DARK SHADOWS 599

“Just drive and get as far away from this town as we can.”

“We’ve got to escape, both of us we’ve got to get out of this town.”

"Quiet, Willie!"

"Let me do the talking, Willie."

KLS. No reprise.

Willie runs to the Old House and yells for Barnabas. He tells him what’s happened. About one half hour ago, Maggie escaped. Willie worries Barnabas might do something to Maggie.

Maggie voice over, “I don’t know if I have the strength to go on.”

She decides not to go to Collinwood in case Barnabas is there. Barnabas suddenly thinks Willie is lying to him about David finding Maggie and that Willie set her free himself. Dope. He asks how David found out about the room. Willie says, “I don’t know.” Flubs from both men. Barnabas says, “You do you know that?” In a weird time.

Joe voice over. Angelique’s eyes over shadow his frame. She calls him all the time. She’s in the room in an effective trick they’ve been doing since the vampire or even Laura the phoenix came on the show. Joe tells her he hates her. He’s lost his job. Angelique knows he cannot resist, “I do want you.”

Willie finds Maggie’s slipper.

Angelique makes Joe look into her eyes and she bites Joe. Maggie has opened the door, sees this, screams and passes out on the bed.

Later, before Joe wakes her up and he and Angelique have a brief conversation, with him saying IDU. She says, “You don’t have to understand everything.”

She will make sure the situation is resolved. When he turns away and then back, Angelique has vanished already. He knows her name.

Maggie tells him she can understand what that woman was. The same thing happened to her. “I CAN understand.”

Maggie tells him, “We’ve got to escape, both of us we’ve got to get out of this town.” She wants to take his car so they can drive as far away from this town as they can. A knock comes. Maggie begs him not to answer it but he is compelled to. Maggie cringes on the wall.

Barnabas and Willie return to the Old House. It’s been two hours since Maggie escaped.

Barnabas’s brilliant plan: tell the police Maggie is insane. Willie counters that she has proof: David and the coffin room at the mausoleum. A knock on the door.

“Leave the talking to me, Willie.”

Joe comes to the door and gives them a message from Maggie: she’d like to see Barnabas at the Cottage.

Barnabas, “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happened.” The door swings open as the two men leave. The door seems to be open but closes back but is not locked.

After Willie and Barnabas leave, Joe is outside the Old House. HAS HIS MIND BEEN ERASED? DOES HE KNOW ABOUT BARNABAS?

Maggie has sketches Pop Sam drew before he was to paint the portrait of Barnabas. We see the Afghan.

Maggie says of Willie and Barnabas, “You both look so strange.”

Maggie tells them it is a long time since she saw Willie: about three or four weeks.

Outside, Barnabas thinks that it is likely Blair that erased Maggie’s memory just as he helped with Carolyn. Blair is the only one who could do that.

Willie wants to know why---he was Cassandra’s brother. Barnabas says, “I don’t know.”

Blair has a plan: a diabolical plan: “what can it be? What can it be?”

Almost 600 of these f’ers!

hERE is what DARK SHADOWS EVERY DAY says and I do not agree:

Nicholas Blair, of course. These days, it’s always Nicholas Blair. The evil warlock has become an all-purpose demon ex machina, hypnotizing people and erasing any inconvenient story progression. We saw Carolyn mind-wiped just yesterday, and today it’s Maggie’s turn.

So I think this is it — the moment when Ron Sproat actually breaks the show. He has violated the ancient truce between the writers and the audience.

Sproat is currently the senior member of the Dark Shadows writing team. He’s been working on the show since November 1966, back when it was totally okay to end an episode with Vicki sighing and looking out the window.

He’s done some good work on the show — he was part of the team that introduced Barnabas in the first place, and made the vampire into such an engaging character that Dark Shadows suddenly blossomed into a blockbuster hit.

But Sproat still believes in using the same old tricks — locking characters up for weeks, erasing their memories, setting up dramatic confrontations and then lunging for the reset button. It’s really long past time to put those dusty old techniques away. The show has changed, and he should know that by now. He’s the guy who changed it.

Like Maggie, the show has been running in circles lately — running toward the door, and then doubling back and forgetting what they were trying to do in the first place. That’s because there’s a war going on in the writers’ room.

Ron Sproat, Sam Hall, Gordon Russell and executive producer Dan Curtis are all struggling to figure out what to do with the show, and what shows up on screen is the muddled result of a string of half-hearted compromises. Dark Shadows is contested territory.

This battle will go on for several months, and it’s the kind of fight where not everybody walks out alive. Some of them weren’t even alive to begin with.

Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:

When Barnabas and Willie are looking for Maggie, Barnabas gets stuck on the phrase “How do you know”:

Barnabas: How did she escape?

Willie: It was David!

Barnabas: David?

Willie: David! He found her, and he let her go!

Barnabas: How do you know?

Willie: Well, he was in the mausoleum, he was playin’ around. He found her there, and he let her go. He admitted it to me.

Barnabas: You’re lying, Willie.

Willie: Lyin’?

Barnabas: You let Maggie escape.

Willie: Me?

Barnabas: Yes! I know how you feel about her. You took pity on her, and let her escape. Then you thought over what you had done, and panicked, and came back with that ridiculous story about David.

Willie: Barnabas, it’s not a story, it’s the truth!

Barnabas: How do you know that?

(They look at each other. Barnabas realizes he’s said the wrong line, and looks at the teleprompter. The scene continues.)

Barnabas: David just wandered into the mausoleum, and opened the panel. Do you expect me to believe that?

Willie: No, Barnabas, it isn’t the way it happened. He was curious — he saw me comin’ out of the mausoleum, that’s why he went inside!

Barnabas: And once he got inside, how did he open the panel? He doesn’t even know it’s there. He doesn’t know it exists!

Willie: He does, Barnabas.

Barnabas: How do you know that?

(Willie looks distracted. It’s obviously the wrong cue.)

Barnabas: How did he find out?

When Joe is sitting on his bed, you can see Angelique standing in the shadows behind him, waiting for her cue.

Another moment of Fridspeak: