A while back, Tumblr user “marcycaa” posted this cartoon summarizing the relationships well-meaning governess Vicki has with strange and troubled boy David and flighty heiress Carolyn in the 1966 episodes of Dark Shadows:
Art by marcycaa
Today, Vicki is being held prisoner by the fugitive Matthew, and Carolyn and David are off their leashes. Carolyn telephones dashing action hero Burke to complain that her mother and uncle don’t want her to see him. Burke reacts with disbelief that Carolyn is nattering on about that when Vicki is missing and might be dead.
David is the only one who knows where Matthew is. He is taking food and cigarettes to him. He has begun to suspect that Matthew has Vicki, and is afraid that he will kill her. This fear contends with his fear that he will go to jail for harboring a fugitive. He sneaks off to see Burke to seek reassurance. When Burke asks him what he wants, he says that he wants Burke to tell him that Matthew is innocent and that his hated father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, is responsible for everything Matthew has been accused of. When Burke can’t do that, David slips away.
Back in his hiding place in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, Matthew lies down on a mattress next to the chair to which he has bound Vicki. Before he can get to sleep, he hears voices calling his name. The portrait of Josette Collins glows, eerie music plays, and one of the voices identifies itself as Josette. Vicki can hear none of this and tells Matthew that he must be dreaming. He wants to agree with her, fearing that the only alternative explanation is that he is going mad.
The audience knows that the ghosts are real, but we don’t know whether they mean anyone well. Matthew’s first action upon hearing the voices is to leap up and hold a knife at Vicki’s throat, so it doesn’t seem that they are protecting her. David considers them his friends, but nothing they have done for him has so far led him anywhere but deeper into his constant agony. The last time Vicki was locked up, the ghost of beloved local man Bill Malloy came and told her she would be killed unless she got away soon, but then vanished, leaving her trapped. While it seems likely the voices represent a power that will destroy Matthew, it is by no means clear they will do so before he kills Vicki. For all we can see, they may be about to drive him to do precisely that.
Vicki is our point of view character, but we’ve known Matthew since the second week of the show. As Carolyn tells David today, he’s always been gruff, but has seemed basically well-intentioned. Reclusive matriarch Liz seems to think that Matthew has some sort of cognitive impairment that would make it difficult for him to function in the world at large, and the sheriff’s manner of ordering him about when they have come into contact would suggest that he has the same idea. Matthew’s killing of Bill Malloy and crimes against Vicki have been desperate acts, committed with displays of reluctance and confusion. The idea that Matthew will end as the victim of a malign force that also spells doom for Vicki is therefore logically satisfying and dramatically compelling.
Well-meaning governess Vicki, fresh from imprisonment at the hands of strange and troubled boy David Collins, gets a few days off work to visit Bangor, Maine. Flighty heiress Carolyn had agreed to drive her to the bus station in the town of Collinsport. Carolyn doesn’t have a job, go to school, or seem to have anything else to do, so why she and Vicki don’t just take a road trip together is unclear.
They wait for the bus at the local restaurant. From there, Carolyn telephones dashing action hero Burke Devlin, her family’s arch-nemesis and the object of her own obsessive crush, and invites him to join the two of them at their table.
Carolyn tells Burke that Vicki has recently seen the ghost of beloved local man Bill Malloy. Vicki tries not to give Burke any additional information. When Burke learns of Vicki’s plans, he volunteers to take her to Bangor in his car. She declines, but he won’t take no for an answer. I don’t drive, and I admire the way this scene shows how hard it can be for a non-driver to decline a ride.
When Burke leaves to get Vicki’s bags, Carolyn blows up at her. Carolyn tells Vicki that she must have known she came to town hoping to see Burke and spend the evening with him. Vicki did not know any such thing. After all, Burke has openly declared his intention of forcing Carolyn’s entire family into bankruptcy and disgrace, and she has expressed remorse for her infatuation with him. When Carolyn makes it clear she is still chasing Burke, Vicki doesn’t know what to say.
The Collinsport Historical Society says that Carolyn spends this week alienating the audience, and her passive-aggressive behavior towards Vicki is indeed exasperating. Watching the scene in the restaurant, it makes perfect sense that Vicki would decide that escaping Carolyn is worth the risk of getting in trouble with her employers by spending an hour with Burke.
Back home at the great house of Collinwood, Carolyn hears her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, playing the piano. She makes a lot of noise when she comes in, ensuring that her mother will call her into the drawing room. Once there, Carolyn puts on a great show of being upset. She gives partial, teasing answers to each of her mother’s questions, drawing her in as best she can. She finally declares that Vicki is not to be trusted. She reveals that Vicki is in a car with Burke, probably telling him everything she knows about the Collinses and Collinwood. We then cut to Vicki and Burke in the car, where she is telling him everything she knows about her recent sighting of Bill Malloy’s ghost in the house.
Again, the scene in the restaurant explains Vicki’s behavior. Carolyn had told Burke so much about it that it would be hard for Vicki or anyone else to see much point in trying to keep the rest of the story from him. When Burke wants her to say that the ghost accused someone in the house of murder, she insists that it only said it was someone in Collinsport, not Collinwood.
Carolyn has always been tempestuous, and Vicki has always been quick to forgive her. Perhaps now that the relationship between Vicki and David is about to enter a quieter, more complicated phase, the makers of the show wanted to ensure that there would be a continual source of conflict within the house. That might explain why they have chosen to feature Carolyn’s nastier side so heavily this week.
Hardworking young fisherman Joe is spending the evening with Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. It’s their first date. Maggie impresses him with her knowledge of ships, and he sings a verse of “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?” It may not sound like much, but the actors, Kathryn Leigh Scott and Joel Crothers, sell it so well that we’ll be rooting for Joe and Maggie for years to come. The final moment of the scene comes after Joe leaves. Maggie looks directly into the camera and says to the audience, “Goodnight, pal.”
Goodnight, pal
In the great house of Collinwood, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins greets his niece, flighty heiress Carolyn, on her return home. Carolyn is upset because Joe has broken off their relationship and is having a date with Maggie. The story of Joe and Carolyn was a bore, largely because the two of them never had a scene with any fraction of the sweetness we see between Joe and Maggie today. There was nothing at stake in their quarrels, because they had nothing to lose if they simply gave up on each other.
Roger tells Carolyn that well-meaning governess Vicki hasn’t been seen for hours, and that he promised Carolyn’s mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, that he would sit up waiting for Vicki’s return. Carolyn is worried as well, and asks Roger why he isn’t actively searching for her. He says she’s probably fine. When Carolyn says that people don’t just disappear, he reminds her of family friend Bill Malloy, who disappeared not so long ago, but then turned up. Considering that Bill turned up in the form of a corpse washed ashore by the tide, it is perhaps unsurprising that Carolyn does not find Roger’s analogy particularly comforting.
After Roger persuades Carolyn to toddle off to bed, he makes sure he’s alone (well, alone except for the stagehand in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.)
Once assured that no one mentioned in the script can see him, Roger returns to the drawing room and opens a secret passage we’ve never seen before. After he disappears into it, Carolyn comes to the drawing room and is baffled at his absence.
The suggestion that Carolyn doesn’t know about the secret passage is characteristic of the show. From the beginning, Vicki has represented our point of view. She started off knowing nothing about the other characters, and everything had to be explained to her while she was on camera. If Vicki knows just what we know, Carolyn, who grew up in the house where most of the action is set, can be presumed to know a great deal we do not. When they reveal a secret to us, they can amplify its importance by showing that Carolyn isn’t in on it. They’ve done this several times, mostly in situations having to do with the murky origins of Roger’s feud with dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Carolyn’s ignorance of the secret passage is particularly effective- it’s right there in the most important room of the only house she’s ever lived in. If she doesn’t know about it, it must be a very well-kept secret indeed.
We go with Roger into the secret passage. He shines his flashlight directly into the camera, creating a halo of light around it. This would not seem to be a desirable visual effect, yet we will see it many, many times in the years to come. This is the second appearance of the effect. The first time came when Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David, was leading Vicki into the abandoned Old House in episode 70. Now we see it when Roger himself is entering another abandoned space, one where he might meet Vicki.
Halo
It’s hard to believe that the repeated use of this effect was altogether unintentional.
All the more so because of what follows Roger’s entry into the passageway. His journey through it actually does seem to wind through a very large space. In the opening narration, Vicki had said that the house is made up of 80 rooms, retconning the total of 40 given in the second episode. Roger’s trek up one flight of stairs, down another, up a spiral staircase, around corners, past windows, etc etc, seems like it must take him past enough space for at least that many. Perhaps the sequence would be a bit more attractive with less time spent focused on Roger’s feet, but all in all it is as effective a creation of space as Dark Shadows would ever do. If there had been Daytime Emmy Awards in 1966, Lela Swift would have had every right to expect to win Best Director for conjuring up this illusion of vast, winding corridors without editing or going outside the tiny studio space available to her.
Roger does indeed discover Vicki’s whereabouts. He hears her calling for David from behind a locked door, promising David not to tell anyone he imprisoned her there if he will let her out now. Roger does not simply let Vicki out. Instead, he makes some loud noises, then puts on a ghostly, wavering voice and calls out to Vicki that she is in great danger as long as she stays in Collinwood. He seems to be having trouble keeping a straight face when he makes these spooky sounds. Vicki isn’t laughing, and returning viewers aren’t either- in Friday’s episode, she and we saw the ghost of Bill Malloy in the room, and heard that ghost warn her that she would be killed if she stayed in the house much longer.
Once he’s had his fun, Roger opens the door. After another flashlight halo, Vicki recognizes him. Alexandra Moltke Isles gives us one of the finest moments of acting in the entire series, when Vicki throws her arms around Roger, her bodily movement as smooth as any ballet dancer’s but her voice jagged, and says that “David is a monster, you were right!” Up to this point, Roger has been brutally hostile to his son, Vicki heroically friendly to him. Her determination to befriend David has become so central to her character that hearing her make this declaration makes it seem that she is permanently broken.
Broken Vicki
Vicki struggles to hold back her sobbing long enough to tell Roger that she saw the ghost of Bill Malloy. That’s an episode-ending sting- Roger wants everyone to forget about Bill’s death, and if his ghost starts popping up he is unlikely to get that wish.
Stunned Roger
Mrs Isles was a “head actor,” one who found the character’s innermost psychological motivation and worked outward from that. That heavily interiorized style would be one of the things that left her in the dust, along with similar performers like Joel Crothers and Don Briscoe, in the period when Dark Shadows was a hyper-fast paced, wildly zany show about vampires and werewolves and time-travel and God knows what. But in the period when Art Wallace and Francis Swann were writing finely etched character studies, she consistently excelled. In this little turn, she shows that when it was logical for her character to go big, she could go as big as any of the stars of the show in those later days.
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.
Carolyn finds her mother playing the piano in the drawing room. They have a very sweet conversation about the good times they had when Carolyn was growing up. Liz laughs when her daughter calls her a “bit of a kook.”
Carolyn wants to talk about Roger and Bill Malloy; Liz doesn’t, but can’t help listening when Carolyn tells her that Roger had declared that he wouldn’t be anyone’s sacrificial lamb. Liz is troubled by what Bill had told her about Roger and the manslaughter charge that sent Burke Devlin to prison ten years before, and wonders if the sacrificial lamb has been led to the altar.
In this scene between Liz and Carolyn, we see a relationship we can care about. In the concern the two women have for Roger, we can see their wish that he would just be part of the good times, not a source of heartache.
Roger is in his office, where Bill had told him, Sam Evans, and Burke he wanted to meet them at 11 PM sharp. It’s 11:30 when we first see the three of them sitting around wondering where Bill is. Burke wants to keep waiting, the others decide to leave. Roger tells Burke that he wants to give him his pen back, feels for it in his pocket, and says he must have left it at home.
The three men in the office don’t have anything interesting to do today. They mention that they’ve spent their time talking about the weather and the price of sardines; it’s a wonder that three New England men with nothing in particular to say to each other on an August evening wouldn’t talk about the Red Sox, but I suppose the club had a bad enough season in 1966 that it would just have added to the gloom.
Roger comes home, apparently quite happy that Bill never showed up and the meeting ended without any new information for Burke. Liz confronts him in the drawing room. She tells him that Bill had told her he thought Roger, not Burke, was responsible for the manslaughter ten years ago, and demands Roger tell her the truth. He emphatically denies Bill’s charges. For good measure, he adds more lies, denying that Bill had said the same thing to him. Liz leaves him alone in the drawing room. Out of her sight, he looks stricken.
In yesterday’s episode, the clock in the foyer at Collinwood chimed at 10:10 and again at 10:30 pm. In today’s, it chimes at 11:10 and 11:30. We saw the hands on the clock each time, and today Carolyn even says that it is 11:10 immediately before it chimes. So it isn’t a blooper- they really want us to think that the clock chimes at 10 minutes and 30 minutes after the hour. That’s just a weird thing to set your clock to do, is what I’m saying. Staying home for 18 years isn’t the only kooky thing about Liz.
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.)
Vicki tells Carolyn that David was the one who sabotaged Roger’s car, which Carolyn accepts as fact almost immediately. The story does build a foundation for Carolyn’s reaction- she repeatedly calls David a monster, and has been guilt-stricken at the thought that she let Burke into the house to commit the crime. But it is also the first example of what will become the hallmark of all of Nancy Barrett’s performances on the show. Her characters are the first to throw themselves into whatever is going on. She comes to serve as a one-woman chorus backing whoever happens to be the protagonist at the moment.
Liz still refuses to face the facts about David. When Vicki finds David’s Mechano magazine in her underwear drawer with the page about hydraulic braking systems marked, she and Carolyn see it as evidence that David had access both to the drawer and to the technical information he needed to commit the crime. Liz sees it differently, saying in a distant, ghostly voice “It was in your room, Miss Winters.”
Liz’ ghostliness is highlighted strikingly earlier in the episode. In the upstairs hallway, Carolyn is chattering away about ghosts, both the metaphorical ghosts of current problems resulting from past conflicts and the literal ghosts that, she would have you know, most definitely exist. Vicki looks at the door to the rest of the house which inexplicably opened and closed itself a few episodes back, and gasps as it opens again. This time it’s Liz coming out, having looked for David in the closed-off wing. Liz is impatient with the girls’ talk of ghosts, but her manner and appearance as she enters through that door are spectral.
The other setting in today’s diptych is a hotel room in Bangor.* Burke is meeting a private investigator there. He’s giving him a tough assignment. He wants more information about the Collinses in less time than the investigator had originally expected. He also wants the job done in absolute secrecy, and if the Collinses catch wind of the project the investigator will suffer dire consequences. The investigator is played by Barnard Hughes, a highly accomplished actor, and his skills are needed. Burke is being harsh and unreasonable, and the investigator is being deferential. Hughes is able to give his character enough texture that he seems to be keeping his dignity. Without that, Burke would have come off as a bully. The audience has to like Burke, so Hughes makes an important contribution to the show in this, his only appearance.
There’s an irony to Burke’s hard-driving intensity. He’s looking for information to hurt the Collinses, while the women at Collinwood have information far more damaging to the family than anything he’s sending his man to look for. So we’re in suspense as to what he’ll do when he catches up to them.
*In a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day, “TD” points out that the hotel room in Bangor has a television set, the first such device we see on Dark Shadows. We will not see another until 1970. That one will be in a parallel universe. We never do see a TV set in the Collinsport of the main continuity.
Evidently Mr Bronson had the hotel send a TV up to his room.
In the teaser, Carolyn asks Vicki what’s on her mind. “The meaning of life?” “No, just the opposite- death.” Exchanges like that go a long way towards explaining the appeal the show has to depressives. Casting makes a difference, too- actresses Nancy Barrett and Alexandra Moltke Isles seem to be far from death-obsessed, so they can deliver the most preposterously gloomy lines without boring the audience.
After the first break, Vicki and Carolyn are having breakfast in the kitchen. As it always does, that set creates an intimate atmosphere which makes it seem natural that the characters should share confidences. Carolyn confesses her feelings of guilt at having brought Burke to the house; Vicki confesses that she doesn’t believe Burke tampered with Roger’s brakes. For some reason, Vicki tells Carolyn that when she was six years old, an attendant at the foundling home played a prank and told her that her birth parents would be coming for her. All of Vicki’s stories about her childhood are like that, it’s no wonder she feels at home in Collinwood.
There’s a scene between Bill Malloy and Burke in Burke’s room. It’s always interesting to see actors as talented as Mitch Ryan and Frank Schofield playing off each other. It is puzzling that a Collins family retainer as loyal and intelligent as Bill would go to Burke before the police have a chance to question him or search his room and tell him everything he knows and suspects about the crime. But Roger has already tipped his hand to Burke, so another indiscretion isn’t going to damage the prospects of the prosecution by much. This scene, in which Burke is eating breakfast while Bill is confronting him with his suspicions, is intercut with the scene in which Vicki and Carolyn are eating breakfast and consoling each other. So, opposite extremes- former friends in a hostile setting, new friends in a nurturing setting.
Carolyn tells Liz that Vicki doesn’t think Burke is guilty. Liz responds that she doesn’t “care what Miss Winters thinks.” Liz then collapses into pity for Carolyn and guilt about herself as a mother. She remembers that when Carolyn was a child, she would come home from school crying because the other children taunted her, saying that “Carolyn’s mother is a witch.”
That’s an interesting story, because it implies that Carolyn went to the school in town. How did she get there? It’s much too far to walk. Did a school bus come up the hill to Collinwood to pick her up and drop her off? That’s a bit hard to imagine. Liz doesn’t want anyone around the place. Sooner or later, some adventurous child would slip off the bus with Carolyn and go exploring the grounds, no doubt finding a way into the house itself. Roger didn’t live there until recently, and Liz has never set foot outside the grounds since Carolyn’s birth. The only servant on the estate is Matthew, and he and Carolyn are not at all close, not as they would be if he’d taken her to and from school every day in her childhood.
That leaves Bill Malloy. He comes to the house more or less daily to go over business with Liz- perhaps he used to combine those visits with picking Carolyn up for school and dropping her off afterward. He is very close to her, calling her “Princess.” He’d have to pick her up very early in the morning, since his responsibilities involve supervision of the fishing boats. She might still have been in her pajamas. She’d have needed to get dressed and have breakfast at Bill’s house. We learn later that he has a housekeeper who has been with him many years; much, much later, that housekeeper will reminisce with Carolyn about brushing her hair for her when she was a little girl. So maybe that was it…
Vicki talks with Liz and Carolyn about the private investigator Burke has hired to look into her background. Liz doesn’t want to talk about anything that touches on how she heard about Vicki and what she knows about her, but by a skillful line of Socratic questioning, Vicki leads Liz to the conclusion that something about her origins might be embarrassing to someone associated with Collinwood. Liz walks out of the room, as Euthyphro walks out when Plato’s Socrates springs a similar trap for him, and we can see how smart and determined Vicki is.
Scenes that focus on the question of Vicki’s origins tend not to get much attention from fandom, perhaps because the whole story-line ultimately fizzled out with no resolution. But watching it forward, not thinking about what comes later, we can see some strong scenes devoted to it.
Dark Shadows begins its first mystery story as the characters try to figure out who tampered with Roger’s brakes, sending his car off the road but causing him only minor injuries. It is an inverted mystery, of the type that would a few years later be stamped with the name of Columbo. The audience knows who committed the crime, the suspense comes from wondering how and when the perpetrator will be caught.
In this case the would-be killer is the victim’s nine year old son David, a boy whose father openly tells him that he hates him and who is frantic with terror that he will be “sent away,” which to him brings up something frightening and unexplained about his mother. David removed the distributor valve from the brake system of his father’s car so that the brakes would fail at the moment when the car approached a particularly dangerous turn on the side of the steep hill leading down from the house.
David has kept the valve, intending to use it to frame someone else for his crime. His first choice of patsy is his governess, the point of view character for this part of the series, Victoria Winters. That plan was foiled when Vicki caught him trying to plant the valve in her underwear drawer. Later, David will try to plant the valve on someone else, but for now he is stuck keeping it in his possession.
1. The dancers at the Blue Whale are so bizarre in this one it really feels like watching footage from an alien world. Considering that so many members of the cast came from Broadway or were on their way to Broadway, it is baffling that the extras defined “dancing” as something you do by violently jerking your shoulders from side to side while wearing a huge grin. A few years before, aspiring Broadway players might have assumed teenagers dancing to rock ‘n’ roll in a Maine fishing village would look like that, but by 1966 there were enough people in the New York theater world taking pop music seriously that it’s hard to explain what we see in the background of these scenes as anything but sincere ineptitude.
2. Carolyn’s fantasy about being hit over the head and dragged out of Collinwood goes a long way towards explaining the men she gets involved with later in the series…
3. This is only the second appearance of the kitchen/ dining area that was introduced in episode 5. I think we see more of it in this episode than in any other. Between Mrs Stoddard’s comings and goings, Vicki’s business with the tea things, and the scenes with Matthew, it’s established as a substantial space.
Roger and Vicki encounter each other on the peak of Widow’s Hill. Roger remarks it is the highest point in the area. At the end of their conversation, Vicki will call to Carolyn, inviting her to join them “down here.” This may seem to be a blooper, but since we hear “down” used to mean “up” in a later episode, I speculate that it’s a peculiarity of Collinsport English.
Little happens to advance the plot in this episode, but between Roger’s announcement that he and Vicki are standing on the highest point in the area and Vicki’s invitation to come “down here,” we hear a lot about the ghostly legends of the place. After the scene in episode 11 where the ghosts are troubling Elizabeth while David is doing something mysterious involving motor grease and little pieces of metal, it seems that the show is using the ghosts as a sign that something big is happening. Certainly the “Widow’s Wail” is a striking sound effect, and Louis Edmonds does a good job of selling the idea that Roger really does believe in all the legends about the house that his social position might require him and Elizabeth to ridicule publicly.
It’s a bit jarring that Carolyn drifts into the scene asking what Vicki and Roger are doing- “planning a suicide pact?” She had just told Vicki about the legend that a third governess would die by jumping off the cliff, and the series story bible still calls for Roger to throw himself to his death from it. So you might think it would be in questionable taste to bring that particular topic up just now.
There’s also a scene in the Evans cottage where Maggie (Kathryn Leigh Scott) tries to get Sam (Mark Allen) to tell her what’s been bothering him. In episode 11, Conrad Bain had triumphed over a weak script and Mark Allen’s relentless whine to turn what might have been a lot of tedious recapping into a compulsively watchable scene. At the beginning of this scene, Kathryn Leigh Scott is mustering such powerful emotions that it looks like she might be about to accomplish the same feat, but Allen has switched from whining all his lines to bellowing them. So the scene is a dead loss.
Dark Shadows Commentary 