s spine-tingling rollercoaster of suspense involves talking to somebody who talked to somebody who’s the last word on birth records in London. Although I suppose it’s possible that the answer is “no,” in which case it might be the second to last word.
“I’m all right. Just call me Miss Jitters of 1967.”
Okay, you’re not going to believe this, but today’s episode of Dark Shadows begins with Victoria Winters looking out the window. There’s a storm outside, and when the lightning flashes, she starts, as if she’s seen something upsetting. Then she walks over to her bedside table and opens that damn music box again. Then Carolyn comes in, and they talk about the music box, and the weather, and then we cut to Barnabas standing outside, staring up at Vicki’s window.
In other words: This is a mash-up of the beginning of every episode from the last five days. It’s like they realized during the dress rehearsal that they’d forgotten to write the first act, so they just tore a page out of all the other scripts this week and now we have to watch it.
“You’ve remembered coldness, you’ve remembered a melody, a fragrance. All these things are very important.”
We open today with Dr. Julia Hoffman, noted blood specialist, leading a therapy session for Maggie, who’s blocking out her memories of being kidnapped by a vampire. This is not typically in a blood specialist’s line of enquiry, but Julia Hoffman is not a typical doctor.
