Do fans universally dislike Nicholas and Angelique, or are they often made to seem likable and/or sympathetic?  I'm not sure about Nicholas, but Angelique is extremely popular, and not always in a "Love to hate" way.  I remember kids playing Dark Shadows as a kid, and lots of people wanted to play her.

Change the setting from the supernatural to, say, a show about Nazis.  A documentary is fine, but a show that made the audience identify and sympathize with Nazi characters would probably get a lot of blowback.  That's why a show like Hogan's Heroes made the likable Germans like Schultz and Klink, into idiots.  DS is in a similar situation, but unlike Hogan's Heroes, it really has very few good characters.  Almost everyone is deeply flawed in some way, and the ones who aren't (like Vicki), are the dumb ones.  I can see that some parents might object to it.  In a way, it's a grown-up show, like a supernatural Peyton Place, but it did have a lot of appeal for kids.

Episodes 21 and 22 of "Dark Shadows Captions", my comedy photo-novel re-telling of the original series, are now online:

http://graeme.t15.org/burkedevlin/current/

This week's highlights; another early reference to Mrs. Johnson, and more coffee jokes than you can shake at.  Not shake a stick at.  Just shake at.

(Note the new link; also note that it's a .org address, not .com.  The old link is still good for the time being

For a recap of previous episodes, see:

http://graeme.t15.org/burkedevlin/epguide/epguide.htm

See the Facebook group "Dark Shadows Captions" for discussion.

We're taking a break from the early episodes this week and doing a special standalone feature:  The Angelique and Nicholas in Hell Sequence.  I've written a brief intro for anyone who isn't familiar with the story up to that point, and presented those two episodes on their own:

http://graeme.t15.org/burkedevlin/current/

(Note the new link, also that it's a .org address, not .com)

As a bonus feature, we're also presenting the transcripts of those episodes in their original form, as a way of seeing how much is changed and how much isn't changed when an episode is capped.

http://graeme.t15.org/burkedevlin/current/original.htm

RECAPS OF LAST WEEK'S EPISODES

EPISODE 15 (released 8/8/11)

Roger is looking for his car keys, but no amount of scary incidental music is able to make this moment seem tense. Vicki enters, offering to help look for them. Roger again tells her to go back to New York, but she feels sure they aren't there.

Oh, by the way, she saw Burke in the garage, looking at Roger's car. Roger says it probably doesn't mean anything. After all, you know how padded these shows are. Liz tries to talk him out of going to the Blue Whale to meet Burke, but Roger explains he's got to, and it's a Lincoln/Ford's Theater kind of thing.

David tells Vicki he hates Roger and hopes he dies. A scene later, Vicki asks if he really meant it. Yep, he did. (There's your padding). David says Roger must hate him because he's not a nice kid. (That reasoning seems sound enough). Vicki retaliates with another Foundling Home story about a girl who thought everyone hated her, and pushed them all away, not realizing that the person who really hated her was herself! Unfortunately, the girl in Vicki's story solved her problem by sharing her Barbies and helping the other girls with their makeup, which doesn't prove too useful for David. David, always practical, says that that girl should have just put all her enemies up against the wall and shot them. Vicki says maybe that will really happen, if Sam Peckinpah ever directs a Dark Shadows movie.

Liz again tries to talk Roger out of meeting Burke at the Blue Whale, but Roger goes all John Wayne and says a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Liz wonders what on earth this could have to do with him.

Roger goes out to his car and starts down the long winding road, but before he gets halfway down, he runs off the road. His last thought before the crash is how ironic it is that this should happen the one time he got behind the wheel sober.


EPISODE 16 (released 8/8/11)
A filler episode in which Vicki and Liz fret about Roger at Collinwood, while Burke, Joe and Carolyn wait for him at the Blue Whale.

Roger wasn't hurt too badly in the accident, but Liz questions whether the accident really was an accident. After all, Burke visits the house for the first time in 10 years, asks Roger to use his car that night, and the brakes fail as soon as he does. Hmmm... Vicki says it must have been an accident, otherwise they couldn't call it an accident.

While Vicki is engaging in circular logic, Joe is looking like a square at the Whale, as Carolyn flirts with Burke and ignores him. Privately, Carolyn confesses to Burke her desire to be clubbed over the head, and dragged away from Collinwood by a dashing suitor, who will take charge of her and order her to do all the things she would have done anyway, even without orders.

Matthew tells Liz that he checked Roger's brakes two days ago, so if they failed now, they must have been tampered with. Either that, or the guy who checked them was an incompetent boob. Naturally, Matthew favors the first theory. Liz doesn't want the press making too much of this, and tells Matthew and Vicki that if the paparazzi come calling, to play dumb. Vicki questions whether she'll be able to do this, but Liz has something stuck in her throat, or something, and is unable to answer.

Joe puts his foot down, and insists that they go to that movie, but Carolyn invites Burke along! Unwilling to be a third wheel on his own date, Joe storms out to go get drunk, forgetting that he was in a bar already. (By this time, it's become clear that, although the Blue Whale jukebox has a couple of dozen buttons, it only has four actual songs).

Vicki lets slip to Liz that Carolyn went to the Blue Whale, and admits she knew that Burke would be there. Liz is about to go club Carolyn over the head and drag her back to Collinwood, until she remembers that she hasn't left the house in 18 years.

I should probably puff this up more, I'm just averse to puffing.  But if you want to see the original series again, this is it.  If you want to see a Dark Shadows comic book, this is that too, but with photos from the series (cause I can't draw for b.  If you want to see what Dark Shadows would have looked like on Mystery Science Theater, this is pretty darn close to that too.

The very early caps were a lot like MST3K until I realized that MST3K isn't funny in print.  A picture of a guy flailing about, captioned "Hi-keeba" doesn't get a laugh even though it does on TV (the timing is all different).  I tried plot based commentary caps for a bit and they weren't funny either (because you weren't hearing the original story at the same time).  In the end, the only way to make it work was to actually re-tell the story, rather than comment on the story, and have the jokes come out of the mouths of the characters, rather than cappers or cute robots.  (Although after that was done, Dan Curtis and Bob Lloyd were re-introduced as the Statler and Waldorf of Dark Shadows, for occasional commentary.  (It worked again, once there was a story being told for them to comment on.)

Here's 2 more sample episodes I didn't link to before, but which everyone will recognize.  Barnabas rises as a vampire for the first time and kills his wife (it's actually a lot funnier than it sounds).

http://graeme.50webs.com/burkedevlin/ch410/index.htm

Episodes 15 and 16 of Dark Shadows Captions, the comedy photonovel retelling of the original series are now online at:

http://graeme.50webs.com/burkedevlin/current/


WHO'S WHO GUIDE TO THE STORY
http://graeme.50webs.com/burkedevlin/01burke/index.htm

SYNOPSES OF PREVIOUS EPISODES
http://graeme.50webs.com/burkedevlin/epguide.htm

MAIN CAPTIONS HOMEPAGE
http://graeme.50webs.com/burkedevlin/


Coming in a few days, another standalone feature:  Captions for the Nicholas and Angelique in Hell Sequence.

Not her most famous, but the first one I think of (After Father of the Bride) is a Jack Benny film from the 30's, called Artists and Models Abroad.  I spent the last year and a half listening to 700+ Benny episodes driving to and from work, and when they were promoting that picture, Joan came on the show, to helped plug it.  And they'd had a hilarious bit a few weeks earlier, when Jack was trying to rehearse his part for the movie, and, since Joan wasn't there that week, Rochester played her part.

I posted months back about plans to institute a weekly Dark Shadows comedy caption serial.  It's up at last, at

http://graeme.50webs.com/burkedevlin/

Episodes 1 and 2 are currently available, along with a FAQ and QuickStart Guide to the first 126 episodes of the series.  It will eventually be updated weekly, once there's a big enough "viewer base" out there watching it.

None of the names have been changed, since nobody was innocent.  I've found that for a one-shot parody, goofy names like Captain Jerk or Mister Schlock are cute, but if you're reading for the long haul, they'd start to get tiresome.  So here Vicki is still Vicki, Carolyn is still Carolyn, and Barnabas will be Barnabas (once he shows up).

Although DS fans would obviously appreciate it most, it's written in such a way as to be (hopefully) understandable to someone who has never seen the show before.  Currently I'm sending out plugs.  Episodes 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 and the rest will be out there... as soon as there's enough interest to justify it.