The Dark Shadows Daybook: January 14

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1971: Episode 1195

When Gerard claims a bride in a bizarre act of unnatural hypnosis, will Barnabas catch the garter? Judah Zachery: James Storm. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Gerard puts enough whammy on Daphne to marry him, and Quentin’s arrival comes too late. He is soon arrested again, and although Barnabas dedicates himself to ending the man he now knows to be Judah Zachery, he may not be able to. Angelique thinks it is hopeless. Her detached attitude about it is indicative of the Witch Privilege that Barnabas cites as the reason he cannot love her. Hearing this, she is determined to reform. Her voodoo attack on Gerard is cut short by the surprise arrival of her intended victim.

With this, we begin the final cycle of “this is it.” Not that it wants to make a big deal out of it. If it were any more modest and self-effacing, the episode would be mistaken for a Lutheran.

One of the things that makes 1840 so incredibly challenging for viewers is the fact that most other endings know that they’re endings. Most endings bellow the fact at you long before the climax and resolution… and, if the production caps off an epic story of British fantasy, it will still be ending hours later. But this doesn’t. It just happens. I hate to look at Dark Shadows as anything other than one, big interconnected story. The fact that it was not constructed with Straczynskian forethought is irrelevant to the finished product… except in certain idiosyncrasies of storytelling. Things ramble endlessly only to end abruptly. You know, like real life.

When a viewer abandons preconceived notions of structure and finally realizes that storytelling does not begin and end with the unholy conformist trinity of Syd Field, Robert McKee, and Joseph Campbell, endings like this one are stunningly truthful. Almost too much so. Real life doesn’t with cues for heartfelt conversations that sum up relationships. Real life has never provided me with my own montage so that I can get into shape, just like it’s never given me a clip reel of highlights so that I’ll know the show is over.

I wonder how the show would have treated these episodes if they’d really, honestly known that this was it. They are not devoid of summative sentiment. But they are summing up a storyline, not a series. Given that, they do so extremely well. If you look at the major “vacations” taken by the storyline, only 1795 is as self-consciously satisfying. Parallel time just mercifully ends, and does 1995 even count? 1897's ending is sort of the opposite of the rest of that story line. It's dour and melancholy and overstays it welcome. So that leaves 1840, and upon re-examination, I think it's the most satisfying ending that any storyline has on the program. Including the incredibly painful death that is just a few episodes away.

The most pivotal moments in the episode work in tandem, one after the other. Barnabas confronts Gerard and refers to him as Judah, which has to be a huge blow to Judah’s ego… and a great show of bravado for Barnabas, considering that Judah Zachery is the boogeyman for Barnabas’ generation; his offstage manipulations have slowly poisoned the family for hundreds of years, and we can thank him for what Barnabas finds when emerging in 1967. Of course, Zachery’s powers are potentially far more vulgar, and Barnabas’ risk in taunting him is all the more shocking when you consider that he very much knows the risk he’s taking.

In a Structured Ending, this would be the puffed-up moment where the hero gets a cosmic spanking for the sin of immodesty. But the up in question is not puffed enough for that. Nothing here is. Barnabas has just come off of telling Angelique the real reasons why he cannot love her. Yes, stop the presses. Important. Show. Moment.

And it kinda happens. That’s about the most you can say.

Yes, yes. It’s enough to make her risk everything to stop the wholesale slaughter she predicts. In that sense, Barnabas is a real value in the rhetoric department. Very casual about the whole thing. Reasonable to a predictably Canadian extent. So reasonable, I fear that he’ll transform into a Unitarian or Merkin Muffley on the Grey Phone with Dimitri.

He basically says, “Yeah, I mean, Angelique, you know… It’s just… You’ve got witch ways, you. You know? Witch, witchy, witch… you know… um, witchy ways. You’ll never stop using them. And that means you are not human. You know how it is. I mean, it’s not your fault, so don’t beat yourself up too much. But, you know. This is how… um, yeah. So, I’m going to make a cheese sandwich. Maybe change the litter box. Do you need anything?”

I’m not really exaggerating. And it’s perfect in its awkward straightforwardness. Even with all of the time travel and psychic premonitions on the show, they still don’t have DVDs, so they have no idea what’s coming. I’m sure if Barnabas knew this was one of the last times he’d be able to give The Speech, he would have really made it a humdinger.

For a viewer, it’s actually satisfying… enough. It passes a reality test that most shows are too teary eyed to par out of at this point. Jonathan Frid and Lara Parker could spellbind just by reading the iTunes terms and conditions aloud at this point. And Jerry Lacy, James Storm, and the Chairman of the Chops, himself, Mr. David Selby? They glide through the episode with an easy confidence the OED would brand Rat-Packian while hitting the notes of gravitas with utter respect for their significance. Storm is especially disciplined, transforming into the series’ Blofeld with a mid-Atlantic blend of Stanislavskian truth and Classical panache. Is this the evil that launched well over a thousand episodes?

Do not underestimate James Storm.

This episode hit the airwaves Jan. 22, 1971.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: JANUARY 22

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 947

Angelique can always depend on her hunky, new husband… to betray humanity! Sky Rumson: Geoffrey Scott. (Repeat. 30 min.)

Jeb and the werewolf tussle, and it’s a draw. After Barnabas checks on Angelique, she confides to her husband about her participation in the resistance. Unfortunately, we learn that this was the wrong choice when he goes to tattle to Jeb. Sky Rumson: publisher, husband, Leviathan.

Geoffrey Scott takes the prize for perhaps the most slighted actor from the series, and this is, in retrospect, totally unfair. In the past, I’ve been one of the detractors. Cards on the table -- Sky Rumson is simultaneously wooden and somehow inflatable. But that’s Sky Rumson. He’s written that way. It’s not Geoffrey Scott, and that’s a distinction which needs to be made when assessing the Dark Shadows ensemble. There’s a larger and deceptive trend and tendency with the media, but especially Dark Shadows, and it’s being undermined with Scott. Not necessarily for the first time, but very, very strikingly. Handsome people are nice people. Even the evil ones. But Sky manages to be handsome AND evil, and the show isn’t necessarily ready for that.

I’m being quantitative when I say that daytime soap operas are written -- certainly were written -- for women. Just as importantly, they were cast with a female audience in mind. Dark Shadows had an admirable record not only casting very good actors, but very handsome actors, as well. When your most beloved actor is also the most idiosyncratic looking, and he’s still on the cover of teen mags, you’re doing something right in casting. But the writing is also, well, handsome. Up to this point, even your most evil characters have had a strange charm to them. Dammit, Jason McGuire, for all your wickedness, I can’t help but like you. And Nicholas, Ghost of Quentin, Adam, etc. Sky Rumson is different, and as such, he is one of the show’s first realistic characters. In the worst way. He may exist in art, but he is a little too true, and that throws us off as fans and viewers. The guy is exactly what he appears to be -- the handsome, bland, successful, privileged, vapid, evil goon who lands the girl to an extent that, of course, she’ll betray the real hero.  Because she loves him. If you’ve ever interacted with humans, you know the type. The rules keep you from being too hard on Angelique for marrying this idiot, but you can dislike said idiot all you like. And Geoffrey Scott gets stuck playing him.

Yeah, he’s that guy. He’s just a hollow, good-looking bully because that’s how he came from the manufacturer. More importantly, we dislike him because he provides illumination for what Barnabas is not. Even Quentin isn’t guy. We need a Sky Rumson so that we can appreciate Quentin and wait for the day when he beats the aqua-velva outta the big hunk of cheddar, at last.

At least he’s brilliant publisher. Yes? No. Who are you kidding? He doesn’t come across as that smart because he doesn’t need to be. I'm sure his magazines have no shortage of pictures. Big fonts. USA Today would fail the Rumson test as too elitist. A cerebral Rumson would defeat the point. He’s got four bedrooms and 2.5 baths at the platinum end of the bell curve, and he never even had to put down a deposit. Nothing he says is authentic or believable, and so of course he’s in league with the apocalypse. He reassures us of our mistrust of “that guy,” and as such, is a gift from the writers. Because I don’t think Sam and Gordon had a fondness for “that guy,” either. He gets a 1969 model Angelique, and then trashes the opportunity within a few episodes. It's the closest Dark Shadows gets to Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, and it has to be the episode where Tony Nelson joins a cult. And Angelique had come so far.

We’ve spent all of 1897 building a begrudging trust with Angelique. Yes, she inadvertently drives Beth to suicide and ruins Quentin’s emotional life and shatters Jamison… but for understandable reasons. Now, we’re seeing that she’s cleaned up her act in the present. It’s like a vacation from evil. You can argue whether or not she deserves it, but at least she’s not making Barnabas’ life a living hell in the same way (and just for fun). Until, you know, she marries a blow-up Blofeld and spills the beans about how there’s a war going on for the future of existence, and she’s decided to be on the side of existence. He just can’t have that. He just can’t wait to tell his frat bruh Jeb all about it.

Even Burke Devlin had hard-earned sophistication. Joe Haskell may be a fisherman, but he’s gentle enough that Liz has no issues welcoming him into the family. Speaking of St. Joel Crothers, even Nathan Forbes has enough good manners to serve as a sounding board for Barnabas and sit at the dinner table with Joshua. And there is no mensh to equal Ben Stokes. But Sky is the worst. Sky Rumson has the most and disrespects everything he gets. He is exactly the weasel you think that guys like that will be. And there was never a huh-huh-huh, rapey fratboy vibe to the characters on the show until Sky and Jeb showed up. Even the man named Bruno disqualifies himself from that by wearing a fur coat and hilarious amounts of product. And Jeb slips out of the noose by turning around. But Sky? This is the show’s opportunity to confirm your suspicions about every chowderheaded sportsballer who steals the skeleton out of the Barnabas Collins game of life. Poor Geoffrey Scott is really good at playing this guy. It’s acting. He does it really, really well and never gets another character to redeem his Geoffosity from his Skyvianness.

But we stay with Jonathan Frid, who would never do that stuff.

We’re protective of Barnabas. We ARE Barnabas. And we know there are only two ways that things with Angelique can end happily: marrying her or sending her back to Hell screaming in fiery agony. Either way, it’s a good ending for Barnabas, and he needs the pleasure of doing one or the other. (And at various times in the show, he does both.) So, like a creepy stepfather, Sky is instantly to be mistrusted. His plastic vapidity is the point.

Sky’s insincere proclamations of love are as unbelievable as his half-hearted proclamations of evil. The perfection of his villainy resides in the fact that he’s too entitled to even NEED to revel in being a villain. He just decides to screw over the world because it’s there. Sky Rumson is the reason that Gillette makes sanctimonious commercials. Thanks, Sky. I have to put up with the apocalypse AND condescending razor ads. But like the razor ads, it all may be necessary for the mythos to move on and and stand as comprehensive.

Blame the writers. They took a break from presenting monsters so that they could present a monster.

This episode was broadcast Feb. 10, 1970.