The Dark Shadows Daybook: October 11

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1968: Episode 605

Stokes reunites his old crew to conduct one, last caper to rob Eve… of oxygen! Can they pull it off or does Nicholas Blair have the upper hand? Stokes: Thayer David. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Julia dreams that Barnabas’ mission to Blair House will end in death. He’s incredulous at this news, but they recruit Stokes anyway. Stokes visits Blair to gather intelligence and make a schematic, having located Eve’s room by its aroma. Back at the Old House, he schemes to invite Nicholas for dinner and bore him with stories as Barnabas sneaks over and drugs Eve. Unfortunately, Nicholas has seen the entire plan be sketched via his scrying mirror. The plan works until Barnabas discovers the blanket stuffed with pillows and Angelique waiting in the wings.

The most unwise assumption about Dark Shadows episodes is that they’re all alike. After all, out of the Fightin’ 1225, how many can be that different? The answer is, quite a few. Yes, there’s a lot of filler. Yes, Sturgeon’s Law dictates that only 10 percent of the episodes are any good. That’s 125.  Not much? If we apply that measure uniformly, it means that there are only two good episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer per year. Fourteen in all. Sixty-four The Simpsons episodes, which is not bad by any means. But you have to be 60 Minutes to beat DS, and how many 60 Minutes festivals have you been to? Exactly.

When I think of the very best of the best of Dark Shadows, there is surprising variety, and nested within, this particularly luminous gem. And, of all things, it’s a caper story. There are two types of these stories out there -- all plot or all style. Thanks to the urbane wit of Gordon Russell, we get a beautiful blend of both with a classic DS punchline.

I love it when a plan comes together, and before it does, the episode appropriately assumes the form of the Barnabas/Julia Dark Shadows sitcom where the only thing missing is a laugh track. Barnabas is on his way to Nicholas’ when Julia stops him. She does nothing for weeks but harangue him to get off his caboose and be a man, and now that he does it, she stops him. Before you can say, “That’s Our Julia,” she gives her reasoning… a scary dream. Jonathan Frid nails his you-gotta-be-kidding-me mug, and I completely expect him to look at the camera and proclaim, “As always, the doctor is OUT!” You may think I’m exaggerating. Watch the episode and get back to me. The show was finding a real rhythm between these newer characters, and rather than lose steam upon declaring peace, the duo departs off like a rocket.



When fans reminisce about the overabundant, cheerful self-appreciation of Professor Stokes, 605 is what we’re talking about. After we’ve gotten used to Barnabas and Julia being polar opposites on this battle, Stokes comes in and unites them with a plan while making them look utterly rational. Characters on Dark Shadows spend most of their time bewildered, frightened, or in denial, setting Stokes up as the show’s most memorable hero as he revels in a carnival of confidence. Whether it’s pulling out the hand sketched schematics of Blair House, identifying rooms by their owners’ scents, finding Nicholas’ boudoir ‘depressingly overdecorated,’ or torturing him with Collins minutiae rather than Willie’s cooking, Stokes makes the scene. There’s even a subtle homage to Ocean's 11,  the camera hovering unusually high in the air, as Team This Old House plans their wacky assassination attempt around a fancy card table that Willie, I’m sure, set up in the drawing room. It’s nothing but endearing joy, and if the scene ended with Stokes, then Julia, then Barnabas (with ring) putting their hands down in a stack on the table, I would have been satisfied on a disturbingly cosmic level.

Ee-oh-eleven!

The only thing better than the planning is the execution. Julia is petrified, Stokes is reveling in the scheme, and Barnabas is only barely keeping the dishonesty cogent. Now, of all times, he becomes a troubled bluffer. Well, if you’re used to having the luxury of 171 years of claustrophobic imprisonment to cook up a good whopper, it might sting to suddenly have but a few hours to get your lines down. Of course, the layered joke is that Nicholas is completely aware of the scene since he has Amazon Prime, too, streaming the show on his mirror at home. As smart as they are, Nicholas is just indulging them, making him a gamesman on par with the professor. It’s just a shame he doesn’t know it. Think how much faster Dark Shadows would go by if everyone on it watched Dark Shadows. Nicholas clearly does. Given how far ahead he is, Nicholas could have stopped the Stokespack at any point. Letting Barnabas wander into a ridiculous trap consisting of pillows piled up under a sheet and Angelique hiding in the corner? That’s not just winning. That’s an editorial. Take that, professor!

This episode was broadcast Oct. 18, 1968.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: October 4

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1968: Episode 600

Barnabas learns that the unknown tastes of garlic and ennui when he allows a dead Frenchman to enter his body. Eve: Marie Wallace. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Eve grows restless, and her attempt to seduce Nicholas fails when he instructs her to stay with Adam or be destroyed. Meanwhile, Stokes deduces that the ghost haunting the area is Phillippe Cordier, a man who chronicled the French Revolution. Cordier confirms this by possessing Barnabas at a seance. He was the former lover of Marie Roget and intends to punish those who took him. Elsewhere, spectral hands choke Adam, and Barnabas suffers as well. 

The Gold Key comics are bizarre, European supernatural stories that have something vaguely to do with DARK SHADOWS. Episode 600 is the Gold Key comics version come to life. I keep looking for the mummy, the electricity dragon, and the Revolutionary soldier. And that fact that it’s episode 600 is a big deal. The writers are too busy, with too much story to tell, to get mired in sentiment. Still, episode 600 is no small accomplishment, and if it just so happens to have some extra trills and glissandos, well, it’s no surprise.

This is one of my fondest periods of the show, and 600 epitomizes why. Because the driving arcs and interconnected characters and storylines are what give DARK SHADOWS its dramatic heft, there’s something endearingly goofy about the latter part of the Adam/Nicholas/Eve/Angelique. It has no real relevance to the larger story, making it a  self-contained non-sequitur. Most of the other storylines connect with the past or future of Collinwood and reveal important elements of the family and key characters. But once Barnabas sits down at a seance to contact the destructive and departed French lover of the ghost of the woman whose life-force was used to spark the reconstructed body of a lady intended to be the mother of a new master race for the dark lord, the series is off the chain. This is a show where Barnabas solves new paranormal whodunnits every week. It’s no longer DARK SHADOWS, it’s Saturday morning’s THE NEW ADVENTURES OF BARNABAS & FRIENDS. I’m amazed that they don’t cut away to unrelated sequences where Barnabas, Julia, Stokes, and Willie have a rock band and sing songs about bike safety. 

They throw story continuity the occasional bone by referring to the fact that Nicholas must keep Barnabas alive to protect Adam, but that’s it. And the nutty part about that element is that it pretty thoroughly removes Barnabas from danger and nerfs a major element of the tension. Somehow, it’s a nerfing that happens in the best way. In monster-of-the-week shows, we want heroes to be inconvenienced more than threatened. And there are few things more inconvenient than being inhabited by a Frenchman’s ghost during a seance. 

Marie Wallace continues to let the DS universe know that she’s here to stay… at least for the next fifteen or sixteen months. Marie and Eve are both very different presences on DS. The idea of a physically imposing beauty is the most Dan Curtis idea that Uncle Dan had never deployed, and her grandly intense acting choices match his zesty sense of storytelling. Eve has every reason to be DS’ most openly sexy character. An alien from another dimension of life, she was literally created to mate. With Eve, DARK SHADOWS rationalized how to be openly erotic without apologies. Her most amusingly manipulative moment in 600 comes when she begins kvetching about women being the helpless puppets of men. Yeah, sure. But she believes it will work, and it’s a nice try. Eve may be one of DS’ most revolutionary character. The rest all follow vague molds; Eve is wholly original. There’s an agenda, and yet it’s a private one. Of course, she’s the Bride of Frankenstein, and she benefits from the fact that the Bride does nothing after coming to life but hissing, screaming and being blown up. And even a Gold Key comic would give the Bride a tad more to do… and probably black stockings to do it in.

This episode was broadcast Oct. 11, 1966.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: OCTOBER 11

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 341

Barnabas appears to Julia and Woodard as they confront one another. Barnabas explains that Woodard cannot be allowed to live, while Woodard counters that he will destroy himself if made a vampire. At a true moral impasse, Barnabas orders Julia to kill Woodard. Unable to do so herself, Barnabas takes the deadly syringe. Woodard almost escapes by convincing Barnabas that Sarah is near, and when Barnabas becomes aware of the deception, he flies into a rage and rams the needle deep into Woodard, ensuring that the sun will never shine there again. He is dead. Meanwhile at the Blue Whale, Sam and Sheriff Patterson discuss Woodard’s odd behavior. Amidst the appearance of a bat outside the bar, the decide to visit Woodard’s office, where they find his body. At the Old House, Julia sulks at being a murderer. She plans to leave, but Barnabas tells her to man up; he’s her only friend, now. She’ll get used to what she’s become.

If you’re a fan of HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, and if you like your Barnabas cold, ruthless, amoral, and yet obsessively sentimental about the past, then you’ve come home! He is stunningly badass in this installment, and in the arc of his character, I think that’s a function of the nihilism he’s found. Will he have Josette? Probably not. Will he have friends he can trust? Probably not. Does Dr. Hoffman seem competent enough to pull off a cure? I doubt it. Why doesn’t he kill himself? That’s a wonderful mystery. But he keeps going. I think he has a streak of frustrated coward in him, and Julia and Woodard are safe people to terrorize. Either way, it’s a masterpiece of furiously bleak passion. Easily one of Joe Caldwell’s better scripts, again filled with dialogue that sure as heck sounds like the fear people have over coming out of the closet. Just go back and listen to Barnabas and Woodard speaking of his dread secret that dare not speak its name.

We’ve bid farewell to Dana Elcar as Sheriff Patterson. In the beefcake department, I’m not sure the show ever recovered. Now, we find Patterson played by Angus Cairns, who could only take the pressure of filling Elcar’s dance belt for two episodes before departing. Cairns was best known as a steady Shakespearean actor in New York, appearing in everything from Eva LaGalliene’s THE TEMPEST (with the pioneer, African American stage star, Canada Lee) to KISS ME KATE. Peter Murphy, who would also play the Caretaker and Woodard’s Ghost, shows up in the bar. Maybe he still is the Caretaker. Maybe that’s some sort of astral superhero, and he’s at the Whale in his human form. The series’ house has many mansions.

And it was a spectacularly quiet day in history, although Rob Selby was born. A future professional athlete, he is no relation. (Look, it’s either that or news of a Yoko Ono art exhibit, which I swore I wouldn’t bring up. So I didn’t. You’re none the wiser.)