The Dark Shadows Daybook: October 28

Taped on this date in 1969: Episode 885

By PATRICK McCRAY

When Barnabas finds himself back in the 1790’s, can he turn his greatest defeat into victory? Barnabas Collins: Jonathan Frid. (Repeat; 30 min.)

As Kitty vanishes into a portrait of Josette, Barnabas loses consciousness and awakens in 1795 on the eve of Josette’s suicide. He is determined to change history, confronting Angelique with honesty and a compassionate plea for mercy. She betrays him yet again, and shows Josette a vision of herself as a vampire high atop Widows Hill.

I used to think that this was all about Judah Zachery. It’s vaguely convenient to imagine him puppetmastering the whole thing to emotionally decimate the Collins family. As Saint Ming would say, he likes to play with things a little before annihilation. The Zachery Codex is awfully elegant, and it makes for some USDA prime smartypantsim. The longer I am with Dark Shadows, the more comfortable I am saying that these grand theories are just those. Maybe they are accurate. Certainly, if it helps you read the show, then subscribe to them by all means. Subscribe to enough of them and then McMahon may show up with a check. Let’s just hope it’s not his bar tab.

(By the way, I miss entertainment. Is it the 70s again? I’m ready for it to be the 70s again.)

However, just because a grand theory works for a lot of things, it doesn’t mean that it explains everything. The moral arc taken by Barnabas Collins could be seen as his torture, but it’s a spectacularly risky and unsuccessful one. After all, although it is emotionally ruinous, it leads to his ultimate success as an ethical man. It could be that some other source is influencing the narrative. For a long time, I couldn’t really figure out who it was. Now, I do.

Sarah.

Just because she’s a child doesn’t mean that she lacks the ability or gumption to manipulate as many spectral workings as possible.  Perhaps this entire story is a contest of wills between the two of them. Because, when properly motivated, there are few things more unstoppable than a determined kid.  What would motivate Sarah to take on Judah Zachary? Well, his one-time protégé, Angelique, may have strayed from her master, but he he still trained her. Imagine that you die and suddenly see the full narrative that drove your life and demise? Not only that, but if Sarah thought his student was bad news, the teacher was practically Newsmax. 

But in death, Sarah realizes that she has a living agent, which is more than can be said for most of the regulars on The Love Boat. Her red right hand to punish Judah is her immortal brother. She knows Barnabas’ strengths, and more than that, she knows his failings. She knows that he is a raw element that must be tempered and honed before he can be properly deployed in battle. And, as with anyone who takes on transforming Poppin Fresh from an unbaked doughboy into a rockhard brick of weaponized  melba toast, ready to scrape the roof of evil‘s mouth, there will be pain. 

And it could be a combination of the two things. With Judah becoming increasingly aware of this inconvenient Vampire and his tough, grizzled, eight-year-old girl of a ringside Burgess Meredith, he puts more and more obstacles in the path. Looking at episode 855, it might be the result of the manipulation of Sarah. Or it might be the result of the manipulation of Judah Zachary. Or it could be the two of them going at it. Maybe Judah rips Josette into the past, and Sarah sends Barnabas after her. Or perhaps Sara has set the whole thing up to test her brother’s character.

The episode is a hidden treasure. Soon, the series will turn into a sequence of hidden treasures. Every episode will be a reward for having watched all of the others. But right now, this exists like the Time Trap sequence around the 660s. It’s a seemingly superfluous gift that exists more as an example of the show’s Hellzapoppin exuberance than as a piece of mechanical storytelling necessity. It feels like it’s their way of saying, “and here’s a special something for being a loyal viewer.“ After all, the show doesn’t exactly specialize in two or three episode “very special events.”  We’ve been trained to expect this kind of side trip to last for months. In fact, Dark Shadows is the only show I know of where the special sequences contain fewer episodes than the average storyline, rather than more.  

At this point, they don’t even really bother with a time travel mechanism. Basically, don’t stand too close to a portrait of Josette while there’s a fire going in the fireplace. Similarly, don’t look at someone who is standing too close to a portrait of Josette while there’s a fire going in the fireplace. It’s just science. And that’s not what you came here for. But if it is, give me a minute and I’ll put on a lab coat and Dr. Lang’s surgical chaps. 

Still, this is part of the plot of the overall series, and if you want the benefits of any kind of overarching story themes, you have to put on an apron with me, grab a hammer, and bang away at these things in the rationalization forge. The fact that there is no seeming time travel mechanism is the entire point. It’s a wonderful mystery that invests us in interpreting the story. If we realize that part of the Leviathans’ plan is to both put the whammy in Barnabas AND hold, and let me see if I remember this correctly, the ghost of Josette as hostage (as a back up), then perhaps this was orchestrated by them to remind Barnabas of the intensity of his feelings for her.  Maybe it was Sarah’s doing, to remind Barnabas of the stakes underlying his ongoing crusades. Or, you know, “Judah Zachary,” because it’s pretty convenient to blame him for everything from the destruction of Collinwood in 1970 to some of those sweaters they made David Henesy wear toward the end of the series.  

It’s an immensely gratifying episode. It’s almost like seeing Barnabas at his high school reunion, vowing to undo everything he did to that bathroom stall in the science building when he was a sophomore. It’s one of the most authentic examples the series gives us of his evolution. Literally, a side-by-side portrait. You know, if one of the sides is hundreds of episodes prior. He is making the decisions we wanted to see him make In the first place. And he’s making the decisions that we suspected he was capable of back then. And now. 

It’s Barnabas at his most tender and heroic. When he tells Angelique that he can only give her his gratitude, he is being honest. By 1840, that would be enough for her. So in a sense, it is as much of a trial for her as it is for him. His mistake is in seeing her as the woman who saved his life in 1897. Yes, people can change. But not yet. This moment of her embittered selfishness doesn’t make us hate her as much as it makes us pity her, and it adds a depth to the ultimate forgiveness that she will show him in their final voyage.

As he made plans with Kitty in 1897, we have never seen him happier nor more confident nor more fulfilled. This adds a harrowing context to the impersonal turn towards a larger evil that he will take in the next few episodes. 

So, why? Why do they do this to him? If not the characters in the series, then the actual people making it? 

Every time I think I know every kind of crazy there is, I meet an entirely new kind of crazy. And that’s how we learn. For Barnabas, a man with a tenuous relationship with reality at best, every time he thinks that the universe is finally reflecting his opinion of what it should be, it piledrives him into reality. And he must climb the steps of Mount Morality once again. But he is not a video game character, continually leveling up. If the real subtitle of the show is The Continuing Education of Barnabas Collins, his cycle of ethical awareness followed by cynical downfalls gives him greater and more nuanced understandings of humanity with each turn. Because it’s not just his story. It’s our story as we venture out of the idealism of the Enlightenment and into being enlightened. 

The difference finally reveals itself in 1840. Up to the fall we are about to see, his heroism has been driven toward redressing who he was in the past, trying to bring the modern world into alignment with the aspirations of his era of origin.  Everything he does is about repairing the past. Because the past is safe. The past is a known quantity. 

What he has yet to attempt is building a bridge to the future unknown. That’s what his final arc, after this and after the Leviathans, will teach him to do. It’s based more on accepting what is rather than what should be, and guiding that with a courage that comes from saying, “I don’t know.“ Because to say that requires Barnabas to let go of his greatest fear: himself.  

And he does. And good for him. And I would like to think, good for Sarah.

This episode was broadcast Nov. 14, 1969.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: November 14

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1967: Episode 366

When a seance thrusts Vicki back in time to the year 1795, will she alter history or be its cause? Sarah Collins: Sharon Smyth. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Mid-seance, Vicki finds herself in front of the Old House in the year 1795, where she meets a youthful Barnabas and Sarah, all quite human. They mistake her for Sarah’s governess and bring her in despite her protests. She later meets a skirtchasing officer, Nathan Forbes, and Joshua Collins, who elects to hire her. 

1795. If you’re a real fan, you may not remember where you were when you heard that the show was headed there, but you might recall how you felt. 

For me, it was a unique kind of excitement, and it was when I knew that Dark Shadows offered something beyond a one-off, fluke experiment… that strangeness that was Barnabas Collins. Shows sometimes stumble onto something like that. This was a promise by Dan Curtis that for once, there was a program on which anything could happen. Legitimately. When learning about the strange series through Fangoria and oral tradition, the 1795 flashback was the first thing I discovered. In a world of endless franchise milking, this may be nothing special. But in 1967, just seven months after the appearance of Barnabas Collins, this was an insane thing to do. TV was largely devoid of costume dramas -- unless they involved chaps, leather vests, and masks. Oh, and they also did a lot of westerns. But Masterpiece Theater was still four years from TV. It’s one thing to do a costume party episode. It’s another to ask writers and audiences to abandon the narrative creature comforts of cars, phones, cigarettes, and hospital scenes. Fortunately, Dark Shadows kept these at a minimum, anyway. In planning this, I have a feeling that Dan’s main concern was if he’d have to hire a string quartet to play “#1 at the Blue Whale” at the Eagle. 

A study of the history of show business is a study in the word “no,” especially toward good ideas. The more familiar you are with this, the more extraordinary Dark Shadows becomes. It’s a net-free highwire act that defines itself by disregarding conventional wisdom. Every place that they could have played it safe, they didn’t. Even down to 1841 PT, where they threw out every known character, an act that mirrored the thinking behind Night of Dark Shadows. Did it kill the show? Maybe. But there would have been no show to kill without the very same thinking. A vampire on TV is incredibly bold. Taking that show to depict his origin, with an entirely new slate of characters in another time period? For months? That investment is programming suicide. Unless it isn’t. And it wasn’t.

The move makes the program crackle with novel possibility. Sy Tomashoff, as always, is to be congratulated. Sets designed to look ancient feel new… so new that the idea of Collinwood seems vaguely premature. They even sound new. It may be my imagination, but when Vicki enters Collinwood, it actually sounds like the door of an empty under-construction house nearing completion. If that’s just the power of suggestion, he deserves even more credit. The Old House seems spanking new, and heretofore unseen areas, such as Vicki’s bedroom, give the place a sense of new possibility and grandeur. At every turn, novelty. 366 gives us what we wanted for months, whether we knew it or not. Joel Crothers confirms our suspicions as he and the show take off the gloves and portray a (so-far) lovable cad with an aptitude for eyebrow-arching normally seen only by graduates from Starfleet Academy. At this point, he seems like a prime ally, if a little grabby, and that’s a solid set-up for a fall. Seeing Sarah alive and well is as unavoidably heartwarming as you’d imagine, and her vaguely psychic prognostication of Vicki is an eerie detail they vaguely avoid later on. I enjoy seeing a progressive take on Naomi and Joshua, in which she’s always encouraged to speak her mind, and Abigail is always present to accuse others of booziness and other shortcomings. 

The inevitable question is, “What about Barnabas?” 

Jonathan Frid goes into Buster Brown overdrive to sell his wide-eyed, naive, innocence. There are subtle notes of Eddie Haskell to his first exchange with Vicki… notes drowned out by his overall sincerity. Seeing Barnabas warmly lit and made-up, sans the empty and bitter loss that will define his future debut, is exciting and heartbreaking. Barnabas often has paranoid fears or prideful aspirations that seems out of touch with reality. And that’s after the change. Here, we see him with the same sense of baseless optimism. Like the audience of a Shakespeare tragedy, we know that this quality will lead to his downfall. Dark Shadows is rarely more bittersweet.

This episode was broadcast Nov. 20, 1967. 

The Dark Shadows Daybook: NOVEMBER 14

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 366

Victoria finds herself outside of “Collinwood” (the pre-New House name for the Old House) in the year 1795. There, a young Barnabas and a living Sarah greet her, and explain that she must be the new governess, a recent survivor of an overturned carriage. Vicki, stunned, allows herself to go inside and change into period-appropriate clothing -- her only possessions save a family history book that has inexplicably accompanied her. She is grilled by a suspicious and superstitious Aunt Abigail but does not betray her true point of origin. Meanwhile, she learns that Barnabas’ bride, Josette, is on her way from Martinique. Vicki is delighted to see a man she thinks is Joe Haskell, but it turns out to be a skirt-chasing sailor, Nathan Forbes. And 1795 begins!

There was no other choice. Due to schedules and weekends and fate, the Daybook has missed out on a number of key episodes. But this one? What a moment. I had read about it for years, but when I finally saw it in my teens, the first glimpse of 1795 that it provided was just magic. The producers, I’m sure, had no idea what a significant storytelling move they were making by having the cast double up in other roles, but this is the moment that DARK SHADOWS moved into the country of metaphor as well as the literal. It is at this point that Louis Edmonds is playing something more than Roger or Joshua. Those are just two sides of a much more complex figure. Variations on American Aristocrat? Maybe. Both are fathers who connect with their sons only after the greatest difficulties. Both love power of the family name but lack the bravery and imagination of the ancestors who actually built the empire. Edward will add nuance to that. As will PT Roger, Daniel, and even Brutus. The player really missing in the equivalency game is John Karlen.

Yes, it must be noted that this timeline differs from what’s been described, but is that due to faulty memories, bad historicity, or fracturing timelines?

But rather than get bogged down in literary folderall, let’s just marvel at this moment. DARK SHADOWS is notoriously generous with its viewers, and actually stopping the show to take us on a multi-month origin story, rich with new characters, new cast members, and fantastic design is more than a ratings ploy… it’s a gift. Now, we can brag about the variety present in DARK SHADOWS, and back then I can only imagine that it was even more exciting. It was a statement that anything was possible, and that this was one soap that would not be bound to the literal and traditional. Sy Tomashoff is worthy of special congrats. With only a very small patch of brick and a door, he conveys a “Collinwood” that brims with such freshness that I wonder why they need a newer house. That says “time travel,” right there. And I also appreciate a small implication about the different sitting room furniture arrangement; it suggests that Barnabas truly makes it his own place when he finally has it completely to himself in 1967. And Barnabas? Jonathan Frid seems to have stepped right out of the Blue Boy with an Eddie Haskell demeanor that just demands a cheek-pinching.

And for once, Vicki has every reason to not understand. Just don’t look down at Nathan Forbes’ trousers too intently. Um. Just don’t. Clearly, they’d be making some revisions in costuming.

On this day in 1967, Theodore Maiman is granted a patent for the world’s first laser system. It was ruby-based. I wish I could say that he used it to hold the world hostage or something, and that Dean Martin had to defeat him with a freeze gun, but none of it would be true.