Episode 496: Father of the Year

Gordon Russell, May 1968, , , , , , ,

“Well, never mind about that now. David was very nearly killed this evening.”

It’s a tough job, don’t let anyone tell you different. It must be one of the toughest jobs in television — writing the script for a daily soap opera. It’s not the long-term planning, which has got to be kind of fun. The brutal part is the scene breakdown.

The problem goes like this: We have a plot point to establish, and it requires these three characters to be on this set, in this kind of mood. Go make that happen. And sometimes there’s just no logical reason why that particular group of people would even be talking to each other. This is why you don’t see a lot of jolly soap opera writers.

Of course, on some days, you figure out a clever twist that solves the problem, and the world is full of sunshine, and that’s a good day. Gordon Russell is not having a good day.

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Episode 495: The Talking Dead

May 1968, Sam Hall, , ,

“Food. That is food. Can you say it? Food.”

Okay, let me run this one past you: a teetotaling Dracula and his mad-scientist gal pal have brought a handsome Frankenstein man to life, and they’re teaching him how to speak by leaving him chained up alone in a filthy basement. Yeah, I don’t really get it either.

I mean, let’s do a quick inventory of things that Adam doesn’t have: A toy. A window. Someone to talk to. Any kind of toilet facilities. And then they try to teach him table manners. How do they possibly think this is going to go?

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Episode 494: To Your Teeth

May 1968, Ron Sproat, ,

“Gee, I wish she wasn’t scared of me.”

Well, Adam’s still locked in the prison cell in the Old House basement, so we are too, I guess. This is one of those slow Thursdays where they’ve got something exciting figured out for the end of the week, and there’s nothing much to do until then.

But we’ve got a secret back door today. We’re going on one more uncertain and frightening journey into the past, back to 1845 and the strange origins of vampire fiction.

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Episode 493: Revenge of the Baby-Sat

May 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“A man — No! He was a monster! A monster!”

You know that you’re in for a good day on Dark Shadows when the episode opens with everybody who has a speaking part all standing in a line and facing the teleprompter.

That means two things: there are four people on a cramped set that can really only accommodate one and a half, and the actors can’t memorize their lines because the things that they’re supposed to say don’t mean anything. In other words, it’s a Ron Sproat script today.

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Episode 492: The Terrible Twos

Gordon Russell, May 1968, , ,

“Whether he’s ordinary or not is not the point. He’s a living human being, and we are responsible for him.”

It’s one of those weird nitpicks that people like to bring up in conversation — that “Frankenstein” isn’t the name of the monster; it’s the name of the doctor who created him. Then you say, okay, so what’s the monster’s name? And then everyone just stands around and looks foolish, until finally somebody says, gee, will you look at the time.

Because the creature doesn’t really have a name — he’s billed as the Monster in the Boris Karloff movie, and sometimes people will say “Frankenstein’s monster,” but those aren’t satisfying names, and everybody knows it.

The name “Frankenstein” exists in this weird middle space, suspended between creator and creation. And when you think about it, they’re kind of the same thing anyway, aren’t they? The doctor is the one who thinks; the monster is the one who acts. It’s the ego and the id. “Frankenstein’s monster” and “a Frankenstein monster” are both true, at the same time.

So, this big guy who’s currently smashing up the laboratory — is he Barnabas’ monster? Or is this a Barnabas monster?

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Episode 491: The Wonder Years

May 1968, Sam Hall, , , ,

“Julia — what if he’s some kind of a monster?”

The story so far: Barnabas Collins isn’t a vampire anymore. He got cured, and he wants to stay cured. But the bloodlust is returning, as it usually does, and the witch who originally cursed him keeps giving him dirty looks, so last week, he did something even more reckless than usual. He got his pal Julia to complete the late Dr. Lang’s botched experiments, and try to transfer Barnabas’ life force into the empty shell of the doctor’s patchwork Frankenstein creation.

Obviously, this is a foolproof plan, as these fools have just proved. The experiment ended prematurely, with only part of Barnabas’ life force going into the creature. And now something new and terrible is unleashed upon the world.

I’d like to say that he has his mother’s eyes and his father’s nose, but he was pieced together from scavenged corpses, and it’s hard to trace where all the bits came from with any degree of certainty.

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Sam Hall: In appreciation

Sam Hall, , , ,

Sam Hall died on Friday, September 26th, at the age of 93. The news was announced, in a quiet way, on his son Matthew’s blog.

I may have mentioned, once or twice, that Sam Hall was the greatest writer on Dark Shadows — which I’m sure sounds like the faintest possible praise, but it means a lot to me.

Dark Shadows is the most surprising, and therefore the best, television show ever made, and Sam joined the show at a crucial moment — in November 1967, when the breakout character was just on the verge of breaking the show. The Barnabas storyline had turned the slow-moving soap into a hit, but the story was starting to run in circles, and it needed a change in direction. Sam brought wit, intelligence and fresh ideas to Dark Shadows, just when it needed it the most. He saved the show.

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Episode 490: What to Expect When You’re Expecting

Gordon Russell, May 1968, , , , , ,

“If we fail, well… then we must go through with it anyway.”

Yesterday, in my round-up of the Collinsport fashion scene, I neglected to mention the one guy on Dark Shadows who’s been breaking all the wardrobe rules — Adam, the patchwork Frankenstein.

Last week, mad scientist and artisanal monster enthusiast Dr. Eric Lang tried to bring his creation to life, squeezing Barnabas’ life force out of his vampire-cursed body, and using it to jump-start the new guy.

In a town with a mandatory “ties or turtlenecks” rule, Adam has brazenly flouted convention, clearly going full commando under his sheet. This bold sartorial statement has made him an eye-catching addition to the landscape, but it was also kind of a clue that he wasn’t planning to get up off the table until somebody found him something in extra-extra-large.

But in this episode — as Julia and Barnabas prepare to give the experiment one more try — Adam’s sheet is pulled all the way up to his chin, which means that he might have some clothes on under there. I think this might be the day we actually get this dude up onto his feet.

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Episode 489: Bein’ Green

Gordon Russell, May 1968, , , , ,

“I have much too much work to do, to be bothered with dreams.”

Young David Collins has returned home, after a lengthy trip to Boston to recuperate from realizing that his cousin Barnabas was a vampire who planned to murder him. This was a major storyline six months ago, and it led directly to the séance that sent his governess, Vicki, tumbling through time to visit the Collins family of 1795.

Last month, when Vicki came back to the present day, the Dark Shadows writers used the opportunity to make a fresh start on the story — not so much tying up the loose ends as just cutting them off and pretending that they were never that loose in the first place. Everybody just stopped talking about how worried they were about David, and now he’s back from Boston, and everything’s fine.

But there’s something different about the boy, which is even more important than his slow-motion off-screen amnesia. David has come back to Collinwood wearing a Nehru jacket.

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Episode 488: Pretty People in Terrible Trouble

May 1968, Ron Sproat, , , ,

“Well, so much for that little brainstorm.”

Today’s episode begins with another Great Moment in Monster Medicine, as Dr. Julia Hoffman injects some magic fluid into the patchwork Frankenstein that they’re planning to bring to life on Friday.

Looking on, Barnabas asks, “Why do you keep giving him these shots?”

Julia sighs, and says, “If he should begin to decompose, then he will be utterly useless to us.”

The logic behind injecting things into the dead is a little tenuous — the body doesn’t have a functioning circulatory system to move the fluid around. At this point, I think what we’re looking at is a rotting corpse with an exceptionally well-preserved shoulder.

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