Okay so here’s the thing: Barb and I wanted to do another Anatomy of a Scene, because this, to us, is Fun. It is F-U-N, as they said one time on MST3K. But we weren’t sure what Dark Shadows scene really NEEDED us to deep-analyze it. There are certainly other great scenes on Dark Shadows, but we would need another one that (1) NEEDED analysis (so that seemed to exclude scenes with Willie Loomis, because they’re all amazing, but they’re also not as SUBTLE as the scenes we’ve done so far), and also scenes that (2) no one ELSE had already analyzed. There are other amazing scenes in Dark Shadows, but other writers have already done a good job of analyzing some of those.
Well, we talked about it, and finally realized that what we might need to get into is Barnabas’ relationship with his father—like, say, the first time we see them together.
As it happens, that moment ALSO happens to be in the same episode where we first get Angelique—just earlier in the episode.
SO HERE WE GO.
https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/508875/s04-e38-episode-368-369 (same episode as Anatomy of a Scene #1, but earlier in the same episode!)
Barnabas is worried about when the heck Josette’s ship, and therefore Josette, will finally get here. What if (as previously mentioned in other posts here) a storm at sea has sunk Josette? Because there’s a thunderstorm outside right now.
Well, that’s when Victoria Winters, who is not just any old governess for Barnabas’ little sister, but who is, specifically, a time-travelling governess, feels sorry for Barnabas and blurts out that no, Josette’s ship will definitely arrive safely, because Victoria has only recently arrived in 1795 from the 1960s, and Victoria hasn’t yet learned to keep her dam’ mouth shut about secrets from these people’s future. (Spoiler alert: Vicki NEVER completely learns this.)
So Barnabas is like “Wow, you sound so certain when you say that! Are you psychic? Because I’ve always wanted to meet someone who is!” Which is super cute of him to say.
And Vicki’s like uh, no, just words that popped out of my mouth, never mind, don’t know why I said that. And Barnabas is just about to pester her more about it when his dad Joshua Collins walks in—VERY shortly after a THUNDERCLAP from the storm that’s going on outside.
“There you are, Miss Winters…”
Joshua is walking with a cane. He doesn’t bother using it much later in the series, because it’s inconvenient to ALWAYS have to use since the actor doesn’t really need it, but in these early days of introducing the character, Joshua sometimes—like many super-wealthy men in the 18th century—suffers from a bit of gout, from eating too much rich food, apparently in his right foot, as far as I can tell. He continues:
“…I understood that Sarah’s lessons were to keep you occupied here.”
Translation: Which is what you should be doing instead of talking to my son.
Vicki: I was just on my way up to her room.
Joshua: Well I don’t know where you left her, but she’s now in my study.
Translation: Bugging me.
BARB SAYS: Dang, Mr. Grouchy, you find your 9-year-old daughter that annoying? You’re going to think about this sort of thing a LOT in the not-too-far future with the tragedies that are going to befall certain family members… Joshua is being set up for quite a cat’s-in-the-cradle fall, and it’ll be way too late for some of the realizations he’s going to have… Joshua’s quite an 18th-century Boomer.
PARK SAYS: “Cat’s-in-the-cradle realizations” is REALLY ironic considering what Angelique does to Joshua a little later…
Vicki: Well I told her to stay in the nursery…
Joshua: She will only stay there if you are with her.
Unspoken: …She’s like that. And then he seems to think Okay, Miss Winters is brand new, I guess she wouldn’t know that yet. So he adds:
Joshua: …Now you know.
Translation: So don’t make that mistake again.
So the perpetually-chastened Miss Winters leaves and goes to find Sarah so she can get back to governing her again, which is extra-fine since she didn’t want to field any more questions about how she knows stuff about the future anyway. That leaves Joshua and Barnabas in the living room together.
Joshua moves to a nearby chair and settles into it carefully.
Joshua: …My gout keeps me home—what’s your excuse? …Why aren’t you at the yards?
Barnabas: I don’t needoze as an excuse—
Translation: I don’t need an excuse—
But Barnabas’ actor, Jonathan Frid, is used to being a theatre actor, with plenty of time to learn his lines ahead of time. Television often does not give him a chance to do that on its day-by-day schedule, so that means relying on the teleprompter that’s just out of sight of the TV cameras. But I think (like a NUMBER of other actors on Dark Shadows) that he could really benefit from glasses that his character doesn’t wear, because sometimes reading off the teleprompter gives him a little trouble, too.
But now we have to talk about the magic of Jonathan Frid, and how God and fate and luck have blessed him with characters and performances and speeches where stumbling over his words somehow almost always seems to work for the character he’s playing anyway. Like right now, when (as Barb has mentioned in an earlier post on this website), he’s really intimidated by his father, it makes sense that he would be stammering and stumbling over his words.
Anyway, he continues:
Barnabas: –At my age, I ought to be able to make a few decisions…!
THUNDERCLAP.
Joshua: At your age, you should make the correct ones.
Barnabas: Well—I was worried about the storm…
Joshua: Worry is not an occupation that pays a decent living.
Barnabas is still standing up at this point, so it’s like he’s having an audience with an older king sitting on a throne—and not just any king, but Scrooge Benjamin Franklin, to judge by that little homily Joshua’s just dropped.
Joshua: Order your horse brought ‘round immediately.
Barnabas: Father, I’m not going to the office. I have a feeling—
Barnabas finally sits down in the nearest chair—
Barnabas– that I should be here today.
So the sitting is a protest, is to say I’m not goin’ anywhere.
Joshua: You think I built those shipyards giving in to my feelings?!
Barnabas: Well you must have once or twice?
His voice breaks a little on “twice.”
Barnabas: –when you were in love…?
Joshua: Love?! Your generation is obsessed with that word. Men were better off when marriages were arranged for them… and love was only a word in ladies’ novels…
There come three knocks at the front door.
Barnabas: Oh ah excuse me, father…
Barnabas jumps up and starts to go toward the door, but–
Joshua: You need not answer that door…
He means, let one of the servants answer it.
Barnabas: But it may be word…!
Joshua: How? I heard no carriage, no horses…! How will you ever get through life—
THUNDERCLAP
Joshua: –if you put importance to… to the really unimportant things…!
Barnabas: Josette is not unimportant. She’s my whole future!
Joshua: A woman is not a future! Don’t you begin thinking that!
Barnabas just sort of glares back and swallows hard, which I personally take to mean: Barnabas already does think that.
The three knocks come again.
Joshua: Oh, those servants, where are they…?
Well the governess isn’t gonna come answer it, you’ve made sure of that. Maybe all the other servants are making busy because they’re avoiding YOU, boomer!
So, anyway, Barnabas goes ahead and answers the door.
And, opening it, BAM, we get our first look at Angelique.
AND THE SOUNDTRACK STARTS UP—typical spooky dramatic music. Yes, “spooky dramatic music” IS typical on this show, but we had NO soundtrack all this time—the soundtrack knows Angelique is trouble, and is trying to warn us all!
Annnd also THUNDERCLAP, too, right before Angelique says her first line, which is:
Angelique: M’sieu Barnabas!
She looks delighted to see him, delighted that he’s the one who opened the door.
And then since he doesn’t say anything right away, she starts on her next line:
Angelique: You a’ su—
Barnabas: Angelique what—
They kinda talk over each other like that for a second, it’s cute. But again, it makes sense that he’s at a loss in regard to getting his words out at this moment… The audience has no idea yet that this is his ex, but Barnabas sure knows!
Angelique: You are surprised…?
Barnabas: Astonished! We weren’t expecting the Countess for at least a week! Well—where is she, and why are you walking?
Angelique: Oh, your roads, m’sieu—pig sties, the Countess calls them… The carriage is in the mud! Stuck!
Barnabas: Where?
Angelique: Too far for my lady to walk…!
Angelique continues to make a little show of shivering and brushing drops of rain off her cloak, emphasizing, for one thing, that Barnabas has still not invited her in. (For another thing, it emphasizes that the Countess has zero problems making Angelique walk in the mud and the rain and the cold.)
Barnabas: Oh, w-well I must go immediately—w-well come in, y-you must be wet…!
THUNDERCLAP
(Barb laughs at this point, because Barb has a naughty sense of humor and is also thinking just a little of the “walked through the rain and cold to the front door of the mansion” scene from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This is very attractive, which is why Maxim used to (and still does for all I know) have its feature “A Dirty Joke From a Beautiful Woman.”)
And so it is only then that Angelique walks in, after she’s been explicitly invited to do so—just barely managing not to look at the camera as she does.
She removes the hood of her cloak (although she does have a little bonnet on under there, but it can hardly hide her huge mass of blonde hair), perhaps evoking fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood (since we only have this episode in black and white, as mentioned earlier, one watching in the 21st-century can’t immediately tell what color the cloak is. It’s probably not red, though. Oh well).
Barnabas: Father, this is Angelique—the Countess DuPres’ maid. This is my father, Angelique.
Angelique does a sort of curtsy-bow.
Angelique: M’sieu Collins…
Joshua: Your mistress wrote us that she would be visiting New York until the day before the wedding…!
Angelique: Oh… the city does not suit my lady…
Joshua: Well I wish we’d known she’d changed her plans…! …Barnabas, fetch for a-the s… stable boys, or Ben… I will see that the rooms are made ready…
THUNDERCLAP
Barnabas: Would you see that you—that—er—that Angelique is shown her room, father…
Angelique: Um, no, I… I must return with you!
She says this because she wants more time with Barnabas…
Barnabas: It isn’t necessary…
Angelique: It may not be to you, sir… but it is to my mistress…
Barnabas: Then very well—c-come—the back way, to the stables…
Barnabas walks off… Angelique turns to Joshua again.
Angelique: It is a great privilege to be in your home at last, M’sieu…
At last? It sounds like she’s been dreaming of this day for quite some time… Anyway, she gives him an even bigger curtsey…
Joshua: Mm.
THUNDERCLAP
He is super not impressed, and having dismissed her words thusly, he heads upstairs…
Angelique turns, and looks longingly after Barnabas… smiling… She walks in the direction Barnabas walked off, and her face is like someone at church having a moment of religious epiphany, her eyes wide… she then follows him in slow, measured steps, like a woman walking down the aisle at her own wedding…
Spoiler alert: SHE will be the lady of this house… someday before too too long… Briefly, anyway…
BARB SAYS SOME STUFF: And doesn’t she look like Kim Novak in the movie Bell Book and Candle! Well, this is gonna be I Married a Witch, but it sure ain’t a comedy…!
So anyway– listening to Joshua telling Barnabas that love doesn’t matter in marriage? Joshua suggests that marriages based on love was a newish thing in 1795, a fad amongst the young, and that marriages should be arranged. That made me wonder if Barnabas and Josette’s planned marriage was really going to be a love marriage… But then, when Angelique comes in and says that the Countess is here, Joshua is a polite host who is eager to have the rooms made ready for the Countess, Josette, and Josette’s father (he wants to suck up to his rich future in-laws, in other words). So, what this says to me is that Joshua sees the marriage as a financial deal, and demands that Barnabas see the engagement in the same way. It’s Barnabas’ attitude that Joshua doesn’t like. Work comes first, duty second, and love, if seen at all, is a distant third.
THAT makes me wonder if Joshua and Naomi’s marriage was an arranged one. He certainly doesn’t treat his wife like a wife. He sees her as rather a burden who drinks too much, someone who gets no decision-making capacity in her own house. And if I remember correctly, Naomi actually owns the Old House, which suggests she came from money. Maybe the Old House was involved with her dowry?
Joshua has some very weird attitudes toward the idea of love. He says to Barnabas that Barnabas must work, even when he’s deeply concerned that Josette’s ship is late. No sympathy from dear old Dad, who claims that a man must work, even during important life events. That makes me feel that Joshua was at work when Naomi gave birth to Barnabas and, later, Sarah. No wonder Joshua seems so emotionally distant from his wife AND his children.
As Park noted earlier, Joshua is very Scrooge-like. Louie Edmonds (Joshua) would have made an excellent Scrooge. “I suppose you want a HONEYMOON with your wife, too, Barnabas,” I could imagine Joshua saying sternly.
As Park also mentioned, Joshua is pushing for his own brother, Jeremiah, to marry Millicent Collins, a rich relative who is a LOT younger and LOT more unworldly than Jeremiah. It’s like Joshua thinks that all single Collinses are simply commodities who MUST marry into money—and must keep all that money closely-held within the family. Imagine what his plans for his little Sarah will be when Sarah becomes older!
PARK SAYS: I imagine he’ll want her to marry Millicent’s brother Daniel, who’s only a year older than Sarah.
BARB SAYS: Yeah! Joshua doesn’t give a damn if any of the younger Collinses are happy. He doesn’t give a damn if his wife is happy. He has no relationship with his little girl, Sarah. His relationship with his son, Barnabas, is like this: “I say jump. You say, ‘How high, sir?’” This is why I think that there is pressure upon Barnabas to marry Josette.
PARK SAYS: By the way, I was slightly surprised that Joshua talked about ladies’ novels, because I associate the women’s craze for novels with the 19th century, but we HAVE started the gothic novels before 1795, including one by a woman, THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO– and LIAISONS DANGEREUSE! I bet the Countess has read Dangerous Liaisons!
BARB SAYS: Yes, women’s novels of that era WERE gothics, after all—it’s not like Jane Austen is around yet. Which is funny because, later on, when Millicent meets Nathan Forbes, they are, at first, two characters out of a Jane Austen novel, right in the middle of this gothic.
But getting back to Barnabas. If there is pressure on him to marry Josette and he also happens to actually be infatuated with her, it’s win-win, isn’t it? Except we, who have seen DS more than once, know that the pretty Kim-Novak-looking blonde at the door is about to screw up that win-win situation.
Also notice how, when Barnabas dares to say that he, Barnabas, has the right to make his own choices, his father says that Barnabas specifically has the right to make the correct/right choice. And, of course, the correct choices are those that Joshua says are correct, so screw the Bill of Rights that Joshua supposedly fought in the Revolution for– as far as Joshua is concerned, Barnabas is the American colonies before the American Revolution, and Joshua is King George, telling him that taxation without representation is a-okay!
And, if you think about it, Joshua is treating Barnabas, a full-grown man, like a teenager who has just had his first case of puppy love. How infantilizing! How—dare I say it—emasculating! Having just watched the end of the series The Crown with my mother-in-law– Joshua sees the Collins Family as an American version of royalty, in a way. Royalty by way of Capitalism, but still, royalty– and sons do not question the judgment of their father, the king.
Oh, by the way, remember when I said Angelique was obsessed and crazy, but questioned if she was really wrong about she and Barnabas being able to be their “real selves,” beyond class and money and expectations, in Martinique? Contrast this Barnabas, who is stammering and practically has a sob in his voice taking to his father, with the man Angelique fell in love with, the man who she claims is his “true” self. Barnabas, when he isn’t around his father, when he is free of expectations, is a charming, passionate MAN, not a man-child who can’t stand up to his father AND can’t tell Angelique, “It’s over– I don’t love you, I love Josette, so suck it up, buttercup!” No wonder Angelique is puzzled, confused, and dismayed!
Oh, like Columbo, just one more thing: Joshua, by equating love with women’s romances, is basically saying his son is a sissy for acting in a loving fashion towards his fiancée. Apparently, a REAL man is a cold, judgmental dictator who cares more about work than his family, and who wants to control everyone living under his roof.