Tag: metatheater

Episode 420: A man’s position in society

One of the most story-productive relationships in the first 40 weeks of Dark Shadows was that between reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Having squandered his entire inheritance, Roger lived as a guest in Liz’ house and drew a salary from her business. She tried to order him to rein in his bad behavior, but time and again wound up shielding him from accountability. When she does that, she reduces herself from authoritative to bossy.

In the summer of 1967, the relationship between mad scientist Julia Hoffman and vampire Barnabas Collins began to follow the same dynamic of Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother. Appealing to her professional standing as a medical doctor doubly qualified in hematology and psychiatry and to her situational awareness as a native of the twentieth century, she makes efforts to convince him that not every problem has to be solved by murder. When he disregards her advice and kills people anyway, she covers up for him. Realizing that she is stuck with Barnabas for the rest of her life, Julia tries to drum up a romantic relationship with him, but he is not interested. Eventually, she will come to be “like a sister” to him in more senses of that phrase than she would like. In the years to come, we will even see storylines in which the two of them explicitly masquerade as siblings.

Dark Shadows took a break from its contemporary setting and began an extended stay in the late 18th century beginning in November 1967. We’ve already caught a glimpse of the Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother dynamic in this period, when haughty overlord Joshua Collins found himself taking orders from his sister, repressed spinster Abigail. Today, we take a bit of a self-referential turn as a character decides to deliberately mimic this trope.

Caddish naval officer Nathan Forbes has talked fluttery heiress Millicent Collins into marrying him. Millicent is very rich and beautiful, Nathan is charming and handsome, and there are many reasons to think they might make a happy couple. There is one small problem. A very small problem, really; not more than five feet tall and well under 100 pounds. It is Nathan’s current wife, Suki. Suki has found out what Nathan is up to, and wants a cut of his take. To his surprise and discomfort, she shows up today at the great house of Collinwood and introduces herself to Millicent as Nathan’s sister.

The Millicent/ Nathan story has been a lot of fun so far, and Suki is just fantastic. Actress Jane Draper gives a performance as big as her body is small, and Suki instantly sees through Nathan’s every lie, which is to say his every utterance. She dominates every scene she is in.

Suki has Nathan where she wants him. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Yesterday, Suki walked in on Nathan at The Eagle tavern and took charge of the place. Today, she is in command of the drawing room at Collinwood. Nathan and Millicent serve up one straight line after another, every one of which Suki answers by saying something unexpected and exciting.

Suki looks out the window and sees Barnabas looking in. She doesn’t know who he is, much less that he is a vampire, but she can recognize a miserable creep when she sees one. He throws her off her form, and we dissolve to an upstairs bedroom.

The rest of the episode is a scene where Barnabas lets himself into the bedroom occupied by his ex-fiancée, the gracious Josette. He tells Josette they can never be together again, but won’t explain why. She says she wants to be with him no matter what. He bites her. They’ve been telegraphing this scene all week. It’s a complete anticlimax, and it does nothing to make up for Barnabas interrupting our time with Suki.

For a show that plundered story ideas from virtually everywhere, Dark Shadows was remarkably wary of lifting anything from the Bible. Suki’s claim to be Nathan’s sister is something of an exception. It reminds us of Abraham, who twice in Genesis passes off his wife Sarai/ Sarah as his sister and then recommends that his son do the same with his wife Rebecca. The 1795 flashback is supposed to explain the origin of the accursed Collins family for us, to answer the question “Who are Barnabas’ kin?” as Genesis answers the question “Who are Joseph’s kin?” So Suki is in tune with the rationale of the segment when she draws on that book. While Genesis explains and justifies a patriarchal order of society, so that Sarah and Rebecca just go along with Abraham’s loony schemes, daytime serials are aimed at a mostly female audience and need self-starting female characters. So it is only to be expected that the gimmick will be at Suki’s initiative this time.

Episode 177: The glare of our scientific era

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is at her job running the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn. Not that she’s working, exactly. There are no customers; the only other person there is her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe.

They’re hugging and kissing, and Joe is bringing up the idea of marriage. Maggie doesn’t think they can get married, since she has to look after her father, drunken artist Sam. Joe doesn’t think that is much of a problem. In previous episodes, we’ve seen that Joe likes Sam and doesn’t mind helping Maggie with him. He does say that he would rather Sam not come along on their honeymoon, and suggests that Sam might be ready to cut back on his drinking. Maggie isn’t getting her hopes up.

Flighty heiress Carolyn comes into the restaurant and asks to speak with Joe privately. Carolyn is Joe’s ex and Maggie is worried the two of them will get back together, but since she only wants to go to a table where they will be in Maggie’s line of sight she goes along with the idea. We do see Maggie looking vigilantly at them while they talk.

Maggie watching Joe and Carolyn

As it happens, Carolyn isn’t trying to win Joe back. She wants him to help Dr Peter Guthrie, visiting parapsychologist, in his efforts to determine whether her aunt, Laura Murdoch Collins, is the reincarnation of two women who died by fire in 1767 and 1867. Guthrie hasn’t told Carolyn what exactly he is planning to do, but he has said he needs the help of a strong young man and that what he is going to do is “not strictly legal.”

Carolyn leads off by telling Joe that she is going to ask him to do something to help her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, who is in the hospital with a mysterious ailment. Joe immediately agrees to do anything that will help Liz. When she starts explaining that she wants him to work with Guthrie, and that Guthrie is a parapsychologist, Joe is incredulous. At length, he reluctantly agrees to go, and to keep what he will do secret from everyone, even Maggie.

When he tells Maggie that they have to cancel their date so that he can go to Carolyn’s house, she is dismayed. He assures her that he is not getting back together with Carolyn, but that Carolyn made him promise to keep it a secret just what he will be doing. Maggie vows to fight if Carolyn does try to take him back.

This scene is the current phase of Dark Shadows in a nutshell. It appears to be a more-or-less typical daytime soap opera of the sort you would see on American television in February of 1967, where good-looking young people in wholesome, everyday settings struggle about who will have a conspicuously chaste romance with whom. That’s what Maggie thinks she is watching when she keeps her eyes on Joe and Carolyn.

But in fact the series is heading towards becoming a full-time supernatural thriller, and stories like those are going to be tossed out and left by the roadside before long. That development doesn’t bode well for Joe and Maggie. Joe tells her today that their relationship is “the simplest thing in the world”- he loves her, she loves him, that’s all you need. Of course, a couple is only allowed to be on screen in a soap opera if they are participants in a conflict of some kind, and are only the main figures in a storyline if they are in conflict with each other. But the show Maggie thinks she’s on might supply them with conflicts that would make sense to the sensible, practical-minded people she and Joe are written to be.

When they start dealing with ghosts and fire witches and who knows what else, Maggie and Joe will have a limited amount of time to show us how level-headed real-world people might react to supernatural crises. Once they’ve exhausted that theme, they will have either to adapt to their new surroundings and become different sorts of people or to leave the show. The prospect of reconceiving the characters might be good news to the actors Kathryn Leigh Scott and Joel Crothers. But Maggie and Joe would be appalled to hear that they will have to discard their personalities and invent new ones, and Joe’s alarmed reaction when Carolyn starts talking about parapsychology is a foretaste of what the characters will be going through as this comes upon them.

As the show’s representatives of Collinsport’s working class, Joe and Maggie are the designated representatives of daylight sanity. From the first week of Dark Shadows, we’ve known that Carolyn and the other residents of the great house of Collinwood are in too close proximity to the supernatural back-world of ghosts and ghoulies for that kind of attitude to be possible.

That contrast is dramatized in three moments in today’s show. In the opening portion, Carolyn and Dr Guthrie spend approximately 500 hours* in the drawing room of the great house recapping all the uncanny elements of the current storyline. When Guthrie asks Carolyn if she has considered the idea of reincarnation, she says that she has considered it and dismissed it. When he starts in with an explanation of how the idea of reincarnation connects to their conflict with Laura, Carolyn is all in.

When Carolyn is in the restaurant telling Joe about Guthrie the parapsychologist, Joe says he is surprised she is taking this sort of thing seriously. “I always thought you were a level-headed girl.” Regular viewers may be startled by this comment. In the last few weeks, Carolyn has had to take over her mother’s duties as head of the household and of the family business, and has shown some maturity in discharging them. But the whole time Joe and Carolyn were a couple, she was fickle and irresponsible to the point of madness. In this context, where Joe is conscious of Maggie’s eyes on him and is trying to project a particular image of himself, he rewrites the history of his relationship with Carolyn. He isn’t the sort of fellow who would spend years chasing after a flighty heiress- he is a sensible man who would only ever be involved with an equally sensible woman. That self-image is going to take a beating as he participates in the kinds of stories we’re going to see from now on.

In the last scene, Joe is in the drawing room and Guthrie puts the same question to him that he had earlier put to Carolyn- has he thought about the idea of reincarnation? Joe says he’s never thought about it, and flatly refuses to entertain the notion. Finally he absorbs Guthrie’s request that he help open the graves of the previous Laura Murdochs, but he never says he believes in reincarnation, and he never shows the enthusiasm that Carolyn has for Guthrie’s theories. Carolyn can afford to be enthusiastic- she’s lived in the great house all her life, and so has never been more than one step away from the unearthly. But Joe is giving up a substantial part of his identity by even being in the same shot as Guthrie, and once he shows up with a shovel in a graveyard at night, the Joe we’ve known will be on his way out.

*The counter on my computer says the scene between Carolyn and Guthrie in the drawing room lasts only 6 minutes and 44 seconds, but I’m sticking with my estimate of 500 hours.

Episode 99: Sobbing women and females

This is the fourth episode credited to writer Ron Sproat. Sproat is making an inventory of the narrative elements available to him, and labeling each one with his plans for it.

In his first episode, #94, Sproat put two of Dark Shadows’ original storylines into a box marked “To Be Discarded.” Those were the quest well-meaning governess Vicki is on to discover her birth family and the relationship between flighty heiress Carolyn and hardworking young fisherman Joe. He put Vicki’s relationship with bland young lawyer Frank and Joe’s with Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, into the box marked “For Future Development.”

In #95, he put the whodunit surrounding the death of beloved local man Bill Malloy in the “For Future Development” box. He also noted the idea of a relationship between Vicki and high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins as a long-term possibility, depending on the outcome of the Bill Malloy story.

Yesterday, in #98, he reimagined Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, not as the frantic and needy victim of his father’s abuse he has been hithertofore, but as an ice-cold sociopath who manipulates the adults around him. If he keeps that personality, David will be able to drive the story for longer periods than he has been able to do so far. We were also reintroduced to a ghost we haven’t heard from in months, suggesting that the supernatural themes will be getting a more detailed treatment.

Today, Sproat continues making his catalog. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin, sworn enemy of the Collins family, is key to the stories Sproat processes this time out. We see most of the events through the eyes of Burke’s secret agent in the great house of Collinwood, housekeeper Mrs Johnson. Using the housekeeper as the point of view character, Sproat suggests that his task in these episodes is primarily one of housekeeping.

In the middle of the episode, we have a couple of scenes about Burke’s attempt to hire staff away from the Collins cannery and fishing fleet. In #89, that attempt set up a visually interesting scene, where a larger than usual group of featured background players gathered in Burke’s hotel room to hear his plans. But the story about them never seemed likely to go anywhere. Today, actor Dolph Sweet appears as the spokesman for the loyal employees who refuse to leave the Collinses. Sweet brings a raw, immediate style to the part that makes a powerful impression. His job today is to drop the story point into the “To Be Discarded” box, and he does it memorably.

Ezra refuses Burke’s offer. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Carolyn has long been obsessed with Burke and jealous of Burke’s interest in Vicki. The episode opens with Carolyn making snide remarks to Vicki about a ride Burke gave her to the town of Bangor, Maine. Vicki, under the impression that a pen she has found is evidence pointing to Burke’s involvement in Bill’s death, tells Carolyn that Burke is the very last man in the world a woman should want to be involved with. Vicki has promised Roger not to mention the pen to anyone, so she can’t explain her feelings to Carolyn.

Vicki and Carolyn discuss Burke while Mrs Johnson listens in the background. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

At the end of the episode, Burke has called Carolyn and made a date with her. Elated, Carolyn apologizes to Vicki and is her best friend again. Vicki tries to talk her out of seeing Burke without mentioning the pen. That effort gives way to a conversation in which Carolyn mentions that Burke gave her a pen, that she gave the pen to Roger, and that Roger lost the pen the night Bill Malloy died. Hearing this and remembering Roger’s behavior when they were alone together in episode 96, Vicki concludes that Roger, not Burke, killed Bill.

These scenes mark Carolyn’s fixation on Burke and her fluctuations between unrestrained hostility and unreserved solicitude towards Vicki as themes that will continue. The ending of course advances the Bill Malloy story, and sets up a conflict between Vicki and Roger.

Episode 94: The Sproatening

This is the first episode credited to writer Ron Sproat. Before long, Francis Swann will leave Dark Shadows, and for several months the only credited writers will be Sproat and Malcolm Marmorstein. Marmorstein will write 82 episodes and leave in August of 1967. Sproat will write hundreds and will stay with the show until 1969.

Today’s setup might remind us of the show’s first writer, Art Wallace. It’s shaped like one of Wallace’s diptych episodes, intercutting between two contrasting groups of characters. This time, we cut back and forth between, on the one hand, a dull but pleasant dinner date between well-meaning governess Vicki and instantly forgettable lawyer Frank at a restaurant in Bangor and, on the other hand, an extremely uncomfortable dinner date between hardworking fisherman Joe and flighty heiress Carolyn at the Blue Whale in Collinsport.

In Bangor, Vicki and Frank smile at each other while Vicki tells the sorts of stories she’s been telling all along. Vicki hopes Frank will be able to aid her in her effort to learn the identity of her birth parents, a quest she has been on since episode 1. Frank’s father Richard briefly joins him and Vicki at their table. Amid good wishes for the two of them, Richard delivers a cautionary message about Vicki’s research. Later, he talks privately with Frank. He strongly approves of Vicki as someone to date, but is chary of many aspects of the research Frank has volunteered to do for her.

Frank’s father stops by the table. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

In Collinsport, Joe and Carolyn are bickering about Carolyn’s obsession with dashing action hero Burke Devlin when Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, enters the tavern with her father, drunken artist Sam Evans. Carolyn invites the Evanses to join them at their table. Carolyn eventually starts talking about Burke again, prompting Joe to ask her to dance. Away from the Evanses, Joe tells Carolyn he is tired of her falling bacxk on him when Burke isn’t available. Carolyn storms out. Joe takes her home, then returns to the tavern, and he and Maggie start a conversation they both seem to be enjoying hugely.

Carolyn, Joe, and the Evanses at the Blue Whale. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

By intercutting scenes, Wallace’s diptychs usually achieve a contrast that brings into focus details of the psychology of the characters and their relationships to each other that we might not have thought about had we watched the scenes straight through. In Sproat’s hands, today’s episode doesn’t do that so much as it comments his own position as a new writer joining an established show.

Vicki has learned nothing about her origins since episode 1, and there is no prospect she ever will. In Frank, she has found a potential boyfriend. In the ears of the audience, Richard’s advice to Frank to pursue Vicki energetically but to pursue her inquiries only circumspectly is a recommendation that the show drop an old, unproductive old storyline and to develop a new one.

Carolyn and Joe’s relationship is another story element that has been in place from the beginning and that has not advanced in any way. We have never seen any reason for them to be a couple, and are simply impatient with scenes where they sit around and make each other miserable. Joe recently had a date with Maggie, and it was sweet to watch those two having fun together. So today’s scenes in the Blue Whale make it emphatically clear that the time has come to drop the Carolyn and Joe story and move on to a new phase where Maggie and Joe are together.

Sproat not only makes himself visible in this episode, he also provides mirrors for critics and commentators. When Richard shows up and interrupts the ten thousandth* sad story the audience has heard about the Hammond Foundling Home, Frank and Vicki seem to be having a pleasant enough time with each other. It is possible that viewers who weren’t watching on many of the days when Vicki told those previous stories are having a pleasant enough time with the episode. But on any given day, only so much of your audience will consist of new viewers and people with short-term memory loss. A time will come when you have to move on to something new, and Richard is the in-universe representative of those who would say that time is already upon us.

In the Blue Whale, the Evanses represent the critics. Joe and Carolyn leave the table twice to dance. The first time, they look happy, and Sam tells Maggie that there is no chance of Joe and Carolyn splitting up. Sam is a chronic pessimist. If he makes a prediction, we take it that it would be bad news for that prediction to come true. In this context, to say that Joe will never break it off with Carolyn is to say that the show will never become more interesting. The second time Joe and Carolyn dance, they are obviously giving up on each other. Maggie, almost as much the optimist as her father is a pessimist, gives a little smile. Joe and Carolyn’s quarrel is embarrassing for her to watch, but it’s good news for her that she’s getting a boyfriend, and maybe a storyline. It’s also good news for us that the show is open to exploring fresh topics.

I don’t think that Richard and the Evanses are so much Sproat’s attempt to impose particular readings on the audience as they are the results of his analysis of the reactions thoughtful viewers are likely to have. If so, I have one data point in support of his theory. In their discussion about this episode on their blog Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri actually find themselves playing the roles of optimistic and pessimistic critic as Sproat scripted them for the Evanses. Here are John as Maggie and Christine as Sam:

John: Have we finally seen the end of the Joe/Carolyn relationship? Now that it’s clear to Joe that Carolyn only comes running to him when she’s jealous, I think he’s had enough of her. The only offenses on Maggie’s record are the bad blonde wig she started with, and calling Vicki a jerk when they first met. But other than that, she’s far less maintenance than Carolyn, so hopefully the change will do Joe some good, provided his job working for the Collins fishery isn’t in jeopardy…

Christine: It’s a soap opera, so I expect the relationship to go through its death throes before the last gasp. Joe’s a glutton for punishment, so I don’t think it’s over yet.

http://dsb4idie.blogspot.com/2016/11/episode-94-11366.html

The Scoleris always do a good job of pretending not to know what’s coming next even when they demonstrably do know. So there is a bit of role-playing to start with. But they are such patient and insightful critics that I don’t think they would just start imitating the characters, certainly not unintentionally. It’s more likely that this exchange represents evidence that Sproat was right about the ways people were likely to read the episode.

*A rough approximation. Could be the twelve thousandth, I haven’t counted.

Episode 55: We are the only ones here, unless you include the ghosts of your past

Sheriff Patterson is at the mansion on the estate of Collinwood, talking with reclusive matriarch Liz and Liz’ ne’er-do-well brother Roger about the mysterious death of plant manager Bill Malloy. Liz listens as Roger answers the sheriff’s questions, seeming every bit the trusting sister. The minute the sheriff leaves, she turns to Roger and asks in an icy voice “How much of what you told him was the truth?” She confronts Roger with the differences between what he told the sheriff and what he’d told her. Roger is upset, and finally tells Liz she has to trust him. Liz looks sadly off into the distance and says that yes, she does have to do that.

Liz saying she has to believe Roger
“Yes, I do have to do that.”

I’m always interested to watch actors play characters who are themselves acting. When she’s concealing her doubts about Roger from the sheriff, Joan Bennett has her first chance to show us what sort of actress she thinks Liz would be. She’s a skillful one- she does have some subtle reactions to Roger’s evolving story when the sheriff isn’t looking at her, but her abrupt, contemptuous turn to Roger is the removal of a convincing enough mask that it shocks the audience. And her statement that she does have to believe Roger, coming after she has made it clear that she knows he has been lying to her and is likely to go on lying, is a performer’s resolution to go on playing a part, however unpromising that part may be.

Intercut with the scenes at Collinwood are scenes in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. Waitress Maggie Evans is serving one customer, her father Sam Evans. Sam wants Maggie to return a sealed envelope he gave her some time ago. He won’t tell her what’s in the envelope, why he wants it back, or why he gave it to her in the first place. She won’t give it back to him without answers to at least some of those questions.

Maggie and Sam at the restaurant
Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Francis Swann is the writer credited with today’s script, but the contrast between the scenes at Collinwood and those in the restaurant form a diptych of the sort Art Wallace specialized in. Sister Liz demands information which brother Roger won’t give; Roger is a fountain of lies and evasions, and finally tells Liz that her idea of family loyalty requires her to behave as if he were telling her the truth. Daughter Maggie demands information which father Sam won’t give; Sam mutters little lies, stonewalls, and begs her to forget about the whole thing.

The two family pairs are both unhappy, but in different ways. The Evanses aren’t having any fun, but you can imagine them reopening communication and re-establishing trust, if only Sam can get off the hook in this crisis. Liz and Roger don’t seem ever to have trusted each other, but they are so much fun to watch that you can see how they might choose to go on fighting these battles indefinitely.

No one has told Maggie or Sam or anyone else that Bill Malloy is dead. When Maggie wonders if Bill might be able to help Sam with whatever troubles he’s refusing to tell her about, Sam replies that yes, Bill might be the only one who can help him. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin telephones the restaurant to order delivery of a meal; he asks if Maggie has seen Bill. Maggie tells Sam that everyone has been asking about Bill.

The sheriff comes in to the restaurant. Roger had told him that he was with Sam and Burke the night Bill disappeared, and the sheriff mentioned then that he’d be talking to both of them. The sheriff reacts strongly when he sees Sam, and tries to strike up a friendly conversation with him. Before the sheriff can elicit much of a response, he gets a telephone call. He rushes out of the restaurant as soon as he’s hung up. On his way out, he casually mentions to the Evanses that it was the Coast Guard calling to say they’d found Bill Malloy’s corpse. They are shocked at the news.

The sheriff doesn’t seem to be watching Sam’s reaction to the news about Bill’s death. That’s odd- while viewers know that Roger is the show’s principal villain at this point, Sam seems to be an equally likely suspect in the case of Bill Malloy. Casually mentioning such a terrible piece of news would seem to be a tactic that a policeman might use to gauge a suspect’s emotional state. Unless it is a tactic of some kind, it would be a spectacularly unprofessional way of announcing to the people of a small town that a highly respected local man was dead. Up to that point the sheriff hadn’t been presented as a blundering fool, so I wonder what they were saying by having him do that.

Miscellaneous:

Marc Masse’s blog posts about the first 54 episodes of Dark Shadows include promotions for Kathryn Leigh Scott’s novel Dark Passages. His post for episode 55 is the first that doesn’t include one of those, and is also the first in which he refers to Miss Scott as “the actress who plays Maggie Evans.” As in “scenes like this emphasize the great and natural chemistry for the father-daughter relationship being portrayed as embodied by David Ford and the actress who plays Maggie Evans.” I wonder if Miss Scott was alienated by “The Dan and Lela Show,” the dialogues between executive producer Dan Curtis and director Lela Swift that he claims to have heard in the background of the episodes. Many Dark Shadows fans were indignant about these, and I’m sure they let Miss Scott know about their objections. Perhaps she pulled her ads from Masse’s blog, and he couldn’t bring himself to mention her name afterward.

While I’m reporting on blog posts, I should mention that the “Collinsport Historical Society” post for this episode is hilarious. Here’s a quote:

Sam Evans is starting to regret writing his Get Into Jail Card that confesses his role in Devlin’s railroading. He tries to get Maggie to return it to him, but she’s not stupid. Maggie is probably a better avatar for the show’s audience than Victoria, and if there’s anything we like more than a mystery, it’s learning the solution to said mystery. While there’s genuine concern for her father’s latest alcohol, caffeine and tobacco binge, she suspects she’s in possession of the final few pages in the mystery novel the whole town is talking about. And she’s running out of reasons not to take a peek and see how things end.

Sam is doing his usual “I’m not looking suspicious by trying not to look suspicious, am I?” thing at the restaurant when Patterson arrives. There’s something of a performer in Sam, who brings his sketchiest A-game when he sees the sheriff, and gets twitchier than Peter Lorre with a pocket full of letters of transit. Luckily for him, the sheriff has other things on his mind. The Coast Guard has found Bill Malloy. Dead.

I’m beginning to lose track of how often we’ve been given the news that Malloy is dead.