Burke slips up and calls Dr. Woodard Dr. Hoffman. Maybe Peter Turgeon was really brought in to replace Julia not Dave and we've all just had it wrong all these years! 

One thing that drives me crazy in the big drawing room scene is the fact that, when the psychiatrist is spinning his theory that Sarah is merely a figment of David's disturbed psyche, not one of the other people in the room thinks to mention that Sarah has appeared to Maggie and Sam as well.

The dream looks like something out of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," so the black-and-white was actually more effective than the original color would have been.

David's fear of Barnabas seems to be confirming everything Burke suspected about him earlier, yet Vicki is unable to make the connection (not to mention Willie worked for him). In fact, she suggests to Liz that Burke be brought in to talk to David about his Barnabas fixation. Wouldn't she be afraid that Burke would only reinforce David's suspicions?

I'm not convinced that Julia's letter plan is really as foolproof as she seems to think it is. After all, Barnabas could torture the whereabouts of the letter out of her. Or he could simply bite her and put her under his spell, thereby forcing her to reveal it to him. Barnabas has been threatening Julia for so long at this point that he's become a bit of a paper tiger, all bluster with no follow-through. Eventually, such a person's power and influence are going to wane to the point of ineffectiveness - and, indeed, Julia seems to be coming less and less afraid of him as time goes on and these toothless [he he] threats mount.

All I can say is Joe is really lucky to have made it out of this episode alive. He avoided being taken down by all those trigger-happy cops standing guard over the Evans' cottage, not once but twice, the first time when he showed up with the doll and Sam had to intervene to make sure Joe didn't get shot, then again when he rushed out the French doors mere seconds after a fusillade of gunfire had just  been raining down on that very spot. All three of them should have been hiding under Maggie's bed till they got the all-clear signal from the cops.

With so much going on at all times, I guess it was inevitable that the writers of Dark Shadows would occasionally drop a story line in favor of something more interesting or promising. I'm not talking about such major lapses as never completing the "Vicki's search for her origin" scenario that seemed to be the very premise of the show at the outset (or the way they left poor Chris Jennings hanging at the end).

I'm talking about more minor narrative dead ends, ones where it seemed like the writers had something bigger in mind then just let it drop. Two that come to mind happen early in the Barnabas story. One involves Sam Evans' attempt to put an art show together. Some larger-than-life woman from "the city" breezes into town for all of one episode to fawn all over Sam's skills as a painter and to get him all excited about gathering his work for a show. He spends a couple of episodes bugging Roger about the whereabouts of the paintings he gave him, then the whole thing is dropped without any further mention.

The second example is the house on the Collinwood property that Vicki falls in love with. Two episodes
involve trips by various characters to check out the house, then nothing much is done with it.

I'd be curious to hear from others of similar story lines that just petered away without explanation.

I hear ya, dom. I'm often floored by the total recall some of the posters on here have when it comes to discussing episodes they may not have seen in years (and the strange thing is they're usually right in their recollections!). That's some DS dedication!

With the non-stop parade of nosy visitors passing through the Old House, I'm kind of surprised that Barnabas and Willie haven't come up with a more plausible cover-story regarding Barnabas' whereabouts and business interests. Willie seems to be caught a bit off-guard at this late date.

The smoke-off between Burke and Julia was really quite impressive, though Burke looked like he'd never held a cigarette in his hands before. He barely looked like he knew what to do with it. 

So, while young people all over the country were reveling in the Summer of Love, we have Vicki telling Burke, "If I marry you, I'll finally have an identity!" Apparently, the still-burgeoning Modern Awakening hadn't quite reached the shores of Maine yet.

It occurs to me that it was an awful lot easier in the days before Google for someone like Julia to pull off her ruse of being someone she really wasn't. Burke seems awfully interested in determining whether "Miss" Hoffman is on the level, but he seems to lack the tools necessary to launch much of an investigation into the matter. Today, it would take him 5 minutes on the internet to find out whether she was for real or not.

I notice that Dr. Woodard refers to Joe as Maggie's fiance. Did I miss something? Did they get engaged in an earlier episode?