Tag Archives: spectacle

Episode 499: A Senior Moment

Gordon Russell, May 1968, , ,

“There will not be time to make you understand!”

Angelique is outside in the garden at night, wearing a cloak with the hood pulled up over her head.

“I have not been able to hear you,” she cries, apparently to her own portrait. “I must find you, and get to you!”

It’s not super clear why Angelique thinks that she should be able to hear an oil painting that’s several miles away. I mean, I don’t think that she’d be able to hear an oil painting anyway, even if it was two feet in front of her, but the distance can’t be helping. But there’s a lot I don’t know about fine art.

“Oh, try and speak to me,” she begs. “Try! TRY!”

This doesn’t seem to be a super effective communication strategy, but Angelique has suddenly aged to about seventy years old, so we should cut her some slack. Maybe she needs her grandchildren to come over and show her how to use her smartphone.

Continue reading Episode 499: A Senior Moment →

Episode 478: What Dreams May Come

April 1968, Gordon Russell, , , , , , ,

“Through sight and sound, and faceless terror…”

It’s been a little over a year since Dark Shadows opened the mystery box, letting a vampire loose and transforming this relatively aimless show into a bubbling cauldron of visual spectacle and lunatic plot contrivances. One of the most remarkable changes is the pace of the show, which used to just drift from day to day, with long sequences of characters telling each other how worried they are about something.

But not anymore. Yesterday, for example, the episode ended with Barnabas falling asleep in a chair, and dreaming about his ex-wife making a promotional announcement about the upcoming story direction. Continuing this rocket sled to adventure in today’s episode, we’re going to watch Maggie fall asleep, too.

We’re going to see a lot of this over the next couple months. I guess making Dark Shadows is exhausting; everyone’s taking afternoon naps.

Continue reading Episode 478: What Dreams May Come →

Episode 462: No Place Like Home

April 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , , , , ,

“I think I expected a haircut to make me feel all new. It doesn’t.”

Victoria Winters is back from her trip to the 18th century — and like all young people coming back from break, she has a bullet wound in her shoulder, a barely coherent memory of what happened, and a new boyfriend who she doesn’t know how to contact.

Now, Julia Hoffman — who has just revealed that she’s a doctor — is providing some unorthodox therapy, spinning a medallion in Vicki’s face and interrogating her under hypnosis. Let the healing begin.

Continue reading Episode 462: No Place Like Home →

Episode 449: Something Nasty in the Woodshed

March 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , ,

“Strange things may happen. Ignore them.”

This week, Joshua Collins has learned that his dead son, Barnabas, has returned from the grave as a vicious undead serial killer, and he’s made a vow to do something about it. And this is how desperate Joshua has become — he’s willing to suggest a team-up with the Countess Natalie Du Prés, who he doesn’t even like that much.

But things have become pretty flexible, here in the dying days of the 1795 storyline.  They don’t have a lot of characters left, what with all the dying, so it’s hard to even get a decent bridge game going, much less a ritual of summoning.

So suddenly Natalie has the power to pray to a candle, sending out a psychic distress call to attract any passing occult-identified day-players. This is why we have a migrant witches problem.

Continue reading Episode 449: Something Nasty in the Woodshed →

Episode 438: Drag Me to Hell

February 1968, Sam Hall, , , , , , , ,

“What really upsets you is the fact that you chose the losing side in this battle between the Almighty and the forces of Evil!”

At the top of today’s episode, vampire recluse Barnabas Collins asks his servant for an update on current events. Ben says that he was at Vicki’s witchcraft trial today, and stayed late to hear the verdict.

Barnabas pauses, and says, “I don’t like the expression on your face, Ben.”

Look, dude, you’ve had just as much time as the rest of us to get used to the look on Ben’s face. It’s a bit late in the day for constructive criticism in that department.

Continue reading Episode 438: Drag Me to Hell →

Episode 386: Make Like a Tree

December 1967, Gordon Russell, , , , ,

“I am defending the right of this girl to be judged innocent until she is proved innocent!”

In the Salem witch trials in 1692, the case for the prosecution mostly relied on what they called “spectral evidence”, which means basically that they believed whatever the screaming girls said. Other techniques included the “touch test” — i.e., having the witch touch a screaming girl, to see if she stops screaming — and looking for a “witch’s teat”, which is just as grim as it sounds.

But you know what they didn’t do in Salem, or in any other witch trial in history? They didn’t tie the accused witch to a tree and leave her there overnight, expecting that the tree would be dead by morning.

They didn’t use this technique for two reasons. For one thing, it’s pretty unlikely that the tree would hold up its end of the bargain. The other reason is that it’s a completely bonkers thing to do, even by the generally loose standards of witch trial sanity.

I’m bringing this up because Dark Shadows is a daytime soap opera, and so obviously a discussion of the Puritan justice system is going to come up at some point. Continue reading Episode 386: Make Like a Tree →

Episode 378: Resistance Is Useful

December 1967, Sam Hall, , , ,

“I am unaccustomed to explaining things, sir!”

Ben Stokes has an axe to grind. I mean, literally — he’s standing in the woods near the Old House, sharpening his axe with a grindstone.

“She’s a witch, that Angelique,” he thinks. “A man like me can’t fight a witch. But I’ve got to. Mr. Barnabas… he’s the only friend I got. She says she’s doin’ everything cause she loves him. If only I could figure out some way I could help him, without her knowin’ it.”

Ladies and gentlemen, there he stands, the unwilling henchman — forced to follow the deranged monster’s commands, but openly struggling the whole way. This is such a common theme on Dark Shadows that it must be coded deep down in the show’s DNA.

So far, everyone that we’ve seen under the vampire’s spell — Willie, Maggie, Julia and Carolyn — have all had the guts to stand up and question what he’s making them do. And not just once, but over and over, even at the risk of their lives and immortal souls. There are no sell-outs or collaborators on Dark Shadows — only underground resistance fighters who haven’t figured out which way is underground yet.

Now we’ve got Ben, the spell-charmed slave of a sinister soap vixen, and he’s desperate to spare his friend. But then a huge floating witch head appears, and starts giving him orders. Looks like recess is over.

Continue reading Episode 378: Resistance Is Useful →

Episode 348: Mission Accomplished

Joe Caldwell, October 1967, , , , ,

“I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t dead.”

Dawn has not yet come to Collinwood. You can tell, because they’ve got the establishing shot up, and it’s dark blue. They’re playing the sub-theme music cue, and somewhere in the studio, fading film star Joan Bennett is standing in front of a microphone.

“Dawn has not yet come to Collinwood,” Joan says, in a world-weary tone which indicates that she’s one sentence into a three-sentence introduction, and it’s not going to get a lot better from here. “The earth hovers between night and day, as though terrified to bring into being the days and nights that lie ahead.”

And it’s amazing, watching it now, to think that there was a time when it was okay to open a television show like this. They don’t take practice swings like this anymore. When your show starts, you start the show.

“But time is indifferent to terror,” says Joan, and you have to admit she has a point. “And the earth obeys the primal command creating nights and days, creating the moment when fear no longer stalks… but stops to strike.”

In other words: it’s October 1967, and you don’t have a remote control. If the earth obeying primal commands isn’t a stop-the-presses level event for you, then you’re going to have to get up, walk across the room and do something about it.

Continue reading Episode 348: Mission Accomplished →

Episode 347: Mad Science

Joe Caldwell, October 1967, , , , , , , , ,

“Did you ever try to find the exact center of a piece of fine crystal?”

The doctor is advising prudence. She asks the patient, “Are you sure you want it this way?”

“I am through arguing the point,” he sniffs. “The treatments must be accelerated without further comment.”

She reminds him that she will not accept responsibility for the consequences.

“If we don’t hurry,” the patient says, “it will soon be morning. Now, begin the treatment.”

And then she fastens the straps on his electric chair.

Continue reading Episode 347: Mad Science →

Episode 330: Twenty-two Minutes

Ron Sproat, September 1967, , , , ,

“They aren’t ideas, and I’m not imagining things.”

Well, it’s Friday, so we might as well talk about cliffhangers.

Over the next couple of months, the Dark Shadows writers are finally going to get the hang of how the show is supposed to work, and a crucial part of that is learning how to create episode endings that get people to come back for the next episode. That’s especially important on Fridays, when the cliffhanger needs to last us all the way to Monday.

High-quality cliffhanger construction is a very specific skill, and as the writers develop it, a cynical observer might start to wonder if the structure of the entire narrative is being twisted in order to service the audience’s bottomless hunger for bigger and bolder thrills.

In other words: Does this entire twenty-two minute slice of television exist only to set up a surprise twist in the last sixty seconds?

There are two answers to that question, which are as follows: a) Yes, it does, and b) Which is awesome.

Continue reading Episode 330: Twenty-two Minutes →