Wicker Man Studios
“Good evening! Good evening Barnabas, Julia, please, come in…” said Professor Stokes, inviting them into his house.
“You said that you had an urgent matter to discuss with us,” said Barnabas Collins, as he and his dearest companion, Dr. Julia Hoffman, entered Professor Stokes’ home.
“Come, please, sit down,” said Professor Stokes.
NARRATOR (Grayson Hall): In spite of her best efforts to stay in the past, Dr. Julia Hoffman has found that her spirit is being dragged back from 1897 to the latter half of the twentieth century. Soon her spirit and body will be reunited… and Barnabas Collins will be alone, in a strange and friendless time…
~~~~~~~~~
The Center of the Light (by Barb Lien-Cooper)
“They didn’t take me as seriously as they should have… because I’m a woman.”
–Dr. Julia Hoffman, Dark Shadows, episode 338
~ ~ ~
Dr. Julia Hoffman sat in the break room of the Windcliff Sanitarium with Dr. Dave Woodard… her friend (who wouldn’t mind at all if he were more than a friend).
“All in all,” Julia was saying, “I think my first interview went well. They, of course, wondered if I, a mere woman, could handle running this place,” she added sarcastically, “but…”
One (or 8 for that matter) isn’t enough to satisfy y’all! So here’s another essay about the 1966-1971 gothic daytime soap opera Dark Shadows…
In my previous essay about Angelique, I mentioned that Angelique had ambitions to better her station in life. Angelique, a lady’s maid to Countess Natalie du Prés, was raised from a young age as a servant. In the du Prés household in Martinique, Angelique learned the manners and mannerisms of the upper class, and wanted the lifestyle they lived.
Time for another essay about the 1966-1971 gothic daytime soap opera Dark Shadows…
When it comes to the 1795 Dark Shadows storyline, I am a bit of an Angelique apologist, with two huge exceptions:
1/ What Angelique does to Victoria Winters, the only person who, in the Collins household, offers Angelique friendship, one of the few people who wants to be kind to Angelique, and Angelique frames Vicki for being a witch (instead of herself)! Yes, it was an act of self-preservation on Angelique’s part, but it was still a nasty thing to do.
2/ What Angelique does to Sarah Collins when Barnabas tells Angelique that he knows that Angelique is a witch. Yeah, I get it, Angelique, you’re angry as heck at Barnabas, but sticking pins in a voodoo doll representing Barnabas’ little sister and then threatening to stick one right in the dolly’s heart? Sorry, that’s a step way, way too far. I was totally on your side before that (I wasn’t all that fond of Vicki, sorry).
Still… let me tell you why I have more compassion for Angelique than I do for most villains.
Okay so here we are with Anatomy of a Scene #4! Today we’re doing the scene from the once-famous gothic daytime TV soap opera Dark Shadows (kind of two scenes, technically, or maybe just one longish one, depending on your point of view) where, in the year 1795, Joshua Collins finds out his son Barnabas is about to marry gorgeous servant girl Angelique instead of Josette DuPrés, who, just a few weeks ago, was the girl everyone (except Angelique, I guess?) thought he was going to marry…
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.
We’re back, with another installment of our feature Anatomy of a Scene, in which we take a deeper dive into a scene, this time once again from the classic gothic television daytime soap opera Dark Shadows, 1966-1971.
Okay so remember our first Anatomy of a Scene? The talk that didn’t go well between Angelique and Barnabas in Barnabas’ bedroom? Well Angelique has gotten RIGHT TO WORK and has acquired one of Barnabas’ handkerchiefs and a toy wooden soldier that was his when he was a boy, and she is contemplating some voodoo revenge magic for Barnabas…
https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/508877/s04-e39-episode-370
She’s talking to her new little inanimate friends… ending with the line:
Angelique: You are all I need… to make him regret what he’s done to me…
Okay, so this is going to be a thing we’re calling Anatomy of a Scene–specifically, this is going to be the first time Angelique and Barnabas are seen together alone in episode 368 (sometimes called number 368/369 for network numbering reasons I don’t want to get into right now) of the TV show Dark Shadows, in the 1795 storyline.
So here’s the set-up:
–Barnabas is the only son of rich parents, and the year is 1795. The place is the coastal fishing town of Collinsport, Maine—except back then, Maine was considered a part of Massachusetts, and not a state all by itself yet.
–Josette DuPres is a pretty rich girl of French ancestry, who has been living in Martinique in the Caribbean.
Now, Barnabas’ dad owns a very prosperous fishing fleet, and Josette’s dad owns a sugar plantation. They would both sort of like it if these kids got married (although Josette has had other suitors in the past who didn’t quite work out, apparently).
–Josette’s aunt Natalie is the Countess DuPres…
–And the Countess’ maid is a gorgeous blonde gal named Angelique.
Reader, Spoiler Alert: Barnabas took a little tour of the Caribbean (he stopped at Barbados, too), and he spent time around Josette. But in those days, young men and women with money were VERY chaperoned, and had to abide by LOTS of rules of being polite and not doing much touching—heck, one hardly ever left such people alone together for five seconds.
So, Barnabas met Josette, and liked her. Quite a bit, actually, to hear him tell it.
BUT, he had a self-esteem problem, and didn’t feel like Josette would return his feelings for her—
It’s the Dark Shadows Frequently Asked Questions… list!
–WHY ARE SOME EPISODES IN BLACK AND WHITE? At first, it’s because they hadn’t started using color cameras yet. But then, some episodes can still only be watched by us in this century because they didn’t always save all the tapes of the color episodes—but they did save (almost) all of the black-and-white recordings of the shows. The easiest way to explain it is that they broadcast the show in color (once that started) on most stations. But some stations didn’t show Dark Shadows at the same time—for just one example, California is three hours behind New York (where the show was made) time-zone wise. So some stations would show a black-and-white recording of the show (oh well—not everyone had color televisions yet, so they’d hardly notice). So when no one saved a color copy of an episode, modern Dark Shadows viewers watch the black-and-white copy.
–“I HATE X CHARACTER—BECAUSE X CHARACTER IS SO MEAN//ANNOYING! WHEN WILL THEY GO AWAY?!?” This is a complex question because the answer depends on who we’re talking about. Let’s hit the most common characters that people say this about.