The Dark Shadows Daybook: October 8

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1969: Episode 868

It’s Barnabas versus Barnabas when Edward and Petofi encounter the twin of the dead vampire… but what will the coffin reveal? Barnabas: Jonathan Frid. (Repeat; 30 min.)

A delirious Barnabas, human, startles Aristede and winds up in an infirmary. Petofi (as Quentin) and Edward rush to the scene, convinced he is still the vampire. This Barnabas, surviving the sunrise, claims to have been duped and duplicated by the creature who menaced Collinsport in the past months. They take him to the coffin where the vampiric Barnabas is found staked and re-dead within. The “new” Barnabas faints at the sight.

It’s one of the most metaphysical moments in the series, and Barnabas needs to enjoy it while it lasts. As much, if not more, than any character in popular literature, Barnabas Collins has been granted the cursed opportunity to experience, explore, confront, and simply be with his own potentials for good and evil. In 868, the dance becomes wonderfully, horrifically, and strangely literal on a level that can only be matched with the logic of a dream. Imagine the terrible liberation of seeing the worst of yourself as dead and staked, knowing that you now have the second (or maybe third) chance to to be the best. Angelique’s brilliant cure is more than just a method to throw his enemies off the scent. She doesn’t only cure his vampirism -- she perhaps cures the moral decay that accompanied Barnabas as a result of the curses. He is now, in a very real sense, a new man. It is an opportunity as bountiful as the initial curse was detrimental. He’s already been a newer form of the beast upon emerging from his coffin in the 1890’s. Before leaving for 1897, Barnabas had been cured for some time. Nonetheless, he had to live with the guilt of his vampiric life as well as constant fear of exposure and concomitant retribution. As moments of humanity go, his first was profoundly lacking in the Zen department. In 1897, he gains a second chance at both the evil and good dimensions of his life. First, can he once again be his worst as the vampire he was and would be... and yet do the best? Yes. Unlike his previous immersions into vampirism (1795 and 1967), he controls and channels his dark energies for a larger mission, often employing his abilities to gain the advantage. He doesn’t even indulge in endless kvetching about a cure. His dark nature has become his last, best hope. He has realized that inner mastery. Now, the remaining mystery asks if he can retain that courage and will to act if he’s transformed once more by the blue eyed fairy of Angelique from a wooden puppet of the occult and into a real little boy, once more. In 1795, the human Barnabas was a naive, proud, impulsive of perpetual victimhood. The powers of the Nosferatu changed that. Becoming the worst in yourself is a helluva way to grow up, but how can you really be your better self until you have harnessed and tamed the monster within?

These are normally issues of simple metaphor, but what is art’s task if not to alchemize the metaphorical into the real so that we can actually see it rise, fall, and still talk about it the next day? Similarly, Barnabas has lived a metaphor twice, with an intermission of humanity in between. Just as we see it in the story, he experiences it in his life. And of course, Josette should show up again. The One who started it all. How will he respond? How will she? It looks like the final exam, and the cruelty of DARK SHADOWS is that it shreds the blue book before he even gets to see the grade. Because it’s not really the exam. This taste is all he’s given before the Leviathans will attempt to rend his humanity again, Parallel Time will give him a reason to seize it, and Judah Zachary will force him to cling to it under the worst circumstances. Yes, Barnabas faints at this glimpse of himself in the coffin, but he now has no greater lesson in why he fights.

It’s a vital moment in the arc of the man and the story, and it goes by in a blink. It’s yet another way that DARK SHADOWS is the most poetically realistic program on television. Humans ponder the worst for days, weeks, months, and years only to be confronted by profound epiphanies that flash by before you can appreciate them. Barnabas is all of us in that sense, but luckily for us, he lives in the realm of art. Ultimately, it’s not his job to appreciate those moments; it’s ours.

This episode was broadcast Oct. 22, 1969.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: September 26

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1969: Episode 858

Can Quentin convince Julia to remove him from Petofi’s body before she returns to 1969? Beth: Terry Crawford. (Repeat. 30 min.)

Petofi continues to make plans with Angelique, all the while trying to balance his attentions with those he lavishes upon a suspicious Beth. Meanwhile, Quentin -- unsuccessful with Beth -- nevertheless persuades Julia that he is living inside Petofi’s body. Unfortunately, she is whisked back to the present before they can act on it.

It’s hard not to rant, rave, and wrap yourself up in an episode such as 858 like a cape on the Fourth of July. The characters have clear goals. They pursue them with a directness defiant of the soap opera dictum to fuddle and futz. There’s passion, surprise, elation, just desserts, and heartbreak. DARK SHADOWS usually mutes and dilutes these to stretch them over the maximum number of episodes possible, but there’s an unusual urgency here. And yet, it doesn’t feel harried. As much as I love 1840, I’ll freely admit that it has an occasionally desperate quality under its breakneck pace. This has that strangely easygoing intensity of a confident, high school quarterback sauntering onto the field in the September of his senior year.*

One of the great things about 1897’s assuredness is that it’s clearly self-reinforcing. The right risks led to storylines demanding further risks -- risks that were the correct choices, also. This led to more risks, etc. Note that I said “right risks.” The story decisions were both bold and wise. Part of the reason is that they were revamping a lot of what they had tinkered with before and/or going much deeper with possibilities that were previously only hinted at. In this episode, we cover tremendous ground in just a few minutes, with Grayson Hall at the heart of it. The sister act she’s formed with Angelique is the show’s most dynamic duo, and it’s a shame it doesn’t last. Their differences are clear. Their similarities delight -- two whip-smart experts in the manipulation of mind and body from vastly diverse ends of the spectrum. They are bound in their unrequited love for Barnabas and their inevitable knack for kicking ass. We don’t see enough of them together in this episode, but the fact that they innately trust each other, with so much blood under the bridge, is authentically inspiring. Then, to see Julia actually trust that Petofi is Quentin? We knew you had it in ya to see what Petofi had in him. Thayer David’s mile-long grin at the realization that Julia believes him is a rare moment of happiness on DARK SHADOWS, and it’s exactly the boost we need in the face of David Selby’s increasingly cruel Petofi.

Another highlight. Everytime I think I have seen all that Selby has in his hat for the Count, out comes another rabbit. He’s building something with the writers -- the increasing cruelty of the Count. It feels like some of Petofi’s most reprehensible actions and statements come when he’s in Quentin’s body. It is reminiscent of the kind of creepily cheerful indifference you sometimes get from friends who successfully diet or get beautiful significant others. It makes some people simply happy. It turns others into weird sociopaths. There is a compassionate humility that can soothe the bitterness of body issues and romantic failure. These are sad things, but they can root a person in their humanity. Petofi is a guy with an instant diet and two hot babes who’re already woo’d. Quentin (literally) did the heavy lifting. Look at the voracious way that Petofi is kissing these women. It goes beyond lustful and into the demented. He’s killed before, but always somewhat surgically. Now, people are so many leaves, and he’s perfectly happy if he denudes every tree in Maine. Petofi is full of such self-hatred and self-congratulation that he almost burns his old face with a cigarillo to celebrate and make his point. I’m not sure if the point is, “Stay single and eat more fudge,” but the wisdom of James Whale rings true, thirty years later.... “Very pretty people often do very ugly things.”

DARK SHADOWS is a world built partly on romantic frustration and mistrust. To see Petofi hijack a handsome body and make hay with it is adding insult to injury. And what happens when three lost characters connect, at least platonically? Julia -- the hub -- gets ripped back to the present. A painful twist that Thayer David sells with a sad desperation, somehow making Quentin into a pudgy little boy whose only friend moves away. Fits, since Petofi was no doubt a pudgy little boy and his sad tale began with the death of a pet unicorn. It’s a bit of backstory that should be ridiculous, but like so many things on the show, it lingers with a deliberately hazy poignance.

*Or so I imagine. I’ve never actually seen a football game, but I regularly read GIL THORPE. And I saw ROLLERBALL. So, I think I’m something of an authority.

This episode was broadcast Oct. 8, 1969.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: OCTOBER 7

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1124

After Desmond displays unusually angry and possessive behavior, Leticia senses that he may be under some alien force. Later, she locates Judah’s head. At Collinwood, Barnabas rekindles his connection with Roxanne until her suitor barges in. It is Lamar Trask, son of the evil Reverend. His father once wrote his mother a letter about the original Barnabas, and thus, Lamar deeply suspects (with good reason) that the two are the same. Lamar later gives the letter to Leticia so that she may use it as a psychic anchor to locate his father’s body. In a trance, she narrows down the location to the Old House, but Barnabas enters, preventing further disclosure. He later forces Leticia to reveal all she said to Trask. He later uses the knowledge to stop Trask from snooping around his home. Meanwhile, Desmond summons Otis Greene, the grandson of Judah Zachary’s jailer. The head forces Otis to reveal clues as to the location of Judah’s body before killing him. Desmond revels in the knowledge.

Now, we’re talking. Plot threads from years past come back with a vengeance, and it’s a pleasure to see the DARK SHADOWS authors finally reap the rewards of their hard work. Most long-running shows develop history. DARK SHADOWS has a mythos. No storyline is more mythic than this, and all of the salient threads of past and future will converge. I enjoy the wonderful theatricality and sense of stakes in 1840, and when I see the stylish melodrama of Desmond’s possession and Lamar’s threats, I remember why. And VIGODA! So close to “viagra.” For a reason? You tell me. You tell me.

Abe Vigoda returns for yet another expert on antiquities and the past. Previously, he filled in as the elderly version of Ezra Braithwaite, who made the pentagram amulet in 1897 to protect Beth. Vigoda seemingly always looked jurassic, and as Otis Greene, it’s jarring and pleasant to see him looking positively virile. Just on the cusp of finding fame and fortune as both Tessio and Fish as well as being a oiled and hirsute hunk adorning millions of posters across America. Vigoda struggled for steady work for much of his career, although the year before, he enjoyed a stint as Landau on Broadway in “The Man in the Glass Booth.”

On this day, Canada was in the thick of the October Crisis, which involved the peacetime invocation of the War Measures Act, limiting civil liberties. And Canada seems to be the seat of both civility and liberty. Two days prior, on the fifth, PBS went on the air, thus providing the platform that Generation 2 DARK SHADOWS fans, such as myself, would use to see it for the first time.