Tag Archives: blocking

Episode 619: The Gunslinger

Gordon Russell, November 1968, , , , , , ,

“No matter how dangerous it is, I’ve got to have a showdown with Nicholas Blair.”

Really, the thing that everybody wants to know is: why can’t the Stormtroopers shoot straight in Star Wars? It turns out there are three simple answers.

#1. Stormtroopers shooting laser bolts are more interesting to look at than Stormtroopers who stand around complaining.

#2. Shooting Luke Skywalker in the head halfway through the first movie is going to leave a rather obvious gap in the trilogy.

#3. “Strong Guy Kills Weak Guy” is not headline news.

This ends the lit-crit theory portion of today’s post; we will now spend the rest of our time watching Dr. Julia Hoffman act like an unbelievable badass.

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Episode 618: Stop Trying

Gordon Russell, November 1968, , ,

“I hope I disappoint you, and die before dawn.”

Barnabas Collins looks around, and tries to focus.

“Where have you brought me?” he moans. “What is this place?”

His wife, Angelique, drifts to his side.

“You’re near the sea,” she says. “Far away from anyone who may want to find you.”

Unimpressed, he surveys the room, clearly thinking: Near the sea? Dude, we live in Maine. Everything here is near the sea.

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Episode 580: Temporary Sanity

Gordon Russell, September 1968, ,

“Do you think a woman’s just going to volunteer to risk her life for something as insane as this?”

Jeff Clark — an 18th century lawyer who’s been transported through time to 1968 — rubs his neck, and tries to concentrate on the journal he’s studying. He’s in the basement of a spooky old haunted house, where he’s helping a mad scientist assemble a female Frankenstein monster, because the local male Frankenstein monster has threatened to kill Jeff’s fiancee if he doesn’t.

So he’s leafing through the journal of his former employer, who was murdered by a witch in the middle of the last experiment, and Julia is next to him, painstakingly pouring some suspicious-looking red fluid from one test tube into another.

Jeff stands up, and says that he’s going to Collinwood — but then he stops, and sighs. Julia walks over to him, concerned.

“Jeff,” she says, “there’s something bothering you.”

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Episode 557: A Race of Monsters

August 1968, Gordon Russell, ,

“When you see his neck, Julia, you will know at once whether or not I am right.”

Julia walks into a haunted house, and finds a vampire sitting in an armchair.

“Barnabas, you look exhausted,” she says, because this television show takes place in a world where people worry that the living dead don’t get enough sleep.

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Episode 539: Grieve a Little Grieve

July 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , ,

“I’m not delirious. You know what she is.”

One of the things that you learn when you watch Dark Shadows is that there are several different kinds of weird. This is not a particularly helpful thing to learn, and learning it will not improve your life in any measurable way. It just happens, and there’s not much you can do about it.

There’s the everyday, domestic kind of weird, which involves eccentric people doing unusual things — say, a college professor taking an enormous feral Frankenstein home with him, and teaching it to read the word “clock” off a flash card.

There’s the fancy, bespoke kind of weird, which involves people acting in a completely illogical way just for the sake of an exciting cliffhanger — like burying their dead friend in the woods, and then realizing that he’s come back to life, and they only have half an hour to dig him up again.

And then there’s the kind of weird where you honestly have no idea why the scene that you’re watching even exists. That’s the kind we’re going to be talking about today, thanks to scriptwriter Ron Sproat, among other mistakes.

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Episode 317: The X-Files

Gordon Russell, September 1967, , , , , , ,

“When I came into your room that night to kill you, I should have gone through with it.”

Today’s episode opens with Dr. Julia Hoffman walking into the Old House to find Barnabas getting ready to leave. Technically, she’s supposed to be coming over to continue her experiments; she believes that she can cure Barnabas of being a vampire. This usually involves injections, seasoned with dialogue about the structure of his blood cells.

But we’ve seen that situation so many times lately that they apparently don’t even need to mention the experiment anymore. Julia just walks in, and asks Barnabas what he’s up to. He calls her “doctor” a few times, but otherwise there’s no mention of the cure, or any other reason that she might be strolling in this evening. It’s actually surprising that she even bothers to knock on the door. Things have become noticeably casual at the Old House.

The main topic of the week is whether young David knows Barnabas’ secret, and what Barnabas is going to do about it. Julia urges him not to do anything rash, and he tells her to mind her own business. You’d think that watching people talk about murdering a child would be inherently interesting. Apparently, that is not always the case.

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Episode 302: The Serpent

August 1967, Gordon Russell, , , , ,

“I find it very egotistical of you to think that only your kind can come back from death.”

The moon rises over the great estate of Collinwood, and at the Old House, Barnabas and Julia are spending a quiet evening at home. She’s preparing an injection that she hopes will cure his vampirism, and he’s browsing through a family album, dreaming of the people that he’d like to kill.

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Episode 228: Those Things in That Room

May 1967, Ron Sproat, ,

“Well, you can all be as exasperated as you like. It won’t do you any good.”

Full disclosure for the hardcore vampire enthusiasts: This is another Jason/Liz blackmail episode. Roger has some funny lines, and Carolyn is always worth watching, but if you’re only interested in vampires, then you can skip this one.

Actually, does it help if I tell you that Liz murdered her husband and buried him in the basement? That’s what the whole blackmail thing is about. Okay, maybe not. Come back tomorrow, vampire fans. Maggie gets abducted and everything.

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