“The book doesn’t say to like me, does it? “
A man is dead on Dark Shadows, which isn’t exactly stop-press news; over the last year, they’ve stacked up so many bodies that people had to come back to life as a new character, just to kill them all over again. Just last week, three characters died on screen, and only one of them even matters.
Here’s the roll call: Paul Stoddard was killed by a lot of noise in the other room, which rendered him inert and sticky; Amanda Harris died of being cast in a Stephen Sondheim musical; and Sheriff Davenport was murdered at the end of Friday’s episode by a Monster Point of View shot.
Now, when Amanda dies, they actually say that the half-life that she kind of lived over the last seventy years was erased from history, so that the only people who remember anything about her are Quentin and Julia. This was entirely unnecessary, because Quentin and Julia were the only people on the show who cared about her anyway. So it’s kind of rude to make a specific point of deleting her, but on the other hand, I can’t remember who we’re talking about, so whatever.
And then there’s Sheriff Davenport, who is so unmourned that when we see his grave later this week, it says “Sheriff Davenport” on it. He didn’t have a first name, apparently, and it’s too late to give him one now. I suppose he’s lucky he even got a gravestone of his own; they could have just used Jeremiah’s with a Post-It note stuck over it.
But Paul’s death really counts, and you can tell, because all of a sudden, they start acting like it’s a soap opera.
Soap operas basically organize themselves around five big events: weddings, funerals, New Year’s Eve, charity balls and plane crashes. Those are the moments when they can bring everybody together for a big dress-up party, and all of the storylines get to cross over. If somebody needs to see somebody being overly affectionate with somebody else — which accounts for more than 60% of soap opera storylines — then these big events are when that’s going to happen. That’s what they’re for.
But on Dark Shadows, they don’t dwell on the funerals, because if they did, they wouldn’t have time for anything else. Does anybody remember Carl Collins’ funeral? He was Quentin’s brother, one of the four adult Collinses in the 1890s. I don’t actually remember them even wearing a black armband for Carl. It’s possible they forgot all about him the second he hit the pavement. He might still be there, for all I know, flat on his face in the drawing room. They might have just decorated around him.
But for Paul Stoddard, they actually put some effort into this. Paul is Elizabeth’s absconded ex-husband, and Carolyn’s deadbeat dad, and I know that we’ve started to drift into a pointedly post-Collins phase of the show, but being directly related to two core family members has got to mean something. So today’s episode is structured around Paul’s funeral — something that would be automatic for any other daytime show, but is remarkable on Dark Shadows.
Now Elizabeth doesn’t really have a lot of feelings about Paul’s death, thanks to the convergence of several lunatic plot contrivances. She’s been comprehensively hypnotized by a passel of ancient fiendish crypto-critters, who’ve hollowed her out and then forgotten to fill her up with anything in particular. Don’t worry about Elizabeth. Elizabeth is fine.
But her brother Roger still has control of his faculties, to the extent that anyone does on this carousel of crackpots, and he’s curious to know why an apparently healthy man in late middle-age would suddenly and simultaneously lacerate himself, singe his eyebrows, spray himself with acid, shatter his own ulna, femur, coccyx and clavicle, and then drop down on the carpet, cause of death: heart failure.
Elizabeth strikes a disapproving pose, the picture of a sensible woman trying to discourage her brother’s tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories about motive and opportunity and physical evidence and police procedure. Sometimes people just murder themselves. It’s irritating, she’s willing to admit that, but if you pay attention, it just encourages them.
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” he persists, “but you know that Paul was a scoundrel; he was a worthless man. He caused this family nothing but trouble since the day he married you. Let’s not let his death cause more problems. Now, I think we should inquire into it privately, but hush it up publicly. That’s all I meant to say.”
And then there’s Carolyn on the landing, proud and wounded and ready for a fight.
“And you said it brilliantly, Uncle Roger!” she declaims. “All in the Collins tradition. There should be a motto on our family emblem: Hypocrisy above all!”
So here’s a thing we haven’t had a lot of lately: feelings! Ever since the show slipped down the rabbit hole of nihilistic Lovecraftian possession drama, they’ve stopped having scenes like this — two non-hypnotized people, discussing their emotional reactions to an actual event. Pretty much every pairing we’ve seen lately has involved at least one Leviathan construct, manipulating events to further whatever weird set of instructions they pulled out of their ancient cosmic almanac.
And it’s a shame, because the 1897 storyline was an absolute gold mine for complicated Collins family dynamics. Since coming back to the present day, they’ve hardly done anything in that line. I think this is probably the first scene Roger and Carolyn have even had together in a year. But here we are, a family, having dynamics.
And look at this, for a shot, just bristling with hurt feelings.
“My father was murdered!” Carolyn declares, defiantly. “The autopsy told only part of the story. The acceptable part. The part that would hurt no one.” It’s lovely. I mean, it’s not Tennessee Williams or anything, but give the girl a break; her father just died.
Carolyn: I intend to find out who killed him.
Liz: Oh, Carolyn.
Carolyn: I loved him, mother.
Roger: You barely knew him, Carolyn.
Carolyn: I knew him. And I’m glad I had the chance, because I’m part of him. Mother, surely you can remember loving him. Because you must have loved him once, you must have!
Roger: Try to control yourself, kitten. It’s all going to be much more difficult if you don’t.
Carolyn: Collins are not supposed to cry! Well, this is the Stoddard part of me — the part that lets me feel!
So the real joy of this moment is that this appears to be a standard-issue portion of afternoon television. A new viewer who tunes in just for this scene will understand at once that Elizabeth is keeping her composure, because she isn’t actually sorry that Paul is dead.
Obviously, there’s some reason why she wouldn’t be sad about her husband’s murder, and the new viewer would instinctively start running through a list of possibilities. Maybe she’s the one who murdered him. Or maybe she didn’t murder him, but she knows who did, and she’s relieved, because he knew some kind of terrible secret and was just about to tell the police. Or he was going to tell Carolyn! Maybe he found out that Carolyn isn’t really Liz’s daughter, and that’s why Liz is having such a hard time connecting with her now! Or maybe she found out Paul’s secret, and he was going to murder her, but then it backfired and he got killed instead, but in order to explain this to anyone, she’d have to reveal the secret — which is probably something about how her tycoon con artist grandfather stole the money that became their family fortune, and if anyone finds out, they’ll have to give the mansion back to its rightful owners, who were forced out and now live, seething, in a tiny bungalow by the sea, waiting for some reversal, like a mysterious death in the family that they are right this minute trying to investigate, while they examine the document that recently fell into their possession, which — if they could only understand it! — might be the key to unlocking this entire sordid tale of money and power and betrayal and shattered dreams, I mean it has to be something like that, doesn’t it, I mean it just stands to reason.
So that’s what’s going through the new viewer’s mind, as they slip on the appropriate mindset to enjoy watching this timeless tale unfold in all its terrible dramatic intensity. God, just wait until they find out that Elizabeth has actually been hypnotized by a race of giant space hedgehogs.
Tomorrow: The Predator.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
At the start of act 1, Jeb trips a little bit on some of the detritus; he plays it off, successfully, by kicking something and pretending that he meant to do it.
In the graveyard scene, when Carolyn walks forward and says, “He was weak and he was confused, and he didn’t know what to do,” the camera tilts up too much, and you can see the top of the black backdrop, with a studio light peeking over the rim.
Jeb says that Barnabas can give Carolyn away. Barnabas protests, “I told you that the book won’t allow me to do that!” Barnabas didn’t tell Jeb that, when they talked about this in Friday’s episode.
Tomorrow: The Predator.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Awwww. My only comment is Jeb hanging out at Mad Jenny’s tombstone. I’m not sure when, beyond some of the ancestors already established, they decided the cemetery should match the historical body count, but it’s a nice touch. Is this still Eagle Hill? (It can’t be, the caretaker isn’t hollering at Jeb to let the dead rest in peace… which would have been foreshadowing.)
It’s a really nice, big tombstone too, for a secret spouse they kept locked in various rooms while she crooned to dolls and then tore them to shreds for years.
…by a race of giant space hedgehogs.
Giant space Pigweasels, surely?
They needed a tombstone big enough for Jeb to hide behind, so they may as well use the one they’ve got in the prop room instead of building another. I’ve always liked that Jenny has the best stone in the yard, no doubt due to an attack a guilty conscience on the part of Quentin and the family.
Her gravestone brings all the boys to the yard. (I’m sorry.)
HA!
For a show with so much death, there aren’t a lot of funerals. That’s cause only a few deaths are on record, the rest are all under the table.
The only other funerals I remember offhand were for Dr. Woodard and Grandmamama Edith, and both of those happened offscreen.
Well, they had a funeral for Michael a couple weeks ago, actually. But it didn’t stick.
There was also the funeral for David, but that got erased by Quentin not dying the second time around.
Under the table, under the flagstones in the basement, under that wobbly fake tree in the woods near Collinwood, under the floor in the secret room in the mausoleum, or behind the brick wall in the cellar of the Old House…I doubt if ANYONE knows where all the bodies are buried!
And that’s just the ones that got interred! So many in Collinsport have combusted or just vanished – is there a record anywhere of just how many known casualties Dark Shadows suffered?
Or you end up like that poor mute gypsy manservant and nobody even scrapes you off the rocks! The seagulls at Collinsport must be quite fat and sassy.
Besides the offscreen funerals mentioned above, we see the tail end of the mourners standing around a grave in 1795, with Barnabas looking on from within the mausoleum.
There weren’t many funerals on the show indeed, but there sure were a lot of disinterments, all of them illegal, of course. If they’re not killing someone off, they’re digging someone else up. The graveyard(s) may have been the smallest of Dark Shadows sets, but it seemed to feature the greater frequency of the most interesting activities.
That’s how we bury ’em in Collinsport: six inches deep, in a wet paper sack.
That way, if they do come back as a ghost/zombie/vampire/semi-amnesiac extradimensional love interest/unclassified being, you don’t kick yourself over the burial expenses gone to waste.
I think there was ONE legal exhumation; one of the Lauras during the Phoenix plot, wasn’t there? They didn’t find a body, though, so maybe it doesn’t count. Sure, the ONE TIME they do it legally, and it’s a washout (or, since it’s Laura, a burnout). 🙂
Laura Murdoch Stockbridge. Frank Garner had started drawing up the necessary papers, but Dr. Guthrie decided it couldn’t wait so he and Joe Haskell went to the crypt to remove the coffin. When Frank found out about it he rushed to the crypt to stop them from opening the coffin, warning Dr. Guthrie that he’d be in jail by nightfall, but then Josette intervened and the coffin lid mysteriously opened of its own accord. So, not strictly legal.
After this, what does Frank Garner agree to? The exhumation of the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, of course! A two-for-one night of illegal disinterments. I believe that’s the Dark Shadows record. 🙂
Ah, well, at least they tried to do it legally!
SPOILER ALERT!
Does Jeb’s zombie “army” count as illegal disinterment? Or is Jeb’s supernatural status a disqualification?
I remember when Julia was having Quentin do physical therapy disinterring Michael’s empty coffin; he was fantastic at it. Of course, digging up and opening sealed caskets is probably part of the basic Collins Skill Set.
Well, since it’s been mentioned –
Quentin’s haunting of Collinwood was ‘erased’ by Barnabas’ time tripping butterfly stomping. So WHY does everyone still remember it?
Amanda’s existence past her Gay Nineties ‘swan dive’ has now been erased by Mr. Best (presumably, Julia just seems to be guessing about the ‘no record’, but of course she’s right, she’s Julia Hoffman. She may lie incessantly, but she’s ALWAYS right).
So WHY does anyone remember her? Guess Quentin’s love is so strong it could never be forgotten (even though he just remembered that like an hour ago); Julia remembers because she’s a total rockstar who isn’t gonna let a little weenie like Mr. Best warp her mind – she’s Leviathan-proof, y’know! She eats Mr. Bests for brunch!)
I’ll wait till next posting for the nagging issues surrounding Sheriff Davenport…
I wrote about why people remember the haunting in ep 911:
https://darkshadowseveryday.com/2016/08/10/episode-911/
My conclusion was that it’s just one of those things.
A trip to the moon
On gossamer wings…
Of course you did, Danny. That wacky Mr. Best must have erased my memory…or maybe I got hit by a car and contracted amnesia. 😀
What I find even more mind-boggling about Amanda’s death causing the memory and record of her–and presumably Olivia Corey–to be erased is that Olivia had this career as an apparently very famous actress. So are there now a bunch of plays that never happened? A bunch of movies that have disappeared or suddenly have a big empty silhouette in them instead of a leading lady?
Right? First thing I thought of. She wasn’t a recluse, at all.
Has anyone ever done a body count? It should come close to rivaling Game of Thrones. I’m thinking of doing one when I start watching it from the beginning again, which will probably be at the end of this year, I’m almost done with 1840. I guess that I shouldn’t count people who don’t stay dead, like Jon Snow or Barnabas Collins.
A Dark Shadows death database (DSDD) would be a cool thing to have. You could even crowdsource it on something like a Google spreadsheet. You could have columns for name, date and/or episode number, cause of death, and killer if applicable.
Melissa, I think that I’ll start a DSDD now, since as I near the conclusion of 1840, the bodies will start piling up and I’ll have data to enter.
That’s a great idea. This should be on Dark Shadows Wiki! I could set up a table there if you like. 🙂
I love the idea of a DSDD. One column would have to be “outcome”. In the real world the outcome of death is pretty much a foregone conclusion. But not one DS. Sometimes deaths “just don’t take” and the character comes back.
Haven’t you really just hit on the precise reason this epoch in the show’s history was, and is, so unpopular? Vampire/werewolf/Dickens/Lovecraft clusterf*** that it is, it’s still supposed to be a SOAP OPERA, about a family named Collins.
The lack of scenes like Paul Stoddard’s funeral is why the Leviathan arc doesn’t stand well against the test of time unlike other storylines from this show. But the storyline’s greatest sin, in my opinion, is that it introduces several interesting ideas that are never fully explored. Here’s a list of just a few:
Paul Stoddard helping Julia and Prof. Stokes fight the Leviathans. He still dies, but he takes out Jeb Hawkes with him, thus redeeming himself.
Evil Elizabeth Stoddard. As one of the Leviathan cultists, we could have explored Liz’s darker side and have her in conflict with Carolyn. Hell, if the show wanted to kill off Paul early, it should have been Liz who pulled the trigger. It fixes the anti-climax of the Jason blackmail plot and sets up potential conflict between mother an daughter.
Make Quentin a werewolf again, at least temporarily. Have him and Chris Jennings team up to kick some Lovecraftian butt!
Let the modern Collins family FINALLY figure out that Barnabas is/was a vampire.
There’s one very practical reason we seldom see funerals on the show. Six people in an episode is a BIG day. They didn’t have enough money to put so many actors in one scene or episode.
You can easily tell that Jeb is a real hardcore he-man/bad boy, because he wears a leather jacket and jeans and his hair is messy. It makes it a lot easier for people who were watching for the first time, thank God.
“They could have just used Jeremiah’s with a Post-It note stuck over it.” Post-It notes weren’t introduced until 1977. 🙂 Also, what’s Jeb’s deal in this episode? He’s always licking his lips and sniffling. Sick second day on the job? Nervous? Or snorting up in his room?
For fashion’s sake alone they should have more funerals, because Liz, Roger, and Carolyn look great in their mourning clothes.
I wonder if Mr. Strak sent flowers?
We’re not going to mention how Carolyn has little to no makeup on? When lately she’s been caking it on. I suppose it’s all part of the mourning period. I did like that she and her mother were dressed in mourning clothes. And for them to actually have a funeral was a nice turn of events.