Category: Episode commentary

Episode 148: A sane and adult level

Writer Ron Sproat stayed with Dark Shadows too long, and fans of Danny Horn’s great blog Dark Shadows Every Day will have fond memories of his frequent denunciations of Sproat. It is true Sproat had many glaring weaknesses. For example, he was pretty bad at inventing stories to tell, which you might think would get in the way of building a career as a fiction writer. But one strength Sproat undoubtedly had was a sense of structure. There might not be anything happening in one of his episodes, but you can count on him to make it clear why it isn’t happening, where it isn’t happening, to whom it isn’t happening, and who isn’t making it happen. Today there are some events, and between Sproat’s script and the work of the actors, it is plain to see what purpose each of those events serves in keeping the story on track.

As the episode opens, Lieutenant Dan Riley of the Maine State Police is visiting instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank Garner in an office. Regular viewers will be confused; we’ve seen this set several times, with exactly these decorations, as high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins’ office at the headquarters of Collins Enterprises. We haven’t seen the set since #69, and Roger wasn’t there at that time. So apparently Frank has moved in.

Frank hasn’t even moved the portrait of the Mustache Man from the spot where Roger had it when he was in the office. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Lieutenant Riley wants to pass along to Frank the information that the Phoenix, Arizona police have given him about a fire in Laura Collins’ apartment in that city. Laura is Roger’s estranged wife, and Frank is representing Roger in their upcoming divorce. It isn’t clear why Riley wants to tell Roger’s lawyer what he has heard about Laura. Later in the episode, Frank will tell well-meaning governess Vicki that Riley came to him because he is a “lawyer for the Collins family.” Perhaps that means he believed that Frank represented Laura. Throughout their conversation, Frank repeatedly protests that no one has any grounds for accusing Laura of anything, encouraging Riley in such a belief. I suppose it’s a lawyer’s job to collect damaging information about the opposition, but Frank does seem to be pushing an ethical boundary here.

The charred body of a woman was found in what was left of Laura’s apartment. Since the woman appeared to be the same age, height, and build as Laura, the room was locked from the inside, and everyone associated with the building other than Laura was accounted for, the body was initially identified as hers. Riley now tells us that the police have determined that the fire started in Laura’s apartment, and that a witness claims to have seen Laura in the building the day of the fire.

Laura checked into the Collinsport Inn the day of the fire and has been in and around town ever since, as many witnesses can testify. Riley says that there is no indication that Laura has been on an airplane recently, and it would seem impossible to travel from Phoenix, Arizona to central Maine in a few hours any other way.

The lieutenant goes on to say that because the room was locked from the inside and the woman who died in the fire made no attempt to escape, the police suspect murder. This is nonsense. An attempt to escape might have been evidence of murder, not the lack of such an attempt. And if the room was locked from the inside, how did the murderer get out?

Frank doesn’t raise these objections, but just blusters through a lot of verbiage as he protests against any suggestion that Laura should be suspected of murder. The lieutenant keeps pointing out that Arizona isn’t his jurisdiction, so he doesn’t have anything to do with it. He’s just a messenger.

Some scholar of acting really ought to make a frame-by-frame study of Conard Fowkes portrayal of Frank in this scene. He has plenty of dialogue, he’s challenging statements made by a policeman, he raises his voice, makes gestures, moves around the room, looks down moodily and up excitedly. Yet he is still so bland that it is difficult to remember a word he says. It is far beyond my understanding of the actor’s craft to explain how Fowkes manages to be so consistently dull no matter what the character is doing.

When Frank is a small part of an episode, I think of his blandness as a note of pure realism. He is just the sort of person you would expect to meet in a small-town law office in 1967, and indeed it is reassuring to think that someone who has obviously never thought of putting himself in the spotlight would handle your sensitive legal affairs. The last person anyone should want as a lawyer is some guy who habitually makes himself interesting to watch on television.

Today, Frank is the leading man of the first half of the episode, and comes back with a key part in the second half. Giving that much time to a performer with such a bland screen presence does serve a purpose. None of the characters has really committed to the notion that they have to worry about crimes and physical danger, much less that they are facing a challenge from the realm of the supernatural. As far as they know, the whole story today is about a couple of romances and a child custody matter. That’s the right speed for dull, amiable Frank Garner.

That the characters don’t yet know the true dimensions of what they are facing in the storyline is one of the points this scene has to make. The other is that we will be hearing more about the investigation in Phoenix, and that it will advance the plot.

I think an acting problem muddies this second point. Today Vince O’Brien takes over the part of Lieutenant Dan Riley from John Connell, who played him in #143 and #144. As Connell played him, Riley was an out-of-town cop, not the least bit awed by the Collinses of Collinsport. His matter-of-fact speaking and impatient listening made it clear that the family’s connection to the case in Phoenix was not going to result in the discreet, abbreviated treatment that the local authorities have given them. But O’Brien’s version of the character is noticeably quick to agree when Frank makes a statement. When Frank does a TV lawyer “may I remind you” about the elements of a murder charge (elements which he gets wrong, but hey, it’s TV, not law school,) O’Brien’s Riley is agitated. He shows defiance by declaring “You don’t have to remind me” in a harrumphing voice, but his wide eyes and trembling legs show that he is intimidated to be in a discussion with the representative of the mighty Collinses. There’s no point in bringing in an out-of-town character if that’s what you’re going for- the residents of Collinsport can show you what it’s like to live under the thumb of the people in the big house on the hill. And it introduces a doubt as to whether anything will come of the investigation, a doubt which leaves us wondering why we just spent so much time watching these two guys talk to each other.

Meanwhile, Vicki is visiting dashing action hero Burke Devlin in his hotel suite. Burke has asked her to come. Yesterday, she told him that she was suspicious there was something sinister about Laura, and he had listened attentively. Later, he met with Laura and the love he once felt for her had flared back into life. So today, he wants to tell Vicki that Laura is A-OK and she should do everything she can to help her.

Like the scene with Frank and Lieutenant Riley in Roger’s office, this scene has two points to make. First is to establish Vicki as a credible protagonist for the rest of the storyline about the danger Laura presents to her son, strange and troubled boy David. Second is to show that Burke is so smitten with Laura that he won’t be much help in protecting David.

Burke guides Vicki into his kitchen, a cozy space where people can confide in each other. Last time they were in this space, she made coffee for him; this time, he makes coffee for her. He’s remarkably dainty about it, sifting cream and sugar in separate cups. He makes a pitch about how remarkable Laura is, how he’s rethought everything they said yesterday, and how a fine woman like her deserves Vicki’s trust and support.

Burke making coffee for Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Vicki is unimpressed. She was in the room when Laura telephoned Burke yesterday, and heard him agree to meet her at one of their old places. She presses him to explain what has changed his mind, and he won’t give a clear answer. She asks how well he really knows Laura, and he looks dreamily off into space and says that he knows her better than anyone else. She asks if his feelings for Laura might be clouding his judgment, and he demands she change the subject. When Burke urges her to persuade David to grow closer to his mother Laura, Vicki replies “I’ll do what I can for David.” Burke says “You’re hedging.” Vicki replies coolly, “I can’t help it.” When he repeats his urging, he tells her she doesn’t look convinced. She replies, “I can’t help how I look, either.”

Vicki’s strength and intelligence and Burke’s dreamy infatuation should impress anyone watching this scene, but especially viewers who just saw yesterday’s episode. When Vicki is asking Burke what happened between yesterday and today to change his mind, she is waiting for him to talk about the meeting he arranged with Laura while she was right next to him. He never mentions it, and his repeated statements that all he has done is think more deeply implies that he does not remember that Vicki heard him talking to Laura. He is so captivated with Laura that the sound of her voice erases his awareness of everyone else, even of someone he is trying hard to persuade of an important idea.

Shortly after Vicki leaves, Burke receives another visitor from the great house of Collinwood. Flighty heiress Carolyn shows up. Carolyn is pouting because Burke hasn’t been paying attention to her since her Aunt Laura showed up.

This scene has one major point to make, which is that the budding Burke/ Carolyn romance is not going to be blooming this winter. Nancy Barrett’s Carolyn bursts off the screen as she bounces from one extreme to another, trying to attract Burke by pushing her breasts at him, trying to anger him by suggesting that her mother Liz and her Uncle Roger were right when they said he was just using her to get at them, trying to embarrass him by bringing up the obstacles between him and Laura, trying to break through his reserve by flinging her arms around his neck and pleading with him to love her.

Carolyn flings herself at Burke. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Burke tries to let Carolyn down easy, smiling at her, caressing her face, hugging her, kissing her on the forehead. But signs of boredom and irritation keep slipping out. He tells her that the time has come for them not to see each other any more, and there can be no doubt he means it.

Burke, bored with Carolyn

Vicki goes to visit Frank. Frank blabs everything to her that the lieutenant had told him.

Vicki and Frank in Roger’s office. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki is deeply concerned about the idea that Laura might be a murderer. Frank keeps telling her that there’s probably nothing to that idea, but Vicki resolves at the end of the episode to do whatever she can to keep Laura away from David. Having established Vicki as a character strong enough and smart enough to square off with Laura in her previous scene, this scene shows us her decision to do just that.

Episode 147: Certain things unsaid

Well-meaning governess Vicki walks in on an ugly scene in the bedroom of her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. David is yelling a threat at his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger. Roger has come to the room to remove a painting showing David’s mother, the mysterious and long-absent Laura, naked and in flames. David says that if Roger takes the painting, he will never talk to his mother again.

Laura has recently returned, and wants to divorce Roger and leave with David. Roger is enthusiastic about this plan. His sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, is very much against it. Roger is dependent on Liz, not only because he lives as a guest in Liz’ house and works as an employee of her business, but also because of the whole psychological structure of their relationship. So he must appease her. Laura has agreed with Liz that she won’t take David unless David is willing to go with her.

Before Vicki entered the room, Roger had been trying to convince David that he doesn’t hate him and isn’t trying to get rid of him by sending him away with his mother. Had he been successful in that attempt, David might have tried to keep Roger away from the painting by threatening not to talk to him, but instead he brings up the idea that he might doom Roger to continue living with him. Faced with that prospect, Roger capitulates.

Laura enters. She and David leave the room. Laura and David continue talking to each other after they are out of the frame. We hear Laura’s voice trailing off as they leave. I believe this is the first time we have seen this done on Dark Shadows, and I don’t recall it in later episodes. I think it’s a nice touch. That characters fall silent the moment we can no longer see them tends to call our attention to how small the sets were. Hearing Laura’s voice gradually fade away makes it easier to imagine that the action is taking place in a huge mansion.

Roger and Vicki stay behind. Roger tells Vicki that he ought to be angry with her. It was she who brought the painting to the great house of Collinwood and gave it to David. Vicki says she can’t explain why she did those things- some unnamed force came over her. She connects that unexplained compulsion with other odd things that have happened since Laura came back. When Roger asks if she is suggesting that Laura is somehow responsible for these events, Vicki won’t commit herself one way or the other.

When Vicki fell under whatever unknown power drove her to ask for the painting and give it to David in #142, her face wasn’t on camera. As a result, the episode played out as a series of moments when Vicki kept doing bizarre things for no reason we could feel. The result was a day spent with Dumb Vicki, a version of the character who emerges when the writers need something done and can’t come up with a motivation for any character to do it. As the one who gets the most screen time, it falls to Vicki to take actions or deliver lines simply because they are in the script.

This remark to Roger marks the opposite extreme from Dumb Vicki. Vicki has surmised information that the show has given the audience, but there is no particular reason why she should know it. We tend to forgive protagonists for being absurdly knowledgeable when their knowledge moves the story along, but Vicki’s insight into Laura’s place at the center of a web of supernatural occurrences doesn’t advance the plot today. As a result, Clairvoyant Vicki is left in almost as useless a position as Dumb Vicki.

One story development we briefly hoped it might have led to would be a self-aware twist on “The Turn of the Screw,” in which the members of the household notice that the governess is banging on about ghostly presences and worry that this is a neurotic symptom that will make her a bad influence on children. That hope is disappointed a moment after Vicki has delivered her lines. She leaves the room and Roger tries to remove the painting from the wall. We see him struggle, as if some invisible being is pulling him away from the painting. He looks disoriented and gives up. Having been overcome by a force like the one Vicki says made her bring the painting into the house, Roger is in no position to question her fitness for her job.

Downstairs, Laura meets Vicki. Laura tells Vicki that David is avoiding her, that he seems to be afraid of her again as he was when she first came back. She asks Vicki to arrange a meeting on neutral ground between her and David, something Vicki had done a couple of weeks ago and that had opened a brief period when David was warm to Laura. Vicki demurs. She says that David is badly disturbed, and that she is afraid of doing anything that might disturb him further. She herself is extremely uncomfortable around Laura.

Vicki rubbing her hands nervously

David comes into the room. He reacts with alarm when he sees Laura, and clings to the spot furthest from her.

David seeks shelter from Laura

When Laura suggests they spend the afternoon together, David says he has homework to do. When Laura says that Vicki will let him do his homework later, Vicki says that it is up to David. When Laura touches the top of his head, David runs upstairs.

Vicki and David have become very close. They’ve spent a lot of time together and seen all the same ghosts. Vicki’s attitude mirrors David’s closely enough in this scene that we wonder what sort of connection is developing between them.

Maybe some kind of telepathy is starting to link David and Vicki. Or maybe the explanation is more mundane, and they are just growing emotionally dependent on each other. David’s father is dependent on his big sister Liz, and the show has been hinting very heavily from the first week that Vicki is Liz’ secret daughter. Perhaps these first cousins are in danger of recreating the Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother dynamic that has dominated their parents’ lives.

Whatever is going on between Vicki and David, Laura can hardly be expected to be happy with Vicki for bringing the painting to him. Now that Vicki is showing dread of her and refusing to help in her efforts to warm David up, Laura has an incentive to make Vicki look bad. Perhaps we will see someone accusing Vicki of thinking she is the governess in “The Turn of the Screw” after all.

Desperate to talk to someone about her feelings, Vicki slips into the town of Collinsport and visits dashing action hero Burke Devlin in his hotel room. Burke is Roger’s sworn enemy, and in his campaign to right the wrongs he believes Roger has visited upon him he is trying to destroy the whole Collins family. The last time Vicki went to Burke’s room was in #114, when she mentioned these facts as a reason she could never speak to him again. Since then, she’s been kidnapped and held prisoner by an escaped killer, and Burke went to great lengths to help in the search for her. So now they are back on speaking terms.

Vicki tells Burke everything she knows and everything she suspects about Laura. Burke doesn’t see what Vicki is driving at, but he does take note when she tells him that Laura and Roger are perfectly comfortable together. He has been hoping that Laura, who was his girlfriend before she married Roger, will join with him in his quest for vengeance, and has fondly imagined Roger quaking with fear of what she might do. Vicki’s report that Roger and Laura are quite relaxed around each other comes as a nasty shock to Burke.

While Vicki is in his room, Burke receives a phone call from Laura. Vicki listens to Burke’s side of the conversation as they arrange to meet at one of their old trysting places, a pier on the waterfront located right next to a fog machine stuck on overdrive.

Foggy Collinsport

Burke and Laura talk about old times. Burke wants Laura to tell him that David might be his son. This strikes me as an odd moment. Burke hasn’t been presented as someone suffering from amnesia- surely he remembers what he and Laura got up to as well as she does. He knows David’s date of birth. And he has been presented as a worldly-wise fellow who, even in the resolutely celibate world of Dark Shadows, very likely knows how babies are made. In #32, Roger mentioned that David was born only eight months after he and Laura became a couple. If that were fresh in our minds, we might suppose Burke wants to know whether David was born prematurely. Since the point hasn’t been mentioned in over 22 weeks, we are left wondering what Burke imagines Laura might be able to tell him that he doesn’t already know.

Burke asks Laura if she hates Roger. When she says she has reason to, he says that he hears she hasn’t been acting like she hates him. Laura asks who told him that, and he says it was Vicki. Laura is surprised that Burke and Vicki were discussing her, then says that she’s just putting on an act so that Roger won’t oppose her efforts to take David.

One does wonder why Burke revealed that Vicki was his source. Not only will that serve to prejudice Laura against her, the fact that Vicki has met with Burke and given him information about the doings at Collinwood is powerful ammunition she can use against Vicki when she talks to Liz and Roger.

Throughout the scene, Laura keeps an eye on Burke, gauging his reactions to everything she says. Burke is divided within himself. He wonders out loud why he doesn’t hate Laura and mistrust her when she did as much to harm him as Roger did, but also tells her that when they are together all his anger melts away and she alone is real to him.

Watchful Laura, divided Burke
Burke split by Laura’s shadow

Episode 146: Laura Collins exists mostly in your imagination

At the end of yesterday’s episode, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell, had gone out to look for Maggie’s father, drunken artist Sam Evans. Maggie and Joe wound up carrying Sam home from the tavern.

Joe left the Evans cottage, Maggie went to the kitchen to brew up some coffee, and Sam lit a cigarette and passed out. The cigarette fell on some newspapers and started a fire.

While the fire began, the face of blonde fire witch Laura Collins was superimposed on the image of Sam. Some mysterious force has compelled Sam to paint pictures of Laura naked and in flames. Laura objects to these portraits. She came to the Evans cottage the afternoon before the fire and told Sam she would find a way to stop him painting any more of them. Her face appearing over the fire, along with spooky music and everything else the show has told us about Laura, demonstrates that she is casting a spell on Sam with the intention of making good her threat.

Today, Sam regains consciousness and sees the fire. He tries to put it out with his hands, burning them badly. Maggie comes running and beats the flames out with a rug.

The current storyline hinges on the idea that Laura’s supernatural powers make her a deadly threat to her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, and perhaps to others as well. The outcome of this spell creates suspense as the audience wonders if Laura is mighty enough to keep the narrative arc going. After all, causing Sam to pass out and mess himself does not take much. There’s no suggestion that any magical abilities reside in Bob the bartender, yet he manages to do that just about every night, and he collects a paycheck for it to boot. For all we know, Laura’s spell might have been a total failure- it might be a sheer coincidence that she was trying to make him pass out and drop a lit cigarette when that’s what he was going to do anyway.

Maggie scolds Sam for his drinking. To Maggie’s exasperation, he raves that Laura started the fire. As he goes on and on about an unnamed power that has been controlling his behavior, Maggie responds “I think they call it alcohol.” Yesterday, Maggie was talking to Joe about laying aside her role enabling her father’s alcoholism and leaving the town of Collinsport altogether. Regular viewers will remember that conversation today, when she tells Sam that she is approaching the limit of what she will take from him. Sam loves Maggie more than anything, and he desperately tries to convince her that he is telling the truth. She sees his desperation, and we see her struggle to make herself say that nothing can convince her of a story like the one he is telling her.

As the voice of correction, Maggie is perfectly reasonable, perfectly justified, and perfectly mistaken. Sam is indeed the plaything of uncanny powers. A couple of weeks ago, they gave us scene after scene full of sound and fury, repeating the point that some spiritual force was making Sam paint Laura’s picture. We see today how little of that was necessary- Laura’s likeness and the theremin music are plenty to show us that the fire is in line with a spell she is casting. But Maggie, while she has often said that she wants to avoid the estate of Collinwood because she believes the stories that ghosts and ghouls haunt it, refuses to entertain the idea that there is anything unearthly at the root of Sam’s troubles. She says that she has to have evidence she can look at out in the open, and that she isn’t going to listen to Sam’s talk about unseen and unknowable powers. Although we know that Sam is right and Maggie is wrong about the particulars of this incident, to the extent that Maggie is speaking to her father as an adult child of an alcoholic she is the voice of the audience.

Meanwhile, Laura is sitting by the hearth in the drawing room at the great house of Collinwood. She is casting her spell on Sam. Reclusive matriarch Liz enters and tries to get Laura’s attention. When Laura finally looks up, her face is contorted in an unattractive expression. Liz remarks on it, and Laura asks if she looked ugly. Liz says yes, then for a fraction of a second looks embarrassed when she realizes that she told another woman that she was ugly. She quickly makes some meaningless remarks in a courteous voice. It is a small moment, but Joan Bennett extracts the jewel of comedy from it quite deftly.

Laura interrupted in mid-casting. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Laura has come to Collinwood to re-establish a relationship with David. After years away, she wants to take David and leave. David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, is all for this plan, but Liz is determined to thwart it. As the only male of his generation in the family, David represents the sole hope that the name of Collins will continue. As the custodian of the family’s past and future, Liz wants to be the chief maternal presence in David’s life. Besides, she never leaves the estate, so she needs all the company she can get.

Liz tells Laura that, while she had agreed that Laura could take David if their relationship were to make the right sort of progress, she is not at all satisfied that such is happening. Her objections don’t make much sense, and if the audience hadn’t been informed that Laura is an uncanny being whose plans will likely lead to David’s death we would probably be appalled at how unfair she is.

Roger shows up and takes Laura’s side. While the two of them stand firm against Liz’ wispy arguments, a knock comes at the front door. It is Maggie. Laura is shocked to see her- apparently she had expected her spell to do enough damage to the Evans cottage that Maggie would be unable to go visiting tonight. Laura’s reaction is dramatic enough, and the music behind it is overstated enough, that we may think Laura expected to kill Maggie. Again, the indications of Laura’s failure lead us to wonder if she is enough of a witch to deliver the supernatural thriller we have been led to expect.

Maggie wants to tell Laura about Sam’s accident, and to lament that Sam’s obsession with Laura has led him to the idea that she somehow caused it. Roger is indignant that Sam would say such things about his estranged wife, and storms off to the Evans cottage to give Sam a piece of his mind. Liz, on the other hand, is intrigued by Sam’s ideas and wants Maggie to give as many details as possible about Laura’s visit to the cottage earlier that day.

When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius wondered if Liz’ interest in Maggie’s story was a sign that she had noticed something eerie about Laura during their previous acquaintance. My interpretation was that Liz is so desperate to find information she can use to present Laura as an unfit mother that she is ready to listen when the town drunk claims she cast a spell on him. As reasonable, justified, and wrong as Maggie was in her scolding of Sam, so unreasonable, unjustified, and right is Liz in her conversation with Laura.

When Maggie says that Laura had threatened to stop Sam painting pictures of her naked and in flames, Liz asks what threat she made. Laura answers that all she said was that she would find a way to stop him. With a look of suspicion on her face, Liz asks what she was planning to do when she said that. “Just what I did do,” Laura answers. After a pause, she specifies, “Turn the matter over to Roger.”

In the Evans cottage, Roger reads the Riot Act to Sam. Louis Edmonds was a master of sarcastic dialogue, and Roger’s lines in this scene give him many chances to shine. Indeed, he and David Ford have a blast playing Roger and Sam’s mutual hatred. When Roger ridicules his claim to be subject to mystic powers, Sam replies in a taunting voice that Roger is in as much trouble as he is. The two men jeer contemptuously at each other, and it is a wonder to behold.

Mrs Acilius was particularly impressed by the contrast between the opening scene with Maggie scolding Sam and the closing scene with Roger railing at him. Sam’s two interlocutors make the same basic point, but the differences between them as individuals and between their respective relationships to Sam tell us entirely different things. Sam hates Roger almost as much as he loves Maggie, and their hostility is as explosive as Sam’s scene with Maggie is poignant. Maggie’s lovable, down-to-earth persona makes her the polar opposite of Roger with his haughty manner, sharp tongue, and utterly debased moral stature. In her scene, Maggie was to an extent the voice of the audience; insofar as Roger is continuing the lesson Maggie began teaching Sam, he is taking over in that capacity. It is quite a different thing for us to relate to The Nicest Girl in Town as our voice than it is for us to see a virtueless snob like Roger in that capacity, and so Roger’s first moments berating Sam in the Evans cottage whip us around fast.

Sam confirms that he has been driven to paint another picture of Laura, and Roger announces that he will destroy it. Sam doesn’t object. When Roger goes over to the painting, he sees that most of it has already been burned away. Sam is shocked to see this- the fire was on the other side of the room, and nothing in the several feet between a burned spot on the carpet and the painting has been touched by the flames. With this, the suspense is resolved- we know that Laura’s fire magic did achieve a result that Sam’s drinking could not. So the show will have a story to tell after all.

The script is credited to Malcolm Marmorstein, who was by far the worst writer on Dark Shadows. It is difficult for me to believe that someone who delivered so many low points wrote a script this good all by himself. Joe Caldwell was making uncredited contributions to the writing by this time, and he was so much better than Marmorstein that I am inclined to suspect that he wrote this one.

I suppose Marmorstein might just have been having a good day. There don’t seem to be any surviving documents identifying those contributors to the writing whose names didn’t appear in the on-screen credits for any given episode, so we can only guess which ones Caldwell worked on in his first several months on the show. But the structure, dialogue, and pacing of this one feel a lot more like the ones with his name on them than they do like the general run of Marmorstein’s work.

Episode 145: The idea for the fire

Strange and troubled boy David Collins has a painting hanging on the wall of his room. It depicts his mother, mysterious and long-absent Laura Collins, naked and surrounded by flames. Last night, a video insert of Laura’s head emanated from the painting and terrified David. Today, Laura finds him staring at the painting, listens to him tell about his frightening experience, and urges him to get rid of it. He says that he can’t do that. He believes that the painting carries a warning for him, and he must find out what that warning is.

Laura calls on the painter, drunken artist Sam Evans. Sam says that he hates the picture, and he can’t explain why he painted it. An unexplained force compelled him. In response to this, Laura turns her back on Sam and says “I see…” When Sam asks what she sees, Laura denies that she sees anything. She suggests that the unexplained force might have something to do with the several bottles of booze Sam drinks in the course of a typical day, a theory he refuses to countenance.

Sam shows Laura the painting he is currently working on. It is another version of the same theme. Laura is appalled by it, and irritated when Sam insists that she explain to him what is driving him to paint it. She tells him that he is solely responsible for the paintings that take shape under his brush, and threatens to stop him.

We’ve had many indications that there is something supernatural about Laura, but the only uncanny power she has exhibited so far is the ability to bother her son while he is sleeping. Staying in a cottage some distance from the house where David lives, she can stand at her window whispering his name and her voice echoes in his mind, causing him to writhe in bed and have a nightmare about her. That doesn’t seem to be the result she was going for. Sam’s paintings show the same scene David saw in the nightmare that her voice triggered, and she clearly regards them as an obstacle to her plans.

Laura’s threat implies that she is going to try to use whatever powers she has as a weapon. Sam is easily the least formidable person in town, so she is giving herself the best possible chance of success in this first effort.

This week we’ve had some hints that a different supernatural being, one separate from and opposed to Laura, is responsible for David’s nightmares and Sam’s paintings. We have another such indication today. Laura sneaks into David’s room while he is sleeping. The painting starts to glow when she enters. That’s been established as a sign of a ghostly presence in several episodes where the portrait of Josette Collins hanging in the long-abandoned Old House glows and then we see other evidence that Josette’s ghost is present. When Laura turns and looks at her own portrait, it stops glowing. The moment she turns away, it resumes glowing.

The painting glows when Laura isn’t looking. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Sam’s daughter is Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell takes Maggie back to the Evans cottage after a night on the town. Maggie is worried that her father isn’t home. She’s even more worried that she might spend all the best years of her life alleviating the consequences of Sam’s drinking. Joe seems to have other ideas about Maggie’s future, and they have a nice kiss before going out to carry Sam home from the tavern.

While Maggie brews coffee, Sam lies down on the couch, lights a cigarette, and passes out. The cigarette falls onto a newspaper, and the newspaper starts to smolder. Laura’s face is superimposed on the screen as a cloud of smoke fills the set.

Sam and Maggie’s house is known as “the Evans cottage.” It’s natural to assume that the coffeepot Maggie is using when this fire starts is ten, fifteen feet away from Sam, tops. Then again, the other day David and well-meaning governess Vicki visited Sam, and he sent David to “the refrigerator” to have a moment alone with Vicki. David was gone for several minutes, and didn’t seem to have heard a bot of the conversation Sam and Vicki held at a fairly high volume. So who knows, maybe their kitchen is soundproofed or something.

Episode 144: Saying things I don’t expect you to say

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:

Josette, is that you? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

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.

Episode 143: Why did you paint my dream?

So much of today’s episode is given over to recapping that I’m just going to make a few miscellaneous notes.

There is a video insert representing a street scene in the town of Collinsport that I don’t think we’ve seen before. It must be rush hour, we’ve never seen this many cars there before. Nor have we ever seen the town’s drug store.

Rush hour in Collinsport.

Well-meaning governess Vicki takes her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, into Collinsport. They want to see drunken artist Sam Evans. David wants to thank Sam for giving him a painting depicting his mother, the mysterious and long-absent Laura, naked and in flames (just what every nine year old boy wants!) Vicki wants to talk with Sam about the unseen forces that compelled Sam to create the painting and her to ask Sam him for it. Sam tells Vicki that the same force has driven him to paint another picture on the same hated theme.

Laura in flames #2, by Sam Evans

Back in the great house of Collinwood, a plainclothesman comes from the Maine state police. The authorities in Phoenix, Arizona are investigating a fire that destroyed the building in that city where Laura lived. The charred body of a woman Laura’s age, height, and build was found in her apartment. Since the only person associated with the building whose whereabouts were unaccounted for the night of the fire was Laura, the police initially recorded the remains as Laura’s. Laura was first seen in Collinsport the night of the fire, and has interacted with many old friends and acquaintances. So the body is now listed as unidentified, and the Maine police are assisting their Arizona counterparts in their attempt to find out who she was.

This officer has brought a few pieces of jewelry found in the apartment, hoping Laura can identify them. Laura isn’t in this episode, so he shows them to reclusive matriarch Liz instead. Liz identifies a locket as a family heirloom her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, gave to Laura when they were married. It contains a lock of David’s hair and a picture of a blond boy who does not appear to be David.

Who’s that kid?

Laura showed Vicki an identical locket in #139 and told her it contained a lock of David’s hair. Liz insists there is only one such locket. In view of all the signs that Laura is a supernatural being, we can tentatively assume that the burned body is indeed her corpse. As the body now living in the cottage at Collinwood is an uncanny duplicate of her original body, so the locket Vicki saw in 139 is a duplicate of the original locket.

When Laura showed Vicki the locket, she did not open it. Vicki has only Laura’s word that there is hair in it. Indeed, Laura asks Vicki to collect a lock of David’s hair, suggesting that the hair may not have been duplicated when the locket was. We’ve already had many hints that while Laura has come back from the dead, she hasn’t come all the way back- what we see when we look at her is only a fragment of a human being, maybe one of several fragments scattered throughout the world. The corpse in Phoenix is one fragment, the guest in the cottage is another, the ghost David sees flickering on the lawn is another, etc. Nor is her resurrection something that offers new life for anyone else. If she can’t bring even a lock of David’s hair back with her, we must assume that anyone who tried to join her on her path would simply be destroyed.

Episode 142: Firelight is not for looking closely

A few times in the early months of Dark Shadows, writers Art Wallace and Francis Swann found themselves in a corner. The story could move forward only if a character took a particular action, but they couldn’t come up with a reason to explain why any character would take that action. So they had the character do whatever it was simply because it was in the script, and hoped the actors or director or somebody would come up with sleight of hand to conceal their desperation.

Since well-meaning governess Vicki was on screen more than anyone else, she was the one most often required to behave without motivation. Sometimes, Alexandra Moltke Isles finds a way to make Vicki’s behavior intelligible in spite of the writers. The scenes in which Vicki tries to befriend her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, are Dark Shadows‘ premier example of good acting trumping bad writing, and there are smaller examples as well. But there are three times in the Wallace/ Swann era- in episodes 26, 38, and 83– when Vicki simply looks like an idiot. This “Dumb Vicki” will appear more and more often as the series goes on, and will eventually ruin the character and do grave damage to the show.

Some weeks ago, Wallace and Swann were succeeded as the principal writers of the show by Ron Sproat and Malcolm Marmorstein. Sproat was a cut below Wallace and Swann, and Marmorstein was far less talented even than Sproat. Today, we get a succession of Dumb Vicki moments resulting from basic incompetence on Marmorstein’s part.

Vicki is visiting her friend Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie has shown her a canvas that her father, drunken artist Sam, was possessed by an unexplained force to paint. Sam hates the painting and is surprised as he watches it take shape under his brush, but is powerless to stop working on it. It depicts Laura Collins, mother of David. Laura is shown as a winged figure, nude and engulfed in flames.

Sam has had several scenes in which he was shown in closeup delivering speeches about his hatred for the painting and going through convulsions while spooky music plays on the soundtrack. He has also had scenes with Maggie and with Laura’s husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, in which he tries to explain what is going on with him and the painting. Yesterday, Maggie recapped much of this to Vicki, sharing the suspicion that Laura is somehow responsible for Sam’s compulsion to paint the picture. Since the show has also given us loads of hints that Laura is connected to the supernatural, this all adds up to a very heavy-handed way of telling the audience that Sam is possessed.

Once you can say that your characters are possessed by unseen spirits, you get a lot of extra latitude as to what constitutes motivation. Once they have shown us that he is possessed, all we need to know about Sam for his actions to make sense is that he has some kind of connection to Laura and that Laura has some connection to the supernatural. The results of the possession hold our interest as we compare them with other events in the story and look for a pattern we can fit them into.

As far as the supernatural beings responsible for the possession go, we don’t need much information at all about their motivation. Far less than for human characters. Most audiences have more or less definite ideas as to what human beings are and what makes them do the things they do. We’re more flexible as to what supernatural beings are, and are willing to spend a long time searching for coherence hidden in story elements that don’t seem to have a logical connection once we have seen that there are uncanny forces in operation.

To get the benefit of that audience participation, a writer does have to show that supernatural forces are at work. Today, Vicki seems to be possessed, but there is no scene showing us that this has happened. Vicki looks at the painting and says she wants it. Asked why, she says she doesn’t know. Nothing she says makes much sense, or much impression.

Three seconds of Vicki staring at the painting while we hear a theremin cue on the soundtrack would have sufficed to tell us that she was falling under a spell. Not only don’t we get that, Mrs Isles never gets a chance to show us what is happening to Vicki. When Vicki first looked at the painting, she was partially obscured, standing behind Maggie; examining it later, she has her back to the camera. During her dialogue with the loudly agitated Sam, only a few brief shots focus on her. Sam gives Vicki the painting. When Maggie says she wonders how Laura will react when Vicki brings the painting into the house, Vicki mumbles that she doesn’t know.

Vicki struck dumb. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Had we seen Vicki falling under the spell, the result could have been a powerful moment. As a supernatural storyline goes on, the mysterious forces behind it spread their influence from one character to another. The first moment in this one when we could see that sort of contagion at work is when the powers that have been controlling Sam take hold of Vicki. To hide that moment from us is to hide the whole development of the narrative arc.

Moreover, that this particular development takes place on this set among these characters is quite significant. When Vicki and Maggie first met, Maggie told her that she was a jerk for taking a job at the great house of Collinwood. She told Vicki that Collinwood was a source of trouble for the town of Collinsport. As the weeks went on, Maggie and other Collinsport natives made it clear that a big part of that trouble comes from the ghosts and ghoulies that are housed in Collinwood and that threaten to break out and take over the town. This will indeed become the major theme of the show in the years ahead.

Now Vicki has lived in Collinwood for over six months, and the only ghosts she has seen are the friendly, protective spirits of Josette Collins and beloved local man Bill Malloy. The first time a supernatural being does something frightening to Vicki is in the town of Collinsport, in Maggie’s own house.

Indeed, the Phoenix storyline is the only one in the whole series to invert the usual pattern of Collinwood as hell-mouth and Collinsport as a beleaguered outpost of normality. There are other storylines where evil powers came from far away, from across the sea or from another dimension, and settled in Collinwood before spreading out to threaten Collinsport, but in this story the source of the disturbance is Laura. While she may tell David in episode 140 that she comes from one of the realms described in the legends of the Holy Grail, that origin applies only to her uncanny side. When Laura first came to town, she had told Maggie that she was originally from Collinsport, and in episode 130, Laura’s estranged husband Roger, and Roger’s sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, had mentioned that Laura’s family had moved away from town.

The episode also leaves us on our own trying to figure out what Vicki is thinking. Regular viewers might take some time during the commercial break to puzzle it out, put it in the context of what we’ve seen previously, and wonder if Vicki is in a stupor because she too is possessed. That might help us to get through the rest of the episode, but if we are to feel a live connection to the character we have to understand what she is feeling while we are watching her. A theory we come up with after the fact is no substitute for empathy we experience during the scene. And of course people tuning in to Dark Shadows for the first time will simply think that Vicki is some kind of idiot.

Many fans of Dark Shadows, especially those who haven’t seen the first 42 weeks of the show or who didn’t see them until later episodes had given them fixed impressions, blame Alexandra Moltke Isles’ acting for Dumb Vicki. But today’s scene in the Evans cottage shows how deeply unfair that is. If an actor doesn’t have lines to deliver, she can’t use her voice to create a character. If the camera isn’t pointed at her, her body language is no use. And if the director is telling her to play the scene quietly while the others are going over the top, she’s likely to fade into the background. Without even a musical sting on the soundtrack to support her, there is nothing Mrs Isles could have done to communicate to the audience what Vicki is going through in this scene.

It is easy for me to denounce Malcolm Marmorstein, since his scripts are so often so bad. I am reluctant to place a share of the blame on director John Sedwick, since I am always impressed with Sedwick’s visual style and usually with his deployment of actors. But I can’t believe anyone would have stopped him pointing a camera at Mrs Isles at the appropriate moment, giving her a chance to play her part.

Back at the great house of Collinwood, David and Laura are sitting by the fire. David asks his mother about her old boyfriends. He wants to know if she ever dated dashing action hero Burke Devlin. She admits that she did. When David lets on that he wishes Burke, rather than Roger, were his father, Laura squirms. We’ve had a number of indications that Burke might in fact be David’s biological father, and Laura is alarmed that David is raising the topic.

The front door opens, and David and Laura are glad to see their friend Vicki. They are intrigued by the package Vicki is carrying. David begs to see what’s inside. Laura, in a light and cheerful voice, tells him that if Vicki wanted him to see it, she would have shown it to them. He continues to beg. Vicki says “All right!,” and unveils it. When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius exclaimed “All right!?,” appalled at Vicki’s nonsensical decision to yield to David’s pleas despite the cover Laura was giving her. Again, the idea that Vicki’s weird decisions and vague, distracted manner might be symptoms of possession was somewhere in our minds, but since nothing had been shown to give direct support to that idea our emotional reaction suited a Dumb Vicki moment.

As Maggie had suggested she might be, Laura is horrified to see herself depicted in this fiery image. David is thrilled- he had been plagued by a recurring nightmare, one he had described in detail to the deeply concerned Vicki, in which his mother stood in a sea of flames and beckoned him to join her. He asks how Sam knew about his dream- did he have the same dream? Vicki mumbles that he didn’t, that he didn’t know anything about the dream or even why he was painting the picture. The audience may have wondered why Vicki didn’t remember the dream until now- the explanation that fits best with the story is that she has been possessed by the same spirit that possessed Sam, but with so little attention given to Vicki as she was reacting to the painting some very insightful critics have taken it as another Dumb Vicki moment.

David points to a white space in the painting, one the shape of his own head, and asks what goes there. Vicki mumbles that she doesn’t know, and that Sam himself didn’t know. David is delighted with the painting and wants to hang it in his room. He asks Vicki to give it to him. Vicki tells him that his mother will have to rule on that question. Laura hates the painting and tries to talk David out of hanging it, but he is nothing deterred. She finally caves in.

While David goes upstairs with the painting, Laura asks Vicki what she was thinking bringing such a terrible thing into the house. Vicki says she doesn’t know- something just came over her. That goes to show that the writer wanted us to think that Vicki was possessed, which in turn makes it all the more exasperating that he didn’t let us in on it at the appropriate time. The fact that we know the writer wants us to have a reaction doesn’t mean that we actually have it. Confusion pushes people away from a story, and merely intellectual explanations offered after the fact don’t draw us back in.

Vicki, seeming to regain some of her brainpower, goes to David’s room and tries to talk him out of keeping the painting. He dismisses her concerns immediately, without even changing his delighted manner, and hangs it on his wall. Looking at it, Vicki admits that it looks like it belongs there.

Laura enters, and tells David she has changed her mind. She thinks it would be bad for him to have such an image on display, and asks him to get rid of the painting. David responds by threatening never to speak to her again. Laura has just been reunited with David after years of separation, and his initial reaction to her return was confused and traumatic. So it is understandable that she capitulates to this extortion.

It is more surprising that Vicki responds by turning away and wringing her hands after Laura leaves. Usually Vicki scolds David after he is nasty to people, and she has been on a particular mission to break down the barriers between him and his mother. If it were clear that Vicki was under the influence of a spirit and was not herself, this uncharacteristically diffident response might have carried a dramatic punch, at least for regular viewers. As it is, it slides past as yet another Dumb Vicki moment.

Back in the Evans cottage, Sam comes back from his usual night of drinking at the local tavern. Maggie is infinitely weary of her father’s alcoholism, but does smile to hear him reciting poetry and talking about a seascape he is planning to paint. At least he’s happy. Sam goes to his easel to start that seascape, only to recoil as he realizes that he is in fact painting another version of the picture of Laura in flames.

David is asleep in his room. The painting starts to glow. Then Laura’s painted likeness is replaced with a video insert of her face. The insert grows and grows, and David screams for it to stay away.

Night-time visitor. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Maggie’s suspicion that Laura is behind the portrait fits with the many signs the show has given us of Laura’s uncanny nature. Laura’s reaction when Vicki brings the painting home, though, shows us that what has been happening to Sam does not serve Laura’s interests, any more than David’s nightmare did.

I think there are three possible explanations for the origin of the compulsion Sam had to paint the picture, the compulsion Vicki had to claim it, and David’s nocturnal disturbances. It could be that by exposing David time and again to the image of him following her into flames, Laura is gradually wearing down David’s resistance to a horrible idea that will lead to his destruction. In support of this interpretation, we remember the first night Laura was at Collinwood. She was calling David’s name in a quiet voice at the window of her cottage, far from the great house. Yet the sound of her voice penetrated David’s mind as he slept. He writhed on his bed, and went into the nightmare. Laura’s objection to the painting militates against this explanation.

When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius suggested a second reading. There might be a lot to Laura. Maybe in addition to the physical presence in the house that wants David to come away with her, there is also a ghostly presence that wants to warn him and everyone else of the danger that implies. That interpretation would fit with David’s sighting, the night Laura first came to the house, of a flickering image on the lawn that looked like Laura. David longed for that Laura to come to him, but reacted with terror when he saw the fleshly Laura in the drawing room. Perhaps there are two of her, and one is trying to protect David from the other. It is also possible that the two Lauras are not aware of each other, or even fully aware of themselves. So this interpretation is easier to reconcile with apparently contradictory evidence.

Vicki’s involvement suggests a third possibility. The ghost of Josette Collins appeared to her and comforted her in episode 126, and an eerie glow had emanated from the portrait of Josette when David left Laura alone in the Old House yesterday. Laura was alarmed to hear that David was interested in the ghosts of Collinwood, had not wanted to go to the Old House, and lies to David when he asks if he saw any sign of Josette’s presence. Perhaps Josette is intervening to thwart Laura’s plans, and it is her power that is benumbing Vicki today. Josette’s previous interventions have been intermittent and subtle, suggesting that it is difficult for her to reach the world of the living. So if she is preparing for a showdown with Laura, we might it expect it to take her some time to recruit her strength.

Again, this is the kind of search for patterns that an audience will gladly go into once you’ve let them know that there are supernatural forces at work in your story. Since Josette has been in the background of the show from week one, has appeared repeatedly, has a set devoted to her in the Old House, and has established connections with both Vicki and David, we might expect her to be the first of the uncanny presences we think of when we enter a supernatural storyline. That she is a tutelary spirit presiding over Collinwood brings it into sharp focus that the estate is under assault from a supernatural force emanating from the town of Collinsport. Today’s failure with Vicki kicks Josette’s ghost out of the spotlight, and that is one of the major faults with the episode.

Episode 141: The ashes of the old

Well-meaning governess Vicki finds that her charge, strange and troubled boy David, is up early. He is standing in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. What is he doing in the drawing room? Drawing, what else? He is using the top of the piano as a drafting board as he finishes a sketch of a Phoenix in flames. His mother, mysterious and long-absent Laura, had told him the story of the Phoenix last night while Vicki eavesdropped. David had been having an extremely disturbing recurring nightmare in which his mother beckoned him to join her in a sea of flames; now he’s had a good night’s sleep and is cheerfully creating an artwork on a theme closely related to the one that had so gravely tormented him. Evidently hearing his mother telling the story of the Phoenix was good therapy for him.

David’s drawing of the Phoenix. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Vicki suggests they get an early start on the day’s lessons. David expresses vigorous disapproval of this plan. Laura comes into the house and asks Vicki to let her spend the day with David. When David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, took Vicki away from David for a day in episode 71, Vicki got in trouble the next day with the person who actually hired her and pays her salary, reclusive matriarch Liz. Roger lives in Liz’ house as a guest, but at least he lives there. Laura is only visiting after a long absence, and to Liz’ dismay she wants to take David away from Collinwood. So regular viewers will wonder what Vicki is thinking when she agrees to take the day off without clearing it with Liz.

The impromptu school holiday turns out to be an opportunity for a lot of recapping. Vicki goes to visit her friend, Maggie Evans, at the cottage in town Maggie shares with her father, drunken artist Sam Evans. Vicki and the Evanses recap up a storm. Maggie is particularly worried that her father is, for some reason he himself doesn’t understand, painting a portrait of Laura Collins, nude and surrounded by flames, with a space left blank for a smaller figure to be added.

Sam Evans’ painting of Laura in flames. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

David takes his mother to his favorite place, the haunted Old House on the grounds of the Collinwood estate. David hopes that the ghost of Josette Collins will manifest itself to them while they are visiting. This idea makes Laura intensely uncomfortable. David wonders if this is because she is afraid of ghosts. Considering what we have seen suggesting that Laura is herself connected to the supernatural, the audience is more likely to see her attitude as a sign that she has reason to expect a showdown with the ghost of Josette.

David explains that the ghosts appear to only one person at a time. He insists that Laura spend a few minutes alone in the room with the portrait. When she does, it glows and the spooky music plays. When David comes back, she lies to him, denying that she saw anything unusual.

David takes Laura’s hand, and they leave the Old House. Once the parlor is empty, we see Josette’s portrait glow again. We have been watching the two of them from Josette’s perspective.* We know that seeing David and Laura has stirred her up out of the mystic back-world implicit in the action of the show, but we do not yet know in what way it has stirred her up. Does she have intentions, or is she some kind of inchoate energy? If she does have intentions, what are they? Does she fear for David’s safety and want to protect him? Is she attached to him as a friend and unhappy with his mother’s plan to take him away? Does she plan to take possession of David in some unwholesome way? At this point, all of those possibilities are open, as is the possibility that Josette has no intentions at all and does not know what is going on.

*Mrs Acilius contributed a great deal to this paragraph.

Episode 140: Some call it Paradise

On his blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn discussed the soap opera term “supercouple”:

This is the thing that people miss when they talk about soap opera couples. Two characters don’t have to be in love with each other to be a “couple” — although they often are, which is why people think that’s the definition.

Two characters are a “couple” when a scene with them together is way more interesting than a scene with them apart. It makes absolutely no difference whether they love each other, or hate each other, or they’re partners, or best friends. Kirk and Spock are a couple. Ernie and Bert are a couple.

Dark Shadows Every Day, Episode 473: The Twin Dilemma

By Danny’s definition, Dark Shadows‘ first supercouple is well-meaning governess Vicki and her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. Most of the storylines the series started with- Vicki’s quest for her origins, dashing action hero Burke Devlin’s quest for revenge on high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, reclusive matriarch Liz’ insistence that certain parts of the house never be entered, the doomed romance between flighty heiress Carolyn and hardworking young fisherman Joe, etc- either dribble away to nothing or never really get started. But Vicki’s attempt to befriend David is interesting every time we see the two of them together on screen.

That is entirely down to the actors. The scripts give David the same viciously hostile lines of dialogue over and again, require Vicki to read aloud from textbooks about the geography of Maine, and lock Vicki up in windowless rooms for what seem like eons. But David Henesy and Alexandra Moltke Isles, with their facial expressions, tones of voice, gestures, use of space, etc, create the impression of a relationship steadily growing in emotional complexity and importance. When David finally looks up into Vicki’s eyes and declares “I love you, Miss Winters!” in #89, this body language gives us a context within which we can feel that a plot-line has moved forward. In the months since that statement, David and Vicki have grown closer, and now they are quite cozy.

So much so, in fact, that there is a danger that they might end up recreating the interpersonal dynamic that Liz and Roger model and that will become Dark Shadows’ signature- a relationship between a bossy big sister and her bratty little brother. Liz continually tries to control Roger’s behavior so that he will not be bad, and when her efforts fail, as they invariably do, she covers up for him and shields him from accountability. Earlier this week, as Vicki explained David to himself and he clutched at her for support after he had done shocking things, we could see how after a time they might fall into that pattern.

Today, they seem to put that danger behind them once and for all. David’s mother, the mysterious and long-absent Laura, has come back and wants to take David to live with her. David has wanted this for years, but in the days since Laura’s return has come to be deathly afraid of her. Vicki has met with Laura and arranged to cross paths with Laura when she and David take their afternoon walk. Vicki’s theory, which has quite a bit of evidence behind it, is that David is only afraid of rejection, and that if he can see his mother in a setting where nothing will be expected of him he will start to relax.

The first result of this encounter is that David slips off a high cliff, clinging for his life to a crumbling rock on its edge. This would seem to be a negative outcome. Vicki rescues him, embraces him, and talks him into going to his mother.

Vicki holds David and urges him to go to his mother

David sees that Laura is crying and apologizes to her. They embrace and warm to each other. David, Laura, and Vicki walk back to the house together. David’s father, Roger, and his aunt, Liz, are impressed with the progress Vicki has made.

Happy at home

Dark Shadows began on a sort of 14 week schedule. Coming at the end of the first 14 weeks, episode 70 gave us our first visit to the haunted Old House and our first unambiguous sighting of a ghost. At the end of the third 14 weeks, episode 210 will end with a hand darting out of a coffin and rebooting the show entirely. Today, the conclusion of the second 14 week period is perhaps less spectacular, but in its own way just as pivotal as those other milestone episodes.

With David’s apology for making his mother cry and his resolution to open up to her, he is becoming significantly less bratty. With her handing of David off to Laura, Vicki is renouncing her opportunity to be bossy, and indeed to become a surrogate sister to him. With that danger out of the way and an untroubled friendship established between them, the Vicki/ David arc seems to have reached a logical conclusion. The series will have to find a new supercouple, or a clutch of new storylines, if it is to hold our attention in the long term.

Perhaps Laura and David will be the new pair at the center of the show. They are together at the beginning and end of the second half of the episode, and in between Laura gets some information about David to which she gives an intriguing reaction.

At the beginning of that second half, the five characters in today’s episode share a meal in the kitchen at Collinwood. The richest people in town live in a huge mansion, and this is their dining room:

Family dinner

I suppose Liz and her daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, lived alone in the house for 18 years, ending with Roger and David’s arrival sometime last spring. So perhaps there is a bigger dining room sealed off somewhere. Be that as it may, the smallness of the kitchen is one of its most valuable features as a set. Scenes there have an intimacy that makes it natural for characters to share important information with each other. Indeed, almost every time we’ve seen the kitchen, we’ve seen someone pick up information that led them to take action that advanced the plot.

Liz and Roger mention that Laura hasn’t eaten anything. Roger follows that with jokes about the cooking abilities of Mrs Johnson, Collinwood’s housekeeper. Laura not eating is a familiar theme to the audience. The first several times we saw Laura she was in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. Maggie Evans, keeper of that restaurant, remarked that Laura never ate during any of her visits there, and yesterday she didn’t touch the breakfast Vicki brought her. The emphasis they keep putting on this point is one of many signs they’ve offered that there is something uncanny about her.

After the others have left the little table, Liz exchanges a few words with Laura. She mentions that David is a highly imaginative child, who even supposes that he talks with the ghosts of Collinwood. At this, Laura opens her eyes wide, shifts in her seat, looks straight ahead, and says that that does sound like pure fantasy. Liz adds that he spends a lot of time with the ghosts. Laura glances back in Liz’ direction and says that perhaps now he will spend more time with her.

One might imagine that a long-absent mother, hearing that her son thinks he spends a lot of time in conversation with ghosts, would be concerned for his mental health. A reaction like the one Laura gives Liz might be a sign of such concern. But we’ve had so many hints that Laura is herself somehow connected to the supernatural that this does not seem to be a likely explanation. More probably, her discomfort is a sign that David’s sensitivity to the uncanny and his communication with the ghosts might lead him to learn something about her that she does not want him to know.

Laura and David sit by the fire in the drawing room. Vicki has scolded David for his habit of standing at the doors to the drawing room and eavesdropping on conversations taking place inside. Now, it’s Vicki’s turn to stand on the same spot and eavesdrop on a conversation involving David.

Vicki listens in

David has asked Laura to tell him about the place she comes from. “Some call it Paradise,” she says. She starts describing a hot, sunny place with palm trees. Her last known address before appearing in Collinsport was Phoenix, Arizona, so maybe that’s what she’s talking about. But as she goes on, the description sounds less and less like that city, and more and more like the places we hear about in the legends of the Holy Grail. The air is always fragrant with the flowers that bloom continually, and the trees are the proper nesting places of a creature that figures prominently in the Grail legends, the Phoenix. David has never heard of the Phoenix, and Laura tells him an elaborate version of its story.

In episode 128, Maggie sat at Laura’s table in the restaurant and Laura told her the story of the Phoenix. When Maggie told her father, drunken artist Sam, that a mysterious blonde woman who used to live in Collinsport had told her that tale, Sam had reacted as if he recognized the story as one Laura used to tell. The version she told Maggie, though, was a relatively brief one, and was by way of an etymology for the name of her most recent hometown. The version she tells David today is much more elaborate. It evokes a whole world, claims that world as her home and therefore as David’s, and invites David to take his rightful place under the sign of the Phoenix.

As Vicki hears Laura reach the climax of the story, a sudden wind blows the front doors open, and a fraction of a second later blows the drawing room doors open as well. Laura looks up and sees Vicki eavesdropping. She is a bit startled to see her, though not as startled as Vicki is to be seen:

Vicki caught eavesdropping

After a brief moment- less than a second- Laura turns from Vicki and to the fire. She and David peer into the flames.

Peering into the flames together

Laura turns from the flames and looks at David. The episode closes with her look of satisfaction as she sees her son fascinated by the fire.

Watching David watch the fire

The doors have blown open before when the show wanted us to think that supernatural forces are at work in the house. Laura herself may control some supernatural forces, but it seems unlikely that she is the author of this incident. It interrupts her story just as she is declaring that “The Phoenix is reborn!,” her reaction shows that she didn’t know or particularly care that Vicki was eavesdropping, and her turn to the fire would suggest that she is concerned the wind might have extinguished the flames. Perhaps we are supposed to think that Laura’s presence and her plans have stirred up one or more of the ghosts Liz mentioned to Laura after dinner, and that the gust of wind was a sign of their presence. That would in turn suggest that the weeks ahead will feature a conflict between Laura’s uncanny powers and those of the spirits lurking in the back-world implicit in the action of the show.

Episode 139: Are you going to Madagascar?

High-born ne’er do-well Roger Collins walks in on his estranged wife, the mysterious and long-absent Laura, fending off an attempt by his arch-nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, to plant a kiss on her. Roger is equipped with a bolt action rifle.

Great emphasis is placed on the rifle. The most prominent set in all of Dark Shadows is the drawing room in the great house of Collinwood, and it was altered yesterday to put a gun rack on its wall. This will startle regular viewers who remember that in episode #118 reclusive matriarch Liz had to go to the back part of the house to dig up Roger’s almost-forgotten guns. Now, those guns are on display in the family’s main dwelling place and holiest shrine.

It is 1967 and everyone associated with the creative side of the show is connected with the NYC theater world, so there is approximately a 100% chance that we are intended to read these scenes in Freudian terms. The gun is a phallic symbol, but a corrupted, sickened one- it promises, not pleasure and the creation of new life, but pain and killing. In the context of Roger and Laura’s dead marriage, it demonstrates that Roger’s sexual frustration has warped him and led him to violence.

Roger declares that Burke is trespassing on his property and bothering his wife, and declares that no court in the world would convict him of anything were he to shoot Burke to death. He also says that killing Burke would give him great pleasure. Burke asks him why he doesn’t do it, and Laura wearily complains that she had enough of these sort of encounters between them ten years ago.

Laura’s remark comes as a jolt. Ten years ago, Roger and Laura were not a long-separated couple in the process of divorcing- they were not yet a couple at all. As far as the world was concerned, she and Burke were involved with each other, and Roger was a friend who sometimes tagged along on their dates. That was the situation until a fatal hit-and-run accident involving Burke’s car. This is the first time the three of them have been alone together since that night. After the accident, Laura and Roger testified against Burke. He went to prison and they married each other. When Laura says that the way Roger and Burke are carrying on now is the way they interacted ten years ago, she is saying that even when she was ostensibly Burke’s girlfriend the two men were more excited about each other than either was about her. Perhaps Laura was the one who tagged along on Roger and Burke’s dates.

Burke grabs the gun. He and Roger struggle for it. It fires into the ceiling, and Burke tears it from Roger’s hands, flinging it to the floor. Burke picks it up. Roger rants and raves, vowing to kill Burke. Yet he does not make any protest when Burke walks off with the rifle, even though the rifle is a valuable piece of property and a central feature of Collinwood’s decor. Roger can attempt to express his masculinity only in conjunction with Burke. When Burke removes the phallic symbol and silently leaves, Roger is struck mute.

After Burke leaves, Roger and Laura continue to develop the themes of powerlessness and sterility. Having none of the influence over her an ongoing sexual relationship might give him, he complains of her disloyalty to him and of his humiliation in the eyes of those who might see her socializing with Burke. He tries to assert power over her with threats of legal consequences if she goes along with Burke’s plan to reopen the hit-and-run case. Laura agrees that she cannot help Burke without losing the one thing she wants to gain, custody of their son, strange and troubled boy David. Roger completes the image of his own emasculation with a parting remark that he will be happy to see Laura leave with their son “if David is my son.”

There is something of a fault with the production. Neither Laura nor Roger is in a position to bring new life into the world, and we are in doubt as to whether Laura is, strictly speaking, alive at all. Yet as Laura, Diana Millay is quite visibly pregnant, and she will only get “pregnanter and pregnanter” as the story goes on. Her style of acting, her personality, and her looks are so perfect for the part that it is impossible to imagine anyone else playing it, but it was very confusing to present her as an avatar of death and the unreal past when she is such a strong visual symbol of life and the growing future.

After Roger flounces out of Laura’s cottage, she goes to the window and calls to David. We see David asleep in his room in the great house. He is writhing on his bed, hearing his mother’s voice and having a nightmare. Well-meaning governess Vicki wakes David, telling him that it is 10:30 AM.* David tells her that he had the same nightmare he did the night before, in which his mother beckoned him into a firestorm. Vicki tries to assuage his fears, purring lovingly at him, but he is still deeply disturbed.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Roger enters and tells David to come along and see his mother. David flies into a tantrum, insisting that he will not see her and that no one can make him. When Roger threatens to beat him, David clings to Vicki and pleads with her to stop his father from hitting him. Vicki calmly states that “No one is going to hit you,” underlining Roger’s lack of authority in his relationships with both David and the hired help. David runs off.

Vicki sits on David’s bed and tells Roger that she has a theory about David’s behavior. She believes that he really wants to see his mother and that her love is tremendously important to him, but that he has worked himself into his current state because he is afraid she will reject him. This theory has a very substantial basis in fact. When Laura first came to the house in #134, David was extremely eager to meet her, until he suddenly asked Vicki “What if I do or say something to make her hate me?” From that moment on, he has become more and more reluctant to see Laura. Vicki tells Roger that she will work to arrange a meeting between mother and son in a situation where he will not feel pressured to perform in any particular way.

Vicki shows up at the cottage carrying a tray of tea things. Laura is impressed with the breakfast. Vicki shares her idea of arranging an apparently chance meeting during the walk she and David take around the grounds every afternoon beginning at 4:30.** Laura does not eat or drink anything during her breakfast with Vicki, but she does ask a series of questions about David. Vicki enthusiastically tells her every nice thing about him she can think of, leaving out such awkward incidents as his attempts to murder Roger and Vicki herself.

Laura chooses the top of Widow’s Hill for their “chance” meeting. This is rather an odd place considering that it is likely to be getting dark by 4:30 PM in early January in central Maine, and Widow’s Hill is a place from which people famously fall to their deaths. But, Laura is the boy’s mother. Besides, the other option was the greenhouse, and they don’t have a set for a greenhouse, so Vicki goes along with it.***

At the top of the hill, David asks Vicki why she wanted to go there, and starts talking about how dangerous it is. He noodles around at the edge of the cliff, alarming her, but he says he knows the ground so well it isn’t dangerous for him. After a minute, David says it’s boring there and he wants to leave. Vicki scrambles for a reason to stay, and finds a ship on the horizon. That catches David’s attention. He watches it, wanders ever closer to the precipice, and talks about sailing around the world.

That’s when Laura shows up. In episode 2, Roger introduced himself to Vicki by startling her while she stood on the edge of the cliff, nearly prompting her to fall to her death. In #75, Vicki returned the compliment. Now, Laura simply starts talking while David is on the precipice. Shocked to hear her voice, he jumps back.

Laura goes on about how David was always interested in exotic places when he was a little boy. He looks petrified, but does agree that he remembers those conversations. She reaches out and calls him to come to her. He recoils, slips, and ends up clutching the side of the precipice. That’s what’s known as a “cliffhanger ending.”

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

*In many markets, ABC affiliates ignored the network’s recommendation that Dark Shadows be broadcast at 4:00 PM and showed it at 10:30 AM. Hearing Vicki mention this hour makes me wonder if we are supposed to think of the action of a soap opera taking place, not only on the date of the original broadcast, but at the time.

**4:30 was the time when Dark Shadows ended in markets where the ABC affiliate went along with the network’s recommended schedule. Mustn’t have people outdoors between 4 and 4:30!

***Mrs Acilius pointed out this consideration when we were watching the episode.