Sex in the Shadows

[quentincollins]

I was wondering recently about the "private" sex lives of the characters on DS.
While I think it was obvious that Carolyn was sleeping with Buzz, do you guys think that she was sleeping with Joe when they were togather? What about Joe and Maggie? Vicky and Peter?
I think we pretty much know that Quentin slept with most of the women in 1897.

[Uncle Roger]

Carolyn appeared to have a pretty active sex life, although she was almost a nun compared to PT Angelique.

[quentincollins]

PT Angelique seems to have slept with every man except probably Roger (who was probably gay) and Chris, who was a decent guy that probably wouldn't fool around with his cousin's wife.
Carolyn does seem like a good time girl, especially back in the early years. It seems likely that she and Joe were sleeping togather while they were dating. I also think that Adam raped Carolyn the day that she asked Prof Stokes to take Adam. A  scene ends with him grappling with her and the next scene she's upset and disheveled. Carolyn does seem to get less promiscuous and more serious over time. I'm thinking that she probably didn't sleep with Chris, and probably no one else until Jeb.
I'm not sure what I think was going on with Burke, Vicky and Carolyn.

[Uncle Roger]

As the series went on, Carolyn seemed to mature quite a bit. She's taken a job and doesn't seem to be getting hammered at the Blue Whale every night.

I think that she definitely wanted to sleep with Burke. And I don't think that he was above using her to get what he wanted. When Burke and Vicki got serious, Carolyn just moved on.

Laura Collins, in both her incarnations, appeared to be quite active as well. The contemporary Laura was seeing both Roger and Burke at the same time and it was implied more than once that Burke was David's real father. And the 1897 Laura cheated on Edward with Quentin.

[michael c]

given the outrageousness of the plots the show was rather traditional in it's attitudes about sex. i doubt the word itself was even uttered once in five years.

things were coded for the viewer.


no matter how late at night julia was working at the old house there was almost always a scene where she puts on her coat and returns to collinwood. why? because at the time it would not have been "proper" for an unmarried lady to spend the night in a house with two men. or even to leave the impression of it to the other characters in the series. for the sake of "propriety", to keep julia a "respectable" woman(even while she created artificial men out of dead bodies in the basement),it was essential that she remain at collinwood as the guest of elizabeth. things like that still mattered then.

whenever the plot necessitated that joe spend the night at the evans' cottage, they make a big deal of joe announcing that he'd just "stretch out on the couch", least the viewer get the impression he had slept in maggie's room. and then we see him there in the morning. maggie wasn't "that kind of girl". when vicki needed a place for jeff to stay she asked maggie if he could stay at her house, essentially a two room shack, rather than him staying in a forty room mansion. again, it wouldn't have been "proper" for the two characters, then unmarried, to live under the same roof. and vicki was nothing if not virtuous with a capital V.

in the DS universe extramarital sex was synonymous with vice and wickedness. so while the nasty characters like laura and quentin and angelique could hop from bed to bed(and even that was largely implied rather than spelled out in specifics)the "good" characters remained chaste outside the marriage bed. although the characters could have huge moral conflictions about other issues, sex was generally not one of them. things were pretty black and white.


even as attitudes about sex changed dramatically in the late 1960's an afternoon soap, sponsored by manufacturers of breakfast cereal and laundry detergent and marketed at housewives and adolescents, needed to maintain a traditional attitude in this regard.

[Gothick]

michael, the kind of thing you mention was, from what I have been able to figure out over the years, largely controlled not by the writers or producers, but by an office at the network that, if memory serves, bore the name "Standards and Practices."

I've just pulled out my copy of a book entitled "Dark Shadows: the introduction of Barnabas," a fan publication from 1988.  I was fortunate enough to be able to secure a copy when I first found the organized fandom in the early 1990s. (I may even have purchased it at New York's Forbidden Planet!)  On p. 132 there is a photostat (for you youngsters, that's sort of like a scan) of a memo headed ABC Dept. of Broadcast Standards and Practices, Eastern Division--New York.  I don't have the energy to type out the entire text, but the memo seems to imply that the script AND videotape for every episode of DS had to pass review by this office--essentially, an internal censorship board the network ran.  The photostat gives approval, with the proviso that corrections or suggestions as outlined be adopted, for the script, and mentions a screening report that would be issued once "the finished film" had been submitted for review.  (I frankly doubt whether the office had time to screen every episode of DS before it went out for broadcast, particularly on weeks when the schedule got tight between taping and broadcast, but who knows.)

This memo contains the often-quoted notation:  "Please ensure that Jason's wisecracks [to Willie, in a scene at the Old House] about 'light housekeeping' and 'the lady of the house,' as addressed to Willie are delivered so that there is no insinuation that Jason suspects a sexual relationship between Willie and Barnabas."  (One wonders if they were aware that many fans have seen the whole Jason/Willie thing as a thinly veiled sexual "friendship" with what appear to be bondage undertones!)

You can really tell that things have changed with what they were allowed to get away with, with the Yeagar character's Maggie obsession in 1970 and how Yeagar "expressed" it onscreen, and then the most dramatic change of all, when [spoiler]characters played by Jonathan Frid and Lara Parker actually went to bed almost in camera view, in circumstances that imply a rape (or at least some heavy coercion), in the PT1841 sequence.[/spoiler]  I don't know what the status of script review by the S&P office was at that point.

All this notwithstanding, speculation about hanky-panky between various characters is a lot of fun, and I'm enjoying this thread.  I also love it in 1970 when Carolyn informs anyone who cares to listen that "hypocrisy above all is the Collins family motto"--a great moment, in a GREAT storyline *wink*.

Cheers,

GothEEK

[michael c]

in the context of the series there was one early scene that i recall actually finding quite "shocking"...


during the burke/carolyn flirtation there was an episode where carolyn goes to burke's room at the inn for one of their ill-fated "dates". carolyn reclines on the couch and at one point actually takes off her shoes.

up to this point i had accepted her as a hair tossing coquette expressing her rebellion by gyrating at the blue whale. but here she seemed crude and even slatternly.

of course in a contemporary context this scene would actually play as rather tame but given the perimeters the series had set for itself thus far i was shocked.

[David]

Barnabas & Angelique doing the deed in Martinique prior to 1795 was hardly implied.

[michael c]

no.

but it was the cause of barnabas' downfall.

[DarkLady]

Gothick, thanks for the quote from Standards and Practices--what a hoot! Those things would seem very tame nowadays.

[spoiler]characters played by Jonathan Frid and Lara Parker actually went to bed almost in camera view, in circumstances that imply a rape (or at least some heavy coercion), in the PT1841 sequence.[/spoiler]

Interesting, but I seriously doubt [spoiler]whether any coercion at all was necessary. Bramwell did want to keep Catherine prisoner, but I never thought he would actually harm her, because it would give her more grounds for rejecting him.[/spoiler]

Anyhow, all this speculation is great fun, especially when we know, for instance, [spoiler]just how unfaithful PT Angelique was, and how "our" Quentin slept with probably every woman in Collinsport.[/spoiler]

[quentincollins]

I think Carolyn was fooling around with Joe, and obviously with Buzz. She was also almost certainly raped by Adam. I don't think there was anyone else she was intimate with until Jeb,and then at least thru the tv series, no one else after him.
I wonder about Joe and Maggie. Did we ever see him sleep on the couch after Sam died? Just because Joe slept on the couch while Sam was around, doesn't mean that Joe and Maggie weren't fooling around in the back of Joe's car on some deserted road. I know that Maggie was a good girl, but she was also a young adult and deeply in love. I don't think there was anyone else on the show she was with though.
I'd think Vicky would be virginal, except for the way Jeff and Vicky went at it like junkyard dogs in heat in their many kissing scenes. Restraint wasn't really the vibe they were giving off.
It was pretty obvious that Peter was having sex with Danielle Roget before he met vicky.                   

[quentincollins]

Laura was clearly sleeping with Burke before she hooked up with Roger. I always thought Roger was more interested in Burke than Laura, and only wanted her out of spite, since he couldn't have Burke, he'd take the woman Burke wanted to hurt him. I find it hard to imagine Angelique actually consummated her marriage to Roger, and prefer to think she just kept him enchanted to think they were having sex.
Angelique and Barnabas had their legendary nights on Martinique. I've heard specualtion that they were sleeping togather by the end of 1840. I'm not so sure of that, but I think it's possible. Angelique also seemed to be happy with Sky until Barnabas came back into her life. Was it implied that Miranda and Judah were lovers, or is that just my overactive imagination?
I do think it's funny how with all the crazy hours Julia spends at the Old House and the way Barnabas and Julia were always whispering togather everyone had to assume they were having a wild affair.

[michael c]

hypothesising about whether or not joe and maggie fooled around in the car is just fan fiction. it was never actually written into the scripts so one can speculate about such things into perpetuity to no resolve.


since these are completely fictitious people none of them "really" slept together. but the series was carefully written and structured to let the viewer know who was who and what was what. ingenue characters like vicki and maggie were very carefully written so that their premarital "purity" remained intact. carolyn was certainly more morally ambiguous but even with that we never actually saw her in bed with anyone until she and jeb were married. not a minute before. all of that was calculation on the part of the writers and producers and, as gothick mentioned, ABC standards and practices department. none of it was by chance.


perhaps because the whole thing was so outrageous in every other aspect to keep it from tipping the scales into a caligulan orgy a sense of sexual propriety was always kept in place.

[quentincollins]

That's really the point of the whole thread. Speculation, and also to gather our collective knowledge for what information we have. If someone could point out an episode after Sam died where Joe is still seen to be chastely sleeping on the couch, then that would be evidence against a sexual relationship between Joe and Maggie.
For example, I think there is a pretty strong argument to be made for virginity with Vicky and Maggie.
I think it's pretty open as to how far Joe and Carolyn ever went, but I think it was pretty obvious that Carolyn was having sex with Buzz, and surely Peter was sleeping with Danielle pre-1795. Quentin in 1897 had cheated on his wife with his brother's wife, and surely everyone assumes that he and Beth were sleeping togather during 1897.
I do like the idea that show was at risk for "tipping the scales into a caligulan orgy".

[Gothick]

Wow, I'd love to see a caligulan orgy in the drawing room.  What a hoot!  It would be interesting to see just what would happen to some of the ladies' elaborate hairpieces. It's shown a number of times that the women who live at Collinwood go to bed wearing their high heels.

Dark Lady, alas I can't read the part of your post where you are responding to me.  I don't know if it's because I'm on a Mac or just what, but the whole text is blocked out in white and clicking or highlighting on it doesn't help.

G.