The Dark Shadows Daybook: January 21

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 677

Chris survives his night in the house of the dead, but will he survive Julia’s offer to help his “condition”? Chris Jennings: Don Briscoe. (Repeat; 30 min.)

After returning from a night secure within the mausoleum, Chris arrives home to find Julia expressing her doubts about helping him. After bribing away a spying David with soda, Chris later ingests poison laced into his drink by an invisible hand.

Is this the most compassionate episode of Dark Shadows ever? Hell, even the homicidal ghost is acting out of love. Everyone is compassionate except for David, the little psychopath, and if he weren’t, it would ruin the episode with Cosmic Inconsistency. He inserts a much-needed moment of ghoulish voyeurism into the proceedings, and it’s darn right that Chris denies him a second soda as a consequence. Now, off with you, Davey. It’s not so bad. Don Briscoe called you “man,” and that’s about the highest honor I can think of… after hearing David Selby ask, “You wanna touch these? No. Higher. No, not those, either. The ones in the box. Yeah, glued them on every day for six months. Weird, huh? Reminds me of the fake muttonchops on Dark Shadows.”

The only semi-holdout in the episode’s kindness klub is Julia, again, keeping the universe in order. When was the last time Chris Jennings bought her a Rob Roy and a steak sandwich at the Blue Whale? Or even let her bum a Gauloises? Exactly. Next time, maybe you’ll think about that when you come to her with out-of-network complaints about lycanthropy. She thinks it’s all in your head and intimates as much to Barnabas before he reminds her that Dan Curtis is paying the light bill.

I’m not sure what Chris Jennings did to earn Julia’s casual sadism. Maybe she just assumes that he’ll reject her, too, and wants to get a head start. Julia and Barnabas parallel each other on the clock of morality, here, both equally humane, but on different sides. Barnabas, emerging more and more from his shell of evil and Julia seemingly retreating into hers. Very purposefully. They are classic reflectors in this sense. Each is a walking yin-yang, and each has either a bit more malice or benevolence, depending. Why are they such? Quantity of suffering and alienation. You would think that Julia would have more sympathy, but her suffering is not all it’s cracked up to be. Yes, yes, an unmarried woman in 1969 in a male-dominated profession, nearing fifty. However, that field is medicine, she’s still has the prestige to head Windcliff, her salary is such that she can take years off at a time, and she’s in the most advantaged demographic in the country. Most of all, she’s human. Barnabas, on the other hand, is only recently human. He’s sitting on nearly two hundred years of interred imprisonment and starvation, has been dragged centuries away from anything familiar, has taken at least a score of lives, and knows the ambiguity of trying to kill the people he’d normally join in a hunt against something like himself. So, yes, he perhaps knows a little bit more about compassion in this regard.

In a year, would Julia be as parsimonious with her affections? I don’t think so, and it’s this Julia that we remember. Or SHOULD remember. It’s the right of the wrong to live forever in 1967, but I’m a man of modern times, and aspire for the future awaiting me in 1970. There, Julia is a woman who’s traveled through time three times, killed her evil twin in a parallel universe, escaped zombies, survived multiple possessions, and did it all while growing her hair back out. That tends to mellow a person out.

But when it comes to being a mensch, no one fulfills the requirements like Don Briscoe. Dark Shadows has a number of civilians interact with the Collins family, but none project the package of likability, intelligence, and steadfastness like Chris Jennings. This matters. Barnabas has reclaimed his humanity in every sense. Normally, stories would have him test that mettle by helping someone of dubious intent… who would no doubt betray him. While it’s true that this happens far, far too frequently in real life, in art, it is empathy-shaming. Yes, yes, it builds conflict and an organic sense of drama, even if it allows the spiritually stingy a moment of self-congratulation. But Dark Shadows is a virtuoso at playing a long game it doesn’t even know is whirling around it. Barnabas must foster his newfound humanity by helping someone worthy of it. This justifies the act. By doing so, the series will forever give him the One Example of a Good Man that will challenge him when he wants to turn his back on a ne’er-do-well.

That’s the problem with cynics. They never met the One Example.

This episode hit the airwaves Jan. 28, 1968.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: JANUARY 28

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 951

What’s got fangs, a taste for booze, and a mild case of pyromania? Barnabas Collins: Jonathan Frid. (Repeat. 30 min.) 

Barnabas, retransformed by the Leviathans into a vampire, and after nearly biting Maggie, attacks one of their newly minted cultists and then burns the Todds’ antique shop to cinders with Jeb inside.

Jeb made a mistake. And this is why we watch Dark Shadows. Yes, yes, it’s a profound meditation on, you know, love and the past and the existential conundrum of culpability versus intent. And we just as much want to see Barnabas Down to Bite, and this episode is a hullabaloo. Perhaps extending into the realm of hootenanny.

Barnabas appears at all corners of the moral map in the series, from sinister to savior, but it’s generally a linear progression. Out of step with this, the Leviathan arc’s depiction of him is incredibly mercurial, and no matter how we’ve see him improve, they still play the monster pedal. But even within the arc, there is a progression. Until there isn’t. Rarely has the series had it both ways with such elegance and efficiency. Here, in 951, he’s a feral and ferocious vampire and a tragic hero, all at once. Cosmically, I blame (and credit) David Selby. Now that there’s another central hero to the series, Barnabas can be the bad guy. But since we’ve seen him go from bad guy to good guy, once, and know his tragic origin, it just won’t stick to have him be completely evil. That’s a job for Nicholas Blair. 451 reestablishes the precarious balance that’s essential to the character. And it does it theatrically as hell in an episode that’s determined to entertain the audience whether they want to only see a boring soap opera or not. Turning Barnabas back into a vampire is fine. Having him attacked by a bat that comes out of a demonic box in the fiery realm of a snake-god temple? That’s great television… and maybe great art, too.

Strike the ‘maybe.’

There’s a dizzying amount of variety that follows. Barnabas has a one-man vaudeville routine outside Collinwood where he decides to bite Maggie, talks himself out of it, then back into it, then back out of it as he nears the door. I’m vaguely surprised they didn’t let Quentin and Jeb have the rest of the episode so they could cut back to Barnabas see-sawing on the issue for the next ten minutes. But it’s all too much, and he needs a drink at the Blue Whale. Just as he’s courting a conspicuously dixie doxie who’s wandered in from a Horton Foote-written episode of True Blood, Julia and Quentin show up at the ‘Whale and Barnabas tries to ditch them. For good reason. Not only is he a terrifying vampire, but he’s killing cultists who are also terminally southern -- and who join snake cults via guys named Bruno, which makes them even more suspect. Oh, earlier, Quentin and Jeb get into yet another fight, which Jeb wins by threatening to injure Quentin’s suit. (Since Quentin’s immortal, I assume that’s the danger posed by the knife.) At this point, those boys fight more than Sonny Corleone. Jeb and Quentin either need to duel to the death or get married. But Jeb had better do it quickly, because Barnabas has had it.

Torching Megan and Philip’s shop is a true, Sopranos moment, and it speaks to my favorite part of Barnabas: the one with a gas can and a match. It’s a strikingly direct solution that really speaks of the no-nonsense aristocrat from 1795. OG Patriarchy’s got stuff to do, thank you, and it has unique ways of solving problems once it’s through indulging those beatnik antique peddlers and their shaggy-haired messiah/stockboy. Mess with hegemony, feel the horns, my friend.  We sometimes think of aristocrats of Barnabas’ time as fey and ineffectual fancy lads, but they had their staff ravage and savage entire continents before breakfast.

There are many dualities and dichotomies to Barnabas Collins. My favorite is when he crosses the line between timidity and to-hell-with-it. It usually involves fire. Like when he goes back in time on a mission. Off to the side, Angelique seemingly lies about saving Vicki from the gallows, and Barnabas & Ben simply shrug and douse her in flames as a response. You can tell it’s therapeutic. Same thing here. Barnabas has been dragged through time, saw Josette commit suicide, had to stop using Just for Men on his temples, was manipulated by threats to Josette’s ghost, and now is a vampire AGAIN. Then there’s the whole Sky Rumson business. And taking orders from Michael and Alexander. I’m amazed that this is all he does.

There are few things as satisfying as a fed up Barnabas Collins declaring war upon Jeb and all of the Leviathans. But Barnabas doing all those things while committing arson is right up there.

This episode was broadcast Feb. 16, 1970.