Category Archives: Ron Sproat

Episode 578: The Understudy

Ron Sproat, September 1968,

“Well, of course it’s necessary; we can’t have prowlers on the place, attacking people.”

Carolyn and Tony are reunited, at last. They were torn apart by the weird, mad woman who married uncle Roger, and who seemed to delight in luring Tony away from Carolyn’s side. But the witch has melted away, as witches do, and with a little time, the betrayal fades, the harsh words forgotten. They’re just two kids — funny, and headstrong, and good-hearted — finding their way back to each other.

But it’s wrong. It’s all wrong! Can’t you see it? Something terrible has happened to Carolyn. Some dark new creature has crawled inside her skin and is making itself at home in her flesh.

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Episode 573: This Strange Way That You’ve Been Behaving

Ron Sproat, September 1968, , ,

“This house has some hold over you, and I want you to resist it!”

This entry is a couple of days late, I’m afraid. The blog is called Dark Shadows Every Day, but to be honest, sometimes it’s more like Dark Shadows Five Times a Week at Irregular Intervals. But Dark Shadows Every Day is easier to fit on a T-shirt, if I ever had time to make T-shirts, which apparently I don’t.

I’d like to explain to you why this entry is so late, but I can’t. All I can say is that there’s some force trying to control me, to make me do things I shouldn’t do, make me go places that I shouldn’t go. I know that’s hard for you to accept, but I want you to try.

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Episode 572: Junior Detectives

Ron Sproat, September 1968, , ,

“But it isn’t possible, Julia! He exists by day!”

Tom Jennings — local handyman, vampire, and one of the cutest guys on Dark Shadows — died yesterday, following a brief struggle with a main character. He was 28 years old, not counting the last two weeks.

Now, Tom was a fun character, with family and friends and an entertaining story point and several attractive hairstyles, so we would be well within our rights as members of the Dark Shadows audience to mourn his passing, but it’s just not possible right now.

Barnabas and Julia are as happy as could be, and so am I, because Tom’s destruction means that they get to play Junior Detectives again.

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Episode 569: Liz Misérables

August 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , ,

“What is this place? Whose coffin is this? Is it mine?”

Well, I guess summer break can’t last forever, so here’s Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, reporting back to work for another day of standing around with a glazed expression. Joan Bennett used to be a movie star back in the day, so she gets an extended summer vacation from Dark Shadows.

Her break was even longer than usual this year — it’s actually been ten weeks since Liz was packed off to Windcliff Sanitarium, following a witch-induced nervous breakdown. I don’t know what she did this summer, but she’s tan, rested and ready to die.

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Episode 568: Do You Want Vicki to Die

August 1968, Ron Sproat, , ,

“Yes, Mr. Clark. We’re going to create another one.”

It’s currently 5:00am on Thursday as I’m writing these words. I woke up early, because I still have to write Wednesday’s entry. Last night, I was just sitting here looking at this episode, and I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say about it. But that’s the challenge that I created for myself on this blog — a four-year-long series of daily deadlines, mostly just to see if I could manage it. Apparently I could, until today.

The real problem with writing to a deadline is that as the time approaches, it’s hard to think about anything except that ticking clock. I think this is why there are so many movies and television show episodes where the climax is defusing a time bomb — the countdown to a deadline is the scariest thing that a writer can think of.

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Episode 562: He’s Just Not That Into Being Supernaturally Controlled By You

August 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“I don’t love you. I love Maggie Evans. I don’t even know you.”

Oh, it’s the same old story. You invite a guy over, you spend the night together, there’s an exchange of body fluids, and the next day, he doesn’t even want to see you anymore.

Joe Haskell looks out the window at the approaching dusk. “It’ll be dark soon,” he thinks, “and she’ll want me to go to her. I’ve got to resist her. I’ve got to!”

Spoiler alert: He doesn’t resist her.

Continue reading Episode 562: He’s Just Not That Into Being Supernaturally Controlled By You →

Episode 561: The Big Sleep

August 1968, Ron Sproat, , , ,

“Don’t try to understand. Just submit to your needs, as I do.”

He should’ve known the dame was trouble when she opened the door.

“Please come to my house at seven,” the note said. Joe Haskell had just met Mr. Blair the night before, and didn’t like him much, but he was curious about the invite, so he came. He thought he’d get an apology, or an explanation, or at the very least a drink.

Instead, he found a blonde. A blonde that would make a vampire bite his way through a garlic-soaked casket in the middle of the afternoon.

Continue reading Episode 561: The Big Sleep →

Episode 560: Messing Around with Dead People

August 1968, Ron Sproat

“I can’t stay around here while this thing is happening. It’s just too horrible.”

One of the rules of Dark Shadows is that there’s always something terrible happening in the Old House basement. The details change — it could be a vampire sleeping in a coffin, or a dead girl singing a nursery rhyme, or a patchwork corpse monster chained to the wall — but there’s always some kind of nightmare taking shape there, down among the dead men.

“Woe unto them,” as they say in the Book of Isaiah, “that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?” It’s like Isaiah knew Barnabas and Julia personally; that is exactly what they do.

Today, it’s Willie’s turn to say “Whoa” unto them. Let’s see how far that gets him.

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Episode 556: Apotheosis

August 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“I intend, my dear, to create a race of superbeings who will serve my master and control the world.”

It’s about surprise; it is always, always, entirely about surprise.

I’ve been dissatisfied lately with the show’s focus on Adam, who’s been sitting around in a storage room for several weeks, getting progressively grumpier. The problem isn’t Adam, because I like him, and it’s not that he’s doing mean things, because he’s fictional and who cares.

The problem is the word “progressively”. If Adam gets a little more demanding and a little more self-centered whenever we see him, then there’s no point in our checking in on him every day. He’s getting predictable, and that’s the opposite of television.

Solving this problem in the most efficient possible way, Dark Shadows unveils its latest plot twist — Nicholas has brought Angelique back to life, as a vampire. Now, it’s not clear exactly how he accomplished this — the last time we saw Angelique, she’d just died of old age in an armchair, so how could she be a vampire now?

Answering that question is not important. Angelique is a vampire!

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Episode 555: All Tied Up

August 1968, Ron Sproat, ,

“Please, take pity on me. Don’t torture me like this.”

It’s a Ron Sproat script today, which means that Vicki’s locked up and she’s not getting away any time soon. This is a bit of an obsession with Sproat, an old-school soap writer who knows that the only question worth asking is: What are we going to do tomorrow? If he can’t come up with a good answer to that question, then he stuffs a girl into a closet and keeps her there for a week.

Now, to be fair, it was Gordon Russell who actually put Vicki in stir this time; Sproat is just the guy keeping her here. But I don’t see any reason to be fair today. If life was fair, I’d have enough material to stretch this out to a full blog entry. And yet, here we are.

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