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Showing posts with label April 11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label April 11. Show all posts

Thursday, April 4, 2019

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 4




By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1969: Episode 730

As Quentin descends with Jamison into the world of occult chicanery, Edward learns that the past can be a real mother! Laura Collins: Diana Millay. (Repeat; 30 min.)

As Quentin uses occult influence to prevent Gregory Trask from taking Jamison, Laura uses Nora to insinuate herself into the house. This disrupts plans both good and bad, and Edward is stunned and incensed at her return.

Laura arrives in a brazen move by the show, shouting back to the primary supernatural threat from the show prior to Barnabas… which means prior to most viewership. Diana Millay gives a shockingly relaxed, modern performance as the returning Laura. She brims with confidence as a character and as an actor. Arriving at the worst and best time, Laura’s proto-reemergence is classic 1897. The story arc is the show’s first shot at Dickens, and nothing screams Dickens like terrible timing. (Ask any high school student with an essay due on Bleak House.) Children, about to be sent off to an unthinkably cruel boarding school, meet their long-missing mother in the nick of time. But does she offer a more diabolical form of escape?

No wonder the record and sky high ratings were reserved for this storyline. If the 1795 storyline were written for housewives, allowing them to be Vicki (out of place and glamorously persecuted), Josette (except no one else sees it, the blind fools), and Angelique (and hear her roar), this was aimed more at the demographic running home from school. It’s written for kids in front of the tv, and it’s talking about weird parental dynamics openly and from their point of view. This kind of depiction of liberal parent vs. stern appeals to any child with a disciplinarian in the roost… or who wishes there were someone who cared enough to be one. It provides fantasties across that spectrum. And it really layers the truths because it’s not black and white. Yes, we know that Edward is ultimately on the right end of the spectrum. He just has no idea what’s really going on at Worthington Hall. Quentin is also on the right end of the spectrum. Yes, the man wants what’s best for Jamison. He just can’t overcome the fact that he’s the uncle who educates before he schools, and while this is fun, it’s not sustainable. And then there’s Laura. Who’s all about love and fire.

To what degree does Laura actually care for the kids (she did abandon them, after all) and to what degree is she trying to satisfy an evil fire god? Yes! I don’t think they are mutually exclusive for her. And the kids (on the show and as viewers) get a little of everything. Laura is about indulgent passion for her kids. Quentin is about indulgent fun. Edward indulges with structure. He actually cares more than either of the others,because it’s more than a convenience, and yet he lacks the tools to demonstrate it in any way that Jamison and Nora can appreciate.

The clever thing in the episode is how Louis Edmonds’ performance shows that dichotomy. When Nora is terrified of the face in the fireplace, Edward is determined to erase that fear. He attempts it terribly, but he tries. The show then takes us to the conversations that the children don’t see, yet concern them. Say what you will about Edward, but he puts his full passion into raising the children. He stayed at his post when the trainees -- Quentin and Laura -- ran (off to Alexandria). That’s why Quentin only snipes at him.

With 724, Dark Shadows becomes an increasingly masculine show, and I don’t mean that in some two-fisted, brutal, five o’clock shadow-sporting, Bud-swilling, Rowdy Roddy McDowell sense. Yes, men cause a lot of the problems on the show, but often as dupes and doofi and people who think with more romance than reason. But they often have soulful vulnerabilities or elements of amusing self-contradiction that add a puckish dimension to the depiction of men. Only in people like Gregory Trask and John Yaeger do we see purely lustful evil after this point.

And some of this is by contrast. A year ago, Vicki and Carolyn and Julia were all wringing their hands about the Life and Death of Peter Bradford, and, well, okay. Vicki had just returned to see a man torn apart like a dog toy in the jaws of two jealous and competing females. Our hero was powerless in Angelique’s shadow. It was still Vicki’s show, and we all just live in it. But with her story vaguely resolved, it belongs to Jonathan Frid. The beautiful thing about both Frid and Barnabas is that they don’t seem to want it. There’s no preening and scene stealing. Just as Barnabas serves the family, Frid seems to serve the show.

In the service of THIS episode, we have to recognize the entire ensemble. David Henesy is the respectable skeptic not predisposed to believe Nora’s ravings about their returned mother. David Selby effortlessly sells the rapport with Jamison that demonstrates why the later haunting will be inevitable. Diana Millay is the ultimate Weekend Mom, and a believable one. And then, there’s Louis Edmonds.

Good gravy, talk about service to the show. There is no such thing as a wasted Louis Edmonds scene, and that’s never been truer than with Edward Collins. Roger may have the most of his episodes. Joshua has the most mythic importance. PT has those fabulous scarves. Brutus is named “Brutus” and sports a pointy beard, which is its own reward. But Edward Collins is his most prized creation as an actor. Relentlessly stiff, yet never predictable, he’s the spirit of late-Victorian zest and progress. Hilariously so. In this episode, he says both “chicanery” and “humbug,” so there you go. I was so excited, I contacted Wallace, who lamented that balloons didn’t drop from the ceiling. Edward is the prime Victorian male archetype, which is a polite way of saying, “well-written stereotype.” At the same time, he always has the capacity for surprise. When Edward reveals or discovers a new layer of himself, such as when he becomes Edward Collins: Vampire Slayer, I have no choice but to buy it because Edmonds completely justifies whatever the writers cook up. And just wait for the transformation Count Petofi unleashes! Edward’s inner life of meek subservience says everything about Edward’s almost fetishistic adherence to obligation, social codes, and the safety of a rigid limit of options. The man has more structure than a Stephen Sondheim song. And he’s every bit as witty and refreshing. Just watch the fun Edmonds has and you, too, will start giggling in precisely the manner that would merit a severe upbraiding from Edward. Perhaps a strong reprimand. A searing indictment is not out of the question. There’s a likelihood of a thorough caning from an experienced hand. And, inevitably, a healthful diet rich in salubrious roughage.

Hail roughage! Hail Edward Collins, its high priest!

And, whatever you do, be grateful for Louis Godbless’em Edmonds!

This episode hit the airwaves April 11, 1969.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 11



By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 473

Roger enters with his new wife in tow, a dead ringer for Angelique named Cassandra. Brittle conversations ensue as Roger and Liz fume at one another and Cassandra pretends to have no idea who Barnabas is. The episode ends with Cassandra alone, tintinnabulating a familiar laugh.

I think everyone has at least one Angelique.

As she returns (for the first time) in 473, we get the feeling why. That’s a tribute to the script by Sam Hall and the everything else by Lara Parker.

Barnabas has been dreading it, but even with the bizarre stuff he’s seen in Martinique, 1795, and the Sixties, I don’t think he believes she will actually reappear. As he opines that witches never die, etc, I think he’s doing it so that he can turn around and say, “Well, guess I was wrong. Ding-dong and all that.”

It’s hard not to impose inner monologues while watching the show, perhaps because Angelique is a living Rorschach blot of a character, drawing out the true intentions from everyone she meets. Wonder Woman needs a lasso. Angelique just needs to stifle a judgy little laugh. Whether it’s lust, violence, respect, or jealousy, the veils come off of others in her presence. And that’s such a refreshing thing on the show. Everyone else is dedicated to keeping and/or inducing secrets. Yes, she’s awfully evil, but she’s evil in the name of love, and we all have impulses to go there once or twice in our lives. And each audience member secretly knows that as long as they weren’t in her way and kept up some lively chat, they’d be spared, right?

It’s her ultimately romantic intent that redeems her. Do any of us really dread that she’s back? No. Finally, a woman at Collinwood who knows the score. Heck, just SOMEone at Collinwood who knows the score.  She’s what we’ve been waiting for since Jason McGuire -- an agent of action, change, humor, awareness, and love. I just imagine, alone with Angelique for the first time in 473, Barnabas sitting down with her and catching up on “how crazy it’s all been” before remembering she’s a monster he’s obligated to hate.

Lara Parker really must be given ample credit for this effect. The good stuff, not the monster part. Holding multiple college degrees, beauty rarely seen this side of the Louvre, and a balance of genteel, southern refinement and canny, metropolitan wisdom, Parker enlivens the wickedest dialogue with equal parts pathos and play with unerring instincts.

Her arrival signals the last major tonal shift we’ve been awaiting in the show, and you saw it here, first. Up to now, it’s a story about 1960’s mortals interacting with gods. With Angelique joining Barnabas to form the dysfunctional, time trekking, immortal First Couple of Collinwood, the situation is now reversed. The story of DARK SHADOWS is finally one of gods weaving through fields of mortals. That’s an important factor to consider when passing moral judgment on Barnabas and Angelique. They may have impossible crimes, but they also have impossible spans of time to pay impossible prices. Us? Short timers.

On this day in 1968, Lyndon Johnson signed the 1968 Civil Rights Act.

This episode hit the airwaves April 17, 1968.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 11


By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in1968: Episode 473

Roger’s luggage is in the foyer, but he is missing… and Angelique’s painting has returned.  Barnabas is equally mystified, but the return of the picture suggests that Roger is somewhere nearby.  Privately, Barnabas asks Vicki to destroy the portrait.  Roger’s change began when she brought the portrait into the house.  It’s a force that controls him.  Barnabas reveals that he and Julia saw Roger at Dr. Lang’s the previous night, and that he leapt from Julia’s car when she tried to drive him home. Roger enters ebulliently, introducing his new bride — Cassandra, clearly Angelique in a black wig. Roger insists on a honeymoon in Martinique, and suggests that they’ll be leaving immediately.  Cassandra is fascinated with Barnabas, especially the fact that he never married.  Barnabas finds it too incredible to believe. In the library, Liz demands an explanation from Roger.  Liz threatens to reveal the fact that Roger is technically married to Laura, still.  Then she finds out that Roger and Cassandra barely know one another, but he’s uncontrollably smitten.  Liz insists that Roger commit himself, but he forbids it, threatening to leave Collinwood, never to return.  Alone with Vicki, Cassandra confesses that she was Professor Stokes’ student, and that’s how she met Roger.  She sends Vicki to bring David to her and to hurry Roger along.  Finally alone with her painting, Angelique admires the change in her hair, laughing characteristically.

Lara Parker comes back to the series to the delight of viewers after an absence since episode 411, and she immediately steals the show. In a show of perfect moments, this may be the single episode where it establishes itself as one solely intended to throw out rules, probability, and anything else standing in the way of an audience having a grand time. Speaking of a grand time, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was also signed on this day.
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