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Episode 1188: Don’t Panic

Gordon Russell, January 1971, , , ,

“Why do you think I brought you here? Why do you think I didn’t kill you?”

“Gabriel, something terrible’s happened,” Daphne pants, sprinting into the drawing room. And she’s right, something terrible has happened; it’s been happening for four years.

“What is it, what’s wrong?” says the orange man, startled. It’s been a bad few weeks for Gabriel, what with the debate disaster and his covid diagnosis and losing the suburban women. He doesn’t need any more October surprises; he’s had plenty.

“It’s Edith,” Daphne cries. “She’s dead. She’s been murdered!” Well, not murdered per se, but she’s been hanging out with Republicans, and none of them wear masks. “Gabriel, you were right, it was Gerard. He was out to dispose of her, and he nearly killed me, just now, in Edith’s room!” Gerard didn’t do any such thing, actually, but Daphne’s been the target of a disinformation campaign, and she’s got things all mixed up. She figures it’s either Gerard, or Hunter Biden; either way, it’s the second biggest political scandal in our history.

“I knocked him out with a candlestick,” Daphne continues. “I locked the door. I’ll get the carriage, and go for the police!”

“Now, wait a minute!” Gabriel tweets. “Now, wait, we’ve got to do this right.” He doesn’t mind that she’s going for the police, he’s all for law and order. It’s just that he can’t stop himself from interrupting women.

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Episode 1057: Infinite Jest

Joe Caldwell, July 1970, , , , , ,

“A whole tangle and labyrinth — I’m convinced that she’s somewhere there!”

It’s the same old story. You start out with another Earth on the opposite side of the sun, where all the good people are evil, and everyone’s got a mustache except the people who are supposed to have mustaches. But you can’t leave well enough alone.

Pretty soon, you’ve got people from the other universe popping up to cause trouble. They move into your house and call themselves Cassandra, and refuse to admit that they’re the spinoff. They demand crossovers and reboots and flash-forwards, rewriting time to suit their own purposes. Before you know it, you’ve got Skaro Daleks fighting Necros Daleks, and 616-Thor taking a spare hammer from Ultimate Thor, and two completely different ways for Edith Collins to die, and anything that you do to try to fix the problem only makes everything worse.

They say that those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it, but it turns out the people who do remember the past repeat it even more. It’s gonna get repeated either way.

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Episode 1021: Five Things

Joe Caldwell, May 1970, , , ,

“If you had murdered someone, what’s the most logical thing that you would do?”

It’s Monday, as you know, because here we are and it’s Monday. Just look around, this is what Monday looks like. Right? Okay.

Now, I’m going to tell you five things about this week on Dark Shadows, and one of them is going to be hard to believe, so you’re just going to have to trust me on this.

First: One of the main characters — who we thought was in love with one character, and has been drawn into a complicated relationship with a second character — is suddenly and without warning going to be madly in love with a third character, and then we’re supposed to pretend that it’s been that way all along.

Second: There’s an episode this week that only has four characters — one nice person, and three nasty people who spend the entire half-hour criticizing her, gossiping about her and openly mocking her.

Third: You know that rape subtext that sits awkwardly behind practically everything that happens on Dark Shadows, including the vampire bites, the possessions, the enchantments, the body swaps and the aggressive reincarnations? You know, the thing that makes us uncomfortable, because we enjoy a show that expects us to be interested in the love lives of serial rapists? Well, that’s going to graduate from subtext to actual text this week. In fact, we’re going to see a villain do a brief monologue on the subject of how great it’s going to be when he literally rapes someone you like.

Fourth: A relationship that you’re interested in, and that maybe you’re rooting for, will get blown to bits this week, and you will never care about it again. This is no longer a story about love triumphant in the face of evil, it’s just a story about things that happen to this particular set of complex, haunted people.

Fifth — and this is the one that’s hard to believe — this is what it looks like when Dark Shadows gets better.

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Episode 284: Doctor Who

Joe Caldwell, July 1967, , , , , , , ,

“Our mistake is thinking that there are limits as to what can take place on this planet.”

Maggie’s still locked up at the Windcliff Sanitarium, recovering from her recent vampire abduction. Dr. Julia Hoffman — the noted blood specialist, psychologist and all-around smart person — is hypnotizing Maggie with a penlight, trying to bring her repressed memories to the surface.

They took a field trip to the Eagle Hill cemetery yesterday, and they found the Collins mausoleum, which triggered some frightening memories. Julia noticed that there was a grave marker for Sarah Collins in the mausoleum, and now she’s trying to learn if there’s a connection between the 10-year-old named Sarah who died in the 18th century and the little girl named Sarah who helped Maggie during her incarceration.

That is an incredible leap in logic, and I’m using the dictionary definition of “incredible”, as in: impossible to believe. Julia is going to make a lot of these intuitive leaps over the next week, making connections that no real human would ever make given the current information. And every single one of her batty conclusions is exactly correct.

Julia is therefore a completely unbelievable Sherlock Holmes type detective, who pulls insights out of the air and is right every time. And the audience loves her and believes in her anyway.

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