
By PATRICK McCRAY
Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1092
Julia’s plan to put Maggie into intentional danger results in Maggie being put into intentional danger. Maggie: Kathryn Leigh Scott. (Repeat; 30 min.)
Julia uses Maggie as bait to find her attacker, but the plan fails. As she and Barnabas continue to decode prophecy and study Rose Cottage, the children are drawn to the playroom by Carrie’s taunting voice. There, they see themselves as dolls in the dollhouse.

1092 begins with Maggie being allowed to wander the Collins estate so that Julia can track down her assailant. When that fails, she and Barnabas refuse to alert the authorities, which might have been a lifesaving move. It’s as if they and the series want her to die. Maggie has been astonishingly indestructible, and it takes a team effort of malice, hunger, and negligent friends to finally pour her into Sebastian’s car. But with sensible average folk around, there is no way that the Collinses would have stayed in that house. I mean, it’s Quentin, the kids, Barnabas, and Julia. Carolyn, too. That’s a double room at the Collinsport Inn and a couple of sleeping bags. It might be close quarters, but Gerard can have the house. Doesn’t happen. In a vacuum of pragmatism, this is what we’re left with, and it’s intentional. Horror may be the ultimate expression of art because both are about stripping down the essentials until the only remaining choice exists by default.

Barnabas continues to wander through a liminal forest, and in the words of Michael Corleone, every time he thinks he’s out, they pull him back in. 1897 seemed to be the forest, and 1970, home. It was a specific place to which he could return after Parallel Time, but nothing’s the same when he does. The household is different. Even Julia’s hair is different. The forest has followed him into a present that may be more unfamiliar than Parallel Time. By the time he returns home to 1971, Collinwood is finally the familiar same, but he is not. That’s the irony, and it’s not a nice one.
Is he being manipulated? We all are. Viewers and our sympathies. Heroes and their supposed true loves. 1092 is talking about this is loud silences and a final image both chilling and satirical when we realize we are in the dollhouse with them.
This episode hit the airwaves Sept. 1, 1970.
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