Episode 188: There is no room for you in my future

Well-meaning governess Vicki has concluded that, because someone called Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and her son David Radcliffe died in a fire “exactly one hundred years ago tonight!,” blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins must be planning to burn her son David Collins to death before sunrise. David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, agrees that Laura is probably a supernatural being, and that she probably represents a threat to David, but is not convinced that there is anything special about tonight. Vicki has also brought dashing action hero Burke Devlin, who is David’s idol and Laura’s ex, around to her point of view about Laura, but he too is unsure about the significance of the anniversary.

Yesterday, the three of them planned that Burke would take David away on a fishing trip early in the morning, and that once they are well away from the great estate of Collinwood Roger will evict Laura from her cottage on its grounds. Today, though, Roger decides not to wait until David is far from Laura and perhaps clear of the danger she embodies. Instead, he insists on going to her cottage immediately, in the middle of the night. When Vicki objects, Roger says he wants to call on her while he’s good and mad. For his part, Burke resists Vicki’s urging to take David away at once, cheerfully sure that morning will be soon enough.

Roger and Burke’s decisions set up the episode. Roger calls on Laura, then reports back to Vicki and Burke on their conversation. Burke calls on Laura, then reports back to Vicki and Roger on their conversation. Laura materializes in David’s bedroom and tells him they will be leaving together tomorrow night, and that he must keep this secret.

These scenes leave us with two reasons to object to what Roger and Burke have chosen to do. First, neither man’s decision makes much sense. Roger’s choice is particularly idiotic, a problem the script lampshades when Vicki tells Roger it makes no sense to let Laura know what’s going on while David is still in the house. But considering that Burke has already accepted Vicki’s analysis of the situation, his complacent refusal to take David at once is just as inexplicable.

The second problem is that today’s scenes are just so much filler. If Burke were to take David away immediately and Roger were to wait several hours before telling Laura that she must go, we’d have a situation in which Laura would either have to take action immediately in order to get David, to demonstrate that she has some power we didn’t know about previously, or to change her plans. Any of those would qualify as plot-advancing developments. Instead, we spend the whole half hour marching in place.

Making matters worse, the plan Laura outlines to David promises at least one more episode with no significant action. He will pretend to be sick, she will pretend to go away, Vicki will keep sounding the alarm, and the rest of them will wander around with their tongues hanging out. They may as well have staff announcer Bob Lloyd end the show by telling the audience not to bother tuning in until Friday.

The actors salvage some good moments. When Burke goes to Laura’s cottage, she is packing her bags. He tells her that people usually pack their bags shortly before going someplace. In response, she asks him if he has any more fascinating generalizations. Diana Millay is so good at delivering sarcastic dialogue that this line is worth a laugh out loud.

There are also some interesting connections with previous episodes. That Laura is packing shows that she at some point unpacked. When she first moved into the cottage in #135, we learned that she had never unpacked during the two or three weeks she had been staying at the Collinsport Inn. Indeed, her only luggage was a single bag that was so light it might be empty. That was a suggestion of her ghostly nature. As time has gone on, Laura has become more dynamic and more corporeal, to the point where she has some laundry.

As previously when Laura appeared in David’s room, today we see her standing in the corner for a moment before the spotlight finds her. I don’t know if that was intentional, or if they didn’t think the television audience would be able to make her out in 1967. Maybe they couldn’t- sets weren’t so great then, and most ABC stations didn’t come in well unless you had an extra-large aerial antenna. But I kind of like it. The pose Diana Millay holds while waiting for her light reminds me of live theater, and her gradual way of starting to move when the light does come plays into the idea that Laura isn’t a full-fledged human being. She turns on like a machine.

To motivate David to keep their plan secret from Roger, Laura tells him that Roger is going to send him to boarding school. At this, David flies into a panic.

In the first couple of months of Dark Shadows, David was preoccupied with a fear that his father would send him away. When David overheard Roger saying that he wanted David to go to boarding school in #10, David’s response was to sabotage the brakes on his father’s car in hopes that he would crash and die. When David saw Roger driving off in #15, he spoke into the night “He’s going to die, mother, he’s going to die!” We still don’t know if Laura could, by some uncanny means, hear David’s voice when he said this, but we do know who taught him that boarding school was so bad that patricide was a rational response the the prospect of it.