The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 29

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1968: Episode 485

Barnabas knows that ultimate happiness is right around the corner because his best friends do all that they can to talk him out of it. Eric Lang: Addison Powell. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Lang relates the dream curse to Julia on the eve of The Experiment as she tries to talk him out of it. Meanwhile, Barnabas relates his instructions to Willie on the eve of The Experiment as he tries to talk him out of it. Across Collinsport, Angelique, tired of the moralizing, stabs a voodoo doll of Lang and then probably takes a long, well-deserved bubble bath. 

One of the great things about Ghostbusters is its use of science to address the supernatural. It would be convenient to say that this is something that started with the novel of Frankenstein, except that the process only hinted at in the book is as much alchemical as it was laboratory grade.  In exploring the dichotomy between the two methods of describing and controlling the universe, Dark Shadows generally comes down on the side of the supernatural, except when it doesn’t, and it doesn’t with surprising regularity. Science makes more appearances than you would think. Peter Guthrie is no witch doctor. Julia begins the show by literally seeing the supernatural through a microscope. The heroes of 1795 at least assert a preference for scientific thinking.  And if scientific thinking is not always the answer, it certainly has a seat at the séance table. Julia works with Angelique to combine bio chemistry and black magic to help Barnabas in 1897. The entire existence of parallel time is well-founded in vaguely articulated pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo recited by Stokes with incredibly precise ambiguity. You know, science. Along with Cyrus Longworth and a side-trip to 1840, via a chronoporting staircase well-founded in time honored principles of total scientific illiteracy.  But, Dark Shadows is under no obligation to be scientifically literate. It doesn’t have to worry about Isaac Asimov clutching his pearly muttonchops as he watches it, kvetching that “It's no Space: 1999.”

For Dark Shadows, science may simply be magic in lab coats, but that’s not all. It’s the Resistance. It’s often the sole force that man has against the new world of ancient gods and monsters. Although it is carefully protected from resembling reality, it still exists to troll hoity-toity magic users and level the playing field for the rest of us. And of course it has to be mad science. Because regular science is too boring and largely exists to give everyone reasons why they can’t have any fun. 

Eric Lang is my kind of scientist. Just imagine him instead of Anthony Fauci. I’m sure somehow Covid would have been cured by now.  Admittedly, we would all have giraffe heads grafted on to us.  Which would have absolutely nothing to do with curing Covid. But I have every confidence that Eric Lang was also on the board of the Collinsport Community Playhouse and was itching to do a modified version of some Ionesco, a playwright he admired for his gritty, hard-hitting realism. After that controversial, all-nude production of Darling of the Day, he had to play it safe.  Every year for a fundraiser, they would do a haunted house. Which was actually the only month out of the year that Lang would simply take down the schmattas covering everything in his home and show off his work in all its glory.

All seriousness aside, the episode crackles with more pure fun than a Chick-fil-A hijacked by RuPaul and Steve Shives, open for biz and spiking the lemonade with bourbon on a Sunday near you.  It begins with Lang trying to logic his way through the dream curse, and knowing that we’ll be saying goodbye to Dark Shadows’ most passionate showman, Addison Powell, it’s a glorious monologue that hovers somewhere between sobriety and appropriate sensationalism. As these people share nightmares, it’s the closest the program comes to presenting the characters presenting their own individual horror TV series. It’s as if they, themselves, are producing a meta-Dark Shadows.

Lang tries to persuade Julia that there’s nothing inordinately dangerous to injecting the soul of Barnabas into the body of Adam, you know, now that all of the heads have been sawed-off, reattached, and Roger Davis still has his face. Hearing this, Julia has her doubts and says that she might prefer if Barnabas simply went back to being a vampire.  

Yeah, you heard me.

Julia eventually emerges as the voice of conscience and common sense for Barnabas. You know, over a year from now.  But today she has one black-stockinged leg in the bold future of 1897 and another one still in the lab, trying to chemically shrivel Barnabas into a future Don Post bestseller. Like in that episode of Next Generation where they kept aging Dr. Pulaski by taking off layer upon layer of Diana Muldaur’s make-up. 

I kid, I kid. Better than Crusher, sez me.

But I have to question the moral compass of anyone who would put the inevitability of a serial killing Lord of the Undead, capable of spreading a vampiric pathogen that could decimate the human race if well-shaded and unchecked, above a wacky experiment that will probably just end in nothing but a crackle, a burning scent, some shrugs, and then Lang, Julia, and Willie splitting the contents of Barnabas‘s wallet three ways at TGI Friday’s, which, knowing what a cheap SOB he was, will barely cover the cost of the seven layer dip and that Ultimate Megarita that is how Julia spells r-e-l-I-e-f on any day ending in ‘Y.’

Why, indeed?

Shifting to the Old House, it’s immediately clear the Barnabas is trying to solve his ongoing existential crisis, because there’s Willie, at his side, wringing his hands and doing everything possible to discourage him from seeking happiness. Moments like these make Margaret Hamilton‘s Cora, from those Maxwell House ads, look like a free wheeling Dennis Hopper. Willie must have nothing to do, because he just watched Julia in the previous scene and is basically repeating what she said to Lang. His namby-pamby nagging and cheek give Jonathan Frid one of his greatest and most genuine line readings. And it’s the kind of moment, going by in a flash, that makes the program absolute gold. Because all of the vampire and curse stuff is interesting, if you like that sort of thing, but it’s not nearly as much fun as watching this old married couple go at it for the upteenth time. Loomis flatly states, “I don’t like it.” 

Barnabas responds with a withering cattiness worthy of Count Petofi. He opines, “That IS a shame,” sighs, and desperately tries to secure his fortune by writing a questionable letter instructing the family to hand over all of his possessions and the Old House to a “cousin from England.” Yeah, like they’d ever do that.

But Willie continues his campaign of simpering instead of doing what he should, which is quickly finishing a paint-by-numbers portrait of Robert Rodan in Georgian drag to sneak onto the wall of the drawing room as if it were yet another portrait of an incestor that “had been there the whole time.“  You know, the minimum litmus test that Roger and Liz need to fork over priceless real estate to a fancy-lad stranger. Hey, if it worked for Georges Baker and Lazenby, why not here?

Just for a moment, I want you to picture that version of the show. Picture a Dark Shadows where the experiment worked, and Jonathan Frid has to loop in the dialogue for Robert Rodan as if he’d just emerged from Boris Balinkoff’s mind-transplant device. For the rest of the series.

It’s a pretty good show, come to think of it. Calling Robot Loomis!

But all this fear over the experiment, and a preference for Barnabas to be a vampire again, has a disturbing subtext. People in abusive relationships tend to gravitate back to further abusers because a familiar love is preferable to taking a chance on a happy future. Although it’s unexpected, that is a truth reflected here by both Willie and Julia. 

However, Barnabas is willing to literally change his mind, so that’s next in line. “Barnabas, the experiment’s still free,” Lang might have reminded him, before adding, “take a chance on me.”

Yes, I once directed Mamma Mia. Or as I called it, “A Cry for Help.“  And those lambs are still decidedly screaming, Clarisse.

Barnabas is so ready for the process that he even puts on a blue bathrobe for the experiment. Like Red Sonia in that armor that I’m sure is just as protective, I assume it’s for “freedom of movement“ but I still feel like the old boy is being exploited. 

Actually, after seeing him manfully clad in suits, capes, jabots, ascots, tights, and various kerchiefs for a year, The semiotic impact of that blue bathrobe conveys the incredibly human vulnerability of Barnabas in a way that is unparalleled across the series. Either that, or he’s waiting for a Jean Shepherd narration to start describing his long-standing battle with Lang’s idiosyncratic furnace as Julia once again unsuccessfully attempts to get Willie to eat meatloaf. 

Well, there are no Bumpus hounds to devour the Ham of Progress as Lang charges up the ozone of electric sex to begin the transfer. But don’t think the supernatural will go down without a fight. With cosmic inevitability, Willie goes to Collinwood to personally hand Angelique the precise piece of information she needs, the letter about “Adam Collins,“ at precisely the right time for her to get out her trusty Eric Lang Mego voodoo doll and throw what was a sober exploration of scientific inquiry into total chaos. 

And for a moment, an important moment, all of the wackiness stops.  We see Barnabas, our friend and hero, screaming in a degree of pain that is suddenly and uncomfortably real. We see him worry. We see him fret. But television usually stops short of showing a character, destined to live, experiencing a pointless and sadistic agony.  And Lang is experiencing it as well. Maybe we could say it’s tantamount to the pain of childbirth, which is what the scene is about, but this is not such pain.

This is sadism. And it is sadism from a witch. A creature of darkness. A creature of anti-science. Someone whose existence knows only the spectrum of literal hellfire or the blazing execution stake representative of human justice. How dare he be cured? More pointedly, how dare he be cured by someone other than she? In that attack, we get a full-spectrum view of the quintessential struggle for the human identity. No, really. Male versus female. Science versus religion. Reason versus emotion. Fear versus informed optimism. What is at stake? Literally, the human mind and, if it exists, soul. 

No answers, except that one side seeks to use nature to control nature. One side wishes to punish the attempt to steal what was her fire, exclusively. Science will, as we will learn, win the day, but not without sacrifices. Adam will live, as will Barnabas. And no matter how big Angelique’s Twinkie, for one day at least, Eric Lang, Barnabas Collins, and Julia Hoffman had the guts to cross the streams. 

This episode hit the airwaves on May 3, 1968.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 23

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1969: Episode 743

When Laura programs Jenny to become the ultimate assassin, will Barnabas and Quentin put their differences aside to combine forces? Barnabas: Jonathan Frid. (Repeat; 30 minutes.)

Barnabas tricks his way into obtaining Quentin‘s Book of the Dead. It’s a successful gambit, perfectly timed to reveal that Laura Collins is actually Laura Stockbridge Collins, a returning fire demon from his youth. Quentin must trust Barnabas when considering his mysterious cousin against the obviously more destructive forces around him.

It should have been a matter of one world ending and another world beginning. Simple, right? There was a point when it happened before. The show shifted focus… officially. A story about Victoria changed to one where Barnabas was no longer this really interesting side character. He was the character. Where? Perhaps right before 1795 or during. During is a good choice because it starts out as Vicki’s story, but she has to be forced into a witch trial just to give her something to do. No, it’s officially Barnabas’ story. It introduces Angelique as the catalyst for his change. If she got the story moving, it’s no wonder that the show should finally resolve itself when she resolves herself. 

Batons pass hands in marathons… and sometimes they come back. Dark Shadows specializes in cycles that vary based on what’s happened in between. Even the structure of the show is a cyclical ritual. Recap. Title and theme. Narration. Resolve the recap. Add less information than it feels at the time. Unresolved crisis. Credits. 

In between all of that is where lives change, and 743 is what could and should have been the fulcrum from Barnabas to Quentin because it contains the moment any self-respecting fan is waiting for from the moment they hear that heroes on Dark Shadows didn’t stop with Barnabas. There was this other guy, Quentin. And for a time, they are both the heroes of the show and yet are constantly pitted against each other. Terrified mistrust is the one beloved and shared virtue tying all Collinses together across the centuries. It’s no wonder that Barnabas doesn’t save time by simply being honest with Quentin. Honesty bruises the gin, and the writers are going to need it if they have to unite these guys. 

Seeing them unite to deal with Laura is uniquely satisfying, and Jonathan Frid and David Selby maintain the tension with admirable gamesmanship. Bringing back Laura Collins was one of the show’s truest masterstrokes. She becomes a thread taking us from long before the appearance of Barnabas to a point even more distant in the past than his origin, and then into the fantastic future of 1897. I’m not sure what this does more of to critics of the program… prove its delightfully substantive complexity or give them ammo to cry, “Codswallop!” (By the way, that’s not asking for opinions. It’s a test with a right answer and a wrong one.) 

Laura is kind of the linchpin of this. The thing that stops Quentin‘s story from becoming the dominant one for the rest of the series is that it pretty much resolves itself in 1897. It’s extremely satisfying, but it’s brief. The story of Barnabas runs through the entire series. However, it’s fun to look at how the cycle changes itself, however briefly, and if only to comment on the Barnabas story.  Both stories involve men who cheat. Both stories involve women who are cheated on, Josette and Jenny, respectively. Both stories involve a magic user who inspires the cheating.  But Quentin’s story is far more cynical. Even though the man in it is more of a cad at the beginning, he also has much more destructive women surrounding him. Chicken or ovum?  Angelique legitimately loves Barnabas. I think it’s pretty clear that Laura has very little interest in Quentin except as an excuse to get her to Alexandria. Josette is a victim in all of this, but she is only used against Barnabas to induce guilt, anxiety, and two, at first, drive him to choosing Angelique. Laura, however, is an engine of pure destruction, which is, of course, the job of fire. Angelique is more of an elemental figure of nature, and thus, is more driven by natural urges in and around procreation and the emotional attachments associated with it. she uses Jossette, with a lot of cruelty, but it is to either get Barnabas or punish him for not attending that particular Sadie Hawkins dance. On the other hand, Laura positively weaponizes Jenny as an assassin, pure and simple. 

I’m sure the program examines Laura‘s motives, but I’m not sure they really matter. Just as Quentin is a passion driven mirror for Barnabas, allowing us to appreciate the latter‘s contemplative nuance, Laura‘s destructive nature is the perfect foil for Angelique. Angelique‘s evolving heroism is perhaps the most truly interesting part of the 1897 storyline, and by seeing her in relief to Laura, it’s easy to begin viewing her as the more sympathetic figure.  Quentin‘s storyline is ultimately less tragic in the Greek sense, but it somehow feels sadder. he is surrounded by no one who seems to really love him. Jenny is crazy, so whatever she feels is going to change in about five seconds, disqualifying it from serious consideration. And Laura is a nightmare who never really loved him. However, both Josette and Angelique genuinely love Barnabas, and this makes us continue to care about him as a vulnerable figure, because he is presented as intrinsically lovable. Why? He is ultimately a good man, and his seeming flaws, which are his conscience-based indecision and the rash action he takes to compensate, finally show themselves as virtues. No, they are not necessarily part of the masculine archetype, but that’s the point. Barnabas is an extremely feminine thinker in a world surrounded by women. Quentin shows what you get with an excess of masculine thinking. He is lust and he is action. You know, everything that a man is supposed to be. So unlike Barnabas. But it only makes Quentin a magnet for women to exercise their wrath for wrath’s sake. And it also manifested self in the nature of his curse: he is revealed as the savage, lone wolf who never finds a pack.

If the largely feminine audience always liked Barnabas, but could never quite identify why, the presence of Quentin defines it by implication.  It’s the show saying, “OK, now here is a traditional man with the traditional psychological traits of a man. Yeah, he’s a lot of fun, but he also winds up sad and alone. look at Barnabas. Not really the traditional masculine figure at all. And he ends up being all the better for it.”

Television at this time was beginning to explore these redefined models of manhood in characters like Spock. but Spock’s decisions seem to originate somewhere between the cultural requirements of being a Vulcan and actual biological pre-determinism, also associated with being a Vulcan. Barnabas comes about it simply by thinking a little differently. In many ways, he exhibits the sort of masculine representation that we would see in someone like Hawkeye Pierce, so someone get him a martini.

Seeing Barnabas and Quentin working together on magical workings in this episode, we begin to enjoy the synergy possible when the two men combine to take power back from a strictly vengeful figure like Laura. Audiences, desiring both men, briefly had their beefcake and got it to bite their necks, too. This was on the mind of the zeitgeist, echoing the most psychologically insightful episode of Star Trek, “The Enemy Within.”  With that, author Richard Matheson concluded that the balanced masculine psyche required both the Barnabas side and the Quentin side. Dark Shadows has a slower burn, and eventually, and subtly, champions the feminine thinker over the masculine one. I would imagine that this is certainly a more appealing conclusion for a largely feminine audience, many of whom were dreading the daily return of their mid century modern nightmares of husbands who would be coming home every day shortly after the show’s closing credits would roll. But it’s also excellent modeling for boys watching the show, and somewhere, deep in the minds of mothers, there had to be more than one who quietly valued that positive modeling.  

You know, sort of. If you ignore countless moral feelings and the potential for supernatural violence. But those are aspects of Barnabas‘s personality that he doesn’t want. it’s telling that he should return to women again and again to eliminate those abilities.

Because they probably aren’t worth it.  Not really. 

This episode hit the airwaves on April 30, 1969.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 24

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 482

When Lang is in search of a new assistant with nerves of steel, Barnabas can think of only one man: Loomis. Willie Loomis. Barnabas: Jonathan Frid. (Repeat. 30 min.)

Barnabas suggests Willie to Lang as his new assistant after Jeff Clark quits. Jeff is compelled to appear at Maggie’s and hear the dream. That night, he has it.

Barnabas Collins reveals himself to be master of the game as he delivers the greatest blow possible to Eric Lang. When the greatest scientific mind in the western world, abandoned by Roger Davis, needs an assistant for the most important experiment in human history, Barnabas knows just the man. The assistant need only “good hands and a lot of nerve.” Who’s up? Joe Haskell? Buzz Hackett? Ross “The” Skipper?

No. No, my friends. For such a mission, there is only one man.

Who better than the cravenly, hysterical, alcoholic, multiple bullet wound survivor and PTSD poster boy, William H. Loomis, esq, late of Windcliff Sanitarium? This, to me, is proof positive that Barnabas has no real interest in a cure. Yes, Roger Davis -- who now has friends in Collinsport and good for him -- is an impossible act to follow, but is Willie really the preferred weapon here? The best part is that Lang hears that the lad is in a mental institution and has absolutely no qualms about using him. It just goes to show what you can accomplish when you have the lowest (or most conveniently expedient) standards possible. With this one decision, and perhaps it’s a test by Barnabas that they both fail. In doing so, Lang reveals himself to be the Hal Needham of mad science. Complete daring and utterly artless. And THAT’S why he gets things done. If only Mike Henry had played Adam.

Then Maggie answers the door in an oven mitt.

It may be the single most ghastly costume piece ever forced on a performer on Dark Shadows. When a skirt made from the Collinsport Afghan is too muted and tasteful, look to Ohrbach’s, my friend. And when people want to know what women actually wore in the era, look to certain scenes on Dark Shadows. This is a garment so eye-popping that no one would have kept it. No one would revive it. No costume designer would try putting a star in it for some period piece. It is a skirt lost to history. But no agendas existed then except to sell stuff from Ohrbach’s, and thus, the show again serves a new purpose -- that of time capsule. Like David Collins’ Matt Mason toys, Dark Shadows is an accidental portrait of so much that would otherwise be lost to Newer and Better. And what else are you supposed to wear for Roger Davis to appear at your door and ask you about your dreams?

The dream curse is truly up and running now as we have our first viral transmission of it, and as we understand what the shtick is going to be for the next few weeks. It both builds and consistently backfires as the show’s effects reach finally exceeds its practical and budgetary grasp. This is a problematic era for the show, at once a pure example of it and the first major storyline that gets vague derision from certain fans. Still, it serves an interesting set of purposes, psychologically. First, of course, it’s a basic Rorschach test to reveal the characters. Although we know them intimately, the program was gaining new audiences by the thousands each week, and the dream curse cleverly catches them up with the core roster, including their most revealing fears. It’s also the first example of the show letting itself down in almost every aspect of the technical execution of something. This is important to fans, because it forces you to make a choice: accept the effects for what they are or defect. Once you agree to go with it, you agree to accept that the special effects on the program are symbolic. And after that compact is made, the show is no longer bound by any attempt to render the fantastic credibly. Only then can they truly cut loose with thinking that suggests, “Hey, they accepted the dream curse. Why not take them to Hell?” Dark Shadows could only do the impossible because all effects were probably going to fall short. Not that they’d aim for that, but when that is the result, anything is possible.

In this sense, the dream curse is more a blessing than something less.

This episode hit the airwaves April 30, 1968.