Another Brick In Barnabas' Wall

EPISODES 501-515

Kidnapping!! Incarceration!! And sudden death?!!! That was an ordinary week in Collinsport! But where do we start?..

Bfff: Best Friend & Food Forever

Ahh..Adam, Adam, Adam aka our handsomely monster with a mind of a child and scars to tell the tale.. I understand how you must be feeling alone and horny (I mean yeah, mind of a child but body and hormones of a grown man right?) when you broke into Collinwood one night and kidnapped Carolyn. Unfortunately, your wallet of words is only enough to call her "Friend! Food!", which btw I found totally hilarious especially considering that is still way better than how Burke used to treat her. You locked her up somewhere, which I suspect was a hobbit's house; accidentally hit her head against a rock; almost pushed her over Widow's Hill but all is understandable because you are not a monster by choice. But that's not what the rest of the town thinks. The news of Adam is all over the town, he even got arrested (and eventually escaped). Liz and the Sheriff are suspicious of his link to Barnabas and pressing to uncover the mystery. Speaking of the Sheriff, I totally lost track of actors portraying that role after Dana Elcar, who was my personal favorite.

Blind leading dumb

There's only one who befriended Adam without prejudice and that is of course our newly blinded artist Sam Evans, who took him in and attended to his wounds right after a misleading cliffhanger where we thought Adam was actually gonna stab the man. That was also when I thought the show was taking a teen-slashery approach 'cause let's admit it, Adam is a creature that is somewhat in league of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. However because the slasher subgenre arose after Dark Shadows and Sam Evans is hardly a teen, that wasn't what happened. Instead, there was almost a heart-warming friendship that rested heavily on metaphors (the whole blind man-ugly creature thing with a cherry on top) but that too didn't end well. I have to say I am not very proud of Maggie here for what she did and what she did was hit Adam on the head with a hammer, thinking he's a danger to her pap.

The bells for Sam?

And when Adam -who has a natural immunity to such blows (or fallings down Widow's Hill) because well, he is made up of corpses and all- attempted to kill her, Sam got in the way hoping that some old fashined love and sweet talking would stop the beast but got bitchslapped instead. As the bitchslaps go, that one was pretty fatal: Sam is critically injured and probably won't make it out alive, Adam fled the scene as he always does and Maggie is woebogone. I've already braced myself for a "It's all my fault" themed mourning but then again, Sam ain't dead yet so let's not wrap the man in his shroud yet. 

Things have got a little bit complicated on the subject of the Dream Curse; it's not just sleep-dream-pass it on kinda deal anymore. We now know the curse is very dominant: it can't be erased by hypnosis. Instead, it even shows the location of the next victim when they're nowhere to be found but let's thank Julia nonetheless for the effort. This happened during the time when Carolyn was kidnapped by Adam and Willie was going out of his mind trying to keep the dream to himself. By the way, I don't know about you but I usually find listening to other people's dreams quite a bore, especially if they are so insistent that they climb up to your room in the middle of the night and terrorize you doing it.

Willie takes sharing too serious

Coincidentally, that is exactly what happened to Carolyn after she got back from the Adam adventure. But since she's part time whiner/part time fighter, Carolyn didn't let Willie tell the whole dream and hence got half the dream that night. It was more like a preview of the dream in the pay-per-view sense. Then Julia & Prof. Stokes stepped in and used her as a test subject to control the dream. They made Carolyn (lucid)dream of Prof. Stokes as the next victim of the curse, or "beckoner" as they called it and the for the first time, the curse was diverted. 

But the real deal went down when Stokes dreamt and had a astral showdown with Angelique!!! It was pretty cool how he refused to follow the dream's standard procedure or fall under her influence. He even called her an old hag and promised to send her back to 18th century where she belongs. Ouch!

The Dream Curse appears to be halted for now but I have a feeling that it's just on hiatus. Will it skip Prof. Stokes and go on with it's intented course? If Sam Evans was to be the next beckoner as seen in Stokes' dream, what happens when/if he dies? 

So this is the latest update on the curse:

Maggie> Jeff> Lang> Julia> Sarah> David> Willie> Carolyn> Stokes

Willie saw a wolf's head; Carolyn her own gravestone and Stokes fought Angelique.

From here on, it becomes a tennis match from hell:

A Séance & A Trial

Cassandra sends Tony to poison Stokes.

Feeling this, Stokes swaps the drinks and lets Tony have a taste of his own poison. When he survives it, Stokes and Julia convince him to work for them as a double agent. He misinforms Cassandra that Stokes is dead.

Stokes, Julia and Tony hold a séance to awaken the witch hunter Rev. Trask's spirit to deal with the witch.

But his vengeful spirit gets out of the brick wall he was buried alive in and has Barnabas go through the same thing. He even summons the spirits of his past victims: Jeremiah the zombie-ghost; Jade and Maude the two whores; Nathan Forbes and his wife Suki in a mock trial and seals Barnabas into the wall.

Not aware of this, Julia & Co. go around their businesses. Stokes asks Vicki to work as an inside agent in Collinwood.

Cassandra's eyes almost pop out of their sockets when she sees Stokes alive, who mocks her with a big smile on his face. He also mumbles something about her portrait not being unique and him having the original but we don't know if this is just a bluff or not.

Julia can't penetrate Barnabas' walls

Now that I mentioned it, I realised they haven't explained how she managed to revert herself back to young age after stealing it from Sam. Pfft..magic!

After 3 days of wondering where the heck Barnabas is and ignoring the sounds from the cellar, Julia finally does the math and sends Willie rushing to break the wall and free Barnabas..that is of course, if he is still alive!!!!!!

-Barnabas has been trapped for days without air, food or other facilities which has by now become a recurring theme in his life. Damn that Trask knows how to hold a grudge. He and Angelique should actually get married. 

-Also let's see how they will explain to Barnabas that they released one of his adversaries from his tomb without his consent, though I can imagine how it will go down: Julia will scream upon discovering Barnabas barely able to breath and all sweaty. Then she will gladly help him recover by giving him sponge baths. There may be one or two throat squeezings on Barnabas' part but he's too weak so let's not count on that one. Then they will try to reason with Trask to cross-over. And as with any other event, this one too will eventually end when the next one begins. What I wanna see though is the reunion of Vicki and Trask where she will get to kick his butt. "Welcome to my century, bitch!".

-I didn't like that they brought back Barnabas' past victims AND didn't even give them lines. The girls had to stand there, looking pretty (and scowly) and not say a word when the boys did the talking?? Unacceptable! But then again, the writers must have thought "Hey we have enough scorned women for one show".

-I wonder if they will further explore how the essence of Ben Stokes got into Timothy Stokes to fill-in-the-blanks his journal or was it just a one time lazy plot trick to find Trask's resting place within the episode? I wanna see Ben take his revenge on Angelique through Timothy. I like Timothy by the way. He has a sense of humour and has enough will power to fight Angelique/Cassandra's magic. "How's our favorite witch today?" Classic!

-Joe and Maggie's relationship is cracking because of Willie and Josette's hypnotic ear-rings. Joe had to beat up Willie but it was Willie who comforted Maggie when Adam attacked them. Ah, nothing says I love you like getting saved by a lunatic when another lunatic attacks!

-Liz IS the boss! I've saved it to the last but I just LOVED the scene where she saw Cassandra and Tony almost kiss and confronted the witch! That was a nice bit of a verbal catfight where Cassandra accused Liz of having no life of her own and always meddling in other people's affairs for it. Then she put a weird curse on the poor woman that would make her think about nothing but the concept of death. My dear Liz suddenly became a gloomy 50-something emo. Alright, I've just noticed this paragraph didn't turn out the way I imagined it. It was supposed to be a praise to Liz. Meh, now I'm depressed.