DARK SHADOWS 607

“We control Barnabas Collins completely, Adam.”

“It’s because of that girl, Maggie Evans, you want her for yourself.”

Lara. No reprise. Adam is in bed. In PJs! The Afghan is on his bed. Blair wakes him up. He had a bad dream. Nicholas startles him and then flubs, “Well, who did I…well, who did you think it was?” Adam’s answer: IDK.

Blair asks why Adam is rubbing his own neck. Adam’s answer: IDK.

Nicholas has forgotten about the connection between Adam and Barnabas.

He sees fang marks on Adam’s neck. When he asks Adam if he knows where they came from, Adam’s answer, “No, IDK.”

He gets two more IDKs when Nicholas asks what he’s frightened of. Five IDKs in less than four minutes must some kind of record.

Adam feels something terrible is going to happen to him. “IDK what it is.” Six IDKs.

Adam doesn’t want to see Angelique at all and is afraid of her when he does. Nicholas asks why he is frightened of her and Adam says IDK again. That’s seven IDKs in under five minutes.

A boom mike shadow shakes.

Angelique talks to herself, “Barnabas will be mine.” Isn’t he already? As she talks about the sunrising, we hear shuffling and squeaking.

Blair and she both forgot (or did they ever know it?) about the Eric Lang message and realize this.

He tells her, “We forgot. We forgot about Eric Lang’s message on the tape recorder.”

At first, she says, “I Don’t Understand.” IDU.

Blair tells Angelique to attack Joe instead of Barnabas. She reminds Blair of his own care for Maggie Evans and that is the only reason he wants her to attack Joe.

A still photo of the Blue Whale yields still waters. The Blue Whale slow music starts and seems to go lower and lower and stop and then start up again.

An old, old bartender inside gives Joe more liquor as he bangs a glass he just downed the contents of. Maggie comes in to wait for Blair and sees Joe. Maggie thought Joe stopped caring for her a long time ago. Blair comes in and he and Maggie sit at a table. Joe voice over. Maggie tells Blair she wants to forget Joe.

SO? Just how much time is going by for these two that we do not see? Last we saw they had their memories wiped. Joe more than implies Maggie’s seeing Nicholas a lot “these days.”

This is one reason I do not follow the DARK SHADOWS WIKIA timeline. More time might go by between episodes.

Joe is also seemingly not going to work.

We haven’t seen Maggie with Blair since he showed up to erase her memory. IF that is what happened (it is). Maggie thinks Joe looks like he used to look when he felt something for her. Joe says, “You don’t know how I feel, Maggie. I wish I could tell ya.”

She says, “We’re not living in the past, we’re living in the present.”

Nicholas and Joe say hello when he enters. I forgot how truly broken up Maggie and Joe were at this point.

Joe voice over. He leaves the Blue Whale. When Maggie hates seeing Joe that way and tells Blair, he says, “I understand.”

Nicholas orders a black Russian for the lady and himself. Maggie tells Blair she wants to forget Joe Haskell entirely.

Adam is reading an old book with ragged cut edges. He uses a knife to cut the pages apart. Huh? They were stuck together?

Adam is afraid of Angelique and doesn’t know why. When she asks, he says, “I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to be in the same room with you.” He leaves. Smart man.

Angelique voice over.

She wants to spoil Blair’s plans. Joe comes to the House by the Sea even though she didn’t summon him. He just walks in through the door (doesn’t anyone lock the doors in this show? Maybe once at Collinwood or so?).

She tells him there is someone else she wants as he goads her into revealing.

Joe will kill him. Angelique shows him the mirror and we see the blue screen slide into place behind Joe as WE look into the mirror. The blue screen is put into place, sliding behind his head.

NOTE: Does Angelique, even as a vampire, have some witch powers? Did she control the mirror or is it the mirror itself? She must have some control over it.

Joe is shown Blair and Maggie. Blair is falling in love with Maggie, they all realize. He tells Maggie if she does not feel the same way for him as she felt about Joe and if she does not, he thinks they should not see each other again. Maggie says, “IDK what to say.” He tells her to answer yes or no, and he’s not forceful about it but almost kind and human.

At Maggie’s the outside looks like a different porch. Blair and Maggie kiss and they hold that for a long time. Maggie is going to give him a chance.

Angelique shows few glimmers of caring about Joe, “Maybe she’ll take you back.” But then, “Anyway, it doesn’t concern me one way or the other.” She treats Joe very badly, just wanting him to go. He’s lost Maggie and his job. She tells him he doesn’t have her either.

He takes a knife and tries to kill her but he can’t. He hates her, hates himself. He does not want to live. Angelique is not even seeing what he is doing and just tells him to leave. She seems less feeling than she used to and less of a human being with concerns and cares or even loyalties.

If anything she’s more a bitach than she was before. Joe uses the letter opener/knife to stab himself in the stomach. Credits are six seconds. The version I’ve just seen on Amazon says 1966!

NOTE: Angelique is not particularly bright here. Joe has the knife and she turns his back on him and doesn’t contemplate that if he stabs himself here, her not seeing it or not caring, that there will be a huge problem for her and Blair.

Review: Seeing Joe stab himself in the stomach after he declares he hates himself and has nothing to live for is over the top depressing. That plus the Liz storyline is enough to put someone over the edge. These two storylines are just not “fun” at all and too much like real life suicide and depression to be having any impact on those who love sci fi, horror and fantasy. On the other hand, the result of a vampire’s curse on someone or hold on someone would probably be just this when that vampire tires of one. As cruel as she was as a witch, Angelique has turned even crueler as a vampire. Seeing Joe fall apart like this is plain sad.

Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:

Nicholas is off his game today. In the teaser, when Adam wakes up startled, Nicholas says, “Well, who did you think I — who did you think it was?”

In act 1, when Adam tells Nicholas that he didn’t see Angelique tonight, there’s a long pause, and then Nicholas looks at the teleprompter. He says, “Well, I think I know what happened,” and then looks at the prompter again. Delightfully, his next line is “I haven’t time to explain.”

In the middle of act 1, as we cut from Adam’s room to the parlor, there’s a ton of studio noise in the background — shuffling feet, and a door opens. There’s a little tape edit here, and the music cue skips ahead a couple seconds.

When Angelique tells Joe to look in the magic mirror, we can see the reflection of the stagehands wheeling in the blue screen behind them.

The copyright date at the end of the episode says 1966.

Behind the Scenes:

Tom Gorman plays the Bartender at the Blue Whale, a role that’s usually played by Bob O’Connell. Gorman played one of the judges in Vicki’s 1795 witch trial, and he also played Ezra Simpson, a dead criminal who presided over Barnabas’ mock trial in June.

Adam is sleeping under the colorful Collinsport Afghan, an often-used prop that’s usually seen on the back of Maggie’s couch. It’s recently been on a tour, popping up in Josette’s room at the Old House, in Liz’s bedroom at Collinwood, and in Joe’s apartment.

The checkerboard Ralston-Purina lamp is also close by, on the nightstand by Adam’s bed. This is usually seen in the Collinwood study, but it migrates occasionally.

Joel Crothers was dissatisfied with the part of Joe and with Dark Shadows generally. In a couple of months, he will leave the show and take a role on another soap. Very few viewers would have been likely to know that was coming in 1968, but Joe was a popular character who was chronically underutilized. He would have had many fans who might have shared Joe’s fear that the show will leave him in the state to which this storyline has reduced him.

Episode 607: Bedtime – Dark Shadows Commentary