The Dark Shadows Daybook: November 30

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1165

By PATRICK McCRAY 

Tad finds out that justice can be a mother when Samantha performs her wifely duty of trying to get her husband beheaded. Tad: David Henesy. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Even though the county prosecutor quits his job over the inanity of Quentin’s trial, the figures of Official Justice insist it go forward anyway. When he’s replaced by someone played by Humbert Allen Astredo, Quentin knows it will not go well. Meanwhile, although Tad begs his mother to testify on Quentin’s behalf, she instead takes the stand against him. Quentin responds by sitting around and pretending not to notice how handsome everyone thinks he is. 

It's David Henesy's last day on the program. It's a sad graduation. It's a quiet graduation. It's the kind of graduation that means a lot more to the adults than to the people actually going through it. Like all graduations, I guess. It's hard to tell whether or not they intended this to be his last appearance. He was at an awkward age for the program. You couldn't get away with any of the juvenile plots of him doing something out of naïveté. Yes, he could be turned into a delinquent, but that’s a move the show might not be ready for. Even in the world of David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman, he's not quite old enough to be an official teen idol without it feeling just a little bit creepy. All of this... packed into someone of middle teenage vintage who nevertheless has a voice deeper than Brock Peters. 

His farewell to the program consists of one scene, and it shows the influence that Tad should have on his world. With his father accused of witchcraft, Ted expects his mother to testify on her husband's behalf. Virginia Vestoff does a wonderful job trying to bend and weave around Tad's expectation, preparing herself to survive whatever kind of confrontation will follow whatever stunt she pulls on the stand. 

Although no relationship in life improves after the first date, it is the last conversation that permanently frames us with each other. Given that these characters, via specific actors, turn up over and over and over again in era after era, it's pointless (in some regards) to see them as anything other than one figure with many masks. All of the David Hennessy characters might as well be just one David Hennessy character. And if we look at it that way, what do we learn from this? 

Well, for one thing, this character was much better at talking people into things back when he decided the rules were meant to be broken. Like Britannicus in I Claudius, I feel like he's become obsessed with "putting on his manly gown," maybe because he doesn't wanna wind up like Laszlo. Either way, he may be becoming all leading man (at least on the chalkboard in his dressing room), but his decision to play it straight comes at the cost not only of his humorbut his overall cleverness. As is reflective of youth culture at the time, if he were any more painfully earnest, we would only see him crying an Iron Eyes Codependent mono-tear over the river of deceit and betrayal that runs through Collinwood. 

So he's growing up. That's a bookend. He's decided to take life seriously. That's a bookend. And he is desperate to stand up for his father, who is getting railroaded on false charges. It feels like he has earned the right to do this. “He” began as a character all too eager to see his father railroaded over allegations the paternoster projected onto, well, who knows? Maybe his other dad. I think we've all had those thoughts. Whether he's doing it for reasons of malice, reasons of justice, reasons of love, or as a five-dollar menu combo of lovingly malicious justice, the David Henesy character begins and ends as someone trying to align his father's legal standing with reality. And it's refreshingly uncynical that he should go from a boy trying to get a guilty father convicted (or at least in hot water) to a kid trying to get his father out. Of course, the two fathers are vastly different. The primary similarity is that the mothers are either physically or emotionally absent, and neither have his best interest at heart. But he is the only person at Collinwood who has yet to see family as more of a mess than a bastion, and so he sticks by the institution with admirable loyalty. 

And Samantha does get up on the stand. Of course, she does the opposite of what Tad wanted her to do. She’s ready to betray Quentin with zesty abandon. But The Henesy’s not around for that. It's almost as if this last blast of optimism collides head-on with one final betrayal from an untrustworthy mother. And perhaps that's all that the David Henesy figure can take. He disappears after that. The message? Very few parents are what they appear to be. Especially mothers. Eventually, that destroys the child within. 

Dark Shadows teaches its lessons in cycles. Moral development in Collinsport is not a straight line. It's a corkscrew, both moving forward while covering the same ground over and over again. The sometimes surrogate mother figures in this character's life have been fire demons, completely absent, suicidal alcoholics, reanimated occultists, and at last, an untrustworthy shrew. As much as the show is meant for women, the female figures that David encounters, no matter the name, have stunningly little to recommend them. Although Victoria is hired to be his companion, she, like all adults, becomes enraptured by events that pre-date David. In that case, for nearly two centuries. Who can compete with that? Carolyn is likewise lost in a hopelessly lost romantic union, which generally makes her lousy conversation. Liz is obsessed with death whenever John Bennett wants a vacation. And Maggie is at Windcliff. So much for female nurture in Collinsport. Fortunately, for someone with a sniveling, cowardly, alcoholic louse of a father (at least for the first year or so), David finds his modeling and nurturing in the men in his life. At various times, Barnabas, Quentin, and Tom Jennings all follow in Burke Devlin's footsteps to provide David with good advice and understanding moral support. At a time when most male relationships on television were based on macho buffoonery, this is revolutionary and refreshing. If you could take anything away from the David Henesy character, it’s that three uncles can make a hell of a mother. 

This episode was broadcast Dec. 11, 1970.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: DECEMBER 11

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1172

As Barnabas faces his ultimate reckoning, can Julia risk an alliance with Gerard? Lamar Trask: Jerry Lacy. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Trask walls his father’s murderer up in the basement of the Old House in a grand gesture of revenge. Julia smells foul play, and Quentin faces a trial without a key witness. Meanwhile, in trying to contact Joanna, Daphne finds herself in a trap.

It occured to me that he could have just slugged Trask.

But he doesn’t.

I keep waiting for an episode to come along where I can depict Barnabas with Falstaffian grandeur and call him “the great man.” Those come along sometimes, but he’s usually just a man. Yes, sometimes “the man,” but just as frequently, a man. With or without fangs. And therein lies what makes him so rich and compelling and fallible as a protagonist. A matinee idol like Quentin would have wrestled Trask for his gun when faced with the alternative of locking himself in shackles for a last taste of amontillado. Barnabas realizes that he has a better than average chance at being shot and dying very painfully on the spot. Does he imagine that Julia and Angelique will come to his rescue? I’d like to think so, but more than likely, he is just out of plans. Not that he was ever much of a planner. Only in times such as 1897, when facing off with Laura, does he really emerge as a chessmaster of note. For the most part, Barnabas, like all of us, is a lucky improviser. Sometimes, aided by his unique and inconsistent application of honor. Often bested by it.

At least he appreciates the irony of becoming definitively mortal just in time to die from it.

Chances are, Barnabas is a coward. And so what? Like Graves’ Claudius, it’s kept him alive. Yes, yes, he shows bravery many times. Usually out of immediate necessity. Sometimes out of love. Maybe even the right thing. But out of all of literature’s heroic protagonists, Barnabas consistently finds himself over his head and struggling to get by. For all of Quentin’s propensity for scrapping, where does it get him? Aristede, Jeb, and even the occasional werewolf may be slowed down a tad by his right hook, but just slowed down. Had he dematerialized like any self-respecting Collins, the most it would have cost him is a little pride. For all of his moments of impudence, Barnabas has far more episodes of being bullied at the core of his mantle of apparent strength.

Bless him for it.

I think this is the real secret of his appeal. He’s not Captain Kirk. Even one hour out of the week. That would be exhausting. Who can keep that going? He’s more like a vision that Q might show Picard of how he’ll end up if he doesn’t take a knife to the chest as a teachable moment. But Barnabas appears in and around 188 hours of Dark Shadows. Kirk? About 69 of his show. That leaves him 119 more hours than Kirk to dodge stakes, bullets, and hex-hurling wives. And he could really use a Spock, because Willie isn’t cutting it and Stokes has papers to grade. He has a McCoy, but only after she stops trying to blackmail and poison him for months and months. The guy is very often on his own. I don’t know about you, but it has a familiar ring for much of life. Not all, but much.

Sports and Lord of the Rings are for people with a steady flow of friends. It’s an ugly truth that sounds for all the world like mopey self-pity if I say that Dark Shadows is for the rest of us. And good for it. Sometimes, the friend stream goes dry because of bad choices. Sometimes, just bad luck. Sometimes, as with the Julias in life, we push them away because of incessant Goldilockism or because we think we don’t deserve them. And sometimes? We’re just, you know, vampires. This show is a bountiful companion, yes. 450 hours of it. But at its core, the program is that most dreaded of artforms; the teaching tool. And it exhorts us to persevere. Yes, Barnabas is often a stiff-necked coward and the most imperfect of heroes. But he endures. His plans often are incredibly sudden, ill-conceived, and born from compromise, but he has them. He tries to regain Josette. He goes to 1897. He returns to Parallel Time to save a Maggie he barely knows. These are his friends -- or the closest things he’ll concede. He may be a coward, but you’ll have to chase him the extra mile to call him that, because that’s where he begins. Most heroes are who we’ll never really be. But Barnabas? He’s who we are. Despite it all, he holds fast to survival, and he if can, so can we.

This episode was broadcast Dec. 22, 1970.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: DECEMBER 11

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 385

Reverend Trask arrives to seek out the witch. Nathan Forbes, showing a broad streak of common sense, tries to get Vicki away, but to no avail. Similarly, Barnabas, fails in his attempts to exorcise the estate of the unordained clergyman. Trask kidnaps Vicki and ties her to a tree in a strange ritual he is convinced will prove her allegiance with Satan.

In 1967, DARK SHADOWS could afford to be progressive. Had this been written a few years later, maybe not so much. What changed? What set the clock back? A work of genius, unfortunately; ROSEMARY’S BABY, released the year after this episode aired.

The witch trial storyline lets the show have it both ways. Most importantly, the Collinses stand as voices of reason in the face of obvious fanaticism. On a horror show, a healthy dose of intellectual, anti-superstitious skepticism is bracing. Along with STAR TREK, DARK SHADOWS was a one-two punch of secular common sense in the genre. With, you know, vampires and werewolves and ghosts. But does it need a witch to facilitate Trask’s mission to play on the buried and forgotten fears of Collinsport, or are we all too vulnerable to hysteria? The scariest part of the show is to see the panic of the family as groupthink sweeps away common sense at the dawn of the 19th century. And there’s a witch in there anyway. Note how Angelique’s motives are all driven by love and desire, though. She’s not claiming Another Child for Satan. She may use dark powers, but she’s the only one at spiritual risk. She is a selfish sorcerer, not a dark missionary. Perfectly postmodern.

ROSEMARY’S BABY would change that. For decades, the devil had been a properly comical figure of cartoonish ridicule. He was Hot Stuff. He hung around on cans of potted ham and turpentine. He was a school mascot, for Pete’s sake. But he lurked in the deepest recesses of our instinctive mythology, anyway, and Roman Polanski released that fear and that side of him. A “Satanic Panic” resulted in pop culture, and despite the fact that the nation was at its most guardedly secular, the devil was back. But this was before all of that. Before the dark times. Before the Empire. Seeing Abigail and Trask as the new, threatening villains of the show dates it, and dates it in the best way. Never before has supernaturalism been so aligned with bullying. DARK SHADOWS is making a very strong statement here, and a subtle one. How many benevolent religious figures do we get on the show as significant characters? Exactly. None. But those Trasks just keep coming. This is DARK SHADOWS at its most subversive, and it’s a credit to the strength, creativity, and dedication of actors Jerry Lacy and Clarice Blackburn that we see it with its strangely fevered integrity. Yes, they are motivated by a communitarian ethos. No issue there. And they still seem like bullies beyond that.  All angles and obsidian, Jerry Lacy is the ideal counterpoint against Lara Parker, a French vanilla elision of aristocratic curves and indulgently refined contours. Even her voice has a gracefully playful mellifluousness that dips and rises like a Billy May arrangement, much too marvelous when set against the jagged ice of Lacy’s feral, slam-bang treatment of the language. She’s not in this episode, but since she has star-powered the storyline both as a character and as actress, we feel the confrontation coming.

Welcome, Reverend Trask.

Satanically speaking, the original BEDAZZLED had that very effect on delighted audiences right around this time in 1967.