DARK SHADOWS 628
DARK SHADOWS 628
Grayson. Storm. Is this the
same storm and the same night as Vicki’s near wedding????
The narration talks about
earthly confrontations…reprise seems like the same exact reprise. The mic
appears as she starts to speak.
Angelique teleprompter.
As the dev…Diablos…starts to
appear, we hear the sound of a spaceship not unlike the Jupiter 2 from LOST IN
SPACE, the Spindrift from
No new material before theme
tune.
I will say this for the
reprise: if it is not the same exact thing as the cliffhanger, it sure is
close. At some point I think they did a roll back on the film so it was exactly
the same but I don’t know where or when that happened. This is a very close
match and to me, it looks exactly the same.
Diablos, so not named in the
show but in the credits, makes her, against her will, descend to him. ONE THING
THAT STRIKES ME is that Diablos is so unappealing and so mean to both of them,
why would ANYONE want to serve him?
We see rocks, a gate, what
seems to pass for fire, and smoke. The hooded figure at a desk seems to be her
“master”, the devil, satan as later named in the show.
She tells him that Nicholas
Blair failed him. In return, he tells her Blair was always loyal and served him
well and that she broke her pact with Blair and followed her own selfish free
will. She yells that she repented.
He is about to let her be
punished and stops her assault on Nicholas but when he mentions the super race
plot, she tells him about how one being killed the other while Nicholas was
with a human. Blair is in love with a human.
Diablos wants her or him to
return to this world but thinks it would be interesting to find out if she can
outwit Nicholas. Her reward is to have this curse lifted from her. Talk about
the pot calling the kettle!
The storm continues. Blair returns and says good evening to Adam.
Adam knows Blair is lying that Eve loves him.
Blair questions Adam. He
fools with his ring when the bell rings and it is Julia Hoffman. She is gusty.
She wants Adam and when Blair says Adam is not here, she counters that she
knows he is lying. “It’s about Eve. She’s dead.”
Several hours ago she was
found dead. The police are holding Jeff. As she and Nicholas spar, Adam decides
to come out of hiding. Julia, “I knew you were here.”
To face off against both Adam
and Blair makes Julia my hero at least for this episode. Instead of running,
she confronts Adam and questions him! He lies, “I don’t care if she’s
dead.”
She warns Blair about the investigation.
She wants to talk to Adam alone and Adam demands it when Blair won’t allow it.
Julia is frank and tells Adam she is glad Eve is dead, “she was an evil,
vicious woman.”
Really? What did she do
exactly? She tells Adam she needs his help.
Three people are in trouble:
Jeff, for one. “And I don’t know how to help them,” she tells Adam.
Adam tells her he does not
care about Jeff Clark. Julia tries to reach the part of him that Prof. Stokes
taught: decency.
She tries to find the spark
of that in him. Julia is asked some
questions. Her answers, “I don’t know” and “I…I don’t know.”
“I only know that the three
of you are in…are in trouble and I want to help you and I…I don’t know how I can without harming one or the
other.”
Barnabas and Adam are the
other two in trouble. Adam tells her, “You don’t care about me.” Julia says, “Curiously enough, I do care.”
And “I don’t know.” She gets three IDKS: She goes to say perhaps
is it because she created him and has some responsibility to him (remember her
quick jab at Chris about his responsibility). “I don’t know” again and then
maybe she thinks it is some protective instinct. Awesome stuff.
Maybe she has a motherly
feeling toward Adam!!!! When he counters that he has no friends, she says he
does, “Carolyn is your friend, Professor Stokes is your friend.” She thinks their names bring up his guilt
about what he’s done.
He kicks her out. When Adam
kicks her out, she says, “Adam!” as if she’s surprised.
Adam voice over, “She almost
made me like her and I can’t like anyone ever again.”
Blair vs Adam. He asks what
if he did kill Eve but still will not admit he did. Which makes me realize just
how much taller Robert Rodan is next to Humbert. Blair says, “I don’t know what
I’m going to do about it, Adam.” Adam
says that is just what he thought.
It is
The room turns red. Diablos,
master, is speaking through Maggie’s mouth (in extreme close up of her nose and
mouth!) Diablos tells him to prepare for his judgment tomorrow.
The credits use the slow
medley melody of the music which clunks when it ends. The only time Diablos’s
name is mentioned is in the credits.
Review: I’m not sure having
the booming voice as the master was a great idea. It makes this sort of
Saturday Morning Cartoon-y not that there is anything wrong with Sat Morning
Cartoons but…it’s sort of embarrassing and takes away from the proceedings.
DW also did this to poor
effect with the finale of THE DAEMONS. The hell set—AND IT IS hell---is pretty
good and surreal in that DS way.
Julia rocks in this episode,
confronting Adam and Blair without any fear…finally, she’s really a strong
heroine and it is nice to see someone older be that.
Grayson is just awesome in
this. Again. What a rat fink tattle tale Angelique is. Still, Blair deserves
it. I really enjoyed these last few episodes and to say 1968 is very poor does
these strong episodes an injustice.
A great, stunning episode,
recounting the relationships between characters.
Ba’al-berith is a name that goes back to the early Jews in the Bronze Age, and more or less means “God of the Covenant,” although who even knows with the early Jews. The name was picked up in Christian demonology, who described Balberith as one of the princes of Hell — Satan’s secretary, basically, and the keeper of the public archives.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
There’s a boom mic overhead during Angelique’s scene with Diabolos, right after the “love, human love” part.
There’s so much smoke in the Hell set that it drifts over into the set for Nicholas’ house, which appears to have a developing weather pattern in the drawing room.
Julia and Adam talk over each other in act 2. Julia says, “Eve was an evil, vicious woman, and I’m glad she’s dead,” and then Adam says “You’re glad?” at the same time that Julia says “Do you believe me?”
Behind the Scenes:
Diabolos is played by Duane Morris, who appeared in May as the headless body that was later brought to life as Adam. He came back for an episode in July, when Nicholas raised the spirits of two guys whose bodies were scavenged for the Frankenstein experiment. He plays Diabolos today and tomorrow, and that’s his last time on the show. He appears in nine episodes total, and we never see his face.
John: Angelique's interpretive dance and a disappointing chroma key effect delivered us to what may be the coolest, most ridiculous thing we've experienced in more than 600 episodes of Dark Shadows. Diabolos! Or more appropriately, Diabolos' office. He's got a nice desk, though his all-covering cloak is a little too business casual for such a force of darkness. And once you get him talking, he seems like an accessible evil guy, and not the overbearing evil master you might expect. I hope we haven't seen the last of Diabolos—he deserves his own show like David Brent or Michael Scott on The Office.
Christine: You're funny! Too bad you're not in charge of programming! We have truly entered a new realm on Dark Shadows. I love how Angelique was tattling on Blair for being in love when she's guilty of the same cardinal sin in Diabolos' book. I was surprised he didn't already know about that, but I guess he's not an omniscient being. You may be interested to know that Diabolos is played by Duane Morris, who also appeared as the headless creation in the dream curse in Episode 484, the headless ghost Nicholas summoned in Episode 544, and Lang's creation before he was given life. So Diabolos is really Adam, which is an interesting concept to ponder.
John: So once again, Adam's naiveté gets him in trouble. It was all planned what he was supposed to do, and when Julia arrives tossing around accusations, he gets defensive rather that playing surprised, shocked, or forlorn about the loss of his mate.
Christine: Will the ethical side of Adam cultivated by Professor Stokes win out and lead him to confess to exonerate Jeff Clark? Who knows what to expect from this impulsive creature. Have I become accustomed to seeing smoke everywhere, or did it seem particularly smoky at the House by the Sea today? Perhaps the smoke from Hell was wafting up to Blair's place.
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