The Dark Shadows Daybook: July 24

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1070


Can Barnabas forgive Julia’s seduction by a malevolent phantom before a sheriff from the future exacts vengeance? Professor Stokes: Thayer David. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Barnabas awakens to the sheriff trying to kill him. Surviving that, he meets with Julia and despite her intermittent control by Gerard, reassures her of his loyalty. Stokes soon perishes from spectral attacks after a seance, and Barnabas and Julia flee through a Time Staircase that takes them back to 1970, where a very loud young blonde girl demands to know who they are.

Blood, thunder, and all good things (unless you’re Professor Stokes) arrive in episode 1070, both wrapping up 1995 and using it as a launchpad for the series’ darkest and most daring storyline. Make no mistake, it’s also drenched in enough sexual subtext and, well, text, to send all of Little Rock diving under pews.

This is a period of intense episodes, where our characters are pushed to their limits, divulging nervous truths and betraying themselves and others the way they always feared was inevitable. They are our heroes and under circumstances of total, existential doom. It remains a challenging storyline to watch because it removes the one constant of the series: Collinwood will always be home. Well, no it won’t. In other news, friends and family members of viewers were being shot at in Vietnam, and the joy of the moon landings was losing altitude. Dark Shadows was as much a product of the Zeitgeist as it was a producer of it. When Barnabas declares his fealty to Julia, he means it, but there is also a halfheartedness and desperation lingering under the words that betrays their lack of steel.

Rather than waft around the edges of the plot and slowly insinuate his evil, as did his predecessors in villainy on the show, Gerard wages a full-on assault as his calling card. And after the Leviathan lethargy and a Parallel Time villainess who wasn’t necessarily there, he’s a welcomed change -- direct and unambiguous. The heroes will have enough ambiguity of their own production in facing him. Julia shows us that in a display of vulnerability that sums up Gerard’s power with exactitude. She’s betrayed Barnabas for Gerard and… I think she kind of liked it. There’s a fear that she’ll do it again, and the fear under the surface that I sense is that she will want to do it again.

And if this isn’t reeking of sexual guilt, I don’t know what is. Barnabas even greets Julia after her seizure by Gerard by remarking that Julia has “been with him.” Okay, it’s as good a verb as any, but coming from Jonathan Frid, it has a sense of Victorian reproach that combines disturbingly with Grayson Hall’s tightly strung guilt. Her sickened fear at her own potential for harming Barnabas is a disturbing admission of weakness from the doctor. Thanks to James Storm’s oily intensity, it’s easy to see why Julia is drawn in and just as easy to see why she seems to feel so dirty about it. Gerard seems to inspire his victims to not only engineer their own destructions, but to want to do so. He is unique in villains in that sense. Gerard is a master in the judo of encouraged self-harm. He is the voice that makes you so curious about jumping off that balcony that it seems almost inevitable. Humans are masters of self-destruction. All Gerard does is get out of the way. And cheer them on.

Thayer David will have more episodes as Eliot Stokes, but knowing that doesn’t remove the shock of his endlessly sudden death. 1080 also introduces the Time Staircase, a bizarre invention of the writers that is quintessentially Victorian in its vague unlikeliness. However, with trips to other time periods becoming more common than a quick stop at the Blue Whale, it’s tremendously economical. More than that, it’s fun. Leave it to Dark Shadows to make a dark, shameful, existential apocalypse a FUN, dark, shameful, existential apocalypse.

This episode hit the airwaves July 31, 1970.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: July 31

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1969: Episode 815

Petofi and his hand are reunited, and Barnabas’ demands that he help Quentin are met with ambiguous responses. Petofi removes Barnabas’ ability to teleport and then shows him what he thinks is the vampire’s impending death. Instead, he sees David die in 1969. Petofi learns that he cannot show a death he did not cause. Petofi then goes to Magda, who sees the Hand and follows his command to be shown Barnabas’ coffin. There, he lays on the Hand and has Aristede chain the coffin.

Absolute evil provides too much fun to be all that bad, all the time. Christopher Pennock, one of the heroes of this column, once remarked that John Yaeger was rooted in the joy and freedom of pure evil. And let’s draw the line between evil and meanness. For our purposes, evil is intense self-interest to the exclusion of the needs of others. Cruelty is about causing harm to others for the sake of pleasure. Of course, “pure” is probably a bad word to use. These things aren’t scientific absolutes. (Which is a polite way of telling people with counterexamples what they can do with them.) Count Petofi is an interesting case. Much is made of his evil, and St. Thayer David rolls his eyes and cackles like he’s trying to show Plato’s Ideal a thing or two about how you really play a heavy. However, his punishment of others only comes when they get in his way. Just because he’s theatrical about it doesn’t mean that he’s deviating from his purpose: to get them to stop getting in his way. Ultimately, his desires make sense. He wants his hand back. (You know, so he won’t die.) He wants to escape an organized manhunt via extremely thorough means. He wants to ensure that those who threaten him leave him alone. Permanently. Can’t fault him for that. Along the way, like a dark Dr. Lao, he usually imparts some kind of lesson or reveals some kind of profound or lasting truth. He’s at least 150 years old, and so he views wants, needs, and consequences differently. I’m not saying that I would mind crossing the guy, because I intensely would. But unlike Angelique, he’s not cruel. His techniques have a more pedagogical bent, “Here, I made my point by taking away your powers of teleporting. Imagine what else I could do? Now, sit down and have some champagne whilst we talk about what brought us together.”

From the teaser for the episode onward, Petofi owns 815, both displaying his powers on Barnabas with surgical relish and then being hoisted by his ample petard when Barnabas teaches him a thing or two about gazing into the future. As arguably the most powerful character on the show, short of Diabolos, Judah Zachary, and Lela Swift, he needs regular humblings. First, they keep the program from lasting ten minutes. Secondly, they get him good and steamed, which is when great things tend to happen. He has surprisingly little ego -- after a tantrum or two -- about learning new things, even his own limits. DARK SHADOWS has introduced its first real supervillain since Nicholas Blair, and he’s arguably more powerful because of his unallegiant nature. Barnabas is intermittent as a presence now, and his almost-guest appearance requires a great show. The teleportation shuffle is just that, and add to it the wonderfully ambiguous loss and victory of seeing David’s death mixed with the knowledge that Petofi’s powers to display tomorrow are extremely limited. Does Petofi have the last laugh? It started about a drama regarding a will and has become the pilot for a never-made DEADLANDS tv series. Of course he does. Magda gets knocked down a cribbage board worth of pegs and Barnabas has the Hand placed on him in his soon-to-be-chained coffin. We’re off to the races.

This episode hit the airwaves Aug. 8, 1969.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: July 31

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 295

Maggie, thought dead by most, arrives at the Blue Whale, her memory on the mend. A panicked Barnabas enlists Julia’s aid to wipe the remainder of her memory. Julia does so at Dr. Woodard’s office and none too soon.

This is one of the clearest examples of the topsy-turvy morality of DARK SHADOWS as it comes into its own. A few months earlier, Maggie was the heroine and Barnabas was the villain as the kidnapping story came and went. Now, when Maggie comes into the Blue Whale and Barnabas has a fantastic moment of panic, it’s clear that our sympathies have shifted. Barnabas is the… well, if not hero, then most interesting character. And they don’t seem to be sending him away. What does this mean? As an audience member, I’m not entirely sure. I think the writers are with me. Am I supposed to be rooting for a kidnapper and hoping to see his victim further brainwashed? Um, yeah. Yeah, I think so. And it’s not RICHARD III. Barnabas is not out to revel in evil. He’s stuck with a terrible disease, hatched a wild scheme to win back his dead love, and now does everything he can to cover his tracks. His desperation and aristocrat’s impatience explain his brutality. Verily, good help is hard to find.

Today marks the filming of DARK SHADOWS’ very first color episode. While it may not be the eye-popping spectacle of 20th Century Fox Technicolor, they go out of their way to sell those TV’s. Vicki’s dress is impressively pink. And if you want to swim in seas of brown and avocado, jump in! Barnabas is a wonderfully and suspiciously tan vampire. Does the tone of the show change? Many say yes. Orson Welles said that it was impossible to give a bad performance in black and white. Likewise, the use of black and white bestowed instant gravitas to the action. Color makes things more realistic, but that also creates a greater challenge to pull off DARK SHADOWS-type storytelling. That they do so, if with twists, is a credit to all involved.

On this day in 1967, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards finish a one month jail term.