The Dark Shadows Daybook: March 9

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 976

Bruno again tries to kill Caroline by locking her in a room with a transforming Chris Jennings. Roger comes to the rescue, clocking Bruno and saving his niece. Later, Bruno persuades Carolyn to meet him, and the werewolf stops his assassination attempt by mussing Bruno’s ‘do to death. Roger tops off the day by checking on Parallel Time, seeing that PT Quentin is returning with a wife, and his dead former wife’s ghost will take him back to court or something. Roger is appalled to see his PT self wearing some questionable lapels.

Two-Fisted Fightin’ Fops!

Bruno and Worf. They have an important similarity besides being of the House of Martok and sporting girlish bouffants. They also get beaten up a lot by sometimes unlikely perpetrators. It’s one thing to be savaged by a werewolf. Happens to the best of us. But to be beaten up by Roger Collins is a clear indication that you need more roughage in your diet… maybe a brisk, daily swim, too. Roger used to dread thumb-wrestling with Liz and Indian burns from Mrs. Johnson. David would threaten to bruise his father’s palm by meriting a spanking. Well, clearly, he’s upped the snifter size he uses in his daily curls because he dispatches Bruno (with a candlestick) like Stokes going through a slice of Stilton.

I kid, I kid. But the hidden gem of the Leviathan arc is seeing Roger mix it up, Jack Lord-style. The Midnight Stroka goes out swinging, duking it out with a werewolf and holding his own until overcome by a fuller hairdo. 976 provides kids with the spring break joy of no less than two fight scenes broken up by another installment of Fretting About Jeb with Liz and Roger. It’s like its the series’ way of saying, “Man, you’re really going to miss us. In almost no time, it’s Parallel Time and jet black fatalism. So, have fun with some fight scenes while you can.”

DARK SHADOWS is about to hit puberty and become the sullen teenager of 1840 and then the  hallucinating college student of 1841 PT. Before that, Bruno gets blowed up by a wolfman real good as the last sip of childhood’s dandelion and lobster wine is vinted in the house by the sea.

I drink to your leg.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: March 9

By PATRICK MCCRAY

The search for Gabriel intensifies when it becomes known that Quentin has vowed to kill him. This is at the behest of Gabriel, who asked it of Quentin before he went into the room. Meanwhile, Daphne withers away into a coma after telling Bramwell that he and Catherine belong together. Morgan makes a case to Catherine that Bramwell was responsible for Daphne’s fate, adding to her conflict. Melanie visits Julia, insisting that Julia knows the identity of her parents, but won’t reveal it. Can she be trusted? Julia and Morgan attempt to learn the secrets of the locked room, but within, Julia recoils in horror at what she sees.

This… is a soap opera. It’s lots of adults having strained conversations, quietly insinuating mistrust over past transgressions. I know that Lara Parker was getting a chance to play something other than a villain and that Jonathan Frid was anti-Barnabasing, and I hope they enjoyed it. The whole thing just feels stunningly pedestrian. I appreciate the literary function of 1841 PT to the whole of the DARK SHADOWS story, but episodes like this feel leaden compared with the cruelty of the show’s beginning and the zaniness of the 1897 apex. The company is twenty days away from filming NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS and less than a month away from putting the show to rest. Are they tying up loose ends or cruising it out? Um, yes.

We are just two days away from the death of Philo T. Farnsworth, who would die on the 11th of March, 1971. He invented the television as we know it. And he was only 64 when he died.