Episode 238: Unreal Estate

May 1967, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“You can’t just walk into a place!”

It’s shaping up to be a pretty dull evening at Collinwood. Liz is sitting at a desk fussing with business papers, and Carolyn is assembling a moody jigsaw puzzle. Things liven up a bit when Vicki gets the evening paper, with the headline “LOCAL GIRL MYSTEROUSLY DISAPPEARS”. It’s bad news, obviously, but at least it gives them something to talk about.

Liz tells Carolyn and Vicki that she doesn’t want them walking around alone at night, until they find out what happened to Maggie. Liz gets up and goes to another room, and literally fifteen seconds later, the girls decide to go out and get some fresh air. What can you do with people like that?

Continue reading Episode 238: Unreal Estate →

Episode 237: Cold Case

Malcolm Marmorstein, May 1967, , ,

“And if that girl turns up dead, I’m going to book you… on suspicion.”

Soap opera cops have a pretty hard life. Somebody gets murdered, and it turns out that over the last couple weeks, eight different people have been walking around saying, “That guy makes me so mad I could kill him!” — often at the top of their lungs, in crowded restaurants. But the soap opera format requires the cops to be slow and methodical, chasing blind leads and arresting at least two innocent people before they find the killer. The night-time cops on CSI can solve a case in one hour; daytime cops have to go the long way around.

By comparison, the Collinsport police have it unbelievably easy. Three new people have shown up in town in the weeks before Maggie’s disappearance, and all three are currently involved in at least one crime. They have nonexistent alibis, and one of them can’t even produce a birth certificate.

And if those aren’t enough people of interest, then there’s also Burke Devlin, who recently came back to town after serving a five-year prison sentence for manslaughter. That’s not a bad place to start; maybe Sheriff Patterson should bring Burke in for questioning.

Continue reading Episode 237: Cold Case →

Episode 236: Extreme Makeover

May 1967, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“Vicki thinks it might be her imagination. But somehow, she connects the two… and they add up to Willie.”

Maggie’s disappeared from the hospital! Last week, the nurse thought that Maggie had died, and ran to get the doctor. When they came back into the room a moment later, the window was open and Maggie was gone.

So there are a lot of mysteries going on, and we’ll get some answers by the end of the day. But at the moment, the most pressing questions are: Why is there a camera in the hallway, and why does everybody keep touching Sam?

Continue reading Episode 236: Extreme Makeover →

Episode 235: The Waiting Room

May 1967, Ron Sproat,

“I had a dream. I can’t remember what it was.”

So basically Vicki is freaking the hell out, and who can blame her? Maggie’s bedroom is under siege, with a pack of vicious, snarling dogs battering at the French windows, howling for blood. Vicki and Burke are pounding on the door, desperate to save their friend.

Burke tries to break the door down with his shoulder. One! Two! Three! And they bust through the door — and find Maggie, drained, blood flowing from the bite marks on her throat. Outside, in the darkness, a triumphant dog howls with savage pleasure.

I mean, a lot of this is sound effects. But still, it’s pretty cool, yeah?

Continue reading Episode 235: The Waiting Room →

Episode 234: Adventures in Babysitting

May 1967, Ron Sproat, , , ,

“I don’t like people asking questions. And I like even less the people who inspire those questions.”

You know, it’s amazing the kind of thing that you can get used to when you’re watching a TV show every day. The show is clearly stalling while the writers figure out how to spin the Barnabas story out, and I’ve been grumbling all week about the recap and repetition.

But consider this: It’s May 1967. Thirty seconds ago, Nurse Sharon was emptying bedpans on General Hospital. And now we’re watching a walking corpse from the 18th century savagely beating a destitute con man with a cane.

Continue reading Episode 234: Adventures in Babysitting →

Episode 233: All Wet

Malcolm Marmorstein, May 1967, , , ,

“Vicki… could it have been one of those things you think you saw?”

It’s been exactly a month since Willie opened the coffin, and it’s started to sink in for the producers and writers that they might want to keep the vampire around for a while.

Originally, the plan was for Barnabas to be on the show for six weeks. Dr. Woodard, the Van Helsing substitute that they’ve recently introduced, would find something nasty in Maggie’s blood samples, lead the townspeople to Barnabas’ door with torches and stakes, and put an end to the whole silly mess.

But now the first trickle of fan mail has started to arrive. This is a new experience for the Dark Shadows team. Nobody’s writing in to say how much they love the Jason/Liz blackmail story, but the dead guy is getting some response. They should keep this storyline going.

The writers have figured out a really good plot point for Friday’s cliffhanger. Now they only have two problems. They’re called Wednesday and Thursday.

Continue reading Episode 233: All Wet →

Episode 232: Just Add Water

May 1967, Ron Sproat, , ,

“They just kept asking me questions, nothing but questions!”

So here’s the thing about soap operas: just because it’s on every day doesn’t mean you’re actually supposed to watch it every day. I mean, you’re allowed to have a life of your own. It’s 1967, you’re probably tie-dyeing something.

You can tell how often you’re supposed to watch a soap by seeing how far back they’ll recap the story for you. If the characters are still standing around talking about something that happened two weeks ago, then you can probably just show up on Fridays and you won’t miss much. In the early 2000s, NBC had a soap opera called Passions, which was so glacially slow that the optimal viewing schedule was one episode every three weeks. Or, preferably, not at all.

Continue reading Episode 232: Just Add Water →

Episode 231: Bedside Manners

Malcolm Marmorstein, May 1967, , ,

“How did you happen to come by these wounds in your throat?”

Maggie’s not feeling very well after her trip to the graveyard last week, and by not feeling well I mean she’s unconscious and somebody’s perforated her jugular vein. Sam and Joe hover around her bed, fretting and recapping. A dog howls, and Maggie starts moaning restlessly.

For a minute, it looks like the entire episode is going to be Sam and Joe standing around looking at Maggie. (Spoiler alert: That kind of is the entire episode.)

Continue reading Episode 231: Bedside Manners →

Episode 230: The Transylvania Twist

May 1967, Ron Sproat, , , , ,

“I’m in a graveyard. How did I get in a graveyard?”

It’s been four weeks since we opened the mystery box and let the vampire out, not that anyone’s actually saying the word “vampire” yet. The show is actually strangely coy about it — nobody says the V-word out loud for nine months. They finally break it out in episode 410, and by then it’s not the craziest thing on the show anymore.

But who needs labels when you have howling dogs? Over the last month, we’ve seen hypnosis, nightmares, fangs and unexplained blood loss — and this is the episode where it all comes together. This is the first big Friday cliffhanger, and exciting things are finally happening.

Continue reading Episode 230: The Transylvania Twist →

Episode 229: Thirst World Problems

Malcolm Marmorstein, May 1967, , ,

“Things are getting deeper and deeper, and people are saying and doing things for no reason at all!”

Maggie’s overslept again; she’s been out all night consorting with demons. It’s actually not clear what Barnabas and Maggie have been getting up to. We don’t see much on screen — for all we know, they could be going to nightclubs and working their way through the Kama Sutra.

However. At a certain point we’re just watching a girl sleep.

Continue reading Episode 229: Thirst World Problems →