The Dark Shadows Daybook: Sept. 15

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1970: Episode 1109

Can Barnabas and Quentin stop Gerard Stiles from raising an army of the dead to destroy Collinwood? Zombie: Chuck Morgan. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Julia and Barnabas rescue Quentin from being buried alive as Gerard prepares David and Hallie for their own ritual murder. After Quentin is driven mad by his attempt to thwart the evil specter, Barnabas is assailed by the living dead and Julia finds herself alone on an enchanted staircase, bound for 1840. 

Full disclosure: I’ve written about this one before, but in a long chain of most important Dark Shadows episodes, this thrusts itself to the head of the line and tells the others to just… back… off. And given what goes on in 1109, I wouldn’t want to throw down with it. As episodes go, I’m not going on the record to say it’s that well-written. It has a sweaty desperation to it on every level, and you could tell that the writers were pushing to create an event where one may not really exist. This sequence of the show is important, yes, but I’m not sure if it’s actually important or if I’m responding to a sense of obligation to find it so.

I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Completely innumerate. I don’t understand most movies. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen The Living Daylights, and I haven’t a clue what’s going on. I think the Taliban are the heroes in it. No, I’m not kidding. If my brow were any lower, it would be lovingly described by the ghost of Jaques Cousteau. So, the only reason I usually claim to like good things is to keep the tasteful from brandishing rolled up copies of Cahiers du Cinéma and taking my lunch money. (I’d rather be watching Smokey and the Bandit, Part 3.) Is that what’s happening in 1109? I could couch it in claims that its impenetrability is all part of Gerard’s existential plan to drive them mad. I’ve done that before. But is that honest or does it just sound good?

Still, I love it. Maybe that’s enough. Yes, it does have mysteries that never pay off. You know, like Gerard’s plan. There’s a whole thing about Quentin being forced to relive the death of his twin Uncle’s son and then re-die being buried alive like he was in… wait. Did any of that happen in 1840? I don’t think so. I don’t remember it. I guess the heroes changed the timeline. Sure. why not? It doesn’t really bother me that much, to be honest. The cast (especially combat-paid David Selby, who probably needed to take a nap for a month after this) really, really pulls it off. If you want what passes for spectacle on a budget that never exceeded the average daytime soap, your front row seat is waiting. 

I enjoy its baffling quality. It feels like a Robert Altman movie. I’m getting little slices of life connected to unexplained, offstage action with a significance that’s never fully revealed. So, where’s Paul Dooley? The obsession with reincarnation and twins runs throughout the episode. It’s deeply theatrical that way, as if the actors can’t quite shake parts they’ve never really played. Is Daphne a ghost or not? Is she on Gerard’s team or not? I don’t know. But I don’t understand most people, and watching Daphne ping-pong between agendas and loyalties is what I experience every day. 

One of the creepiest elements is Gerard’s obsession with the kids' clothing. I guess he went to Brewsters in between episodes and got them some fancy new duds, because he’s wildly insistent that children of the 1970’s, possessed by children from the 1840’s, have new clothes. You’d think he’d want them dressed in antique ensembles to relive the night he’ll never kill them, but these are right off the rack. It’s a sick moment on several levels beyond the mustard-yellow shirt he forces David Henesy to don. It’s only now that I’ve begun to wonder if he’s forcing them into the clothes they’ll have on at the visitation. After he kills them. It’s a level of thanophilic mockery to rival that of the most brutal serial killer. The other darkly kinky aspect to this is that David and Hallie will be undressing in the same room, aroused as they face certain death. The show pulls a muscle to deny that these kids are deep in the mournful summer heat of puberty, but then it does things like this. It’s sex and death and taboo that passes us by because zombies are on the march, so run home at 4:30 to catch it, kiddos. 

Yeah, we’re playing for keeps, and it makes me wonder what kids made of it. It was probably deeply cathartic to watch adults, who were talking about things they only pretended to understand, get hoisted by their own green flag. Finally. One tv show actually gets what it’s like to be a child. Or me. This episode is The Empire Strikes Back of Dark Shadows, with our heroes in constant retreat. 

But it has the undeniable grip of great drama, with our honestly beloved heroes pushed to brinks of terror beyond their reckoning. To hell with Willie emerging from a coma and spilling the beans to Dana Elcar, Barnabas. What you faced in 1967 was Tinker Toys compared to being grappled by zombies. Chuck Morgan threw off the fabric that was thrown over his head and chased you like you had the last two-for-one Malibu Chicken Sizzler coupons on earth. There’s a dark satisfaction to seeing our heroes really put to the test. The crashing kathunk of Quentin’s initial smugness of 1897 is not when he learns his unknown son is dead. That Hamleting around is a trip to Epcot compared to Gerard’s simple, maddening grip. Gerard is the era and ilk of ghost that Quentin would have feared as a child, and he cannot be outrun. Just as the teens are infantilized, so is Quentin… before being slammed back into adulthood to stagger away from another boy he couldn’t save. This is his fate. To be the loveless, misunderstood, lone wolf Collins. He’s destined to live for the sole purpose of officiating at funerals for children he never saved. The only ones naively wise enough to have loved him. 

Catharsis, yes. And a baseline to return from. We’ve always known that our heroes could get the best of Nicholas Blair and Petofi because guys like those don’t really play for keeps. They’re having too much fun. But Gerard is Lex Luthor. The real one. The one who doesn’t get his kicks from planning the deaths of innocent people, but causing them. And Barnabas is not innocent. Nor is Julia. Nor is Quentin. Nor even David, if you go back far enough. Remember when they were bad guys, and we hoped they’d get what was coming to them? Be careful what you wish for. Because Gerard is the hero that, once upon a time, we were hoping would put ‘em in their place. All motion is relative, Mr. Brady. All motion is relative. 

It’s an evil statement. It’s a statement that the universe doesn’t care about all the swell stuff you’ve done for hundreds of episodes. Because it has a moral agenda to fill. And that, alone, is a force for our heroes fight. For all of us. Because who they’ve become matters. The good that they’ve done matters. Now, in 1840, they’ll finally have a chance to prove it. Except for Quentin. Quentin the Second. He’ll just have to wait for a new timeline to pull in at the Collinsport Depot and take him to the beginning and the end of a better world. He deserves it. As do the rest. Thanks to the destruction of everything, they just might get it.

And I like 1109 a lot. A lot. But I like documentaries. 

This episode was broadcast Sept. 24, 1970.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: Sept. 9

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1969: Episode 842

Count Petofi and Angelique face the one force no occult power can overcome. But what could it be? Julia Hoffman: Grayson Hall. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Julia realizes that her force of will can not only propel her through time, but makes her immune to the machinations of Count Petofi. Surviving a point-blank shot, she responds by recruiting Angelique to best the Count. Later, Charles Delaware-Tate fully understands the extent of his powers by creating life from art. 

The Dark Shadows that I want, the Dark Shadows I remember, and the Dark Shadows I get are three distinctly different shows. I want an Edward Albee version of Doc Savage with vampires, and no one is sensible enough to make that. The Dark Shadows I remember is an endlessly engaging, unfinished symphony of surprise as Barnabas wanders toward episodes that I was told were too expensive to show. The Dark Shadows I get is a sustained note of comforting monotony spiked with fleeting moments of delight and wonder. They are moments where I shout to no one that, “There it is!  There’s the imagination and delight and risk!” 

When Dark Shadows is good, I mean very good, it crisscrosses the best of American character drama with tales of profound, speculative fantasy. It can be the equal of great theater and exceeds the brainiest science fiction. I say things like that, but when it comes to proving it, I’m often bereft. I usually have to tell people that, you know, there are 1225 episodes, and if you just watch it, that will appear, like some kind of theatrical magic eye poster. And I could never do those; it’s perverse to ask it of others. Which, of course, I love doing. 

Still, the pleasure of writing the Daybook is to become Khan in the Mutara sector, bolting from his chair and announcing, “There she is!  There she is!” And 842 needs to hop up on a pedestal and pose for that moment, because, well, there she is. It may be all of that or it may be all of that only in the context of the other 1224 installments. I’m not sure that anything in Dark Shadows is what I’d like it to be. Is anything a self-contained example of itself? You simply have to judge for yourself after watching it, and if you do that, by the end, even the most die-hard critic of the show has at least seen it. Does it amount to anything? Not my problem. 

It’s not a payoff episode in terms of resolving storylines, but it nevertheless answers questions the show has begged, which is a horror no-no, and depicts characters actually talking about their relationships, aspirations, and surprises. A secret to acting is that a performer can build a career on making decisions, discoveries, and disclosures. Taking a note from that, 842 propels itself with a marvelously satisfying sequence of all three. 

It may never top its beginning, as Julia suffers a fatal bullet wound from a diabolical trap... set by Petofi to force Barnabas to be her unwitting murderer. Such inventive sadism. In a Republic serial, it would all have been resolved with some kind of cheat that in no way matched the set-up. But Gordon Russell is too crafty for that. Why cheat when you can explore the existential extent of your own whackadoodle time travel conceit? That’s what they do, and in doing so the show uses its exhausting length to investigate all of those bizarre implications no other medium could afford. Time travel through an I Ching trance is patently silly (unlike the dignity of a flux capacitor or vaporising equalizer) until you really explore it to such an extent that it somehow legitimizes itself. Julia is there, but only through the force of will that symbolizes the spirit with which these characters soldier on through 950 hours of contrived terror and unlikely romance. These characters keep trudging on because they have to. You know, like we do in life. And Julia, more human than any of them, summons a friendship that dwarfs love and simply goes there. In doing so, she is a woman beyond time and may be the most powerful character in the Dark Shadows universe. Moving among cursed titans of cosmic powers and immortality, she is more immortal than any of them, immune even to the powers of the great Petofi. Now, she is a god, and instead of being driven mad with power, she represents all of us base creatures of limited time and matter by doing her frickin’ job. Finally, one of us is thrust into the fray and she spends her time finally talking sense to these giants. Getting them on the same team. Pointing out that there are stakes beyond what they want in the impulsive right now. And she gets Angelique -- Angelique -- on the side of truth, justice, and the Collinsport way. 

That’s how you thrash curses and send sorcerers running. That’s how you mix it up with monsters. Faulkner declined to accept the end of man, and when I see Julia Hoffman straighten her spine and go to work, I understand why.

That’s why Dark Shadows matters. 

This episode was broadcast Sept. 16, 1969.