The Dark Shadows Daybook: Dec. 9

 

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1169

By PATRICK McCRAY

When Angelique declares her love for Barnabas and lifts his curse, Judah realizes that the former vampire’s human side is a dangerous place to be. Judah Zachery: James Storm. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Barnabas interrupts Gerard’s daytime quest for his coffin by appearing quite human, having been made so by a contrite Angelique. Meanwhile, as Angelique reveals her history as Miranda Duval, Gabriel is haunted by the ghost of his murdered father, and attempts to kill Gerard.

Everything has to grow up. 

It would have been just as school was letting out for the holidays. Kids were three years older than they were when they spent their first (significant) DS Christmas break in 1795. I know that the show wasn’t expressly aimed at them, but, well, it was, anyway. Sam Hall was the father of a twelve year-old boy, and thus, was not only aware of their evolving sensibilities, but of their schedules, as well. School was letting out. Although kids were hme all the time, they also had more things bidding for that time. The show would kick it up accordingly. 1795 existed to show the knotty nature of pursuing passion’s industry. It’s appropriately two-dimensional for kids first learning about the basics of new love, infidelity, and the occult. Three years later, the lessons of ep. 1169 are far more nuanced, dealing with last loves, true loves, and a love so enduring that it grows past romance and into actual respect, affection, and admiration. 

It’s my understanding that the ratings were not as problematic at this time as history later implied. Still, Dan was increasingly restless, they had a star who was desperate to play anything other than the show’s sensation, and, not being a genre writer, Sam Hall himself was growing exhausted and bereft of fresh ideas. It’s a natural time to start asking where this is all going. Dark Shadows was not a sustainable organism because of its very strength… the wild ideas that sparked the story and the vast number of episodes they had to enliven. While that may seem kind of sad, it makes it the Roy Batty of daytime TV, finding a life with shape and meaning because of its limited lifespan. Other soaps may have memorable storylines and characters, but are they a memorable story? It’s impossible. But as unwieldy as Dark Shadows seems to be, there is a story within it. Like the Garden of Earthly Delights, it may be a massively complicated and surreal mess, but there’s a frame, and if we step back far enough, it’s all there to be seen at once.

1168 makes us acutely aware of that. As a piece of dramatic structure, it suffers from the endemic curse of its medium: the most vital moments are in the first act. Why? Today’s first act is actually the resolution of yesterday’s climax. So often with Dark Shadows, the episode begins with yesterday’s crescendo, but unlike the countless other entries in the saga, it does more than pad the running time until setting up the next episode’s big beginning. Hall is cleaning house, taking chances, unwrapping surprises, and, seemingly, hanging out with dear friends he knows are going away.

So, if they are going away, what can he do for them? How can he thank them? You know, “them” being not only the characters, but the actors who were his inevitable collaborators. Let’s start with James Storm, who has the opportunity to delve ever deeper into the character of Judah Zachery. Zachery, at this point, is so close to victory that he doesn’t seem to care. Storm has enjoyed one of the show’s rarest delights as he subverts one deceitful character for another entirely different deceitful character, but never really taking the spotlight as he should. He’s competing for airtime with the program's most saturated and robustly charismatic male ensembles. Given that, he’s practically Elvis, and the field of near-metadrama is his ‘68 Comeback Special. How many layers? We have Sam Hall writing for James Storm playing Judah Zachery possessing Ivan Miller pretending to be Gerard Stiles. That’s not confusing. It unrolls at a stately pace. Rather, it’s generous. Storm is so nimble and meticulous in his performance, you’d think it would turn clockwork. No. His singular magic is to fuse that almost pointilist precision of thought and language with the Halloween-night joy of simply performing. And he’s in marvelous company, because Christopher Pennock is allowed dazzling range here as a Gabriel pushed to the edge. Planning, calculating, and swearing vengeance, he’s a murderer trying to shift the blame onto Gerard. And from a certain point of view, he’s correct. But like a twisted riff on Hamlet, he’s tortured by the ghost of the father he murdered, and this spectral patriarch may not be omniscient. He’s still there to take it out only on Gabriel, and you would think that, in death, he would see the puppet strings of both Gerard and Judah, at the very least spreading the blame. But Daniel seems myopic to this, and the frenzy of ghostly guilt and greed seems to galvanize Gabriel (hang on, let me catch my breath) into taking his first actions to preserve the Collins legacy. In Dark Shadows, you don’t even bother to hope that your ancestors will go to a better place. You just double it on the pass line and pray they didn’t see what you did. 

On the blueprints, the dullest and most thankless part on the show had to go to Grayson Hall, who’s not crazy, supernatural, newly human, possessed, nor haunted. Her edge comes from the fact that Sam had to sleep some time, and if he thought he was going to turn her into a wandering sounding board for exposition, he’d better sleep lightly. Having only guts, common sense, and enough experience to know that Blairs and Petofis come and Blairs and Petofis go, she’s one of us looking in. Judah doesn't stand a chance. 

In her attempts to reason with Barnabas, we see each appreciating and suffering the lack of what defines the other. Julia is memory. Fact. Common sense. Barnabas is a creature high on the fumes of pure relief and affection. Is it possible that Angelique is staging all of this for a royal screw worthy of Wile E. Coyote? Yeah. But… you know… it’s also possible that she’s sincere. We have no evidence. So, yeah, she did this out some newfound goodness in her heart. It’s possible. What? Stop lookin’ at me like that. It is. And as it turns out, I’m right. 

Lara Parker plays the dishwater dull role of Proving She’s Earnest and then Giving History Lessons. That kind of goody-goody nonsense and trip-down-memory-lane-ing is deadly for actors. However, these are also profound turning points for the character. Someone who’s lived only lies -- down to her very name -- for centuries is changing the dance. That’s a powerful lesson, and Parker plays it with a fierceness that communicates the absolute necessity of compassion and honesty. She’s tried everything else. If 1840 is anything, it’s a woman’s attempt to protect the man she loves from the machinations of a deranged ex-boyfriend. From the implications she drops about Judah, it’s clear he was a love of her past. How different he was from Barnabas, and perhaps that’s the point.

And this positions our craggy, handwringing hero to have moments in the sun at last… again. We see him through the eyes of Julia and Angelique as everyone tries to reconcile that, yes, we have the capacity for change. Even the worst of us. Jonathan Frid, a man who, three years prior, was damnably uneasy playing youthful innocence, now portrays the same man with ease. It’s an innocence that’s organic. It comes from knowing how complicated humans will make the world, and what a relief it is when they drop the act. Innocence like Barnabas’ doesn’t come from a lack of experience. It comes from seeing how little can actually come from it. And relishing pulling the rug from beneath Gerard? As well as showing off his Mrs. Peel?  It’s been a long time coming. 

This is all in 24 minutes, and that just begins the goodbye. 

This episode was broadcast Dec. 17, 1970.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: December 9

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 646

When Collinwood’s newest and oldest guest reveals himself, will there still be room for Roger? Quentin: David Selby. (Repeat; 30 min.)

David and Amy encounter the ghosts of Quentin and Beth, who telepathically instruct them to bury Quentin’s bones and then set up a tripwire for Roger on the stairs, which works. Perhaps lethally.

It may be the most awaited day in Dark Shadows history. The build up had been going on for several weeks. Today, we meet Quentin Collins. And few men just kind of stand there and look sharp with the same kind of benevolent and sybaritic menace as David Selby.

As smartalec as that sounds, it’s also true. That’s all the man needs to do to establish his presence. And stand, he does.

It was clear that something was coming. It was clear that he was named Quentin. And it was clear that it was the next big direction for the story because, let’s face it, Don Briscoe is too nice of a guy. Unlike the arrival of Barnabas, Quentin was coming into a series where anything could happen. That did a lot of the work for David Selby, but it also raised expectations meteorically. Quentin’s first appearance is a masterpiece of performance focus, lighting, makeup, and costume design. The accompaniment of Beth, lit beautifully because she barely had to move, is even more powerful because it puts this mystery man into a context. He has followers. He has a team. Unlike the accident that was Barnabas, he exists as the result of a campaign. And every time David visits, he grows more powerful, thus reinforcing every warning that kids ever got about goin’ too near the white van driven by the guy with muttonchops.




The show has it both ways on several accounts. The more Quentin moves, the more he reveals potentials and limitations. So he plays it as motionlessly as possible. It’s an old stage trick. When blocking a play, the less a character moves, the more powerful they are. All of Selby’s work is with the eyes, and the muttonchops direct and intensify them magnificently. The production also satisfies twin agendas by allowing Quentin to remain a silent cypher and still communicate, by speaking through David. When David tries on the Victorian clothes, he speaks as if he were Quentin, but the line between Quentin and Beth and David and Amy is wildly questionable. Is it Quentin or David or David-through-Quentin or David-empowered-by-Quentin who says that he was bound to get revenge for how both of them had been treated?

It’s a fantastically allusive line of dialogue. Maybe Quentin is speaking about himself and Beth, and how they were treated by ancestors… perhaps he doesn’t know they are dead. Or perhaps Roger and Elizabeth enact some bizarre legacy of which David is ignorant. Maybe David and Quentin see themselves as marginalized members of the family, brothers-under-the-shroud, and are striking out. Maybe David is speaking for himself and Amy. maybe it’s all of the above, and that’s why they were chosen. David did not discover Quentin. Quentin simply waited for the right one.

Because the right ones were watching every day. And god help their parents if they didn’t have a release like Dark Shadows.

It’s a cliché among fans of a certain age that they “ran home from school to watch dark shadows.“ It’s a very true cliché however. 646 really twists that cliche by very authentically representing and addressing those fans. They are finally the heroes, investigating the unknown and taking charge of discovering what others had been too lackadaisical to discover. And they are also the villains, being moved by an entirely new figure who didn’t just deal with them as curious happenstances, but as the target of their interests.  It’s easy to forget the sense of constant pain and unfairness that sits with an aware child, and I don’t think it’s going very far to say that dark shadows fans are, if anything, aware. Both David and Amy are only children, growing up with adults who treated them — almost — as equals, because how else are they to address them? But they are inconvenient, unwise adults, and children like David and Amy are aware of this, also. Before, the show focused this kind of interest entirely on how dangerous and random a kid like this could be. David trying to kill his father is absolutely nothing new. But now, we see this from Davis’s point of view, also. If an adult is encouraging him to kill, there must suddenly, finally be a rational reason.

Yes? No. But David’s rage at Roger has been assuaged for some time. Or has it? It doesn’t take much for Quentin to inspire more of it. Roger complains about David to Liz throughout the episode, and that’s a chicken-and-egg passive aggression that a kid is going to notice. When Roger wonders if he made a mistake letting that child into the house, Liz asks if he means Amy. She wouldn’t ask if “David” were not a likely answer as well. The storyline has a very political message between parent and child, because the tension between Roger and David has improved, yes, but maybe not healed. Roger has yet to contemplate losing him, and David has yet to see whether Roger cares. Quentin was rejected by Jamison, who believed that he didn’t care, either. If he sees David as Jamison and Roger as the nearest adult in the lad’s life, somewhere between himself and Edward, then perhaps this is to prove to the Jamison spirit that an adult can care. Even Roger.

Ghosts have strange logic. But it’s clear there is a logic. How will it involve Barnabas? Or will Barnabas go away? The questions in the era were heady as the show revs up for 1969, its greatest year and when the downfall -- very quietly -- began.

This episode hit the airwaves Dec. 16, 1968.