Tag Archives: writers

Episode 690: Laugh Like a Man

February 1969, Ralph Ellis,

“It was just me. I was pretending to laugh like a man.”

Dark Shadows lost one of their writers a couple weeks ago; I may have mentioned that before. Don’t worry, he wasn’t one of the good ones.

There’s a new writer who’s going to join the team in March, but meanwhile there are a couple extra scripts that need writing. They need a fill-in writer for the next two episodes, so Gordon Russell calls Ralph Ellis, who wrote ABC soap A Flame in the Wind with Gordon from 1964 to ’66.

Ralph is just at the beginning of a long and successful career as a soap opera writer. Pretty soon, he’s going to join NBC’s Another World, and then CBS’ Search For Tomorrow, and eventually he’ll be a head writer for The Doctors, As the World Turns, Loving, and General Hospital.

Right now, he’s doing a couple days on this weird little haunted house show. Let’s see what he comes up with.

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Episode 683: The Very Last Ron Sproat Episode

February 1969, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , , , , ,

“I want you to tell me what you know of a tall blonde woman in a long, flowing white dress.”

On February 5th, 1969, ABC aired what is generally considered to be the worst half-hour of network television, the first episode of a sketch comedy show called Turn-On. The show managed to be both offensive and incomprehensible, which is quite a trick, and on at least one station, it was cancelled during the first episode.

The conceit of Turn-On was that it was produced by a computer, which spliced together lots of little shards of not-funny. The show didn’t have any sets; it was just filmed against a stark white background. An odd-looking character would appear and do something strange, and then they’d cut to something else.

Almost all of the jokes were about sex, and sometimes they just flashed the word SEX! on the screen, in various colors. They also flashed captions with jokey references to sex and gay people, including “God Save the Queens,” “Free Oscar Wilde,” “Make Love Not Wine,” and “The Amsterdam Levee Is a Dike.” Sometimes the screen would be divided into four comic-strip panels, and the sketch would be performed in discrete chunks, one in each panel. The ending credits were split up into pieces and aired throughout the show.

WEWS, an ABC affiliate in Cleveland, took the show off the air during the first commercial break, and just didn’t show the rest of the episode. I don’t know what they filled the extra twenty minutes with, but it was better than Turn-On, so it could have been literally anything.

And on the same day — February 5th, 1969 — ABC also aired the last episode of Dark Shadows written by Ron Sproat. ABC was just having a bad day overall.

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Episode 669: My Boyfriend’s Back

Gordon Russell, January 1969, Violet Welles, , ,

“I’d like to meet the man that invented supermarkets, and wring his neck.”

We’ve talked a lot lately about the failure of the 1968 storylines, and I think it’s high time we move on, and talk about the failure of the 1969 storylines. You can’t live in the past forever, except for Angelique, apparently, and I don’t think I’ll ever figure out how she manages it.

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Episode 668: The Aristocrats

January 1969, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“Sometimes I get scared to like people, because I’m afraid.”

There are five more Ron Sproat episodes, and then, I swear to you, he is out of my life for good.

To catch up the uncaught: Over the last three months on Dark Shadows, there’s been a behind the scenes tug-of-war between two of the writers, Ron Sproat and Sam Hall. Ron’s been on the show since November 1966, and he lkes to slow things down and take his time. He writes a lot of recap scenes, and a whole week can go by without anything really happening. Sam joined the show in November 1967, and he’s the opposite. He’s smart, fearless and easily bored, and he wants to make the show faster, funnier, and more interesting.

Ron and Sam have been out of synch for a long time, and their disagreements are getting worse. That’s why the last few months have been a patchwork of exciting episodes and boring episodes, even more than usual.

By now, Sam has won, and Ron is on his way out. There’s only a handful of Sproat episodes left — and based on today’s episode, it sounds like he’s already cleaned out his desk.

Honestly, he’s not even trying anymore. I mean, he never really tried that hard in the first place, but now he’s not even trying to look like he’s trying.

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Episode 643: Interceding with Oscar

December 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , ,

“You must intercede with Oscar. Only you can save me.”

So here’s the lost secret of Lost: They had no idea.

ABC made Lost for six dazzling, frustrating, mind-boggling years, weaving a web of mystery and misdirection and nonsense, one baffling hour at a time. I don’t know if it did anything for you, but I loved it. I was one of the sad cases who rewatched the episodes in slow motion, looked up all the references on Lostpedia, and listened to the weekly cry for help that they called The Official Lost Podcast.

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the show’s producers and head writers, used the podcasts, Comic-Con appearances and magazine interviews to present an intricate paratextual metafiction about two make-believe people named “Damon Lindelof” and “Carlton Cuse” who totally, totally knew all the answers to every single question that a viewer might have about the show’s rich mythology.

According to this ongoing behind-the-scenes fairy tale, Damon and Carlton could totally explain everything to you right now, but they won’t, because a) it’s very complicated, b) it would spoil the surprise, and c) It’s Not Really About the Mythology, It’s About the Characters.

In reality, after a while, it wasn’t even about the characters. It was about whether Damon and Carlton actually knew what they were doing, or were they just lying this whole time, because they needed to keep the plates spinning for another day.

That’s the question that Lost fans were dying to learn. We didn’t watch season six because we wanted to know if Jack, Kate and Sawyer would survive. We watched because we wanted to know if Damon and Carlton would survive.

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Episode 616: The Great 1968 Wrap-Up

November 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , ,

“I said you were my friend, and how I wish that were the truth. But I am past the point when friends are possible.”

Signs that your life may not be going the way that you hoped: You walk into your best friend’s house, and you find him moaning in an armchair. You reach out to touch his collar, and you see bite marks on his neck, and the only thing that you can say is, Oh, man. Not this again.

Barnabas Collins has been chewed on by his ex-wife, vampire soap vixen Angelique, and now his friends Julia and Willie have to figure out what to do about it. They stand around the scene of the crime and spitball ideas for a minute — they want to hide Barnabas someplace, but the next time the vampire summons him, he’ll go. They need to store him someplace safe, where she can’t get at him. But where?

Then Julia says, “Downstairs, Willie — the cell!” like that’s suddenly the greatest idea ever. So they hoist Barnabas to his feet, wrangle him downstairs to the basement, and lock him up in the dungeon cell, because today’s episode was written by Ron Sproat, and he never does anything else. God damn it, Sproat!

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Episode 601: The Last Days of Ron Sproat

Gordon Russell, October 1968, , , , ,

“It’s happening, Julia! The spirit of Philippe Cordier is killing Adam!”

Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present — for one night, and one night only — the insubstantial spirit of Monsieur Philippe Cordier.

Now, for people who are just joining us, I’d like to give you a brief introduction to Philippe, so that you understand his role in the current storyline. Unfortunately, this is impossible. He only showed up at the end of Friday’s episode — and by “showed up”, I mean he possessed Barnabas at a seance and ranted in French for two minutes — and in today’s episode, he’s banished forever, immediately following the opening titles.

An explanation of who Philippe is, and why he’s on the show right now, would involve at least six character names, two Universal Monsters references, an anagram, the French Revolution, the phrase “life force”, and maybe a couple of Doors songs. You basically need a Ph.D. in Dark Shadows to approach this particular plot point.

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Episode 540: Mission: Inscrutable

July 1968, Ron Sproat, ,

“I don’t want to understand about those things; they scare me.”

Okay, here’s what’s going on: I have entirely no idea.

I know that Angelique, spurned lover and secret sorceress, is currently in residence at Collinwood, posing as Roger’s innocent new wife, Cassandra. She’s come to wreak a terrible slow-motion vengeance on reformed vampire Barnabas Collins, and she’s spent weeks and weeks lobbing a hex that never quite landed. And that is pretty much the beginning and the end of the list of things that I understand about what Cassandra’s doing right now.

It’s not just me, either. The writers have had the better part of three months to figure out what they were going to do with Angelique after the Dream Curse storyline. They have not used that time effectively.

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Episode 496: Father of the Year

Gordon Russell, May 1968, , , , , , ,

“Well, never mind about that now. David was very nearly killed this evening.”

It’s a tough job, don’t let anyone tell you different. It must be one of the toughest jobs in television — writing the script for a daily soap opera. It’s not the long-term planning, which has got to be kind of fun. The brutal part is the scene breakdown.

The problem goes like this: We have a plot point to establish, and it requires these three characters to be on this set, in this kind of mood. Go make that happen. And sometimes there’s just no logical reason why that particular group of people would even be talking to each other. This is why you don’t see a lot of jolly soap opera writers.

Of course, on some days, you figure out a clever twist that solves the problem, and the world is full of sunshine, and that’s a good day. Gordon Russell is not having a good day.

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Sam Hall: In appreciation

Sam Hall, , , ,

Sam Hall died on Friday, September 26th, at the age of 93. The news was announced, in a quiet way, on his son Matthew’s blog.

I may have mentioned, once or twice, that Sam Hall was the greatest writer on Dark Shadows — which I’m sure sounds like the faintest possible praise, but it means a lot to me.

Dark Shadows is the most surprising, and therefore the best, television show ever made, and Sam joined the show at a crucial moment — in November 1967, when the breakout character was just on the verge of breaking the show. The Barnabas storyline had turned the slow-moving soap into a hit, but the story was starting to run in circles, and it needed a change in direction. Sam brought wit, intelligence and fresh ideas to Dark Shadows, just when it needed it the most. He saved the show.

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