This is a special Dark Shadows episode for me: it's the first one I ever watched. Somewhere in this Forum I have said that I started watching in 1967, but that's a typo because I was saying something about 189
7 at the time. On the day that this episode first aired, my brother came home from school and said we were going to watch Dark Shadows today. I now know (if I remember correctly what MB said) that this was around the time that ABC's Boston affiliate reinstated Dark Shadows in its schedule, so that would be why the kids at my brother's school had been talking about it. Anyway, we watched Dark Shadows, a show that I had never heard of. The next day my brother didn't watch it but I did. I was quite disappointed to learn that it was a serial, and that the murder in today's episode had consequences, and that the show wouldn't feature a random murder every day. For some reason, however, I continued watching, and the rest is history, of a sort.
Today I noticed that, aside from giving me the fun of thinking how confused I was that first day (I remember assuming that Barnabas and Julia were an long-married couple like my parents), the episode is terrifically interesting on its own.
Chris asks Amy if there's anything she wants to talk about - anything secret, that she doesn't understand. Amy clearly hasn't a clue what Chris is getting at. (She's a good liar, but we know how she looks when she lies.) But why didn't she think of Quentin? Also, I started wondering if there's anything in Amy that makes her part of the reason that Chris is a werewolf - some sort of a link that, if broken, would mean that Chris would not be able to transform, sort of like a computer program that you try to start up, but that fails with an error message telling you that some driver or file is missing.[spoiler]Having seen 1897, I know that this can't be true - but the idea appeals to me anyway.[/spoiler]
What made Barnabas think of werewolves? I would have thought he was too self-absorbed to think of anything except vampires. But, like EmeraldRose, I liked the thought of him feeling a kinship to Chris because of the panic he saw in Chris's face - panic that would have made him feel as though he were looking into a mirror showing him his past self.
Did Jonathan Frid hurt his right hand or did Barnabas? I don't remember Barnabas hurting his hand, but there was a bandage on it today. Am I being dense?
I wonder, was it was a blooper when Chris saw the pentagram on Carolyn's face instead of Donna's?
I was wondering that myself, but decided it had to be intentional when it was emphasized so much. It doesn't make any sense, though. Maybe the pentagram thinks all blondes look alike.
