dark shadows before i die – Page 64 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 198: Only up to a point

In the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, seagoing con man Jason McGuire has his third conversation with reclusive matriarch Liz. It is identical in form and content to their first two conversations. He makes a demand, she resists, he threatens to expose her one and only secret, and she gives in.

Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, is also being blackmailed. His blackmailer is drunken artist Sam Evans. Unlike Jason, Sam is someone we know and have reason to like. And unlike Jason and Liz, Sam and Roger do not repeat the same conversation every time we see them.

Moreover, Jason is acting against the interests of the audience, while Sam is trying to achieve something we might like. Jason is working to isolate Liz and to drain her funds. Those goals reduce the range of stories the show can tell, limiting a major character’s interactions with the rest of the cast and cutting back on the power of the family at the center of the series from making things happen in town. Sam wants to get hold of some old paintings of his, which will give him a chance at making a big splash in New York. If Sam succeeds, future episodes will be set at least partly in the midtown Manhattan art world. That would be a radical departure from the show we’ve been watching, but a radical departure of some kind is inevitable if Dark Shadows is to keep going at all. Dark Shadows 1.0 finished its liveliest stories when blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins vanished two weeks ago, and if Dark Shadows 2.0 is going to hold our attention it is going to have to come up with something very fresh.

Ten years ago, Roger paid Sam $15,000 and received from him ten paintings. These paintings have suddenly become fashionable, and a prominent art dealer has come to Sam asking about them. The real reason Roger gave Sam the money was nothing to do with the paintings, but to bribe him. The paintings changed hands only to cover the bribe.

Sam had seen a fatal hit and run accident, and knew that Roger, not dashing action hero Burke Devlin, was the driver. Burke went to prison for the crime, and has been trying ever since to prove that Roger was responsible. Now Sam threatens to go to Burke unless Roger produces the paintings. Roger has been searching Collinwood for the paintings, but he cannot find them.

The highlights of the episode are two scenes between Sam and his daughter Maggie. In the first, we see Sam drinking and talking to himself while Maggie is in the room getting ready to go to work. Maggie knows that her father has a great opportunity and that the man who has the paintings is keeping him from realizing it. She doesn’t know who that man is. She keeps asking questions, and he keeps getting upset. He shouts “Are you going to work or aren’t you!?” Then he apologizes and tells her he didn’t mean to raise his voice. She says bitterly that she should be used to it by now. He tells her that what he’s doing, he’s doing for her, that if he succeeds she will get everything she has coming to her. She isn’t impressed, and doesn’t have much to say.

As Maggie, Kathryn Leigh Scott does a fine job of showing an Adult Child of an Alcoholic trying to distinguish between the challenges the outside world is presenting to her father and those he has brought on himself. She’s looking for a way to simultaneously be Sam’s ally against the man who is keeping the paintings from him and to stand firm as an opponent of his drinking. Above all, she is trying not to let her pity for him harden into contempt. As Sam, David Ford is alternately so self-absorbed he apparently forgets Maggie is in the room, so angry he doesn’t care what he says to her, and so hopelessly dependent on her that he all but transforms into a baby. When he is looking up at Maggie and telling her all he hopes to do for her, Sam looks for all the world like a toddler trying to keep his mommy from being angry with him. It’s a heartbreaking finish.

Sam telling Maggie his hopes. Screenshot by *Dark Shadows Before I Die*

Their second scene is even more powerful. Maggie comes home from work to find a groggy Sam slumped in a low chair. Once he has come back to life, Sam tells her that the man was in the house while she was at work, and that he can’t find the paintings. He lets slip that the man lives in Collinwood. Maggie realizes that it must be Roger. Sam tries to deny it, but since Roger is the only man who lives there he is stuck. He can hardly claim that well-meaning governess Vicki, a 20 year old woman, was a man ten years ago, or that she paid $15,000 for ten paintings to put on display in her cubicle at the Hammond Foundling Home. He briefly claims that “Collinwood” was a slip of the tongue, but can’t keep that lie up.

Sam finally admits that Roger is the man. Maggie asks why Roger bought the paintings. Sam asks if she really wants to hear him say it. When she says she does, he starts to speak, but falls abruptly silent in the middle of a sentence. While he looks down in shame, she blurts out that he took the money as a bribe to keep silent about Roger’s crime and to consign Burke to prison. She has suspected this for some time, but is devastated to say the words and see her father’s face.

Of all the questions the two blackmail plots might prompt the show to answer, how Maggie and Sam’s relationship will change as the result of the disclosure of his secrets is the most interesting. So it should be no surprise these two scenes are among the strongest we’ve seen in months.

Closing miscellany:

At one point in the episode, we see Jason talking on the telephone to someone named “Willie.” This marks the first time we hear this name on Dark Shadows.

During a conversation with Roger, Jason sits at the piano and pokes at a few keys. This is the first time since flighty heiress Carolyn tried her hand at “Chopsticks” in #119 that a member of the cast makes use of the instrument.

Roger and Liz have a scene in the basement of Collinwood. Roger’s fear of blackmail leads him to hope that he might find Sam’s paintings in a locked room there, while Liz’ fear of blackmail leads her to forbid that anyone ever go into that room. When Roger asks Liz what is in there, she refers to her long-absent husband, Paul Stoddard: “They are… ah… old things of Paul’s. Yes, that’s it! I put his things in there.” This is so obviously a lie she is making up on the spot that we laughed out loud. Joan Bennett must have meant to elicit this reaction.

Episode 194: Traces of fear

The residents of the great house of Collinwood stand around recapping the series so far. The only unanswered question that comes up is matriarch Liz’ extreme reluctance to leave the house.

Regular viewers could probably explain that to the characters. She has nowhere to go. She conducts the family’s enterprises from the drawing room, doing paperwork on a coffee table and holding meetings on the couch. The only room we’ve seen in the headquarters of the company is the office assigned to her brother Roger, and no work is done there. Since dashing action hero Burke Devlin is supposed to be a major corporate raider and he runs his business from his hotel room, the show takes a firm stand in favor of remote work.

The only spaces for socializing that we’ve seen are the Blue Whale tavern, a downscale hangout which wouldn’t have much to attract Liz, who is such a grand lady that she is played by Joan Bennett, and the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn, which is part of her adversary Burke’s territory. The only private home that has appeared is the cottage occupied by drunken artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, who represent the working class in Collinsport and upon whom the head of the Collins family decidedly does not call. We’ve also paid two visits to the Pine Hotel in Bangor, Maine, whence hapless fountain pens are launched on endless journeys. That leaves the sheriff’s office, the crypt at the old cemetery, and the waterfront as the only places not on the grounds of the estate we’ve seen more than once. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why Liz, or anyone like her, would ever want to go to any of those places.

So if they are going to launch a storyline built around the question of why Liz is a recluse, they are going to have to show us someplace she might like to go. If we know that she doesn’t have anywhere to go, we won’t be in suspense as to why she isn’t going there.

Related to Liz’ reclusiveness is her concern that no one go into certain parts of the house. This is such a dead end that not even the other characters take an interest in it. When she asks if, during her recent absence in the hospital, the late and much-missed parapsychologist Dr Guthrie went into the basement, well-meaning governess Vicki almost yawns while responding “Oh, sure, he went down there.” The show didn’t bother putting Guthrie’s explorations of the house on screen, and the audience never heard him talk about anything he found there. Vicki makes it clear to Liz that he never talked about it to her, and regular viewers will remember that she was his chief contact.

Today, we learn that Liz has been wearing a chain around her neck with a key at the end for years, and that it hasn’t occurred to anyone to ask what the key unlocks. When Roger casually puts that question to her today, she angrily tells him that they shouldn’t question each other. Later, we see her use the key to open the door to a locked room in the basement. When Vicki finds Liz coming out of that room at 2:40 AM, Liz explains that she went there because she was having trouble sleeping. Evidently it is such a dull place that going there can cure insomnia. With scenes like these, they are signaling that only Liz ever thinks about the basement, and that when she takes note of the attitudes of the people around her not even she believes that there is anything there worth paying attention to. Since Liz’ interest in the basement is the only plot point we get all day, that is not a recipe for excitement.

Vicki finds Liz trying to cure her insomnia

In their post about this episode, John and Christine Scoleri pick up on Vicki’s remark that Guthrie explored the great house of Collinwood very thoroughly. John mentions that the show didn’t put any of that exploration on screen, and Christine responds with a series of images with Guthrie inserted into various rooms of the house. It’s hilarious, you should take a look.

Episode 182: That spook bit

Like many children of divorce, strange and troubled boy David Collins finds himself having to decide which parent he will live with. He and his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, have been living in the great house of Collinwood as guests of Roger’s sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, ever since Roger ran out of money some months ago. Now David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, has reappeared after an absence of many years, and she wants to take David. This idea delighted Roger from the first, but David had initially reacted to Laura with fear. He still has mixed feelings about her.

Today, well-meaning governess Vicki is trying to get David to focus on his studies. He tells her that he is thinking about his living situation. He likes Collinwood, especially since Vicki came. But he has just about decided to go away with his mother.

Vicki asks why David wants to do this. He reminds her of a vision he had yesterday that terrified him. He saw himself in the fireplace, immersed in flames and showing no sign of wanting to escape them. He interprets this as a warning from the supernatural realm that he is in great danger, and that the danger is to be found at Collinwood. He believes he will find safety if he goes far from the estate with his mother.

Vicki knows that David is partly correct. She has considerable evidence that the ghost of Josette Collins has been trying to warn David and her and several other people that David is in danger of being burned alive. She is also sure that the source of this danger is at Collinwood- it is Laura herself. She is an inhuman creature who will burn David alive. Vicki can’t tell David about this, but she does remind him of some of Josette’s previous warnings. David realizes that his mother featured prominently in those warnings, but does not see that she is the one Josette is warning him about. To Vicki’s dismay, David concludes that Laura is also in danger, and that it is urgent that the two of them go off together at once.

When her warnings to David backfire, Josette is running true to form. The first time she tried to rescue someone from imminent peril was in episode 122, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan had kidnapped Vicki. Matthew’s response upon hearing a ghostly voice was to put a knife to Vicki’s throat. Eventually Josette enlisted some of her buddies from that land of ghosts which forms the back-world behind what we see, and together they would stop Matthew and save Vicki. Here again, Josette needs help getting her point across.

Of all the characters, David is the one who has had the easiest rapport with Josette. In #102, we saw him standing in front of her portrait in the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, chattering happily away to her. We couldn’t hear her, but he could. She had no need to manifest herself visibly or do anything else spectacular; she and David could just talk to each other.

Now, Laura is blocking Josette’s attempts to communicate. In #165, Josette manifested in a room with Laura and David; Laura ordered her to go away, and she did. In #170, Josette began speaking through Vicki at a séance; Laura silenced her, and in later episodes visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie said that Josette was battling against some power at least equal to her own. Strong as Josette’s connection to David has been, she cannot break through his mother’s interference.

Vicki confers with Guthrie. They decide to present their case to Roger, who alone has the legal right to oppose Laura’s wish to take David, and to dashing action hero Burke Devlin, who has a great influence over the boy. Guthrie meets with Roger in the drawing room, and Vicki goes to Burke’s suite at the Collinsport Inn.

Roger despised Guthrie as a quack starting almost as soon as he met him, but in his most recent appearance, in #178, he started to suspect that there might be something to Guthrie’s ideas. He is quite rude to Guthrie throughout their conversation today, but does hear him out.

Burke respects Vicki, but finds it impossible to sit still when she starts talking about Josette. So she sticks to the demonstrable facts. The camera sticks to Alexandra Moltke Isles’ eyes, on which the light plays arrestingly.

At length, Burke admits that something strange might be going on. Vicki asks Burke if he will stop encouraging David to go away with his mother. He says he believes that he ought to stop doing that, but that he doesn’t know what he will actually do after he next sees Laura. Vicki says she knows how he feels about Laura. Burke tells her that he himself doesn’t know how he feels about Laura, or about anyone else.

Mitch Ryan projects Burke’s bewilderment about his own behavior when he is with Laura. We haven’t seen any sign that Laura has cast a spell on Burke. So far, it is entirely possible that Burke is just smitten with Laura. She was the ex-girlfriend who left him for Roger and is now suggesting she wants to get back together with him. As such, she is the symbol of both his lost youth and his upcoming triumph over his bitter enemy. Also, she is beautiful, and can be hilariously funny. That combination would be enough to cloud anyone’s mind. But when Burke is telling Vicki how confused he is about his emotions, we wonder if there might be some witchcraft involved as well.

Back at Collinwood, Roger and David are in the drawing room. David tells Roger that he wants to go away with Laura, and when Roger asks why he has made that decision David tells him what he saw in the fire. David asks him if he still wants him to go away. In previous episodes, David had asked Roger about his hostility towards him. Sometimes Roger parried these questions with witty remarks, other times he simply dismissed David and walked away. Now Roger just chokes up. “We’ll see,” he keeps saying. “We’ll see.” What we the audience see in Louis Edmonds’ performance is a man who is starting to realize what he has thrown away by refusing to love his son. It makes a powerful moment.

After David leaves him alone in the drawing room, Roger assumes his usual position in front of the brandy bottle and pours himself a glass. He lifts it to his lips, then looks around, as if he detects an unusual scent in the air. He sets the drink down. He turns, and sees an old book open itself.

A book first did this in the drawing room in #52. That time the Collins family history opened to a picture of Josette. More recently, Josette’s signature jasmine perfume was in the air in the crypt at the old cemetery when a book opened itself there in #157. Regular viewers will therefore assume that when a book opens without visible aid of a cast member, it is Josette, the spectral research librarian, leading the characters to the information they need.

Roger hasn’t seen these previous occurrences, and he has chosen to disregard the evidence he has seen for the existence of supernatural influences around him. So the sight of the book opening itself comes as a great shock to him. When he looks at the page to which it has opened, he finds out something about the death of a woman named Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, whom Guthrie and Vicki believe to be an earlier incarnation of his wife. That Laura had died by fire in 1867, along with her young son David. Guthrie had told Roger that. A fact he had not mentioned, and which strikes Roger with particular terror, is that David Radcliffe had not wanted to be rescued from the fire. He had wanted to burn.

The idea of Laura the Phoenix is an interesting one, and the storyline gives Josette and the other vague, indefinable spirits of the supernatural back-world Dark Shadows has been hinting at since it began a suitable adversary to bring them into the action of the main continuity. But most of the individual episodes are so slow, so heavy with recapping, and so confused in their development that few of them can be recommended on their own merits. Indeed, this is only the second episode from the Laura arc, after #146, to which I apply the “Genuinely Good Episode” tag.

After we watched the episode, my wife, Mrs Acilius, shared her theory that the show is getting better because they’ve learned that it will be renewed for another 13 weeks. That makes sense- if it was going to be canceled after #195, the writers might not want to come up with any fresh stories and the producers certainly wouldn’t want to pay to build any new sets or hire actors to play new characters. Better just to run out the clock so that the Laura arc ends in #195 and everyone else lives spookily ever after. But if they know they can keep going until #260, they will have time to work out new ideas.

Whatever was going on among the writers, the actors seem to have been in a good mood today. David Henesy and Mrs Isles horse around a bit with the opening slate. He strikes a goofy pose to hold it, and she creeps up on him and puts her hand over his mouth.

Episode 155: Around her little finger

We open in the hotel suite occupied by dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Burke is getting a briefing from a paid agent of his whom he placed in the home of his enemies, the ancient and esteemed Collins family. This agent is wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson.

Mrs Johnson has come to report on a conversation between high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins and Roger’s estranged wife, the mysterious and long-absent Laura. Mrs Johnson overheard Laura telling Roger that she is keeping Burke pacified by pretending that she will testify on his behalf in a retrial of a long-ago criminal case. When Mrs Johnson relays this to Burke, he flies into a rage. He demands to know who is paying her to defame Laura. Mrs Johnson stands up to his abuse, and he apologizes.

Mitch Ryan and Clarice Blackburn were outstanding actors, and it’s always fun to see them play a scene together. But this doesn’t really make much sense. Whatever Laura’s plans, it is hardly likely that she would advance them by telling Roger that she is going to side with Burke. Since this is a conversation Burke is having with a secret agent in his employ, the audience would expect him to understand deception.

Meanwhile, Laura is in the cottage where she is staying on the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood. She has a visitor- her son, strange and troubled boy David. The head of the Collins family, reclusive matriarch Liz, has forbidden Laura to see David and ordered her to leave the estate. Laura repeatedly urges David to keep his visit to her a secret. She gives him a music box, reminding him to hide it from everyone in the great house.

Moments after David gets home, Liz catches him with the music box. She recognizes it as Laura’s and scolds him for visiting her. She tries to explain why he can’t see his mother. David takes this badly, shouting at her that he doesn’t love her. When she objects that this is a terrible thing to say, he tells her he hates her.

Liz sets out for Laura’s cottage. Laura is there, but she is not alone. Burke has come to ask about the conversation Mrs Johnson overheard. Several days ago, Burke had asked her about her relations with Roger, naming well-meaning governess Vicki as his source. Today, Laura asks if Vicki has been talking again. Thoughtlessly, Burke won’t answer, further convincing Laura that Vicki is her enemy.

Laura starts crying. Burke’s anger evaporates. He embraces her and kisses her. At that moment, Liz enters.

Burke, whom we first saw today in his role as spymaster, tells Liz he’s glad that happened because he likes to have everything out in the open. Liz, who has sealed up most of her house and hasn’t left the estate in eighteen years because she is trying to cover up some hideous secret, says that she also likes that. Burke leaves.

Liz demands Laura leave the estate no later than tomorrow morning, and vows that she will never have custody of David. Laura says that no power on earth can keep her from her son, and tells Liz she will learn to her cost what she is capable of.

Back in the house, Laura’s face is superimposed over the screen as Liz grows faint. Liz starts climbing the stairs. She calls for help, naming Roger and well-meaning governess Vicki. We see her start to fall. Then we see her sprawled at the bottom of the stairs.

Liz under Laura’s spell. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

The process shot makes it clear that Laura is using witchcraft to control Liz. Burke’s behavior is also uncharacteristic, but it is an open question whether it is the result of Laura casting a magic spell on him, of his own emotions leading him to make a fool of himself, or of sloppy work on the part of the writers.

Episode 151: Finishing my puzzle

There isn’t really any structure to this episode, certainly no suspense. It’s a collection of scenes in various moods, each exploring some familiar themes, all taking place in the great house of Collinwood.

Reclusive matriarch Liz wakes her nephew, strange and troubled boy David. She is glad to find that David is cheerful, but disturbed to hear that his mother, the mysterious and long-absent Laura, visited him in his room last night. Liz says that Laura couldn’t have been in the house last night. David proves that she was there by showing Liz the handkerchief she gave him.

Liz is puzzled how Laura got in and out of the house without being seen. Friday, she learned that there had been strong evidence of supernatural activity in the house yesterday. As she questions David about the details of Laura’s visit, it looks like she might be trying to rule out a supernatural explanation of Laura’s visit. That’s a bit of a dead end- Liz is committed to covering up anything that will make the family look weird, so if she is thinking along those lines she certainly won’t be talking about it with anyone. But she had a confrontation yesterday with Laura, in the course of which each implied that she had sufficient willpower to defeat the other. So Liz’ unsettled reaction might explain why Laura left the handkerchief. She wants Liz to know that she is not dealing with any ordinary antagonist.

We then see Liz and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, having breakfast in the kitchen. Roger is delighted by the prospect that his wife Laura will divorce him and go away with their son David. He promises Liz he will think fondly of David when David is a distant memory. Liz is exasperated with Roger’s narcissism. She reminds him that he lives as a guest in her house, and that it was for David’s sake she took him in. He studiously ignores the implication that if David goes away, he will have to find a place to live and pay his own bills.

Liz and Roger in the kitchen. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Liz’ daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, comes into the kitchen as Roger is leaving. She informs Liz that Laura has been seeing the family’s arch-nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Before Laura came back, Burke had been leading Carolyn on, and she has been bitterly disappointed that no romance will be blossoming between them. She leads Liz to the idea that after Roger and Laura are divorced, Laura will deliver David to Burke. “The last of the Collins! The only hope our name will continue!” exclaims Liz. Fearing Burke’s intentions, she vows to keep Laura away from David.

While she may not have forgotten what she heard Friday about the indications of supernatural doings, Liz has not grasped the message the ghosts are trying to send. While Burke may want David to forget Roger, think of him as his father, and change his name from Collins to Devlin, the ghosts have been telling anyone they can reach that he won’t get the chance. If David goes to Laura, she will change far more about him than his last name. Perhaps she will kill him, perhaps she will turn him into some kind of otherworldly creature, but whatever her plans are, Burke should be the least of Liz’ worries.

Roger was among those who saw and heard the signs of the ghosts on Thursday. On Friday, he flatly declared to well-meaning governess Vicki that he refused to think about them any more. While Carolyn is in the kitchen giving Liz the news about Burke and Laura, Roger goes to David’s room to try to talk him into spending more time with his mother.

When he hears Roger at the door, David is sitting on his bed, playing with toy soldiers on a chessboard. He hastily shoves the soldiers and the edge of the board under his pillow and picks up a textbook.

Everything Roger says seems to bewilder David. When Roger tells David that he has done something to please him, David replies “I have?” David continues to answer all of Roger’s statements in that wise until Roger protests that David is using “two-word questions” only to annoy him. He talks about how important it is for a boy to spend time with his mother, that he ought to ask Liz if he can go on a long trip with his mother, etc. At the end of their talk, Roger tells David “You can be a very intelligent little fella when you want to be.” David continues to give him a mystified look.

Since David has already had several scenes where he angrily told Roger that he knew Roger was trying to send him away with his mother because he wants to get rid of him, regular viewers are likely to take this scene as an indication that David is changing his approach to Roger. He’s tried confronting his father with the ugly truth, screaming at him, and threatening him. Last summer, when Laura was still an unseen, half-remembered figure David would call to while standing at the window, he tried murdering him. None of those tactics got him anywhere, so now he is just deflecting him with a show of incomprehension.

There is another possible explanation for David’s change. The most shocking of David’s recent behavior came when the ghost of Josette Collins was making her most intense efforts to get through to him about the danger his mother represented. That process manifested itself in nightmares and a frightening painting that threw David’s mind into an uproar. Now, Laura has appeared to him in the night, blocking the nightmares, and Roger has burned the painting. Josette is temporarily silenced. David is not afraid of his mother, and may not be enraged with his father.

Those who have been watching closely all along will find another interesting note in Roger’s attempt to manipulate David. In #68, Roger had been eager to get rid of well-meaning governess Vicki. In those days, David saw Vicki as an enemy. Roger sits with David in the drawing room and talks very calmly about the fact that David hates him. He asks if he doesn’t hate Vicki even more. David doesn’t deny it, and expresses extreme hostility. This was only a few weeks after Roger found out that David had tried to kill him, so it is rather chilling when he tells David that he will leave it entirely up to him to solve the problem of Vicki.

In that scene of horrifying child abuse, David was helpless as his father deliberately set about warping his mind so that he would attempt a murder. By contrast, this scene is a comedy in which David Henesy and Louis Edmonds get real laughs, and David Collins is certainly no worse off at the end than he was a the beginning.

David is playing with his toy soldiers again when he hears someone else at the door. Again, he stuffs the soldiers under his pillow. It is his cousin Carolyn. He tells her that with so many visitors to his room, he is having trouble studying. Carolyn takes the soldiers from under the pillow and says she can see how hard he’s been studying. He asks “Secret?” She replies “Secret!”

As far as I can recall, this is the first time we’ve seen Carolyn in David’s room. The “Secret?” “Secret!” exchange is certainly the first time we’ve seen them so friendly. It’s a relief- Carolyn’s over-the-top denunciations of David as a “little monster” were getting monotonous, and each of these characters needs more people to talk to.

After she and David have talked about Laura for a while, Carolyn goes back downstairs to talk to her Uncle Roger. Roger is lounging on the couch doing the crossword puzzle. He is quite annoyed that Carolyn is interrupting him in this most important task of his day. This is a bit of mirroring- as David is more concerned with his toy soldiers than with his studies, so Roger is more concerned with his puzzle than with any of the responsibilities you might suppose would attach themselves to a grown man who is nominally employed as an executive at his sister’s business.

Carolyn brings up Burke and Laura. Roger says that she needn’t worry about that- until their divorce is final, Laura won’t dare do anything to alienate the Collinses. Carolyn asks what will happen after the divorce, when David is living with Laura and Laura is available to Burke. It seems to dawn on Roger that it might be bad for the Collinses if the family’s only male heir is the stepson of their deadliest enemy, and so he says he’ll do something about it. Carolyn so adores her uncle and so resents Laura and Burke’s relationship that not even his crossword puzzle can keep her from blinding herself to his complete ineffectiveness. She is gleeful at the thought that Burke and Laura will now get their comeuppance at his hands.

Carolyn and Roger on the couch. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Like Roger, Carolyn was among those who saw and heard the signs of Josette’s presence Thursday. She knows all about David’s nightmare and about the painting in which she warned that Laura would set fire to herself and David. Yet she has inherited the family’s tradition of denial. She will not see what is in front of her, and cannot shift her focus from her thwarted desire for Burke to the grave danger impending over David.

Episode 149: The scent of jasmine

Yesterday’s episode gave writer Ron Sproat six major points to communicate to the audience:

None of the characters yet believed that the relationship between mysterious and long-absent Laura Collins and her son, strange and troubled boy David, involved physical danger or crime, much less a threat from the supernatural realm.
An police investigation taking place off-screen and centered in Phoenix, Arizona will advance the plot.
Well-meaning governess Vicki is a credible protagonist in the storyline about Laura.
Dashing action hero Burke Devlin is too smitten with Laura to be of much help to Vicki in her efforts to protect David from Laura.
The budding romance between Burke and flighty heiress Carolyn is at an end.
Vicki has decided the time has come to start fighting Laura.

With more help from the actors than he really deserved, Sproat managed to get all six of these points across. Today, Malcolm Marmorstein has only two themes to deal with. First, he shows us Carolyn processing her feelings about Burke. Then, he shows us the characters discovering that they are living in a ghost story.

Carolyn comes home to the great house of Collinwood in a grim mood. Vicki asks Carolyn who has upset her. She says that Burke has put an end to their budding romance. She asks Vicki to guess who has caught Burke’s eye now, and Vicki names Laura.

Later, Carolyn puts the same question to Laura’s estranged husband, her uncle, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Roger also names Laura, also without batting an eye. When Carolyn is surprised at his calm reaction, he assures her he has no interest in anything Burke and Laura might get up to.

In her anguish, Carolyn tells Roger that he would take an entirely different attitude if he could see Burke from a woman’s point of view. As Roger, Louis Edmonds replies to this remark by raising an eyebrow ever so slightly.

The episodes Art Wallace and Francis Swann wrote in the first twenty weeks of Dark Shadows gave more than a few hints that Burke and Roger’s enmity has its roots in a past homoerotic relationship. In the months since Sproat and Marmorstein took over the writing duties, that idea has only cropped up a couple of times in Sproat’s scripts, and not at all in Marmorstein’s.

Edmonds’ raised eyebrow here will bring a chuckle to regular viewers who have caught on to the theme. As the look passes from his face, Carolyn turns to look at her uncle. When Nancy Barrett saw Louis Edmonds, she must have been glad the scene was ending, as she didn’t have to worry about keeping herself from laughing out loud.

In the village of Collinsport, drunken artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, are at home. Maggie is trying to cheer her father up after a recent mishap with fire injured his hands, leaving him temporarily unable to hold either a paint brush or a whiskey glass. Losing his ability to paint is not as upsetting to Sam as it might be at another time. Lately, an occult power has compelled him to paint nothing but pictures of Laura, naked and in flames, a subject which he and everyone else, especially the lady herself, finds horrifying.

Maggie tries to talk sense to Sam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

What is weighing most heavily on Sam at the moment is a mystical feeling that something is happening to the first of these paintings. It now hangs at Collinwood in the bedroom of Laura and Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David. An occult power, presumably the same one that took possession of Sam, made Vicki take it back to Collinwood and show it to David. David took the painting because it depicted the scene of a recurring nightmare that had afflicted him and that Sam had no way of knowing about. In the nightmare, Laura had beckoned David to join her in the flames. Again, the nightmare seems to be a communication from an occult power, and there is no reason why it could not be the same one that possessed Sam and Vicki.

The painting has a blank spot the size and shape of David. Sam’s mystical feeling suggests to him that the painting is being completed. He goes to Collinwood to investigate.

While Sam is on his way, we see David’s room. The painting glows, as both it and the portrait of Josette Collins hanging in the long-abandoned Old House have done when supernatural beings were about. Josette herself manifests. She looks around. She turns to the painting and touches the blank spot.

Josette’s ghost is played here by stand-in Rosemary McNamara. We get a fair glimpse of her face. Her hair and makeup looks very much like those we just saw Kathryn Leigh Scott wearing as Maggie. Miss Scott has played the ghost of Josette several times already and will be closely associated with Josette later in the series. If resemblance is intentional, as it would seem it must be,* why not simply have Miss Scott play Josette today?

The ghost of Josette in David’s room. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Roger, Carolyn, and Vicki are gathered in the drawing room, talking about the painting. Carolyn reminds Roger that David is out of the house, and suggests that he take the painting now and destroy it. Vicki objects that David would take that as a grave betrayal.

A knock comes at the door. Vicki answers it and greets Sam. She shows concern for his injured hands, and very gently takes his coat. She tells him that she is as mystified by her own actions in taking the painting and giving it to David as Sam is mystified by his compulsion to paint it in the first place. Sam asks to speak with Roger. Vicki ushers him into the drawing room, where he meets Roger and Carolyn.

Roger and Sam hate each other, but in front of the young ladies they behave almost correctly. Certainly their hostility doesn’t slow down the exchange of story-productive information. Sam asks to see the painting. Roger and Carolyn send Vicki up to David’s room to fetch it.

That’s an interesting moment. When Sam knocked, Vicki had gone to answer the door at once, and had presented him to Roger and Carolyn very much in the person of a household servant. When Roger and Carolyn send her for the painting, she is all smiles, happy to be on the job. Yet when she and Carolyn were in the drawing room earlier discussing Burke, Vicki was functioning entirely as Carolyn’s equal. The two of them sound like old friends, or like the sisters the show has been hinting they might be. Vicki can move with remarkable facility between the roles of servant and family member. That extraordinary flexibility is one of the qualities that we can imagine will come in handy as she confronts the spiritual forces of darkness gathering in the background.

When Vicki enters David’s room, spooky music starts to play. Vicki walks in slowly, looking from side to side. She senses an eerie presence. She looks at the painting, and sees that where it once was blank it now sports an image of David. She screams.

Roger, Carolyn, and Sam are momentarily stunned by Vicki’s scream. By the time they leave the drawing room, Vicki is already on the stairs holding the painting. Seeing David’s face depicted there, Roger exclaims that he saw the painting earlier that day, and that the spot was still blank then. Sam touches it, and says that is impossible- it is oil paint, and would take days to dry. Roger says that the painting now shows the whole scene of David’s nightmare.

As the four of them try to figure out what could have happened, Vicki says that when she entered the room she felt a weird presence. She says there was a specific perception accompanying this vague feeling- she could smell jasmine perfume. None of the ladies in the house wear that scent. Vicki says that she smelled it once before- in #126, when she saw the ghost of Josette Collins. The association of Josette with the scent of jasmine will continue throughout the series.

Vicki and Carolyn wonder how David will react to his own likeness in the painting, and Roger replies that he never will see it. He throws it in the fireplace. As it burns, the sound of a woman’s scream rings through the room.

This episode is a turning point. Hints of supernatural activity have been cropping up in the show from week one, the audience has been seeing evidence of it for months, and both Vicki and David have seen and talked with ghosts. But the completed painting and the scream that emerges from the fireplace are the first unambiguous tokens of the occult that have been presented to a group like these four.

The only other time more than one person had seen anything like it came in #88, when Roger and his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, found seaweed on the spot where Vicki reported that the ghost of beloved local man Bill Malloy had dropped it. But Roger and Liz both want to keep the stories of Collinwood’s haunting to a minimum, and they threw the seaweed into the fire without telling Vicki or anyone else that they had found it. Denial, the psychological defense mechanism, is the ruling passion of their lives, and when the two of them found the evidence it was a foregone conclusion that it would be destroyed.

There is no such unity among Sam, Vicki, Carolyn, and Roger. Now that the only way any of them can deny that supernatural powers are operating in connection with Laura and David is to lie, we see that the four of them are strikingly ill-appointed to be the members of a plot to keep a secret. Sam is an outsider and no friend of the Collinses. Vicki is too conscientious to be part of a coverup. Carolyn is a loose cannon, and might tell anyone anything. Roger is unburdened by a conscience and is quite happy to tell lies, but he is also so cowardly and irresolute that he might be the weak link in any conspiracy he might join. So, not only do these characters now know that spirits are at work in connection with Laura’s relationship with David, but everyone else is likely to find out as well.

*Rosemary McNamara’s face is of the same general type as Kathryn Leigh Scott’s, but I think the hair and makeup above emphasize the similarity. Here’s the picture from her imdb profile:

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.

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 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.