“I will hate you until I end your life, and I will end it.”
Man, did you ever have one of those days where nothing goes right? Meet Barnabas Collins. He’s experiencing an epic, unbroken string of days like that, which is a real shame, because he doesn’t have a whole lot of days left. As the saying goes: Life sucks, and then you die. And then things start to go seriously downhill from there.
Continue reading Episode 403: But I Loved You, and Other Excuses
“Just how does one go about sensing an evil spirit? I’ve always been curious about that.”
We take you now live to the Old House drawing room, where an argument is already in progress.
Trask: Miss Winters was bound securely to the tree. She could not possibly have freed herself. Someone must have untied those ropes for her.
Joshua: Are you suggesting, Reverend, that it was a member of this family?
Trask: I am saying that whoever helped her escape is also in league with the Devil, and that can mean only one thing. We are dealing with a coven of witches!
And that’s what Dark Shadows is like these days. Zero to sixty.
“In the tropics, decisions melt like ice.”
When you get down to it, magic is just metaphor. It’s taking a symbol — like a toy soldier — and saying, this toy soldier represents Barnabas. Then you wrap a handkerchief around the soldier’s neck, pull it tight, and see what happens.
Anybody can do that, really, minus the magic part. Your boyfriend is far away, but every night you kiss a picture of him before you go to bed. You get an email from an annoying co-worker, and you roll your eyes and snarl at it, the way you’d like to treat the person if you could get away with it. When someone that you love dies, you light a candle, and leave flowers on the grave — and even if you don’t believe in ghosts or heaven, it comforts you.
But the people who know magic can take that a step further. Angelique isn’t just smacking a toy soldier around. She tricks the universe into believing that the soldier is Barnabas, and when she throttles the toy, Barnabas chokes.
That’s what magic is — you connect the symbol to the real thing that the symbol represents. Then you wish so hard that you punch a hole through reality, grab something on the other side, and pull.
“Deep within the night, opposing forces stalk each other. And their meeting, when it comes, will shatter the ancient truce between the living and the dead.”
At the end of the last episode, Julia broke into the Old House, walked downstairs to the basement, and found Barnabas sleeping in a coffin. And just as a measure of how weird this soap opera has become — that’s not a surprise anymore. It’s daytime, the dude sleeps in a coffin. We know. Yawn.
The actual surprise is that Julia survives the experience. We’ve seen this scene three times before — with Willie, Maggie and Jason in the lead role — and none of them walked away happy. But in this case, Barnabas just stays asleep, and it’s like a bomb goes off. What’s Julia up to? What is she going to do?
Dark Shadows is on fire today. I mean, literally — today the show actually catches on fire.
“Even historians have a certain amount of feminine vanity.”
It’s another cloudy day at Collinwood, and occasional governess Victoria Winters is daydreaming at the drawing room window, staring outside at nothing in particular while she listens to Josette’s music box. David walks into the room, and the music fades.
Then we realize that she’s not holding the music box. We were just hearing the music that plays inside Vicki’s head. Apparently we can do that now.
This raises the possibility that all of the incidental music that we hear on the show is actually just happening in the characters’ minds. So when something surprising happens, they turn around and say to themselves, Dunn! Dunn! DUNNNNNN!
“I suppose I’m exaggerating. But then again… maybe I’m not.”
At the top of today’s episode, we’ve got Barnabas sneaking up on a sleeping Vicki as she spends a not particularly peaceful night in Josette’s room. He’s got his fangs in this time, so he’s ready for action.
But then, from the corner of his eye, he notices Josette’s portrait, staring at him. He’s basically making a move on his new girlfriend while his ex is calmly sitting there and watching. It’s an awkward moment for everyone — even for Vicki, and she’s sound asleep.
Embarrassed and sheepish, Barnabas backs away from Vicki and exits the room. It’s a nice character-building moment for Barnabas, but unfortunately it makes the story less interesting. If he’s not going to bite her, then we don’t have a plot anymore. So now what?
Dark Shadows Every Day 