DARK SHADOWS 588

“I’m beginning to remember things, Willie. Things that happened after I disappeared.”

“Barnabas wanted me to believe that I was Josette.”

Nancy Barrett. Maggie voice over. Reprise? Maggie keeps talking to herself and then also going into Voice Over.

She starts to remember again and calls Barnabas’s name again. She’s starting to remember again. So it is a reprise but it’s different. Very different. There is another flashback. Is it a redo? A do over or an honest to goodness flashback to another film?

Maggie goes from voice to actually speaking, though at one moment she’s mouthing the words but the sound does not match so we hear nothing while she is talking and then she goes into the flashback and more voice over!

Josette’s music box music.

When Willie gives Maggie the dress, there are blue lines around it, a trick on the cameras. Josette music. When he slips and uses the name Maggie she starts to remember but to calm her he opens the music box and starts it playing, instructing her to go upstairs and change into the dress.

More Maggie voice over.

Collinwood: a long slow nice pan through the drawing room from the windows to the door out of it into the foyer and up the steps as Carolyn comes out of the door on the landing.

Carolyn: Blair comes in. Mic shadow. Vicki has been given a sedative. Roger is in town with the sheriff. Everyone is with Miss Winters, suiting Blair fine. She doesn’t like being alone. He fakes that he wants a drink and she directs him to the brandy. He closes the doors. When he asks her to look at him, she says, “IDU.”

He makes Carolyn unable to move or speak and she is now his slave. He explains. She says, “IDU.” He says, “It is unnecessary for you to understand anymore than what I have told you.”

Willie arrives back at Maggie’s crypt to let her go but he realizes when she asks who was Josette, that she’s remembering. Magie is incredibly stupid not to ask him about who Josette was until after she was outside. Willie lies, “I don’t know anybody by that name.” Maggie protests that he knows things about her. “IDK,” is all he can say.

Maggie tells Willie about the Old House and remembers more things. “IDK why I was I the old House but I was. And so were you.” Willie tries to fake it, “You went to the Old House with your father.”

Barnabas wanted her to believe she was Josette. Willie asks why he would do that and she answers IDK. She says sometimes she was afraid of Barnabas and sometimes she wasn’t. IDK why she adds.

Willie’s voice seems to go high pitched. Maggie recalled that she escaped Barnabas once and tried to get to her father.

Willie says, “Barnabas would never harm you.” WHAT?

Maggie has another flashback to the mausoleum. She remembers Barnabas brought her here and wanted her to be the bride of Barnabas Collins. Maggie either is lying and faking it or is really back under his power in the flashback but she seems to accept happily that she will be with Barnabas forever.

BTW what was his plan? Marry her and hide her forever from everyone? He WAS insane.

In any case, Maggie tries to sprint out the door and fails, showing once again what a moron she is. He was just about to NOT punish her for disobeying him and leave with her but instead, she does this and he grabs her.

With fangs shown, Barnabas bites her on the neck. He then brings her into the secret room. Next we see her laying in the coffin. He closes it. She screams. NOTE: how much air would she have in such a thing?

Maggie screams. “I know, I know what Barnabas Collins is!”

Review: Despite the flashbacks, which are very long, this is still riveting, at least to me. Repercussions of the previous storyline…Maggie’s never dealt with that because she didn’t remember and now her plans as she does is scary because it could mean the end of the show, the end of Barnabas or force Barnabas and/or Willie to kill Maggie! Still amazing.

In the act 1 flashback, as Maggie enters the room and approaches Willie, you can see the shadow of a camera moving around on the left.

At the end of the act 1 flashback, Maggie leaves the room, and the camera lingers on Willie and the music box for about twenty seconds. This gives Maggie time to hustle over to the mausoleum set, and throw on her nightgown over the dress she was wearing in the flashback. When they cut to Maggie in the mausoleum, you can see the yellow collar of her dress poking through under the nightgown.

In act 2, when Carolyn hears Nicholas knocking on the front door at Collinwood, the music stops, and there’s no music for about a minute and a half.

When Barnabas carries Maggie into the secret room, the door doesn’t quite shut behind him.

Behind the Scenes:

There’s a big change to the show’s structure that starts today — it changes from four acts to three. It stays this way for about two years — up through episode 1050, in July 1970. I’m going to talk about this in the next couple entries, but this episode is actually when the change happens.

Maggie’s first flashback is kind of a pastiche of her abduction experience, so it’s not based on a specific episode. The closest match is probably episode 239, which aired in May 1967. The second flashback is a remake of a sequence in episode 248, from June.

DS BEFORE I DIE had these interesting things to note:

John: Well, Maggie has acclimated well to being trapped in a mausoleum with a coffin. If she were to open it, would she find it empty? Or are the remains of Jason McGuire in there?

Christine: In Episode 276, we see Willie shoveling dirt in the corner of the mausoleum as Barnabas remarks that Jason ended up in a narrow, unmarked grave, so it's not possible for him to be found in the coffin. I really wish we'd had another POV shot of the coffin closing on Maggie like we saw in Episode 248.

John: I like the transitions in and out of Maggie's memories. It will be interesting if Willie and Barnabas try to prove that she's imagining things by proving that he's not actually a vampire (anymore).

Christine: I'm not sure Maggie has anyone she can tell who will believe her. Vicki's having a breakdown from the Adam attack, her pop's dead, and her boyfriend's consorting with a vampire. All she has left is Nicholas Blair, and he's got his own designs on her.