Tag Archives: police futility

Episode 623: This Is Happening

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

“All we know is, she was hanged. But whether she died or not is something everyone in Collinsport is still wondering about.”

Gosh. So much to cover, and I can’t explain any of it. The Great 1968 Wrap-Up is in full swing, and I don’t have the energy to take care of bystanders today. If you aren’t completely up to date on the ins and outs of the spine-tingling nonsense they’re passing off as a storyline these days, then there is honestly very little that I can say that would help.

If you’re super brand new to the blog, then you might be better off reading yesterday’s post. Wait, sorry — yesterday’s was even goofier than today’s. I don’t know, there’s a lot of posts to read. Pick a number between 210 and 623. Okay, now put it back in the deck. Was it 497? Damn it! I suck at card tricks.

Continue reading Episode 623: This Is Happening →

Episode 615: The Truth About Cats and Dogs

November 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , , ,

“What difference does it make who catches the vampire?”

Hey, look who’s come over for a social call — it’s Sheriff George Patterson, the three-time winner for Least Effective Police Officer in the Dramatic Arts. In the two years that he’s been on Dark Shadows, Collinsport has grown from a gloomy little seaside town into a nightmarish hellscape ruled by demonic mob bosses, who never get prosecuted or even questioned very hard. We’re not going to see another law enforcement losing streak like this until the Pink Panther movies in the mid-70s, and even Inspector Clouseau managed to catch the bad guy once in a while.

As we’ve seen this week, there’s been a massive conspiracy to kill that nice young Joe Haskell, with four characters directly involved in a plot to poison his medicine. Furious, he decided to take the law into his own hands, and there’s an eyewitness alleging that she watched Joe strangle Barnabas Collins while he was innocently napping in an armchair.

Joe is not technically in custody at the moment, because he’s in the hospital, recuperating. But he never gets booked, and nobody else in the crime syndicate does either. Sheriff George Patterson lives in the law-breakiest town in the world, and he never even makes a goddamn arrest.

Continue reading Episode 615: The Truth About Cats and Dogs →

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!

Continue reading Episode 556: Apotheosis →

Episode 532/533: In Darkest Hour

Gordon Russell, July 1968, , ,

“If I had known you were going to pursue your usual nonsense, I would never have come downstairs.”

Okay, there’s just one more week of the Dream Curse, one of the most tedious storylines in all of Dark Shadows. When I started this blog, I knew that the Dream Curse was going to be a hard period to work through. The problem for me isn’t really that the episodes are bad — some of my best entries are for bad episodes — it’s that they’re so repetitive. There are only so many ways that you can talk about a three-month storyline where exactly nothing happens.

But soap operas are resilient beasts; they rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher and better things. Probably. I’m pretty sure we’ll get to cool stuff at some point.

So here we are, in the darkest hour, fidgeting and waiting impatiently for the dawn. But what the hell. Let’s have some fun.

Continue reading Episode 532/533: In Darkest Hour →

Episode 505: The Sinking Detective

Gordon Russell, May 1968, , , ,

“You might as well prepare yourself for an ordeal.”

It’s a tough job, I get that. Police officers on Dark Shadows combine the inadequacy of soap opera cops with the inadequacy of monster movie cops. Police officer characters can do very well, if they stay in their own genres, but when they stray too far from home, they start competing with characters that are automatically way more interesting.

The outbreak of lawlessness that Sheriff George Patterson is currently investigating centers around Adam, the patchwork Frankenstein monster. If they catch him, they’re planning to charge him with being brought to life without a license, which I don’t think is even a misdemeanor.

So you’ve got to feel bad for the Sheriff, unless you forget all about him the moment he’s off the screen, like everybody else does.

Continue reading Episode 505: The Sinking Detective →

Episode 428: Duel It Yourself

February 1968, Gordon Russell, , , , ,

“They’re going to keep Barnabas away from me, and avoid the duel. That means that all of your lies and deception will go unpunished.”

In yesterday’s episode, we saw the beginning of Vicki’s witchcraft trial, the first example of any kind of sustained legal procedure on Dark Shadows. And this is an odd moment for them to be apprehending suspects, because the 1795 storyline is basically the moment when we say goodbye to law enforcement in Collinsport.

When they get back to the present day, we’ll see a few scattered appearances of the useless Sheriff Patterson and his even more useless successors, but they don’t amount to much, unless you count rising from the dead as a zombie and then being torn apart by a werewolf.

But in 1795 — even with a whole subplot involving a trial and a prison term — we don’t see a single police officer. There’s a couple jailers, a few judges and an executioner hanging around in the back somewhere, but there’s nobody representing the police force. In fact, the main characters don’t even consider calling in the police, despite the sudden rash of suspicious deaths in and around the grounds of the Collins estate.

Continue reading Episode 428: Duel It Yourself →

Episode 342: Shadow of the Bat

Joe Caldwell, October 1967, , , , ,

“I didn’t say I believed it, but Dave did. And he’s dead.”

You know, we’ve been spending a lot of time with the monsters lately; we should probably check in with the good guys while we still have some.

Yesterday, Barnabas and Julia murdered Dr. Dave Woodard, because he’d found Julia’s notebook that described her efforts to cure Barnabas of being a vampire. Julia prepared a hypodermic with a drug that would make it look like Woodard had a heart attack. She chickened out at the last minute, but Barnabas jammed the needle into Woodard’s arm, and the doctor died.

This has caused a great deal of inconvenience for everyone, because earlier in the evening, Woodard had called Sheriff Patterson, and made an appointment to share some important evidence. So now the Sheriff is wondering whether Woodard was killed to conceal that evidence.

Naturally, this raises an important question, namely: Why do you need to make an appointment to bring the Sheriff crucial evidence about an unsolved murder and kidnapping? What else was on his schedule today?

Continue reading Episode 342: Shadow of the Bat →

Episode 328: Look! A Ring!

Ron Sproat, September 1967, , , , ,

“There are a dozen reasons why that’s impossible.”

So here’s your standard, kitchen-sink soap opera situation: Willie was shot a couple days ago, and he’s still in a coma. Barnabas is pacing around the drawing room, waiting for Julia to come back from the hospital to report on the patient’s recovery.

But this is Dark Shadows, and what he’s really worried about is that if Willie pulls through, he’ll tell everyone that Barnabas is a vampire. So when Julia tells him that Willie is still alive, Barnabas explodes with anger.

“I know what you’re going to say!” he shouts. “You’re going to tell me to remain quiet and forget it. Well, I refuse to do that any longer! Willie must die!”

Continue reading Episode 328: Look! A Ring! →

Episode 273: All These Years

Joe Caldwell, July 1967, , ,

“I’ve been a prisoner because of this room!”

I’ve noticed a bunch of new readers showing up on the site this week, which is fantastic, but not necessarily the best timing. This is the final week of the last non-supernatural storyline, and it’s taking a minute to wrap up. The last time we saw the vampire was over a week ago, and all he did was talk to Liz about suicide.

So, new readers — stick around! The vampire comes back tomorrow, and next week he’s going to throw a costume party. Seriously, that’s the next storyline.

Continue reading Episode 273: All These Years →

Episode 272: Bourne Yesterday

Joe Caldwell, July 1967, , , , ,

“I seem to remember doing time for a certain manslaughter charge.”

Personally, I don’t watch a lot of police procedurals. In my opinion, if there’s a crime on a TV show, they should either tell us who did it, or just admit that they don’t know and stop wasting everybody’s time.

So there’s a lot that I don’t know about how a police investigation should run. But even I know enough to say that pretty much everything that they do in today’s episode is wrong, and every character who appears on screen ought to be brought up on charges, up to and including the sheriff.

Continue reading Episode 272: Bourne Yesterday →