The Case of the Disappearing Adam

[rainingwolf]

Since YouluvBarnabas, you must also luvAdam... When YouhateAdam, do you also hateBarnabas, IluvBarnabas?

 

[michael c]

the show's previous three supernatural characters...laura,barnabas and angelique...worked within the existing framework and tone of the show.even with the time travel element of 1795 it was still gothic melodrama.

adam and company changed(violently)the tone.suddenly it's not gothic melodrama but a full fledged "spook show" with the main cast relegated to the sidelines and monsters the focus.they'd spent the previous two years telling us that these are the important people then suddenly they're not the important people these are?does that make sense?

with the start of the quentin storyline that rights itself i think.

i agree with magnus' comments about adam's constant threats.as a plot device they grew extremely boring.ironically the more grandiose they got the more hollow.while killing vicki was somewhat achievable once it became the entire collins family it became an empty threat with no suspense.obviously they were not going to kill off most of the primary cast and viewers knew that.

[MagnusTrask]

Well said.   I'll add that no matter how strong a man is, his threatening to take out an entire family one by one at some unspecified date (perhaps weeks away) is ridiculous and unbelievable.   There are just too many factors to stop him.   People would run away, especially after the first throttling took place.  Granted, you want to avoid even that first one...  Adam's counting on Barnabas's desire for secrecy to be absolute, and Adam doesn't even know Barnabas's biggest secret, so he can't spill much.   It's bad for Barnabas to have some beans spilled, but worse than what Adam's making them do?  (But then, Barnabas isn't doing it personally!)   At what point do you say, screw it, I'm tellin'?

Okay, I guess he would do anything to keep all the questions from arising.

I don't know all the things that could be done about Adam's overblown and insanely open-ended threat, but Barnabas could think of plenty.  Perhaps privately-hired security goons to overpower and confine him, who would keep their mouths shut?  Anesthetic darts?   I don't know how Barnabas has money, apart for a handful of jewels, but he has it.   Call Animal Control?   Sell Roger on the idea of armed security guards for some made-up reason?  (Barnabas can't have Adam hurt, but the sight of the guards could change his mind.)   Do some Carribean voodoo he learned when he was young?

Really... worldly, very grown-up Barnabas ought to have laughed at Adam's threat.   Really, Adam thinks he can hover in some hiding place they'll never find, indefinitely, and strike down everyone in Barnabas's entire family anytime he wants, now or months from now, force Barnabas to dig up bodies and stitch them together in his basement (If it comes to that, though, he's having the help do it!), then after it's over, he can just walk off hand-in-hand with his custom-made mate into the sunset, unmolested?   

Is Adam going to go through his life threatening everyone's family whenever he doesn't get what he thinks he deserves?  His boss at the Seven-Eleven's really going to like that.  I think the writers were thinking of Adam more as a "movie monster" and therefore as untouchable and unstoppable, when really he's just a very big, strong (unarmed) man, whatever his origins.

[Lydia]

Playing devil's advocate...

they'd spent the previous two years telling us that these are the important people then suddenly they're not the important people these are?does that make sense?

This prompts me to think that Adam's threat to kill the Collins family didn't have to be completely ridiculous to the viewers.  The show started out with a sense that the supernatural did not exist but that Collinwood was a spooky place.  Things changed, and the supernatural became real.  The basic setup of the characters changed when Barnabas arrived on the scene.  Why shouldn't another character also cause radical changes in the show?  We could have ended up with a straight-down-the-line good vs. evil show - Barnabas vs. Nicholas - if the audience had responded favorably to the goings-on in 1968.

As for whether Barnabas should have perceived Adam's threat as ridiculous...Adam has been proven to have superhuman strength.  Hey, he survived a dive off Widow's Hill!  (Shouldn't he get a T-shirt?)  If he decides to kill a bunch of people, he has the ability to carry through on it.  And nobody will be running away.  They'll just be saying, “There’s a killer on the loose...better not go out at night...I think I'll run down to the Old House tonight and ask Barnabas if we still shouldn't be going out at night...”

Anyway, Barnabas knows that the driving force behind Adam is Nicholas, and Nicholas is bad, bad news.

I concluded during the Watching Project's watching of 1968 that my objections to the Adam storyline are character-driven, not plot-driven.  (Doesn't that make me sound highbrow!)  Adam is welcome to threaten the whole Collins family to extinction however many times he want, if he'll just do it with a little style. 

[michael c]

lydia,

i'm fine with a character causing radical change on the show if the character is thoughtful and well written...as barnabas was for instance.

adam was none of those things.he,and the plot,was boring and stupid and adolescent.

your remarks make me think you care little for the original cast.i like them.i thought they deserved better than they got for most of 1968.for me there are more important things than how a particular plot affected ratings.i don't really care how "favorably the audience responded" to the adam storyline...i thought it was stupid.

i was glad when the primary cast was returned to front burner status with the quentin storyline.

[MagnusTrask]

Yes, Lydia, even with a rampaging Adam going from one bedroom to another mangling Collinses, the survivors would still be waffling and wondering why they should leave the house!

[IluvBarnabas]

Since YouluvBarnabas, you must also luvAdam... When YouhateAdam, do you also hateBarnabas, IluvBarnabas?

In a word, no. I had at times conflicting feelings about the two men. I will allow that Barnabas and Julia probably should have handled Adam better than they did (having Willie look out for him was NOT smart at all). And Adam threatening Vicki and the Collins family, for example,  was purely Adam (well, actually Nicholas) and not Barnabas.

Barnabas had good reason to think that Adam would carry out his threat, as mentioned, Adam proved he could have the strength to do anything when provoked. However, does anyone really think that Adam would have brought himself to kill Carolyn, the woman he loved? I tend to doubt it. Vicki, Elizabeth, Roger, even David yes, seeing as he had no emotional attachment to any of them. But he DID love Carolyn very much. I can't see him doing any harm to her no matter how many times she rejected him.

[Lydia]

your remarks make me think you care little for the original cast.i like them.i thought they deserved better than they got for most of 1968.for me there are more important things than how a particular plot affected ratings.i don't really care how "favorably the audience responded" to the adam storyline...i thought it was stupid.

mscbryk, my remarks were, except for the last paragraph, not about what I liked on Dark Shadows, but rather about what the audience might think was possible and about what the characters might think was possible.  The last paragraph may have been a little misleading, because I see that I said “Adam is welcome to threaten the whole Collins family to extinction” when I meant to say that he was welcome to threaten the Collinses with extinction.  And please note that I wanted him to do his threats with style.  I assume you’ll agree that there was style in the original cast of characters.

There are certainly more important things than how a particular plot affected the ratings, but that wasn’t the philosophy of Dark Shadows management when they took the Leviathan storyline drastically off-course, and I assume it wasn’t their philosophy when they shut down the various mid-to-late 1968 storylines.  If there had been a flood of “bring back Adam” letters, Dan Curtis would have found a replacement for Robert Rodan.  I'm glad that didn't happen.  I can't imagine anybody playing Adam better than Robert Rodan did, and even so, I just didn't like Adam.