The Dark Shadows Daybook: DECEMBER 6

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 645

When David and Amy are trapped in Quentin’s room, will they become the next morbid relics in his collection? Amy: Denise Nickerson. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Finding a dead man in the sealed chamber, along with a working gramophone, David and Amy are sealed inside until they agree to do Quentin’s bidding. Their first morbid task involves moving a rocking cradle from the Old House. After charming Barnabas and Liz, the two return to see someone they call to as Quentin within the room.

The prelude to 1897 deliberately builds the mystery of Quentin Collins one purposeful layer at a time. This is a reminder of how the writers took advantage of the soap format to load, but not overload, the audience with a mosaic of details. Most recently, a voice on a long-dead phone, a hidden room, a gentleman’s skeleton in an office chair, a Victrola’s phantom melody (included in an episode for the first time today), and now -- we think -- Quentin, himself. The origin of Barnabas literally tells itself, mostly within a few episodes of the character’s introduction. Quentin’s makes us work for it and rewards us proportionately. Perhaps the most macabre detail is the infant’s crib that Quentin makes David shlep from the Old House to his chamber.

One of the fascinating things about Quentin is that he reverses -- or at least delays -- the typical pattern we see with specters. When I think of most haunted house stories, I think of people encountering spirits who try to get humans to go away. By contrast, Quentin recruits them. Of course, the fact that it’s David and Amy is a coincidence, but who else would have been as vulnerable? David has a father who is rarely around and Amy is missing both parents and two brothers. Well, one of the brothers, anyway, during Collinsport’s almost constant full moon. Quentin and Beth, like cult leaders, provide that family. They craft occult scavenger hunts and arts & crafts projects. They laugh a lot. They wave their hands menacingly. They bulge their eyes. What more could you want in an undead surrogate uncle? There’s a bizarre logic to it all, besides Quentin wanting to permanently “release” Chris from the curse, dominate Collinwood, and respond to Jamison’s abandonment by slowly killing his identical descendant. Quentin seems to need human attention and contact. The more he gets, the more powerful he becomes. Is this some last occult working he arranged in life? That’s another good reason to seal off the wing. Short of burning him, what other way is there to isolate this black magic landmine from being triggered in a cemetery and haunting THAT? Because someone might recognize that ghost, and the whole thing would be incredibly humiliating.

Quentin nudges David and Amy into subtly bizarre directions (beyond trying to kill Roger, which is business as usual for David). The possession is proceeding apace, and both are maturing at a strangely arresting pace. It’s in a strangely sentimental way, appropriate for Edwardians. David speaks very sentimentally toward Amy, and were they a few years older, it would read more differently than it does. Right now, it’s just a notch below ooky. Amy also masters counterfeit affection, in this case with David’s advice, and aims it at Barnabas. These are affirming forms of manipulation based purely on giving people what they want to hear. Can Quentin’s charm be any more infectious? And what other ghost would use such a signature? The masterstroke is reserved for Barnabas -- a pint-sized bear hug from Amy. For a man still in mourning for his young, dead sister, there is no better way to (try to) win him over.

It’s also emblematic of how his character has changed in response to public reception. He was now a hero to kids across the country. The sight of her hugging him must have made every kid running home after school a study in envy. Amy knew what she was doing because David knew, and David knew because Quentin knew. It makes me wonder how Maggie’s kidnapping would have gone if Josette had decided to possess her.

For the hell of it, I also wonder how things would have gone if Sarah had possessed Adam.

This episode was broadcast Dec. 13, 1968.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: DECEMBER 13

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 650

In the wake of Madame Findley’s death, Victoria fixates on Jeff’s watch. When it begins to tick, she knows that his spirit is active and capable of contact. This is bolstered when he actually appears to her, drawn by the power of love. After he vanishes, she becomes determined to return to him. After tearful and sincere goodbyes to Liz and Barnabas, a solitary Vicki sees Peter appear once more. When they join hands, both are drawn back to the past as Liz and Barnabas look on in astonishment.

Maybe it was the mood I was in. Maybe it was the ensemble at its best. Maybe it was the quietly dignified compassion shared between the characters. Maybe it was Ron Sproat’s sensitive, emotionally mature script. Or the passionate sincerity of the performances. Perhaps it was the result of these things combined, capping stories that have been years in the telling. But we said goodbye to Victoria Winters. I was transfixed, teared up, and felt both elated and terrible for everyone.

Betsy Durkin, in her final appearance on the show, again ably carries the episode, with a Victoria pushed beyond arguable madness and into an understanding of time and destiny known by very few. Her farewells to Liz and Barnabas are as credible as if she’d been essaying the part since 1966. Roger Davis puts in a performance both heartfelt and heightened, without ever straying into the hamfisted. The unsung hero of the episode is Jonathan Frid. In saying goodbye to Victoria, we see the character’s pain, his restraint, his compassion, and his wise dignity. Of course, for Barnabas, his knowledge of her is fresh. He’s known her maybe a year? That includes how they met in 1795. His feelings for her are fresher than we, the viewers, realize. No, they’re more than that. He’s seen the range of her bravery, going back nearly two centuries. She’s an extraordinary woman, and no one else there -- not even Peter Bradford -- appreciates it in quite the same way. His longing is so clearly articulated, but it’s punctuated by his decision to control when they part company. It’s the last and only position of self-respect. How much has he lost? How ruthless is he in the pursuit of his desires? We know what he’s capable of. Thus, his choice to move on shows a thoughtful self-command that can only be credibly crafted and appreciated in the daily storytelling of the soap. With their parting, she leaves, he stays, the baton is passed, and it becomes clear who the ultimate protagonist of DARK SHADOWS is destined to be. The show begins with one lost stranger coming to Collinwood only to find her destiny in the past. It continues and ends with a man of the past finding his fate in the future. Is Victoria, in her unblemished purity, the past that Collinwood needs? Is Barnabas the stabilizing voice of yesterday here to balance the moral scales of yesterday? They become bookends. Both finding meaning through devotion to families that aren’t really theirs. Both meeting their ends in trials.

Special kudos to Louis Edmonds, too. Everyone who thinks that Roger remains a heartless, condescending cretin needs to take a good look at his depiction in an episode like this. He is strength and sympathy in equal measure, and as with Barnabas, it’s a believable result of the character’s evolution. When he asks Barnabas to look after things in his absence, there’s a sincere warmth to the request, and again, it makes me realize how far both characters have come.

I am impressed by so many of the DARK SHADOWS installments, but few leave me as emotionally winded as this one. And yet, I can’t wait to watch it again.

On this day in 1968, the president of Brazil runs rampant over their constitution, but manages to stabilize the country. It’s unclear if a surviving Burke Devlin is involved.