By PATRICK McCRAY
Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 538
Stokes reunites Julia with Adam, and as soon as she pronounces the promethean dead, the lumbering Adam comes alive, writhing and choking. Deflecting his questions, she takes Stokes to disinter Barnabas, and does so in time to stop both he and the symbiotically linked Adam from certain death. Adam, revived, wants to leave Collinwood, but Carolyn persuades him to stay. Barnabas, ascertaining in a mirror that he is still human, takes the first opportunity to gloat over it to Angelique. The curse failed thanks to the lifeline of Adam, and Barnabas is resplendent in his victory.
Leave it to soap opera pacing to delay all immediate gratification for the audience and Barnabas regarding the fate of the dream curse. However, it rewards patience and memory, meting out pleasures a bit at a time to give each episode at this point a little payoff to be savored.
For a character who is no dummy, Prof. Stokes really puts up with a lot of mysteries that are put politely out of his reach due to circumstance and urgency. It’s to his credit that he soldiers on anyway. The end of the episode features one of Angelique’s great moments of defeat. The dream curse is finally undone, and Barnabas has a wonderful reason to gloat. He does so with relish, and it certainly is one of his most delicious victories over the witch. Science, even/especially ridiculous science, can triumph over black magic in the world of DARK SHADOWS, and don’t forget it!
On this day in 1968, Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, was born. Considered one of the most powerful figures in the media and advertising, her actions in 2017 may determine whether she is remembered as one of the great heroes of free speech or one of its most regrettable turncoats, driven by the strange and darkly allied bedfellows of social justice censorship and commercial greed.
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