Tag Archives: too broad and too deep

Episode 1216: Return to Return to Collinwood

February 4, 2021February 1971, Gordon Russelladdams family, boom goes the dynamite, come back, hide the deer, housewives, merchandise, pretty girl in peril, pteranodon, relationship status, seance, stairs, ta-dah, thirsty, too broad and too deep, vixen, war for dark shadows, werewolfDanny Horn

“I can see Collinwood — but not the Collinwood of today!”

As we careen toward the conclusion of this rattletrap of a television show, I’ve been peering into David Collins’ crystal ball, which now happens to be in my personal possession for reasons that I’ll tell you about later, and I’ve been looking forward into the future of Dark Shadows, to see what happens to this story, once the story is over. This is the War for Dark Shadows, the battle to determine what this story becomes in the decades ahead.

As we all know, the organizing principle of Dark Shadows is Oh my god, what are we going to do next, the agonized heartcry of a team of writers and producers trying desperately to stay ahead of the audience. The only way to do this is to triangulate based on what the viewers are currently responding to, and then steer towards the next surprise.

Continue reading Episode 1216: Return to Return to Collinwood →

Episode 1212: Once in Every Generation

January 25, 2021February 1971, Gordon Russellarchitecture, basement, brandy, clamshells, coffin, fangs, long-overdue national conversation, lookalike, merchandise, parkerverse, salem, too broad and too deep, tor books, trespassing, war for dark shadowsDanny Horn

“Really, my good man, there is more to life than one monster’s power over another’s.”

In today’s episode of ABC-TV’s Dark Shadows, the utterly haunted Collins family of 1841 Parallel Time actually goes ahead and holds the lottery that they’ve been talking about for weeks and weeks, with a dramatic reveal and an off-screen high-speed chase, which should probably be attended to at some point. But the great thing about 1971 Dark Shadows is that even if I take the day off today to talk about something else, they’ll still be there tomorrow, doing more or less the same stuff. That has not always been the case on this show, but is definitely the case now.

So you won’t mind if I allow Gabriel to slip quietly out the door for the day, while I tackle another task that has been personally haunting me for months: the second installment of the Parkerverse continuity.

Continue reading Episode 1212: Once in Every Generation →

Episode 1201: Willie Loomis Must Die: The Movie

December 26, 2020February 1971, Gordon Russellloomis abuse, must die, pirates, rosencrantz, too broad and too deep, war for dark shadowsDanny Horn

“You’re just as frightened as both of us!”

“Hurts… everything hurts!”

Five months ago, Willie Loomis snuck out to the Collins family mausoleum, looking for buried treasure. Opening a hidden mystery box, he unleashed one hundred and seventy-two years worth of hunger and fury into the world.

“Don’t! Don’t hurt me!”

His name is Barnabas Collins, and he has been using Willie as a housekeeper, a carpenter, an accomplice, a snack bar — and, now, as a patsy, who’ll take the fall for Barnabas’ crimes.

“Is it dark?”

Now Willie’s in the hospital with five bullets in his back, gunned down by law enforcement while trying to warn one of Barnabas’ victims.

“Is it dark outside?”

The vampire knows that if Willie tells the police what he was doing, then his secrets will be exposed. He has no choice: Willie Loomis must die.

“I’m afraid of the night! Don’t let it be dark, please! Don’t let be dark!”

But Willie has lost his mind, from pain and horror and fear. He is hopelessly insane, and he’s shipped off to a sanitarium, to live out the rest of his shattered life.

“Don’t hurt me! Please, don’t hurt me!”

And then seven months later, Barnabas needs him to come back and clean up after his new pet Frankenstein, and Willie says sure, no problem, we’re total besties.

So when Dark Shadows fans say that someone should remake the show, telling the same story but skipping the Dream Curse and the Leviathans, then you have to ask: if a writer isn’t desperately trying to fall downstairs and land on their feet every day to churn out another half-hour of daytime television by any means necessary… Does the story of Dark Shadows actually make any goddamn sense?

Continue reading Episode 1201: Willie Loomis Must Die: The Movie →

Episode 1190: The Years of Time

November 22, 2020Gordon Russell, January 1971april third, candles, goldfish, make a friend, mansplaining, nostalgia, portraits, seance, sentiment, ta-dah, the will, too broad and too deep, war for dark shadowsDanny Horn

“Nature puts a bar between the worlds of the living and the dead for a reason.”

The sun rises once again on the house on the hill; Collinwood wakes to a new day. Many changes have come to the house, and to those who reside therein, as the years of time have swept by.

And it has been years of time, hasn’t it? Specifically, it’s currently August 2003 and this is the Brooklyn Marriott, which may not be the time or the place you were expecting. That’s time for you, I guess; it’s sneaky that way.

This post is another installment of The War for Dark Shadows, the decades-long struggle that’s taken place after the show’s finale to define what Dark Shadows is, and find fresh perspectives. Today, we’re going to jump into a Dark Shadows Festival in full flow, and listen to the Big Beginning.

Continue reading Episode 1190: The Years of Time →

Episode 1178: The Mary Sue

August 23, 2020December 1970, Gordon Russellblack goat, halloween, harpercollins, jungle girl, lilacs, loomis abuse, mary sue, merchandise, never drink wine, pumpkin pie, revenge, satan's favorite tv show, silver, the past, too broad and too deep, trickery, war for dark shadowsDanny Horn

“Linger, my friend, while I tell you my fascinating thoughts.”

“Mr. Collins, are you there?” calls Lamar Trask, talking to a brick wall. He’s excited, this is his first murder.

Trask has walled up the trans-temporal eccentric millionaire Barnabas Collins in a basement alcove, for vengeance purposes. First he thought that Barnabas murdered his father, the Reverend Trask, fifty years ago. Now he knows that Barnabas isn’t a vampire, but he still thinks that Barnabas is responsible for his father’s death. Or maybe it was Barnabas’ father who was responsible. It’s not clear to me what Trask thinks. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, one way or another.

“Mr. Collins, something has occurred to me,” he continues. “Something I think you might find interesting. Shall I tell you?” From behind the wall, Barnabas says yes. Apparently he’s still taking calls.

“Good,” Trask smirks. “You’re not dead yet. Linger, my friend, while I tell you my fascinating thoughts.” Which kind of sounds like what I’m saying, at this point in the blog.

Continue reading Episode 1178: The Mary Sue →

Episode 1172: The Deck Chairs

July 31, 2020December 1970, Gordon Russellharpercollins, long-overdue national conversation, loomis abuse, make a friend, meet cute, merchandise, parkerverse, pirates, prequel, rosencrantz, shakespeare, shipping, ta-dah, titanic, too broad and too deep, trickster, voodoo, war for dark shadowsDanny Horn

“Slow agonizing death is the worst kind, you know!”

It’s three days till Christmas 1970, and here we are in the dying days of Dark Shadows, a show that has specialized almost exclusively in dying days since its ratings peak in October 1969. Don’t tell the 1970 audience, but between you and me, the show only has 15 weeks left to run, which means, if my recent posting schedule is any guide, that this blog will shudder to a stop somewhere around the middle of 2075.

So we should get back to The War for Dark Shadows, the ongoing struggle to define what kind of story Dark Shadows becomes when it’s not a half-hour daytime soap opera anymore. This battle has been raging for decades in books, movies, comic books and the hearts of children, and there’s a lot of it, so we’d better buckle down and start taking this seriously. I mean, those deck chairs aren’t going to rearrange themselves.

Continue reading Episode 1172: The Deck Chairs →

Episode 1074: Future So Bright

September 14, 2017August 1970, Sam Hallapril third, gold key, grave soil, merchandise, moon, rummaging, seance, something terrible, time travel, too broad and too deep, werewolfDanny Horn

“Charting the future is not a whim with me.”

Gentleman vampire Barnabas Collins is terribly concerned about the future, and for good reason; he’s been there, and it sucks. He spent a couple weeks trapped in the 90s, where he found his house tore up from the floor up, and he’s desperate to counteract the oncoming calamity.

But we all know that he’s going to fail; the future for Barnabas Collins is not going to be on ABC-TV at four o’clock in the afternoon. Collinwood will fall, and the family will move to a series of temporary shelters in paperback novels and comic strips and audio plays. That future is fast approaching — not today, and not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of his life.

And he might have figured that out, if he’d bothered to learn anything about the world in 1995. He didn’t even crack a newspaper; the name “Bart Simpson” means nothing to him. He spent the entire time running around the house, looking for ghosts.

Dark Shadows has spent the last year and a half turning inward, gradually losing touch with the world outside the great estate. Even the town of Collinsport hardly matters, these days. Barnabas came back to the present with the name “Rose Cottage” on his lips; nobody’s ever heard of it, but I’d bet money it’s going to turn out to be somewhere on the Collinwood grounds. It’s the only place they care about.

But this isn’t the only example of Barnabas Collins flash-forwarding on a mission of purely parochial interest. In November 1971, he shot a whole hundred years into the future, and you’ll never guess what he was looking for. Nope, don’t even try. Whatever it is you’re thinking, it’s dumber than that.

Continue reading Episode 1074: Future So Bright →

Episode 1068: Just a Girl

September 3, 2017Joe Caldwell, July 1970big finish, soap opera rapid aging syndrome, too broad and too deepDanny Horn

“I did it from right here — with this coin.”

Tumbling through time, Barnabas and Julia have come to a hard stop at 1995, lured by the siren call of alternative rock and Richard Linklater movies. No one has a mint-with-tag Beanie Baby or anything, but you can tell it’s 1995 because everybody keeps dying hard, with a vengeance.

The Collinwood of the future is in ruins, abandoned and left to rot after a particularly brutal cancellation twenty-five years ago. The main characters who aren’t dead are irretrievably insane, stumbling through a devastated ABC Studio 16, waiting for someone to turn on the cameras again. They don’t cancel soap operas like this anymore; they have a much more humane system, where actors who can’t be placed in foster soaps get their own web series.

Here in 1995, Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes, Dark Shadows’ signature twenty-something sweetheart, is now pushing fifty, and apparently she’s been pushing it with her face. She looks awful. She’s spent the last couple decades becoming that loneliest of creatures, a cat lady who doesn’t have cats.

But from our perspective, this is still the Carolyn Yet to Come, and if Barnabas and Julia can find out what caused all this daytime trauma, then maybe it’s avertable. Like A Christmas Carol, The Terminator and 12 Monkeys, the question of this story is whether the future can be changed if everybody stops acting like a jerk for five seconds.

Continue reading Episode 1068: Just a Girl →

Episode 952: Something Evil People Are Afraid Of

November 10, 2016February 1970, Violet Wellescoffin, cross, gold key, grave soil, manhandling, merchandise, mic drop, murder club, objective, plan A, thirsty, thwarted, too broad and too deep, werewolfDanny Horn

“Human, yes… except for his hatred! That’s what makes him so dangerous!”

Yesterday, sporadic vampire Barnabas Collins burned down the local antiques store, because his enemies turned him into one of the living dead, and then they didn’t know where the off switch was. This should be a lesson for us all.

But this isn’t the first time that Barnabas has been revamped, and it won’t be the last, not by a long shot. He’s been bouncing back and forth between the living and the dead for a couple of years now, and every treatment is only a reprieve, not a cure. Barnabas may long to be human again, but the audience wants fangs, and we cannot be denied our simple pleasures.

So it’s no surprise that the Gold Key Dark Shadows comic books have gone through the same cycle this year. In February 1970, the same month that flappy bat reclaimed TV Barnabas, comic book Barnabas was suddenly freed from his curse with no explanation, apparently sprung on a technicality. He mentions “the day Angelique’s curse dissolved,” and then he’s human for four issues, or as close to human as Barnabas ever gets.

But a year later — issue #8, February 1971 — the bat came back. “Barnabas Collins… the VAMPIRE!” says the caption. “Caught in a web between the lust for blood and the peace of normal life, Barnabas Collins laments his fate… even as he PREPARES TO STRIKE!”

So this is an opportunity for us to look at Barnabas’ current difficulties from another angle, and since the antiques shop is still smoldering, we might as well see what’s cooking at Gold Key Collinwood.

Continue reading Episode 952: Something Evil People Are Afraid Of →

Your Lies and Spells (Blood & Fire)

July 14, 2016June 2016, Roy Gillapril third, big finish, decline and fall, too broad and too deepDanny Horn

“What demon have you summoned up with your lies and spells?”

Soap opera is a hungry beast. It chews through stories, as fast as you can write them. It eats ideas and feelings and relationships — stripping them down to the bone, and beyond. Creators retire and actors die, fashions change, networks rise and fall. And the soap opera keeps going, driven by its remorseless hunger for more story. You can cancel it, but it will be replaced by another, just as ravenous. Soap opera can not be stopped.

In its day, Dark Shadows was the hungriest of all, chewing up stories and characters and whole generations, every few months. And that’s why it stopped, in the end. The writing team stuffed the beast with tears and wit and English lit for all of 1969, but found their cellar depleted within a year.

Here on the blog, we’ve just reached the Leviathan story, an ambitious tale for a washboard weeper, and one of the first signs of trouble. The show will go on, for another sixteen months or so, but we’re already starting to line up suspects for the Who Killed Dark Shadows murder mystery dinner theater. As we go along, we’ll uncover a lot of different explanations for why the show eventually got itself cancelled, but the most important one is the simplest — they just ran out of stories to tell.

Dark Shadows flourished because they thought outside the box, busting out of the normal confines of a 1960s daytime soap, because it was fun and they didn’t know any better. They built themselves a new box — a mystery box, stranger and more exciting than anyone else’s — and they spent a few years exploring all its dark corners and secret passageways. But once they’d investigated the contours of that space, it turned into a familiar toy box, with a particular set of tropes and a limited set of characters. After a while, there just weren’t any new stories left to tell.

So that puts Big Finish in something of an awkward situation, because they’ve spent the last ten years making more than 60 new Dark Shadows audio dramas, continuing and expanding on a franchise that ran out of juice four decades ago. If the original creators couldn’t think of anything new to do with this story, then what hope does anybody else have?

Continue reading Your Lies and Spells (Blood & Fire) →

Dark Shadows Every Day

The 1960s vampire soap opera, one episode a day.