Well-meaning governess Vicki is being held prisoner by homicidal fugitive Matthew, a fact unknown to any of the characters in today’s episode. As in all episodes from the first 55 weeks of Dark Shadows, Vicki delivers the opening voiceover; she seems annoyed when she says that “the inhabitants of Collinwood have only begun to suspect I’m missing!”
Reclusive matriarch Liz is in fact very worried about where Vicki has got to. Housekeeper Mrs Johnson holds fast to the theory that she and flighty heiress Carolyn drove off together to visit Vicki’s boyfriend in Bangor, Maine, but cannot convince Liz of this. Mrs Johnson concedes that Carolyn had been very concerned about her appearance before she went out, and that she would not have been likely to make such a point of looking her best if she were just driving Vicki to Bangor.
Carolyn wanted to look especially good for the same reason she didn’t tell her mother where she was going. She is on a date with her family’s arch-nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin. By the time we catch up to them, they’ve gone back to Burke’s hotel room, where they are drinking, exchanging sweet nothings, and doing some serious kissing.
Just Thursday, Burke was kissing Vicki, and now he’s moved on. This shouldn’t reflect too badly on him- after all, he’s one of only two eligible bachelors in all of Collinsport.
The other eligible bachelor is Carolyn’s ex, hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell. Joe interrupts Burke and Carolyn’s kiss with a knock on the door. They gather that Joe is there on behalf of Liz and jump to the conclusion that he is trying to enforce Liz’ prohibition against her daughter dating the family’s foe. This leads to a fistfight between Joe and Burke, in which Joe fulfills the vow he made in #24 to punch Burke in the mouth. When Burke learns that Vicki is missing, he forgets all about his date with Carolyn and goes to Collinwood to form a search party.
Within one minute, Carolyn goes from the high of seeing the entire available male population of the town fighting over her attentions to the low of being dismissed as both of them start literally chasing after Vicki. Nancy Barrett usually throws herself into all of her parts with the utmost gusto, but she plays this bit of emotional whiplash very quietly. It’s an effective choice- the situation is so blatant that an underplayed reaction comes off as shock.
At the great house of Collinwood, Joe hangs his coat up. It’s the first time we see someone doing this from inside the imaginary closet in the foyer. While doing it, he sees Vicki’s suitcase, proof that she did not go to Bangor:
It’s a relief to have an episode in the middle of a captivity story that doesn’t lock the audience up with the captive. There are a couple of awkward bits. Vicki’s huge suitcase is in the coat closet, but there is no door separating that closet from the entryway, so it is simply inexplicable that no one notices it until the end of the episode. And, entertaining as Joe and Burke’s fight is, regular viewers will find it repetitious- Joe and Carolyn broke up weeks ago, long after they had bored us all silly with their pointless, joyless relationship. We know that Joe and Burke have nothing to fight about. And the conversations between Liz and Mrs Johnson go on too long and involve at least two statements of every point.
But those are relatively minor objections. This one moves along at a fair pace, has more action than usual, and the actors manage to paper over even the weakest of the weak points.
Dark Shadows Commentary 