“There is a evil here!”
It started with radio, of course, this war of the words, with Painted Dreams and Just Plain Bill and The Romance of Helen Trent. All those listening women needed something to listen to, and radio soaps offered fifteen minutes of pure uncut conversation. But there comes a time when even soap opera characters need to admit that they don’t know what they’re talking about, and pipe the hell down.
Take the parallel Sabrina Stuart, spouting nonsense at one of those pop-up seances which they construct on the fly in high-traffic areas on the Collinwood estate. “She’s dying, she’s dying!” Sabrina cried, pointing at someone who wasn’t dying. “Murder! Murder! MURD-ERRRR!” It wasn’t clear whether she was pro or con. It probably doesn’t matter, one way or the other.
“What did I say? What did I say?” Sabrina asks, relaxing in the green room after her performance. She’s finally thinking things through, an episode too late.
Quentin Collins, parallel pop star and master of the house, throws open the door. “You had to go through with it, didn’t you?” he spits. “Angelique was not murdered!”
“Is that what I said?” says Sabrina. “What did I mean?” This cycle of “what did I say” and “what did I mean” threatens to go on indefinitely. Soap opera characters need to take more personal responsibility.
But Sabrina refuses to learn from experience. “It’s true,” she breathes. “I remember. It’s true. The voices told me — Angelique was murdered. Murdered!”
She’s doing a lot of dramatic clarification, where you repeat the thing that you just said but with increasing intensity. People who do this are especially susceptible to things that voices tell them.
Once Quentin clears the shot, Sabrina and her fiancee Cyrus discuss their relationship difficulties, which is the other prime directive for soap opera characters.
“You were always so fascinated with Angelique,” Sabrina shouts. “You were! It was she who taught you about seances, about other things!” She’s wholeheartedly committed to adding worthless clauses. “She was so beautiful, so alive! You were attracted to her curiosity about everything! But you also knew that she was cruel, and demanding!”
Cyrus isn’t sure how to respond to an accusation that Angelique taught him about other things. He stammers, and blinks his blinky little eyes.
“Cyrus, just how close were you to Angelique?” Sabrina continues. “You see, you don’t want to answer that, do you? Did you kill her, Cyrus?” Angelique died of a stroke.
“No!” Cyrus shouts. “Sabrina, how can you think such a thing?”
“I was suddenly afraid,” she says. Honestly, soap characters.
But Cyrus is a Jekyll, the kind of guy who tries to catch honesty in a test tube. He’s been mixing up some abstract concepts in his basement murder lab, trying to synthesize some small-batch philosophy. Nobody asked you to distill hope, Jekyll. We already have hope, and we’ve had it for a while.
“Sabrina, you said yesterday that you loved me because I was a gentle man,” he cries. “If you said that yesterday, you can’t believe what you’re saying now!”
“I do,” she says, meaning she doesn’t. “But sometimes you’re so fascinated with evil!”
“I loathe evil!” he announces. “You know that! I’d do anything in the world to get rid of it!”
“You are attracted to it!” she hollers, parking herself a centimeter away from his eardrum. “You’re fascinated with it! That’s why you loathe it so much!” Jekylls get into this kind of conversation all the time.
Things calm down over the commercial break, and Cyrus changes the subject to something which is essentially the same subject. Sabrina came to Collinwood this evening to insist that everyone re-enact a seance from six months ago because she was traumatized by a home invasion, which is a reasonable thing to be shook up by but doesn’t really excuse the rest of it.
“Sabrina,” he says, “how did you feel, when that figure broke into your room?”
“I was terrified!” she cries. “There was such a feeling of evil about him! It was as if I were paralyzed!” She doesn’t say “Paralyzed by evil!” but you can tell that she wants to.
So now we know two things that you can be, in relationship to evil. You can be fascinated with it, or paralyzed by it. They talk a lot about evil today, to no real effect.
“Why did he come to my room?” she wants to know.
Cyrus turns away. “Just don’t… don’t think about it.”
“But you asked me, Cyrus!” she points out, scoring her first point for the day.
“I know, I know. I just… I just hate talking about it!” This conversation goes on for approximately ever.
After a while — let’s say an eon or two — they end up reviewing their relationship status.
“We’re still engaged?” she asks, putting her hand on his arm. He doesn’t answer, so she shakes his arm a bit to remind him that it’s his turn to talk.
“I’m going to find that ring,” he says. “I’m going to find it, I know it!” It’s in his pocket.
“Even without the ring, Cyrus, look at me,” she insists. “Does it make a difference, what’s happened tonight?” He doesn’t answer. “Does it make a difference, Cyrus?” This is a question that maybe Sabrina shouldn’t ask. The answer is yes. It makes a difference.
“I’m your fiancee,” she reminds him, “who goes into shock, and behaves most strange.”
“Your mind went from evil to evil,” he says. He said that in the last episode, too. It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now. What is he talking about?
But Dark Shadows is fascinated with, and paralyzed by, the concept of evil. As a 24/7 monster movie, it should have a pretty good definition of what evil is by now, but the show has an underdeveloped moral sensibility. They treat evil like it’s a communicable disease that’s impossible to treat, and either somebody has it or they don’t.
Evil is a presence and a punishment, divorced from any relationship with actions or intentions. For example, Sabrina is pretending that she’s sorry that she invited herself over and forced everyone to undergo a mandatory late-night party game that’s brought a solid fraction of the cast to the brink of despair, but that’s for show. She isn’t a bit sorry, really.
“What have I started, Cyrus?” she moans, because everything is always about her.
“You haven’t started anything,” he says. “It started long ago, in that first seance.”
“But it would have never come up!”
“It would have come up,” he reassures her. “Someplace, sometime.” Citation needed.
“Let’s get out of here,” she decides. “Cyrus, let’s get out of here, out of this house, and never come back!”
Then she clutches her coat, and shudders.
“There is a evil here!” she announces. “I can feel it still! There is a terrifying evil here!”
So, fine. Out of here, out of this house, and never come back. Good plan. Nobody asked you to come over in the first place.
Tomorrow: Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
When Alexis runs up the stairs after Daniel, the boom mic appears in the top left.
Halfway through his description of last night’s disturbance, the bartender completely dries up and has to check the prompter during a close-up.
When Angelique appears to Daniel in his dream, she looks towards the studio for her cue. She does it again a few seconds later, when she’s beckoning him.
Behind the Scenes:
They use “The Eagle” as the name for the bar in Parallel Time, rather than the Blue Whale. The tavern in 1795 where Barnabas threatened Nathan was also called the Eagle.
Ken McMillan plays the Eagle bartender today. McMillan first appeared on Dark Shadows in December 1969, playing Jack Long, the haunted sailor who gave Paul Stoddard some information about the Leviathans. Those are his only two episodes on the show.
My favorite prop, the Ralston-Purina lamp, has made the jump to Parallel Time. It appears in the study today, witnessing all of the crazy Cyrus and Sabrina talk. We last saw the lamp a month ago, at Bruno’s place, when Nicholas got killed. We’ll see it again in a couple days.
Tomorrow: Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
Maybe Sabrina’s wig is too tight. That’s a wig, right??
That fucking wig. They got it right when Sabrina is first introduced as a lab assistant being pawed by Bruno–it was still obviously a wig but a cute little cross between a pixie and a Prince Valiant cut–but then they switched her back to this hideous “Middle aged DAR Lifetime member” thing she had to wear in Collinwood Prime. They switched back again briefly but then back to that other one.
And I like Sabrina! I like that they gave her something at least a little different to do and that she isn’t afraid to confront Cyrus when he’s being weasely about how weird she knows she’s acting. But that damn wig! It ages her twenty years and looks just awful! How bad could her real hair be????
Whenever I see that a bar or tavern is called the Eagle, I can’t help thinking that it’s a leather bar. I doubt Collinsport has any sort of active gay community, despite having had a fabulous antiques shop for a while before those demons from beyond the dawn of time did their hostile takeover. Where do the poor gays and lesbians of this little hamlet go, then? To Bangor? There’s f**k-all to do in Bangor.
And yes, Sabrina is a drip, no matter what universe she’s in. Or maybe the actress is. I don’t know. I just wish she’d move to Bangor already and leave the rest of us alone.
(I replied to the wrong comment initially – sorry about that)
Me, too, Tony Whitt – “The Eagle” is forever “that” bar I longed to visit in my closeted youth and eventually did. I like to think the gays in Collinsport are simply with all the black people of Collinsport at the best house party ever while throwing shade about those “crazy white folks” on the hill. Maybe there is even a Drag Ball going on with calls of “Vampire Realness!” and “Werewolves to the floor!” ringing through the crisp night air…
Zombie hands up in the air
Like you just don’t care…
I know i’m doing to this from way, way in the future, and I doubt anyone is still reading this, but the writers, at least Joe Caldwell, most certainly knew what they were doing when they named the two bars the Eagle (very notorious leather bar in NYC then and, less so, now) and the Blue Whale, then as now the main restaurant/bar of Fire Island Pines. Wink wink. Oh, and btw, Joel Crothers was a regular at the Eagle. Don’t ask me how i know
I know i’m doing to this from way, way in the future, and I doubt anyone is still reading this, but the writers, at least Joe Caldwell, most certainly knew what they were doing when they named the two bars the Eagle (very notorious leather bar in NYC then and, less so, now) and the Blue Whale, then as now the main restaurant/bar of Fire Island Pines. Wink wink. Oh, and btw, Joel Crothers was a regular at the Eagle. Don’t ask me how i know
According to the Big Finish DS audioplays, Collinsport definitely has an active gay community. In related news, Big Finish has an active gay community.
Yes – that always did make meeting some of them at conventions more exciting than usual. 🙂
It’s too bad that Dark Shadows, already being ahead of its time or at least an outlier for daytime dramas, couldn’t be a ground-breaker with an openly gay character. And Louis Edmonds, being an out actor, could have done it. Roger Collins would have made the most sense to me. I can just see him starting his own club in Collinsport “The Jolly Roger”
Ha Ha. Eagle = Leather in most cities.
Absolutely the first place my mind goes too, mainly because there is a gay bar called The Eagle in my town.
Don’t forget that Sabrina and Ned Stuart just might be the descendants of Vicki and Peter (don’t even ask me how that might work in PT); that explains a lot, wouldn’t you say? 🙂
And yeah, Slocum, that is SOME WIG isn’t it!? Yikes!
Yeager’s wig is the worst – it looks like Brylcreemed road kill. I don’t even want tospeculate on where they found that mustache.
At least they stopped using the fake silly putty nose
If memory serves, Count Petofi had the worst wig.
Maybe PT Sabrina (and Ned if he exists in PT) is the descdenant of Peter Bradford and Danielle Roget
It also looks like Cyrus combed his hair with a rock…
Bwaa-haa!
You beat me to it.
But I do get to mention that oh-so-attractive expanse of forehead revealed by Cyrus’ hairdo. Just so that we’re all SURE he’s a mad scientist…because ain’t no crazy like bad hair crazy. 🙂
Cyrus’s hair reminds me of Gene Wilder’s in Young Frankenstein.
Peter and Vicky aren’t Ned and Sabrina’s only incestors, if you know what I mean.
Ah, yes: the Incestors. Luke & Leia and Cersei & Jaime ain’t got nothin’ on Nedrina in the “Twincest for the Wincest” stakes.
Yeesh.
Cyrus and Sabrina’s conversation about evil makes perfect sense to me. It’s one of the reasons I don’t always draw the big difference between “hard-headed realists” and “ostriches with their heads in the ground” that you’re expected to draw between them (sometimes but not always) – because it’s easy to “face” a bad thing if you’re FASCINATED by it, and it’s easy to “hide from” a bad thing if you AREN’T fascinated by it.
Yes, me, too. It’s why you don’t tempt the Devil by paying him too much attention. He doesn’t come as a fire-breathing demon, but as a beautiful seducer, telling you how smart you are and offering you your heart’s desire.
I agree–paralysis and fascination are really two sides of the same coin–the basic “hypnotized by a cobra” thing.
Cyrus postures that he’s trying to eliminate the “evil” side of Man’s Nature, but as Danny points out, this experiment is doing the exact, precise opposite of that! Jaeger has completely taken over and it’s not like Cyrus spends his “me” time angelically doing good deeds–he spends all his time obsessing over the same experiment! This whole “get rid of evil” thing is not his goal, it’s simply his cover story.
“She’s doing a lot of dramatic clarification, where you repeat the thing that you just said but with increasing intensity.”
They do that in Gilbert and Sullivan, too, and when they run out of breath the chorus takes over. I tell you, Cyrus and Sabrina are Frederick and Mabel just waiting for the Pirate King to show up with his sisters and his cousins and his aunts.
I’m going to be sensible again, and ask:
The séance puts Sabrina in touch with the Great Beyond (though sadly does NOT transport her to 1795 PT) –
She’s used as the conduit to give the information that Angelique was (DUN DUN DAAAAH!) MURDERED –
so why the heck don’t the spirits give out with the name of the MURDERER? Would it really be too much to ask? Just, while they’re preempting Sabrina’s psyche, have her point and start shrieking, “Murderer! Murderer! MURR-DURR-URR!” It wouldn’t even be that hard to mention the murder weapon while they’re at it…guess they don’t have all the CLUE cards yet. Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the candlestick.
Miss Withers: “Murderpoo?”
Jessica Marbles: “Yes, dear, we’re going to have a lovely murderpoo!”
from Murder By Death
I get the idea that it’s very difficult both to send and receive messages via seance. You’re probably lucky to get the few words we do.
I think Danny pointed that out earlier in this blog.
It’s beyond annoying, and I would like SOMEBODY to explain why the hell that first seance was held at all! (Even later when Damien shows up, they still don’t go into it.)
OK, I’ll ask the burning question that everyone else seems to be avoiding: Does Sabrina really say “a evil” rather than “an evil”? If so, wouldn’t that qualify as a genuine blooper? Or are certain traditional rules of the English language different in this parallel time band? That’s a distinct possibility, you know.
Yes, she really DOES say “a evil”…
‘A evil’ is even more evil than just ‘an evil’. Harder to say, too – which proves just HOW evil ‘a evil’ is.
LOVE that one screenshot of Cyrus looking at the camera. His expression screams “Can you believe this chick?”
If you are looking for a more compelling tajke on Cyrus and Sabrina, look into the Big Finish audiodrama The Enemy Within. It takes the basic concept of Cyrus/John, puts it in the context of the main timeline, and makes both characters sympathetic and tragic. And if that’s not enough of a hook for you, the John personality is the antichrist, the son of the Dark Lord himself.
I dunno, I think watching the events in PT with a bucket of popcorn could be fun.
Sabrina was at her best as the gray-haired trauma victim. She’s a background kind of character and just can’t hold up a big part of the main storyline.
And the wig.
Okay, one more dig at the wig – couldn’t they have given Sabrina a PT hairdo? She has to keep the same one she has in the main timeband. Why not a blonde, or a redhead (to match Cyrus)? Or something in an updo, like so many other Parallel pretties are sporting? Makes me wonder what Lisa Richards’ real hair looked like.
In the first weeks of the Leviathan story, Paul Stoddard has three experiences at the Blue Whale. Jack Long, “the haunted sailor,” offers to buy him a drink, and he nearly punches the guy. Whether or not Collinsport has an “active gay community,” the only way to read that scene is that Paul thinks Jack is trying to pick him up and he’s responding with a violent display of homophobia.
And remember the episode where Barnabas summons him with a finger-curl, and Paul struggles with himself but can’t resist going to his table. Not only is that hard to see as anything other than a reference to a closeted man conflicted in his response to a same-sex overture, it leads to Paul’s recollection of his meeting with Mr Strak in the same bar. That’s another classic tale of the closet, a chance encounter with a stranger that seemed so trivial at the time but that comes back to estrange him from his daughter, wreck his position in the community, and lead to a series of events ending with his death.
“Angelique died of a stroke.”
Yeah, and Dave Woodard died of a heart attack. The prime example of the show’s “underdeveloped moral sensibility.”
“’Your mind went from evil to evil,’ he says. He said that in the last episode, too. It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now. What is he talking about?”
He simply means that her mind went from evil to evil like a salesman goes from house to house; from door to door. Her mind was like a young gazelle upon the mountains of evils.
I can’t with all the horrible hair going on in this episode! I’m shocked that Bruno wasn’t in this one as it was Bad Hair-apalooza all around.
What’s going on with the men’s clothes? Ohrbach’s are you listening? Every last jacket doesn’t fit right; there are puckers and wrinkles everywhere. It’s like, as a joke, everyone is wearing someone else’s costume. It’s making me miss Carolyn and Maggie’s well tailored outfits.
I have to agree the Sabrina wig is just awful. I thought Sabrina looked very pretty, in what I assume is her natural long brown hair, in the flashback where she witnesses Chris’ transformation to the werewolf. What in the world could have happened to her hair to cover it with that awful wig ? Maybe apolecia ?