Annoying the Phoenix

My daughter was trapped this morning. It was too warm and humid to stay in her bedroom, yet downstairs meant watching more of Dark Shadows. Such a dilemma. The humidity won and forced her into the cool of the media room.

I kept teasing her about watching the show with me.

  “I KNOW you love this show. You’re mesmerized it. The off lighting. The charm of Roger and his rich-family accent.”

She finally admitted she was waiting for Laura and her mean-spirited one-liners. Shortly after that, Burke burst in on Laura and Dr. Guthrie.

“What’s he doing here?” asked Burke.

“To tell you the truth, he’s annoying me,” replied Laura.

Just what my daughter was waiting for.

Later, David visits his mother at her cottage only to find her in a trance, staring at the fire in the fireplace. He calls to her several times and finally she responds to him.

“Don’t you ever like to be alone, David?”

“You mean all alone? All by myself? No. Not really.”

“Oh. Well, that’s where grown-ups are different.”

David is a weird one, but he recognizes an insult when he hears one. So did my daughter. It made her tolerance of the show rise just a little.

 

Quick wrap-up of episodes #171-178 (only eight on this disc):

Dr. Guthrie confronts Laura. He tells her that he knows she has an unusual power and when he discovers what it is, he plans to tell everyone. Laura warns him to leave her alone. Shortly thereafter, the good doctor is overcome in a manner similar to that which has incapacitated Elizabeth Stoddard. It is only when David interrupts his mother at her cottage that the doctor regains his bearings. He explains what happened to Vicki and they both realize something is going terribly wrong again in the Collins home.

After learning that the dead body in Phoenix has disappeared from the morgue and while recovering from his strange memory-erasing episode, the doctor decides that he must see the body of Laura’s relative buried in a crypt on the Collins property. Only then will he know if the connection between the death-by-fire of Laura’s relatives in the last two centuries will confirm his suspicion that Laura is really a phoenix.

The last episode ends with Joe and Dr. Guthrie finding the crypt locked. As they prepare to break into it, the door (with a mighty movie squeal to it might I add) slowly opens, revealing not the inside, but looks of surprise and terror on the faces of the Joe and the doctor.