Strange and troubled boy David Collins has run off to be with his mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson had been keeping an eye on him yesterday, and only let him out of her sight long enough for him to escape because she had to answer a telephone call from well-meaning governess Vicki. Vicki had set Mrs Johnson to watch David, because she knows that if he gets loose Laura is going to burn him to death. So it was an act of inexplicable stupidity on Vicki’s part to make that call.
Today, the show lampshades this problem, having Vicki say that she assumed someone else would answer the phone. But the whole reason Vicki was giving orders to Mrs Johnson in the first place was that no one else was at home. They take a moment that made Vicki look dumb yesterday and turn it into one that makes her look twice as dumb today.
Vicki and her allies, dashing action hero Burke and hardworking young fisherman Joe, remember something that happened at a recent séance. David had channeled the ghost of David Radcliffe, the son of one of his mother’s previous incarnations, whom she had burned to death one hundred years ago. David Radcliffe had said that there would soon be a deadly fire in a “little house by the sea.” Laura has been staying in a cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, and it could meet that description. Burke and Joe head for the cottage while Vicki and Mrs Johnson stay in the great house.
We see David enter an old fishing shack on the estate. As he does so, he shines a flashlight directly into the camera, creating a halo of light that fills the screen. He does this three more times during this brief scene.
While David settles in at the fishing shack, Burke and Joe go to Laura’s cottage. When they arrive at the cottage, Burke shines a flashlight directly into the camera. He’s way behind David, he only creates a halo effect once.
He and Joe don’t find Laura or her luggage at the cottage, but when they see the wood-fire still blazing in the hearth they know that she must have been back since leaving on a bus early this morning. Burke wonders if David might have gone to meet Laura at the long-abandoned Old House on the estate. This leads to a spectacular dialogue flub:
Burke: Maybe she asked him to meet her up at the Old House. I think I’ll go and check.
Joe: Want me to go with you?
Burke: No, I think we should stick together… No, no… we can’t stick together. You go down to the greenhouse and look through the woods. I’ll go up to the Old House.
This may not look like much on the page, but as Mitch Ryan delivers it his mangled lines are good for a laugh out loud. Joel Crothers can’t hide his confusion while Ryan is stumbling:
Back in the drawing room at the great house, Vicki has called the bus company. We see her on the telephone protesting “I don’t understand!” As Dumb Vicki becomes a bigger and bigger part of the character in the months ahead, we will hear those words many, many times.
The bus company tells Vicki that the driver reported a weird story about Laura. She was sitting next to an old lady. The old lady nodded off and when she woke up, Laura was gone. The bus had not stopped while she was asleep- Laura simply vanished into thin air. As a frequent user of mass transit, I enjoyed the idea of something uncanny happening on a bus. That was definitely the high point of the episode for me.
In the fishing shack, David hears Burke and Joe approach. He hides in a wooden crate. They don’t think to walk around it, or turn it over, or tap on it. Apparently whatever has knocked three or four standard deviations off Vicki’s IQ is contagious. Joe does give us one flashlight halo, but otherwise the scene is a bust.
Laura materializes in the corner of the fishing shack, holding a lantern. David sees her and expresses only very mild surprise that he didn’t hear her coming in. Within seconds, he is acting as if it is perfectly natural for her to be there. Considering that there is only one door and he is standing directly in front of it, his rapid acceptance of the fact that she has somehow managed to insert herself into the shack ought to be a chilling sign of the power she already has over his mind. We’ve seen too much dumb behavior on the part of Vicki, Burke, and Joe today for that to land, so the impact of the scene is blunted.
Laura gives David her lantern and instructs him to look into the center of the flame. Several times we have seen her sit with him by a hearth and urge him to look deep into the flames, but this is the first time she or anyone else on Dark Shadows indicates an object held in the hand and directs someone to “look into the center” as a means of inducing a trance-like state.
Alone in the drawing room, Vicki senses the presence of her chief patroness, the ghost of Josette Collins. She catches the scent of Josette’s jasmine perfume while spooky music plays on the soundtrack and the picture goes out of focus. She keeps asking Josette what she is trying to tell her. It takes her quite a long while to figure out that Josette is reminding her of the fishing shack.
While we were watching this scene, my wife, Mrs Acilius, wondered how exasperated Josette must be getting with the dimwitted living beings she has to work with. She imagined Josette at each turn of the Phoenix story starting to get her hopes up- “OK, they’re getting it!”- only to be disappointed time and again. In #149, she literally paints a picture for them, and they still can’t figure it out.
Meanwhile, David is complaining of the cold and saying that he’s tired. Laura refuses to take the lantern from him, quietly urging him to peer into the center of the flame, then talking about sleep. When he drops the lantern and sees the floor catch fire, he says they should get out. She tells him everything will be all right so long as they stay inside. We end with animation effects suggesting that fire is starting to surround them, while David stands quite still.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 