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 6

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 382

1795. Attempting to reason out why Josette and Jeremiah eloped, the Countess and Abigail focus their attentions on the many ways in which Victoria is a little-too-coincidentally out of place. Naomi will have none of it, but while she confers with Vicki, Abigail searches her room. The rifling is disrupted as the cat explodes, revealing Joshua in its place. An interrogated Victoria hides behind a dim memory, a condition shared with a furious Joshua. As they try to understand what is motivating Josette and whether or not Victoria is responsible, Natalie and Naomi finish the search of the governess’ room, and they find modern clothes and a charm bracelet misread as occult. Abigail summons Trask from Salem.

Let’s just get it out into the open; I think it’s clear that Joshua remembers far more of being a cat than he cares to recall. He complains of a burning scent after regaining his human shape, but couldn’t he really be marveling at the taste of 1795’s equivalent of Whiskas still in his mouth? And the bigger question, still… and if no one else is going to ask, I will -- is his chamber pot filled with sand? Louis Edmonds has a feline quality, anyway. What habits remained? These deeply pertinent questions and observations are why we’re here. Are they dangerous to ask? Of course. But as Wallace explained when editing Sargon’s piece for the upcoming anthology, SMELL THE HAND OF MONSTER SERIAL, “I'm in command. I could order this, but I'm not because Edgar is right in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any reference to the fact that maybe Joshua liked being a cat a little too much, but I must point out that the possibilities - the potential for knowledge and advancement - is equally great. Risk! Risk is our business. That's what this Daybook is all about. That's why we're aboard her.”

Seeing Abigail as master detective is one of 1795’s highlights… much like the Ur-Mrs. Kravitz on steroids. The charm bracelet is a perfectly passable piece of evidence, but the 1991 series vastly improved upon it with the occult reading of Vicki’s clothes care instruction tags. “Cool iron,” indeed.

It’s taken the show a year and a half to name its ultimate bete noir, but in 382, “Trask” is mentioned for the first time. If he and his family are so intensely opposed to the Collinses, our stiff and secretive New England aristocrats are suddenly swingers by comparison. No, they’re not the anti-Collinses, but to devote so much time to their destruction? What do the Collinses have to earn such ire? Simple. For a Trask, that much power cannot exist with Abigail as the exception and not the rule. And each generation has different reasons for that. In 1795, it’s in the name of God. In 1897, it’s because the prideful are more easily gulled by the avaricious. In 1840, small-mindedness is advantageous to Trask in the saddest way; it’s a mediocrity commensurate with his own. Greatness is the birthright of a Collins, even if the greatness is grandly self-destructive. But even that kind of Gothic self-ruination requires a strange boldness and imagination. Trasks never lack for boldness. It’s much sadder than that. It’s the imagination they lack.

On this day in 1967, Adrian Kantrowitz performed the first human heart transplant in the United States, and the world took yet another bold step toward the future. I like that superstition was portrayed so honestly and ridiculously on DARK SHADOWS right before kids turned to the news and saw a life-extending triumph of science.

Never enough of that.