“How can I fight a presence?”
Angelique was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. Actually, there is some doubt about it, so I guess the story is, like, eighty-five percent wonderful.
Here’s what we know about Angelique: She was once the mistress of Collinwood, in this strange desert otherworld of Parallel Time, and she was married to the dashing, brooding Quentin Collins. Under her administration, the house ran according to a strict timetable, which included menu selection, flower arrangement, and daily adult-beverage tea parties in the drawing room for anybody with a Y chromosome who felt like dropping by while her husband was at work.
Angelique attracted a wide set of worshippers, and a smaller faction of detractors, mostly determined by gender. Men were drawn to her by the handful — Quentin and Will and Bruno and Roger and Cyrus, all of them eager to kiss or flirt or banter or gossip or social-climb, as per their proclivities. The females in the family seem to be the principal holdouts; neither Elizabeth or Carolyn were accepted into the queen’s inner circle, and they stand on the fringes, glowering and holding their tongues.
And then there’s Hoffman — perplexing, unexpected Hoffman, who breaks patterns and makes faces.
The principal pleasure of this introduction to Parallel Time is that we’re being dropped into a new soap opera in media res, which is the correct method. This new-fangled fad of watching every episode of a television series in order is fine for pampered millenials with no creative viewing skills, but in 1970, you watched whatever they broadcast that day, and if you couldn’t figure out what’s going on, then you weren’t trying hard enough.
If the Collins family history of Parallel Time is written down in a book somewhere, then it must have been taken to the distant past or eaten by chupacabras, because we don’t have access to it; all we can make are inferences.
It’s a world of siblings and cousins and hardly any parents, as if a whole generation of grown-ups vanished during the 1960s. There’s Quentin, who’s a cousin of Elizabeth and Roger, who are cousins of Chris and Amy, and nobody knows where any of them came from. It’s a clear case of spontaneous generation, which you’d think a soap opera wouldn’t encourage.
So if we want to understand what’s going on, then we’re going to have to use our soap opera televisual literacy to reconstruct what came before.
Here’s what we know:
Barnabas: In the time I come from, Julia Hoffman is a doctor.
Carolyn: Perhaps she’s happier then.
Barnabas: Maybe she is. But how did she happen to come to Collinwood?
Carolyn: With Angelique, of course.
Barnabas: They were friends?
Carolyn: It was hard to tell who was in charge of the other.
Barnabas: What do people actually know about Angelique?
Carolyn: Well, everything. She always wanted to marry Quentin. Always, since she was a child.
Barnabas: She lived here as a child?
Carolyn: Yes, her father raised her — Tim Stokes.
Barnabas: Stokes!
Carolyn: She outgrew him, once she became a Collins.
Barnabas: It’s all so similar — and yet so different!
Yeah, you can say that again. What on earth are you talking about?
The sentence “she lived here as a child” is the one that perplexes me. Do they mean in Collinsport, or on the Collinwood estate? What does Carolyn mean when she says, “Her father raised her — Tim Stokes”?
Those two sentences sound like Tim Stokes was the gardener at Collinwood, and he and his daughter Angelique lived in the caretaker’s cottage. That resonates a bit with our own timeline, because both Angelique and (Ben) Stokes were introduced on the show as Collins family servants.
Angelique always wanted to marry Quentin, and when she grew up, she managed to seduce him away from the upper-class girls that his invisible parents presumably preferred. That sounds like a story from a 19th century serial or a 20th century soap opera, a Becky Sharp / Erica Kane / Jane Eyre social-climber spectacular.
But they also say that housekeeper Hoffman “came to Collinwood” with Angelique, which is the part that’s hard to figure. How could you say that Angelique “lived here” and “came here,” in the same conversation?
So “Angelique lived here” must mean Collinsport, rather than the estate, because the gardener wouldn’t have had a housekeeper. The Stokeses must have been a well-off family from town. We’ve never seen anybody else from Collinsport who had servants, but presumably there are more mansions tucked away in a corner somewhere, maybe on the invisible farm with the Convenient Rooster, who crows at dawn to alert nearby vampires that it’s time to go to bed.
Now, going by the actors’ ages, Angelique was in her early thirties when she died, and her son Daniel is fourteen. So Angelique married Quentin when she was somewhere around eighteen years old, which has an appealing “scheming teen soap vixen” ring to it. But David Selby is twenty-nine, which would peg him as fifteen when he knocked up the wealthy gardener’s daughter, so that’s probably not a useful guide.
Still, if we take this version of Dark Shadows as an ABC soap opera from another dimension, there must have been an on-screen courtship between Angelique and Quentin. She knew him as a child and schemed to win his love, “outgrowing” her upper-middle-class father and taking over Collinwood. This is far too delicious a story to be part of the series bible; it must have happened on the show.
But that doesn’t mean the show’s been on for more than fourteen years, because Daniel was probably the beneficiary of “soap opera rapid aging syndrome,” a chronosynclastic condition which gives youngsters the chance to leap over the tedious toddler years and go straight from switched-at-birth infant to sexy high school dropout in record time. This is probably the third Daniel.
They’ve built Angelique a nice big set, full of flowers and furnishings and keepsakes, which you’d only make for one of the most popular characters on the show. There’s a huge portrait of Angelique above the mantel, which must have been painted fairly recently, and serves as a visual reminder of her long-sought ascension to greatness.
I keep coming back to Erica Kane as a model — All My Children’s bad-girl teen who married well, and became the show’s signature wealthy diva. Erica was introduced in 1970 as a fifteen-year-old heartbreaker interfering in other people’s love stories, and catfought her way to nineteen consecutive Daytime Emmy nominations.
Using that model, this show is probably eight or nine years old, opening with Angelique as a teenager who’s desperately in love with dreamboat Quentin. She’s raised by her father, who can’t offer her much in the way of positive female role models, and by her devoted housekeeper Hoffman, who’s essentially out of her mind.
Under Hoffman’s fierce tutelage, Angelique dismantles the relationships of her wealthy childhood crush, destroying all rivals and finally winning his heart. The clincher in the final love triangle is probably Angelique getting pregnant, forcing Quentin to choose her, rather than his other current option. Once they’re married, Angelique brings Hoffman with her to Collinwood, and the pair gradually take over the estate, producing an heir and then launching into a series of bitter rivalries and torrid affairs.
Knowing those two, they probably had something to do with the death and/or disappearance of Quentin’s parents, who used to live in that big suite in the east wing. The land grab probably happened during the funeral for Quentin’s mother, so everyone comes back from the cemetery to find Hoffman standing in the middle of Angelique’s new throne room.
Angelique’s death must have been a terrible blow to the show, removing one of the most important and popular characters. But they didn’t do a murder mystery storyline at the time — it’s now six months later, and nobody seems to know how Angelique really died.
So probably what happened is that parallel Lara Parker was pregnant, and the show didn’t have any use for a new baby. They “killed” Angelique and the actress left the show for six months, which gave them time to build a new love triangle for Quentin.
Maggie is a new heroine, apparently, introduced after Angelique’s “death”. She used to live in Collinsport, but moved away as a child, and nobody on the show has met her until now. Their meeting and courtship, which apparently took place in London, must have happened on-screen, because they couldn’t lose both Quentin and Angelique at the same time without taking a serious hit in the ratings.
Plus, they’d have to build up Maggie quite a bit, for the audience to accept that she’s a reasonable rival for a back-from-the-dead Angelique. They must have done a big story about Quentin on the run, trying to escape all the terrible memories of his terrible marriage. In the most unlikely place, he meets a Collinsport girl, and decides that this is what he should have done the first time. This is what he wants now — a simple, sincere girl, like he thought Angelique was, back in the day.
Now Quentin’s come home, back to the standing sets with a new bride and a storyline just waiting to be revived. We’re joining a show already in progress, which is pretty much always the case with soap operas, and it’s right at the time that their clever trap is sprung.
Because this is what we know about Angelique: The show doesn’t work without her. Soaps don’t really have main characters, but to the extent that they do, it’s usually the richest lady in town. Parallel Dark Shadows without Angelique is like One Life to Live without Viki, Guiding Light without Reva, Days of Our Lives without Marlena. It is intolerable.
So we’ve stumbled on a version of Dark Shadows that’s been through some rough times in the past several months, stuck with slow-burning stories and not really concentrating on the characters that the audience cares about. I wonder what that must be like?
Tomorrow: The Cassandra Complex.
Note:
If you want to see what else I’ve been up to lately, I just posted a video for a talk I gave a few weeks ago called “First a Bird, Then a Plane: The Natural Selection of Superman“. It’s basically me doing a live version of this blog, talking about how serialized narrative works, through the lens of Superman’s development. It includes material on giraffes, mermaids, mad scientists and secret wax museums, and why it’s totally okay to tear people’s houses down even if they didn’t ask you to.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
At the beginning of act 1, when Amy tells Daniel that it’s impossible for his mother to contact them, you can see past the edge of the set, and somebody walking by. You can see it again, a little later in the scene.
One of the cameras is faulty, making black lines appear on the screen at irregular times, mostly in act 1 and 2. MPI put a warning before this episode on the video, explaining that the problem comes from the original recording.
When Maggie joins Quentin on the balcony, there’s a lot of studio noise — something falls over, a chair scraping on the floor, and shuffling feet.
When Quentin hugs Maggie in the foyer, someone’s shadow crosses behind them.
There’s no glass in the window in Daniel’s room.
When Daniel walks moodily from the window to his desk, there’s a clang from the studio.
Hoffman tells Daniel, “I have a feeling — take my advice, and go and see what this is.”
When Maggie puts down the flowers, there’s a boom mic overhead.
Isn’t the song that Maggie plays called “Ode to Angelique”? It’s not likely she would be fooled into buying and playing the record, if it has Angelique’s name on it.
Behind the Scenes:
Here’s another update on the Parallel Time version of David’s room, aka Daniel’s room now. We can see the right side of the room today, including the dresser, which has the cardboard dog protestor. There are some small and not interesting pictures on the right wall, still no sign of the cat picture. We also see some more shelves, which have the third robot and some more cars. There’s also a new, colorful table lamp. Still missing: the sailboat, the football player, the nutcracker soldier thing, the cat picture, the radiometer and the ruined globe.
Tomorrow: The Cassandra Complex.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
I haven’t yet watched the full Superman video yet and I’ll post a comment later but so far it’s as brilliant as your blog. As a longtime Superman fan I love it. You nail it. As for this DS post I like the idea of a parallel time soap opera. “Strange Shadows” ? How interesting it would have been if the show had simply continued from the 1841 parallel time juncture. At the end of the series they weren’t even saying this was Parallel time anymore. You’ve probably mentioned this before but isn’t it interesting that Collinwood-Prime was never visited by time travelers or counterparts from parallel time. If you’re in parallel time it’s like a one-way mirror. Collinwood-Prime folks can see the parallel time people but not vice-versa. As for time travel one can leave from Collinwood-Prime ..if you live there, You can go backwards, forwards, sideways etc and back again. The only person to be displaced into Collinwood Prime is Phyllis Wick..but she had to switch places with someone to do it …and it wasn’t voluntary. Looking forward to seeing how you piece together more of the PT back story.. I know more info is coming
I like to picture Prime Collinwood characters standing at the doors to the mystery room with popcorn, hoping their new favorite show is playing on the other side.
Isn’t there a scene in which PT characters watch RT characters (Quentin & Julia ?) discussing Barnabas?
Yes, you’re right about that! It doesn’t happen for a while and it’s important, albeit a rare occurrence
Danny, I know you have another life, but it’s too much time between posts! I’m getting sucked into the other ongoing soap opera of our life. The new President. I’m hoping the writers change this story line real fast, or do an alternative parallel story. I digress. I really just want to say that THIS Quentin Collins is the worst# shouty, petulant, angry and I don’t know why Maggie doesn’t just organize a protest against him. He could have been SO much better!
I know, I’m hating my posting schedule too. Sorry. I’m working on it. I need to get back to a daily rhythm, because I only have one more year left — and I’d like to finish it in a year, rather than five years. 🙂 Back to normal soon.
Thanks Danny! Don’t stress too much about it though, LOVE the recaps and dreading when we come to the end. Side note, I LOVED HODS., I vaguely remember seeing it as a kid and being scared out of my mind, but finding it years later was super nostalgic, and the I thought the story was good. Ots interesting they had a Daphne then, before the DS Daphne even existed.
PT Quentin can see RT David and Amy in an episode and PT Angelique will see RT Quentin & Maggie in another.
Really looking forward to the Superman video – thanks for sharing it…
One random thought I had the other night; is there an episode of DS that is essentially blooper-free? I don’t remember seeing one noted on the blog but that doesn’t mean I didn’t miss it. Of course, I rather like the bloopers as it really helps give the show its distinctive charm but figure if a broken clock is right twice a day, DS might be “right” once in its entire run…cheers!
I remember that there was one episode where I was really struggling to find any bloopers… I think I said something about it in the bloopers section on that post, but I don’t remember when it was. Maybe someone else remembers?
The entry for episode 440 has no ‘Bloopers’ mentioned, though the DS Wiki mentions issues with the lighting in the scene where Rev. Trask’s candle mysteriously goes out (the lights dim before the flame is extinguished).
But I do remember that you made mention of trying to find something…and seem to remember it being near the end if the 1795 story line. But I could be mistaken.
And agreed, ALL the episodes have their own particular ‘charm’! N’est-ce pas? Bloopers or no.
Episode 444 also has no mention of mistakes; the DS Wiki also lists none – BUT – 444 prominently features Noah Gifford, so you decide.
If you listen hard over the music playing during the closing credits for episode 473, you can hear a conversation between Dan Curtis and another production member bleeding through, where Curtis is commenting on how there were no bloopers in that episode, and that it was only the second or third time, and finally he decides that it was the third episode to that point, where there had been no bloopers.
I can confirm that one of those other two episodes was 189, toward the tail end of the Laura/Phoenix story.
There are numerous Dark Shadows Wiki episode pages that also list no bloopers, but as you well know, the DS Wiki is still very much a work in progress. 🙂
Whoops! Check that, it was 187, or 188, or both. But certainly one of those. 🙂
So his talk of “no bloopers” over the credits, in essence, gave that episode a blooper (albeit it sounds like a minor one)? Oh, the irony…I’ll have to go back and listen to that…thanks!
Though few and far between, there are actually episodes that are blooper free, and some of these are from the pre-Barnabas era.
Just a random thought: Barnabas chained in his coffin forced to give an interview to Will about the vampire life who wants to write a book…. has Anne Rice ever said she got the idea from Dark Shadows? It’s certainly possible, isn’t it?
Also–Did the idea for PT itself come from Star Trek’s MIRROR MIRROR in 1968? (Someone should have had a beard)
So here’s my interpretation of the relationship between PT Hoffman, and Angelique: Hoffman is gay, and she and Angelique are/have been lovers. When Angelique moved up to the big house on Widow’s Hill, she brought her girlfriend with her. Of course this would have been too transgressive for 1970s daytime TV, but by the way that Grayson and Lara are playing their characters, this is how I see them.
That’s certainly how Judith Anderson played it in Rebecca. And Grayson Hall had played gay before (and very well too, in Night of the Iguana, winning an Oscar nod.)
Daphne du Maurier was bisexual, and a lot of people have written a lot of criticism of REBECCA based on the idea that what drove de Winter to kill his wife was that she was sleeping with women as well as with other men.
I’m skeptical about that interpretation. Maybe du Maurier had planned to put that in the book, but once the story turned out to be about the second Mrs de Winter’s struggle with feelings of inadequacy, the events that actually took place between Rebecca and Maxim during their marriage are relegated to a secondary importance. As for Mrs Danvers, the most important thing about her in the novel is her ambiguity. The second Mrs de Winter is terrified of her, but she would be terrified of anyone. Since she is the narrator, we have no way of knowing what Mrs Danvers is actually thinking or doing.
Of course, Hitchcock and Judith Anderson made Mrs Danvers’ erotic attachment to Rebecca the central theme of the movie. The second Mrs de Winter finds that Maxim has become unavailable to her as soon as they arrived at Manderley. The only powerful emotion she encounters anywhere in her new environment is Mrs Danvers’ passionate attachment to Rebecca. That passion is just one more thing she can’t understand.
Grayson Hall is good as Hoffman, but I wish Clarice Blackburn had played the housekeeper. First, because she joined the cast thinking that Mrs Johnson would be based on Mrs Danvers, so that she had spent a few years preparing for the role. Second, she was in real life partnered with a woman, so it would have been good to see an actual lesbian play a homoerotic-inflected role.
Absolutely. Have a look-see tomorrow at the look on Hoffman’s face when she thinks her Angelique has returned to her. I made a gif of it. Incidentally, does anyone know how to post gifs on here so they actually play and are not just a link? It would be nice to post it here on the relevant episode.
Hoffman looks really rough here. When she becomes Julia again, she puts on more makeup and becomes softer looking.
Great Superman lecture Danny! Very interesting to hear the evolution of the famous concepts that have endured about the Superman Family of characters.
I learned something new too. I had always thought Superman’s ability to fly was introduced in the Max Fleischer cartoons. I’m not as familiar with the Superman Radio show as I would like to be, but I looked it up and the Radio show was on the air for a year and a half before the Fleischer cartoons were produced. I wasn’t aware the Radio version started so soon after the comic.
Thanks for sharing your lecture!
The lecture got super adorable towards the end. And I was so happy learning about the origin of the hilarious labelling thing they use on the Batman TV show. Well I’m now assuming that’s where they got it from.
Hooray, I’m glad you guys liked it. It was really fun to do, I hope I’ll get more opportunities like that in the future.
Me too. Apart from enjoying the lecture itself, it was also great to be able to see someone who was otherwise a disembodied voice, come alive and be a real person. And it’s great that people get to benefit from your ideas and that you get some recognition.
That’s odd. While some people struggle to find what’s wrong with Dark Shadows, I’m only interested in what’s good about it, which is more than enough. I’ll never understand why people who claim to be fans are so determined to find every conceivable flaw.
There’s an old song that says,
“You always hurt
The one you love…”
It is a perversity of human nature to find fault in those things most loved. Yet somehow, still love despite the faults. And which is flawed…Dark Shadows, or those of us who find flaws yet still watch again and again?
Both. And neither.
(Whoa, man, that’s heavy. Can you dig?)
Real things have flaws in them. I love the flaws in people, and I love the flaws in Dark Shadows. And I love the good things about them too.
Ditto.
I think the flaws in Dark Shadows are really interesting, because often they’re a window into how the show was made. When you see the camera pull back too far and show the edge of the set, you can see how small and close together the sets really are. When someone blows a line, you get a sense of how hard and complicated the dialogue is to learn. Lighting problems, logic problems, boom mics and abandoned storylines — they all help me to appreciate how much work it took to make the show as enjoyable as it is.
Really? That’s good to know. It comes across as an unrelenting attack, a determined effort to make Dark Shadows look as bad as it possibly can. I’m constantly wondering “Was this was written by someone who supposedly likes this show?”, but it’s up to us, the readers, to either like it, and keep reading, or to wish for a similar blog that’s not as insulting. It’s not your problem, it’s mine. You’re under no obligation to cater to those us who, for instance, love the dream sequence.
I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t like my blog?
There have been several moments I enjoyed.
Yeah, no. That’s not how this works. You’re doing it wrong.
I think the bloopers put the show in context — it was incredibly ambitious in its direction and effects (as has been commented on the blog), and this was all done without a net.
Not only is this written by someone who enjoys the show, but takes their pants down and rolls around in it! (To use SubGenius terminology…in fact, here’s a bit more: THIS SHOW GIVES ME SLACK!!! IYIYIYIYIYIYIYIY)
Did you listen to the Superman lecture Richard? That puts this stuff even more in context. Thinking about it a little more since listening to it, I can see how the ideas in it can be applied to Dark Shadows more specifically. Like – why Barnabas can’t work as a Nice Guy. Why it Won’t Do to have Barnabas and Julia in all-out war, rather than as allies. Why Barnabas and Angelique can’t reconcile (at least not for any length of time). And, how errors (especially dropped storylines, inconsistencies) can show the scaffolding that the show we love is built on and why it’s so damn great.
Absolutely! I’m actually in awe of how much the show successfully pulls off. I think DS actors/crew/staff, etc. had an almost impossible task and have great respect for the work they did; the breakneck speed, the constantly shifting storylines, the forever changing lines, memorizing pages of dialogue EVERY day…these are true professionals who are a joy to watch…which is why people did/do watch them even now, 50 years later. I’m new to the show and would never spend this much time on something unless I truly enjoyed it, warts and all. In fact, one could argue that in today’s often overly slick and polished media landscape, warts are underrated and sorely missed. I’ve read every one of these blog posts as I’ve gone through the series and never once found them mean-spirited; in fact, they’ve only enriched my growing enjoyment of a show that was already deeply engaging on its own…
The other thing I love about line flubs, is that over time you get a window into how people think. Different actors make different types of flubs, and deal with them differently. It’s so interesting. Modern shows just whitewash the whole process. But in old shows you get to see people flub, then the majority of the time they plough right on, not even batting an eyelid. It’s so impressive. I’ve seen this in another show of the era, Callan (which again, they expected to just toss in the bin once it had been aired). Edward Woodward flubs a line occasionally and nobody even blinks, and he just keeps on going. There were giants on the earth in those days.
About the different styles, for example: Louis Edmonds will forget a word somewhere, but his mind seems to have grasped the sense of what he is supposed to be saying, so you will see him cast around for another way to express the same idea – whereas, Jonathan Frid seemed to need to memorise things word for word (which when you think about it, is totally in keeping with doing Shakespeare and the like, historical stuff, where if you change a word or do anything differently it will ruin the whole thing)…so when he makes an error or forgets a word, he’s up shit creek without a paddle. And I love how, many times, when he starts going south, it’s because he accidentally switches the words around to be in a more Elizabethan grammatical style, then realises the sentence is now going to be broken and he can’t finish it. It’s very cute.
I do not think anyone was paying attention to the stage flaws. Now that you go back and watch again, you can see them. But I didnt care then, dont care now. I just think the characters are interesting now.
You should see me over at Dark Shadows Wiki — I’m the “blooper king” there, at least I like to think so: “Strange visitor from another website, faster than a camera frame, able to hear line flubbings in a single scene: It’s a word, it’s a phrase, it’s… Blooperman!”
Actually, I’ve structured my exercise regimen around Dark Shadows bloopers. I’ll pop a DVD into the computer and get my stretch rope out, then go for a 22-minute workout. Months ago, after having been away from exercise and having been overeating a bit, I couldn’t even hardly manage 3 push-ups. But now, thanks to Dark Shadows Bloopaerobics, this flabby, slightly overweight Dark Shadows fan has been transformed into a lean, mean, blooper-spotting machine! Now, I can do three, four dozen push-ups in a 22-minute workout.
I should put out a Dark Shadows exercise video — but I don’t have to! Because Dan Curtis already did that, more than 50 years ago.
Take that, Richard Simmons – “Sweatin’ to the Old Dark Shadowies” is sure to sweep the nation! In all seriousness, that is a great anecdote and kudos to you…
“There’s no glass in the window in Daniel’s room.”
The window is there…you can see the “stained glass” of the usual window to the side, it has been opened outwards on a hinge.
Although they never explained the lineage of Parallel Time (which I think is a different band of time than the subsequent PT 1841) I always assumed that just as Barnabas made a different choice (not having an affair with Angelique in the 1790s) so did the Quentin of the 1890’s. He stayed married to Jenny and their twins weren’t given up for adoption. And both twins lived. The male had two sons, one of whom was probably the father of Parallel Time Quentin. The other the father of Parallel Time Chris and Amy Collins. Who knows there might be a Tom Jennings running around here too (The grandson of Lenore, the other twin).As for the ages of Quentin and Angelique I just figured these parallel time counterparts were older by a few years.Also I think it’s mentioned later but Tim Stokes isn’t the father of Angelique and Alexis. He’s their stepfather
I’d dare say there was no Quentin of 1897 if Barnabas was never a vampire in 1795. “Hurricane Angelique” pretty much wiped out the family and left no heirs but cousin Daniel, who stayed in Collinsport and started what would become the modern Collins family.
I still think there were two branches of the family. According to Will’s book Barnabas lived but his heirs didn’t stick around. And the original Barnabas stayed on at the “old House” with Josette. So I still think that cousin Daniel wound up as the de-facto head of the house abd became master of Collinwood
Who’s their mother?
maybe they were changelings…
Stokes’ high school sweetheart. Earlier, when Stokes in real and present time is mulling over the choices he might have made he talks about the possibility of having gotten married rather than academic pursuits — but instead, in parallel time he practices the black arts rather than merely studying them.
However, it does beg the question of how Angelique and Quentin, beings from previous centuries, come to be in 1970. But then again, the key to making Dark Shadows work is for the viewer to utilize “suspension of disbelief.” Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to get past the summer of ’66. 🙂
There’s quite a bit more suspension and disbelief yet to come especially when we get to 1840 and all the time anomalies
Laura Stockbridge
Perhaps there WAS a PT Angelique in 1795 and she went “respectable,” or at least pretended to, marrying someone like Nathan Forbes or a wealthy townsman and sticking around, and this Ang. is her descendant or reincarnation or time-traveling version, etc. There could be some good fan fiction story starters here.
OR..the 1795 Angelique’s family never moved to Martinique, she didn’t take up witchcraft and never met Barnabas.
That doesn’t explain 1970 Ang. in Maine.
Descendant of Miranda duVal. She was beheaded for being a witch in the 1690s. Her daughter was raised by a nice teacher named Judah Zachary. Angelique is said to be the spitting image of Miranda and they can prove it. They keep her head in a case.
PS – looks like they merged Matthew Morgan with Stokes in this PT version of Stokes. Could real time Matthew Morgan be a distant Stokes cousin? (via Ben’s daughter?)
Stokes is actually Angelique and Alexis’ step-father.
Oh yes, I forgot about that. OK, so, Angelique’s real father in parallel time is… whoever Nicholas Blair’s father was. So, yes, the devil himself. And why not? Crazy supernatural goings on in parallel time as well, and Angelique’s choices in real time had affected that as well. Yeah, that’s it! 🙂
Whatever the precise lineage of the PT Collins family, i like to think that there’s an Oscar (always being interceded with, he was) among them.
+1
Interesting use of television literacy to backfill the PT history!
I am eager to watch the YouTube lecture.
I can appreciate the references to Erica Kane here. All My Children was my first exposure to the soap opera genre. My mother always watched it, so any time I was home from school sick or sometimes during the summer, I would catch an episode here and there. That said, I’m not much of a soap fan in general, but, well, Dark Shadows is…different. 🙂
Oh now you’ve done done it, Danny – you made me want to watch the PT Dark Shadows!
(Would somebody mind popping across to the universe next door and picking up a boxed set for me? Thanks! )
This script is credited to Gordon Russell, but there is the scene where Hoffman begins apologizing to Maggie and segues into praising Angelique, and Maggie says “You’re the only person I’ve ever met who can turn an apology into a testimonial.” It sounds like Russell’s friend Violet Welles, who is soon to leave the show altogether.
Has anyone else noticed the vocal tics some of the actors have? Alexandra Moltke has her unique pronunciation of Zjosette. Dennis Patrick liked to begin nearly every line with the word “Well”. (This was apparently infectious as other actors also picked up the habit.) And Katherine Leigh Scott started off many of her speeches with a laugh… especially in the early years.
I noticed Selby started with “now” a lot.
Thank you, Danny. I had planned on checking the birth dates of Selby and Henesy, but you saved me the trouble. Quentin does seem young to have a teenage son.
I’m usually blissfully unaware of the glimpses of the edge of the set, microphone shadows, and off-screen shuffling noises until I see them enumerated here. The verbal bloopers are much more noticeable, of course. And speaking of vocal tics, Frid will often insert a “…well…” into the middle of a line when he’s trying to recover from a misstep.
I thought I would like PT Julia but, no. She’s as irritating as regular Julia. Wishing that Angelique would just quit being dead but not just that – making it out to be like a choice Angelique had made! It’s irritating.
However, maybe she knows something by more than I know as it seems Angelique has come back! However, Hoffman is still irritating.
This same evening ABC aired Bewitched episode #198: “Mona Sammy” where Endora gifts Samantha with a painting of her Great Aunt Cornelia who happens to look just like Samantha, painted by Leonardo DaVinci in the style of Mona Lisa. This then prompts Louise Tate to ask who did it and Endora changes the signature to Darrin’s making Louise request a portrait be done of herself.