I don't know about "Dark Shadows" so much in this regard, but there was one 60's series that DEFINITELY helped me to expand my vocabluary..and that was "Lost in Space."

As portrayed by Johnathan Harris, Dr. Smith was a fount of sophisticated vocabulary and he would often send me racing for the dictionary tp look up definitions.  Harris was apparently a master at devising clever alliterative phrases, and the writers were more than happy to give him free rein in that area (most of these phrases came out as insults aimed at the Robot).

Blithering bumpkin...ignominious ignoramus...pusillanimous pipsqueak...These are just a few of the examples I can come up with off the top of my head.

Yes, strange as it may seem, I credit much of my early vocabulary-building to Harris and Dr. Smith.   

I'm not sure, but I believe the blooper is that the jewel chest was clearly visible at the end of the previous episode (on the small table next to Barnabas' chair), but that it is missing as this one opens.

Does anyone know what happened to all the old posts from 2007?  I am behind on the Watching Project (I'm watching each of the episodes on the same date they were originally broadcast - i.e. watching the 6/29/67 episode on 6/29/07) which means I am only up to #264.  Yet, when I came on today to read the thread on that episode, I found it had disappeared and there were only two pages of 2007 entries.  Anyone have any info. on this?  Thanks

Unfortunately (?), I'm going to be taking a trip to Europe for the first three weeks of February, so I won't be able to participate for awhile.  But I've already gotten a head start of sorts, since I stated watching Volume 1 a few weeks ago and am already at the end of disc 2.  I'll keep going till I leave and try to be caught up for when I get back to the states in late February.

This is a fantastic idea, by the way.  Really cool.

I just noticed that in the 1841 parallel time story, one episode goes all the way back to the late 1600's to show how the "curse" came onto the Collins family.

However, in "our" time band, the great house wasn't built till the time of Barnabas more than a hundred years later.

Just another one of those quaint inconsistencies we DS fans treasure so highly!

Jeb Hawkes was so bad, you had to like him.  From his camera to his leather pants, he added some 'kick' to the show.   

I think that of course Carolyn married again,but, she had a locket with his picture in it. 

It also might be worth noting that the ONLY scene of a couple in bed together in all of DS (correct me if I'm wrong on this) is the one involving Carolyn and Jeb on their honeymoon. 

The other thing I like about Jeb is that he is the "bad boy" who tries to turn good but discovers that he has sown the seeds of his own destruction by his previous behavior and cannot escape his fate no matter how hard he tries.  That makes his downfall particularly poignant, especially when it drags down a genuine innocent like Carolyn in the bargain.  I find this to be a very moving storyline (the most "beautiful" and "lyrical" scene in all of DS for me  is the one in which Carolyn writes a note to her mother explaining her elopement with Jeb, then lies down on the bed and falls asleep.  The scene is genuinely breathtaking). 

A few random questions about Barnabas:

Why, for long stretches of time when he was a vampire, did he not seem to have much of a need for blood?  Sometimes he seems to go for months at a time without dining out on a single neck (1840 comes to mind).

Why was he able to sit at the table during the day when he was in the I Ching trance (the second time he uses it to go back in time), even though he was a vampire?

Why does he not seem amazed by all the modern inventions and conveniences he encounters when his coffin is opened in 1967?

Just some random thoughts.