Thank you all for the birthday wishes. There's plenty of extra slices of custom quadruple chocolate Briscoelicious birthday cake, if anyone's still got a sweet tooth!

Best wishes to all,
Sandor

(who, unlike Chris Jennings after a night of baying at the moon, I woke up this morning - not in the woods with blood on my torn clothes - but snuggled safely in my apartment with no hangover. Hold that moon poppy, Sabrina!)

Nancy Barrett's voice-overs are very somber and breathy, but often, so is Carolyn. Sometimes it's hard to tell if the actors who do the daily voice-overs (those openings definitely a great DS device in its own right, but that's another thread) are using their own natural voices or those of their characters - that is, after the "My name is Victoria Winters..." openings from the first year were dropped. Did Alexandra Moltke change her general delivery of the openings at all once she didn't have to start with "My name is..."? I'll have to listen and compare.

KLS' voiceovers were always captivating to me. She sounded as if she'd had experience reading stories out loud to younger children. I know she did a stint as a Playboy bunny; was she also a kindergarten teacher for a brief time?

Episode #547 was my first exposure to Dark Shadows in 1968. My older sister and her friends gathered around the TV set at 4pm, and announced that today was "the big showdown" between Barnabas and Angelique Collins! I was only 6, but my parents - having heard of the DS phenomenon - said I could watch it provided they chaperoned (and got to see what all the hype was about). Despite a few flubbed lines here and there, this is truly a classic episode. I always got the impression (from the cliffhanger) that Barnabas suspected Julia had done something sinister to the aged Cassandra behind closed doors (i.e., tossed her out the window, injected her with a hypodermic needle and then rolled her under the sofa). Supposedly, Julia was still holding onto the gun that Cass tried to kill Barn with, though we heard no gunshots coming from the Drawing Room (that wouldn't have been easy to explain away to Roger, standing nearby).

And kudos to Vicki, who finally wises up in this episode, and figures out Angelique/Cassandra's plan started by getting her portrait into Collinwood, so it could bewitch Roger and bedevil Barnabas. If many moaned and groaned through much of the Dream Curse/Adam storyline, this episode (and the one following it) was a great payoff.

Naturally, we must give mention to Barnabas' nickname right before 1970 PT, when the Leviathans made him a vampire again and Barn's hair developed a shocking streak of grey: the one, the only... SKUNKABAS!

Pink blanket, blue blanket.... how about at least a multi-colored afghan for poor Adam to liven up that dingy cell?!!

It was as if Adam represented Barnabas & Julia's unwanted love child - and it's not as if B & J had to marry to save the family honor. Now that would've been a fun plot twist.

I always enjoyed the chemistry between Grayson, John Karlen, Frid and Robert Rodan in these early "Adam" scenes. These shows were filmed in New York on May 9th and 10th 1968.  Lots going on outside the Collinwood fantasy world. No wonder it was hard for the actors to remember their lines at times.

local handymen/hunks like joe haskell and chris jennings add a certain beefy charm.

That was my first thought. Though the many other insights posted here are well said and appreciated.  But ahhh, that beefy Jennings charm....

Presumably Maggie would have gone back to work at the diner and further intrigue would have resulted from there.  It's kind of sad that the diner pretty much disappeared after Laura's story.

So true, G. Both Maggie and Susie could sure whip up a mean chicken salad sandwich on toasted marble rye at the Diner. Once Mags moved into Collinwood, she was at the mercy of Mrs. Johnson's choice morsels. No more hot coffee brewing... just witches' caldrons.

On the topic, I think I'll go watch the last Alexandra Moltke episodes and the first Betsy Durkin episodes back-to-back, and then make my decision on style and circumstance. If Maggie hadn't become governess, maybe she and Barnabas would have started dating, or she and Willie would have had a raunchy fling, or her memory of "the past" did return (again) - keeping her involved in the goings-on at Collinwood, if peripherally.

i remember a show where she was running all over collinwood dealing with everything going on from the kids to who knows what because liz and rog and carolyn were not there.  and she was so frazzled, running around up and down steps and into the drawing room and answering the phone.. and then she answered the knock at the door, and was talking to someone when someone upstairs shrieked.

Ah, thank you, Willie - Episode #655 - another classic - Julia in that tight yellowish dress, flitting about Collinwood, slapping Joe, protecting Amy like a mama lioness, calming a distraught Carolyn, declaring Liz dead... all in 23 minutes. I was impressed with how agile and fit Grayson Hall was, with all that physicality. And if I'm not mistaken, that was Henry Kaplan's first episode as director on DS. He always drew out something extra in Grayson's performances. My favorite line from that episode was when Carolyn asked Julia how they'd explain Amy's sudden disappearance from the house to Elizabeth.  Julia: (flatly) Lie to her!