Dan Curtis being impossible...Everything I see about him tells me I wouldn't like him. But if he hadn't been impossible, we wouldn't have had Dark Shadows at all. Good heavens, how many guys who did golf shows persuaded a programming manager to let them do a gothic soap opera?
I'm not quite so sure how much truth there is in that. For one, DC wanted to bring his dream to life as a primetime series. It was the ABC exec that he pitched it to who insisted it be done in daytime despite DC's objections. And for another, DC's impossibility often made the working environment at DS unpleasant at best and impossible at worst (who can forget the writer (and an excellent writer at that) who became so unsettled that he threw up under DC's pressure and quickly quit rather than work under it?). I doubt anyone should be thankful for that.
Having skimped on the Damian Edwards story and gotten away with it, the writers were then emboldened to skimp on many other stories.
It's most probably true that there's no one scene where someone lays out the entire Dameon Edwards story, BUT everything about how/why his death occurred is indeed explained. The writer's provided all the details. And personally when it comes to a lot of the shows that I watch I'm often happier not to have the writers spoon feed me and/or tie things up with a nice neat bow because it means the writers trust the intelligence of their audience.
What about that yachting accident? What about Harriet's murder? And that's just the big stuff.
It might have been interesting to get more details about both of those, but I don't honestly think it was necessary or consider the fact that we didn't an oversight because neither ultimately factored into their respective storylines main narratives, and getting into them deeper would have unnecessarily taken away time from the main narratives. The mention of the yatching accident was simply to plant suspicion and potential motive (knowing that there was possible suspicion surrounding the incident was all that was actually needed) and Harriet's ghost was simply a device to make sure Daniel never remembered Angelique (and knowing the simple fact that Daniel had killed Harriet was all that was needed).
And as for the possibility of Angelique never really doing anything that bad to Julia that others have mentioned, perhaps some have forgotten a certain 1840 turn of events involving Angelique, Julia and Roxanne which nearly resulted in a dramatic change for Julia? Or perhaps some have yet to even see it...