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.
Flashlight halo
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.
Flashlight halo
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:
What?
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.
The Three Stooges couldn’t have missed that kid
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.
Yesterday, the group trying to keep blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins from immolating her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, agreed on a plan. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin would take David away very early in the morning on a trip to a fishing cabin far to the north, near the border between Maine and Canada. David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, would evict Laura from the cabin where she has been staying on the great estate of Collinwood. This plan was unsatisfactory to well-meaning governess Vicki, who believed that the time of greatest danger to David was before dawn. So she sat in David’s room overnight and watched him sleep.
Today, David wakes up after dawn and Vicki urges him to go back to sleep. When he stays up, they spend the morning on lessons. When Burke finally shows up around lunchtime, he announces that come evening he will be taking Vicki to dinner at the local tavern, the Blue Whale. Apparently the fishing trip to the cabin far to the north has somehow morphed into a couple of hours in the afternoon on a boat nearby. This is such a jarring break in continuity that Mrs Acilius and I wondered if the writer of today’s episode, Ron Sproat, just hasn’t been watching the show.
Vicki agrees to go out with Burke on condition that the housekeeper, the wildly indiscreet Mrs Johnson, keep David in her sight at all times. When Mrs Johnson was hired, David took it for granted she would be his “jailer.” He used that word with his aunt, reclusive matriarch Liz, in #77, and again with Burke in #79. Today, it turns out he was right. At one point, Mrs Johnson picks up a chair, sets it between David and the door, and plants herself in it to keep him from getting out. Sproat may not know what happened in yesterday’s script, but he does manage to set up an echo with what was going on five months ago.
Jailer
The scenes between David and Mrs Johnson start off with some chuckles. David Henesy and Clarice Blackburn were both talented comic actors, and while they establish themselves as a restless boy and his irritable babysitter they seem like they are about to be funny. But they just don’t have the lines to keep us laughing. By the time Mrs Johnson tells David that she’s tired of watching him “doodling around,” we know the feeling- doodling around is all Sproat has to offer today.
At the Blue Whale, Vicki is too worried about David to keep her mind on Burke. Burke keeps trying to calm her fears. He saw Laura get on a bus out of town in the morning, and according to Vicki’s analysis it was last night that David was in the greatest danger. She still isn’t convinced.
Hardworking young fisherman Joe shows up. He tells them that he had looked at the nineteenth-century newspaper clipping that led Vicki to believe it was last night that Laura would make her move. Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, whom Vicki believes to have been an earlier incarnation of Laura Murdoch Collins, burned herself and her son David to death one hundred years before. Re-reading it, Joe realized that it was ambiguous whether last night was the anniversary of that event or tonight will be. So he went to the hall of records, and found that it was in fact one hundred years ago tonight that the Radcliffes burned.
Vicki wants to rush back to Collinwood at once to check on David. Burke suggests she telephone first and ask Mrs Johnson if he is all right. Vicki agrees.
This is one of the “Dumb Vicki” moments the writers make a disastrous habit of falling back on. When they can’t think of an interesting or even plausible way to get from one story point to the next, they have a character do something inexplicably stupid. Since Vicki is on screen more than anyone else, she is usually the Designated Dum-Dum.
At this point in the series, the only telephones in the great house of Collinwood are downstairs, one in the foyer, the other in the drawing room. Vicki has been living in the house since June, so she ought to know where the telephones are by now. Since David’s room is upstairs, the only way Mrs Johnson can answer a call is by leaving him unattended. Vicki knows that Laura’s power is so strong that she can do all sorts of bizarre things given a few seconds; it makes no sense at all that she accedes to Burke’s suggestion and gives Laura those seconds.
Mrs Johnson is reluctant to leave David alone, but he seems to be getting ready for bed. So she rushes down to get the phone. When Vicki asks her about David, she rushes back upstairs and finds that he has gone missing.
There are a couple of firsts in this episode. Burke has been trying to take Vicki out to dinner since the beginning of the series. They’ve had several near-misses, but this is the first time he buys a meal that she actually eats.
Burke first met Joe in #3, and within minutes he’d alienated him with an offer of a bribe. Joe found further reasons to dislike Burke as time went on. Those reasons have dissipated, and so today is the first time Joe greets cheerfully Burke and calls him by his first name. Joe and Burke were never particularly important to each other and there is no reason to expect they will become so now, but earlier this week we did see Burke and Roger, whose mutual hatred is a major theme in the show, act like friends for a little while. If Burke and Joe can make up, we might wonder if Burke and Roger’s brief détente might also point the way to some kind of reconciliation.
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.
Waiting for her light
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.
Yesterday’s episode ended with a séance in the long-abandoned Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Strange and troubled boy David Collins was possessed by the spirit of David Radcliffe, a boy who died in 1867. David Radcliffe and his mother, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, stood in flames, refusing to be rescued, and burned happily to death. Through David Collins, David Radcliffe told well-meaning governess Vicki and drunken artist Sam that he wanted to be with his mother forever, but that he was separated from her when they died. He also tells them there will be another deadly fire very soon, in a small house by the sea.
Vicki, Sam, and others suspect that David Collins’ mother, Laura Murdoch Collins, is a reincarnation of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. A humanoid Phoenix, she will burn herself and somehow rise from the ashes. The voice of David Radcliffe, someone of whom David has never heard, confirms their fear that Laura will take David with her into the flames of her latest pyre, and that he will burn to death there.
During the séance, dashing action hero Burke Devlin and hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell had waited outside the Old House. When today’s episode opens, Joe has apparently taken Sam home. Burke carries David into the great house on the estate, with Vicki walking beside them. David is awake and keeps protesting that he can walk, but Burke insists on carrying him to his room. Burke has never seen David’s room before, and David enjoys telling him how to get there.
David points the way to his room
Vicki is very serious. She tells Carolyn that their friend, parapsychologist Dr Guthrie, was killed in a car crash on his way to the séance. They both believe that Laura somehow caused this crash, and lament their apparent helplessness before her. Vicki also recaps the events of the séance, leaving Carolyn terrified that Laura will take David soon.
Burke comes down and says that David wants Vicki. Vicki goes up to David’s room with some extra blankets; he is already in bed. He asks her what happened to him at the séance. Vicki lies to him, claiming that he just fell asleep and started dreaming. We know that Vicki is a deeply honest person, largely because she is such an inept liar. When she is about to say something that is not true, she looks down, stiffens, and starts talking fast. Most of the time, Vicki’s attempts to lie precipitate an immediate disaster, and this is no exception. David blows up at her and declares that he is going to go to his mother in the morning and tell her he wants to live with her from now on. It would be hard enough for Vicki to respond to this under any circumstances, but having just told David an obvious lie she can barely find words suitable for mumbling.
Downstairs, David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, comes home looking miserable. Carolyn tells her Uncle Roger that she has bad news for him. She means Guthrie’s death, which Roger says everyone in town already knows about. He expresses regret that he behaved so churlishly to Guthrie when Guthrie was only trying to help.
Roger proceeds into the drawing room and sees Burke. Roger and Burke are bitter enemies, and when Carolyn said that she had bad news she may well have been thinking of the fact that Burke was in the house. But Roger knows about that, too. He crossed paths with Joe, who brought him up to date. Roger and Burke agree to set their differences aside for the duration of the crisis.
Vicki comes down and tells Burke, Roger, and Carolyn about David’s decision. The four of them collaborate on a plan to keep David away from Laura. Burke will take David on a fishing trip in the morning. Once they are well away, Roger will go to the cottage on the estate where Laura is staying and throw her out.
Roger and Burke go together to David’s room and tell him that Burke wants to take him fishing. David says that he has to see his mother in the morning. Burke keeps pushing the idea, describing a fishing lodge at a lake in northern Maine that can be reached only by seaplane, where he might catch a record-setting muskie. David can’t resist that. Roger says he will tell Laura about David’s decision while he and Burke go away.
Fathers and son
Roger and Burke do a good job of co-parenting David. There was some talk early in the Phoenix storyline about which of the two of them was David’s biological father; this scene shows that that was always the wrong question. If they were truer to themselves, Roger and Burke would forget their differences permanently, set up housekeeping together, and David would have two dads. Burke and the Collinses are rich enough and powerful enough to ignore convention, and people in town gossip about them constantly anyway, so why not.
Back in the drawing room, Roger and Burke are confident they have matters under control. Vicki isn’t listening to them. She looks at a contemporary newspaper clipping about the deaths of David and Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and notices something she had overlooked before. The fire took place “Exactly one hundred years ago!” The others dismiss this as a coincidence, but Vicki declares that the fire in which Laura will lure David to his death will happen within 24 hours.
Once you start telling stories about the supernatural, you cut yourself off from the usual laws that we see operating in our daily lives. You need some other system of cause and effect to maintain suspense. Dark Shadows settles on anniversaries as forces that can make things happen. Vicki had noticed hundred year intervals between the fiery deaths of women named Laura Murdoch, but this is the first time an anniversary is explicitly presented as the cause of an event.
Hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell is having a drink at the bar in Collinsport’s tavern, The Blue Whale. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin enters and annoys Joe by sitting next to him. Burke and Joe had some conflicts earlier in the series, and Joe had formed a decided dislike of Burke in those days. The conflicts are no longer generating any action, so Burke has been trying to befriend Joe. Joe isn’t having it.
Burke tells Joe that he hears he has been having some adventures. Joe says that he doesn’t know what Burke is talking about, and isn’t sure he cares. Burke says that he has heard that Joe and parapsychologist Dr Guthrie went to the old graveyard north of town, opened a couple of graves, and found them empty. This is true, and since the only people who knew about it were either sworn to secrecy or strangers to Burke Joe is mystified as to how he found out.
Burke tells him that well-meaning governess Vicki told him. “Vicki wouldn’t tell you that,” says Joe. Burke explains that she had to tell him, because she needed his help. Strange and troubled boy David Collins adores Burke, and Vicki is the leader of a group who are afraid that David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, is going to burn David alive.
Burke dated Laura years ago, and was still hung up on her when she came back to town. He’d been urging David to get closer to his mother and to go live with her. He several times made it clear that he hoped to marry Laura and become David’s stepfather. Vicki laid out the evidence that she, Dr Guthrie, and the rest of her group have assembled in support of their view about Laura’s unearthly nature and horrifying plans. Since he heard Vicki out, Burke has joined her side.
Joe is taking all this in when we hear a tinkling sound and a muffled voice. The bartender comes to him and says “Mr Haskell, there’s a call for you.” I believe this is only the third time we’ve heard the bartender speak, after #3 and #156.
We see Joe take the call. He is shocked by what he hears. He returns to his spot and tells Burke that Dr Guthrie is dead. His car ran off the road and burst into flames.
Joe mentions Vicki and David, and Burke is alarmed at the thought that Vicki and David might have been with Guthrie. Joe calms him, explaining that Guthrie was on his way to meet Vicki and David. They, along with drunken artist Sam Evans, are waiting for Guthrie at the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. They planned to hold a séance there to contact the ghost of Josette Collins, in hopes that Josette, who has been giving them hints and clues all along, will be able to tell them how to defeat Laura. Burke insists on going to the Old House with Joe.
Joe and Burke exchange all this information in normal conversational tones punctuated with shouts. We don’t see any other customers, but the bartender is right there, and while they are on the way out we even see him react to their mention of the séance.
Bob the bartender, wishing those two would keep their gobs shut
I’m sure they are relying on the bartender’s professional discretion. Still, they are catching on that Laura is extremely dangerous, participating in séances can wreck the reputation of people in the businesses Joe and Burke are in, and Joe and Guthrie’s grave-opening expedition was quite obviously something that could get them sent to jail. You’d think they would want to spare him the responsibility for so much sensitive information. It’s just inconsiderate to dump all that on a guy in return for the tips you give him for two beers.
At the Old House, Vicki, David, and Sam spend more than one scene waiting for Guthrie to show up. There is quite a bit of filler in this episode; when Sam says “I hate waiting like this!,” we can sympathize. Even after Joe and Burke show up with the news of Guthrie’s death, there is yet another scene of filler, in which Sam rants about Laura as the cause of Guthrie’s death and can’t decide whether he is willing to join Vicki and David in going through with the séance.
Of course they do go through with it. A ghost begins speaking through David, but it is not the spirit of Josette. It is David Radcliffe.
David Collins had not heard of David Radcliffe, but Vicki and others know that in 1867, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe burned herself alive with her young son David. A contemporary newspaper account reported that David Radcliffe happily joined his mother in the flames, refusing to be rescued. Vicki and her group believe that the current Laura Murdoch Collins is a reincarnation of that other Laura Murdoch, and that, as a humanoid Phoenix, she achieves a cyclical immortality by burning herself alive and rising from the ashes. They fear that Laura Murdoch Collins will take David Collins into the flames with her, and that he, like his namesake, will choose to burn to death.
They do not know whether David Radcliffe shared his mother’s immortality, or whether David Collins will rise again if he burns with his mother. The show has repeatedly identified ghosts as unquiet spirits of the dead, so David Radcliffe’s appearance as a ghost speaking through David Collins would by itself militate against the idea that Laura’s resurrections are shared by her sons. In his speech, David Radcliffe describes himself being held by his mother while the fire rages and wanting to be with her forever, but ends with an tortured cry as he asks where she has gone. In agony, David screams and collapses.
This scene is a remarkable tour de force for David Henesy, and completes the audience’s understanding of what Laura is and what danger she represents. Her son is a means to the end of her own immortality, not a partner in that immortality. That Laura Murdoch Collins gave her son the same name her previous incarnation gave to the son she killed for her own sake shows that it was her plan all along to make him a human sacrifice to her inhuman survival. If Vicki can rescue David from the fate Laura has in store for him, she will not only prolong his life, but give him an altogether new life and give him herself as the mother of that life.
So, there are two sources of suspense. First, what further obstacles will Vicki encounter on the way to rescuing David, and what will be lost as she makes her way through them? There might be further deaths- Guthrie might have been the most readily disposable character on the show at the end of last week, but there are several others without whom Dark Shadows could go on just fine. There could also be lots of changes in relationships among characters, or in the personalities of characters we like as they are.
That brings us to the second source of suspense. It is a question that has been on the minds of regular viewers since the Phoenix story began approaching its climax. What will the show be about once Laura is gone? The only consistently interesting relationship on Dark Shadows so far has been that between Vicki and David, and once Vicki has established herself as David’s de facto mother that is going to be defined pretty securely. There might be periodic threats to their friendship, but once Vicki has managed to replace David’s mother there won’t be much doubt that she can overcome any lesser disruptions.
Art Wallace’s original story bible for the series, Shadows on the Wall, called for Laura Robin Collins to die under mysterious circumstances and for Vicki to be put on trial for her murder. That does not sound promising. We’ve spent months of episodes, most of them dismally slow-paced, figuring out information about Laura. Most of the characters now know as much about her as we do. An entire narrative arc spent rehashing what they’ve already rehashed beyond endurance would be impossible for even the most devoted fans to watch.
Vicki is to some extent based on Jane Eyre, a governess who ends by marrying her charge’s father, Mr Rochester. David’s father is named Roger, which is as close as they could get to “Rochester” without making people miss Eddie Anderson. They brought up the idea of Vicki and Roger going on dates in #72, #78, and #96, but in each case Roger was merely trying to keep Vicki from making trouble for him, very possibly by killing her.
Further, the show has been hinting very heavily from the first day that Roger is Vicki’s uncle, the biological daughter of his sister Liz. Wallace McBride mentions the single most compelling piece of evidence:
In Dark Shadows, your reflection always tells the truth.
Duality was a series theme from the very first episode, which implemented a shocking amount of symbolism in its photography. As a daily series, it was never designed to withstand the scrutiny of re-runs, let alone the far-flung fantasy concept of “home video.” The series was as disposable as a newspaper, something to be enjoyed for a few minutes and then forgotten. The writers and directors of Dark Shadows did not get that memo, though, and set about creating afternoon entertainment that was more psychologically complex than it had any right to be.
The first episode established this dynamic immediately. Victoria Winters is riding on a train through the night, her reflection in the glass beside her. We discover that she’s a “foundling,” anonymously abandoned to the state as an infant. She’s traveling to Collinsport, Maine, to take a job — and to learn the truth about her own mysterious past.
In other words, she’s looking for the real Victoria Winters — represented throughout this episode by her own reflection. We see Victoria reflected back in the window of the train carriage, the mirror in the restaurant of the Collinsport Inn, and in a mirror (in a flashback!) at her bedroom at the foundling home.
Most telling is the reveal in the episode’s final scene. When she arrives at her destination, the doors of Collinwood open to show Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard standing in the entrance, looking very much like Victoria’s reflection. (For me, this is all the evidence I’ve ever needed that Liz was Victoria’s mother.)
Among soap opera characters, attempted murder is frequently a prelude to romance, and an engagement between two people who are, unknown to themselves, closely related can build suspense as we wonder whether a third person who does know the truth will tell before it is too late.
But as Roger’s character develops it becomes ever clearer that he is not interested in marrying anyone. He is a narcissist, a coward, and devoid of family feeling. Worst of all, he’s spent all of his money. If she marries him, Vicki will either join him as his sister Liz’ charity case or get a blue-collar job and support him in a style to which he has no conceivable intention of becoming accustomed. That might work on another show, but it doesn’t sound at all right for Dark Shadows.
There are some odds and ends lying around from previous storylines, but those didn’t take off the first time we saw them and aren’t likely to be any more exciting now. Why is Liz a recluse? They haven’t shown us anyplace she’d be interested in going. Will Burke be avenged on Roger? Not if it requires writing Roger off the show- he’s hilarious. Will Joe marry Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town and daughter of Sam? Why not, they’re happy together and no one is against it. Will a serious romance blossom between Vicki and instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank? That’s such an urgent question that no one has noticed Frank isn’t on the show anymore. There just isn’t an episode’s worth of story in any of those questions. You may as well ask whether any more of Burke’s custom-made fountain pens will show up in town, or what happened to the dartboard Roger used to have in his office, back when he had an office.
Once it finishes with Laura, Dark Shadows is going to need a reboot. Both Laura’s storyline and the one that immediately preceded her, that of crazed groundskeeper Matthew Morgan, led us into the supernatural back-world of the show’s universe. That’s clearly where Dark Shadows 2.0 will be heading, and probably in a way too dynamic for the wispy presences of Josette and the Widows to survive. There may also be an attempt to mine some of the leftover pieces from Shadows on the Wall, but it’s hard to see how anything in there will get you very far.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins finds visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie writhing in agony on the floor of the drawing room. David calls for well-meaning governess Vicki.
As Guthrie struggles, the image of David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, is superimposed on the screen. This visual effect lies somewhat beyond Dark Shadows’ ability to achieve clearly. One of the hallmarks of the show is its ambition; time and again, their reach exceeds their grasp. But that adds to the excitement of it- there is always the chance that the next time they try something extraordinary, it will actually work.
Look at this pile of shapes long enough, and you’ll make out an extreme closeup of Laura over an image of the struggling Guthrie
Guthrie clutches at David. David is a true New Englander in his reaction to Guthrie’s touch. When a man hugs him, he recoils and gives a horrified look.
Whaddaya, fruity?
As Guthrie holds onto David, we see Laura looking confused. Apparently her spells don’t work against someone in contact with David. As he regains his strength, Guthrie thanks David for saving him and tells him that he is “the key.”
Guthrie is getting some people together to have a séance in the Old House on the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood. The ghost of Josette Collins has been trying to warn people about the danger Laura poses to David. Josette spends most of her time haunting the Old House, so he thinks she should be able to speak most clearly there.
After David rescues him, Guthrie knows that Laura is trying to use her powers to silence him and that he will be helpless if he is alone. He gets into his car to drive by himself into town and back. Vicki knows that Laura is nearby and has been thwarted because David was out of her control. She leaves David alone just inside the front door while she wanders off for several minutes. Malcolm Marmorstein wrote today’s script, so those are only the most glaring of several inexplicable acts of stupidity in it.
While David is standing in the entryway waiting for Vicki, Laura sweeps in and asks him to come away with her at once. He tells her that he can’t go tonight- Vicki is going to take him someplace special. When Vicki finally drifts back in, she stands her ground. She tells Laura that “Soon, we may know everything there is to know.” She is wearing a very sweet smile when she says this, but Laura’s reaction and the background music both make it obvious that it is a threat.
After Vicki and David leave, wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson comes out and tells Laura that “his nibs”* Guthrie can’t hide everything from her with his whispers. She saw the table and four chairs they took to the Old House, and it’s her guess that they are going there to have another séance. She also tells Laura that Guthrie is by himself on the road into town at the moment. Laura seems very interested, as if this is information for which she will find a use.
Vicki and David enter the Old House. Vicki sets up the table for the séance and tells David that they will be trying to reach Josette. He is jubilant at the prospect.
Drunken artist Sam Evans shows up for the séance. He and David have a pleasant conversation about the portrait of Josette hanging above the mantle. Sam is impressed by its artistic achievement, and amazed at its fine condition amid the decay of the long-vacant mansion. Indeed, the fact that the canvas is unstained by mold after decades in an unheated building is some of the most blatant evidence that more is going on in the Old House than meets the eye.
On the road, Guthrie starts talking to himself, complaining about the other drivers using their high-beams. Eventually it dawns on him that Laura is causing him to see a blinding light. This realization takes a frustratingly long time. It does make sense if you stop and review what we have seen so far. Laura’s spells disorient and confuse the people subjected to them, so we can figure out that Guthrie might still have some brain fog as the result of his experience at the beginning of the episode. But as this scene is written, it feels like Guthrie is just an idiot who doesn’t know that he should pull over when he can’t see the road.
The car crashes. We see Laura in her cottage, a satisfied look on her face. In the flames of her hearth, we see Guthrie’s car blazing. We’ve just seen the first on-screen murder in Dark Shadows.
I’ll miss Guthrie, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that he is killed at this point in the show. His role was to figure out what the audience knows about Laura, to present this information to Vicki and her friends, and to isolate Laura from any potential allies. He has completed all of these tasks. That leaves only three paths forward for him.
The first is what actually happens, for Laura to kill him. That gets him off the show, precipitates a crisis that gives the “Phoenix” storyline its climax, and establishes Laura beyond all doubt as a deadly threat who must herself be destroyed in order for the other characters to be safe.
The second path would be for Guthrie to defeat Laura. Within the series as it has been developed so far, that would be unsatisfying. Laura has deep relationships with all of the main characters who were on the show before Guthrie joined the cast in #160, and she has been driving the story for months. If Guthrie is the one to stop Laura, we’ll be left wondering why we bothered with the first 32 weeks.
In particular, the only relationship on the show that has been interesting every time the characters are on screen together is that between Vicki and David. At first David hated Vicki, then they became fast friends, now we are afraid Laura will turn him against her. The logical way to crown that storyline would be for Vicki to rescue David from a danger that has been looming over him all his life. So the Laura story really ought to end with Vicki saving David from Laura.
That resolution comes with its drawbacks. It is so logical an outcome that we’re all expecting it. So it won’t come as a surprise, and we don’t know whether the show is up to developing a convincing, dramatically powerful sense of inevitability.
An even more serious problem is that once Vicki has rescued David from Laura, there won’t be anywhere for the show to go. The other stories have all either been resolved or been lying around doing nothing for so long that there is no reason to think they will ever become interesting. If Guthrie, rather than Vicki, rescues David, that might represent a new start. Dark Shadows would relaunch as the occult files of Dr Guthrie. If they had gone that way, it’s hard to see what use a show like that would have for the existing characters and setting.
The third path was suggested yesterday. Guthrie tipped his hand to Laura, telling her virtually everything he knew. He explained that he was doing this because he wanted to study her. He wants to stick around as the friend and associate of a domesticated Laura.
Laura laughed at Guthrie’s idea. She has her plan, and she is uninterested in any alternative Guthrie might present. Further, she is the wrong sort of character to keep on Dark Shadows indefinitely. When she was first introduced, Laura was thoroughly mysterious, vague, and insubstantial. She was the perfect adversary for Josette, the Widows, and the other wispy presences that make up the supernatural back-world behind the action that we see.
In recent weeks Laura has become more dynamic and has forced Josette more and more into the foreground. If she were to have a friend with whom she could discuss her problems and plans openly, Laura would be so strong that her mere presence would rip the crêpe-paper world of Josette, the Widows, and the rest of them into tiny shreds. If they are going to scrap that side of the show’s universe, they would probably be better off doing it with a fresh character who hasn’t already been defined in relation to everyone else, and certainly better off if the character came with a more familiar mythology than they have given Laura.
Besides, if they keep Laura on the show they’ll face complications with the actress. Diana Millay is getting more and more visibly pregnant, a big problem for a character who is supposed to be something other than alive. And after her son was born, she scaled back her acting career. After Dark Shadows, she appeared briefly on The Secret Storm, then retired altogether to concentrate on writing. So even if they had wanted to keep Laura on the show, Millay might not have wanted to commit to an indefinite run on a daily production.
So, death it is for Dr Guthrie. It’s too bad they didn’t bring actor John Lasell later in some other role. He had a tremendous range- an actor who could play both the understated, virtuous, and thoroughly Yankee scientist Dr Guthrie and the flamboyant, sinister, and very Southern John Wilkes Booth of the Twilight Zone episode “Back There” could be effective in any part.
John Lasell as John Wilkes Booth in “Back There.” Image by imdb.
*The first time we hear this expression on Dark Shadows.
Parapsychologist Dr Guthrie visits blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins in her cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. He tells her that his researches have led him to the conclusion that she is “The Undead” and that she poses a danger to her son, strange and troubled boy David. She replies that he is being preposterous, but she doesn’t deny anything he says.
Guthrie says that she is probably wondering why he has told her these things. The audience certainly is- Laura has already tried to cast a paralyzing spell on Guthrie, and can hardly be expected to grow more benevolent towards him now that she knows that he has figured out her nature and has told her he is “closing in on” her.
Guthrie explains to Laura that their meeting marks a significant moment in the history of the world- a scientist has come face to face with a being who has died and returned to walk the earth. He wants to learn from her, and offers to help her if she will stop trying to claim David. He tells her that an effort to bring science to bear on cases like hers “has been my life.” “What an interesting way to put it,” Laura responds, in her unforgettable sardonic tone. She dismisses his offer, and tells him he is powerless.
In a way, it’s too bad Laura doesn’t take an interest in what Guthrie might be able to do for her. That’s quite an idea, a scientist trying to help an undead being and to explore the realm of the supernatural thereby. It suggests the 1945 Universal movie The House of Dracula, in which a blood specialist treats Dracula for vampirism, with apparent success. That doctor then encounters the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster. He attempts to treat them also, but things eventually go awry. The House of Dracula runs for 67 minutes; it might be interesting to develop a story like that in a daytime serial, where you have as much time as the audience and the network are willing to give you.
Guthrie is trying to organize a séance to contact Laura’s chief adversary, the ghost of Josette Collins. He tells hardworking young fisherman Joe* that they will have to recruit drunken artist Sam Evans to join them at the séance. Joe laughs at the thought of how Sam will react to such an invitation. Sam’s daughter, Maggie, is Joe’s girlfriend; Joe stops laughing and is a little bit scared when he thinks of Maggie’s likely reaction. But Guthrie insists that Sam’s participation is essential. Josette took possession of Sam to paint pictures that gave them some of their first and clearest warnings of what Laura might do to David, so he has already been one of her most powerful mediums. Joe agrees to ask him.
At the Evans cottage, Joe pitches Sam and Maggie on the séance. Sam at first finds the notion hard to take seriously. The more he thinks about it, the more convinced he becomes that Guthrie’s theories are correct and that it is his duty to participate. Maggie is dead set against her father having anything to do with Collinwood or the supernatural. She has worked on getting him to forget the paintings he made under Josette’s influence and his belief that Laura was responsible for the fire that injured his hands shortly after he painted them. As an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, Maggie is in the habit of heading Sam off when he’s on his way to do something weird. Usually Joe is her most reliable ally and greatest help in looking after her father. Today, she reluctantly gives in when Sam and Joe both think the séance is a good idea.
In the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, Dr Guthrie is studying some documents. We see Laura staring into the fire in her cottage. Her eyes are superimposed over the image of Guthrie as he becomes ill.
Joe comes in and sees that Guthrie is struggling for breath. He asks Guthrie if he is all right. Guthrie complains of the heat. Since Joe is still wearing his heavy coat and looks perfectly comfortable, he ought to know that isn’t much of an explanation. He mentions that he has completed some tasks Guthrie asked him to perform. Guthrie has no idea what he’s talking about. When Laura attacked Guthrie in episodes 175 and 176, it was through a spell that hit him while he was in this same room. Then also, he had difficulty breathing during the attack and a gap in his memory afterward.
That time, well-meaning governess Vicki came into the drawing room and saw Guthrie suffering the effects of the attack. The attack abruptly ended. While Guthrie was recovering, David came back to the house and told him and Vicki that he had interrupted Laura a few minutes before while she was staring into the fire at her cottage. After David gave Vicki and Guthrie a full account of the incident, they sent him off to have dinner followed by two desserts- cake and ice cream.
That day, Vicki recognized the symptoms of Guthrie’s attack as the same those reclusive matriarch Liz exhibited after a confrontation with Laura and before she lapsed into a catatonic state from which she has not yet recovered. From this, Vicki concluded that David must have stopped Laura while she was in the process of casting the same spell on Guthrie that she earlier cast on Liz. Guthrie agreed with Vicki’s analysis, but was confident he could defend himself against any further spells Laura might cast. He never explained what his defense would be.
Whatever protection Guthrie thought he could give himself against Laura’s powers obviously isn’t working, at least not while he is alone. After Joe goes away, Laura resumes casting her spell.
While Guthrie struggles in the drawing room, David strolls into the foyer. The ghost of Josette manifests on the staircase above. She takes a few steps down towards him and points to the drawing room doors.
Josette sends David to rescue Dr Guthrie
David realizes Josette is telling him to go into that room at once. He obeys, and finds Dr Guthrie on the floor by the fireplace, apparently near death.
*Who is evidently fishing again. Months ago, Joe got a white-collar position in the offices of the cannery, a position he accepted only in order to make enough money to buy his own boat. Today David asks him when he will take him along on the boats, and Maggie mentions that he’d recently lost his watch in a mackerel net. They never told us that he’d gone back out, and indeed he was carrying papers back and forth from the office as recently as #174.
Blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins opens the front door of the great house of Collinwood. Housekeeper Mrs Johnson intercepts her. Laura wants to see her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins. Mrs Johnson tells her that David has gone to town with well-meaning governess Vicki to buy shoes. Laura objects that she was supposed to take David to get new shoes, and is quite upset that Vicki has taken this from her. She is even more upset when Mrs Johnson says she is under orders to keep David in the house unless he is with Vicki or flighty heiress Carolyn. Laura asked who gave those orders, and is shocked to hear that it was her estranged husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger.
Laura shouts for Roger, who comes downstairs to see her. In the drawing room, she demands to know why he is keeping David from her. At first he repeats Vicki’s old line that David is falling behind in his studies, but when Laura dismisses this he tells her that he is suspicious of her because of all the strange goings-on that started when she came back to town. They quarrel about this for some time, and Roger holds his ground.
Laura goes to the Collinsport Inn, where her ex-boyfriend, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, is in residence. Burke also refuses to help her. He tells her that she is not at all the same person he was in love with ten years before. She protests that everyone gets older, and he says it isn’t that. She has somehow become a stranger to him.
Yesterday, visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie had laid out the case against Laura to Roger, while Vicki presented the same facts to Burke. Roger resisted until the ghost of Josette Collins intervened to present him with some particularly hair-raising information. Today, we see that Josette and Guthrie have combined to carry their point, and have enlisted Roger in the fight against Laura.
After Vicki had told Burke why she regards Laura as a threat to David, Burke had said that he thought he ought to go along with her request that he stop urging David to leave with his mother. But he admitted that Laura has such a strong emotional effect on him that he couldn’t promise that he would be able to follow that resolution. In the scene between Burke and Laura, Burke alternately gives Laura hard stares and avoids eye contact altogether, turning his back on her and edging away whenever possible. Returning viewers will appreciate the effort he is making to keep his feelings from overwhelming him. By the time the scene ends, the two most important men in David’s life are both on the team opposing Laura.
Laura loses her last ally, Burke breaks his own heart
Back at Collinwood, Guthrie talks briefly with Roger. For the first time, Roger speaks respectfully to Guthrie, whom he has always before disdained as a quack. Roger leaves, and Guthrie has a few words with Mrs Johnson. Mrs Johnson mentions that when she was cleaning the cottage where Laura is staying, she made a move to extinguish the fire in the hearth. Laura responded with terror, frantically demanding that she leave the fire alone. At this news, Guthrie decides to pay a call on Laura.
In the cottage, Guthrie says that it is very warm and makes a move to put the fire out. He observes Laura’s panicked reaction. He asks her why fire is important to her; she says she merely dislikes cold rooms. He asks if she derives a power from fire; she says she doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Laura asks Guthrie if he is the one who talked Roger into keeping her from seeing David. Guthrie says yes. She asks why, and he tells her he thinks she is a danger to her son. She asks what danger she could be to David, and he asks her who she really is. When he says that she is not the woman Roger married, she ridicules the idea that an impostor could fool all the people who have identified her as Laura. He says that he doesn’t mean that she is an impostor. When she asks what he does mean, he asks if she really wants him to say the words. She says yes. He tells her “You, Laura Murdoch Collins, are the undead.”*
*If I recall correctly, that marks the first time the phrase “the undead” is spoken on Dark Shadows.
Like many children of divorce, strange and troubled boy David Collins finds himself having to decide which parent he will live with. He and his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, have been living in the great house of Collinwood as guests of Roger’s sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, ever since Roger ran out of money some months ago. Now David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, has reappeared after an absence of many years, and she wants to take David. This idea delighted Roger from the first, but David had initially reacted to Laura with fear. He still has mixed feelings about her.
Today, well-meaning governess Vicki is trying to get David to focus on his studies. He tells her that he is thinking about his living situation. He likes Collinwood, especially since Vicki came. But he has just about decided to go away with his mother.
Vicki asks why David wants to do this. He reminds her of a vision he had yesterday that terrified him. He saw himself in the fireplace, immersed in flames and showing no sign of wanting to escape them. He interprets this as a warning from the supernatural realm that he is in great danger, and that the danger is to be found at Collinwood. He believes he will find safety if he goes far from the estate with his mother.
Vicki knows that David is partly correct. She has considerable evidence that the ghost of Josette Collins has been trying to warn David and her and several other people that David is in danger of being burned alive. She is also sure that the source of this danger is at Collinwood- it is Laura herself. She is an inhuman creature who will burn David alive. Vicki can’t tell David about this, but she does remind him of some of Josette’s previous warnings. David realizes that his mother featured prominently in those warnings, but does not see that she is the one Josette is warning him about. To Vicki’s dismay, David concludes that Laura is also in danger, and that it is urgent that the two of them go off together at once.
When her warnings to David backfire, Josette is running true to form. The first time she tried to rescue someone from imminent peril was in episode 122, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan had kidnapped Vicki. Matthew’s response upon hearing a ghostly voice was to put a knife to Vicki’s throat. Eventually Josette enlisted some of her buddies from that land of ghosts which forms the back-world behind what we see, and together they would stop Matthew and save Vicki. Here again, Josette needs help getting her point across.
Of all the characters, David is the one who has had the easiest rapport with Josette. In #102, we saw him standing in front of her portrait in the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, chattering happily away to her. We couldn’t hear her, but he could. She had no need to manifest herself visibly or do anything else spectacular; she and David could just talk to each other.
Now, Laura is blocking Josette’s attempts to communicate. In #165, Josette manifested in a room with Laura and David; Laura ordered her to go away, and she did. In #170, Josette began speaking through Vicki at a séance; Laura silenced her, and in later episodes visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie said that Josette was battling against some power at least equal to her own. Strong as Josette’s connection to David has been, she cannot break through his mother’s interference.
Vicki confers with Guthrie. They decide to present their case to Roger, who alone has the legal right to oppose Laura’s wish to take David, and to dashing action hero Burke Devlin, who has a great influence over the boy. Guthrie meets with Roger in the drawing room, and Vicki goes to Burke’s suite at the Collinsport Inn.
Roger despised Guthrie as a quack starting almost as soon as he met him, but in his most recent appearance, in #178, he started to suspect that there might be something to Guthrie’s ideas. He is quite rude to Guthrie throughout their conversation today, but does hear him out.
Burke respects Vicki, but finds it impossible to sit still when she starts talking about Josette. So she sticks to the demonstrable facts. The camera sticks to Alexandra Moltke Isles’ eyes, on which the light plays arrestingly.
Vicki looks at Burke
At length, Burke admits that something strange might be going on. Vicki asks Burke if he will stop encouraging David to go away with his mother. He says he believes that he ought to stop doing that, but that he doesn’t know what he will actually do after he next sees Laura. Vicki says she knows how he feels about Laura. Burke tells her that he himself doesn’t know how he feels about Laura, or about anyone else.
Mitch Ryan projects Burke’s bewilderment about his own behavior when he is with Laura. We haven’t seen any sign that Laura has cast a spell on Burke. So far, it is entirely possible that Burke is just smitten with Laura. She was the ex-girlfriend who left him for Roger and is now suggesting she wants to get back together with him. As such, she is the symbol of both his lost youth and his upcoming triumph over his bitter enemy. Also, she is beautiful, and can be hilariously funny. That combination would be enough to cloud anyone’s mind. But when Burke is telling Vicki how confused he is about his emotions, we wonder if there might be some witchcraft involved as well.
Back at Collinwood, Roger and David are in the drawing room. David tells Roger that he wants to go away with Laura, and when Roger asks why he has made that decision David tells him what he saw in the fire. David asks him if he still wants him to go away. In previous episodes, David had asked Roger about his hostility towards him. Sometimes Roger parried these questions with witty remarks, other times he simply dismissed David and walked away. Now Roger just chokes up. “We’ll see,” he keeps saying. “We’ll see.” What we the audience see in Louis Edmonds’ performance is a man who is starting to realize what he has thrown away by refusing to love his son. It makes a powerful moment.
Roger tries to connect with David
After David leaves him alone in the drawing room, Roger assumes his usual position in front of the brandy bottle and pours himself a glass. He lifts it to his lips, then looks around, as if he detects an unusual scent in the air. He sets the drink down. He turns, and sees an old book open itself.
Roger sees the book open itself
A book first did this in the drawing room in #52. That time the Collins family history opened to a picture of Josette. More recently, Josette’s signature jasmine perfume was in the air in the crypt at the old cemetery when a book opened itself there in #157. Regular viewers will therefore assume that when a book opens without visible aid of a cast member, it is Josette, the spectral research librarian, leading the characters to the information they need.
Roger hasn’t seen these previous occurrences, and he has chosen to disregard the evidence he has seen for the existence of supernatural influences around him. So the sight of the book opening itself comes as a great shock to him. When he looks at the page to which it has opened, he finds out something about the death of a woman named Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, whom Guthrie and Vicki believe to be an earlier incarnation of his wife. That Laura had died by fire in 1867, along with her young son David. Guthrie had told Roger that. A fact he had not mentioned, and which strikes Roger with particular terror, is that David Radcliffe had not wanted to be rescued from the fire. He had wanted to burn.
The idea of Laura the Phoenix is an interesting one, and the storyline gives Josette and the other vague, indefinable spirits of the supernatural back-world Dark Shadows has been hinting at since it began a suitable adversary to bring them into the action of the main continuity. But most of the individual episodes are so slow, so heavy with recapping, and so confused in their development that few of them can be recommended on their own merits. Indeed, this is only the second episode from the Laura arc, after #146, to which I apply the “Genuinely Good Episode” tag.
After we watched the episode, my wife, Mrs Acilius, shared her theory that the show is getting better because they’ve learned that it will be renewed for another 13 weeks. That makes sense- if it was going to be canceled after #195, the writers might not want to come up with any fresh stories and the producers certainly wouldn’t want to pay to build any new sets or hire actors to play new characters. Better just to run out the clock so that the Laura arc ends in #195 and everyone else lives spookily ever after. But if they know they can keep going until #260, they will have time to work out new ideas.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins is sleeping peacefully in his bed. His cousin, flighty heiress Carolyn, comes into his room to check on him. She tucks him in, waking him. He asks what she is doing in his room. When she says that she was making sure he was asleep, he points out that she woke him up. When she keeps showing concern for him, he reminds her that she has called him “a spoiled monster” and a “menace to the civilized world” among other endearments, and that if he showed up in her room there would be no end of hollering.
Carolyn goes on talking to David in a gentle voice about how important he is to her, and says that maybe she’s the one who is a spoiled monster and a menace to the civilized world. After Carolyn maintains an affectionate attitude towards him for a few unbroken minutes, David asks her if she is OK. She assures him that she is. As David Collins, David Henesy’s bewildered response to Carolyn’s friendliness brings the house down.
While we are still laughing, David presses Carolyn to explain why she is being nice to him. A look of fear comes over him, and he asks if something terrible has happened. Carolyn assures him that nothing has, but he just looks more and more alarmed. By the time she leaves him, his expression is little short of heartbreaking.
David alarmed
The next morning, well-meaning governess Vicki is sitting with David in the drawing room, going over his homework. He has written an essay about what it might be like to have an older sister. He wonders if such a sister would love him. Vicki says that she might, and that it is a waste when you don’t love the people who love you. When Vicki asks David where he got the idea of writing about an imaginary older sister who loves him, he doesn’t give a direct answer. He does start talking about Carolyn, making it clear that he is thinking of her.
Vicki leaves David alone in the drawing room for a short while. He looks into the fireplace and sees his own face wearing a placid expression and immersed in the flames. He flees the room in terror, bumping into visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie. Vicki comes running, and David holds onto her for dear life.
ReflectionsSafe with Vicki
David’s vision reminds me of a post of Wallace McBride’s on The Collinsport Historical Society from April of 2020. His point is summarized in his title, “In Dark Shadows, Your Reflection Always Tells the Truth.” David lives in 1967, so he doesn’t have access to that article. But he already knows the truth it tells- his terrified reaction shows that he knows it means there is an imminent danger that he will die by fire.
We see hardworking young fisherman Joe poring over old newspapers in the Collinsport Public Library. He finds something that alarms him, and rushes to a public telephone to call Vicki. He tells her he is coming to the house to show something important to her and Guthrie.
Joe on the phone
When Vicki tells Joe and Guthrie that David had a vision of himself in flames, she connects it with a recurring nightmare that had plagued him several weeks ago. David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, had come back into his life after an absence of several years, and he kept dreaming that she was beckoning him to join her in flames. While he was suffering from this nightmare, drunken artist Sam Evans, miles away in town, inexplicably painted a couple of canvases depicting exactly the image that kept appearing in David’s dreams.
Joe and Guthrie become very animated when Vicki tells them what David saw and how he reacted. Joe declares that what David has seen is a vision of the past. Joe has already shown Guthrie what he found in the library, a newspaper article from one hundred years before. The article is about someone named Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. That Laura Murdoch died in 1867 in a fire along with her young son. His name was David.
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