Alfred Hitchcock famously used the name MacGuffin to refer to some object that the characters in a story are all trying to get hold of. His point was that if the action is interesting enough, the audience won’t care what the characters’ ostensible motivation is- the MacGuffin can be anything at all.
It’s one thing to show a bunch of people all in constant movement, fighting, scheming, and racing about, for an hour or two. If that’s what you’re showing, sure, it doesn’t matter what they are chasing. But on a daytime soap opera where a story may play out day after day for weeks, where much of the time will be taken up with people sitting around having conversations where they recap plot points over coffee, and where at most half the characters are involved in any given storyline at a time, a meaningless MacGuffin soon becomes a bottomless pit into which all dramatic interest falls, never to be seen again.
Dark Shadows proved that point during the twenty or so episodes devoted partly or entirely to looking for Burke Devlin’s fountain pen. Today is the third episode in which well-meaning governess Vicki is aware of a locket sometimes worn by the mysterious and long-absent Laura Collins, and the locket is already beginning to match Burke’s pen as a source of soul-killing tedium.
A week ago, in #139, Laura showed the locket to Vicki and went on at length about how important it was to her. Yesterday, in #143, a policeman brought a locket indistinguishable from the one Laura had shown Vicki and said that it was found in the what was left after a fire destroyed Laura’s apartment in Phoenix, Arizona. When Vicki says that Laura had shown her the identical locket, reclusive matriarch Liz says that she can’t have seen the one in front of them. That seems obvious, since it has just arrived from Phoenix. Strangely, Liz goes on to deny that there could be a duplicate of the locket.
Vicki, Liz, and the policeman go to Laura’s cottage. Laura identifies her belongings, including the locket. The policeman asks about a woman whose charred body was found in what was left of Laura’s apartment. Laura tells him she and the landlord had the only keys. After he tells her that the doors and windows of the apartment were locked from the inside, so that the dead woman must have had a key, Laura makes up a transparent lie about a cleaning woman who may have had a key.
Liz and the policeman leave; Vicki stays behind, and asks Laura about the locket. As she had done with Liz, Vicki opens by claiming that she had seen Laura wear that particular locket. Laura very reasonably points out that she just got it back from the fire. Laura then does as Liz had done and denies that there is a duplicate of the locket. It would seem to be the easiest thing in the world for Laura to say that she had a duplicate made. After all, she could lie to the policeman to put his questions off- why not lie to Vicki to shut her down? Laura’s insistence that she did not show Vicki the locket is just frustrating.
Vicki goes back to the great house of Collinwood and crosses paths with the policeman as he is leaving. She asks him a number of questions about his investigation. He had been present when Vicki and Liz were talking about the locket, and had seen Vicki stay behind to talk with Laura. It would be natural for him to ask her if Laura cleared up her concerns. That he doesn’t think to raise the subject is a missed opportunity to give us a reason to care about the locket.
Vicki, Liz and instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank play a scene in the drawing room of the great house. Frank asks Vicki how she is. “Confused!” she answers. “You have a habit of saying things I don’t expect you to say,” Frank replies. Frank has no such habit. He says just what you would expect him to say, in just the way you would expect him to say it. That might make him a reassuring person to handle your legal affairs, but it does not deliver much entertainment value.
They all leave the room, and we see the Collins family album open by itself. It opens to a portrait of Josette Collins, wearing the locket. After Vicki and Liz return to the room, Vicki sees the portrait and wonders if it is a sign. She has encountered the ghost of Josette, and feels it is her protector.
This portrait of Josette looks quite different from the other images of Josette we have seen. At this point, the show is still placing Josette’s life in the 1830s. The portrait of her above the mantle in the Old House at Collinwood is just about possible for that period, although it would more likely have been painted twenty or thirty years later. Next year, they will readjust the family history and put Josette in the 1790s. This picture could have been done anytime between then and the 1860s:
Confused, Vicki goes for a walk on the beach to clear her mind. As if to acknowledge that the story of Burke’s fountain pen was a drag and to promise they will do better with their MacGuffins this time, they reuse the footage from #75 of Vicki walking on the beach, up to the moment when she discovered the pen there. They intercut that video insert with footage of Laura staring, evidently suggesting that Laura is watching Vicki. For the first time, we have clear evidence on screen that Laura and Josette are on a collision course.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 