In honor of the shows 50th anniversary this week, I've kicked off a daily Dark Shadows blog, where I'll say a bit about each episode on the 50th anniversary of its original airing. As that's a lot of posts, I didn't want to clutter up things here at bare•bones, so if you're interested, I invite you to check things out over at Dark Shadows Before I Die. The odds of my making it through all 1225 episodes will likely be dependent on whether anyone shows up.
And who knows, with the appropriate encouragement, I might be able to talk Peter in to joining the fray from time to time...
See you on Widows' Hill!
-John
8 comments:
Well, I'll just expect a similar EDGE OF NIGHT blog afterward then. We'll decide at that time if you are excused from the no longer extant episodes. (Wonder if their scripts were archived anywhere other than a landfill...one hopes in Slesar's files, wherever those might be, at least.)
The Edge of Night sounds like it would be right up Peter's alley, though I know I couldn't in good conscience embark on such a journey without a commitment to watching every episode. So let's pencil that one in once someone digs up watchable copies of all 7420 episodes. :)
May I make a suggestion, in the name of avoiding frustration and extending sanity:
Back in the olde VHS days, the video distributor had the idea of combining one week's shows into a continuity, rather than each episode individually.
A week's worth of half-hours, less commercial breaks and repetitive credits, would come to about two hours viewing time; watching them on a daily basis would get you to the good stuff a lot faster, to say nothing of relieving the glacial pace considerably.
When I starting taping daily soaps in the '80s (All My Children and Edge Of Night principally; I was working for a living back then), I often found that watching a whole week at a time tended to sharpen my interest and give me greater focus on the stories.
This was my experience; yours may differ.
Again, just a suggestion - but you'll note that even in cable/digital rerun cycles, the tendency is to run at least two a day.
Best of luck with this, and I hope that your next-of-kin have been notified.
Thanks Mike!
Allowing a peek behind the curtain, I am actually watching them in larger batches. In launching the blog, I liked the idea of a post going up on the 50th anniversary of each particular episode's original airdate. In time, I might very well decide that a weekly post on the events of that week's shows might be a much saner way to go. We'll see how I'm holding up a few weeks in. ;) In the mean time thanks for your support!
Back atcha, John.
In re Edge Of Night:
I recall that a year or so after ABC dropped Edge, Procter & Gamble struck a deal with a cable outlet (USA as I recall) to show nightly reruns, going back to about 1980 (I think), through to the end of the line in '84 - about five years worth.
Later on P&G swung another deal for the just-dropped Search For Tomorrow; I thought I sensed a trend coming on, at least with the P&G soaps, but it went nowhere.
The point would be that P&G apparently held on (holds on?) to their productions indefinitely (?), so they'd be the ones to see about a DVD/cable/streaming/whatever thingy; in the case of Edge I'd consider going as far back as possible, to the Irving Vendig days in the '50s, to Henry Slesar's arrival in (I think) the late '60s, through to the last days with Lee Sheldon in the '80s (do you get that I'm a fan here?), just as soon as my 401k kicks in ...
...Oh hell, I'll settle for just seeing those USA reruns again ...
Well, I'm all for this.
I have read the posts so far and love them. I may be a silent lurker but I will be following!
Mike, EDGE, like DARK, also got syndie repeats on broadcast...not unique to those two, but rare in the soap world...(syndie offers from jump, such as STRANGE PARADISE when impoted from Canada, or MARY HARTMAN! MH! saw repeats in their packaging, too, unsurprisingly).
I love this idea! And I'm relieved I didn't think of it first.
Don
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