A combined post this week to get things caught up a bit....
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Last Week's 50th Anniversary Viewing
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Dark Shadows
Episodes 220-224
Originally aired May 1-5, 1967
It seems I was premature in titling last week's group of episodes. This week opens with Willie Writhing, but then things actually start to happen.
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Monday
IMDb said:
Barnabas moves into the old house. Jason demands that Willie leave Collinwood. Willie meekly agrees to go; but where he ends up, no one would have expected.
Willie's up and about come nightfall, and
Jason is suspicious and confrontational. Jason confirms both that he's mad at Willie for having something of his own going on, and that he doesn't want anything to do with it...and he insists that Willie leave Collinwood because of it. Willie seems hesitant of doing what he needs to do next.
Victoria brings food up for Willie, but he does not eat...food. He apologizes to Vicki...something he's been saving since last week, when he apologized to everyone else.
Jason goes downstairs to bring
Elizabeth the news of of Willie's impending departure...and to tease along their subplot. Willie comes down on his way out, trying to tell his hostess something important...but she wants him out too badly to listen to him, and Jason pushes him out for fear that Willie's trying to rat on him.
Elizabeth's next visitor is
Barnabas, who gains approval to move into the Old House. The contrast of her and Vicki's attitudes toward Barnabas compared to Willie is particularly evident here. Ah, the irony.
Barnabas formally enters the Old House as its new resident...and in comes Willie, with the tail of his mortal life and free will between his legs. Barnabas sends Willie out on an errand. How does that work--does Willie bring the livestock and women to Barnabas, or can Barnabas drink second-hand blood out of him?
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Tuesday
IMDb said:
Barnabas meets Maggie Evans at the coffee shop. A ruse brings her to the old house where Barnabas lives.
We open with the ill-fated
Maggie closing up the diner when her soon-to-be tormentor Barnabas comes calling. He's all charm and courtesy for now, during the initial stages of his seduction and entrapment. Contrary to lore, he does appear to imbibe his coffee. Maggie takes note of his cane...he lays it on that it's his most prized possession...and he wastes no time arranging to leave it at the diner. After Maggie is disturbed by the children of the night singing, Barnabas leaves, and in comes
Joe. Maggie's hug establishes that he's her boyfriend, not Burke. He talks about a woman having been attacked...likely by the guy who just left before he arrived...or maybe by his new manservant. Maggie notices the cane that Barnabas left. As she and Joe leave to return it, the children of the night seem to be trying to tell her something. I guess they're sort of like the laugh track of a comedy--standing in for members of the audience wanting to scream at their TVs to warn Maggie of what she's getting into.
At the Old House, the door opens mysteriously; Barnabas eventually appears when Joe has temporarily left the room. Willie pops up after they leave, expressing concern for Maggie's welfare...and he should know. Barnabas chastises him for not doing his job and sends him out.
Back at her home, Maggie can sense that Barnabas is about to close the episode with one of his dramatic money shots:
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Wednesday
IMDb said:
Barnabas commissions a portrait of himself from Sam Evans, Maggie's father. Victoria learns that Barnabas has hired Willie Loomis to fix up the old house.
Willie is setting up housekeeping at the Old House when Victoria pays a visit. Everyone just walks into this place. She's startled by Willie's presence, while he attempts to warn her to leave. Willie's story of having helped Barnabas change his tire is pretty flimsy considering that Barnabas doesn't have a car. He's also evasive about the master of the house's whereabouts, as it's still daylight. When Victoria mentions that the sun is setting, he doubles down on pushing her out. No sooner does she leave than Barnabas appears, questioning his motives for shooing their guest away.
Meanwhile, at the Evans home, Maggie is distraught by the feeling of having been followed home. Barnabas comes knocking with much foreboding atmosphere, but he's still acting as polite as ever, taking particular care to gain her invitation to enter. Maggie mentions the girl who was attacked on the waterfront and the strange animal killings. Barnabas changes the subject by asking about her father's work. Then in walks the artist,
Sam Evans. He mentions another girl having been attacked that night. Barnabas asks about commissioning an unfinished portrait of himself that's going to be getting a lot of screen time in upcoming episodes. Barnabas specifically arranges to have Sam paint at the Old House, and only at night. Nothing suspicious about that.
We cut to the beginning of Sam's work on the portrait at the Old House...and then to Collinwood, where Maggie pays a visit, to be let in by Vicki. They exchange notes about Barnabas and his the looming old but long-finished portrait of him.
Back to the Old House, where Sam has been working through the night, the crowing of a rooster is Barnabas's cue to mysteriously slip out while Sam is focused on getting in one more detail, leaving Willie to let their guest out and take him home. Willie insists that Sam not return until after sundown. Nothing suspicious about that.
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Thursday
IMDb said:
Victoria tells Elizabeth and Burke that Barnabas has hired Willie. Burke asks Elizabeth about her strange business deal. David is upset that Josette's portrait is gone.
The week's penultimate episode opens with Victoria and Elizabeth obsessing over Willie...what's new? Well, Willie's now in the Old House working for Barnabas...that's news to Elizabeth. In comes
David, for the first time in a couple of weeks, upset that the new Collins cousin is moving into his kid-dangerous playground. He doesn't want Barnabas changing anything, so he's in for some disappointment.
Elizabeth leaves the Collinwood set for a change, going to see Barnabas at the Old House set...and yeah, she walks right in, as does David behind her. Nobody's there to greet them, so it must be daytime. The boy gets particularly upset that Barnabas has taken the portrait of Josette down. What's more, he seems to believe that her spirit is gone from the house as well.
Meanwhile, back at the main house,
Burke has come calling. Victoria brings up the effect that Jason's presence has had on Mrs. Stoddard. Burke is there to question Elizabeth about some land that she sold, secretly to pay off Jason. Apparently there's some bad blood between Elizabeth and Burke from pre-Barnabas episodes...but that doesn't keep him from ending the scene by contributing to the local obsession with Willie. Burke has a conversation with David about the same things that David was just whining about in his previous scene. Gotta pad the week out somehow. The conversation does serve some purpose, however, in that Jason gives David the fool notion to run to the Old House and ask Barnabas about letting him have Josette's portrait.
Back at the Old House, a frightened David finds himself shut inside with only the soothing sounds of the children of the night to keep him company. Cut to...
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Friday
IMDb said:
David is happy to hear Barnabas will be hanging Josette's portrait in another room. Elizabeth promises Jason his money. Maggie has a terrible dream.
The children stop singing, and Barnabas appears. Once his cousin has calmed him down, David gets to the point and asks about the portrait of Josette, which Barnabas promises will be displayed elsewhere in the house, with the boy being welcome to come over and see it whenever he wants. Willie pops up to remind us that we should be concerned about the company that David is keeping.
Back at the main house, Elizabeth obsesses over Willie with Jason, filling her blackmailer in on his erstwhile partner's new employment. Jason presses Mrs. Stoddard for his payoff in the form of a Swiss bank account. When David comes in with Barnabas, the boys fills some more time by recapping his previous scene. Elizabeth implores upon Barnabas that he get rid of Willie, but Barnabas plays her like a fiddle and she consents to his keeping the most hated man in Collinsport gainfully employed.
Jason calls upon Willie at the Old House and strongarms him for information about what he's up to until Barnabas shows up. Jason is impressed at the way that Barnabas send Willie on his way, and tries to compete in a pissing match about who has the most control over Jason's old partner in shadiness.
At the Evans home, Sam is on his way out to go work on the portrait while Maggie is getting ready for bed. While Barnabas has some foreboding words with Sam about his daughter at the Old House, Maggie closes the week with the nighmare that foreshadows the dark turn that her plotline is about to take....
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The Saint
"A Double in Diamonds"
Originally aired May 5, 1967 (UK)
Xfinity said:
Templar encounters a mystery involving interchangeable diamonds and fashion models as he tries to track down an ingenious jewel thief.
Once again, Simon's in his jewel-thievery wheelhouse. I can't say the same for myself, as I found the episode a bit confusing. It involves a valuable necklace that has two duplicates...one that the lord who owns it plans to sell while reporting it stolen for insurance, and another being made by the lord's secretary, who's conspiring with a dress designer who also works for the lord to swap in their own fake and sell off the real McCoy. They get tripped up by the fact that the necklace they steal is the other fake.
Simon gets involved via the jeweler who made the fake for the secretary. The secretary finds herself killing the jeweler when he gets suspicious of her story she's having the fake made for her employer. I was wondering how the story would deal with her, since she was shown not to be a hardcore criminal, but had nevertheless killed a friend of Simon's. In the end, her fate is left ambiguous, as she and her cohorts experience a car crash that Simon walks away from without bothering to go back and check on them or summon the authorities, strongly implying that they didn't survive. Yet in a later scene, Simon tells the lord, whom he has no reason to lie to, that "Charlie's killers have been arrested"...which feels like an attempt to handwave away the clear implications of the previous scene.
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The Avengers
"Who's Who?"
Originally aired May 6, 1967 (UK)
Wiki said:
A pair of assassins changing their minds (for Steed's and Emma's) bring double trouble.
Steed Goes Out of His Mind
Emma Is Beside Herself
So the show sort of makes good on the tease of doubles for Steed and Peel in the episode with Christopher Lee. Invisibility, time travel, invasions from Venus...all off the table as actual phenomena in the world of the show. But mind-swapping? We can do that!
The guest actors do a good job of playing Steed and Peel in the bad guys' bodies. The end of things with the bad guys in Steed and Peel's bodies isn't as interesting because we don't know anything or care about the villains of the week. But the situation does give Macnee and Rigg the opportunity to act more frisky toward one another.
The episode notably breaks from the show's usual format with a couple of tongue-in-cheek, commercial break-following announcements about the mind-swap.
The final group of Emma Peel episodes will be coming in September, but are counted as part of the same season in the British reckoning.
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50 years ago this week:
May 8 – The Philippine province of Davao is split into three: Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, and Davao Oriental.
May 10 – The Greek military government accuses Andreas Papandreou of treason.
May 11 – The United Kingdom and Ireland apply officially for European Economic Community membership.
May 12 – The Jimi Hendrix Experience release their debut album, Are You Experienced.
"Hey Joe," The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Bonus "Saving the Iconic Singles for When They Chart" Link
(#198 on
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time)
New on the charts that week:
"Ain't No Mountain High Enough," Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
(#19 US; #3 R&B)
"Let's Live for Today," The Grass Roots
(#8 US)
"She'd Rather Be with Me," The Turtles
(#3 US; #4 UK)
"Little Bit o' Soul," The Music Explosion
(#2 US)
And new on the boob tube:
- Dark Shadows, episodes 225/226-230
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My sidelist viewing has fallen behind a bit, but it looks like H&I was threatening to cause that in a couple of weeks anyway, as they're trying to keep together
Batman two-parters that aired across different weeks by popping in the odd Season 3 episode ahead of schedule.
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All I could turn up with a Google search is that you're not the first person who's asked.
