The Dark Shadows Daybook: December 27

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 397

It’s wedding bells for Barnabas and Angelique, but will Barnabas’ dead uncle catch the garter? Reverend Bland: Paul Giles. (Repeat; min.)

Barnabas is predictably mordant in accepting the fact that his bride is missing on the wedding day. He explains this to the reverend while rationalizing away the various haunted events from Jeremiah that interfere with the pre-nuptial wait. Meanwhile, Angelique is nearly buried alive by the ghost of Jeremiah, before the presence of Ben Stokes grants a reprieve. At the wedding, more cursed events take place, and despite the wine turning to blood, they marry. The wedding night is disrupted by Josette’s music box and the sight of a mocking Jeremiah.

Predictably, the social event of the year is also one of the most hilarious as the Dark Shadows writers have their wedding cake and smear it over the faces of proper expectations at the same time. They’ve always excelled at mixing horror with the ridiculous and the sublime, depicting situations that are monstrous for the characters, frightening for most audiences, and blackly satirical for the cast and savvier viewers. Best of all, the characters in 397 are vastly aware of this — especially Barnabas and Ben. And with Paul Giles’ doddering Reverend Bland, it’s infinitely clear that Sam Hall does, as well. Grayson Hall is clearly a woman of deep wit, and a script like this could only have come from the guy she chose to keep up with her. Considering that, it’s not so much admirable that the show allowed itself these sardonic side quests, it’s more amazing that it reserved them for, you know, weddings.

In the midst of it all is Angelique getting a taste of her own gris gris with the twisted genie of Jeremiah refusing to go back into the bottle. (With this monkey’s paw, I thee wed….) Of course, it leads her to pledge to do only good, which is what one often does after nearly being buried alive. And, of course, all it takes is Barnabas clutching Josette’s music box like Darren McGavin with the Leg Lamp to lead her away from the pledge and back into fiery jealousy.

This is all after Jonathan Frid’s bone dry Canadian wit gets a thorough workout alongside Reverend Bland, who struggles to find anything good to say, including wildly inaccurate statements about the admirable loyalty shown between the Collinses. Barnabas keeps his straightest face ever, explaining away breezes coming from closed windows, etc, like a Benny Hill character on a date with a flatulently deflating love doll hidden in the closet. Jeremiah does his best to ruin the wedding, and it’s proper vengeance for a ghost who’s been through what he has. If anyone shares the hero spot of the episode, it’s the villain, which is par for the Collinsport course.

This is a wedding I used to forget about when I would see the entire show over the course of years. However, it’s perhaps one of the three or four most pivotal moments of the mythos. Setting up a payoff that no one knew would come in the 1840 storyline, it’s a wedding of two people who love each other despite every reason not to, and Lara Parker and Jonathan Frid pull off the ambiguity with humanity that transcends common sense. In other words, a wedding. And it’s not so horrible that it nukes their relationship in the long run. If anything, it strengthens it. It’s one of those shared disasters which bonds people rather than atomize them. And it’s exactly the disaster that (and you knew this was coming) would be my focus if I were King of Big Finish. They’ve taken the stories in another direction, and I can’t complain. However, an episode of after dinner tales… imagine it. Because these are the stories the grandkids finally hear when they come back from college and can have that cognac after the meal, pulling it off like they’ve always done so. Maggie and Quentin get misty eyed talking about their nude wedding at Club Med, laughing at the fact that the only attendees were Roger Collins (who insisted) and Willie Loomis (who was inexplicably there at the time). Then, of course, the kids ask about Barnabas and Angelique’s wedding. And they laugh. Protest. Roll their eyes. And tell the story. And it ends sentimentally. Which it should. Because it was all worth it.

And there are moments of warmth in the episode that ring with inevitability. Naomi, never the snob, accessorizing Angelique’s wedding dress. Ben Stokes, the first and last man standing now the best man, as well. Because, as Barnabas says, he is. In every sense in 1795, he truly is.

I’m 48 and unmarried. Episode 397 is a checklist of the good and bad that will need to happen before I am. Well, maybe not all of it. But you get the idea.

This episode hit the airwaves Jan. 2, 1968.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: DECEMBER 27

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 660

Barnabas may be able to defy the centuries to save Victoria, but can he defy Julia? Julia: Grayson Hall. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Spurred by a photo that Quentin had David plant, Barnabas is convinced that he should go back in time and save Victoria Winters from being hanged as a witch. Stokes and Julia voice doubts, but the appearance of graves from the past convince him that he must proceed.

Finding purpose. It’s an onus for everyone. For Barnabas, even moreso, and the sheer amount of Dark Shadows makes it more than possible for him to explore that question… it makes it essential. At a certain point, what else are you going to do with these people for hundreds of hours. They can’t drink brandy and talk about a pen forever.

For the first time, we really see Barnabas contending with living in the past and present at once. At least, for the first time since his arrival and conversion. Just because he’s no longer a supernatural man doesn’t mean he’s immune to feeling the effects of the supernatural. The show opened the time travel can o’worms when Barnabas was first unleashed. Unusual time travel, but time travel nonetheless. We are all time travelers in a very similar sense, just on a different scale. One of the reasons the show resonates is that the past is always living with us… and living us… whether we like it or not. Conventional wisdom tells us not to focus on that. It’s pointless. But Barnabas has no choice, and here he’s confronted with a chance to do something about it. Will it change him? No. It will change others, and changing others for the better, rather than the worse, is perhaps one small way he can make cosmic amends. With Nicholas Blair out of the way, Barnabas is on the other side of intimidation. After he smashes the equipment to revive Eve, we see a different character. While the past thirty or so episodes have been a warmup, now Barnabas at his best and fullest is striding onto the field. It’s an appropriately timed emerging, since it’s in the service of taking the baton from the retiring protagonist. Fitting that it should happen in 1796, the year he left his home and the year she finally found hers — both in a life after death after life.

The show rarely deals in parallelism and metaphor, but it reaches for something beautifully sophisticated here. Julia takes on the role of parent, telling Barnabas again and   again he can’t will himself through time. Similarly, Barnabas tells the children they can’t go to Boston. David becomes a strange conscience for Barnabas when he complains that adults get to do as they please, only to be told it only seems this way. But this clearly sticks with Barnabas as he realizes that he does have free will, and that living a life where it is inhibited is to live the life of an intimidated child. He’s not even going to be intimidated by his own past, as we see when he comes as close as possible to outing himself to Stokes, only to be stopped by Julia, coughing like a sitcom character in a hamfisted coverup.

This begins a story that both stands independently, like a primetime episode, and connects the beginning of the series to its eventual resolution. Victoria has come looking for a purpose, and Barnabas will end by finding his. In between, they meet. 630 comes roughly halfway through the series. No episode nor arc could be more fitting.

This episode was broadcast Jan. 3, 1969.