“Being a mental patient seems to make anything possible.”
So we might as well gently check ourselves into an asylum, is what I’m saying. It’s about time, and it doesn’t appear like anyone’s going to do it for us. I think at this point we could all do with a little rest cure at a home for the mentally unwell, if only to hang out with the rest of the Dark Shadows fanbase.
“Won’t anyone listen to me? That woman is dead, I tell you, she’s dead!”
“How now, Samantha,” says Gerard Stiles, on the battlements of Collinwood. “Stand and unfold yourself.” It takes a minute, but she manages it; a person like Samantha Collins can get herself pretty comprehensively folded.
You see, at the end of yesternight’s episode, the deceased Joanna Mills, Quentin Collins’ former mistress, showed up at the front door of Collinwood, and told Samantha, Quentin’s wife, that she wanted to talk to her sister Daphne, Quentin’s current mistress.
“What art thou that usurp’st this time of night,” Samantha said, addressing the spirit. “By heaven I charge thee, speak!”
“You and I know of each other, although we’ve never met,” spake Joanna, harrowing Samantha with fear and wonder. “I don’t mean to disturb you; I only want to see my sister.”
So Samantha allowed this dreaded sight into her house, because you don’t want to be rude, even to an apparition. In the gross and scope of my opinion, this bodes some strange eruption to our state, although now that I think about it, Samantha is responsible for strange eruptions pretty regularly, all by herself.
“I suppose I’d better pay a visit on the antique shop which specializes in a succession of strange, disposable little boys.”
Scene One: Grave, Indeed
EXT. PHOTOGRAPH OF COLLINWOOD — DAY
PROFESSOR STOKES (O.S.)
For Maggie Evans, a time of terror at Collinwood has ended, and the source of her torment has been identified as Michael, the boy who lives with Megan and Philip Todd at the antique shop.
FADE IN:
INT. ANTIQUE SHOP BEDROOM — DAY
Michael stares directly into the camera, waiting for his cue to begin acting.
PROFESSOR STOKES (CONT’D)
And now Michael faces his own time of terror. For with shocking swiftness, he has fallen ill, and as she examines him, Julia Hoffman knows his illness is grave indeed.
Having received his cue, Michael shuts his eyes and rolls around on the bed. Julia positions a stethoscope somewhere in the vicinity of his heart.
JULIA (THINKS)
Come on come onnnnnn when do I get to inject him with something
Continue reading Episode 928: Another Day in the Uncanny Valley
“I’m a monster! I have no choice but to kill!”
Megan is alone, on the display floor of her antique shop. Her husband left to buy cigarettes a few moments ago. The room is dim, and cluttered with scattered relics.
Megan is worried. Earlier today, she was suddenly overcome with the unshakeable feeling that someone is coming to kill her. She’s correct; somebody is actually coming to kill her. It’s been a weird day.
What follows is a five-minute solo spaz attack of epic proportions. When I was younger and less discerning, I thought of this as The Worst Scene In Dark Shadows. I’m not sure what I think about it now. I’m still trying to work that out.
“I don’t believe that she’s not worried about Philip, either.”
Things look bleak for the global Leviathan conspiracy. The ancient book of prophecy has been stolen. The child is sick. The boss is spending all his time punishing the Chosen Ones. It’s only been two weeks, and the organization is falling to pieces.
We need a firm hand at the wheel, a steady leader in an unsteady world. We need a thirteen year old.
“You oughtn’t to go, until you take something more to them than what you’re taking now.”
They opened the box, and read the scroll, and lost the book, and had the dream. And now they have a baby, which is not how it works.
“And why do I do as I do?”
So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that in the fictional world of Dark Shadows, there’s no such thing as the supernatural, and everybody on the show is just overly emotional. Would that actually change the show in any way?
“What I was is not what I am. What I am is what I will be.”
So let’s say you have an entirely crazy person on your hands, and you need to keep her in your home for an unspecified amount of time. This is a common concern for modern homeowners. According to the experts, you should keep her in a warm room with indirect light, check the top of the soil before watering, and fertilize once a month in the spring and summer. No, wait, that’s ficus trees.
Well, here’s what vampire-about-town Barnabas Collins does, once he’s taken it upon himself to immure Quentin’s crazy wife for the foreseeable. He stashes her in an upstairs bedroom, locks the door from the outside, and then goes down to the basement to sleep in a coffin, leaving a note for the comedy gypsies who serve as his unwilling housekeepers.
I’m not saying that’s the appropriate way to handle it, I’m just telling you what Barnabas does.
“Wait for me, Quentin! I’m coming — to KILL you!”
Crazy Jenny has been in the attic and out of her mind for a couple of years now, and to be frank with you, she’s sick of the whole experience. Her husband, the adorable antihero Quentin Collins, skipped town a couple years ago with his sister-in-law, Crazy Laura, and Jenny took it pretty hard. In fact, she’s gone entirely loco, in that unspecified way that people on television always do, babbling maniacally and ready to kill at a moment’s notice.
As it happens, Laura is also in a murderous mood, so she gets her new boyfriend, Groundskeeper Dirk, to let Jenny out of her cell, give her a knife, and point her in a Quentin-facing direction.
Obediently, Dirk supplies Jenny with a dagger that he’s selected from the random assortment of murder weapons that the Collins family keeps in every room in the house. But then he hears the boss coming, so he bundles Jenny into the drawing room and closes the door, which is pretty insensitive considering how she’s spent the last couple years.
Judith walks in and finds Dirk, who’s desperately trying to look like someone who didn’t just adopt a pet Tasmanian devil. She gives him a couple of cursory orders, but he’s finding it hard to focus.
Judith’s puzzled by Dirk’s odd behavior, but the servants at Collinwood are always distracted by one thing or another. We never see most of the people on the payroll, but they probably each have their own weird schemes going on that we don’t happen to see. I bet the cook is currently consulting her crystal ball to check on her late brother, the chauffeur, who’s been reanimated with the spirit of the upstairs maid. Meanwhile, the gardener scuttles through the back passageway on all fours, desperate to escape from that dream, that terrible dream!
“Anyone who believes in voodoo must believe in me!”
Let’s talk for a moment about the tremendous advantages of having a gypsy on your television show.
Number one, obviously, ethnic, which means there’s all kinds of comic value just sitting there for the taking.
Number two, ethnic, which means you can always kickstart a plot point by showing her something that she wants to steal.
And number three, ethnic, which means that if you can’t think of an exciting way to end an episode, then she can just run into the room, point at a cast member, and scream The MARK! The mark of DEATH! Soon! SOON! You will DIE! and then you superimpose a Chromakey skull over the guy’s face.
And yet I can’t think of a single other show that has a gypsy. I swear, it’s like people don’t even want to make good television.
Dark Shadows Every Day 