Dark Shadows has arrived!

[ClassyCo]

I've tried to buy the complete set from amazon (two times, actually) but even though it's listed as "in stock" they never actually ship. And now it's no longer available at all, except from marketplace sellers for twice the purchase price.
Dailymotion will get me as far as episode 533 so at least I can see a little bit more of Adam (I was so looking forward to this storyline).

Perhaps I should accept my defeat gracefully (*swallows a blasphemous expression*) and continue with the youtube playlist. I'm sure Grayson Hall will be excellent in those storylines as well. I've watched her playing a gypsy kind of character and I believe there was also a bitch-slap in it.
I hope young Mark Jennings didn't only appear in the missing episodes.

The complete series is on both Tubi and Amazon Prime, just in two separate playlists. Search "Dark Shadows: The Beginning" for the the pre-Barnabas episodes.

 

[bmasters9]

I've tried to buy the complete set from amazon (two times, actually) but even though it's listed as "in stock" they never actually ship.

Why won't they ship that all-in-one (take your money)?

 

[Willie Oleson]

The complete series is on both Tubi and Amazon Prime, just in two separate playlists. Search "Dark Shadows: The Beginning" for the the pre-Barnabas episodes.

Tubi is not available in the Netherlands, and the only soaps on Dutch Prime are teen soaps Dawson's Creek and One Tree Hill.

Why won't they ship that all-in-one (take your money)?

I have no idea.

 

[ClassyCo]

Tubi is not available in the Netherlands, and the only soaps on Dutch Prime are teen soaps Dawson's Creek and One Tree Hill

My apologies. I wasn't aware of that.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Watching the Adam episodes is like watching Barnabas Collins and Dr. Julia Hoffman being married with child.
Adam likes classical music (maybe he's a genius) but the music is always annoyingly interrupted by Dr. Eric Lang's *cough*scientific*cough* report.
Just like my videos are always interrupted by Eurodisney commercials.

However, Adam is also beginning to learn language and - as a spoiler to myself - maybe he's going to memorise exactly those words. Words that should never be spoken at Collinwood, especially when Angelique could sabotage the project.
Willie Loomis starts to fall in love with Maggie, or so it seems. That was the longest scene about earrings I've ever seen.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Dr. Eric Lang's tacky recording gets a surprisingly poignant meaning when Adam throws himself off Widows' Hill into the Dark Waters.

I'd be surprised (not to mention furious) if this the definite end of Adam but nevertheless the images of the brutal sea accompanied by Dr. Lang's vocal warning is an unusual ending for a Dark Shadows episode. Heck, there's a little bit of Howards' Way in it.
Watching videos on Dailymotion is a nightmare. Videos keep buffering and there's no chronological playlist which means that every next episode has to be searched for manually - but it's better than nothing at all.
It'll all be over after episode 533 and then I have to skip 203 episodes and continue the rest on you-know-where. Unless....a miracle happens (*checks calendar*)

The story of the vampire-transfer-operation itself has taken a backseat, despite the imminent danger that Barnabas will permanently revert to vampirism.
Maybe they'll pick it up once/if Adam resurfaces. Or, to put it in Dr. Lang's poetic words, "if they both live".

The episodes about Angelique's aging painting were very creepy, I knew the trick wouldn't work but I hoped it would.
Anyway, back to dailynotsmoothmotion.com.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Is it just me or was there a change in camera technique? There's something about these last few episodes that makes everything seem larger and more lively than before.

And this isn't even full screen.

Almost everyone in Collinsport starts to see through Angelique's schemes, and now they're calling their alter ego ghosts to the rescue.
This time it's Jerry Lacy who gets to chew the scenery, and oh he does it so well.
(Ben) Stokes as the professor in the occult is also very entertaining to watch. Like Angelique, he's got a solution and explanation for everything.
Adam is alive (surprise!) and ends up in Sam Evans' home. It's all very exciting and continuous, and I feel it's building up to a climax of sorts.

 

[Willie Oleson]

I just knew Adam was going to be lots of fun. I hope Dark Shadows keeps him!

Poor Joe!

The whole ghosts-from-the past thing is getting out of control, there's no sense of reality anymore.
Nevertheless, I think ghost-Trask made a good point about Barnabas' victims. Yes yes he didn't choose to become a vampire (and that he had to dispose of his human blood supplies) but even in modern day Collinsport he has caused a lot of trouble for many people, and it was usually for selfish reasons. Let's not forget that he was going to kill Jeff Clark, or become Jeff Clark but that's the same thing.
I still have no idea why I have to root for him, or why he's the most popular character in the series. He's behind the walls in the coffin room now and he can stay there for all I care.

#TeamAngelique

 

[Daniel Avery]

What I love most about that GIF is how "blind" Sam Evans politely keeps moving from side to side for everyone else to do their emoting/falling/pushing as he just stands there. It was a stroke a genius for the writers to have Sam blinded, since it allowed David Ford to show up to the set as drunk as he usually was, but he could read his lines off the TelePrompter from behind those dark glasses without it being quite as obvious.

I still have no idea why I have to root for him, or why he's the most popular character in the series

It's the Julia Hoffman Show. He's just along for the ride. She is the GOAT of DGAF.

 

[Willie Oleson]

She is the GOAT of DGAF.

Yes, absolutely (I know what you did there, trying to trick me into asking what it means).

So. Liz saw Cassandra trying to kiss Tony, and she wants to tell Roger all about it. In order to neutralise Liz' threat Cassandra puts a worry-about-death spell on her.
It's a pointless spell because Liz is always wringing her hands over something, but what's really stupid is that Cassandra spends a lot of time and energy working Liz' state of mind while all she wanted was to get the Collins matriarch out of her hair.
But sometimes stuff happens because something else needs to happen, in this particular case a tête-à-tête with the vengeful ghost of Trask.
And for a moment it actually looked as if Cassandra's story arc was going to end right there and then.

The award for most over-the-top performance of the week goes to....Willie Loomis! There's got to be an unintentional connection with the fact that Barnabas wasn't on screen to boss him around.
The award for most blasé, there's-nothing-that-surprises-me-anymore performance of the week goes to...Dr. Julia Hoffman.
What's that noise? Oh, that's the ghost of Josette sobbing in the basement.

The writing can be devastatingly atrocious sometimes. My goodness.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Sam Evans has died in the hospital, seemingly. If only there was a doctor to confirm it.
Trask, now appearing in the flesh, has sort of exorcised the evil spirit of Angelique. It's a very long speech and because it sounds as boring as a page from the telephone book I found it difficult to pay attention to it.
A new character shows up at Collinwood and identifies himself as Cassandra's brother. Well, seemingly.
Adam's English vocabulary is rapidly surpassing mine, and that means that Dark Shadows had the first AI: Adam Intelligent.
Barnabas and Julia have been on the move these last few episodes. If it's not an emergency then it's something that needs to be verified, like, a skeleton in the basement or something.

I miss some of the old locations, like the Blue Whale and the cottage where crazy Matthew and later Laura lived.
But it's possible that the cottage has been reworked into professor Stokes living room. I think the hospital corridor was previously used as the jail location in the witch trial story. But it's hard to tell when they're moving walls and stuff.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Vicky and Jeff Clark have no become the ever-quarrelling couple. They disagree about everything.

You are Peter Bradford!

Stop that nonsense, I'm Jeff Clark!

later...(after nightmare)....

You were right, Vicky, I am Peter Bradford.

No that's not true, you just think that because of the stories I've told. You are Jeff Clark!

Talk about identity crisis.

Nicholas Blair has more power than Cassandra/Angelique. That's a nice change.
It's just that all that long-distance hypnotising looks a bit lazy imo. 18th century Angelique was about voodoo and Laura Collins always did it with fire, but now they just inner-monologue other characters into doing or feeling something, it's no longer grounded in a specific kind of magic.
Nevertheless, he's a new character and that's more interesting than all those ghosts from the past who have already done their storylines.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Oh wow. Nicholas Blair does some serious commenting on Angelique and her bourgeois bewitchery. It's almost like criticising the soap itself, like Michael Sharpe once did in Falcon Crest's last season.
It's very exciting and I feel like anything could happen.

 

[Willie Oleson]

And that's it....the end of episode 533. And there's so much going on!

But what I've learned from Dark Shadows is that the most unexpecting things can happen, like a miracle or something.
Perhaps I should be patient and hope for the best...

 

[Daniel Avery]

Julia, after realizing she forgot to put embalming fluid on her shopping list.

 

[Willie Oleson]

I don't think I had thanked @Daniel Avery for the link to darkshadowseveryday.com.
Luckily/magically, the number of unavailable DS episodes has been reduced from 200 to 40, and I plan to go back to Collinsport "live" tomorrow or Monday.

But reading up on those missing parts is certainly not a chore, in fact it's almost as entertaining as watching it.
It's not like those synopses on wiki, like, "A goes to B, B tries to avoid C, something happens, somebody returns".
Oh no, darkshadowseveryday is a passion project, and even if I didn't already consider myself a DS fan then this website would cement the feeling.
It's got many quotes taken from the episodes, lots of images and it's very, very funny.

There are also some shocking revelations: the Vickyist comments, apparently not realising how important she is to this soap.
Whenever there's a need for redemption, a character or the soap itself, it always comes back to her. Only she, in all her badly acted cluelessness, can decide what's acceptable and what's not.
And then there's the mention of the four (!!) commercial breaks, which I think is only doable if you're born and raised in America.

Here's an interesting quote from dseveryday:

Then we go over to the Old House, where Barnabas is reading a book, which is not a good way to start a scene. In Monday’s post, I mentioned this regrettable trend of opening with someone knocking on the door while Barnabas is curled up with a book.

The main character on your soap opera should not have this much free time. It sets a bad example for everyone else.



Soap opera characters should always be doing one of the following things: kissing, crying, drinking, gossiping, running away from something, scheming, seducing, putting on a shirt, taking off a shirt, accusing, confronting, testifying, proposing, apologizing, divorcing, misplacing, switching babies, planting explosives in a wedding cake, quitting, slapping, suspecting, outsmarting, tampering with DNA test results, realizing at the last second, waiting for the killer to make a mistake, or opening a nightclub.

Reading is not on that list. We have no use for characters who read on television.

I guess it depends on how the character reads. On/in Dynasty there's a scene in which Krystle Carrington reads a magazine but clearly not in a focused way, and this tells me a lot about her state of mind. A daytime soap, and especially Dark Shadows, would give the actor a "thought bubble" to inform us about whatever dilemma.
Furthermore, soap characters sitting on their ass doing nothing interesting are bound to be interrupted by something or someone unpleasant.

It's a soap's "sitting duck" tradition.


https://darkshadowseveryday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/553-dark-shadows-jeff-barnabas-dry.jpg

 

[Willie Oleson]

Deep Shadows
Episode 558: The Long, Hot Summer | Dark Shadows Every Day

 

[Willie Oleson]

The thread title "Dark Shadows has arrived" still feels relevant today.

After the slight hiccup I'm back reporting live from Collinsport, and the first new episode starts with our very first magic mirror shenanigans. At long last!

Angelique, looking sexier than ever, is no longer in cahoots with Nicholas Blair-with-Flair. She's become his female Willie Loomis. Oh the schadenfreude.
The darkshadowseveryday blog mentioned the recent sexualisation of some of the male characters, and this is very true. Angelique behaves like a starved cougar when she preys on her juicy hunkmeat that is the poor unfortunate soul Joe Haskell.
I don't know what they did to his eyes but he's the creepiest-looking Dark Shadows character since Laura "diieeeed byyy fire!" Collins.
And, wow, Sam Evans is really gone. Talk about an unceremonious exit.

It's funny how Barnabas and Julia's dastardly Frankenstina project looks less monstrous simply because an über-villain wants to steal their...am I really going to say this....technology.

 

[rlr718]

The thread title "Dark Shadows has arrived" still feels relevant today.

After the slight hiccup I'm back reporting live from Collinsport, and the first new episode starts with our very first magic mirror shenanigans. At long last!
View attachment 54519
Angelique, looking sexier than ever, is no longer in cahoots with Nicholas Blair-with-Flair. She's become his female Willie Loomis. Oh the schadenfreude.
The darkshadowseveryday blog mentioned the recent sexualisation of some of the male characters, and this is very true. Angelique behaves like a starved cougar when she preys on her juicy hunkmeat that is the poor unfortunate soul Joe Haskell.
I don't know what they did to his eyes but he's the creepiest-looking Dark Shadows character since Laura "diieeeed byyy fire!" Collins.
And, wow, Sam Evans is really gone. Talk about an unceremonious exit.

It's funny how Barnabas and Julia's dastardly Frankenstina project looks less monstrous simply because an über-villain wants to steal their...am I really going to say this....technology.

I think this was just about where I left off when I was watching the dvds. Buts been a number of years and I would probably start at the beginning again.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Even when you consider that there's a companion in the making, Adam's story arc has reached a soapy impasse.
And it looks like that next "New Person" storyline is going to be brutally hijacked by Nicholas and Angelique therefore I'm not sure if Adam is getting any out of it.
Which makes it quite remarkable that he's still the most fascinating character to watch, and I think that has a lot to do with Robert Rodan, the actor who plays him.
It's no longer about "friend!" "food!" and "hurt!", no, Adam plays chess and gives Carolyn advice based on his findings in Freud.
But there are lots of nuances that makes us remember that he used to be the traditional Frankenstein creature, and it often looks better than necessary for Dark Shadows.

And to prove - once again - that Dynasty is connected with everything: Adam created by Barnabas/Blake, rejected by Barnabas/Blake, the transformation from primitive/hicksville to educated/sophisticated, obsessed with Carolyn/Kirby (there's a rather insinuating conversation about Carolyn's scarf: "I kept it, and sometimes I look at it") and if Dark Shadows didn't already have a lawyer (Tony) then I'm sure Adam would become one.
Although he did attack Tony so maybe he was after his job.
Btw, Robert Rodan doesn't hold back when he has to shove another Dark Shadows actor.

Forum member Alexis once said, Jeff is a**hole, well, Dark Shadows' Jeff C. really has become an a**hole. He was a great guy as Vicky's jailer Peter Bradford but now he's constantly shrill and agitated, and particularly vicious towards Adam.
But this is good because he also brings out the worst in other characters. Nevertheless, it's a surprising journey.

Elizabeth Stoddard Collins is still suffering from Angelique's spell, and she's worried to death about worrying about death. Meanwhile, Barnabas has already been buried alive twice (and trice, if you count the beginning) and he looks healthier than ever.
This storyline doesn't kick ass, imo.

There's a new character who kinda looks like Nicolas Cage, he acts as the meals on wheels for Adam now that Willie Loomis is doing....something else.


In the Soapy Shadows, through the Dark Windows.