MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*
There are many worse television shows than the two-season superhero NIGHTMAN, which producer Glen Larson adapted from the 1994 Malibu originally written by Steve Englehart. In fact, based on my recent reading of the first issue of the comic, the show might be better than its source material. (For once, the suit in a superhero TV show looks better than the one in the magazine.) Since this was one of the few episodes of which I had semi-strong memories, I decided to revisit it.
The gimmick with this particular superhero was that jazz saxophonist Johnny Domino (Matt McColm) got struck by lightning. This caused him to be able to sense evil intentions in the hearts of others, which in turn led him to become a costumed crusader. One minor sidenote was that Domino can't sleep normally-- hence, the "Nightman" designation-- though in this episode the hero's confidante Raleigh claims that Domino rests while awake, like an ever-moving shark, and experiences what the script calls "nirvanic nightmares," whatever those may be. Raleigh, a technician, supplies Nightman with a suit that lets the crusader fly and shoot laser beams, while in a few episodes of the first season, a parapsychologist named Walton (Patrick MacNee) renders sage advice. In some early episodes the show's opening replays a line from Walton's first appearance to explain to viewetrs Nightman's special proclivities: the hilarious line "You're tuned in to the frequency of Evil!"
Most NIGHTMAN episodes were cookie-cutter fare, and they rarely extended over two linked episodes or recycled characters. "Magic" seems like a setup for something more ambitious, since the hero encounters a sorceress who seems to be a representative for "the forces of evil," testing Nightman because he has the effrontery to join "the forces of good." But if the writer meant to expand on that conceit, it never took place.
Though the sorceress introduces herself at Domino's night club using the puckish name of "Lucy Devlin," she dominantly uses the name Selene, the same as that of the Greek moon goddess. This cognomen may have been selected because the witchy-woman specializes in all sorts of nightmares to plague both the hero and his support-cast. (The authentic moon-goddess is not associated with sleep or dreaming in any way that I could find.) I won't relate all of the evildoer's dream-illusions since most of them are jejune. But after placing two regular characters into dream-trances-- with Raleigh being able to awaken from his while a cop named Charlie cannot-- Selene challenges Domino. She messes around with a few prominent Tarot cards and claims that she can send her victims "into the deepest recesses of their minds, reliving their darkest hours." Intending to rescue the cop, Domino lets Selene send him into a dream-world. However, instead of finding the cop, Domino witnesses a scene from his past, when he was eight years old and his parents were quarreling. Selene has already explained that cancer took Domino's mother Betsy when he was a teenager, but it's not initially clear why this argument in front of eight-year-old Johnny was so traumatizing.
Further complicating the matter is that though Johnny sees himself as an adult interrupting the domestic scene, in the real world Raleigh and Walton see him talking to empty air. Then Mother Betsy approaches Adult Domino and tries to kiss him in an un-motherly manner. Domino fends her off and the dream-Betsy turns into Selene (though she's still wearing the mother's dress). From the sorceress' mouth sprouts a huge threatening snake's-tongue. The hero breaks out of that dream briefly, consults with his two buddies, dons his Nightman costume and finds a way to enter the cop's dream and to pull him back to reality. That done, he re-enters his own trauma-dream and smooths the waters between the two parents and the suffering kid. Selene doesn't seem to be control of the dream anymore, for this time dream-Betsy embraces him lovingly in the manner of a real mother.
Then back goes Nightman to the real world (maybe), where Selene turns into a devil-horned creature and the two of them fight with energy-powers. They seem to fight to a standstill, at which point Selene reiterates that she and her Satanic buddies will keep watch on him. Then Domino apparently awakens in Really Real Reality, having maybe dreamed the entire sequence. For the closing moments Domino seems to re-experience his initial encounter with Lucy Devlin in the night club. The one difference is that, whereas in the first version he accepts Lucy's calling card and invites her to join a party at the club later, this time he tears up the card and does not invite Lucy-- which seems, vaguely to have the effect of banishing a demon.
I don't mean to suggest for a moment that any of this "is it a dream or not" twaddle holds any value. But even though the writer's overt intent is to show that both Young Johnny and Adult Domino both want to see the parents stop quarreling and reconcile their differences, the scenario has a strong resemblance to one of Sigmund Freud's famous assertions. The psychologist thought, without much evidence, that when a male child watched his mother quarrel with his father, the son would inevitably sympathize with the mother due to his Oedipal complex and might want to see the father perish so that he the son would have a clear shot with the object of his affection. The script for "Magic" never suggests hidden Oedipal urges in Domino for his deceased mother, nor hostility toward his still-living father (who's a regular character in the first season, though he does very little in this episode). Yet a lot of popular fiction recapitulated the Freud scenario because such a transgression automatically grabbed audiences. I think it's entirely possible that this was the only reason the evil sorceress tried to (clumsily) seduce the hero with the image of his mother, not so much because the illusory seduction had a chance to work as because such a transgression would seem like the sort of dark thought that might come forth from the deep recesses of one's mind.
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