The Dark Shadows Daybook: Oct. 26

Taped on this date in 1967: Episode 351

By PATRICK McCRAY

When Barnabas bites Carolyn, will they learn that true love is relative? Carolyn: Nancy Barrett. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Barnabas, having bitten Carolyn and regained his middle-aged youth, finds that his niece is a ready and willing assistant. He alludes to granting her eternal life in exchange for her loyalty, but we sense the beginning of her mixed feelings as he orders her to secure the love of Victoria Winters for him. As she goes to Collinwood to begin, Barnabas entertains Julia’s desire to stay on, even if he is refusing her injections. She may be a servant, he says. For now.

There are so many trigger warnings I feel like I need to put on this, you might as well stop reading now and find a Bill Keane anthology to sit out the next few paragraphs. Seriously.

Dark Shadows hovers above the semblance of realism because, if it touched the surface of it, it would enter into a realm of ugly taboo, and thus become unwatchable. Yes, all horror deals with some echelon of the taboo. That’s why it’s horror. But, you know, it’s safe taboo. It’s either a threat we know can’t really exist or a set of consequences so ludicrous that it’s just as safe. Yeah, sure, it’s a metaphor, but no one’s really worried about being stuffed in a wicker man. Similarly, if we look at the moments of Dark Shadows that are actually scary, and I’m thinking of the kids being replicated in the dollhouse much later on the show, they are always written off as nightmares. Even by me. And nightmares aren’t real. All we have to do is remind ourselves of that, and the spell is broken. 

There is another realm of horror that may not even be scary, but it reads as quite, quite real. “Standard” horror comes up and says, “Look, here’s a thing that could never happen, but what if it did?” Cue Count Floyd. Ohhh, scary! Yeah. Kind of removes the glamour when you tear off the shmata. The more rarified strata of horror can’t happen that often or sustain itself for very long. No one would watch after an episode or two. This episode slides into that nuanced world of “no.” It wraps itself up in immense and impish charm, jealously, and Cinderella wish-fulfillment, so we don’t notice nor object. We get distracted by the fact that Vicki is “the real focus,” and so we skim around what almost happens. And what almost happens is that Barnabas and Carolyn make a really functional couple.

Yeeesh. Just writing that makes me wanna take a bath.  

So, yes, incest. That’s bad enough. It’s just, you know, one of those things primally revolting. I have the luxury of writing about this with no proximate female relatives in my life. A luxury because I can speculate without it being, well, as creepy. Incest has to have some kind of dark appeal (hello, VC Andrews), and if it didn’t, such a wealth of the laws in Exodus would be about something, anything, else. 

Fortunately, stories involving incest almost inevitably involve force and negation of will. And this does, too. But sometimes there’s a ghost image of truth that seeps in through the frames, and there’s one here, very clearly. It brings out a dark pleasure in the characters and viewers. The dimension that makes the episode safe is the element of mind control under which Barnabas holds Carolyn. He’s a bloodhungry heavy, what can you expect? She’s under his spell, so file it the same way. But the impression I get is that Carolyn authentically wants this relationship. Yes, Barnabas has power. Maybe the power that doesn’t really matter. But at last, Carolyn has the power she’s always wanted at Collinwood: she has the secrets. She has The Big One right up front, and and is promised more to follow. Secrets are the primary currency in her era of growing up in the house. That, and a sexual fixation on natty and vaguely (?) effete father figures … urbane, available, safe, and now? Delivering, and delivering in a big way. It’s not that the mind control has clouded her judgment. It’s seems more as if it has erased the social agreements that have held back this dynastic union. There is something disturbingly right about this couple. It comes across in the spirit of dreamy and zen ease and comfort with which Jonathan Frid and Nancy Barrett slip into this forbidden inevitability. Barnabas already lurks in the folds of transgression. We just spend most of the show ignoring it. Here, he not only steps into the light, but does so proudly, and draws in Carolyn, who has just as little regret. She seems to be beyond even the need to “discover” that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Keep in mind, I’m describing. Not endorsing. The fact that I feel compelled to remind you of that is a testament to the danger in which the show is trading. 

From the first time she calls Roger “dreamy” and he calls her “kitten,” this element has effervesced around the series. But we never take it seriously. And Dark Shadows has two realms of characters: gods, destined to live unscathed by the Major Threats, and everyone else. Aristocrats and civilians. Carolyn was a beautiful piece of set dressing up to now. She was there to get upset about what was happening to everyone else, but that was it. She seemed safe. Bad things happen to brunettes in this universe, but not Carolyn. Those are the rules. 

But the rules just broke. And the manner of it, with Barnabas so unspeakably old when he attacks, just underlines the horrific disparity that satisfies both of them. In fact, it seems to be the blood of a relative that really, really hits the spot. Just as she’s sated afterwards, Barnabas is not only revived, but is practically smoking a cool, toasty cigarette of satisfaction. He’s at his most blissful as he passive-aggressively roasts Julia, who’s suddenly lost too much ground to even feel jealously. Because, frankly, she’s been a bully. She’s been an envious and mean-spirited bully. Just because she’s doing it to a monster who’s equally vindictive, it doesn’t matter. She’s chosen to slowly torment Barnabas, and now, at last, he has the temporary satisfaction of a true friend to help him strike right back. If only by implication. The class envy is rattling the lid at a full boil, too. It’s clear that it took and will take a beautiful, cool blonde aristocrat to really DO the job that Julia only apes. Not only that, a Collins. No, Julia, not even the taboo against incest will give you a fighting chance. You thought you could rewrite the rules of age, class, social expectation, and nature by insinuating yourself into this realm. 

The punishment of minimizing Julia isn’t an attack. It isn’t torture. It’s just the humiliation of suggesting that you are, at best, temporarily adequate. Oddly, it’s exactly the sort of feminine punishment that Carolyn might have suggested. So, who’s feeding off whom between Barnabas and Carolyn? 

It’s a slice of truths and observations so forbidden in their inevitability that the show cannot remain around to see what actually happens. It skips town to 1795 like a grindshow exhibitor the morning after the circus tent comes down. Dark Shadows has too much make-believe on the agenda to speak such truths with any regularity. But it would be dishonest to not make us stop and think, “What if?” Only for a moment. Anything more is too much, even at Collinwood. 

This episode was broadcast Oct. 30, 1967.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: October 26

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1967: Episode 351

Carolyn is bitten and smitten with Barnabas… but is she still Roger’s Kitten? Carolyn: Nancy Barrett. (Repeat; 30 min.)

Carolyn awakens from serving as Barnabas’ blood source and cure from Julia’s aging serum. He enlists her as an eager assistant, but her loyalties seem to be tested by his request that she persuade Vicki to seek his courtship.

The show spends most of its run promoting Barnabas as a troubled hero. That’s good, because they have a lot of mopping to do from his first year. If the perverse kidnapping of Maggie is a cleanup on aisle six, episode 351 does the same thing, worse-yet-better, in a fraction of the time. Like Gerard’s haunting, this storyline gets the most out of the victim’s complicity, making the crime all the more horrific and strangely lurid. Is Carolyn compliant because it’s part of Barnabas’ spell? Or -- far worse -- because she wants to be? A casual observer would say one thing. A fan, perhaps another. It’s telling that this brief storyline should come out as Dark Shadows fandom was really establishing itself. Maggie, a reluctant victim, was kidnapped as the show was being discovered. I wonder what would have happened if Maggie had been kidnapped after it gained a foothold in popular culture. Would she have been as unwilling? Certainly, Carolyn isn’t, and thus we have a massive and revealing shift in tone and morality.

Barnabas eventually acknowledges that he has to treat Carolyn differently because she’s a relative… and for a moment, it’s unclear if that means better or worse than Willie. Carolyn’s desire to assist Barnabas seems like more than the mere product of vampire mind mojo -- the opening dialogue of the show would be incredibly disturbing otherwise. But Barnabas is a phenomenally popular figure, and part of his popularity has to do with the peculiar and particular brand of sexulality. There is a deep focus, but an absence of real lust. It’s not effeminate nor anything else fatuously predictable. It’s something peculiar to him, but never lacking in intensity. Through that combination of interest and distance, I think he creates a sense of strange safety. It’s a compliment to be wanted, and to be wanted by someone capable of such an intense and ruthless desire. But without the predatory sexuality, it almost puts the subject of the obsession in the role of potential seducer. As these things go, it is a unique cocktail that explains the eerie attraction.

Carolyn’s brief stint as the object of his obsessions may be the most brazen and honest moment of potential sexual energy on the show. Taboo is on parade as Julia asks the awakening Carolyn a series of questions that sound unsettlingly like what I imagine an assault victim would encounter. She gives all of the wrong answers, but sounds like a love-woozy fan as she does so. This is no Josette. She doesn’t want to flee… she even says belongs there. She wants to stay to serve Barnabas’ needs. Carolyn says little with words, but chapters with her dreamy, vaguely post-coital purr. It’s a purr you can watch with your grandparents because it says nothing, technically. It just implies. Heavily. The hint of incest seems comfortingly distant until Barnabas mentions giving her some platinum-status attention based on her genetics, up to and including the eternal life package. Then it’s a plus! 

Of all of Barnabas’ assistants, Carolyn is the most realistic and, I think, reflective of how fans think they would behave if “cursed.” She’s smart, efficient, and loyal. It’s like, “finally!” The fact that she’s honest in her sense of desire for Barnabas makes the ensuing jealousy make sense, and it also makes her semi-decision to help him land Vicki all the more weirdly poignant. Now, Barnabas is a (very) distant cousin. Does that make the whole thing creepy? She’s already had her neck bitten and blood consumed, so I think we left the realm of the uncreepy when her cousin bared his fangs. This isn’t the first time that Carolyn has shown idiosyncratic tastes. The first weeks of the show are spent discussing that dreamy Uncle Roger who calls her “Kitten.” Is this a continuation of tastes we’ve seen since the series began? As a student of quotes that sound like they were said by someone who read an article on psychology once, I’ll say that no one longs for an absent father like Carolyn. What is it with “The Case of Dark Shadows and the Missing Parent”? Paul Stoddard. Laura Stockbridge. Then there’s 1970 Parallel Time Daniel sometimes is like Vicki, and has both parents gone. Oh, Vicki. Yeah, I forgot her. And where is Maggie’s mom? It’s dangerous to become a parent in Collinsport.

Stay single, Barnabas. For the sake of the kids.

This episode was broadcast Oct. 30, 1967.

The Dark Shadows Daybook: October 15

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this day in 1969: Episode 874

Petofi must go on the run from gypsies as the power of the hand returns to Quentin, who uses it to restore minds. Meanwhile, Kitty begins to realize that she is Josette.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly." — Ernest Hemingway, THE SUN ALSO RISES

Endings in DARK SHADOWS frequently feel like they happen in the same fashion: quickly. It’s jarring for a show where everything else is, to be polite, in no particular hurry. In the case of Jason McGuire, characters like Carolyn and Barnabas have simply had enough and they end his shenanigans unceremoniously. (Literally, since the wedding doesn’t take place.) Adam wanders away. In the case of Petofi, it’s a controlled implosion with a variety of calamities all happening around the same time. A disturbed jolt back from 1969. A rebounding Barnabas. Garth Blackwood. King Johnny’s widow. Beth’s cooking. Whatever Aristede brought back from Cabo. (Okay, I’m conjecturing the last part.) Still, for a character who’s been around for months, it’s a shock to see him undermined and petard-hoisted so quickly.

Putting almost all of the end in David Selby’s hands (or hand, in this case) is a master stroke. Petofi’s wit and strange gentility always seemed like a function of his ungainly physique. It was a source of humility beyond the deniable. In Quentin’s body, he becomes understandably and insufferably smug. And then far crueler with far less nuance to his approach. As far as games go, he’s moved from an elegant and Puckish game of go to football, with a brutal playbook, at that. By the same token, Quentin has yet another lesson in humility to learn, and he’s graduating with honors. I’m not surprised that the character is so boring when we meet him again. If I were Quentin, I’d be too terrified of life to do anything but wash my hands, walk old ladies to the grocery, and turn the pages for the chorus pianist. I don’t think Gerard drives him crazy; whatever happens to him on the Night of the Green Flag is the final chunk in the mosaic of All of the Things in Life that Can Go Horribly Wrong.

Not that it’s a miserable ride for the rest of us. Not here. Watching Petofi lose the power of his hand is like seeing Khan getting caught with his shields down. Although it would be fun to see Thayer David find a new way to chew the scenery, Selby’s eyes register shocked umbridge with olympian powers. It’s a bit of full circle. We met him as a petulant ghost, eyes blazing with disapproval and reproach. As human and humane as Quentin becomes, this is a nice reminder of why the man and actor were so captivating when we were first introduced.

As Petofi falls and Quentin learns his last lessons in responsibility, Barnabas is also on the ascendant, and it’s our warmest time with him. Watching him actually, really, I-swear-to-God get Josette back has a sweetness that even the show can’t yet believe. It metes it out as if we’re a deserving dog, they’re out of treats, and all that’s left is the fois gras. On our end, we’ll take what we can get, and yes, it’s fois gras. In the same fashion, it won’t last. It can’t. Happy characters don’t belong on soap operas, and it still feels like Barnabas has lessons to learn. Who knew they’d be so ugly? And it’s not like the fois gras is being served up by the shovelful. Kathryn Leigh Scott is charged with serving it in tiny bites at frustrating intervals. I have no idea if she ever got to play Nina in THE SEAGULL, but she gives the audition of her life, here. Seagull/Actress/Kitty/Josette, it becomes a blur that she navigates nimbly, and it’s her best acting on the show since the depths of her first of many kidnappings. Kitty’s transformation into Josette could have easily degenerated into a Carol Burnett skit, and if you’ve seen KLS on the inaugural POLICE SQUAD!, you know she’s an astoundingly underrated comedienne. The fact that she keeps it on just this side of credible (without degenerating into the dull) is a tribute to her sense of taste and discipline.

She plays one more character who’s not what she appears. As 1897 ends, almost no one is. Kitty is Josette. Quentin is Petofi. Petofi is Quentin. Barnabas is a human Doppelganger. Amanda’s a painting. Charity is Pansy Faye. And a sketch of Garth Blackwood is about to kill the Count. The deceptiveness of appearances is a bedrock of soap operatic writing, but DARK SHADOWS, epitomized by 1897, will never be content with only the basics. Curtis and the writers top themselves with no concept of ceiling. If appearances are deceptive, then they’ll deceive like they’re doing a daredevil stunt. Is it a stunt? Does it feel like it? No. It’s intrinsic to the story. Like Petofi’s end, it’s been so gradually cultivated, we don’t realize it’s upon us. So much of DARK SHADOWS could feel like a gimmick. From concept to credits, the show seems like it would be television’s greatest engine for gimmicks until you watch it.  The writers are too good for that, though, and so are the performers.

This episode was broadcast Oct. 30, 1969.