“How I wish I could confess to you what you’re implying.”
The scary thing — and this is a show about spooks and monsters, so presumably we’re interested in the subject — the really scary thing, if it’s June 1970 and you’re a thrill-seeking housewife and/or teenager, is that they’ll decide to stay in Parallel Time forever, and this is what the show is like now.
Part 1: I Just Don’t Understand It
One of the most bothersome and kind of amazing things about the Dark Shadows storyline as it stands is that Quentin Collins, the presumed romantic hero and cornerstone of the main love triangle, is an enormous dick.
I don’t mean that he has an enormous dick, which maybe he does, I mean that he is an enormous dick. I wish I didn’t have to resort to language, but what else can you say about this guy?
For example: he walks into his bedroom and finds his pretty young wife hanging up the phone. So he stands stock still in the middle of the room, hits her with a penetrating glare, and shouts, “Maggie! Who were you talking to?” at a pitch that’s appropriate for a middle-school teacher catching some seventh-graders smoking behind the gym. And when she doesn’t instantly start testifying, he yells, “Maggie, what’s wrong? I asked you who you were talking to!” All she was doing was talking on the phone. I’m pretty sure women were allowed to make their own phone calls in 1970.
Once they get past the telecommunications issue, Maggie offers an item of local interest — her hairbrush and mirror are missing from the dresser, where she left them.
“I’m sure you’ve just misplaced them,” says the loving husband. She says that the housekeeper hasn’t seen them, and she’s looked everywhere. “I just don’t understand it!” she continues, and suddenly there’s another issue.
“Maggie, I hate that phrase!” he barks. “Everyone who mentions it automatically begins to start talking about the supernatural.”
This is mostly his fault, and oh my god, why are we policing the phrase “I just don’t understand it”? Are there any other common English sentences that are currently out of favor with top brass?
Part 2: Build That Wall
Meanwhile, downstairs and on another planet: dueling impostors.
Angelique: Well, have you come to see me, Mr. Collins?
Barnabas: No, actually, I came to talk to Quentin.
Angelique: Oh? And do you plan to tell him that I am Angelique, returned from the dead?
Barnabas: You’ve already pointed out the danger of that.
Angelique: I just wondered how carefully you listened.
Barnabas: I always listen to an enemy.
So that’s what we’re doing now, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for the criminally insane. It’s fantastic. This should be the entire show, and maybe someday it will be.
But Angelique turns to another topic.
Angelique: You know, I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately on a very fascinating subject.
Barnabas: Oh?
Angelique: Parallel Time. Does that phrase mean anything to you?
Barnabas: Should it?
Angelique: Perhaps. The theory is that there are other bands of time besides our own, and that we live in them also. Also, that there are even places where one can move from one band of time to another.
Barnabas: That hardly seems possible!
Angelique: Even to you?
Barnabas: How I wish I could confess to you what you’re implying, Miss Stokes, but I am not a visitor from another time.
Now, the interesting thing about accusing someone of being from another band of time is: where do you go from here? Let’s say you expose them. What then? I suppose you could call Immigration and try to have them deported, but it’s a long shot at best.
Part 3: I Still Don’t Understand Some of It
And then Quentin enters, and says, “Barnabas! How pleasant,” which is a hell of a way to walk into a room.
I have to admit that Shouty Parallel Quentin is growing on me, because he seems determined to say the wrong thing on every occasion. While Barnabas and Angelique are being terribly polite about their mutual predation, Quentin wants to turn every conversation into armed conflict.
I mean, imagine this storyline with Quentin and Maggie actually being nice to each other, it would be intolerable. What would anybody have to talk about? So he conducts himself like a refugee from Monty Python’s argument clinic, just saying the opposite of anything anyone says. He contradicts himself sometimes, because he changes his stance based on whoever’s talking to him, so that he can disagree with them. This even happens within a single conversation.
First, Barnabas says that he’s concerned about what’s been happening lately, and Quentin says, “You’re not the only one, Barnabas,” which is just his way of clearing his throat.
Then Barnabas says that Quentin should take Maggie away, and Quentin says, “That’s being a little melodramatic, don’t you think?”
Barnabas digs in for the inevitable fight. “I think not!” he says, opting for the five-minute argument rather than the course of ten. “What happened here the other night is not to be discounted! I know you doubt that the picture spoke to her.”
Now, Barnabas tried to take the wind out of Quentin’s sails with that line, because what’s Quentin going to do, deny doubting something? So Quentin changes course, and snaps, “Barnabas, how did you know that?” This helps him set up a whole new series of arguments to come. Parallel Quentin is amazing at this.
Outflanked, Barnabas tries another approach. “Quentin,” he announces, “there is a spirit here that means to harm your wife!”
“Yes, a spirit!” Quentin smirks. “A vengeful spirit!” No idea why he’s smirking. Apparently, Quentin doesn’t believe in the supernatural today.
Except that he does. “Barnabas,” he says, “I have a feeling that Maggie herself is responsible for what’s happening around here.” This quick-turn is referring to a baffling plot thread from last week about Quentin suspecting Maggie of being an undercover voodoo princess assassin.
“I haven’t told that to anyone,” Quentin says, “and I probably shouldn’t tell you,” because now he’s even arguing with himself in the middle of a sentence. “But I would be lying if I didn’t admit it. None of these occurrences took place until Maggie got here!” This is not the case.
Barnabas says, “Quentin, you don’t believe that!” and Quentin says, “I don’t know what I believe!” So where does that leave us?
And then Angelique comes in, and says that all she wants is for Quentin and Maggie to be happy. “There, there,” he says, “it’s going to be all right. We all want the best for each of us.” What?
Part 4: And Then the Underwear
Then there’s a thirty-second scene in which the villainous John Yaeger — another spirit bent on wife-harming — breaks into Maggie’s bedroom and steals some of her clothes, so that he can set up house in the basement dungeon he’s constructed for her imminent abduction. Opening a suitcase on the bed, he goes to the dresser, pulls out a bra and panties, and rubs them on his face.
This is a thing now. Christopher Pennock has made the explicit acting choice that his character demonstrates his twisted affection for Maggie by rubbing her clothes on his face. This is going to come up again.
Part 5: The World’s Noisiest Goldfish
Okay, back to the drawing room, where Maggie tells her husband that she’s going into town. “Not before we have a little talk, my dear!” he barks. Everybody in this storyline is desperately in love with him.
He wants a report on why she told Barnabas about hearing Angelique’s voice. Her answer is “Because he was here,” which admittedly is not a well thought-out response.
“Elizabeth found me in the room, and I was very upset!” she explains, and Quentin shouts, “But Elizabeth did not hear the voice!”
“Quentin, you still don’t believe that anything happened!” she cries. “You still think it was my imagination!”
Quentin sidesteps. “I just don’t think you should confide something to a total stranger!”
“I wouldn’t call Barnabas Collins that!”
“And even if it did happen,” he yells, “I don’t want everybody to know about it!” Now he’s just picking fights out of the air.
“Maggie, I don’t want to fight about this again!” he declares, and then he storms out of the room ten seconds later.
Part 6: Misalliance
The dramatics continue upstairs, too. Angelique walks into somebody else’s bedroom for no particular reason, and finds Yaeger packing for Maggie’s compulsory sleepaway camp.
“Who are you?” she asks, and then it dawns on her. “No, you don’t have to tell me, I know! You’re John Yaeger!” Excited, she closes the door and locks it behind her, to make sure that the dangerous psychopath can’t get away before she’s done with him.
They go on to have the most intense conversation they can make up on the spot.
Yaeger: How do you know who I am?
Angelique: I collect information. I know about you and Mrs. Collins. She… confides in me.
Yaeger: That isn’t very wise of her, is it?
Angelique: No, no. You and I can be friends, John Yaeger.
Yaeger: Oh? You make up your mind even quicker than I do.
Angelique: I have the ability to recognize evil.
Yaeger: And deal with it?
Angelique: I’m not afraid of it. Now, either Mrs. Collins knows that you’re here —
Yaeger: No.
Angelique: — or you have a plan, and I want to know what it is!
Yaeger: Do you value your life?
Angelique: I’m not afraid of dying. Now, tell me your plan — and tell it to me now, before someone else comes in here!
Then I guess she helps him pack, offering helpful suggestions about Maggie’s future prison attire. So that makes two spirits who mean to harm Maggie, three if you count Barnabas. Quentin isn’t doing her any favors, either.
Part 7: Again with the Face
And then John Yaeger brings his ill-gotten wardrobe back to the dungeon, where he picks up a string of beads, and rubs them on his face. The end.
Tomorrow: A Room of One’s Own.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
Maggie tells Quentin that “Daniel and Julia” haven’t seen her hairbrush; she should have said “Hoffman”.
Quentin tells Maggie, “I hate that phrase! Everyone who mentions it automatically begins to start talking about the supernatural.”
At the end of Quentin and Maggie’s first scene, there’s an offscreen scraping sound.
Angelique tells Barnabas, “The east wing seems to be one of these bands — one of these places where one can move back and forth.”
Angelique tells Quentin, “I still have some letters to write. I’ll catch on them now.”
Barnabas tells Quentin, “I know you doubt that the po– that the picture spoke to her.”
Angelique tells Quentin, “I just heard you talking to Barnabas, and I’m sure his — I’m sure he means me.”
Maggie’s screams and Yaeger’s laughter can be heard at the beginning of the following scene; then someone coughs from the smoke machine.
Behind the Scenes:
The stairs leading down to Maggie’s cell are very recognizable as the stairs in the antiques shop, from the Leviathan story.
Tomorrow: A Room of One’s Own.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
“The scary thing — and this is a show about spooks and monsters, so presumably we’re interested in the subject — the really scary thing…this is what the show is like now.” That was the problem (or challenge) with Dark Shadows from the beginning. We wanted to be scared, and were given unfocused dialogues that continued like an example of purgatory. Just having the overall theme of a house/family that was cursed and how they dealt with that would helped. Using ideas of parallel time, etc. could have been meaningful, but the focus was lost.
That loss of focus was a product of the constant changes based on viewer feedback. Yes, the writers could move in directions that were popular with the audience, but the storylines became insupportable as they tried to please everyone (which, as generally happens, ends by pleasing no one).
Foreshadowing of focus groups? One of the things I liked about The Edge of Night was that the head writer, Henry Slesar, plotted out the mystery-suspense stories for the show very carefully and didn’t get heavily influenced by focus groups. He told good stories and was – for a long time – allowed to do so.
But doesn’t it seem that Dark Shadows, especially by 1970, is less about story because it is less of a traditional soap opera? It’s more like a serialized horror movie, where special effects, thrills and spills, and star actors are the order of the day. DS seems less about plot and more about the characters, in terms of the actors who play the roles. After all, the writing department doesn’t sell the merchandising, and people didn’t make Quentin’s theme a hit because Bob Cobert wrote it. At the end of the day, and the beginning of each new story, there’s that “wall count” to consider most of all — it’s the main thing that keeps the show on the air. 🙂
Yes. It’s no longer a soap, and when it soaps it doesn’t do it right by this point.
The scene in Yaeger’s dungeon when the “hapless landlord” slowly realizes something is wrong definitely felt like a horror movie
Maxim deWinter was certainly shouty and abrupt and difficult, but he still treated his nameless second wife a lot better than Quentin treats Maggie.
The problem with Quentin isn’t that the character mistreats Maggie. It’s that his reasons wouldn’t make sense if he was supposed to be more balanced than a psychopath. “Shouty, abrupt and difficult” could be written into a character’s personality, but Quentin’s personality doesn’t go anywhere. Which is a shame because i like him 🙂
I really think Selby and KLS had some romantic potential, too. It’s a shame he chose not to nuance his performance with a little less shouting and a lot more conflicted emotion. If we could have believed that he loved Maggie, then we could have given a rat’s rump about that story line. As it was though, I just wanted Maggie to run straight over to Tony Peterson’s PT quickie divorce office and get herself free.
Ooh, the spinoff we never knew we wanted: Parallel Peterson, P.I.
Parallel Peterson’s “Land o’ Law” office, located at the Collinwood strip mall – right next door to the Laundromat. Just like William Devane’s office in that classic film, White Trash.
PT Tony might actually be capable of fleecing the Collinses the way Real Time Tony never would.
The major weakness in the Parallel Collins business machine (ParaColCo, Ltd.) turns out to be its reliance on disposable attorneys.
Do you suppose he has a fiecely loyal, wisecracking secretary by the name of Sarah Johnson?
Regular Sarah Johnson serves up hard, boiled dinners, but Sarallel Johnson serves up hard-boiled dialogue.
And we know Maggie CAN leave, because we saw her do it! She has family in New York, she has access to money; she’s not trapped. Every now and then she insists she isn’t going to leave because she won’t let Angelique win, but it’s usually when she’s about to jump out a window, so we can’t buy it.
Oh.
My.
God.
I was joking about rubbing the dainties on the face, really I was! I had NO IDEA this would actually happen! Ohrbachs should have raised some objections about that scene (and also about how often their name is being misspelled in the credits). And this stuff is on afternoon television, for Pete’s sake. (Barry McGuire’s right – we’re on the eve of destruction…)
If Yeager straps a bra on his head, I will not even be able to deal. Honestly.
I’d like someone to ask Chris Pennock if he was directed to do that or if he just ad libbed it.
I’ll make a guess he just extrapolated from the earlier “gloves” bit.
And raised the “super creepy” bar for us all.
I wonder how risqué Yaeger doing that was at the time?
It’s a safe bet it was more risqué then than it would be now.
Not risque–creepy then and creepy now. I’m pretty sure that these days any man who walked into a Victoria’s Secret and started fondling the merchandise, would find himself in the company of a mall cop in short order.
It’s still better than him rubbing his hard on on her coat while thrusting his tongue directly at the camera, but not a lot better.
I will say that Pennock just super-commits to the gross that is Yaeger; way more than Jeb Hawkes, who was all over the place, his version of Cyrus Id is very focused on “let’s assault women in a really slimy, yucky manner.”
The one saving grace about Pennock’s portrayal of Yeager is that he isn’t Roger Davis.
That’s quite a funny thing about Cyrus/Yaeger and the underwear, but if anyone’s gonna go there on this show, it would have to be someone with a split personality disorder. They could have adapted a Beatles song for this: Here, There and Underwear.
Linger in her Lingerie…
Boy, you been a naughty girl
you let your knickers down.
“So he conducts himself like a refugee from Monty Python’s argument clinic, just saying the opposite of anything anyone says.”
That’s practically a chapter in The Writer’s Handbook: “When All Else Fails, Start An Argument.”
It creates a conflict, which is as close as you can get to Drama if you don’t know what the hell you want to do. They’ve got all the ‘Rebecca’ attitudes without any of the forward motion that story had. All we get is barking and sniveling.
Takes me back to high school French class. We’d have to write and perform skits with a certain number of lines, and if we ran out of ideas we’d just have one character pick a fight with another, which was good for a few lines of:
“Dindon!”
“Bête!”
“Stupide!”
“Crétin!”
“Quoi?”
“J’ai dit, crétin!”
I’m sure the teacher saw right through us.
Did anyone notice the sound effect blooper when Yaeger was opening Maggie’s bedroom door (around the 10 minute mark)? I had to laugh. He was trying to quietly open her bedroom door to sneak inside to gather more of her belongings to take to the farmhouse. Instead, we hear the familiar squeaky hinges of the door to the Collins’ family mausoleum.
This happened in the previous episode, too.
I think I can see where PT Quentin fits into the ecology of Quentins. Quentins are a charming, handsome folk, but selfish, cruel, and above all, averse to responsibility. Had we seen PT Quentin and PT Maggie’s courtship, we likely would have seen her discounting his less attractive qualities. She might tell herself that his childish moments are just a sign that he’s on a long vacation, a vacation he needed to recover from the loss of his beloved wife, and that he will become a mature, reliable partner once he gets back to running his big house and his substantial business.
But of course a Quentin isn’t going to be a mature, reliable partner; he’s a perpetual bratty little brother, sorely in need of a bossy big sister to contain the danger he represents to all in his orbit. None of the prospective bossy big sisters is on the job at PT Collinwood. The original bossy big sister, Liz, is represented in this continuity by someone of whom it can be said “Chance and Mrs Stoddard are identical twins.” The grand champion bossy big sister, Julia, is in the enemy camp. The cadet bossy big sister, Carolyn, is isolated in a substream of the Barnabas story and can be seen at the big house only when we’re in suspense about Barnabas’ exposure. And Angelique, as the ultimate stalker, has no desire to alternate between curtailing Quentin’s misconduct and enabling it, as Liz does for Roger, as Julia does for Barnabas, as Carolyn occasionally does for David, and as Beth would have done for Quentin if she’d been played by an abler actress.
So PT Quentin is a point on the continuum between the charming rascal we saw in 1897 and the utterly destructive ghost we met in The Haunting of Collinwood. The segment not only barrels past the courtship of Maggie and Quentin, but skips a whole lot of necessary character development. Had they gone into all the points they should have, though, I think PT Quentin would fill in that space that leaves so many viewers scratching their heads at the end of the 1897 segment.
I’ve got a certain sympathy for Selby because it’s not all his fault. The writers have given him a lousy character to work with and I suspect that the directors (or even Dan) are the ones insisting he hit every line with a sledgehammer. They’re trying to out-de Winter Max de Winter and it’s not working.
Lara Parker looks VERY fetching in that burgundy print dress. And her hemlines are starting to creep up into KLS territory, which we should all applaud.
And that brings us to John Yaeger. Pennock is obviously having a blast with this storyline. As great as the underwear scene was, even better was the earlier scene of him kissing and licking the hairbrush. Much of this probably went straight over the heads of the viewers in 1970 but 50+ years on it’s hilarious.
“Have I told you about my sword cane, Dr. Freud? It enters the body soooo easily…”
Angelique saying she is not afraid of dying made me laugh. She’ll always be back! Ta-dah!
And now Yaeger is holding Maggie hostage. Just as Barnabas did. So again the writers are repeating a part of the early Barnabas plot. Is it because they have HoDS on their minds? Or is it just Dan trying to redo Barnabas’s story yet again the way he originally wanted?
I counted and Maggie has been held hostage at least three times, four if you count her stay in Wyndcliff. And there’s no RT Julia to hypno-wipe her this go-round.
Man, the fireplace jets are loud in this episode.