“I dream about her only because I hate her!”
Cockney mentalist Leticia Faye dashes into the drawing room of the sumptuously-appointed Rose Cottage, making a beeline for Flora with a bulletin from the courthouse.
“Oh, Flora!” she sobs, plunging into the woman’s arms.
Startled, Flora cries, “Tell me what’s happened!”
Leticia tries to pull herself together. “It’s Desmond!”
“What about my son?” Flora asks, and that’s how you know it’s Christmas.
Or, rather, it was Christmas, last Friday. Now it’s Monday, the beginning of the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and potentially an important week for the show.
You see, the ratings for Dark Shadows have been sliding precipitously. The show peaked at an 8.4 share in 1969, during the 1897 storyline. The specific week that the show hit its ratings peak was in October 1969, when vampire Barnabas Collins suddenly returned to the show, four weeks after he’d been apparently staked in his coffin, and left for dead. But there he was, alive and walking around, ta-dah, and everyone in the audience wanted to know how he pulled it off.
Following that, the ratings dipped a bit, descending from 8.4 to a still-respectable 7.3 share, as the show dealt with Lovecraft monsters, Parallel Time and a frantic trip into the far future of 1995.
But it was the transition back to the present-day in August 1970 that hammered the show, with a slow meander around some recycled plot points that sidelined the most popular characters. At this point, the show is getting a 5.3 share, and by the end of this week, Variety is going to make a snarky remark about “the incredibly shrinking shares of Dark Shadows“.
Like all daytime shows at the time, Dark Shadows was produced in cycles of 13 weeks — one quarter of a year. If you get renewed for another 13 weeks, then your show keeps on going. You know it’s over when you’ve only got 13 weeks left, and ABC doesn’t renew the show for another cycle.
Here’s the bad news: as of today, Dark Shadows has 14 weeks left to run. There’s this week between Christmas and New Year’s, and then one more cycle of 13 weeks, and on April 2nd, Dark Shadows wraps at ABC Studio 16, and that timeslot goes to Password.
So if Dark Shadows is going to squeeze out one more last-minute renewal that could keep the show going past April 2nd, then this week is crucial. The teenagers and the young set are out of school between Christmas and New Year’s, so they might just give the show one more look, as long as they’re home anyway. Maybe the show can stop the ratings slide, and get an eleventh-hour reprieve.
This week, the show is going to do two things to engage those lapsed viewers. First, there’s going to be not just one, but three surprise returns of characters that we thought were gone. Second, they’re going to catch everyone up on the last four months of this convoluted storyline, dishing out steaming bowls of recap with both hands. That way, everyone will understand what’s going on, and they’ll stick around and keep watching the show, and who knows? We might all get paychecks through July. It’s worth a shot, anyway.
There are two problems with this plan. First problem: understanding what’s going on has never been a prerequisite for the Dark Shadows audience; we just want to see sexy monsters make fun of each other, and then either jump through a plate glass window or go up in flames. If the producers thought understanding the story was a priority, then they should have made a lot of different decisions, a while ago. Second problem: the thing that the lapsed viewers definitely don’t want is people standing around in old-fashioned clothes, describing interesting things that we missed. And yet, here we are.
So here’s how you’re going to spend the next five and a half minutes of your day: watching three grown people crowded into an overstuffed set that doesn’t have a thing worth looking at, except the lamp that I’ve recently decided looks like Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000. I’ll give Flora partial credit for the lavender ensemble, but that’s all.
Dialogue-wise, as I said, the giveaway was that Leticia mentioned Desmond, and Flora said, “What about my son?” to make sure that the viewers understand that she’s Desmond’s mother. I don’t think that particular detail makes any difference — you can tell that she’s interested in Desmond’s well-being from the way that she’s acting, and whether he’s her son, husband or prom date is pretty immaterial. Still, I guess you have to say something.
“They asked me about the head,” Leticia sobs, filling us in on last week’s courtroom scenes.
“The head?” asks Flora. “What has that got to do with anything?”
Leticia cries, “It is the head of Judah Zachery!” and suddenly Gerard’s on the move.
Stepping forward, he interjects, “That head was in this house?” Leticia nods, and Gerard continues, “That is why Desmond had the journal of Judah Zachery!”
“Judah Zachery? What are you talking about?” Flora asks, and seriously, are we actually this far away from shore?
They’re talking about an old curio that Flora’s son Desmond picked up on sale on Macau, and brought home as a conversation piece that can keep up its end of the conversation. Flora knows that it’s the head of Judah Zachery because her son Desmond told her it was, and Gerard knows that the head of Judah Zachery was in this house, because a) Gerard knows that Desmond brought it to Collinsport, b) Gerard has handled it himself, and c) Gerard actually is Judah Zachery, and should therefore be entirely up to speed on everything Jay-Z related.
It’s possible that Gerard is playing dumb at this moment in the conversation and just pretending not to know that much about the head, but if we’re trying to help the audience understand what’s happening, then the deep cover black-ops element is not assisting the recap process. We don’t need any characters to play dumb right now. It’s dumb enough.
Leticia tries to explain. “A warlock,” she says, breathing heavily, “who lived in Bedford one hundred and fifty years ago. He was tried for witchcraft, and found guilty, and then he was beheaded, just like Quentin’s going to be, and Desmond!” And then she breaks down into sobs. “I’m sorry,” she cries, “but what are we going to do?”
“You’re going to finish telling me about Judah Zachery!” Flora says, because recap is more urgent than action.
Leticia tries again. “The head was put on display in the town square, as a warning to Zachery’s followers. But it disappeared!”
Gerard frowns, like he’s trying to remember something. “Disappear…” he repeats. “Yes, I remember! There’s a legend… The head has certain powers, and can possess a man.”
Which, again, is leading the recap-hungry viewer in the wrong direction. It feels like Leticia is shoveling information in the front door, and Gerard is busily shoveling it out again through the back door.
Leticia continues telling the story, and for ten seconds, there’s a closeup of Gerard, motionless, just glaring at the audience and challenging them to try anything funny.
There’s some more emotional acting. “Charles Dawson says that the head was not destroyed,” says Leticia. “That Quentin brought it — that Desmond brought it to Quentin, and now Quentin is being possessed by Judah.” I’m sure that slip doesn’t make life any easier for the people who are trying to get their heads around this story.
Flora says she doesn’t believe any of this, which is understandable, but Gerard adds, “There is a curse. I remember reading about it in the journal of Judah Zachery.” They haven’t explained that part at all. “Before he was beheaded, he vowed that he would serve revenge against the three judges, and all their families that sentenced him to death!” I don’t know why the families sentenced him, I would think that was the judges’ job.
He concludes, “Amadeus Collins was one of those judges,” and that’s the piece of information that settles things for Flora. “I must go to Desmond,” she says, and heads out the door. Finding out about Amadeus Collins was the cherry on top of the sundae, as far as Flora is concerned.
Once she’s gone, Gerard proposes a plan that will help no one. “This case can be easily solved,” he says, making complicated semaphore gestures with his eyebrows. “All we have to do is find the head, and prove that it has been destroyed. Quentin can no longer be possessed with something that doesn’t exist.”
Unpacking that for a moment, finding the head and proving that it’s been destroyed are mutually exclusive. He might mean that they should find it and destroy it, and then prove that it’s been destroyed; I hope they remember to keep the receipt. The theory about whether someone can be possessed by something that doesn’t exist is, I believe, a novel argument in the supernatural hokum field.
But the real problem is that this sounds to the uninitiated like there’s now a clear story point coming up: Gerard and Leticia are going to go and look for the head. Except then they both just go off on their own and do other things, and when they come together again near the end of the episode, they don’t mention it at all; they just talk about other stuff, like this scene never happened.
So this is the problem with the whole week, designed specifically to get more people to watch: the writers aren’t clear what story they’re trying to tell anymore, so these jumping-on points contradict themselves, and turn into dead ends.
“You’re going to finish telling me about Judah Zachery,” Flora demanded, and she’s right. They’re going to finish telling us about Judah Zachery, sometime between now and fourteen weeks from now.
Tomorrow: The Unfinished Dream.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
Flora trips over a word: “Gerard, you seem to take Barnabas’ disappearance very sm- easily.”
At the top of act 1, Leticia sits down in a chair. Flora takes a step behind Leticia, then stops and turns her head — and her earring falls off. She catches it, holds it in her hand for a moment, then puts it back on her ear, acting all the while. A true pro. She puts on different earrings to visit Desmond in act 2.
When Leticia says that the head disappeared, it takes a few seconds before Gerard realizes that’s his cue.
Desmond proclaims that “Judah Zachery is now master of Collinsport!”
Desmond tells Leticia, “Please, I don’t want him to hurt you or to kill you. And if you make him force your hand, he will.”
Julia tells Leticia that she didn’t tell Angelique about taking the Head to the tomb, but she did last week, in episode 1173.
Julia asks Leticia, “What could they find — we find, that they didn’t?”
In previous episodes, people have walked from the Collinwood foyer to Quentin’s lab through the door under the stairs, which is supposed to lead to the basement. When Julia and Leticia head for Quentin’s lab, they go out the front door.
Julia tells Angelique, “That night, that final night, when the ghost of Gerard had killed the two children, and burning — the house was burning…”
Julia searches for her line: “I don’t know whether to be grateful… for the stairs… or not… or hate them!”
When Angelique leaves Quentin’s lab, she shuts the door behind her, but it pops open again.
The end credits are where you can really see the resemblance between the lamp and Tom Servo. Or maybe it’s just me.
Tomorrow: The Unfinished Dream.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
‘”This case can be easily solved,” he says, making complicated semaphore gestures with his eyebrows.’
I personally think Gerard is a native of the planet Delphon, where they communicate with their eyebrows. It’s really the only thing that makes sense at this point, including the plot.
thank you, Danny. never very apt at direction, for fifty years i thought it must just have been me; or mayhaps Quentin laboratory was as ambulatory as his peremptory flirting stairs.
Danny, this is absolutely my favorite blog entry you have written to date. Thank you!
“All we have to do is find the head, and prove that it has been destroyed. Quentin can no longer be possessed with something that doesn’t exist.” Who knew that Trumpspeak existed in 1970. At least Gerard didn’t also opine that ingesting bleach would be a good way to cure croup.
I kind of agree with you about this particular viewer retention approach, and I kind of don’t. I agree that understanding what’s going on at any given moment in the history of DS isn’t crucial to enjoying it, but I think if I’d tuned in to this episode after a lengthy absence I would have found people standing around in old-fashioned clothes discussing convoluted and bizarre events to be familiar and soothing, kind of like comfort food for the eyes and imagination, ’cause that’s what DS represents to me emotionally. History tells us, obviously, that I would have been in the minority. (again)
I base this idea on my contemporary viewing patterns. THE GOOD WIFE, for example: I was a regular, devoted viewer of THE GOOD WIFE for, say, the first two-and-a-half seasons, and then I drifted away for some reason, and then returned about the middle of season six, and found it to be pretty much same-stuff-different-day, pretty much the same people engaging in internecine warfare over partnership standing and majority stock share ownership and such, and it was reassuring and comforting. I thought, “Ok, I get this.”
I can absolutely see myself, if I had been an enthusiastic, cognizant viewer of DS when it was happening instead of just 4-years old, being really ga-ga for the show from 1966 say through ’68, and then drifting away for awhile and then returning in, say, early 1970, and finding people standing around in old houses wearing vintage clothes getting emotional about severed heads and finding it soothingly familiar, exactly what I expect and want from DS.
And I like to imagine that in the great vastiness of the multiverse there’s a reality out there somewhere where DS never ended, but kept going decade after decade like so many other daytime dramas; and on some rainy afternoon, when the metaphysical particles of the atmospheric continuum are distributed just right, I’ll be bored-ly flipping through channels and up there in the high, high upper register of channel numbers I’ll come across a current episode of DS, and I won’t know some of the players and I won’t understand exactly what’s going on, but for 30 relaxingly familiar minutes I’ll be immersed in talk of witches and werewolves by people in frock coats, and I’ll be home.
Then at the end of the week there’s nothing that DS could have done to save the show; even some new heartbreaker monster or time jump to a plot-rich era with interesting new Collinses and amazing perils? Something that sent the ratings jumping way up? No last minute reprieve?
Just speculation, of course, I doubt Dan Curtis would have done it. He was going for the big screen, and I’ll assume his idea was that NoDS would keep the franchise going.
I remember an interview with Dan Curtis when the 1991 Dark Shadows series was airing. He said that he didn’t intend to stay with it forever, implying that he would get someone else to take the reins had the series run for several seasons.
Perhaps had Curtis done this with the soap after 1897, the show could have lasted longer. There had to have been other producers and writers who could have transformed the show into something that would still be of interest. Perhaps not. Making a movie that is a virtual bloodbath at the hands of your soap opera hero seemed questionable to me. But it’s obvious that he didn’t want to do a soap opera anymore and supconciously sabotaged his own show.
I’m in the 470s now, and it’s starting to strike me that one of the reasons the show ran out of steam when it did were casting decisions made then and earlier. I just watched two episodes with Addison Powell as the mad Dr Lang and Roger Davis as Peter Bradford/ Jeff Clark. It is hard to imagine a writer watching either of those guys and coming up with ideas for storylines that will showcase their strengths. (“They’re trapped in a giant wind tunnel, and have to shout very loudly to escape!”)
I think of other actors they may have cast. In the first season, both Harvey Keitel (in episode #33) and Frederic Forrest (in episode #137) were seen dancing at The Blue Whale. I imagine what the show might have been like if Frederic Forrest, rather than Conard Fowkes, had been cast as Frank Garner; if Harvey Keitel, rather that Roger Davis, had been cast as Peter Bradford/ Jeff Clark. Powered by Forrest’s goofy charm, a Vicki/ Frank/ Burke love triangle might have held our interest as a B-story well into the vampire storyline; it might even have been interesting enough that Mitchell Ryan could have tolerated the show while sober, sparing us our time with the charisma-free Anthony George. And with Keitel’s intensity and intelligence to work with, the writers might have come up with something great for Peter/ Jeff.
Heck, even I could write compelling dialogue if I knew I had a good enough actor to deliver it. Keitel’s frequent collaborator Robert DeNiro was a young actor taking whatever work he could find in NYC in 1966-1970. When I was in the 200s watching the story of Carolyn and Buzz, I imagined DeNiro as Buzz. I started writing lines that I could hear him delivering brilliantly. “Mrs Stoddard, you’ve got me all wrong. You talk to me like I’m trying to take something from you. But what it is, I’m living my life, and Carolyn wants to be part of that. We’re not going to hurt anyone.” Who knows how much mileage there might have been in the Carolyn/ Buzz storyline if Buzz had been as compelling as DeNiro could have made him?
By 1970, the writers had done what they could with the good actors on the show, and had spent so much time trying to come up with a use for the less capable ones that they were all exhausted. Besides, once you’ve wasted so much time with the Addison Powells and the Roger Davises, how seriously can you expect anyone to take your show?
Was there any reason that anyone gave for why there was such a small pool of writers working on the scripts? Was it a money issue, or a question of finding the talent?
Back in those days, most half-hour soaps only had a head writer who wrote the long-term story and outlines for each episode, and a couple of dialog writers who wrote the actual scripts.
It’s my understanding that Dan Curtis took the role of the head writer in that he didn’t want anyone else to do it. He had his dialogue writers (mainly Sam Hall and Gordon Russell) pitching ideas to him and they collectively formulated the long=term story.
I know from reading many books on how daytime TV shows used to be produced that a good head writer such as Agnes Nixon (One Life to Live, All My Children) had to expand the number of writers working on her shows when the soaps expanded to an hour-long format. She still wrote the long-term story, but she hired someone else to do the break-downs/outlines for individual scripts, and these were given to the dialog writers. Nixon was also responsible for editing the final scripts before they were mailed to the studio for production. It was a well-oiled machine. Apparently, Dark Shadows just didn’t work that way.
Yep, it’s a Servo lamp.
We’ve been calling that big blue and red vase that appears around the mansion Emperor Tom Servo.
It’s funny how they’re trying to recap the 1840’s plotline but failing because they don;t know what it is.
This is apropos of nothing but I have to mention it because it’s another weird example of Dark Shadows synchronicity, kind of like when I just happened to watch back-to-back the only two episodes in the entire series in which one of the characters said the words “dark shadows”. This morning as I continued watching the pre-Barney episodes of DS for the first time, I took in an ep in which Maggie serves David a sundae (which he refuses to eat). So I got my sundae glass down from the cupboard and made myself one (chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup, whipped cream, rainbow sprinkles, and a maraschino cherry on top). Then I watched this episode (1176), after which I came here to read the corresponding post, and saw that Danny had written: “Finding out about Amadeus Collins was the cherry on top of the sundae, as far as Flora is concerned.” XD