Dark Shadows - Barnabas Brings it Savage!

 

Episode 255 really doubled down on how savage Barnabas could be. I mean in this episode, the writers really just placed Maggie in a position of almost zero hope. And they emphasize how Maggie is seemingly without any remaining help to arrive. Sam is shown just downing shot glass after shot glass as the Blue Whale, as he informs Joe that he set to bring Barnabas his portrait, finally finished. Well, Sam arrives just as Barnabas, Willie, and Maggie are up in Josette's bedroom. Barnabas assures Maggie that if she lets out any noise that might draw attention to her (Willie holds her with a gag on her mouth), he'd kill Sam, her dad. If that wasn't bad enough--actually hearing her father's voice and Barnabas asking about any information on Maggie's whereabouts (now that is scummy!) without being to yell for help--Sam gets word from Joe that a girl's body had been found miles outside of town, a corpse that fits the description of Maggie. Sam is led to believe that the body is his daughter's so Maggie has to listen on as both her father and boyfriend leave the Old House, with Barnabas coming back up to mock her about how all hope for her recovery is now gone. This episode really shows how cruel Barnabas can be. I like a dialogue scene at the beginning of the previous episode where Maggie tells Barnabas that she can't be someone she isn't, no matter how bad he wants her to. It really hadn't been said much prior to that. I like that these recent episodes, including this one, show Maggie just no longer even trying to pretend. Yes, Barnabas just gets Willie to dump her back in that damned cell, and it is really getting bad for poor Maggie as she is clearly at the breaking point. She rolls around on that awful cot fighting off the demented isolation Barnabas keeps her, and the voice of a song (London Bridges) from a little girl (it is indeed one of those WTF?! moments/twists that comes wonderfully unexpectedly) outside with a doll brings up a whole other added wrinkle to the Maggie's kidnapped storyline.

Willie has moments where he shows some humanity, but when he returns to being a weakling, I think plenty would just want to shake him. Just tossing her back in the cell, leaving her and walking away, ignoring her cries to just stay a while, even trying to convince her to be a vampire; Willie seems content with remaining Barnabas' bitch. Yes, he would more than likely be killed, but knowingly allowing Barnabas to keep this innocent young woman a prisoner because he wants her to be a delusion; that kind of willing participation is just egregious. Some will defend him for keeping her alive, but what is alive if she has to either accept vampirism or remain in a cell (or dead?)? Barnabas up in the room telling Maggie that her boyfriend would soon meet someone else or that her dad would drink the pain away for awhile before settling in to his painting again, both eventually forgetting her, was altogether depraved. How could a memory of someone he loved bring someone to do that?! It really reinforces how badly Barnabas wants to recreate a fabrication of Josette...by any means necessary. 4/5

***What Barnabas does to Maggie in this episode, how he pulls her to the room, expects Josette in every way she was, with picked flowers as Josette would have liked them, talking to her as if she were that long lost love who took a dive on Widow's Hill, not wanting any remaining part of Maggie Evans to appear, only for that lie to be exposed by a woman who simply cannot be who she isn't shows a ridiculous obsession that is so desired but completely unsustainable. Even as a vampire, Maggie is the one turned. Josette is long gone.***