The restaurant at the Collinsport Inn appeared in the very first episode of Dark Shadows. Well-meaning governess Vicki arrives in town, and stops there on her way to her new home in the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Counter-woman Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, gave Vicki a bit of a hard time at first, but quickly emerged as the person likeliest to be her friend. And indeed, Vicki and Maggie have visited each other, had heart-to-heart talks, etc.
We’ve seen the restaurant many times since. As part of the inn, it has always figured as territory associated with dashing action hero Burke Devlin, arch-nemesis of Vicki’s employers, the ancient and esteemed Collins family. It was Burke who brought Vicki to the inn and therefore sent her Maggie’s way, and the major scenes in the restaurant since have revolved around Burke and his doings. By making the whole complex of the inn an extension of Burke’s personality, it established him as a force equal to the Collinses with their mansion and its precincts.*
Today marks a shift in the use of the set from a symbol of Burke’s power to a neutral space where new characters are introduced without giving away their relationships to the ongoing storylines. While Burke figures in the conversation, he doesn’t appear in the episode, and the action does not depend on what he has done.
Maggie presides over the place. Her interactions with newcomers begin from the fact that she works there. The only other public spaces we’ve seen are the Blue Whale tavern, where the bartender does not speak and any conversations start as part of whatever story the speakers are involved in, and the sheriff’s office, which is nobody’s idea of a casual hangout. So Maggie is elected Welcoming Committee.
A blonde woman in a stylish hat takes a seat at a table while Maggie is at the counter bantering with her boyfriend-in-waiting, hardworking young fisherman Joe. Joe tells Maggie that the woman looks familiar, but that he can’t quite place her. After Joe leaves, Maggie gives the woman a menu, pours her a cup of coffee, and talks with her.
The woman asks about Grace, whom Maggie replaced at the restaurant five years ago. She confirms that she lived in Collinsport when Grace ran the restaurant. Since she is from Collinsport, Maggie is surprised that she came to town on the bus and is staying at the inn. The woman asks about the Collinses. Maggie says that high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins is the same as ever, only more so. When the woman asks what that means, Maggie explains that he is the person in town likeliest to play the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.** The woman asks about Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David Collins. She is happy when Maggie says that David is a cute, clever boy, and startled when she says that “a nice dungeon would help” him to be easier to live with.
The woman is never named, but returning viewers will have a very short list of people she might be. The ongoing storylines are:
- Vicki’s quest to learn the identity of her birth parents. The woman doesn’t look anything like Vicki, and the one potential lead Vicki has discovered in her time in Collinsport is a portrait of a woman who looks exactly like her. If the woman is connected with that storyline, therefore, it would likely be in some roundabout way- we wouldn’t expect them to cast a blonde actress as a close relative of the brunette Vicki after the big deal they made of that portrait.
- The mistress of Collinwood, reclusive matriarch Liz, hasn’t left home in eighteen years and no one knows why. Liz is the first person the woman asks about, so it could be that she has come to shed some light on this puzzle. The only women who lived in the house eighteen years before who have gone away since were the servants, so it could be that this woman is a former Collins family servant who has come into money.
- Homicidal fugitive Matthew’s abduction of Vicki. Matthew has always been friendless, and his only relative is an elderly brother. He has always lived in poverty, and did not know the servants who were connected with the house before Liz became a recluse. So it is difficult to see what connection he could have to this woman. On the other hand, the ghosts with whom the show has been teasing us since the first week have been making their presence very strongly felt as that story reaches its climax. The woman may have some connection with the supernatural back-world of the series, and that may somehow link her to Matthew or Vicki.
- Vicki’s love-life. Vicki and Burke had been spending a lot of time together, but she has told him that because he is the enemy of her employers they can never see each other again. Burke doesn’t seem to be ready to accept this. Since she has been missing, Burke has taken an aggressive part in searching for her. Vicki has been seeing instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, but we haven’t seen him since she’s been abducted (that I recall; the guy is very forgettable.) The woman seems to be a bit too sophisticated for Frank, but she may be a rival for Burke’s affections.
- Joe’s breakup with flighty heiress Carolyn and his budding romance with Maggie. Maggie doesn’t recognize the woman at all, Joe can’t identify her, and their working-class backgrounds make her almost as unlikely a connection for them as she is for Matthew. Still, if she is a former servant at Collinwood, she might have some connection with one or the other of their families.
- Burke’s quest to avenge himself on the Collinses in general and Roger in particular. There is a woman involved in Burke’s grudge against Roger- Roger and a woman named Laura were in Burke’s car when it killed a pedestrian. They both testified that Burke was driving, saw him sentenced to prison for manslaughter, then married each other. Burke swears that Roger was driving, and Laura was apparently Burke’s girlfriend, certainly not Roger’s, before the night of the fatal collision. Laura is still married to Roger, though they have lived apart for some time, and she is David’s mother. The mystery woman’s reactions to Maggie’s descriptions of Roger and David would make sense if she were Laura, as would her evident affluence and her separation from friends or relatives.
- Vicki’s effort to befriend David. If the woman is David’s mother, she could complicate this, the quietest but most consistently successful of all the show’s storylines.
Maggie’s reference to “a nice dungeon” is ironic. There are dungeons about, both literal and figurative. Matthew is keeping Vicki bound and gagged in one inside the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, where his helper David visits him today. David doesn’t know that Matthew is holding Vicki until the end of the episode, when he stumbles upon her. As David Collins, David Henesy gives a splendid reaction to this shocking sight:
Before the mystery woman enters, Maggie herself seems to be in a kind of dungeon. Her dungeon is built not of stone walls or iron bars, but of careless writing. Joe is filthy and exhausted after many long hours searching for Vicki, who is missing and may be in the clutches of a murderer. Even though she is Vicki’s close friend and The Nicest Girl in Town, Maggie doesn’t show a moment of concern for her. She giggles, jokes, and smiles all the way through her conversation with Joe. Not only is her dialogue out of character, it is composed entirely of cliches that remind you forcibly that you’re watching a 56 year old soap opera. For example, when Joe mentions that he crossed paths with Carolyn in Burke’s hotel room, she exclaims, “That is a convention!” The dread Malcolm Marmorstein strikes again…
*My wife, Mrs Acilius, developed this point in our discussion of the episode.
**Louis Edmonds would indeed have made a marvelous Scrooge. It’s too bad the cast of Dark Shadows didn’t get round to performing A Christmas Carol until 2021, two full decades after his death. It was a great performance, highly recommended, and is followed by a Q & A every fan of the series will find fascinating.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 