“She called your name, and then she became unconscious again.”
One nice thing about being a soap opera character — and overall the benefits are not numerous — is that every once in a while the writers need you to figure something out in a hurry, so they hand the entire solution to you on a platter, whether it makes sense or not.
For example: the Dark Shadows writers have decided that straight-laced Charity Trask needs to know that Quentin, her prospective fiancé, is a werewolf who murders people on the regular. So they’ve arranged an educational tableau for her to discover, on her morning walk through the woods.
Lying on the turf is the unconscious Quentin, with his shirt all ripped up and decorated with blood spatters. A couple feet away, there’s a young woman who we haven’t seen before and aren’t likely to see again, because she’s sporting the telltale fang and claw marks of a werewolf victim.
Feebly, the girl mutters Quentin’s name, and Charity finds the crucial piece of evidence in his hand — he’s clutching a piece of taffeta, torn from the young lady’s dress. There isn’t a sign that says WEREWOLF with an arrow pointing to Quentin, but Charity’s a bright girl. She can put two and two together, especially if one of the two is currently bleeding out on the green burlap that everybody’s agreed to pretend is the ground.
So I’d like to take a moment to come to grips with this scenario.
Here’s what we know: Quentin turns into a wolf creature at dusk, and back into a man at dawn. Tessie — her name is Tessie, by the way — knows that the creature who attacked her is actually Quentin, which means that she was around for at least one stage of the transformation. And when Quentin changed back to human form, he was clutching the fabric, and he fell to the dirt a few steps away from Tessie.
Scenario A is that Tessie was with Quentin at dusk when he changed into a wolf, although why he would be arranging late afternoon play dates in the woods on the night of the full moon is beyond me. Then he turns into a wolf and brutally almost-murders her, leaving her in a heap on the ground, and then he just runs in circles all night holding his fabric swatch, and at dawn he ends up back here to ask for her phone number.
Scenario B is that this is actually Tessie the Vampire Slayer, and she was just activated this evening with no time for training. She saw Quentin change, and followed him through the woods all night, waiting for her chance to put an end to his lupine murder spree. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a Watcher yet, so nobody’s given her sensible advice like please don’t follow the werewolf around in your lavender party dress, unless you’re equipped with a pentagram and a couple of wisecracking high school sidekicks.
Obviously, Scenario B is the correct answer. Isn’t it nice when we stop to really think things through?
When Quentin wakes up, Charity temporarily puts aside the question of who murdered who, and tries to focus on helping the wounded girl. She says they have to take Tessie to a doctor, but Quentin wants to know what Charity’s going to say when they ask her what happened.
Charity says she won’t tell them anything, but he doesn’t buy it; they need to have a conversation about this. Charity shouts, “Quentin, she’ll die!” and then Quentin drops the bomb. “You’ll die too, Charity,” he says. “If you tell anyone you saw me here — if you say one word to anyone that links me with this — I’ll kill you.”
He means it, too. He looms over her — a strong, six-foot-three man, towering over a woman who’s five-and-change. And he grabs her and points at her, and gives her instructions. She’s supposed to go back to Collinwood and stay in her room, while he takes care of the wounded.
“But you remember,” he grimaces — still towering, still looming — “how easily you could die.”
He’s the hero of the story now, by the way. We’ve been tracking Quentin’s progress since we met him in early March, and he’s definitely supplanted Barnabas as the core protagonist by now. I think the switchover happened three or four weeks ago, when Barnabas was on the run from a pack of vampire hunters, and then he just hid in a cave and everybody forgot about him for a while. Quentin is the star attraction with his own hit single, soon to be featured on a set of bubble gum cards. And here he is, looming, towering and terrorizing a young woman who is honestly only trying to help.
So Charity scuttles away, and who should turn up but Count Andreas Petofi, the mad god of the northeastern states, who’s currently inhabiting the body of an eleven-year-old because he thinks it’s funny. He and Quentin are supposed to be enemies, kind of — at least, Petofi’s kind of the villain of the show right now and Quentin is kind of the hero, and that usually counts for something.
But Petofi is all charm this morning. “Back from your evening revels, eh, Mr. Collins?” he observes, strolling around the crime scene. “And in need of help again.”
Apparently this mini-Petofi considers himself a member of Murder Club, the social organization for monsters who help cover up each other’s crimes, and he dives right into the problem-solving.
Petofi: Now, what are we to do?
Quentin: I’m going to take her to Magda.
Petofi: No, I don’t think that would be wise. I don’t think Magda is quite ready for another shock.
Quentin: What do you mean?
Petofi: I mean that we should look at the other possibilities. Perhaps we both could make use of this unfortunate occurrence.
Now, as it turns out, I don’t know what the hell he’s referring to. His cunning plan is to tell Reverend Trask that there’s a wounded girl in the woods, and she’s carried to Collinwood, where she can gasp Quentin’s name a couple more times before succumbing to her injuries. I’m not sure how that serves their interests more than just leaving her in the woods, but the details don’t matter. The point of this scene is to establish that somehow, without any effort on his part, Quentin has become Petofi’s ally.
Later on, Petofi has a moment alone with Quentin, to scheme another scheme. “There’s a paper in this room,” he teases. “A very important paper. You’re going to need it soon, ‘Uncle Quentin’. Honest, you will.”
Quentin asks him what he’s talking about, and Jamison gives him a clue: “Twice burned, once torn — but still intact, and fear is born!” They don’t really have time for games at the moment, and Quentin isn’t very good at them anyway, so eventually Petofi just points at the desk drawer and tells Quentin to help himself.
The item he’s after is that confession that Reverend Trask was tricked into signing the other day, admitting that he arranged his wife’s murder. Quentin can use the paper to blackmail Charity into silence; she doesn’t believe that her father killed Minerva, but she doesn’t want Quentin to drag this out into the open. None of this has anything to do with how they disposed of Tessie, but I guess that’s how life works sometimes. It doesn’t always add up.
The important thing is that they’re establishing the fact that Count Petofi is now in charge of the show. This is the beginning of a long streak for Petofi, which is unusual for Dark Shadows. Characters usually come and go, even if they’re important to the storyline, because the actors need a break once in a while. Also, every cast member is guaranteed a certain number of episodes per month, so it’s best to keep them circulating. They only do a long streak like this with the same character when they’re trying to make a point.
Julia had a 21-episode streak leading up to 1795, when she and Carolyn and Barnabas were all chasing each other around the foyer looking for Julia’s notebook, because the only way to move the story forward was to kill Julia, and they were damned if they were going to lose the most interesting character on the show just because it made logical sense.
They also gave Quentin a 16-episode streak early on in the 1897 storyline, when they were establishing him as a major player. That’s the period when he’s killed by Jenny and then raised from the dead as a zombie, only to be revived by Angelique, and then he goes straight into a battle with Laura.
But the most relevant example is those extraordinary first six weeks of 1795, when Angelique was in 25 out of 30 episodes. She was a brand-new character who we’d never even heard of before, and at that crucial moment in the show’s development, they basically handed her the entire show and told her to go nuts. Which she did, quite spectacularly.
And what’s happening now with Count Petofi is exactly the same. Starting with episode 800, Petofi appears in 24 out of 30 episodes, including an unbroken 12-episode run in the middle. Like Angelique at the opening of 1795, Petofi blows into town like an oncoming storm. The 1897 storyline has been held over by popular demand, way past its intended expiration date — so here comes the Hurricane of Hungary to shake the world like an Etch A Sketch.
Like Angelique, and like Julia and Barnabas before them, Count Petofi has come to once again bring the Collins family to their knees. Then the next three months is everybody trying to piece together the shattered remains of their lives.
Tomorrow: The Most Dangerous Game.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
At the beginning of the episode, Charity is walking through the woods, when she stops, clearly just a step away from Quentin’s body. Then she gets a close-up as she looks around, and she’s startled as she suddenly sees the body that she couldn’t possibly have missed. They did this at the end of yesterday’s episode too, but the timing was better so it didn’t look as pantomime-silly as it does here.
When Petofi says, “Back from your evening revels, eh, Mr. Collins?” he walks around Tessie’s body. The camera pulls back to keep him in shot, but goes back a little too far, so you can see a playback monitor beyond the edge of the forest. Check the screenshot below.
When Quentin approaches Charity on the stairs, the camera can’t seem to get a clear close-up of him.
They’ve turned off the lights in the drawing room set too early, and apparently they can’t get them back on, so Trask, Charity and Quentin perform the last scene in mostly-darkness.
Behind the Scenes:
Tessie is played by Deborah Loomis for 3 episodes — yesterday’s, today’s and then a return visit as a ghost a few weeks from now. She has a few other credits, but the only notable one is a prominent role in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1970 film debut, Hercules in New York. Loomis played Helen, Hercules’ love interest.
Tomorrow: The Most Dangerous Game.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
I’m about the only one on earth who likes “Hercules In New York” BEYOND those “so bad it’s good” reasons. If you’re a Peplum fan (using that word to include non-Italian films), there’s evidently sometimes no limit to the ones you like.
Hercules in New York is also the sole big screen credit for Erica Fitz (a.k.a. Leona Eltridge.) Alex Stevens is in it as well, maybe that’s how Tessie knew about the werewolf.
You’re right that Petofi drives the show by this point and makes for some of the best DS ever. I always thought they should have gone back to 1897 (or 1898?) instead of 1840 and picked up with Petofi as the villain again instead of Judah Zachary. Selby could’ve played the real Quentin instead of that pale substitute and Thayer David, wasted as Stokes in 1840, could have donned the curly wig again.
Yeah, as a menace Judah Zachary was booooring. All he did was stare, while Petofi, well…
In the reboot I am doing something with Judah. Basically making him the headless horseman, give him a pumpkin for a head and have him go chopping off heads. He is stopped by Petofi when he tries to decapitate Aristide (he wants a good looking head). And that’s my opinion of who would win between the two.
In a battle between the head and the hand, the hand wins! 🙂
Now, that cool Adriana.
I’m not a fan of the Zachary either. I thought that it would’ve been more interesting if the villain had remained Gerard, whose objective was to replace Quentin as master of Collinwood. That motive made no sense for Zachary, who basically targeted Quentin because he was the descendent of the Collins who convicted him. Weak motives = weak villains.
I totally agree!
That could have been epic. 1840 was definitely a mistake.
I would have liked him to go to 1969 in Barnabas’s body instead of having the Leviathans. Julia could still have been his adversary, Barnabas could still have been evil and Quentin would have had an important part in helping Julia discover what was wrong with Barnabas. They could have even have had Petofi switch to Quentin at some point and romance Carolyn.
I saw “Hercules in New York” about 6 years ago on hulu – there must have been some very weird copyright issue with the background music, I guess. The background music and sound kept getting deleted out. The dialogue seemed like it was somehow choppily patched back in. Arnold was also obviously dubbed — someone thought that his native Austrian accent would not fly. Strange movie.
I got to see a sort of “restored” version where he’s barely dubbed at all, so you get to actually hear Arnold as Hercules. And of course, long before COMEDIANS started doing it, mythology itself often pictured Hercules as a well-meaning “big lug” who often gets himself in trouble, so that down-to-earth “AH-NALD” way of speaking would’ve made AT LEAST as much sense as the dubbing.
So, I give this episode’s developments a lot of leeway because they move us closer to Charity as Pansy Faye, which is all kinds of awesome. But honestly, Charity finds Quentin in ripped clothing next to Tessie, who’s been ripped to shreds and dies mumbling Quentin’s name. How the hell does this translate to “Quentin’s a werewolf”? Couldn’t Quentin just claim that the werewolf attacked both of them, he tried to defend Tessie, but was knocked out and the wolf ran off. He’s told less convincing lies.
I guess Charity put it together, because she had that vision of Quentin’s portrait changing into a wolf the other day.
Oh, that’s why they gave her the sneak preview of the werewolf portrait the other day. That makes sense now.
They also gave her a prophetic dream in yesterday’s episode that made Quentin seem sinister.
The Petofi streak of episodes doesn’t quite feel the same as that of Angelique, because with Petofi it’s divided between two actors. I wonder if they did that to keep David Henesy more involved in the show, since Denise Nickerson is away for a while doing theater work.
I would say the switchover in main protagonist appeal happened the day they decided to put Barnabas and Quentin in the same scene together. It probably made the kids realize they were going ape all these months over this wrinkly old man who also has more pockmarks on his face than the Moon has craters, whereas Selby’s more contemporary features would not have looked out of place on the album covers of the rock bands of the time or even on his own as a folk singer.
If we can believe a werewolf, we can believe green burlap. Personally, I’d like to line the basement with it. Add a few tombstones, maybe one or two of those fake shrubs. The cat would love it!
I’m getting ahead of things here, but the 1840 storyline seemed like a total rehash of the 1897 story. It would have been better had Petofi showed up in the present.
There’s a Scenario C as well, though it has holes in it just as do A and B. Perhaps Tessie happened on the werewolf in the woods at dawn, and he turned BACK into Quentin in the midst of the attack (which is why she didn’t die–the attack wasn’t completed). So maybe she saw the werewolf transforming back into Quentin and then passed out from shock, her injuries, or both. Quentin did tell Trask he knew Tessie from meeting her once or twice at the Blue Whale, so Tessie would have recognized him. Of course, why Tessie would be wandering the woods at Collinwood at dawn is a hard question to answer.
I don’t think it’s so hard to explain why Tessie was in the woods at dawn, though it does require a little fanfic.
Charity was in Quentin’s room in 806, inviting him to go for a walk on the beach when he’s busy getting drunk and listening to the same dreary little waltz over and over. To get Tessie into the woods, all we have to do is assume that shortly after that scene Quentin ran out of booze before he was drunk enough to stop caring about the upcoming full moon. Not wanting to deal with the Trasks, he didn’t go to the mansion’s liquor pantry, but staggered down to the Blue Whale.
There, Quentin met Tessie. She was upset with him for missing several dates in the last few days. He can’t very well explain what he’s been doing lately, and his refusal to answer Tessie’s questions angers her. She’s about to give Quentin a piece of her mind when he realizes that it will be dark soon, and rushes from the bar.
Now Tessie is really furious. She follows Quentin to the estate. Once there, she sees him change into the werewolf, and hides in terror for most of the night. Shortly before dawn, she thinks he is gone and leaves her hiding place. The werewolf appears and slashes away at her for a few minutes before changing back into human form and collapsing beside her.
And that’s when Charity finally takes her walk, and finds out.
And once again, Quentin is found in his torn-up shirt – ripped in exactly the same way as all the other mornings we’ve seen him in his torn-up shirt. Do you suppose the werewolf has OCD, and must carefully shred the shirt in exactly the same way every time, just before falling unconscious?
fabulous notion, John E. Comelatey.
Egged on by Jamitofi’s promises of an important hidden document that can be used against Trask, Quentin rummages through the desk in the drawing room at Collinwood, pulling out sheet after sheet of paper. Not finding what he was looking for, he says “There’s no paper here!” Whaaaat?
Also – I’m thrilled that they’ve given David Henesy something meaty to work with. He’s doing a fantastic job with this role.
Woe to those of us who need captions. I suspect but have not confirmed that the captions on Amazon Prime’s DS episodes are the same as on the DVDs (I only have one DVD set and its the one with episode 210; I’m up to 825 and am not about go back now). Anyway, if you watch with the captions on, you will notice mistakes. Some funny, others just annoying. There was, presumably, a team of captioners on the DVDs and some were better than others.
Here are some outrageous caption mistakes.
Some captioners clearly have no idea what the characters’ names are. In today’s episode, 809, “Count Petofi” is rendered “Count of Toffee.” In the same episode, “Tessie” is captioned as “Chelsea.” In episode 818, “Trask” is rendered “Trout.” In episode 794, Fenn-Gibbon is called “Sangivens,” Magda Rakosi is consistently called “Magda La Corti” and her husband is called “Tandora Corti.”
Also in episode 794, when Fenn-Gibbon gloats, “He’s convinced that I’m a member of the English aristocracy,” the captioner has, “He’s convinced that I’m a member of the English heretics.” (“The English heresy” might almost be an understandable error, but, no, the caption says “heretics.”)
In 796, Aristede’s line “Shall I begin to choke again?” becomes “Shall I begin to joke again?”
And “Some men like to live in doubt” is turned into “Some men like to live in dust.” (In both episodes 796 and 818, the words “god” and “gods” are often rendered “guard” and “guards.”)
Going back to episode 773:
“I shouldn’t like you to think ill of me” somehow made sense to the captioner as “I shouldn’t like you to think hell of me.”
“I didn’t have the foresight to bring a gun” was turned into “I didn’t have the force, I had to bring a gun.”
“Shaw is violent” became “I’m sure he’s violent.”
Another delightful layer of bloopers to go with the originals! I wonder what the captioners made of some of the choice bits of Fridspeak, or if they caught Bob Costello’s prompt to Bathia Mapes?
I may have to change my online name to The Count of Toffee (member of the English Heretics). 😉
Often they use voice recognition software for captions. Being somewhat hearing impaired I often use them. The voice recognition on live events like sports and news can be hysterical.
I wondered if it might be software, especially some of the more ridiculous mistakes, but I did a little research and another possibility is that English is not the captioners’ native language. Either way, these are of course the cheaper options. Quality closed captioning can get pretty expensive apparently. In any case, I think the ‘Count of Toffee’ might be my fave so far. lmao
I realize it’s late in the game, but I’d like to interject what a fine actor David Henesy is and what he brings to this show. He really could have been a big star, if he had stayed with acting. This is a young kid who can hold his own against far more experienced and senior actors. As an aside, the jade green (on my tv) that Nancy Barret is wearing today, with her eye make-up, looks awesome.
The famous lamp makes an appearance in this episode. I wonder what happened to all the furniture and props from this show. I can’t begin to imagine the value of some of those things today, if they still exist.