The only episode of the series to take place entirely outside of the town of Collinsport and the great house of Collinwood, this one is set in Bangor, Maine.
Well-meaning governess Vicki has gone to that town in search of information about herself. When she asks her employer, reclusive matriarch Liz, even the most basic questions about why she decided to hire her and how she knew she existed, Liz becomes evasive, then flatly and transparently lies to her. Vicki has found an old document in the house that may shed light not only on the matters Liz has already refused to discuss, but even on her questions about her birth family. Sure that Liz won’t give her any information about the document, she decides to take it to Liz’ lawyers, the firm of Garner and Garner.
Lawyers on soap operas don’t always follow the rules that bind their counterparts in our universe, but at least in this episode Garner and Garner are not going to tell Vicki anything their client does not want her to know. Indeed, the Garners are realistic enough to present a problem. One of them is Frank Garner, a young lawyer who is going to date Vicki for a few months. As played by Conard Fowkes, Frank is very much the sort of fellow you would expect to meet in a law office in Bangor, Maine. In this phase Dark Shadows still has some room for low-key stories and naturalistic acting, but no TV series this side of C-SPAN would be able to accommodate a character like Frank.
It’s a shame Frank isn’t more suited to Dark Shadows. The show urgently needs more young men in the cast. At this point, the only male actors between the ages of 11 and 40 they have who have appeared more than once are Joel Crothers as hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell, Mitch Ryan as dashing action hero Burke Devlin, and Dana Elcar as Sheriff Patterson. Sheriff Patterson is supposed to be older than the 39 year old Elcar, and is coded as an authority figure who is unavailable for dating. So Joe and Burke have to provide the male points on all of the love triangles.
I think Frank could have been saved had he been played by a different actor. However dull the dialogue the writers might give him, he is on screen enough that a sufficiently charismatic performer could have grabbed our attention. And maybe stimulated the imagination of the writers, so that he would have had interesting things to say and do. Harvey Keitel had danced in the background at The Blue Whale in episode 33, and so must have been available for a speaking part on the show. Keitel’s quiet, brooding intensity always convinces an audience that a character who is saying very little is thinking deeply and feeling strongly and planning mighty things. Keitel would have been quite powerful as Frank.
Fowkes brought a light tone to his performance, and that is welcome. Dark Shadows always struggled to maintain a bit of sparkle against the background of a setting so gloomy that in this episode Vicki finds it “hard to believe there was ever any real gaiety at Collinwood.” If that line is meant to raise our hopes that a Vicki-Frank relationship will create a bright new mood, it sets us up for instant disappointment. Frank is cheerful and pleasant enough, but he doesn’t project enough personality to change the feeling even of the shots he is in, let alone of the entire series.
Keitel has never been known for lightness. If you wanted that, you could have turned to another Blue Whale dancer- Frederic Forrest, whom we will see in episode 137. Thinking of the goofy charm that Forrest’s character maintained throughout a movie as heavy as Apocalypse Now it’s easy to imagine a breeze of fresh air running through Dark Shadows. Not only would Forrest himself have been fun to watch as Frank, but he might well have brought out some of the most under-utilized aspects of Vicki’s character. A handful of times in these early months, Vicki is allowed to make jokes, usually in her scenes with strange and troubled boy David. David will not be amused, but the audience can see that Alexandra Moltke Isles is capable of being extremely funny. A relationship between a character played by Forrest and one played by Mrs Isles might have given the writers abundant opportunities to showcase that side of her. A pairing with the earnest, cheerful, but entirely humorless Frank represents a death sentence for Funny Vicki.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 