Strange and troubled boy David Collins is on intimate terms with many of the ghosts who haunt the great estate of Collinwood, but few living people would be likely to be called his friends. In some ways the closest of these is his governess, the well-meaning Vicki. The formation of that friendship was the one narrative arc that consistently worked in the first months of the show. David’s first words to Vicki were “I hate you!,” the most usual theme of their early conversations was his wish for her immediate death, and he at one point locked her up in an isolated room where it seemed she might die. But in spite of all his displays of hostility, the actors played the relationship between the two characters as one of a steadily increasing emotional complexity, and when David suddenly declares to Vicki that “I love you, Miss Winters!,” we see a dynamic story kicking into a higher gear.
Now, it would seem that Vicki and David’s hard-won friendship has come to a new crisis. David had found Vicki bound and gagged, prisoner of the homicidal Matthew. Overwhelmed by his terror of punishment, David did not free Vicki, but left her to be killed. Eventually she would escape, but only because the ghosts intervened and scared Matthew to death before he could bring his ax down on her head.
Today we have the first scene between Vicki and David since he left her in Matthew’s hands. She is trying to interest him in his math lesson. He describes himself as “not a brain in math- but I am a brain in history!” Vicki cheerfully says that she wants him to be a brain in everything. After a few such inconsequential remarks, David soulfully asks, “Miss Winters, why don’t you hate me?”
David had been calling her Vicki for some time before her ordeal with Matthew, so the fact that he is back to “Miss Winters” is an indication that he’s feeling uncertain with her. She responds jovially, and when David says that he abandoned her to be murdered she points out that he eventually told someone who would be interested in helping her. The subject then changes to a nightmare David had last night about his mother, and his doubt that he wants to see his mother again.
I think this is a missed opportunity. David Henesy and Alexandra Moltke Isles are great fun to watch together, and the climax of the arc centered on David’s mother will have everything to do with the relationship between David Collins and Vicki. So the “Phoenix” story really is the crown of the David/ Vicki storyline. A heart-to-heart conversation between them near its beginning, therefore, would be something the series could build on for months to come.
Imagining what such a conversation might be, I think of the personage Vicki met after David abandoned her and before Matthew came back with his ax. The ghost of Josette Collins appeared to her and told her not to be afraid. David had been paralyzed with fear, so afraid he would be sent to jail for the aid he had previously given Matthew that he can do nothing to help Vicki. Josette is one of David’s favorite specters, and he would be fascinated by any story about her. Telling David what Josette said, Vicki could broach the subject of David’s own terrible fears. After all, none of the punishments of which David is so obsessively frightened could harm him as gravely as he has harmed himself with his fears.
Yesterday, David’s mysterious and long-absent mother Laura said that she is much healthier than she used to be, in part because she went through psychoanalysis. Thus, the theme of therapy has been introduced. Today, a candid talk between David and Vicki could suggest that he needs an emotional catharsis, and that if he doesn’t get it in professionally recognized forms of therapy, he’ll have to get it as the consequence of tragedy. Instead of that talk, they just hustle the whole topic out of the picture for a while. It is realistic that Vicki wouldn’t want to discuss it in depth right now, but it is a missed opportunity for the show.
There also are some miscellaneous scenes I’d like to mention. Before Vicki gives David his lesson, we see them sitting down to breakfast in the kitchen with David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, and his aunt, reclusive matriarch Liz. The kitchen is one of my favorite sets, and this is the first time we start a scene there with four people all sitting at the table. The scene doesn’t lead to much, but it raises hopes that the series will start to feature dialogue among larger groups of characters.
Roger at one point brings some firewood into the house. That’s a neat way of marking the transition from the part of the series including Matthew to the part including Laura. Bringing firewood into the house had been the usual way Matthew came into contact with the family when he was the caretaker, before he became a homicidal maniac. That someone else now has to perform this task marks his absence, and service to the hearth reminds us of Laura’s obsession with fire.
Liz breaks the news to David that his mother is back in town. David says he already knows. He says that in his dream he saw Laura wearing a blue coat and sitting beside the fire in the drawing room. Liz is unnerved by this. David was asleep when Laura was sitting beside the fire, and she was in fact wearing a blue coat. Roger refuses to be impressed.
Liz does not know what David told wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson on Friday, that he had seen a lady in a blue coat looking at him while he was using the swing set. Returning viewers know about that, and we also know that Laura’s fascination with fire is so strong that if her son remembers anything at all about her he would probably picture her staring into a fireplace. So the show is giving itself an out if it wants to abandon the hints it has been dropping that there is a supernatural side to Laura.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 