The Dark Shadows Daybook: February 16

By PATRICK MCCRAY

Having learned that she has been selected in the lottery, Catherine believes that her disbelief in the curse will help her survive. Everyone else power-of-suggestion’d themselves to death. (Or went mad. Or possibly went mad and killed someone else.) Morgan begs her not to go… as does Daphne… as does Bramwell. She holds fast. Bramwell receives the portrait of his father -- the classic Barnabas painting -- as a wedding gift. Although touched, he’s obsessed with the idea that Catherine is carrying his child. When she and he meet alone, she tells Bramwell that she wants to disprove the ghost because dispelling the superstition will save lives in the future -- specifically, the one she’s carrying. When she goes to the haunted room, she finds it locked. Morgan is within; he says that he will spend the night there in her stead. 

“Loud noises!”

-- B. Tamland, climate journalist

That sums up Keith Prentice the more I watch the character of Morgan. I go easy on actors, and yet Prentice performs as if he’s unaware that there is a boom mic over his head. If Lara Parker claimed to have tinnitus as a result of the opening scene in this episode, I wouldn’t be surprised. The man can project, I’ll give him that. 

Two highlights in the episode. One is the golf-clap moment when Bramwell is presented with the portrait of Barnabas, and Daphne notes the eerie resemblance. I think a moment like this is part of the ritual. Is it fan service? Yes, but I am a fan and I like service, so there. The other moment worth appreciating is right at the very beginning. For a show that bread-and-butters itself with the supernatural, DARK SHADOWS has a healthy appreciation for skepticism. Catherine has a refreshingly rational approach to the haunted room, and I think it’s an important and subtle message slipped in for viewers. 

On this day in 1971, the Hell’s Angels sued the Rolling Stones for making them look bad. No, I’m not making this up. Footage of Altamont in GIMME SHELTER showed the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter, the murder of whom Angel Alan Passaro had just been acquitted. They sued on the basis of “invasion of privacy.”