"My name is Victoria Winters, my journey is beginning ..."

[ChrisSumnerMatheson]

She pops round to investigate and that weird kid tags along. He starts freaking out about how the house has changed.

Word! I always found him to be so strange and I never bought that Roger could have a son, . He was *so* fabulously gay and all of those trips he'd take just scream Fire Island!

[James from London]

This is turning into THE MAGGIE THE WAITRESS SHOW. She goes to sleep and the screen turns all wibbly wobbly and we're into this far out dream sequence full of dry ice. Maggie finds herself in front of a coffin and it opens and inside is ... her! And she tries to scream but she can't because her head's turned into a fleshless skull! Then she wakes up and really does scream, she screams and screams and screams some more. Then she calls Hunky Joe who takes her to the 60s theme pub to get her drunk, and Barnabas is there hanging out with Maggie the Waitress's dad, Father the Painter and Captain Fogarty from DALLAS (who warns Barnabas against Harvey Beth; everyone warns Barnabas against Harvey Beth) and they all pretend not to notice that Barnabas has started wearing eye shadow. Then something freaks Maggie the Waitress out and she goes back to bed where she twists and turns in her sleep, unaware that Barnabas is actually coming through her window--4real!

[James from London]

Barnabas stands at the foot of Maggie the Waitress's bed. He smiles and ... oh look, he has fangs! After a bit of wave-crashing-against-rock title music, the action then cuts straight to the next morning. Given that (to paraphrase Frida from Abba) every moment in DARK SHADOWS seems last an eternity, this feels like the soap opera equivalent of the moment in ALIAS where Vaughn suddenly tells Sydney that two years have past since the last scene. Maggie wakes up all high strung and hysterical. She goes to work where she's the waitress from hell, spilling coffee and breaking cups and then fainting. At night fall, she gets all giddy AGAIN (just like Harvey Beth!) and drives Father the Painter over to the cobwebby house where he is painting Barnabas's portrait. She and Barnabas act all sly and knowing around each other, then she goes home, opens the windows of her room, gets into bed and bares her throat in readiness ... Gosh, it's all a bit Madeline Smith in THE VAMPIRE LOVERS. Meanwhile, Vaughn Leland blackmails Joan Bennett into giving him a job in public relations to cover up the fact that he's blackmailing her over the way she murdered Dirty Den and buried in him in the cellar of the Queen Vic, or something. Thrillingly, Vaughn even says the immortal line, "Blackmail's such an ugly word." Joan is rattled and gets her dialogue all in a tangle. Fortunately, the groovy 60s blonde who is always listening at doors then interrupts their conversation. She's all suspcious, even more so when her camp uncle (Larry Grayson) tells her that information about her missing father is locked in a secret room. Groovy 60s blonde wants the key, but Joan Bennett doesn't want her to have it. "My name is Victoria Winters" gets all nervous and begs Groovy to drop it, but she won't ...

[James from London]

"Things are getting deeper and deeper and people are saying and doing things for no reason at all!"

Everyone's freaking out because Maggie the Waitress has disappeared. Harvey Beth makes an anonymous phone call to "My name is Victoria Winters" telling her that Maggie's in the graveyard, wandering around in her nightie looking like a cross between Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST and Ruby from UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS. "My name is Victoria Winters" and Captain Fogarty from DALLAS find her and take her home, much to the annoyance of Barnabas who was planning to eat her, and he beats Harvey Beth with his fancy stick. Back at Father the Painter's house, bite marks are discovered on Maggie the Waitress's neck. This show is wildly atmospheric, and the great thing is, you can wander off in your mind and start thinking about your favourite soup for a while, without actually missing anything.

[Rio Colby Dexter]

Enjoy it while you can. I am about two years ahead of you (1897), and believe me, it's even faster-paced than todays soaps. I really miss the "atmospheric" Dark Shadows of 1967 and 1795. It seems that after 1795, they decided that "more is more", and totally threw out the slow-evolving relationships, atmosphere over action, and real life events mingling with the supernatural. After 1795, there are NO real life events to counteract all the supernatural goings-on. As of 1897 (which I am six months into) there are at least four supernatural storylines going on at once. No one is involved in anything realistic. I really miss that aspect of the show. Sometimes less IS more!

[James from London]

"There was every indication she was dead!"

After her latest blood transfusion, Maggie the Waitress dies in hospital and then jumps out the window. Father the Painter grieves amusingly, and no one can understand how she can have disappeared now that her heart has stopped beating and everything. It's a bit like Pam Ewing after she was wrapped in bandages, and you half expect Katherine Wentworth to be behind the whole thing. But it turns out Maggie's shacked up with Barnabas who wants to turn her into Josette, his fiancee who threw herself off a cliff two hundred years earlier (you can understand why). He gives her the wedding dress he's been saving ever since, which is in remarkably good condition. This is like REBECCA meets Miss Haversham meets VERTIGO meets necrophiliac daytime TV.

[James from London]

It's like a particularly gothic episode of CHANGING ROOMS when "Mynameisvictoriawinters" and Groovy 60s Blonde pop next door to see what improvements Barnarbas has made to the cobwebby house. He's swept up all the cobwebs! It's amazing! Barnabas appears out of thin air, and they tell him they just lurve what he's done to the place. He modestly agrees that Josette's bedroom is "brimming with femininity". The girlies then make their excuses and leave as they have to home before the curfew, lest they get eaten alive like poor Maggie the Waitress. Once they're out of sight, the episode turns into an undead version of WHAT NOT TO WEAR as Maggie materialises wearing Josette's wedding dress, and looking so two hundred years ago.

[James from London]

Barnabas is having a candle lit dinner (is there any other kind in Collinwood?) with Maggie the Dead Waitress, whom he insists must now be called Miss Josette. They are interrupted by a knock at the door. It's Hunky Joe and Father the Painter! Harvey Beth hides Miss Maggie the Dead Josette Waitress upstairs while Father the Painter and Barnabas have a painfully protracted conversation (is there any other kind in DARK SHADOWS?) about how they'll have to postpone the completion of Barnabas's portrait. Miss Waitress the Dead Maggie Josette hears their voices and suddenly remembers who she used to be when she was alive. She makes a noise and Barnabas is not best pleased. He gets rid of Hunky Joe and Father the Painter and does ... something to her. Next day, the weird kid is back! He sneaks over to the cobwebby and sees Josette through the window! He couldn't more excited if it was Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall. Everyone--Barnabas, Mynameisvictoriawinters and Dr Smith from LOST IN SPACE--are all very cross with him for trespassing, but he doesn't listen. All her cares about is a 200 year old dead woman in a wedding dress. What a special little boy he is.

[James from London]

Miss Josette the Dead Maggie Waitress and the weird kid have this long conversation where it's like they're both on drugs, and she keeps repeating everything he says. "Your fondness for this house is insatiable," Barnabas tells the kid later. Is it legal to use the word "insatiable" when talking to a child, even a child as weird as this one? Dead Waitress Maggie Miss Josette misses the kid when he's gone. "Oh little boy? Oh little boy?" she calls, wandering the cobwebby house in her 200 year old wedding dress. After looking at slides of Maggie's blood cells through a microscope, the doctor goes all Scully and refuses to believe what he sees. He calls for a second opinion but then his office is ransacked and the blood samples stolen. He then reluctantly shares his opinion of what happened to Maggie with Captain Fogarty from DALLAS: "It's terrifying and ... impossible!"

[James from London]

Suddenly there's no vampires or dead waitresses and it's like watching a normal black and white soap opera. Vaughn Leland tries to blackmail Joan Bennett into marrying him--nothing fancy, just one of those Greg 'n' Abby or Richard 'n' Terry "Merger Made in Heaven" type affairs. Joan's having none of it and decides to call his bluff and tell Groovy 60s Blonde the truth about her father (whatever that maybe). Groovy 60s Blonde gets all nervous and runs away screaming when Joan tries to tell her that her father wasn't a very nice man.

[SnarkyOracle!]

I miss the old fisheye lenses from the 60s and the 70s. Nobody ever seems to use them anymore.

[James from London]

Things are moving reeeeallllly sloooowllllly. Harvey Beth is forced to give the doctor a blood sample, in the hopes that it might hold a clue to what happened to Maggie the Dead Waitress. "I guess some of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen in my life have been microscopic views of hideous malignancies," says the doctor chattily, not noticing Barnabas exchanging the blood sample with another, less supernaturally tainted one. Joan Bennett appears to be going along with Vaughn Leland's marriage idea when she consults her lawyer about divorcing the husband she secretly murdered eighteen years before. "Perhaps we're people who were never meant to be married," muses Joan's camp brother, aka Dr Smith from LOST IN SPACE. Dr Smith then reminds his niece, Groovy 60s Blonde, that she's desperate to know what's locked in the basement. "Oh yeah, I'm desperate to know what's locked in the basement!" she suddenly recalls.

I miss the old fisheye lenses from the 60s and the 70s. Nobody ever seems to use them anymore.

What a great picture. I await the Richard Channing years with interest.

[James from London]

Father the Painter drops by the cobwebby house and leaves his pipe behind! Maggie the Dead Waitress aka Josette the 200 Year Old Bride glides downstairs and finds it! She can't remember who the heck she's supposed to be, but knows the pipe is significant. Harvey Beth is nervous about Father the Painter's visit (but then, what isn't Harvey Beth nervous about?) and goes to wake Barnabas who's having a disco nap in his coffin. (yes, he sleeps in a coffin--what joy!) While they're gone, Maggie the Dead Waitress disappears! Father the Painter sees her outside his window, but nobody believes him, it's just like with Audrey Roberts and Joan van Ark. Barnabas finds her in the graveyard and gives her a good throttling before locking her in a coffin in the crypt as punishment. Harvey Beth finds her and brings her home where she remembers that she's Maggie and then she forgets and thinks she's Josette and then she forgets and thinks she's Maggie and on and on.

[James from London]

So Maggie the Dead Waitress has remembered that she isn't Josette, but keeps forgetting who it is that she is. However, she knows enough to know that she has to pretend to think she's Josette or Barnabas will get real mad. He's planning their wedding ("All her complete being will be mine!") and Harvey Beth has been busy building 'His n' Hers' coffins for the big day; it really is too cute. Nobody's mentioned the word "vampire" yet, but somehow Maggie the Dead Waitress intuitively knows that driving a stake through Barnabas's heart is what's required to get her out of this undead matrimonial pickle. Meanwhile, next door, another enforced marriage looms as Joan Bennett and Vaughn Leland announce their engagement. On Vaughn's advice, Joan opens the mysterious room in the basement for the first time in eighteen years and allows Groovy 60s Blonde, Dr Smith from LOST IN SPACE and mynameisvictoriawinters to poke around inside. They open a couple of suitcases, but soon get bored and don't so find whatever it is that she is hiding, wherever she's hiding it (beneath the floor would be my guess, given the frequent and ominous close ups of everyone's shoes).

[James from London]

It's all curfews and fangs this week. Barnabas bares his gnashers after waking up in his coffin to find Maggie the Dead Waitress standing over him in her 200 year old wedding dress and pointing a stake at him. He's very annoyed and tells her she's no longer worthy of the name Josette (a bit like Danielle from BIG BROTHER being stripped of her Miss Great Britain title). He can't decide whether to marry her or kill her. Heck, why not do both? "I'm close to killing you tonight," he tells her. "Only your beauty saves you." He decides to drive her insane first, then kill her. "You must endure great pain before you die, Maggie Evans. Greater pain than any human being has ever endured." Sounds like a plan. Then he locks her in a convenient cell where she does a lot of screaming.

Groovy 60s Blonde is such a mixed up crazy kid since her mother got engaged to Vaughn Leland that she takes up with a hairy biker, a sort of cross between Charles Manson and Jeremy Beadle. They come back to the mansion late at night, drunk, and dance, dance, dance to the radio. Joan Bennett appears in her dressing gown and it's all very FALCON CREST Season 9--posh matriarch meets naughty young people on motorbikes--Charley St James, "God of the Grapes", all that stuff.

[James from London]

Maggie the Dead Waitress, still locked in a cell, tries to get word to the outside world by giving Harvey Beth a ring to sell (I can't quite follow the logic either). The freaky kid from next door breaks in to the cobwebby house in the hopes of obtaining Josette's autograph and 200 year old diet and exercise tips, but Harvey Beth throws him out. He finds the ring that Harvey Beth has dropped and takes it home, planning to wear it when he grows up and embarks on his cabaret career as a Josette tribute act. He stupidly shows it to Mynameisvictoriawinters who primly shows it to Barnabas who deviously pretends it's an old family heirloom and takes it and shows it to Maggie the Dead Waitress and laughs in her mad, screaming face.

Joan Bennett and Vaughn Leland announce they plan to marry in two weeks' time (which will doubtless take another three 40 episode box sets to reach). As an act of rebellion, Groovy 60s Blonde decides to marry Jeremy Beadle on the same day, in spite of Hunky Joe's stern disapproval. "That guy looks about as much fun as a bag of spiders!" he tells her.

[James from London]

Maggie the Dead Waitress obediently agrees to Barnabas's suggestion that she listen to the music box that will make her think she's Josette, which in turn will make Barnabas want to marry her rather than kill her. Then she changes her mind, deciding that, on balance, she'd rather be dead than undead.

There's a very funny scene where Barnabas has a speech in which he has to say the word "exist" about ten times and gets completely tangled up, but he has to keep going even though you can tell he has no idea what he's talking about.

Then something really weird happens--this little girl in a Victorian costume suddenly appears outside Maggie's cell singing "London Bridge" (the original, not that funky new version by that girl from the Black Eyed Peas). At first I thought she'd wandered in from another studio by mistake, but then she appears to the freaky kid as well and asks him to sing "London Bridge" with her. He refuses, saying it's too childish a song. I think he's more a "Don't Rain On My Parade" type myself.

Groovy 60s Blonde describes her stepfather-to-be as "the man who inspired the invention of truth serum."

[James from London]

The little girl in a Victorian hat suddenly appears inside Maggie the Dead Waitress's cell. They have a good time playing catch (not exactly the most challenging game to play inside a confined space, but needs must) and singing "London Bridge". Maggie's hoping the little girl will show her a way to escape but instead she just disappears into thin air. What a bitch. This sends Maggie round the twist. Barnabas finds this a big turn off and decides he won't marry her after all; he'll just kill her.

Joan Bennett is threatening not to marry Vaughn Leland if Groovy 60s Blonde goes through with her promise to Jeremy Beadle. While Groovy is the ladies room of the Blue Onion ("Her nose needed some powder," explains Jeremy Beadle--he actually used those words) Vaughn tries to talk Jeremy out of the wedding, saying that Groovy is just using him. But Jeremy doesn't care. Well he always was game for a laugh, wasn't he?

[James from London]

It's only taken 49 episodes, but DARK SHADOWS has suddenly got really exciting. First Groovy gets arrested for Driving While Blonde and nearly killing someone in the process. With Dr Smith from LOST IN SPACE off cruising boys, there's no family member available to bail her out of jail unless ... Joan Bennett can bring herself to leave Collinwood for the first time in eighteen years! It's unthinkable of course, but mynameisvictoriawinters finally persuades her. And you think Groovy is gonna be so impressed by her mother's efforts on her behalf that she'll call off her wedding to Jeremy Beadle, but she throws it back in Joan's face instead and refuses to leave the jail with her. The sheriff, later on the FALCON CREST Board of Supervisors, has to more or less boot her ass out of jail. If that were not enough, Joan Bennett then confesses to mynameisvictoriawinters her real reason for marrying Vaughn Leland: he knows that she murdered her first husband!

Harvey Beth poisons Maggie the Dead Waitress's milk so that she can avoid an even uglier death at the hands of Barnabas. But before she can drink it, The Little Girl From Another Time appears in her cell again and gives her clues on how to escape. Then the little girl appears to Father the Painter and asks him to draw her. He positions her on a stool so that she can read her lines off cue cards and she tells him that if he wants to see Maggie again, he should look for her on the beach that night. Then she disappears.

Meanwhile, Barnabas has risen from his coffin and is coming to kill Maggie. She's trying to work out the riddle and pressing bricks in a certain order hoping a magic door will open. The wall gives way and she escapes just as Barnabas arrives, and I'm nearly having a heart attack. It's suddenly all so creepy and NOSFERATU-ish.

[James from London]

Maggie the Waitress escapes to the beach and collapses. A shadow looms over her ... it's Barnabas. Oh God no! Maggie screams and Father the Painter comes running. Barnabas has no choice but to leave her where she is and make a run for it. Father the Painter brings her to the hospital where Maggie decides she's nine years old and wants to play with dolls. The doctor is worried that whoever kidnapped her before will try again and decides that the sensible thing to do isn't to call the police as one might imagine,but to fake her death and then send her to a private clinic run by Dustin Hoffman. Father the painter and Hunky Joe think this a swell idea.