Dark Shadows - Elizabeth Stoddard Leaves Collinwood

 Episode 259 is a huge episode of Dark Shadows for more than one reason: Elizabeth is convinced by Victoria to leave Collinwood and Elizabeth finally tells someone, Victoria, that she killed Paul Stoddard, her husband! Finally Elizabeth says it. Finally, after eighteen excruciating years, Elizabeth leaves that damn mansion. Imagine carrying that weight around and only one other person knowing it: Jason, Elizabeth's blackmailer. Victoria has often been treated as a sideline character despite being the first character established on the series from the very beginning. But she's actually been another daughter to Elizabeth. But during Dark Shadows - The Beginning, Vicky's past was so important. It came up often. But as time went on, Victoria was sort of the character who moved around different stories without really having one of her own. She was the person others leaned on, talked to, needed to vent to, release their pentup frustrations to. In this episode, not only does Vicky actually convince Elizabeth to leave the house and go to pick up her daughter from jail, she persuaded the pained matriarch to finally say the words, "I did it! I killed my husband!" Because this was at the very end, Vicky's reaction wasn't really allowed to hang on screen very long since it was Liz's admission that was important. So the next time we see them, how Vicky processes this and how Elizabeth goes from here is set up as such a big deal. I loved the shot of those double doors opening and Liz shown from a distance having to make those steps outside the house. This was not something to take lightly. This house had been a prison, a sort of isolation, for eighteen years. She didn't leave it because of what happened to Paul. And with Jason telling Liz to just abandon Caroline and marry him, her agony is released in her upstairs bedroom with weeping...she has just carried that burden too long. And her emotionally charged back and forth with Caroline, who believes Liz leaving was just because her marriage to Jason had finally been the reason to finally do so, only compounds the ever-consuming depths of despair Elizabeth was carrying day in and day out. So it had reached a boiling point and Vicky was there for her to release it. Great moment for this show. That took a long time, too. 5/5

***Jason putting the squeeze on Elizabeth after that awful row with an emboldened Caroline, who just spit fire at her and pretty much cut herself off from mommy, was the breaking point. Jason's antics have just about pushed Elizabeth to the edge where nothing he could do would persuade her to marry him.***

***Sheriff Patterson sighting: he was at the sheriff's office, responding unfavorably to Caroline's behavior, flippantly excoriating her mother. Her nearly killing a woman, crashing her car, and taking that near-victim to task after saving her from the wreckage explains just how far Caroline has fallen since Elizabeth told her family about the marriage to Jason***