DARK SHADOWS 447

 DARK SHADOWS

447

Nancy B. A note about the narrations: sometimes they mention Victoria Winters by name, sometimes they use the word girl and sometimes they use the word woman. The reprise is different and there is a zoom in on Joshua as he realizes the gun did no good. Joshua says, “IDU.” Barnabas tells him he is dead but not dead, “I am already dead.”  Joshua cannot release him on the world again. His son tells him that Angelique is the reason behind it all: the deaths of Jeremiah, Sarah, me, Josette are all her doing. If he told anyone, she threatened to destroy the entire family (which may not be strictly true as she never directly threatened Naomi, I believe). Joshua finally says, “Miss Winters is innocent.”   He will see to it that she is freed---but he takes a long time to do it if he ever does. Joshua gets an IDK. Joshua tells him he will send for Rev. Trask but Barnabas tells him he is dead…now, wait a sec. That was maybe five episodes ago and a great deal of that seems to cover only two days at most, unless more time has gone by it seems almost to cover one night! So Trask might still be alive behind that wall and listening…unless Barnabas did something else which seems unlikely since Trask was behind the wall and screamed when Barnabas put the last brick in. SO is Trask really dead yet? If this were MILLENNIUM he’d live for a week or so. Joshua laments this and then asks him if he was responsible for Abigail. Barnabas tells him she died of heart failure/fright. Would he have killed Abigail anyway???

 

Joshua then makes the really stupid mistake of moving Barnabas to the Tower Room at Collinwood WHY? More people there could discover him. AND THEN, he doesn’t consider that any light from candles could be seen from the drawing room and other places. And makes no attempt to cover the windows when both Naomi and Millicent later see these lights. AND unless I am very wrong, he also stands at the window of the Tower Room at least once!  Barnabas initially refuses to go there but Joshua tells him to either kill him or he will leave and tell Naomi about Barnabas. He will not have Barnabas roaming the countryside like some crazed animal. 

 

Millicent is staring. This happens a lot in DS. It’s almost surreal. Like a comic book in  a way. Daniel is scared and moving around the steps and down as if he’s afraid and cautious. He had a robe on. He hugs Millicent when he finds her in the drawing room and he thought before this, that he was alone in the house. Millicent tells him she would never go away without telling him. I wish she would just go away. Daniel claims he never had bad dreams before coming here and he thinks it is this house and the sounds it makes and the things that happen to the people that live in it. They hear a dog howling. He points out bad things happen when the dogs howl. As Daniel talks, he seems to be moving the chair near him with his foot or robe. When he thinks they are going to go home, he seems VERY happy.

 

All of this makes Daniel very different from David. David loves Collinwood and is sad when he has to go away from it, although when away somewhere else, he seems more like a normal human boy. David sort of likes the noises and balks at going away for good. David, while afraid sometimes, is not as afraid as Daniel. Daniel is made to be a different character by the writers and the actor.

 

Daniel tells Millicent that he likes Nathan, Nathan’s always been nice to him. “I like him.”  Naomi talks to Millicent: the marriage will take place tomorrow. Naomi gets and IDK. Without having told Nathan about her plans, Millicent will go to her lawyer and put all her money in Daniel’s name. Nathan will support her as he’s always saying that it is not her money Nathan is interested in. He often told her he would renounce her fortune. Joshua comes in and Naomi questions him extensively (“Something in that house is going on that I don’t know about!”). And she gets her own IDK (I DON’T KNOW). He looks for Ben. Naomi somehow (well, having seen Joshua staring at the portrait could have done it) feels Barnabas is involved. Then after Joshua leaves, she stares at the portrait. He had another IDK.

 

There is an interesting shot of the lower area of Collinwood below the Tower Room and it pans up. Very nice and atmospheric. It doesn’t really make up for the location stuff but…Barnabas tells Joshua he is helpless to resist his needs and he says or flubs that he tried to undo the risk…undo the curse. Joshua also gets another IDK. He tells his father that said he killed Angelique but she is not dead. She wants the risk, the curse never to be broken. Naomi is seen in the drawing room practically grabbing up at the window to open it.  She sees a light in the Tower Room. Barnabas is there. There is once more a clunk at the end of the music.

 

An atmospheric and well acted, superior episode.           

 

Barnabas flubs several lines today, including:

“Now you know why I was unable to do… to myself… because it cannot be done.”

“I myself tried to undo the risk, the curse, by — preventing it. And she will do the same.”

“She is still with us, and for one reason only — to make sure that the risk, and the curse, is never broken.”

Joshua changes his story when he talks to Naomi about why he went to the Old House. Yesterday, he said that Nathan had reported that he saw lights in the Old House. Today, Joshua tells Naomi that he was just out for a walk.