DARK SHADOWS 340

 

DARK SHADOWS 340

“I tried to keep Barnabas under control. I wasn’t always successful.”

 

“…he’s out there, somewhere in the dark and he’ll find you and he’ll kill you.”

 

Different….slightly different reprise. And new material and dialog after it, too. THEN, the credits. Julia head tilt as Barnabas wants to eliminate Dr. Woodard. Frid flubs over sentimentality…and corrects himself. Camera or mike shadow shaking. Barnabas has done some horrible things before this episode but this is him at his most unlikable and horrid. Here, he taunts Julia into helping him by telling her that Woodard will die a slow horrible death, enduring agony, begging for death. Instead of turning on Barnabas, faking it, and going to the authorities, Julia tells him about a way to inject Dave with a drug that will make him die a painless death that will make it look like a heart attack. The two of them are first class monsters, evil doers and villains. Nothing more at least here.

 

And here, I loathe them more than any other character so far. They’re even worse than Jason.

 

The way Barnabas talks to Julia and treats her, if I were her, I’d inject HIM.

 

Woodard is also a jerk. Instead of getting to the Sheriff immediately or to Burke or anyone in a crowded place, a safe place…he goes to his office. He does call the office but the sheriff is out. He should have declared a total emergency then and there and got whoever answered that phone to get him help.  

 

If you think about earlier scenes of how panicked Barnabas was and if Woodard went to the hospital or told Sam and Joe and the Sheriff, he could have escaped death but he goes back to a lone office and where is this office now? Who knows? No one seems around and this seems the point at which DS starts to become this otherworldly other Earth somewhere where no one is around. And…it’s a lesser show for it IMO. Before, there seemed to be a real world at least, outside, location shooting, the hotel or hotels, the diner, and more…we don’t even see the Blue Whale much any longer. And the show becomes less real and with that less scary in a way.

 

Sam knocks on Dave’s door, smoking a cigarette. From behind it appears to be he’s smoking the pipe but it’s not. He wants Maggie’s pills; Dave was supposed to stop by with them and see how Maggie’s been doing and he did not. GIANT MIKE SHADOW.

 

 

The monster killer evil being Barnabas browbeats Julia into having HER administer the lethal injection but she refuses and comes up with another plan: talk to Dave. He may listen, she says. He wants her to take the needle with her anyway. WHY would she do that? Barnabas is  a first class immoral creep.

 

For maybe the second time, the bat is at the window, which seems open. For the first time, we see the bat vanish and Barnabas appear in the room.

 

I wonder the rate of popularity of the character of Barnabas at this point. Are we supposed to empathize with him and relate to him and worry about him over Woodard exposing him? In this episode alone, he’s completely unlikable, Barnabas, I mean. He is set on murder and only murder, he relishes it, he isn’t reluctant at all here. He bullies Julia into preparing the injection, then wants HER to do the act, then gives her some false hope and finally follows her to kill Woodard. AND in the next episode, he’s not even worried about what Sarah thinks. He’s a total horror show.

 

The word vampire will not be uttered until the 1795 storyline in episode 410.

 

340

      Julia. The narration talks of violence and sudden death---and implies it might be Barnabas…but are we supposed to be worried about this nut job vampire who here, seems totally unsympathetic. Barnabas and

      Julia enter her room and when she switches on the small light, the hallway

      giant light goes on, too. Barnabas says, "Dave Woodard must be

      eliminated." He also flubs over the word sentimentality, saying

      sentimememtality or something like that. Julia balks at having to commit

      murder and won't do it. The camera shakes on Julia's close up. He wants

      her to devise a medical way for them to kill Dave and make it look like a

      natural death. As he talks something in the right of the screen, a shadow

      shakes uncontrollably for a time. Julia-ism: she hugs her bed post in

      agony. Barnabas tells her if she doesn't do it and make him die peacefully

      and quickly, he will do it and he will make Dave suffer in agony for a

      good long time, a painful death. Julia-ism< "NOOOOO!" She thinks there is

      a way to make him die painlessly with a drug she has in her laboratory, he

      will die instantly without pain and it will look like a heart attack.

      Barnabas goes on about how humanitarian she is and she says she should be

      saving lives but he tells her she is.

 

      Dave's office: green walls abound. Sam comes to see him and smokes. He

      wants him to write a prescription for Maggie's sleeping pills. Mike

      shadow. Woodard does this fast and makes Sam leave; Sam notices the red

      notebook.

 

      Old House: Barnabas and Julia discuss the injection. He will force her to

      do it and he calls it a mercy killing. Barnabas has his back to us for a

      bit---is Frid reading his lines off cards in hands? It looks like it. Dave

      was Julia's friend she says. She hopes that there can be an alternate way

      to do this: to talk to him, make him cooperate. She says something like

      Medical Silence in a flub of Medical Science. Barnabas will let her try

      but makes her take the hypodermic needle that will house the drug that can

      kill Dave. It is a large dose of a medicine that in smaller doses can save

      a person.

 

      Woodard calls the sheriff but the man's not in. He sets up a meeting with

      him in 15 minutes through the deputy. Zoom out of Woodard. Julia comes in

      and tries to stop Dave who goes over Maggie and Willie and what happened

      to them. Julia has tried to keep Barnabas under control. When she can't

      stop Dave, who wants to leave, she warns him, "He's out there somewhere in

      the dark." Woodard tells her that Barnabas can kill all Collinsport but he

      can't stop him using the phone. A bat flops at the window and Barnabas

      appears inside the room when it vanishes. Woodard thinks it a nightmare

      but Barnabas tells him to consider it a dream from which he will never

      awaken...

 

      Truly terrifying in a way. Barnabas and Julia are the villains, right?

      Woodard, the stupid fool, is the hero, right? So why do all the musical

      cues try to get us to feel it is the other way around? Because Barnabas is

      more popular? I find it kind of...a car accidenty bunch of eps

      really...it's truly shocking that in the next ep there is no reprieve for

      Woodard and that his number does seem truly up but up until the moment in

      the next ep when Barnabas strikes him with the needle I was expecting him

      to be saved somehow...The next ep is truly shocking and brave of the show

      to that. If they didn't...they sort of wrote themselves into a corner

      where they had to kill Woodard or Barnabas and the were not about to kill

      him. Notice the word vampire still has not been uttered at all. Again, a

      good episode but kind of shocking to watch...like a train wreck. And how

      could we ever care about Barnabas and Julia again when both are so mean

      here? For a long time, I didn't.