DARK SHADOWS 643
DARK SHADOWS 643
Louis. Once more the
narration goes to pains to tell us that something new is happening: a new reign
of terror is about to begin.
Chris vs Carolyn, who’s
guessed that maybe the curse has to do with Chris. She wants to know why he
stopped the séance. Chris, “I do not know why. I stopped the séance.” She asks, “You don’t know?” Chris felt he had to do it, “I don’t know
why.”
“Chris, I don’t understand
it.”
“Neither do I.”
No reprise. She wonders who
it was that came through her, who Magda was. Chris, “I don’t know.” She
wonders. “Do we have to talk about THAT!!!”
Carolyn says no but then feels Magda is still in the room.
Amy goes to David and wakes
him up in his room in his bed. David comically covers his face with his
blanket, briefly. “What do you want?”
NOTE: when Amy first enters
the room, we see a large globe under the window and it obscures the window.
From David’s close up or medium shot we do see a crystal ball but is it a
different take or edit? From the longer shot, we cannot see the crystal ball.
We hear hammering. (Or
something near the window falls as it looks like in the shadows?)
David’s crystal ball is on
the window sill. The globe is completely gone! There is a very skinny pole of
some kind, possibly a candle holder and candle with a larger metal thing on top
(I am not sure what this is).
Amy says Quentin is angry.
David asks why Quentin would be angry and she answers, “That’s what IDK, that’s
what we’ve got to find out.”
David has tried to hear
someone on the old phone 100 times but didn’t. He then tries again “HULLO?
HULLO???!) and with Amy there, he hears breathing again. They find out that
“she” will try to stop them and that “he” wants them to find him, Quentin. David
asks who she is and Amy’s IDK is the answer.
In a weird moment, David asks
what “she” will stop them from doing what and then David seems to say IDK when
Amy should say it? And then Amy says he wants us to find him and he wants us to
do it tonight. Chris?
Roger returns and says “Hello
Kitten” for the first time in a long time and a hello to Jennings. Carolyn sees
him out, stop by anytime she says.
In the drawing room, a book
falls off the piano and Roger opens it and finds a note from Quentin to Jamison Collins, his father!
“He must have been a boy when
this was sent to him.”
NOTE: if Jameson was say ten
or eleven in 1897 as we shall see soon…in 1887 he would be…a baby of two.
The letter: “Dear Jameson,
you must return to Collinwood. I need your help. You must intercede with Oscar.
Only you can save me.”
It is postmarked 1887 and is
says something like please return to Collinwood and intercede on my behalf with
Oscar, “only you can save me now.”
Carolyn asks what that is about. Roger, “Well, I don’t know.”
NOTE: Oscar IS Edward?
Roger says, of Quentin, “I
didn’t know very much about him.”
Carolyn asks how a book from
the piano can fall by itself. Roger’s answer, “Well, I don’t know.”
Carolyn thinks Magda did it.
When Roger asks, Carolyn explains, “I don’t understand any of it either but the
spirit of a woman named Magda exists in this house.”
Later, Roger says, “IDK what
to think.”
For a brief moment Magda
comes through Carolyn and says stop them. Roger asks about it and Carolyn says,
“IDK.” And “IDK why I said what I said.”
Roger: “Oh, I wish I
understood what was going on around here.”
Carolyn thinks Magda has sent
some kind of warning. “Someone in this house is in some kind of danger.”
Roger asks who and Carolyn
says, “IDK. It could be any one of us.”
Amy wants to go to the
storage room. When David expresses doubt about that, she asks if he is afraid.
He says, “I’m not afraid of anything, Amy.”
Amy admits that she is afraid
of somethings but not Quentin. Roger is worried about David and decides to go
check up on him. Amy hides behind the door.
David lies to Roger about
reading and not being able to sleep. Roger almost leaves but almost catches Amy
as he returns and says that if David needs him he should come get him and then
he leaves again. David tells Amy that his father never says goodnight to him,
says he is acting weird, and says, “I can’t understand him sometimes.”
He asks Amy about it and she
says IDK.
Carolyn asks why Roger was
worried about David (uhm, warnings of danger, Carolyn?). Roger says, “I don’t
know, kitten.” Then he says it was a
feeling he had. Is everyone on drugs in this ep? A cough? I hear a cough as
David and Amy start their adventure.
The two kids pass a strange
light that looks like a cross between a hawk and a Christmas ornament. David’s
flashlight falls as one of the ghosts tries to warn them not to go to the West
Wing. Amy asks what happened. David’s answer, “IDK. It seems like somebody grabbed it out of my hand.”
Then a hand pushes David away
by pushing his stomach. Both kids are scared. David will continue. Amy says,
“You’re braver than I am.”
David says, “Cause you’re a
girl.”
The door is locked. It turns
to
Roger calls Carolyn kitten
and the two of them go to bed (AT 4AM! What were they doing? Well, Roger was
reading, Carolyn was strumming her fingers in thought…).
Carolyn says she won’t be
able to sleep. Roger offers her sleeping pills. She changes her mind and thinks
she will be able to go to sleep. She is exhausted. They hug and he says, “Goodnight,
Kitten.”
The kids sneak into the
drawing room, David moves the chair, and opens the secret panel. Once they go
in and the door closes, the chair moves itself back, sliding back into place.
The kids go up steps.
It is
An old grandfather clock in
the west wing falls in front of them. This could still be the “she” trying to
stop them. Magda? Beth?
In the storage room, the door
shuts and David cannot get it open. They are locked in the storage room. David,
“Amy, we’re locked in here.”
Review: Not sure what the
1887 bit is but Jamison can’t be a little boy there unless he’s like one or two
years (and maybe three as David is about 12 now and in 1897 time trip, Jamison
seems about 12 or 13 SO is this a flub by the writers who then changed the
time/year?) old and then why would Quentin write a letter to him? AND who is Oscar? Does the show ever follow
through with that? And later, there is something about a baby crib that
rocks…in any case, while there are more flubs here than before and more
increasing “I don’t knows” but maybe there have always been “I don’t knows”,
this is what DS is really all about.
Yes, DS at its simplest and
scariest is all about this: two ghosts in a huge haunted house after a séance
while two kids get stuck in a part of the house that is extra haunted while another ghost tries to
warn them through Carolyn and oh, a werewolf just left the house. There’s
something simple and spooky and delightfully entertaining about the next four
or five episodes or so…something that seems like pure DS, even Old 1966 DS…a
scary huge house instead of five or six
villains who threaten and do less than they threaten. Having the two kids lost
in Collinwood or stuck in a new room is…delightful. Also as mentioned, seeing
Collinwood through the new eyes of a new character is inspired…yet it does seem
at times that Amy is already possessed by Quentin or maybe Beth already. This may not be the best DS ep ever, but it’s
certainly not the worst and among those that seem indicative of what the entire
series is all about at its best…
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
As David gets out of bed, there’s a banging in the studio.
I edited one of Roger’s quotes above for clarity — “It’s dated 1887.” What he actually says is, “It’s post-dated 1887,” which doesn’t mean anything.
When David gets the flashlight from his desk, someone in the studio coughs.
David’s tells Amy that there’s a secret way into the west wing: “So you — keep it a promise that you won’t tell anyone, right?”
David and Amy wait until everyone in the house is asleep before they venture into the west wing — but then we see Roger and Carolyn sitting in the drawing room at 4am.
The credits play over a shot of David’s room, but the camera is pulled back much farther than usual. You can see the edge of the set on the right, and the desk is just in the middle of an open space — we’re essentially looking at the place where the “fourth wall” is supposed to be.
a lot of DAILY makes sense:
So let’s look at that purported backstory, through the lens of our spoiler-filled time travel.
On the credit side: Roger’s father is Jamison Collins; Jamison has a close relationship with Quentin, which Quentin tries to use to his own advantage; Quentin spends a lot of time abroad. Check, check and check — that tallies up with what we see in March.
On the debit side: 1887, and Oscar. Now, obviously, it’s fairly trivial to say that they simply decided to change that to 1897 and Edward; that’s not necessarily evidence that they didn’t have the story worked out.
But the actual content of the letter — Jamison must return to Collinwood, to intercede with Oscar — does not match up with the storyline as the time travellers know it. When we get to 1897, it’s Quentin who’s returning home, not Jamison. He doesn’t need the boy to intercede with Oscar or anyone else, except in the most abstract way, and “Only you can save me” means nothing at all. That doesn’t even sound like the Quentin we know.
Also, the story about Quentin, Magda and Oscar is not about werewolves, and Chris reacting to the word “curse” is not a clue.
Chris freaked out in yesterday’s seance for two reasons. Number one: Somebody needed to interrupt the seance before Magda said anything useful that would derail the storyline. Number two: They have two major storylines running right now — The Wolf Man and The Turn of the Screw — and if rubbing them together for a minute makes for an interesting scene, then that makes the episode better, and Sam Hall gets a lollipop.
It’s hard for the time travellers to see things the way that the Dark Shadows writers did, because we think of the show as a finished saga that stretches from episode 1 to 1245, split into chapters called 1795, 1897, Leviathan and Parallel Time.
But for the producers, here in December 1968, it’s just Dark Shadows, one continuous round-robin narrative that runs for as long as they have blood in their bodies and breath in their lungs. “1795” was an anomaly, a crazy thing that they still can’t believe they got away with. They have no idea right now that the time travel stories are going to define the structure of the show.
They’re not on the road to 1897, or 1887, or anywhere else. There’s no road, never has been.
Consider this: in episode 622, Angelique spent the whole episode forging an uneasy alliance with Eve, which led to nothing at all. They didn’t even have any scenes together after that. Less than a week later, in episode 626, Eve was killed. In 627, Angelique spent the episode forging a new alliance with Adam, which led to nothing at all. Angelique went to Hell the next day, to complain to Diabolos about Nicholas. Then she dropped out of the storyline completely, and had nothing more to do with Adam and Eve.
In other words, this is a television show where — just three weeks ago — they literally did not have the ability to plan ahead from one day to the next.
Now, if you want to believe that this writing team spontaneously developed the time, patience and foresight to set up interweaving plot points nine months ahead, then that can be the thing you believe. But it isn’t true.
They’re doing the same thing that Damon and Carlton did on Lost — throwing random clues into the pot, with the vague intention of explaining them later, probably, if anybody remembers what they were.
So by the beginning of next week, we’ll have the following pieces in play: the west wing, Quentin, Beth, Oscar, Jamison, Magda, the skeleton, the phonograph, the crib, the curse, the polar bear, the numbers, the hatch, the Others, the Smoking Man, the Rambaldi artifacts, the Torchwood Institute, Parseltongue, black oil, the Log Lady, and Claude North. Nobody knows what they mean yet. That’s the fun of it.
The fact that, on the whole, most of the clues do actually end up being meaningful is not evidence of the Dark Shadows writers’ awesome long-range planning skills. It’s evidence of their awesome seat-of-the-pants cleverness, connecting up all the relevant loose ends as they stumble headlong through 1969.
They are actually brilliant, and this really is a brilliant story. But right now, they’re just throwing stuff at the screen. The brilliant part happens down at the other end.
and from :Before I Die:
I am more bothered by the fact that Amy the Fearless who wanted to meet ghosts is suddenly trembling and claiming that she's not as brave as David is. His response that it's because she's a girl is a little tone deaf during the Women's Liberation Movement! Also, what is that strange sculpture behind them? It looks like something you'd find in Little Shop of Horrors.
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