Dashing action hero Burke Devlin pays yet another visit to the great house of Collinwood. He announces to its residents, the ancient and esteemed Collins family, that he intends to take control of all their properties, including the house. He is buying up their debts and will use them to seize their businesses. He offers to pay them for the house, though. He even offers to pay for it at higher than the market value.
Ne’er-do-well Roger Collins urges his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, to take Burke’s offer for the house. It’s a huge, gloomy, impractical place, and they would be better off without it. He doesn’t mention that the cash might come in handy when Burke starts calling in all the notes they have no way of meeting. Liz won’t hear of it, and vows to fight.
Flighty heiress Carolyn and well-meaning governess Vicki process their feelings about the matter. Carolyn is wounded by the evidence that Burke never really wanted to be her boyfriend- not that he ever said he did, but she kept hoping. Vicki wonders what Burke is thinking, and whether he understands his own motives. He admits that he may not- after all, if he’s trying to avenge the wrongs the Collinses have done him by bankrupting them and collecting their assets, why not just watch their house fall into his lap with the cannery, the fishing boats, and whatever else they may have, leaving them with nothing?
With this post we say goodbye to one of the bloggers who has kept us company. This was the last episode Marc Masse discussed on his blog Dark Shadows from the Beginning. His posts usually include stimulating insights, sometimes remarkable scholarship, and occasionally material that is in one way or another frustrating. Still, he is always well worth reading.
Among his most extraordinary contributions was about the story of the sabotaging of Roger’s car, a.k.a. The Saga of the Bleeder Valve. That story began when we, accompanying Vicki, saw Burke standing by Roger’s car in episode 13.
Burke tells Vicki that he was looking at Roger’s car because he was thinking of buying one like it, an explanation she finds unconvincing.
In his post about episode 46, Masse includes a long section about similarities between the Saga of the Bleeder Valve and a particular episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He convinces me that Art Wallace and Lela Swift had studied that episode. You’ll notice from his screenshots that that John Cassavetes even had the same haircut that Mitch Ryan wore as Burke:
Source material for the missing brake valve storyline on Dark Shadows can also be found in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour anthology series. In the episode Murder Case (season 2, episode 19; aired March 6, 1964), Gena Rowlands plays an actress (Diana Justin) in London married to a rich diamond merchant (Charles Justin) played by Murray Matheson. Diana isn’t really in love with her much older husband Charles, but since he is the main financial backer of a play she is starring in, her success is ensured… that is until the boyfriend she dropped so she could run off to England and start a production company with her rich husband, a struggling actor named Lee Griffin (played by John Cassavetes), manages to wangle his way through an audition and secure a part in the play by getting Diana to pass a good word along to the author and director of the production. Lee gets Diana to agree to resume their former relationship, and in no time the pair are in cahoots to relieve Diana of her marital obligations and in the process secure a huge windfall by plotting to have the old man bumped off. To accomplish this, they arrange for Charles to have an automobile accident; this is where the similarities to the missing brake valve story on Dark Shadows come into play.
One afternoon, on a visit up to the country home where Diana and Charles live, which is situated high up on a hilly area, Lee gets an idea when he comments on how the type of car that Charles drives is famous for its brakes.
To compromise the functioning of the car’s brake system, Lee first uses a wrench to loosen something, probably the bleeder valve…
…after which he pumps the brake pedal several times so there won’t be any hydraulic fluid left for when Charles next gets behind the wheel.
Just after completing the task, and with the wrench still in his back pocket, Charles walks in to find Lee there standing by his car, just like in Dark Shadows episode 13 when Victoria Winters walks into the Collinwood garage to find Burke near Roger’s car. To diffuse the situation, Lee explains to Charles: “I was, uh, just admiring your car. It’s, uh, fabulous!”
That night Lee and Diana have a performance in London; to set the plan in motion, Lee phones Charles from backstage while the play is still on and concocts a story about nearly having gotten into an accident on their drive into London due to a careless young motorist, which left Diana shaken up, and suggesting to Charles that he drive down to London to take his wife home…
…which he agrees to, just like in Dark Shadows episode 15 when Roger agrees to drive into town to meet with Burke at the Blue Whale.
Similar to how Roger in episode 17 is shown to have miraculously escaped with just a sprained arm and a few stitches to the forehead, Charles winds up crashing head on into a tractor that was just starting up the hill; despite that the car ended up a total loss, Charles was extremely lucky in having sustained only a couple of cracked ribs and a slight concussion.
The missing brake valve story on Dark Shadows never really did feel like something that would ordinarily be presented on a daytime serial drama. Instead, thus far Dark Shadows has taken its cue from 1940s film noir for atmosphere, Broadway theater style for acting performances, and nighttime mystery suspense anthology programs for subject matter. Is it any wonder that Dark Shadows would go on to evolve into the cultural phenomenon it would later become? A truly one of a kind blend of widely varying influences.
In his post for episode 76, Masse includes the audio of Joan Bennett singing “Sentimental Moments” in the 1955 film We’re No Angels. I’d never heard of the song, and had no idea she sang. Indeed she was not a Singer with a capital S, but her gentle, precise phrasing is perfect for this strange, sad little tune. I think of it as a farewell to Masse and his blog.
Mrs Sarah Johnson, longtime housekeeper to the late Bill Malloy, shows up in the hotel room of dashing action hero Burke Devlin. She tells Burke that she believes his enemy, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, killed Bill. Her principal evidence for this is the fact that Bill’s body washed ashore near Roger’s home on the estate of Collinwood, and “I believe in signs and omens!”
This line is a bit of an omen itself- Clarice Blackburn will be an important part of the show, not only as Mrs Johnson, but as other characters who believe in signs and omens, and who make things happen in the name of that belief.
Meanwhile, hardworking young fisherman turned hardworking young clerk Joe Haskell is called into Roger’s office at the cannery. There, he finds flighty heiress Carolyn behind her uncle’s desk, looking seductive, or at least highly available.
Nancy Barrett’s way of throwing herself completely into whatever her character is supposed to be doing at any given moment sometimes makes Carolyn seem even more scattered than her persona as Flighty Heiress required, but it does come in handy when the character is supposed to be sexy. That makes her stand out- even by the standards of an American television show of the 1960s, Dark Shadows is remarkably un-sultry. Sometimes it’s a marvel that they can put so many good-looking young people in close proximity to each other and still project an image of total chastity.
Joe and Carolyn kiss, and she asks him to go away with her. He tells her that he can’t just leave work in the middle of the day. She explains that she is troubled by the doings of Joe’s bête noire, Burke. This leads to a lively conversation, which in turn leads Carolyn to resume her attempts to persuade Joe to take the rest of the day off. When Joe’s boss calls for him, she offers to use her clout as the owner’s daughter to persuade him to let Joe go. He won’t let her do this. She leaves, frustrated by his refusal.
Back at the hotel, Burke and Mrs Johnson are devising a plan in which she will get a job at Collinwood and act as a secret agent for him. We get a glimpse of Burke’s persuasive abilities. When Mrs Johnson is showing reluctance to follow his plan, Burke mentions that well-meaning governess Vicki has given Roger an alibi. She immediately declares that Vicki is lying. Burke won’t agree, leading her to demand that he set aside his personal feelings and devote himself wholeheartedly to making the case against Roger. Not only does the audience see Burke showing kindly feelings towards Vicki, keeping the idea alive that they might become a couple, but we also see Mrs Johnson commit herself to going along with Burke’s plan. Whatever Burke’s actual feelings for Vicki, his emotional display at this moment is timed to lock Mrs Johnson into doing what he wants.
There is a knock on the door. It’s Carolyn. Mrs Johnson hides in Burke’s kitchen and listens as he gives Carolyn the idea of hiring her as housekeeper at Collinwood. This isn’t very hard- Burke simply mentions that Mrs Johnson needs a job, and Carolyn at once says that she will tell her mother to hire her as housekeeper at Collinwood. Even so, Burke’s skillful handling of Mrs Johnson is so fresh in our minds that we don’t need to see him actually do anything to enlist Carolyn in his scheme for this scene to reinforce his image as master manipulator.
The sight of Mrs Johnson lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping on Burke and Carolyn, further reinforces this image. A guileless woman comes into his room proclaiming her every thought at the top of her lungs, as she had done when she was introduced at the sheriff’s office in episode 67. We can hardly imagine so straightforward a personality becoming an effective undercover operative Yet within minutes of meeting Burke, he has her working as a spy.
Writer Francis Swann is credited with the script for today’s episode. He is particularly good with installments that, like this one, have only four characters. Swann’s ability to slip substantial amounts of plot exposition into natural-sounding dialogue makes a minimalist drama seem busy. In this one, it also helps us to feel that we have seen Burke perform great feats of persuasion. Burke may not have had to work very hard to plant ideas in the minds of Carolyn and Mrs Johnson, but we are aware that the scripted dialogue has planted ideas in our minds, and know that someone on the other side of the screen is good at subtle communication.
Swann and director Lela Swift also make effective use of the sets in today’s episode. This is our first look at the kitchen in Burke’s room. He’s gone in and out of there several times, most notably in episode 29 when he prepared a nonalcoholic mixed drink, the “Burke Devlin Special,” for Roger’s son, problem child David. Regular viewers might have started to wonder what it might look like, and might pay close attention when we get our first look at it. What we do see is a complex pattern of shadows that signals Mrs Johnson’s initiation into the world of film noir.
In today’s scenes with Carolyn and Joe, we spend as much time in Roger’s office as we have in any other episode. It’s the only part of the Collins’ business location we see, standing in for the whole enterprise. Played on that set, Carolyn’s flippant attitude towards Joe’s job and his mixed feelings about the demands she makes lead us to wonder if she’s going to wreck the whole business. Her persistent friendliness towards family nemesis Burke gives substance to that thought. Regular viewers will remember that Roger’s self-indulgent behavior nearly annihilated the business; seeing his favorite niece play-act as him in his office leads us to wonder if she will finish the job.
Dashing action hero Burke Devlin goes to the local tavern, The Blue Whale. He sees Matthew Morgan, maniacally devoted servant of his foes, the wealthy Collins family. Matthew demands that Burke leave town. When Burke refuses, Matthew calmly informs Burke that he will kill him. Mitch Ryan plays Burke’s reaction to this announcement with a priceless look of disbelief. There’s a flicker of light in his eyes in the first second of the reaction, and he holds it long enough to be hilarious to watch:
Burke is stunned by Matthew’s casual announcement
Their conversation devolves into a bar fight. After the sheriff breaks it up, Ryan again has an opportunity for a memorable facial expression:
Burke recovering from the bar fight
Burke has been obnoxious enough, and Thayer David’s Matthew is engaging enough, that we found ourselves cheering Matthew on and laughing when Burke lost the fight.
In the sheriff’s office, both men get stern scoldings, Matthew for assaulting Burke, Burke for interfering with the police investigation of the death of beloved local man Bill Malloy. The sheriff releases both, warning Burke to stay away from the estate of Collinwood and Matthew to stay on it. Alone in the office, he calls reclusive matriarch Liz to warn her that Burke might be coming to Collinwood, and asking her to call him if he does.
Liz tells first the sheriff, then her daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, that she doesn’t think Burke will come to the estate. The sheriff had previously assured Matthew that Burke wouldn’t go there “if he knows what’s good for him.” If soap opera characters knew what was good for them, they wouldn’t get much screen time, so of course the episode ends with Burke entering the house.
My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out that my post about episode 60 was unfair. She objected to the sentence “The Friday cliffhanger is Burke asking if he may join the Evanses and Vicki for dinner.” As she explained, that moment actually is an effective cliffhanger. I hadn’t mentioned that the sheriff had called drunken artist Sam Evans to warn him that dashing action hero Burke Devlin might be coming to his house, that he urged Sam to call back if Burke did come, and that actor David Ford played Sam’s reaction to this call with a convincing display of terror.
Sam trying to conceal his fear from the women behind him and the man on the other end of the call
I also failed to mention the shot when Burke enters the room. Before Sam can get the words out to tell his daughter Maggie not to open the door, Burke has burst in. The scenes in the Evans cottage have been dimly lit, with all three figures moving before dark backgrounds. When the light colored door swings open, its relative brightness feels for a second like a flash, and when he stands in front of it Burke cuts a stark figure. We see him in contrast with Maggie, who stands against a dark background, wearing a dark top and a stunned expression:
Burke enters the Evans cottage
Throughout the episode, Sam had failed repeatedly to exercise any measure of control even in a social situation in his own home where the only other people are his daughter Maggie and well-meaning governess Vicki, the two kindliest characters on the show. The irruption of Burke into that setting is indeed a formidable moment for Sam.
So yes, that was a more plausible Friday cliffhanger than I allowed. Perhaps I was prejudiced against it because I remembered this episode. The purpose of a cliffhanger is to bring the audience back for the next installment. Typically, the next installment will begin by resolving the cliffhanger as quickly and unceremoniously as possible. But today, Burke’s intrusion into the Evans cottage drags on and on. In the process, it does serious harm to Burke’s character.
After rushing into the Evans cottage, Burke defies Sam and Maggie to say that he isn’t welcome. Maggie, unaware of the sheriff’s call urging Sam to let him know if Burke shows up, breaks down and says that of course Burke is welcome. Burke then tries to order Vicki and Maggie into the kitchen so that he can be alone with Sam. Neither woman is at all meek, however, and they stand up to Burke’s browbeating admirably.
Not so Sam. He takes the first opportunity to run away. We know that Sam has his guilty secrets, but he is a likable character, and it is hurts to imagine the pain that will await him the rest of his life whenever he remembers the night he left his daughter and her sweet young friend to face an angry man alone in his house. Sam doesn’t even call the sheriff. Instead, in his panic he goes to the hotel to try to retrieve a sealed envelope he had Maggie leave in the safe there. That gives us a scene with Conrad Bain as hotel manager Mr Wells. Bain is always a delight, and his little business about the envelope is certainly the most pleasant part of the episode. At the end of the episode, Sam will meet Burke at the hotel and ask to talk with him alone in his room, leaving us with the image of him trying to redeem himself in his own eyes.
Before that end comes, however, we have much, much more of Burke trying to bully the young women in the cottage. He won’t let them eat dinner. He harangues them about his manslaughter conviction. In the course of that harangue, it becomes clear that he isn’t thinking at all clearly. “I was drunk and don’t remember too much about that night, but I do remember Roger Collins taking over the wheel.” That’s just delicious- he was hopelessly drunk, blacked out in fact, but he’s pretty sure he remembers giving the keys to someone else before the fatal collision. The fact that his substitute driver was just as drunk as he was doesn’t seem to occur to him as a flaw in his “defense,” nor does the fact that this one convenient piece of information is the only thing to surface from his alcoholic stupor. That sort of thinking runs at such an oblique angle to reality that there would be nothing to say to Burke even if he were willing to listen to you. He goes on to suggest to Maggie that her father may have killed their old friend Bill Malloy, and refuses to leave the house when Maggie tells him to do so.
Burke’s abuse of Sam, Maggie, and Vicki makes it hard for us to like Burke as much as the show needs us to like him. We’re supposed to perk up when he’s on screen, not only because we don’t know what he might do next, but also because we don’t know whether we will approve of whatever surprising thing he makes happen. Even when he is trying to destroy the family to which our point of view character, Vicki, owes her loyalty, we’re supposed to want to see more of him. But when we see him treat Vicki and Maggie the way he does here, the image of him as a grinning thug sticks in the mind, and it is hard to want more of that.
All the more so, perhaps, because of his ineffectiveness as a thug. Our first concern with the show is that it should tell an interesting story, and Burke earns our attention by providing exciting story points. We can like even a very evil character who makes exciting things happen, but someone who simply shows up at your house when you’re about to eat, keeps you from your dinner, rambles on with a lot of nonsense, insults your father, and refuses to leave is just testing your patience for bad conduct.
We can compare Burke as the villain of this episode to another, more interesting villain. Throughout 1966, Mitch Ryan was not only playing Burke on Dark Shadows, but was also on Broadway in Wait Until Dark. In that play, he was one of the con men who, under the control of a mysterious figure calling himself Harry Roat, junior (and senior, but that’s another matter,) talk their way into a blind woman’s apartment and try, at first by trickery and then by threats of murder, to get her to hand over something valuable that she hadn’t realized she had in her possession. Like Maggie and Vicki, the heroine of the play stands up to Ryan’s character and the other villains. She ultimately triumphs over them. Unlike Burke, who is simply indulging on rage for its own sake and boring everyone as he does so, Roat has devised a brilliantly clever scheme to trick his victim, a scheme which fails only because she is his equal in brilliance and his superior in other ways. Wait Until Dark was a major hit in that original Broadway run, as was the movie version the next year and as many revivals of it have been in the years since. If Roat’s activities were as pointless in the play as Burke’s are in this episode, I very much doubt it would have been produced at all.
Maggie Evans is working the counter in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. We open with her on the telephone, explaining to her father Sam that she hasn’t seen Bill Malloy. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin comes in, orders breakfast, and asks Maggie if she’s seen Bill Malloy. Hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell comes in, scowls at his bête noire Devlin, and asks Maggie if she’s seen Bill Malloy. Flighty heiress Carolyn Stoddard comes in. Carolyn already knows that Maggie hasn’t seen Bill Malloy, so she talks about her car.
Maggie and Carolyn are both cheerful when the episode opens, and by the end the men have dragged them down into gloom. Joe is in a sour mood, not only because shares the universal worry about where Bill Malloy is, but also because of the steadily mounting evidence that Carolyn doesn’t have any intention of getting married. Burke is in a towering rage because of his suspicion that either the dastardly Roger Collins or the drunken Sam Evans did away with Bill Malloy to prevent Bill from clearing Burke of the manslaughter charge that long ago sent Burke to prison. Sam is wallowing in despair, as per usual.
Maggie goes home to the Evans cottage to find that Burke is there, confronting Sam. The two men have been yelling at each other about not knowing where Bill Malloy is. After Burke leaves, Maggie tries to get Sam to tell her what’s going on. He refuses to do so. Downcast, she turns to go back to work. Before she leaves she asks her father “Where are we all heading?” After she’s gone, Sam looks at the closed door and says “Towards death, Maggie darling. We’re all heading towards death.”
Carolyn goes home to the mansion at Collinwood with Joe. They start to hug and kiss when there’s a knock at the door. Carolyn answers. It’s Burke, demanding to speak to Roger. He wants some answers, mainly about where Bill Malloy is. Joe and Burke wait in the foyer while Carolyn searches the house for Roger.
Burke gives an angry and not very coherent speech denouncing the Collinses. Some commentators think the evident difficulty Mitch Ryan has with this speech is a sign that he was drunk during taping. Ryan did have a drinking problem, and admitted that in the 1960s he sometimes showed up to work drunk. But the speech itself is so awkward and weird that I suspect there is another culprit aside from alcohol- uncredited additional dialogue by Malcolm Marmorstein. Be that as it may, the speech rubs Joe the wrong way, and by the time Carolyn comes back and tells Burke that Roger isn’t home, Joe is in a worse mood than ever.
Roger is trying to keep his hands busy today. Our first look at his office focuses on his dart board, and he spends a great deal of time handling the darts.
Bill, whom we just saw in the Blue Whale giving Burke a stern talking-to, comes to Roger’s office to continue his stern talking-to concert tour. He drives Carolyn away. Roger stops handling the pen playfully and handles the darts menacingly.
Later, Roger sees Carolyn at home. He finds out she had lunch with Burke and that Burke gave her his pen. He explodes at this and demands that she give up the pen. After a phone call from Bill (stern talking-to #3) and a commercial break, Roger simmers down. He apologizes and calls Carolyn “Kitten” again. She admits that she’s probably just hanging around Burke out of curiosity. She also tells Roger about the evidence that Burke is trying to put the family out of business. Roger takes this news calmly- after all, the Collinses’ cannery, fishing fleet, and other financial interests can hardly compare to the significance of who gets to touch Burke’s pen.
Roger’s obsession with where Burke Devlin’s pen is will become the show’s obsession for a couple of months. Anyone unsure whether there is some symbolic significance to this might have a look at the books, plays, and movies the makers of Dark Shadows and other intellectually ambitious New Yorkers were likely to be paying attention to in the summer of 1966. Maybe we can learn something about the ideas that were in the air if we look up the some famous thinkers on Google NGrams:
Looks like Marx was a biggie in those days- maybe Roger’s obsession with where Burke’s pen is illustrates the Marxist concept of commodity fetishism. That might also explain Roger’s relative disregard for the family’s capital holdings- he’s so caught up in the fantasy of value as something inherent in a physical object that he has lost sight of the actual source of his wealth.
Darwin was on people’s minds as well. Perhaps Roger’s fixation on Burke’s pen is the result of his genealogy- maybe the Collinses have been bred to their little niche for so many generations that they have emerged as a new species, one which does not have the same survival strategies as other humans and so does not share values and concepts which we would understand.
And there’s Einstein, also a popular preoccupation among people who aspired to advanced learning back then. One of Einstein’s most famous ideas was that time passes at different rates for different observers depending on how fast those observers are moving through space. There will be twenty or more episodes of Dark Shadows that focus largely or entirely on the question of where Burke’s pen is, and as we move through that narrative space there will be many occasions when it seems that time itself is about to grind to a halt. Could be that, I guess!
That leaves Freud. Hmm, looks like Dark Shadows was written and acted chiefly by people from Broadway, and that Freudianism was a major inspiration on Broadway in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. I suppose we’ll have to figure out what Freud would have made of a fascination with where Burke’s pen is. Then maybe we’ll have some idea what’s really going on with Roger.
Everyone who is going to know that David tried to kill his father now knows it, and Liz has decreed that the incident will have no consequences. So we’re back to the basic story elements laid out in week one, as modified in subsequent episodes to make sure everyone had plenty of people to talk to.
Vicki is at the Blue Whale. Harvey Keitel is gone, but Burke is still there, so she sits with him. He asks her why she joined him. She looks off into space and says “Inches, feet, miles.” He tells her she reminds him of a drink that fizzes and foams, but he isn’t sure what kind. He asks what she’d like to have for dinner. She replies “I’d rather go to your hotel room.” He flashes the same dopey grin any fellow would in this situation, and says “You amaze me, Miss Winters.”
Vicki is supposed to be a street kid from NYC, so we can assume she knows how to go about finding inches when she wants them, and that she’s no stranger to feet, either. Miles may be in short supply in the city, but she’s willing to learn. It turns out that all she wants from Burke is a look at the report his private investigator prepared about her. In the hotel room, she tells him what the audience knows about her origins and about Liz’s refusal to give a straight answer to the question of why she hired her. She looks through the report, and says it doesn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know. He orders two steak dinners from the hotel restaurant.
A knock comes on the door. It isn’t room service; it’s Joe, come to repay Burke for settling his bar tab. Joe is about to tell Burke he still doesn’t like him, when Vicki comes out of the bathroom. Joe excuses himself, startled to see her. Vicki goes a moment later, leaving Burke alone, waiting for two steak dinners.
I summed up my reaction to this episode in a comment on John and Christine Scoleri’s Dark Shadows Before I Die:
“Miss Winters, you amaze me.” Me too! Any woman as young and attractive as Vicki in a town as small and gossipy as Collinsport would be the scandal of the month if she went unchaperoned to a bachelor’s hotel room. When the woman lives with and works for the richest family in town and the bachelor is their sworn enemy, “indiscreet” isn’t any fraction of the word needed to describe her boldness.
Burke has time and again talked about how gossipy Collinsport is. For example, in episode 27, he seemed almost unhinged as he told his associate Bronson about how deeply secretive his investigations of the Collins family holdings would have to be, since anything that happens in or near the town of Collinsport is immediately known to everyone there. So we have to assume that he plans to get everyone talking about his evening with Vicki.
At this point in the show, we usually have to guess what Burke’s plans are, and even when they are revealed we can’t decide whether they are good or evil. In the case of his attempt to get rumors going about himself and Vicki, I think it’s a little more straightforward. He keeps telling her she should get away from the Collinses and leave town. If the Collinses think she’s involved with Burke, Vicki is very likely to find herself on a train back to New York. Maybe not to the Hammond Foundling Home- Burke might have a little apartment in the East Village where Vicki can stay until she finds something…
At Collinwood, Liz tells Carolyn that David won’t be going away just because he tried to murder his father. “Things will go on just as before.” On the other hand, Carolyn should marry Joe and leave the house, because “You’re the only one of us who can have a sane, happy life.” I suppose we’ve all seen that in real life, someone swinging wildly between deep denial and exaggerated despair. Two forms of learned helplessness, I guess.
At the Blue Whale, Joe is getting well and truly sloshed. Burke joins him at his table, interrupting a conversation between Joe and his whiskey glass. Joe tells Burke that he doesn’t like him, expresses his frustration with Carolyn’s refusal to get married, then goes to Collinwood, roaring drunk, and tells Carolyn, Liz, and Vicki what he thinks of them.
One thing Joe thinks is that Carolyn is doomed to be a spinster. Considering that she’s supposed to be about seventeen, that does call to mind Barnabas’ line to Carolyn in the 2012 Dark Shadows movie, “Fifteen? And no husband?”
Marc Masse brings this point out well on his Dark Shadows from the Beginning, and argues that the depiction of Carolyn may be one of the things that sunk the show with young viewers between the end of the first month and the introduction of the vampire:
You have to wonder what kind of impression the character of Carolyn Stoddard would have made to young viewers in 1966. Here she is having grown up in a mansion with forty rooms and her only option in life is to be married off before her eighteenth birthday to a local fisherman, or else face a life of lonely spinsterhood. In that respect, Dark Shadows seems to belong to the sensibilities of previous decades.
This paragraph is part of an in-depth discussion of Dark Shadows’ place on ABC’s schedule, its ratings, the show that preceded it in its time-slot, and Art Wallace’s rather antiquated view of the world. It’s all very informative, highly recommended.
When Joe passes out on the couch, Vicki goes to town. She goes to the Blue Whale, where Burke asks if she’s looking for someone. “I just found him,” she replies. Obviously, she’s talking about Harvey Keitel, who is dancing a few feet away from her.
That Harvey Keitel was once an extra on Dark Shadows is pretty interesting. If he took that job, clearly he would have taken a speaking part. I gave some thought to parts I wish he had taken in comments on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day four times: here (on episode 470,)here (on episode 769,) here (on episode 1057,) and here (on episode 1137.)
Burke makes up a story about finding the bleeder valve on the side of the road leading to Collinwood, another lie to go along with the lie he told about finding David on a sidewalk in town. In the minutes before both of these lies collapse, he and David sit on the staircase in the foyer. He tells David that they’re still friends- after all, if he were really mad at David for trying to frame him for attempted murder, he’d have told Roger the truth.
That placates David, who likes Burke and is desperate for a friend. It doesn’t do much for us, though- the lies collapse so quickly that a crafty operator like Burke can’t have thought he was giving David much cover, and he’s observed the Collinses closely enough to know that they will go to any lengths to keep a family scandal from becoming public. So we are still undecided as to what Burke wants to do and whether he is right to do it.
David’s confidence in Burke allows him to talk openly, admitting that his murder plot was “stupid” and declaring that he’s going to get back at Vicki. Burke doesn’t like that idea, but David is still on the rampage when Vicki tries to talk to him. He says that he hopes “a thousand ghosts come and strangle you and make you dead!” Burke warns her that if she’s going to keep living in the same house as David, she ought to stay away from open windows.
It may be hard for the other characters to understand why Vicki wants to stay on as David’s governess, but the audience should understand it. It only took a few minutes with the warm, upbeat Burke Devlin before David was jumping up, making jokes and laughing. Vicki has spent her whole life at the Hammond Foundling Home, at first as a resident, then as staff. Her great achievement is connecting with troubled children. If she can get David past the idea that he is working with her father to lock him up, she should be able to get at least as good a reaction from him as Burke did.
Thunder rumbles. The lights go out at Collinwood. Alone in the drawing room, Vicki lights a candle. The doors swing open, and a darkened figure stands in shadow. Vicki calls to the figure. It does not respond. The lights come back on. The figure has vanished. Roger happens by; he is the only other person in the house, but he is too tall to have been the figure.
This is the second occurrence in the series that is either a supernatural manifestation or an elaborate Scooby Doo-esque prank on Vicki. The first time, in episode 14, happened when David had taken the bleeder valve from the braking system on his father’s car, an event that would have dire consequences. We can assume that this second occurrence is telling us that we are about to see events that will stir up the supernatural back-world of Josette, the Widows, and heaven knows who else.
David had planted the bleeder valve in Burke’s room, trying to frame the family’s enemy for his own crime. When he spends a few minutes with Burke and takes a liking to him, he tries to retrieve the valve, not knowing that Burke has already found it and that he is carrying it in his pocket. In Burke’s car on the way to Collinwood, he pleads with Burke to go back to the hotel. He can’t give an explanation for his plea, and Burke refuses to turn back without one.
Vicki tells Roger that she had found the bleeder valve in David’s room, and Roger quickly accepts that his son had tried to murder him. When Burke brings David home, Roger takes David into the drawing room and demands he confess to his crime. Burke refuses to leave the house. Roger calls Vicki into the room; Burke insists on joining them. David calls Vicki a liar, Roger continues to browbeat him. We see a reaction shot of Burke in profile, standing in the doorway, watching the scene intently. Roger mentions the bleeder valve; Burke steps forward, and with a flourish produces the valve from his pocket. David’s face crumbles into absolute dejection.
Has Burke really betrayed David? Or is he playing some other game? We have to tune in next time to find out.
So, we begin with an indication that what follows will stir up the back-worlds, and then see an episode about the relationship between Burke and David. Roger describes Burke and David as “the two people I dislike the most.” Something Burke and David have in common, something that Roger cannot forgive, is going to bring the ghosts out of the woodwork and into the foreground.
Dark Shadows Commentary 