Episode 926: I don’t want to know who you are

This episode has the same story as Friday’s.

The current A-story is about the coming of the Leviathans, mysterious beings who act through a cult that has absorbed several people in the village of Collinsport and on the estate of Collinwood. Antique shop owners Megan and Philip Todd have been entrusted with the care of a creature that has assumed the forms of several human children in succession. This creature, currently presenting itself as a thirteen year old boy named Michael, is extremely obnoxious to everyone for no apparent reason, prompting them all to reconsider their commitment to the program. Philip is ready to turn against the Leviathans; Megan from time to time admits that he is onto something, but by the end of yesterday’s episode was back under Michael’s control. She had said Philip needed to be got out of the way and picked up a gun.

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins goes to the Todds’ shop in the village. He finds Megan pointing her gun at Philip and orders her to cut it out. Barnabas had been the leader who initiated the Todds into the cult and as we hear his thoughts in internal monologues today we hear that he still has some loyalty to it, but Michael has been too much for him. When he tells Megan to listen to him instead of Michael, she is shocked at his sacrilegious words. He hastily claims that he was only testing her.

For his part, Michael is at the great house of Collinwood. Last night he was there as the guest of strange and troubled boy David Collins, who has shared supervision of the Todds with his distant cousin Barnabas. David’s governess, Maggie Evans, is not a member of the cult, and she had done something that bothered Michael. So he trapped her in the house’s long-disused west wing. She is still trapped there, and he has returned to use his powers to torment her further. David is anguished about this, but does not feel he can oppose Michael.

Maggie’s captivity prompts us to ask just why it is so frustrating that this episode is essentially a duplicate of Friday’s. In May and June of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire, he was holding Maggie prisoner in his basement, and there were a number of duplicated episodes. It was during that period that the show first became a hit, and it is that story that every revival of the show, from the 1970 film House of Dark Shadows on, goes out of its way to incorporate.

I think what kept people coming back to watch Barnabas’ imprisonment of Maggie was not so much what he was doing to her, but his relationship with his blood thrall Willie. In the course of Barnabas’ abuse of Maggie, Willie went through all of the psychological phases that Megan, Philip, David, and Barnabas exhibit today. I think the actors playing all four of those characters live up to John Karlen’s performance as Willie; even those who disagree with me on that will have to concede that some of them do good work. So the problem is not with the performances.

Rather, these episodes fall short because the character of Michael does not have the depth Barnabas had in the spring and summer of 1967. We kept wondering what Barnabas was thinking, and the more we learned about him the more puzzled we became, since all his ideas were so crazy. In his role as Barnabas’ external conscience, Willie gave us grounds to hope that we would eventually reach a layer of his mind where the nonsense would give way to something intelligible. But we don’t wonder what Michael is thinking, because there’s no evidence Michael is thinking at all. He demands submission from all and sundry and flies into a rage the instant he encounters resistance. He is just a spoiled brat.

Moreover, as a vampire Barnabas needed people to protect him during the day and to surrender their blood to him at night. When David is slow to submit today, Michael tells him he doesn’t need him or anyone else. This seems to be all too true- nothing is at stake for Michael in any interaction. No matter what Michael Maitland brings to the part, no matter how well his four Willies play their roles, the character is a dead end.

One viewer who seems to have been carried away with his frustration with this one is Danny Horn, author of the great blog Dark Shadows Every Day. His post about it includes some rather obtuse remarks about the performances, some of which fit with his usual shortcomings (e.g., his habitual underestimate of David Henesy’s acting.) But in other comments he loses track of his own analysis. For example, time and again throughout the blog he stressed that the show was made for an audience that saw each episode only once, and that their memories of the images that had appeared on their television screens would drift over time. When a particular moment makes a big enough impact that it is frequently referred to in later episodes and is a topic of discussion among fans, the images of that moment that appeared on screen during the original broadcast are at most a starting point, something that the viewers build on in their imaginations, so that the pictures that memory supplies soon enough have little or nothing in common with what was actually produced.

Danny makes all of these points over and over. Yet his post on #926 ends with this objection to the invisible form Michael and the other Leviathan boys assume when they are supposed to be mighty:

Dark Shadows actually has a great track record at creating scary things out of not that much money. The legendary hand of Count Petofi was incredibly cool and memorable — a Halloween decoration that they invested with real power. The scariest thing about the legendary hand was that it wasn’t under anybody’s control, even Petofi’s; it would fly around on its own, doing unexpected things. Not an expensive or difficult effect, just good writing, using what they have to tell an interesting story.

Television is a visual medium; we need to see the thing that the story is about. “It’s better in your imagination” is just a way to weasel out of coming up with a compelling visual. If you can’t actually show us the monster, then maybe you should consider a non-visual medium like print, or radio. Or not doing it at all.

Danny Horn, “Episode 926: The Shark, and How to Jump It,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day, 15 September 2016.

I reached that point in Danny’s blog more than four years after the post went up, but even so I felt compelled to join those who piled on him for those two paragraphs. Here’s what I wrote:

I don’t think there would be a point in showing the monster. If the monster had done anything really scary, our imaginations would be working overtime to frighten us. Any image they put on screen would let the steam out of our anxieties. And since it hasn’t done anything scary, we won’t be worked up when we see it. Looking at it calmly, we’ll just be examining a costume or a prop or a visual effect or whatever.

Now, you can show the audience a thing or a person that looks harmless, and then build up fear around it. That’s what they did with The Hand of Count Petofi, which Barnabas observes with utter contempt when Magda first shows it to him, but which then wreaks havoc. Or you can build up a fear, introduce a person, and suddenly connect the person with the fear in an unexpected way. That’s how they gave us Barnabas- Willie opens the box, there are vampire attacks, a pleasant man shows up wearing a hat and speaking with a mid-Atlantic accent, and then we see that man without his hat, waiting for Maggie in the cemetery. There are lots of ways to scare an audience, but showing a picture of something that’s supposed to be scary isn’t one of them.

Comment posted 17 December 2020 by “Acilius” on Danny Horn, “Episode 926: The Shark, and How to Jump It,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day, 15 September 2016.

I still agree with that, more or less, though I suppose it makes the creative process sound a lot tidier than it ever is. I do wish I’d thought of the comparison I make above between the four disaffected cultists and Willie. Danny’s blog was still drawing comments in those days, and I think that would have attracted some responses.