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Post by omega on Sept 4, 2017 9:45:12 GMT
There are lots of blogs following Dark Shadows episode by episode, but I figure this one is better than most. Danny Horn has started with episode 210, when a certain vampire came out of the coffin to eventually charm housewives and young children. He goes through episode by episode, examining things like the literary and cinematic inspirations, character designs and narrative tropes. Danny provides his own commentary on what he thinks works and doesn't work. Often it's very amusing, and the comment boards can be just as interesting a read. Read about him admire Julia to the heavens while forever calling Vicki and idiot. See his interest at the start of a storyline spike yet turn into a desire to see it end when it's outlived its welcome. He'll dissect where storylines and characters go wrong. And that's not all. Danny doesn't just look at the TV show. He examines the merch. The comics, the games, the novels, the audios, the bubblegum trading cards and the joke book which ran out of funny jokes too early in. He looks at the pop culture of the time and how that related to Dark Shadows. There's a big focus on House of Dark Shadows during his 1970 Parallel Time coverage. Danny even looks at the 1991 version of the show from time to time. It really is an education. darkshadowseveryday.com/2013/09/01/introduction/This is pretty much a shameless plug and a way to direct more traffic to the blog. But whether you're marathoning, watching through or just want a new perspective on significant events, this is the place to go.
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Post by omega on Sept 4, 2017 9:46:38 GMT
Episode 1068: Just a Girl“I did it from right here — with this coin.” Tumbling through time, Barnabas and Julia have come to a hard stop at 1995, lured by the siren call of alternative rock and Richard Linklater movies. No one has a mint-with-tag Beanie Baby or anything, but you can tell it’s 1995 because everybody keeps dying hard, with a vengeance. The Collinwood of the future is in ruins, abandoned and left to rot after a particularly brutal cancellation twenty-five years ago. The main characters who aren’t dead are irretrievably insane, stumbling through a devastated ABC Studio 16, waiting for someone to turn on the cameras again. They don’t cancel soap operas like this anymore; they have a much more humane system, where actors who can’t be placed in foster soaps get their own web series. Here in 1995, Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes, Dark Shadows’ signature twenty-something sweetheart, is now pushing fifty, and apparently she’s been pushing it with her face. She looks awful. She’s spent the last couple decades becoming that loneliest of creatures, a cat lady who doesn’t have cats. But from our perspective, this is still the Carolyn Yet to Come, and if Barnabas and Julia can find out what caused all this daytime trauma, then maybe it’s avertable. Like A Christmas Carol, The Terminator and 12 Monkeys, the question of this story is whether the future can be changed if everybody stops acting like a jerk for five seconds.
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Post by omega on Sept 4, 2017 23:33:50 GMT
Episode 1069: Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me"We can stop the cause of what's made all this happen if we go back!" There's a moment in this episode when it looks like Julia might give Quentin a lethal injection, as the Sheriff of Collinsport just stands there and watches. It doesn't happen, but that's how bleak the current storyline is, that you sit there and think, wait, is Julia casually murdering one of her friends? Last year, we spent six weeks with the main character of the show mind-controlled by lurking horrors from the depths of space who wanted to cleanse the earth of humankind, and it wasn't anywhere near as scary as this.
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Post by omega on Sept 9, 2017 9:10:19 GMT
Episode 1070: Gangsta’s Paradise"You don't understand the enormities of your problems."
It's not really about the future, of course. If it was, they wouldn't be doing Turn of the Screw II: The Returning. Dark Shadows has a future, of sorts, in reboots and reruns and spinoffs, but right now, they're running out of energy and ideas. They spent the spring making House of Dark Shadows, a feature film that explicitly rejects the idea that this is a continuing story, and kills off just about every character that you could possibly be interested in, to make sure that there won't be a sequel. Now they're thinking about what to do in the sequel. Also, they're making a daily TV show, and they're finding it increasingly difficult to imagine a future that runs as far as the next six months. But for two weeks, at least, they've managed to put together a tight, emotionally engaging mini-storyline set in 1995, which focuses on exactly the right characters and manages to turn the familiar sets into an alienating nightmare landscape. Today's episode is essentially the season finale, with Barnabas directly challenging the Big Bad, and daytime soaps don't do season finales. My argument, based on this episode, is that they should; they're fantastic. Read more of this post
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Post by omega on Sept 10, 2017 0:55:25 GMT
Episode 1071: Back From the Future“Is it possible that we traveled through time while we were on those stairs?”One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now — if I may use the phrase — be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? Read more of this post
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Post by omega on Sept 14, 2017 0:16:37 GMT
Episode 1072: Something Terrible“I was concerned, because people that are highly sensitive are usually very receptive to supernatural phenomena.”And on top of that, she’s psychic, too, so now we have another reason for Hallie Stokes to stand around looking breathless and unwell, and we don’t even get a weird theremin sound or the scent of lilacs or anything. “You know those strange feelings I get sometimes?” she says, so here we go; it’s one of those. Hallie’s telling Quentin about unexpectedly running into Barnabas and Julia in the hall earlier this evening, an experience which has shaken her to the core. “I guess the reason I was frightened was the way that they looked at me, and talked to me,” she grouses. “They said things that made me think that they’d seen me someplace before, and I know I’ve never seen them before!” She tries to catch her breath, which appears to be a constant pursuit. “But then when I brought them downstairs, I had the awful feeling that something terrible was going to happen!” But something terrible is already happening, thinks Quentin. It’s you. Read more of this post
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Post by omega on Sept 14, 2017 0:17:27 GMT
Episode 1073: Steer the Stars“It’s different here. I don’t have to imagine things.”Elizabeth Collins Stoddard is perturbed, and for good reason. Her houseguests vanished into a dimensional fissure they discovered in a closed-off wing of the house, and when they returned, months later, limping and gasping and covered in space dust, they issued dire portents of calamities to come. The house of Collins will fall, they say, collapsing into each other’s arms and weeping deliriously, and when you ask them for details, they fall to pieces. We don’t know, they say, keening. Nobody would tell us anything. The future is super cliquey. Read more of this post
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Post by omega on Sept 19, 2017 7:25:52 GMT
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Post by omega on Sept 19, 2017 7:27:16 GMT
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Post by omega on Nov 3, 2017 7:27:38 GMT
Episode 1076: Say Yes to the DressIt’s the second time around the track for this unfaithful adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, and it looks like we’ll be racing in circles for a while. Episode 1077: The Scent of LilacsFor the second time in a month, a romantic lead falls in love with a pale, mute woman with no personality, just because he likes the way that a flower smells. Episode 1078: Everyone Must Leave This House at OnceThe ghost of Daphne Harridge scatters journals and toy boats and hypnoclothes around the house, enchanting everyone but me. Episode 1079: Carry a Big StickThe countdown to calamity continues, as Daphne considers stabbing Quentin, Hallie apologizes for something she didn’t do, and Quentin abjures the spirits, to no avail. Episode 1080: What’s in StoreLiz sits around and looks at her horoscope all day, while Carolyn goes out and tries to get some kind of storyline to happen. © Danny Horn and Dark Shadows Every Day, 2013.
Please visit the website and read all the wonderful things he's written.
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Post by omega on Nov 3, 2017 7:30:19 GMT
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Post by omega on Nov 3, 2017 7:32:48 GMT
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Post by omega on Nov 3, 2017 7:33:59 GMT
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Post by omega on Nov 21, 2017 7:44:33 GMT
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Post by omega on Nov 21, 2017 7:45:23 GMT
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Post by omega on Dec 3, 2017 8:04:05 GMT
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Post by omega on Jan 1, 2018 7:30:13 GMT
Episode 1111: The HealerJulia emerges into the world of 1840, where she finds an insane patriarch, a silly novelist, and the destroyer of Collinwood: the Healer, himself. Episode 1112: The Boy FriendJulia safecracks Barnabas’ old crib, and learns some valuable lessons about playing with wild animals. The War DoctorCross-time traveler Julia Hoffman survives the opening skirmish of the Second Great Time War. Episode 1114: The UnshakeableIn which we meet the third Roxanne in four months. Episode 1115: The Gun RunnerGerard enters the room, and demonstrates the value of a road not taken. © Danny Horn and Dark Shadows Every Day, 2013. Please visit the website and read all the wonderful things he's written.
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Post by omega on Mar 5, 2018 8:13:55 GMT
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Post by omega on Mar 5, 2018 8:15:25 GMT
Episode 1121: QuentupletsAnother Quentin arrives, but unfortunately it’s not one of the good ones. Episode 1122: The Lost WorldEverybody refuses to tell Quentin anything about the multiple mysteries hiding just behind the curtain. Episode 1123: Jay-ZDesmond is contacted by a mysterious disembodied head lurking in his living room, and he absolutely refuses to do anything sensible about it. Episode 1124: We Had FacesTrask speaks urgently to Roxanne, as we pull in for an extreme close-up that takes us a full minute to extricate ourselves from. Episode 1125: Things You Say to Otis Greene, DeceasedThe noose, the noose, the unmarked stone, and then — what was it, again? © Danny Horn and Dark Shadows Every Day, 2013. Please visit the website and read all the wonderful things he's written.
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Post by omega on Mar 5, 2018 8:16:40 GMT
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