Three people expressed surprise in episode 40 that Roger Collins wasn’t at his office. He still isn’t there today, and three more people are surprised. He finally decides to go in when Liz presents him with the alternative of looking for Carolyn.
Bill Malloy isn’t at work either, hasn’t been all day. He and Roger have been taking turns inviting themselves into Sam Evans’ house. Sam is also not working, and in fact takes time out of his busy schedule of downing one glass of whiskey after another to destroy the only thing we’ve seen him make as part of a paying job, a sketch of Burke. Maggie pieces the sketch back together- she’s also at home when she’s supposed to be working.
Telephones are unusually dynamic in this episode. Typically we see only one end of a phone call on Dark Shadows. This time, we cut back and forth between both ends of three telephone conversations this time. In the teaser Roger is browbeating Sam; Sam sets the phone down and walks off. While he gets another drink, the receiver is in the foreground and we hear Roger’s voice at the same volume as we did when Sam was listening. Sam comes back, returns the receiver to its cradle, and goes to sit down while it rings.
The bit when we see the phone and hear Roger’s voice, though Sam isn’t looking at the phone and can’t hear it, establishes the telephone as a character with its own relationship to the audience, independent of anyone who may or may not be paying attention to it. It’s a neat moment:
Liz calls the office and talks to Joe. Joe tells her Bill hasn’t been in all day. The stress in his voice, the papers piled on his desk, and the tight grip he has on the telephone receiver all make it credible that he’s the only person in town who showed up for work today:
Liz mainly wants to talk to Joe about Carolyn. Joe tells her he hasn’t talked to Carolyn in some time, and that he has no idea what if anything she is thinking about their relationship. While he breaks this news to Liz, we see him continue working, then cut back to the look of distress on Liz’ face.
Maggie calls Collinwood. Vicki answers and is excited to talk to Maggie. I guess the show is telling us they’re friends now. Maggie asks to talk to Roger. Vicki says Roger is probably in the office at this time of day, Maggie somehow knows he isn’t, Vicki remarks that he isn’t in the habit of confiding in her. Roger overhears this and asks “Is there any reason why I should confide in you?” When Vicki holds the receiver out to him and says Maggie Evans is on the line, he takes it and hangs up without so much as putting the receiver to his ear. Vicki and Roger then have one of their little quarrels.
That’s the only thing Vicki does in the episode. Her character is heading into a danger zone. Through the first eight weeks, she was on all the time. She was our representative, the outsider who knew nothing about the other characters or the town they live in, and to whom everything had to be explained. Now she knows as much about the rest of the characters as they know about each other, and we know as much as we want to learn by hearing explanations.
The major characters all have their secrets, but the only two who know each other’s secret are Roger and Sam. Vicki isn’t any likelier than anyone else to uncover that one. She has no secrets of her own, and her original story-line- her quest to discover her origins- is dead in the water. What’s more, Vicki is no good at lying. Soap operas are mostly conversation, and the big events on them are lies and the exposure of lies. The only time Vicki has tried to lie to anyone- in episode 13, when she told Matthew that Liz knew she was in his cottage- she was immediately found out, with disastrous consequences. If she’s going to stay relevant to the show, something is going to have to change, and fast. It’s fun to watch Alexandra Moltke Isles bicker with Louis Edmonds, but the characters they play need something meatier to bicker about.
This is the first episode credited to writer Francis Swann, indeed the first episode credited to anyone other than Art Wallace. Swann’s teleplay finds humor in the idea that so many people have taken the day off. Each time another character remarks on a case of absenteeism it gets that much closer to raising a chuckle. And Roger’s line that looking for Carolyn would require him to “neglect my vital tasks at the office… Dear me, no” is genuinely funny, especially as Louis Edmonds delivers it. The telephone scenes are also an innovation, and promise a new source of visual activity. Those favorable omens are offset by Vicki’s scene and its suggestion that her character is about to be allowed to wither on the vine.
A couple of the blogs I read when I prepare my comments made remarks about this episode with which I disagree. John Scoleri of Dark Shadows Before I Die says this of the quarrel between Sam and Maggie:
I know Sam gets frustrated with Maggie, but I’m beginning to wonder about their relationship. If he’s that close to hitting Maggie when he gets drunk, there’s no way I’m believing he hasn’t done that before.
To which I replied:
It doesn’t look to me like Sam has hit Maggie. She’s inches from his face when he is at his angriest, yet she doesn’t flinch, doesn’t slump down, doesn’t show any sign of withdrawal or fear or anger or panic or sullenness or bewilderment or any other possible response to physical abuse.
Patrick McCray said this:
There hasn’t been much happening on DARK SHADOWS in the last few weeks, but that doesn’t mean the show hasn’t been moving forward. There’s been a growing sense of doom throughout the show, and it’s obvious that someone is going to die. In this episode Sam rips up his portrait sketch of Burke Devlin, he and Roger lob threats at each other, Liz begins to draw Joe’s attention to his girlfriend’s romantic intentions on the family rival, and Victoria has been pushed around by just about everyone in the cast. In theory, any one of them is eligible for a ride in the bone wagon, but the show has been implying that Devlin is headed for a fall. It’s interesting that the show decides to go in another direction: I don’t know when Bill Malloy checks in at Eagle Hill Cemetery, but it’s probably sooner rather than later.
While it is true that “in theory, any one of them is eligible for a ride in the bone wagon,” I do think there’s a clear front-runner to be the first Dark Shadows character to be killed. It’s Sam who is obsessed with the fear of death, Sam whom Roger has threatened, Sam who left a mysterious sealed envelope to be opened in the event “something happens.” And, from an out-of-universe perspective, it’s Sam who has a daughter played by an appealing actress who needs a story-line. Maggie seeking revenge for the killing of her father would be just the plot to elevate Kathryn Leigh Scott from the bottom of the second string to the starting lineup where she so obviously belongs.
No other character has anyone so well-positioned to play avenger if they’re killed. The only keen attachment Bill Malloy has shown is his devotion to Liz, and in her scene with Matthew in episode 38 Liz demonstrated that she sees devotion from people outside the family as a tool to use when time comes to protect the good name of those inside it. So if she suspects Roger killed Bill, she won’t become Bill’s avenger- if she could order Matthew to throw away his own good name to cover up the truth about David, we can hardly expect her to expose Roger to redress Bill’s grievance against him. Indeed, when Bill is murdered, they will introduce an entirely new character to seek revenge for him.
Vicki is an orphan, who tells us in today’s opening narration that before she arrived at Collinwood she had never known a home. No one is likely to avenge her, and besides, she still does the opening narration for every episode- she’s supposed to be important, even if the writers can’t quite figure out what to do with her. Burke is supposed to be rich and powerful. Presumably he has friends, but we haven’t seen any of them. Joe is Mr Nice Guy and he’s mentioned a friend or two, but again, we haven’t seen them. The series story bible calls for Roger to die when Burke finally gets his revenge, but every time Louis Edmonds’ performance is the most interesting thing in an episode it becomes so much the less likely that they will ever get around to playing that scene. So the smart money, at this point, would be on Sam to be the victim in the first Dark Shadows murder. So much so, indeed, that it might not be surprising enough if it does happen- they may think they have to kill someone else to keep the audience engaged.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 