Did I ever tell you about the time I watched all 1,225 episodes of ‘Dark Shadows’?

No?  Well that’s because I haven’t yet.  But I’m close!  I only have, like, 790 more episodes to go…

My Dark Shad­ows   pil­grim­age began back in 2009, a few months before Tim Bur­ton announced his film ver­sion.  It was on the rec­om­men­da­tion of my mom, who used to rush home from school to watch it with her sis­ter (and pre­sum­ably swoon over Quentin Collins, or some­thing like that).  At any rate,  I’m now 435 episodes in.  I fell off the view­ing wagon for a while last sum­mer, but started back up again ear­lier this month.  It’s now my new goal to com­plete all 1,225 episodes by May, when the new movie comes out.

“But Jaime, that’s crazy!” you’re prob­a­bly think­ing.  Who would want to spend that much time watch­ing some old, low-budget soap opera?  Well, I am noth­ing if not a com­pletest.  I can never be the type of per­son who just watches only a few episodes of a TV show, or reads just a few chap­ters of a book–even when it turns out to suck.  For me to fully appre­ci­ate some­thing, I must see/do/read/absorb it all.

Thus, the Dark Shad­ows theme has become part of the sound­track of my daily life.  I like to put it on while I’m work­ing at the com­puter, doing house­work, and I’ll also get a few episodes in before I go to sleep.  I’m aver­ag­ing about 10–12 episodes per day.  It sounds like a lot, but it goes pretty quickly since the magic of DVD means there are no commercials.

You too can over-commit your life to the same mean­ing­less (but ulti­mately reward­ing?) cause with these help­ful Dark Shad­ows marathon view­ing tips!

1. If you want to get right to the meat-and-potatoes of the series, I rec­om­mend skip­ping Dark Shad­ows: The Begin­ning (episodes 1 — 209), which takes place before the intro­duc­tion of Barn­abas Collins.  While I don’t regret hav­ing started from the very begin­ning , I do agree with the gen­eral con­sen­sus that the pre-Barnabas episodes are some­thing of a gru­el­ing exer­cise in endurance.  There are some unmemorable/disposable char­ac­ters, rather thin and unin­ter­est­ing plot lines, and although the gen­eral atmos­phere is creepy, noth­ing overly hair rais­ing ever really hap­pens.  It’s under­stand­able why the show was on the verge of being can­celled.  One can only stand so much of David Collins cry­ing like a lit­tle bitch and storm­ing off to his bedroom.
2. The first 370 episodes are avail­able on Net­flix for instant stream­ing, and the rest of the episodes are avail­able for DVD-by-mail.  But if you decide to fol­low Tip #1, then you can safely start at episode #210.  If you have a smart­phone, some ear buds, and the Net­flix app, it’s a great way to get through long car trips, wait­ing at the doctor’s office, or stealth-watching at church/work/boring parties.
3. Fast-forward is your friend!  Often the first three min­utes of each episode repeats the last three min­utes of the pre­vi­ous episode (remem­ber, this was a 1960s soap opera).  You can also shave an addi­tional two min­utes from each episode by skip­ping the open­ing and end­ing cred­its (unless you really enjoy watch­ing waves crash into rocks…over and over again).
4. You don’t actu­ally have to  watch  Dark Shad­ows, as in, with your eyes.  You can pick up almost every­thing you need to know just by lis­ten­ing.  The scripts are very straight­for­ward, almost mad­den­ingly so, often requir­ing the char­ac­ters to repeat key dialogue/plot points  many times over.  But of course, just lis­ten­ing to Dark Shad­ows means you might miss out on the endear­ingly cheesy spe­cial effects like float­ing hands,  red corn syrup blood, my favorite plas­tic bat on a fish­ing line.

There’s plenty to enjoy about  Dark Shad­ows,  if you can look past the campy act­ing, out­landish plots, and fre­quent mis­takes .  Over time you may even come to love these qual­i­ties, as I do.  The impor­tant thing is to have fun and let your­self be entertained.

Related posts:

1. Tim Bur­ton Con­firms ‘Dark Shadows’