DARK SHADOWS 603

“Knowing the man you love is also a part of love.”

Vicki. Whispers to Liz state that death is nearer and nearer. Liz has a small model made by an architect. And…it’s …cute!

Vicki comes in and I must say they finally have her look just right: she has never looked more pretty, her hair looks great, and her muscle tone is just right. Hmmm, yeah. Vicki looks perfect in this episode.

Vicki asks her to go with her for a drive. Liz tells her she does not want a burial underground and tells her not to mention Windcliff. Mike Shadow.

Liz says, “We’ve always understood each other, you and I. I’ve been grateful for that. I’m sure you’ve felt it, too.”

“Yes, I have.”

Liz talks about changes being made, it being finished and Vicki will see to it about more changes.

Vicki: IDU what you’re talking about.

Her mausoleum. She does not want to be buried under the ground. She wants Vicki to promise she will not let them do that to her.

NOTE: This seems to be the movie version of the of The Premature Burial (1962).

Liz says, “I thought that you’d understand.”

Liz says she does not. Vicki says she understands that Liz cannot help, that the reports from Windcliff and Dr. Hoffman say physically Liz is fine. “They don’t know,” Liz says a few times.

They discuss the mind and how it can drive your ailments. BOOM mike shadow.

Vicki tells her that she and her family have been kinder to her than anyone else and she doesn’t know what she’d be like without Liz and that at the orphanage (Vicki getting an IDK when she says, “I don’t know what I’d have been like if I hadn’t met you.”), Vicki always thought she’d be alone her whole life but Liz and her family all showed her that she was wrong. “You’re wrong too,” and she wants to let them show her that.

Liz wants her mausoleum to be built on the cliff over the sea so everyone can hear the bell. Roger yells at her from the door, entering strongly and he mocks Liz that the architect probably thought ill of her and the townspeople (calling the town a village) must be laughing at her.

Liz tells him that his life would be better if he didn’t care so much what other people think. Roger smashes the model in but Vicki later fixes it. It’s cute.

Liz runs out. Vicki yells at Roger that he shouldn’t have done that. Roger says, “I know.” Roger starts to say, “I don’t know what to do…” when Vicki interrupts him, “She’s been in such a state.” He only gets the IDK part and then repeats the IDK part and says the rest. He’s listened to and reasoned with Liz. He’s spent hours with her when she seemed her old self again.

Vicki is sorry she yelled at him and fixes the model. Roger had Liz almost admitting the absurdity of the way she was thinking and had her almost her old self.

Roger gets a third, IDK, and says IDK what to do.

This ep has sound issues. Liz’s own voice is tormenting her. It yells, “Get ready! Get ready!” Liz yells, “No.”

Roger tells Vicki this whole thing started when he married Cassandra. Roger tells Vicki, “We’ve never been lucky in love, you and I.” Mike. Roger also flubs the word blame when blaming Cassandra with the word bame. He then thinks it is just that he and Vicki have never been lucky in love. He tells her, “At least you didn’t marry young Clark.”

Jeff knocks and the knock from inside sounds NOTHING like the knock from outside. Roger answers it and from outside we see inside the drawing room and the huge boom mike itself. The left (when facing it from outside the drawing room) door to the drawing room also half closes by itself.

Roger closes the door to go get Vicki. He asks Vicki if she wants him to say she doesn’t want to see him but she will see him.

Her own voice still torments Liz. Jeff wants to give Vicki the engagement ring again but she doesn’t want him to touch her. Vicki vs Jeff. Vicki gives him some sign of some hope. If he gave her some explanation, if he said he hates Roger or if he said he doesn’t want to work in a cannery, that would be something she could understand. “At least there would have been something for me to try and understand.”

He says there are some things he cannot explain but that everything he did, he did for her own good. She says he hurt her for her own sake and she adds, “Well, I don’t really understand that,” she says.

Previously they discussed that love means forgiving but she said that love also means knowing the man she loves. She wonders if she just made up the man she loves and put those traits onto Jeff.

She says people can love each other and still know that a life together would not be right.

He says he said everything he planned to say.

Vicki: “Perhaps that is what’s wrong. Perhaps I didn’t want to hear everything you planned to say. Perhaps that would have made me want to be a part of your life again.” WHAT? WTF is she talking about?

Roger goes to Liz’s room and finds her…gone. After more dialog from Jeff vs Vicki, he alerts them.

Liz in the graveyard. Liz voice over. As if it is a separate entity. It tells her she will lie underground. The mausoleum will not be finished in time.

Jeff calls Liz Miss Stoddard. It’s Mrs.

Jeff and Roger search for Liz; while Vicki, at Roger’s request, will search the house with the unseen Mrs. Johnson. As Vicki goes to the exit out of the foyer area, she seems to stoop or trip.

Liz is by Peter Bradford’s gravestone. It reads Jan 18^th, 1770 to April 3^rd, 1795.

Liz torments herself (was this what some people were like and went through during COVID?) and as she tries to get up from kneeling or sitting by Peter’s tombstone and burial site, she gets a pain and cries out.

Peter shushes Roger who asks, “What was that?” Peter says IDK.

As they search, Roger tells Jeff the truth about Liz’s mental state. Roger thinks Liz might go to Widow’s Hill so they separate. Roger will go down the road to Widow’s Hill.

Jeff finds Liz at Peter’s tombstone.

Liz gasps, “You’re dead. You’re dead!”

She passes out. Jeff takes her to Collinwood. Vicki asks what happened. Jeff: “I don’t know.” Vicki feels for a pulse and a heart beat and finds neither. “She’s dead! Jeff, she’s dead!”

Review: This Liz dying shit is seriously depressing, maybe not as much as it used to be but still…at the same time, Vicki telling us more about the orphanage seems to bring us back to her own dilemma/life and that’s always a good thing.

Jeff and Vicki reconciling at least a bit is nice in a way. Roger is overly mean smashing that cute little model. How dare he. The voice haunting Liz is a bit too like real mental dilemma and real life depression.

It does not make a good DS but it does fit in with the mood of the show and with Liz in particular as Liz tried to off herself more than once and while NOT under a spell. WELL< I wrote that over ten years ago, maybe more, and now I think it is good DS.

NOTE: the cliffhanger dialog will be slightly different in various ways. When Vicki asks where he found her, here, he says, “In the graveyard.” Next ep in the reprise, he will say, “In the cemetery.” Here, Vicki says, “She’s dead! JEFF, she’s dead!” Next time she will leave Jeff’s name out of it. Jeff also says here, “She fainted.” Next ep, he will say, “I think she’s fainted.”

The reprises and cliffhangers, while usually very similar, are also very different but this is not always the case. Sometimes, I believe they just roll it back and it is exactly the same but more often than not, especially for the first 600 plus episodes, the two are different, sometimes obviously so but sometimes not so obvious.

John: Since when does Vicki run around Collinwood in a little black dress with her hair down? Did she know that Jeff would be stopping by? Or did she perhaps have a date with Barnabas?

Christine: Maybe she just got back from the concert in Bangor Barnabas promised to take her to in Episode 583.

John: Sadly when Roger crushed Liz' model mausoleum, we saw that it wasn't a particularly high quality construction. Despite that, Vicki was still having trouble reassembling it correctly.

Christine: Was anyone else searching online for the Stoddard Mausoleum Playset, complete with bell that actually rings? Add a few Dark Shadows action figures and imaginative kids can have hours of entertaining fun! Collins Family Mausoleum, chained coffin, and stakes sold separately.

John: Liz is dead? Sure she is. Who was the last person to die for the duration of the closing credits of one episode to the opening credits of the next?

Christine: Of course she's not dead. Haven't you seen Premature Burial? It's no wonder Liz was so worried about being buried alive. Vicki has declared her dead even though her chest is rising and she's obviously still breathing!

Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:

Roger trips on a word as he talks to Vicki: “It seems to me that everything began to change here when I married Cassandra. Oh, I bame — blame her because… we’ve never been very lucky in love, you and I, have we?”

When Roger opens the front door for Jeff, you can see the boom mic hovering above the drawing room.

Someone in the studio coughs as Roger approaches Vicki to tell her that Jeff’s at the door.

In the cemetery, as Jeff approaches the cowering Liz, you can see into the Collinwood drawing room set just beyond the set. Someone is standing on the set, and takes a couple steps. The great thing about this blooper is that it shows you how small the cemetery set is today. Jeff and Liz are in a tiny little sliver of the studio floor, not quite surrounded by greenery.