We open in an old, abandoned fishing shack loaded with junk, much of it made of dry, brittle wood. The floor of the shack is on fire. Flames leap from the floor several feet up to the ceiling. Over the next half hour, none of the junk will catch fire, nor will the walls. During that period, strange and troubled boy David Collins and his mother, blonde fire witch Laura, will stand around in the shack, carrying on a conversation. David slowly recites the legend of the Phoenix. There are also several cuts away from the burning shack. We see well-meaning governess Vicki in the drawing room at the great house of Collinwood; we see reclusive matriarch Liz in her hospital room in Boston. Evidently it’s one of those leisurely shack fires that don’t demand your undivided attention.
In the pre-credits teaser, Laura calls David to come to her, deeper into the flames. He takes a few steps in her direction. After the credits, David is back where he started. This sets the amazingly dilatory tone that persists throughout the whole episode.
In the drawing room, Vicki is shouting at the ghost of Josette Collins, asking where David is. My wife, Mrs Acilius, says that on this viewing of the series she is starting to identify with the ghost of Josette. Josette must be getting pretty frustrated that after everything she and the other ghosts have done to try to explain the situation to them, the living still don’t get it. Vicki really ought to have thought of the fishing shack several days ago, when a ghost told her that there would be a deadly fire in a very small house by the sea, but it doesn’t dawn on her until some minutes into today’s episode, by which time a wooden shack would have burned to ashes.
Laura asks David to tell her the legend of the Phoenix. He announces the title: “The Legend of the Phoenix!” Then he looks at the teleprompter, intones a few more words, and looks at the teleprompter again. It is very unusual for David Henesy’s memory to fail him, and even more unusual for him to bellow his lines like some kid actor on a 1960’s TV show. Usually he’s letter-perfect and remarkably natural. But Diana Millay is also a good study, and she’s looking at the teleprompter today as well.
Maybe writer Malcolm Marmorstein didn’t get today’s script to the actors at the usual time. It’s easy to imagine that the producers might have kept sending Marmorstein back to do rewrites- this is the grand finale of the most ambitious storyline they’ve had, and it stinks to high heaven. Maybe by the time they realized they weren’t going to get a decent piece of writing out of Marmorstein, it was too late for the actors to learn their parts properly.
In a hospital room in Boston, flighty heiress Carolyn is sitting with her mother Liz. Liz has been in a catatonic state and off the show since #160, immobilized by Laura’s evil spell and Joan Bennett’s annual five week vacation. It’s the first hospital room we’ve seen on Dark Shadows, and it comes equipped with Ivor Francis, who would be one of the busiest and most distinguished character actors on American television in the 1970s. Francis plays the doctor who very patiently and calmly tells Carolyn that there isn’t any point in sitting with Liz tonight. Francis is always interesting to watch- you can tell that the doctor has a thousand interesting things on his mind, and are engrossed in his every word, expecting him to say one of them out loud. But of course he never does.
Vicki makes her way to the shack, where the fire hasn’t made the slightest progress. Maybe the real danger David is facing is asbestos exposure. Vicki tries the door and finds it locked. She stands at the window, which has no glass but is crossed with stout wooden beams, and shouts at David to come out. Laura urges him to finish telling the story of the Phoenix, Vicki urges him to stop telling the story and get out of the shack. Vicki can stick her hand into the shack, but can’t quite touch David.
Laura looks up at Vicki and says that David can’t hear her. Vicki keeps talking, and Laura sounds as exasperated as we imagine Josette must be. After all the research she and her allies have done, hasn’t she figured out that this was what was going to happen?
Returning viewers share Laura’s exasperation, because we know that Vicki has indeed figured it out. She’s spent weeks warning all of her friends that exactly this scenario would play out. But suddenly today she has forgotten everything. It’s the ultimate Dumb Vicki moment, when the writers paint themselves into a corner and escape by making Vicki act like a moron. Marmorstein has to keep the shack burning and David in it from 4:00 to 4:30 PM Eastern time, and if that means Vicki has to develop some kind of amnesia, too bad for her.
Laura says that David, like her, will attain immortality if he burns in the fire. We know that is false.The ghost of David Radcliffe, a son whom she burned in a previous incarnation, spoke through David at a séance the other day and told us that he was separated from his mother in the fire and has been an unquiet spirit since. Laura may not know this, and may sincerely believe that David will share in her resurrection. But Vicki was at the séance. It’s a bit odd she doesn’t try to correct Laura on this point, since they have plenty of time for chit-chat while the flames burn in place.
In Boston, Liz wakes up. Evidently Laura’s impending immolation has broken the spell she cast on Liz. After some minutes of preliminaries, Liz starts shouting “David! Fire! David in fire!” Carolyn and the doctor try to calm her, but she keeps shouting. Almost 300 miles away at Collinwood, David can hear Liz’ voice.
After he hears Liz, David can hear Vicki as well. Evidently all of Laura’s spells are breaking. Laura keeps pleading with David to join her in the flames, Vicki keeps yelling at him to stay where he is. Two minutes before the end of the episode, a burning beam falls, and Laura looks terrified. She delivers her lines after this with the utmost intensity. In an Archives of Television interview, Diana Millay explained that the beam wasn’t supposed to fall, that she really was frightened, and that after all those weeks on the show she had developed a maternal feeling for David Henesy that nearly led her to break character and try to protect him at that moment. She uses those feelings to great advantage, selling the audience on the idea that this is Laura’s last chance to take David with her into the flames.
Finally Laura tells David it is too late. David looks back and forth between Laura in the flames and Vicki at the window. The flames consume Laura as she cries out “From these ashes, the Phoenix is reborn!” David is horrified as he watches his mother disappear in the blaze.
David pulls at the window in an attempt to escape. Vicki calls him to come out the door. He does, and she embraces him as he weeps.
The last couple of minutes of the episode work well enough to show us what we are supposed to be feeling. Mostly that is down to the emotions Millay and Henesy are able to project when they aren’t burdened with a lot of lines they got at the last minute and that don’t make much sense anyway. It also rests on the foundation of the only relationship that has been interesting every time we’ve seen it, the growing friendship between David and Vicki.
Now that David has chosen the life Vicki is offering him over the death his mother represented, that relationship has nowhere to go. None of the unresolved stories has ever been interesting, and there is no reason to suppose that will change now. So today marks the end, not only of the Laura arc, but of Dark Shadows 1.0. ABC has renewed the show for thirteen more weeks, taking them to episode 260. At this point, there is no indication of what they could possibly do to keep the characters busy for that long.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 