“The curse is more powerful than all of us put together.”
Morgan Collins has pulled the ol’ love-and-shove on his faithless wife Catherine, pretending that he’s going to rescue her boyfriend Bramwell from the human sacrifice chamber. Where is he? I can’t see him, she said, and he said Just look closer, he’s right there, and she said I don’t — and then all of a sudden she was on the wrong side of a locked door.
“You tricked me!” Catherine cries. “Just as you tricked Bramwell, you tricked me!”
“I plead guilty, my dear!” Morgan hollers, through the door. “On both counts!”
“Well, listen to me, Morgan!” she shouts. “I’d rather die with Bramwell than live with you one more day!”
“Then you have your wish, don’t you?” he chirps. “Goodbye, Catherine!” And then he saunters away, mentally updating his Tinder profile.
So we’re agreed: Morgan is the asshole in this story, and we refuse to put up with him anymore. After nine and a half weeks of this lemon of a storyline, Dark Shadows and I are finally on the same page.
So here’s where we find ourselves, with two episodes to go: two of the most popular actors on Dark Shadows, trapped and frightened, desperate to get out of this studio before they die. The television show that they’re in actually ended two months ago, with a bittersweet romantic/tragic ending for their characters that didn’t quite hold up, but was good enough for daytime TV. Angelique died, and Barnabas lived, and then they were supposed to walk off the set and spend the rest of their existence in spinoffs and fan fiction, as per their contracts.
But the show refused to die on schedule, and now they’re locked up in a spooky box where they have different names and hairstyles, and all they want to do is go home. Anyone who spends the night on this set either dies or goes insane, and at the moment it’s touch and go whether that’s already happened or not.
“You and Bramwell wanted to be together,” Morgan gloated. “Well, you are together! You are together like James and Amanda, and I hope you rot together like James and Amanda!” That sounds like it’s supposed to be a threat, but James and Amanda are in the room downstairs, and they haven’t rotted at all; they’re just lying there in the packaging, two action figures who are still mint in box. So I guess we’re going to live forever, in novels and comic books and audio dramas, thanks a lot, Morgan, Angelique said, and Morgan got all frustrated and stomped off to think up some better threats.
Meanwhile, Willie Loomis and Dr. Julia Hoffman are down in the drawing room, trying to figure out some way out of this mess. Julia is uncharacteristically defeatist; usually, she’s the first one to propose a plan, and sure, it’s usually sedatives, but at least that’s a place to start. Now she thinks that the curse that’s trapped them in this storyline will go on and on, until the very last cast member is dead. I’m not saying she’s wrong; I’m just telling you what she thinks.
“Julia,” Willie says, “what if we brought Carrie Stokes here, held a seance? Maybe we could make the ghost of Brutus Collins appear!”
She just shakes her head. “We have tried that, and it brought us more trouble,” she says. “As a matter of fact, there isn’t anything you can think of that we haven’t tried!”
She’s right about that, too: they’ve tried seances already, and ghosts, and coffins and werewolves and mad scientists, and gypsies and witches and Frankenstein monsters, and the black goat of the woods with a thousand young, and basements and time travel and haunted portraits, and fire and murder and hypnosis and old phonographs, and candles and special effects and black magic and blood and logical explanations and trespassing and brandy and skeletons and telephones and cats and bats and roosters and flashlights and antiques and horoscopes and staircases and poison and amnesia and secret panels and music boxes and thunderstorms and clocks and exorcisms and graveyards and witch trials and fog machines and Chinese divination techniques and flashbacks and love triangles and turtlenecks and doomed investigators and crystal balls and alchemy and tarot cards and lamps and dark creatures of nature and pirates and hatpins and widows and pentagrams and blackmail and bungling and board games and gum cards and carousels and medallions and harpoons and plaster made from clamshells and horsehair, and at a certain point, there just isn’t anything left to do.
But Julia and Willie know from hopeless situations — almost every situation they’ve ever been in has been hopeless, in one way or another — and they learned years ago that when you’re facing existential oblivion, there’s still one thing that you can do: You can be kind.
Look at how she’s grasping his arm, as he faces off against the steaming pile of hairspray that turns out to be their current nemesis. “Kendrick Young” and “Julia Collins” don’t like each other: Kendrick blames Julia for the death of his sister, and Julia thinks that Kendrick is determined to expose all of the family secrets. They’ve never been on the same side of anything.
But in this dark hour, she recognizes him for who he really is: Willie Loomis, her partner and her friend. Barnabas and Angelique are in trouble right now, and Quentin and Gerard aren’t around to take part in the rescue operation. The lovers will have their hands full inside the cursed room; Julia and Willie will have to deal with the mess on this side of the door.
Naturally, Julia’s the one who figures out what’s going on, during a private therapy session with Morgan. She doesn’t have her medallion anymore, but that was just a prop. All she really needed was a sharp mind, a key light and some creative facial expressions.
Morgan is walking around with the world’s most pompous and self-satisfied grin on his face, like a cat who’s been given the keys to the canary factory. He claims that he talked things over with Angelique like mature adults and they agreed to separate, but obviously that’s not true; if anybody in this storyline ever acted like a mature adult, then everyone in Collinwood would have been in police custody weeks ago.
Julia guesses that Angelique is pregnant with Barnabas’ child, and this gets him to open up and reveal his secret plan, like a proper villain. “I followed Catherine last night,” he says. “Instead of going to the Old House, she went to the gazebo, with him. They were talking about a child — their child!”
“You don’t have to talk about it any more if you don’t want to,” Julia says. She’s already lost interest in the anecdote.
“I knew then and there what I had to do,” he preens. “I wanted my revenge in the form of… Poetic Justice.” He says it like that, with the capitals and everything.
And then she just puts it all together, and lays it out for him. Morgan’s acting the way that Brutus Collins acted, back in 1680 when he came up with this terrible storyline. He tricked the main characters into entering that cramped, dusty bedroom set, and then injected them with something that kept them frozen in place, unable to move the story along or do anything remotely entertaining.
That’s what Morgan’s done to Barnabas and Angelique, and now he’s smirking and congratulating himself. Julia gazes at him, and wonders where she could find a decent mad scientist apparatus, at this time of night.
Upstairs in the torture chamber, Barnabas comes up with a cunning escape plan, which involves grabbing a wooden chair, throwing it at the doors and hoping for the best. The chair bounces off the door, and Barnabas turns away with a frustrated look, thinking, Damn you, Sy Thomashoff! You’ve thought of everything.
Well, the cursed room isn’t going to stand for that kind of behavior; this set is crappy enough without people tossing the furnishings around. So we finally get some action from the spooks, who create some theremin-supported wind noises and a shuddering chandelier.
Barnabas checks in with Angelique, who says, “Why do you keep calling me Catherine? My name is Amanda!” and then Barnabas makes a facial expression about it.
Now, the obvious question is, if Amanda is already up in the tower room possessing Melanie, then is she doubling up here, or is Amanda a franchise that can open in multiple locations under some kind of licensing agreement?
For some reason, Amanda decides that she needs to stab herself to death with a magical knife that appears in the room. This is a bit on the nose, in my view; when they said that everyone who stays in this room overnight either dies or goes insane, I figured there would be more to it than just possessing the person and making them stab themselves. That’s not even a new knife, it’s the same knife they used all last week. For the amount of time we’ve spent hearing about this Disneyland Dream Suite, I’d expect turndown service, at least.
Now all I can think of is little Tim Braithwaite, dressed up in Gabriel’s clothes, getting possessed by Amanda and stabbing himself. I hope they cleaned off the knife afterwards.
She snaps out of it, so for round two, the ghosts make Barnabas feel like he’s choking, for the length of a commercial break. He says, “I can’t breathe!” and she says, “Fight him! Fight him!” and he says, “Agggaaahhhaggghhh!” and then there’s an ad for Wish-Bone Italian Rosé salad dressing.
It turns out saying fight him, fight him is the magic antidote to pretty much anything the room throws at these two; Barnabas just gargles for a bit longer and then they let him go.
“He will try once more, before this night is over,” Barnabas says, but I’m not super worried at this point. Angelique and Barnabas have lived through worse than this before. They’ve done worse than this, to each other, in their first week of marriage. Brutus has no idea who he’s dealing with.
Meanwhile, Julia and Willie rummage through Morgan’s bedroom, to see if they can find the key to the locked room. The search is utterly futile, as they acknowledge within twenty seconds, because the key could be anywhere, but it’s worthwhile anyway because it wipes the dumb smile off Morgan’s dumb face, and accelerates his descent into villainy. Just look at Willie’s expression as he glares at this overdressed pantomime dame. We are done with Morgan.
“Mwa hah hah hah HAAAA ha ha haha!” Morgan says, approximately. “Yes, I locked her in the room! And with her lover! And they just may stay there beyond the morning! I haven’t quite made up my mind yet.”
“No!” Julia objects. “You know that door must be open, tomorrow morning!”
“I know no such thing, Julia!” Morgan snaps, and segues into monologue mode. “You see, there are no more rules anymore. I have taken over at last! And what a pleasant sensation it is, not to be at the mercy of anything, or anyone! To be my own master! The master of Collinwood!”
“You’ve lost your mind!” Julia cries.
“NO no no, quite the contrary! I have regained my senses! You know, I AM! I AM the master of Collinwood!” He starts puffing, the newly self-appointed emperor of everything. “I have such sympathy for Brutus… how misunderstood he was!”
“But Brutus got his revenge,” his highness sighs. “Oh, yes! And I’m getting mine.” And then he sings a full chorus of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid.
So that’s the state of play, as we head into the next episode, which is shaping up to be the final battle between good Dark Shadows and bad Dark Shadows. Let’s meet back here, for the final time, tomorrow.
Tomorrow: Sunset at Collinwood.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
There’s a purple stripe down the side of the picture from one of the cameras today, which actually adds kind of a nice accent color to some otherwise drab scenes. If you had to choose one of the camera faults that they’ve had lately, this is the keeper.
In the teaser, when Catherine throws herself at the door, the whole wall shakes.
Morgan shouts, “You don’t believe I s— believed a word you said, do you?”
Morgan tells Julia and Kendrick, “I’d like you to like — to know that I’m going to open the room.”
Tomorrow: Sunset at Collinwood.
— Danny Horn
Dark Shadows Every Day 
and zombies
The Penultimate Blog. Can’t believe it.
“Brutus has no idea who he’s dealing with.”
Hahahaha. Damnass right.
I rather thought that Morgan was making amends. Ridding the soap of Bramwell and Catherine was to be a kindness to them and the viewers. His final and most altruistic action.
Remind me again when Morgan stopped being possessed…?
And WHY? This episode would have worked better with Mad Morgan being possessed by Brutus, intent on getting revenge on the lovers.
I think treating them like they are actually Julia, Willie, Barnabas & Angelique makes this episode a lot more interesting. The parallel time room and/or parallel time stairs really needed to throw some characters from Dark Shadows into the mix here.
Checking…
I tried posting this a minute ago but not sure it went through. Trying again…
Yeah, calling the characters by their non-Parallel names got me to thinking about a thought that crossed my mind the last time I finished up re-watching the entire series.
I knew going in that this last storyline was going to be a slog. It wasn’t quite as bad as I remembered it, but one thing I really regretted watching this play out is that they didn’t find some way to pay homage to the original characters, so cruelly dropped off, unsupervised, about two and half months ago.
Sure, you could imagine that they never intended this, that the 1841 jaunt sideways was just planned as a temporary sojourn, and we’d get back to Barnabas & Co. in a few months time. But, literally days from the Official Wrap-Up, aka The Day the Paychecks Stopped, everyone knew that these were the characters that we’d be going out on and NOT the ones who made the show a hit in the first place.
So, couldn’t they have come up with some last minute shout-out to the original crew before The Big Fade Out? Maybe some sore of quick last-minute re-write to let the diehard fans know that they haven’t totally forgotten about the characters we actually liked? Couldn’t at least one of the Kaiju have crossed over to give, at least temporarily, a final wave goodbye?
And… one could have. Yeah, Barnabas, Julia and Quentin are all safely parked back in non-Parallel Time, but that leaves the one who’s currently floating somewhere in the Nether Void, so…
Couldn’t Angelique have popped in for one last cameo? Instead of Catherine being possessed by Amanda, how about our favorite Soap Sorceress waking up in this Other Dimension, at least briefly, and passing along to the familiar-looking Bramwell some hard-won (indeed, fatally-won) final wisdom? Namely, don’t be such an asshole and think “other people don’t exist.” Operating on a “our happiness, scratch that, MY happiness is all that matters in the universe and screw everyone else” approach doesn’t get you your happy ending; in fact, it guarantees the contrary, something Angelique only learned too late.
OK, maybe too Jiminy Cricket for some tastes, but at least they could have done some sort of last-minute acknowledgement recognizing that there’s still a timeline out there where all our favorite characters are still residing.
Ya got my vote.
Mine, too!
It wouldn’t even have had to be one of the Big Four. I wish Lamar Trask had escaped alive into the Parallel Time room in episode 1198, and had cropped up occasionally throughout the final nine weeks. He was the funniest Trask, and if they’d had the writing staff to do him justice he could have done a tremendous amount to relieve the tedium of this last segment. And any character at all from the main timeline would have sufficed to show there was a connection of some kind with the show we’d been watching.
Will their kid be a vampire or a witch?
Or both! (cf The All Soul’s Trilogy)
pulled off in the final moments, yet another of your trademarked illuminated approaches, with a franchise of proper villainy laughing off my chair. i’ve said it before, but i’m so glad i got to say it again, Danny, you do me in.
I’m big on film and television iconography, so I’m all for thinking of these characters in terms of the other characters the actors have played. It’s interesting that Nancy Barrett has merged with Alexandra Moltke Isles, so that Melanie is both the only daughter of the family in the big house and the orphan obsessively seeking her origin, and that Bramwell is going to treat her both as he treated Carolyn- showing her elaborate courtesy, but no real consideration- and as he treated Vicki- declaring himself to be her rescuer, but never investing any emotional energy in an interaction with her.
This episode and the one before also show that, even though television is famously Not A Director’s Medium, a director can have great importance from time to time. Episode 1243 was really rather good, and that is entirely to the credit of Lela Swift. The pacing is rapid, the visual composition tells as much of the story as we could want it to do, and she elicits good performances from all the actors, even Keith Prentice.
In this one, Henry Kaplan keeps moving the actors around in tight little spaces, with the result that they have to shuffle from one set of marks to another. Even worse, he indulges himself in a series of dissolves, each of which would probably have looked cluttered and been distracting under the best of circumstances, but with the camera faults in this episode it’s as if the TV screen is at the bottom of a pond. Poor Keith Prentice, finally doing a good job of acting for a second consecutive episode, winds up looking like the world’s biggest idiot when a closeup of him laughing in wicked triumph dissolves to a shot of the cobwebbed room.
Oh my god, I’m going to miss this!
I’m back with the Leviathans and Danny has just described Angelique as a “Valkyrie with clipped wings” and how perfect is that? He’s so original and funny and brilliant and often so much better than the material deserves. Like now. Dark Shadows is lucky to have him, as are we all.
One day more….
And bleeder valves and fountain pens and the scent of jasmine..
So glad you’re still here, Joanne. We started watching the show last March, when the pandemic shut down live theater. I started reading the blog when we got to 210. Your comments were a big part of the appeal of those first few hundred posts.
Thanks so much. Had a lot of things going on in the past 2 years and will have to go over the episodes again to comment but of course that’s the fun in being able to rewatch at will.
Danny, did some of the comments from the early 2012-13 posts get deleted? I know I was commenting early on, but my comments seemed to have disappeared.
Hmm, not on purpose. That’s very weird, it looks like all comments before 2014 are gone……. might be some terrible WordPress change that I didn’t notice. Thanks for pointing it out, I’ll investigate.
Thanks for checking into it. I may be wrong, but I think I was one of the “originals” from 2012 who has remained a faithful fan here to the end of Dark Shadows Every Day.” I haven’t commented much lately because you and the other commentators have truly summed up how I have felt about this awful last storyline. It’s almost like an exorcism. Lol.
Thanks so much for writing this wonderful blog, Danny.
I am still back in 1840 with Daphne and now sing she has found the man she is going to kill.
Announcing! I really must proofread
And pig weasels!
Okay.
I think I get it. We can’t have Morgan be possessed, because it’s HIM we have to hate; that way it’ll be all right when he shoots himself while he and Bramwell tussle over the gun or falls off Widows Hill or gets stepped on by a rampaging elephant, because then it’s all right that Bramabas & Cathelique live happily ever after, because Morgan BROUGHT THIS ON HIMSELF! Totally HIS fault, shouldn’t feel sorry for him because his wife was cheating and his cousin was cuckolding him, completely understandable and Morgan’s just being a jerk getting upset about it. All that needs to happen now is to have Quentin get lost at sea and Bramwell’s got the house and the family fortune as well.
I don’t like it, but I get it.
Mr. Horn!
Oh sweet mystery of life, now that I’ve found you…
Your talent renders me bereft of words adequate to thank you, most sincerely, for generously sharing your delightful, in depth insights and astonishing sense of humor!
But I shall try…I know it’s been said by so many but I MUST
Thank you for writing this blog with such passion and spit-take inducing hilarity.
I MUST.
Missing my own theatre days, your descriptors of acting technique just kill me …what a joy to literally laugh out loud several times per episode.
I’m tempted to gush but fearing I shall sound sycophantic, and brevity being the soul of wit…
I suppose I MUST …redundantly simply say …THANK YOU!
“I have such sympathy for Brutus… how misunderstood he was!”
Until just a few days ago, the Collins family members thought someone outside the family had put the curse on them. It appears they thought he and his family had been cursed by someone else. It was James who attributed the curse to Brutus. Amanda, James, and Constance probably saw him as a murderer, because he killed them. All the Collins family members who went crazy and/or died probably realized Brutus was behind the curse.
Poor Brutus! His legacy is ruined!
I am finding that I actually enjoy Morgan’s purely evil nature in these final eps.. What is DS without a Trask or Yeager or Gabriel or Barnabas?
don’t forget Nicholas!
Morgan’s musical laughter is what really does it for me… I like a man with a sense of humor. 😄
And don’t forget Petofi!
and of course Gerard!
And Angelique.
It is April 2 on the East Coast. 50 years ago… but I wonder if in 10 years I won’t view 4/2/21 as being equally sad…
“It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for.”
In Defense of Bramwell …or perhaps more precisely, Frid’s portrayal of Bramwell…
(Comments/debate most welcome!)
Did not see this story line in my younger viewing years.
That said, this bonus Fri-park-ed concupisence comes to me like a surprising sip of Amontilado …
I am Drinking Bramwell in from my very half full apposite crystal vessel, enthralled with every delicious sip.
Have heard Dear, dear, esteemed Mr.F and Mary O’Leary state that he enjoyed playing Bramwell, including Mary sharing “he grew out his hair, had fun with that” I believe the video evidence of his blissfully Becoming Bramwell is borne out in his strong,sensual performances.
An enjoyable journey into the depth of range of The Actor, -formerly -known -as -Frid.
In fact a Stunning surprise visually and vocally. Bravo JF!
Sensuality ” A lovers touch …nothing you wanted more than mine. Has that changed? Can that change?” Amplified by Catherine’s quivering, breathless reaction …(Frid/Park After Dark?)
DH’s Wonderfully parodied Ep 1214 Begun Again (they Began the Beguine)
But I beg you consider JF’s suave, supremely,quiet confident delivery
Breathtaking.
Never hotter…AND they finally let the poor man eat a flippin SANDWICH …and take a nap!
Now …about the 1971 Johnny Cash look alike hair/sideburns …and the rather non elegant , western inspired attire …
Hmmm …attempting to pre audition him for new producers and casting opportunities?
I, FOR ONE, am so grateful for this …bonus time with them.
Mad love for Barngelique/Fri-Park-ed!
Weren’t they…simply …marvellous!!!
Will miss their pairing immensely…again.
Perfect post—the only thing that’s missing is a screen shot of Morgan doing his evil villain laugh.
This timeline, or whatever it is, I’ve lost track, is my least favorite. Everything about it makes me cringe. Keith Prentiss (I think that’s his name) overacts to the point of being clownish. Had he been around longer, he may have knocked Addison Powell down a notch or two. I read somewhere, probably in this blog, that he was showing out in front of some agency scout who came to watch the filming. I guess that person left quickly.
I found the vertical purple stripe on my screen more interesting than the ep.
Thank you for this great blog.
Penultimate episode on the eve of the new year. As fun as the show and rewatched have been this will be my own final rewatch. I’ll miss this blog a lot. Off to the final episode before the ball drops