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MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night

Huh...my programming guide has been erroneously using that show's description in its listings for the original on DECADES: "A primetime revival of the 1960s Gothic serial about a 200-year-old vampire. (Drama, 60 Mins.)."

That's a break from Me's usual programming...how long are they showing it? Are the SSFSN shows still airing?
 
Quickly from my phone: Today MeTV is actually showing the 80s revival of DS. Which was actually not bad.

1991, actually. Which is the only version of Dark Shadows that I've actually seen. I remember it mainly for its lovely ladies, Joanna Going and Lysette Anthony. It had a number of cast members who'd go on to other noted genre roles -- Ben Cross (Sarek 2009), Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Adrian Paul, Eddie Jones (Lois & Clark's Jonathan Kent).
 
The Binge has begun...Dark Shadows...now in living color!

I get a giggle out of how often the actors stumble over their lines...that would definitely be part of the drinking game!
 
Yeah, I just got home and found the original on-- the digital guide is indeed erroneous. Kind of too bad, since I wouldn't mind seeing the remake again. Not being fond of remakes, I would have preferred a sequel, but they did what they did well. And some of the casting was wonderful, particularly Joanna Going and Jim Fyfe.
 
Dark Shadows is one of those shows that, IMO, looked better in black and white. also, i looked ahead in the guide and apparently tomorrow morning they are starting over with the introduction of Barnabas. i hope my guide is wrong.
 
I'm afraid that DECADES's site confirms that...they're scheduled to reboot at 11 a.m. Interestingly, it looks like they're stopping exactly where their previous "Series Binge" left off...I wonder if there's a reason they can't or won't go past that point.

ETA: It's starting to look like perhaps DECADES only has a limited package of episodes to air, not the entire series. The episodes in question are 1.210 through 1.340 by the numbering system that IMDb uses...or 7076 to 7205 by the numbering system on the DECADES site. Approximately 130 episodes (I'm not sure where the 1-episode discrepancy in the numbering schemes comes from)...barely over 1/10 of the total series.

To put things in chronological perspective, that was six months' worth of the original airings...from April 17 to October 13, 1967. The Summer of Love in Collinsport!
 
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"Black Widow Strikes Again" / "Caught in the Spider's Den" was a terrible waste of film on so many levels. One, this turned out to be ailing Tallulah Bankhead's final character role appearance before her death in 1968. Not a good coda to a sometimes strong acting career.

Next, the kiddie-party felt and paper "spiders" were supposed to be the big cliffhanger threat, but if looks like something at the aforementioned kiddie-party....

With only four episodes (two stories) left in season two, the sharp dive to self-parody even pushed the once exciting adventure component to the side, in favor of...whatever they believed they were doing. After the ratings decline throughout this season, one would think a sensible producer would at least try going in the opposite direction of what was clearly having negative effects.
 
Batman: "Black Widow Strikes Again"/"Caught in the Spider's Den": Do spiders have dens? Anyway, for what it's worth, Marvel's Black Widow was introduced about three years before this episode. But it's a generic enough name that it's surely coincidental, considering the differences. At this point, surely Miss Tallulah Bankhead was much better known than Natalia Alianovna Romanovna. (And this was the final role of her distinguished career.)

We also get a cameo by gangster-movie star George Raft as the sketchy guy in the bank, plus a couple of Trek guests -- Meg Wyllie (the Keeper) as the robotic granny and Walker Edmiston (various uncredited voices) as a teller.

This is one of the few villains in the series for whom we know both a nickname and a real name, by virtue of their being essentially the same -- Mrs. Black, Widow.

It strikes me that Black Widow's gimmick is similar to Marsha's and Siren's in that it involves a woman putting men under her mind-control spell. But since Miss Bankhead wasn't the young sex symbol she used to be, they had to revise it to an electronic box instead of something more seductive. I wonder if maybe it was conceived for a younger actress.

Nice touch that Robin actually saved Batman and himself. I was expecting the usual thing where Batman was faking all along.

Reprogramming criminals' brains to reform them? Creeeeepy, Batman. Isn't that how Identity Crisis got started?


Wonder Woman: "Skateboard Wiz": Oh, this is a pretty dull one. From time travelers to illegal gamblers... oy. And I almost didn't recognize Eric Braeden with the mullet and porn 'stache.

But that was a very nice outfit Diana had on in the beginning. I love the hat. She also looked pretty great in her bathing suit. I think that's the first time she's been more covered up (well, slightly) after changing into Wonder Woman.

Weird that they don't seem to have looped the dialogue in the beach scenes, so it was barely audible over the crashing surf, when the dialogue in some other outdoor scenes was clearly looped.

I love the bit where WW jumps up to the window of the burning house and the smoke is billowing in reverse. Yeah, that's convincing...

Of course, the "high" point of the episode is Wonder Woman changing into a skateboard outfit and skateboarding after the fleeing car. What the hell? She's freakin' Wonder Woman! Why does she need a helmet and pads? And how exactly does it benefit her to ride on a small piece of wood? She wasn't even pushing against the ground to make the board go faster, but just coasting under gravity in a way that was somehow fast enough to catch up to a car... once it was stopped by a truck in its way. They keep giving Wonder Woman climaxes that involve her riding vehicles or horses and rendering her actual superpowers effectively irrelevant. It's really stupid, and this is probably the culmination of the trend. I'd call this a shark-jumping moment if the show hadn't already jumped several sharks by now.
 
Yeah I'm sure the network would allow Wonder Woman to wear her normal outfit on a skateboard on a Friday night with kids possibly watching the show.
 
I just did a quick google to confirm...it looks like you won't be seeing Wonder Woman on water skis. Forgive me if I caused undue mental anguish.

ETA: Barnabas attacked David with a rubber bat on a pole. It was clever how they subtly implied the menace of the pole by letting us briefly glimpse its shadow on the wall.
 
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Wonder Woman on a skateboard was just par for the course for certain companies hoping to cash in on the skateboard craze. In that same decade, Marvel soiled two of their flagship characters by featuring skateboards prominently...

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Kirby as a writer/artist had a certain kitschy flair for that sort of thing, though. KILL-DERBY! would have been right at home in his classic Fourth World books.

And to beat Christopher to the punch, Cap using a skateboard makes a little more sense, since he couldn't run faster than sound in high heels.

That, plus Cap is participating in KILL-DERBY! KILL-DERBY! has rules. First rule of KILL-DERBY!--Nobody tal...you know where I'm going with this....
 
To be honest, I think the show itself has retconned the whole "running faster than Mach 1" power out of existence by this point. My continued harping on it is more by way of a running joke (no pun intended).

Hmm... I wonder if they downplayed her superspeed on foot to avoid comparisons with The Bionic Woman. But then, I thought they were doing their best to imitate TBW by playing up the "Secret Agent Diana Prince" side of things. So I don't know what they were thinking. I'm not sure they knew what they were thinking.
 
Remember when we were discussing Fugitive-premise shows several months back? H&I has exposed me to a new candidate, which evidently wasn't brought up previously according to my search results.

Branded, a Western series that aired in '65 and '66, was Chuck Connors's next regular gig after The Rifleman. He played a former soldier who was drummed out of the army after an incident that resulted in an unjust charge of desertion. Apparently he wandered from place to place because his reputation as an alleged coward was so bad that it caused trouble wherever he went. And apparently there was a subplot that involved him searching for the truth of what happened, though I don't know how actively it was featured in the show.
 
i remember watching that as a kid. my dad recently bought the series on dvd. i think there were a couple episodes where the main character would find someone who could clear his name. usually the main character would show up and someone would find out who he was and cause trouble.

The Invaders is another Fugitive type show. made by many of the same people behind the Fugitive actually. dunno if that show was brought up or not.
 
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