The Dark Shadows Daybook: May 10

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 235

When Sam faces his last chance to confront Maggie’s danger, is he prepared to fight the impossible? Sam Evans: David Ford. (Repeat. 30 min.)

Seeing bite marks on Maggie’s neck, Sam wrestles with the origins and implications of Maggie’s assault. Seeing her dazed state and hearing Victoria’s reports, he tries to protect her further, but while a nurse is distracted, Maggie vanishes from the hospital by way of an open window. 

It’s easy to get used to good acting on Dark Shadows. So much so that it often goes unmentioned. But then there’s David Ford. Like so many vets of the show, he was also a vet of Broadway, and his transposed appearance in the film of 1776 further evidences his acumen. (Theatre insiders who saw his Dickinson report that it was even more impressive than his Hancock.) The measured intensity of Sam Evans in 235 sells the terror of Barnabas as much as Jonathan Frid, himself. Although Dark Shadows very quickly becomes a paean to outsiders, it begins very differently, and as it should. In these early months, we move among the normal insiders of society, and the show does a convincing job of throwing that world into uncertainty and peril with the arrival of vampires and phoenixes. Eventually, the show moves to the other side of the coffin lid. But before we get used to Barnabas and Quentin, we see how disturbing it is to be a mortal among gods, and few are more mortal than Sam Evans.

This episode could easily have turned into a tired-yet-subtle lecture on masculine arrogance. Today, it might have. Generalized Men have become incredibly safe targets for recriminating critique in the media, and Sam Evans is my Exhibit A to counteract this. He both represents ostensible male authority and displays perseverance in the face of its reevaluation. Yes, it will be deconstructed in this episode, but not as an all-knowing punishment or as guilt by association. It’s not sexist, it’s Shakespearean. No one could have known what was necessary to properly guard Maggie. In a poorly-written episode of the modern era, Sam would have been advised on the possibility of supernatural threats from the get-go. Of course, he would have rejected them. And of course, the implication would have been that he was blinded by rigid, masculine inflexibility, thus leading to his failure as parent and protector, etc, etc. Ron Sproat doesn’t play that game. The show skirts near implicating the fallibility of men, but instead does the more universal job of depicting fallibility, period. Because anyone would have made Sam’s choices. Or Joe’s. Or Woodard’s. 

The attacks on Maggie become a rape metaphor with very little imagination. In a ham-fisted episode, someone would have been warning Sam about a potential attacker as he would have been waving it away in a whiff of omniscient privilege. But there is no warning. To Sam, in his innocence, an attack like that is more than unthinkable; it doesn’t even exist. He’s a true naif, but so are they and so are we. None in Collinsport can conceive of this attack as even possible. Maggie is the ultimate victim, here, and right behind her is Sam. No one is implicitly or explicitly to blame of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time, regardless of role or gender. By making no move in that regard, the show actually makes a fascinating and bold one. Bold in the 1960’s. Arguably beyond progressively egalitarian, now, because of how tempting it would be as fodder for painfully “relevant” commentary.     

Bearded and robust, Sam Evans looks like the love child of Brian Blessed and God, making him a seeming straw man for a Statue of Liberty-sized misandry. Just as this makes him the perfect target, he’s just as perfect to see side-step becoming one. Opinionated at times, but never without a heart the size of China (and twice as fragile), his masculinity is a nourishing one, not toxic. Sam Evans is both parents, and he represents the best of them on the show, despite the alcoholism. 

And he increases the intensity of the show’s terror, as well. With no agenda except to love his daughter, his reactions inform us as to the magnitude of the horror in Collinsport -- the horror of Barnabas and how transgressive it is. He sees the bite marks. He knows what they are. We know what they are. Fiction is now fact. You don’t just witness the parent of an attack victim. You meet a man whose boundaries of safety and definitions of reality are stripped away. If vampires are real, what the hell else is out there? It’s the job of a parent to stretch the truth when they say that everything is going to be okay. But few have been on the business end of the boogeyman as Sam Evans. There are no limits to the possible dangers, now, and with that is his realization that he has no power to stop any of it. 

The show never could have sustained this level of existential dread, but rooting us in it roots us in the program’s sense of humanity. This establishes an emotional and ethical baseline, and as wild as the action becomes, we never stray from the terror experienced by everyone, including the monsters. We all share a fundamental need for safety, and safety is grounded in the footing of knowing what’s possible. That definition is tenuous in Dark Shadows -- even demons end with more questions than answers. Beginning that with a human parent is a crucial choice. Sam’s job as an artist makes him even more vital as our lens because it’s his job to represent reality, and doing so is important to him. He informs us early into the series that he’s not an abstract painter. Liz has such power and guilt that it’s hard to sympathize with her. Sam’s guilty, too, of lying on the witness stand, but the pressures and weaknesses experienced there are a tad more understandable. He’s a parent, not a paragon. Artist and parent, he’s joined in the dawning horror by Joe, who must be a realist to survive on the high seas. With them, and most tragic of all, perhaps, is Dave Woodard. He fights to understand the problem from every angle but the mythic. As physician, with the most power and responsibility, his late attendance at the party of the possible carries with it the most culpability for Maggie’s fate. Burke’s in that mix, as well. Materialists all, but not insensitive ones, their best estimates of reality leave them without a body, just an empty hospital bed. Robbed of all ability to protect, they are even robbed of the evidence of their failure. 

Ron Sproat’s script is an admirably balanced mix of propulsive and meditative. In the wrong hands, it would have devolved into a tired lecture. Is it a warning against arrogance? No. Episode 235 is a strange comfort that true horror will come when and where we know it shouldn’t be possible. The comfort comes from reminding us that we are all together in that predicament. More than any genre, horror can unite as much as comment or divide. In 235, it had the chance to do the worst of the latter. Thanks to Ron Sproat and David Ford, it does the opposite. 

This episode hit the airwaves May 19, 1967.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: May 6

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 490

On the eve of Adam’s creation, will the dream curse give Julia an ugly wake-up? Barnabas: Jonathan Frid. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Julia reels from the dream, and Barnabas fears what should happen if she shares it with Mrs. Johnson. Of course, Mrs. Johnson shows up, someone in a daze and claiming to have no dreams whatsoever.  Julia is relieved after sharing the dream, and at the same time, Barnabas reassures Victoria that if she likes him, she’ll love his cousin, Adam. What a coincidence that they won’t be around at the same time. Meanwhile, the attempt to bring Adam to life goes somewhat haywire, resulting in both Barnabas and Adam being alive at the same time.

I often wonder if Dan Curtis found himself in a position analogous to Barnabas and Julia around this time. Do any of the three of them know the nature of the pickle they’re in? The challenge facing all three is, “Once we’ve created the lug, now what?” He’s going to struggle and shamble and then eventually go away after several months of unresolved tension. That is, if it follows the model of the novel, which the whole thing does. Kind of.

This is the first case where following literary models limits, rather than liberates, the writing staff. However, in 490, they’re on the precipice, and all things are still possible. In fact, they skirt around a much more interesting storyline on the way, and things are memorably wacky before that, too.

In the cosmic meanwhile, it’s so nice to see the show settle into the perverse domestic comedy of Life with Barnabas and Julia. It’s even nicer to see the temporary role reversal of Barnabas hectoring Julia into action, nudging the doctor to work harder and faster. Clad in a robe for the climax, Jonathan Frid might as well be wearing a mask of cold cream and have his hair in curlers while he’s at it. With the Adam experiment doomed to the failure of mixed baggery, it’s in an episode of tense optimism surrounded by fatalism. Sleep gives no relief; the dream curse is now upon Julia, and that puts it one step closer to Barnabas. To what does she wake up? A plan so insane that no one would have anything to do with it unless it sat at the end of a year of compromises and terrible, seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time decisions.

Doomed when waking, doomed when sleeping, the option of just stopping and living with the ugly life of a vampire doesn’t occur to them. In the midst of this festival of fatalism -- beginning with the dream curse and ending with the horrifying realization that both Adam and Barnabas are still alive --  the show gives us one crucial reminder of why they’re doing it at all. It’s not a matter of escaping from Angelique; it’s escaping to Victoria. In doing this, though, the writers set themselves up for a trap. The storyline that would have been triggered had the Adam Plan been successful is far more interesting than what we get, and it can be sensed even if this is your first time with the show.

Imagine Barnabas showing back up in another body. Arguably a more powerful one. To Victoria, a more attractive one. It’s a new dawn, and one that thoroughly confuses Angelique. Maybe Jonathan Frid gets a vacation. Maybe he lives, but is reverted to the man he was before the experiment, so there are two Barnabi. I just know that the prospect of Barnabas reinsinuating himself into Collinwood as someone else is an intriguing potential that almost becomes realized. Maybe that’s what would happen if they were to do it today. But it’s vital to remember that all of these things were firsts for television, or almost-firsts. Moving on to Frankenstein is a logical step for the show, since, in our collective imaginations, that legend follows Dracula as if it were all part of the same word. The show borrows from Dracula only in the sense that both stories involve people who bite others and drink their blood. There might have been greater versatility in the storyline if they had played as fast and loose with Frankenstein . The potential of a man who doesn’t exist, inhabited by the soul of a man who perhaps should not exist is the real kernel of the drama. The writers were wise to pursue that early on. The story potential for continuing it is one of the great unrealized possibilities of the overall storyline. Yes, they re-visit it, with interesting results, during parallel time. But the spark of “It’s Alive” is a fleeting one.

This episode hit the airwaves May 10, 1968.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: May 10

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1968: Episode 494

When Willie distracts Adam with Josette’s jewelry, he thinks they may also make a good peace offering for Maggie. After delighting her -- and flummoxing Joe -- by sneaking them into her purse, he is scolded by Julia for leaving his post. To calm Adam, she leaves Lang’s tape of Mozart. After they leave, Adam hears Lang’s message about his link to Barnabas, whose name he repeats.

Just when you thought it was safe to put the Josette storyline to bed, 494 resurrects it. It’s helpful to casual viewers, however. So many new (or semi-new, like “Cassandra”) characters have been introduced since the return from 1795. By touching upon Josette again, we resolve some of Willie’s creepiness rather than ignore it, and we also tie the present into the past once again. DARK SHADOWS gives its viewers a lot of credit, calling back to characters we haven’t heard from in months, if not years. (Paul Stoddard? We hardly knew ye.)

It’s a strangely fetishistic episode, with everyone a little TOO into ostentatious jewelry for my tastes. I can only imagine Barnabas’ mixed feelings at storing Adam in the same room as the hidden jewelry vault.

“What could actually go wrong?” -- he must regret how often he said that to himself about every major decision. From the moment he first kidnapped Maggie through the point when he agreed to be Quentin’s extemporaneous advocate in 1840. Just imagine...

“It’s just one I Ching trance.”
“It’s just a female version of Adam.”
“It’s just keeping the kids in the house with lethal ghosts.”
“It’s just another witch trial led by a Trask.”
“It’s just a room with a parallel dimension from which escape seems impossible.”
“It’s just a matter of putting a reanimated hulk of a corpse in the care of a mentally unstable felon... who keeps stalking a woman we once held hostage… despite the five bullets he took in the back the last time he saw her.”

I mean, what could go wrong? And it’s not that Barnabas is unintelligent. He has an Enlightenment Gentleman’s optimism that grows to match his desperation. Still, could we not have found another cell for Adam? Because Adam loves jewelry. And Willie loves jewelry. And Maggie loves jewelry. Every once and a while, DARK SHADOWS goes full on sitcom. The TV Guide entry for this one writes itself. This is devoted to a wacky scheme of leaving sentimental evidence of a brainwashing in the victim’s purse… as a love gift! But when it comes to, “What could actually go wrong,” Willie has learned at the foot of the master. And it was apparently a good lesson because it kinda works! Joe is baffled, and for good reason. He exists in a place called reality, but he’s alone.

Julia really Larry Tates the situation to the hilt, ordering Willie into a cell with a homicidal madman and threatening lifelong incarceration, which they both know she probably can’t do, but Willie doesn’t press it. Few episodes cry out for a laugh track more. That it should end with our heroes barely missing the only relevant clue to Adam’s and Barnabas’ connection? Pure Sherwood Schwartz. 

May the Schwartz be with you. Always.

On this day in 1968, audiences in theaters were enjoying the film adaptation of Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE. Given that it’s on TV yet again, it may be the most unstoppable property to come from straight Broadway theatre. The film was directed by Gene Saks, who, with Bea Arthur, was the parent of Daniel Saks, with whom I worked for a few weeks. Nice guy. I made him late to the airport once, so this is a name drop of strange shame. Sorry, Daniel. The freeway signs in LA to the airport were very unclear. You missed it, too. I mean, you didn’t give me a hard time about it, but I’ve had issues for a long time. Daniel could also sing the theme to THE ODD COUPLE TV series, the lyrics of which could be heard on an LP that had clips of dialogue from the show. He had it as a child.

I think they went like this…

No matter where they go 
They are known as the couple. 
They're never seen alone 
So they're known as the couple. 

But they're laugh provoking; 
Yet they really don't know they're joking. 
Don't you find 
When love is blind 
It's kind of odd.

Kind of like Willie’s obsession with Maggie. Really, just about every relationship on the show. And thus, we come full circle.

This episode hit the airwaves May 16, 1968.