In the long-abandoned Old House on the estate of Collinwood, fugitive Matthew is sharpening the ax with which he plans to kill his prisoner, well-meaning governess Vicki. In the great house on the same estate, strange and troubled boy David is struggling with himself. His hated father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, and his idol, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, are waiting for him to tell what he knows about Matthew and Vicki, and he keeps asking for assurances that he won’t be punished if he tells.
While David’s pathological fear of punishment keeps her rescuers at bay, Matthew finishes sharpening his ax. In the secret chamber where she is bound to a chair, Vicki receives a visitor- the ghost of Josette Collins. The ghost tells her she need not be afraid. Vicki asks why not. The ghost simply repeats herself and vanishes. It is by no means clear that the ghosts mean to save Vicki from Matthew, or that they could keep him from killing her if that is what they want.
David finally tells Burke and Roger where Vicki is, and they get some shotguns. David delays their departure still further by pleading to go along with them. Meanwhile, Matthew is in front of Vicki, starting to swing his ax at her head.
Matthew hears ghostly voices and breaks off in mid-swing. He runs out of the hidden chamber to the parlor, where the ghost of beloved local man Bill Malloy comes strolling in to the room, singing one of the more family-friendly verses of “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?” Matthew starts swinging his ax wildly at the ghost, which laughs at him. Four more ghosts, representing the famed “Widows,” follow, and he swings at them.
In her place of confinement, Vicki can hear Matthew screaming, but cannot hear the ghosts plaguing him. She calls out to Matthew, who falls silent. Burke and Roger come in, she calls to them, they find her and release her from her bonds. Matthew in a chair in the parlor, dead of fright.
It is notable that Burke and Roger do not actually save Vicki- the ghosts of Bill and the Widows do. When Matthew first tried to kill Vicki in episode 111, it was reclusive matriarch Liz who saved her. Now, it is again a female-led effort, though as the victim of Matthew’s first homicide Bill does get a chance to help. I suppose that fits with the nature of the genre- daytime soaps are addressed to a predominantly female audience, so it only makes sense that female characters will drive most of the major plot points. It doesn’t bode well for the future development of Burke- he’s a dashing action hero, after all, and if all the dashing actions are going to be precipitated by women, girls, and feminine ghosts he’s likely to be left out in the cold.
Matthew Morgan, killer of beloved local man Bill Malloy, has been hiding out in the long-abandoned Old House on the great estate of Collinwood for many days. He has been keeping well-meaning governess Vicki a prisoner in a secret chamber there. Strange and troubled boy David Collins believed that Matthew was an innocent man and has been helping him; now, David has found Vicki, and Matthew knows that the crisis is upon him.
In the great house on the estate, David calls for his hated father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Roger does not answer, but the ghost of Bill Malloy appears and tells David to help Vicki. David is used to seeing ghosts, and tries to engage Bill in conversation about the circumstances of his death. He asks him whether Matthew really killed him, or if, as he has been hoping all along, it was Roger. All the ghost will say is that he must help Vicki.
The ghost vanishes when Roger comes in. David tells him he has something important to say, but that he won’t tell him unless he first promises that he won’t be punished. When Roger will not give such a promise, David tells him that something terrible will happen tonight, and it will be his fault. Roger snaps at him, and David replies that he hopes he gets pneumonia and dies. David’s pathological fear of punishment led him to try to murder Roger in the first month of the show; now it leads him to resign himself to Vicki’s death and to wish for Roger’s.
In the woods, Matthew sees Bill’s ghost. The ghost tells him that someone will die at Collinwood before the night is out. This message is not immediately helpful to Vicki; Matthew interprets it to mean that the ghosts want him to kill Vicki. Indeed, the first time he heard a ghostly voice, Matthew’s immediate response was to leap up and put a knife at Vicki’s throat. Bill’s encounter with David would indicate that he’s trying to help, as would his previous apparition to Vicki in #85. He just isn’t very good at it. We aren’t sure about the other ghosts yet.
Vicki manages to get loose and makes it as far as the front door. Matthew meets her there. He is relaxed and cheerful, and asks her why she is frightened. He calls her “Miz Stoddard,” indicating that he believes she is reclusive matriarch Liz. Vicki plays along, but Matthew breaks out of the delusion before she can get away. He shoves her back into the chamber and ties her up again. He goes to get an ax to kill her with.
Back in the great house, David places a phone call to dashing action hero Burke Devlin. He leaves a message telling Burke that he has an urgent message about Vicki. Burke comes running. He and Roger bicker, and David won’t tell what he knows unless he can be assured he won’t be punished. Matthew is moving slowly, but David’s phobia and Roger’s angry interference combine to keep the potential rescuers from moving at all.
The restaurant at the Collinsport Inn appeared in the very first episode of Dark Shadows. Well-meaning governess Vicki arrives in town, and stops there on her way to her new home in the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Counter-woman Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, gave Vicki a bit of a hard time at first, but quickly emerged as the person likeliest to be her friend. And indeed, Vicki and Maggie have visited each other, had heart-to-heart talks, etc.
We’ve seen the restaurant many times since. As part of the inn, it has always figured as territory associated with dashing action hero Burke Devlin, arch-nemesis of Vicki’s employers, the ancient and esteemed Collins family. It was Burke who brought Vicki to the inn and therefore sent her Maggie’s way, and the major scenes in the restaurant since have revolved around Burke and his doings. By making the whole complex of the inn an extension of Burke’s personality, it established him as a force equal to the Collinses with their mansion and its precincts.*
Today marks a shift in the use of the set from a symbol of Burke’s power to a neutral space where new characters are introduced without giving away their relationships to the ongoing storylines. While Burke figures in the conversation, he doesn’t appear in the episode, and the action does not depend on what he has done.
Maggie presides over the place. Her interactions with newcomers begin from the fact that she works there. The only other public spaces we’ve seen are the Blue Whale tavern, where the bartender does not speak and any conversations start as part of whatever story the speakers are involved in, and the sheriff’s office, which is nobody’s idea of a casual hangout. So Maggie is elected Welcoming Committee.
A blonde woman in a stylish hat takes a seat at a table while Maggie is at the counter bantering with her boyfriend-in-waiting, hardworking young fisherman Joe. Joe tells Maggie that the woman looks familiar, but that he can’t quite place her. After Joe leaves, Maggie gives the woman a menu, pours her a cup of coffee, and talks with her.
The woman asks about Grace, whom Maggie replaced at the restaurant five years ago. She confirms that she lived in Collinsport when Grace ran the restaurant. Since she is from Collinsport, Maggie is surprised that she came to town on the bus and is staying at the inn. The woman asks about the Collinses. Maggie says that high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins is the same as ever, only more so. When the woman asks what that means, Maggie explains that he is the person in town likeliest to play the role of Ebenezer Scrooge.** The woman asks about Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David Collins. She is happy when Maggie says that David is a cute, clever boy, and startled when she says that “a nice dungeon would help” him to be easier to live with.
The woman is never named, but returning viewers will have a very short list of people she might be. The ongoing storylines are:
Vicki’s quest to learn the identity of her birth parents. The woman doesn’t look anything like Vicki, and the one potential lead Vicki has discovered in her time in Collinsport is a portrait of a woman who looks exactly like her. If the woman is connected with that storyline, therefore, it would likely be in some roundabout way- we wouldn’t expect them to cast a blonde actress as a close relative of the brunette Vicki after the big deal they made of that portrait.
The mistress of Collinwood, reclusive matriarch Liz, hasn’t left home in eighteen years and no one knows why. Liz is the first person the woman asks about, so it could be that she has come to shed some light on this puzzle. The only women who lived in the house eighteen years before who have gone away since were the servants, so it could be that this woman is a former Collins family servant who has come into money.
Homicidal fugitive Matthew’s abduction of Vicki. Matthew has always been friendless, and his only relative is an elderly brother. He has always lived in poverty, and did not know the servants who were connected with the house before Liz became a recluse. So it is difficult to see what connection he could have to this woman. On the other hand, the ghosts with whom the show has been teasing us since the first week have been making their presence very strongly felt as that story reaches its climax. The woman may have some connection with the supernatural back-world of the series, and that may somehow link her to Matthew or Vicki.
Vicki’s love-life. Vicki and Burke had been spending a lot of time together, but she has told him that because he is the enemy of her employers they can never see each other again. Burke doesn’t seem to be ready to accept this. Since she has been missing, Burke has taken an aggressive part in searching for her. Vicki has been seeing instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, but we haven’t seen him since she’s been abducted (that I recall; the guy is very forgettable.) The woman seems to be a bit too sophisticated for Frank, but she may be a rival for Burke’s affections.
Joe’s breakup with flighty heiress Carolyn and his budding romance with Maggie. Maggie doesn’t recognize the woman at all, Joe can’t identify her, and their working-class backgrounds make her almost as unlikely a connection for them as she is for Matthew. Still, if she is a former servant at Collinwood, she might have some connection with one or the other of their families.
Burke’s quest to avenge himself on the Collinses in general and Roger in particular. There is a woman involved in Burke’s grudge against Roger- Roger and a woman named Laura were in Burke’s car when it killed a pedestrian. They both testified that Burke was driving, saw him sentenced to prison for manslaughter, then married each other. Burke swears that Roger was driving, and Laura was apparently Burke’s girlfriend, certainly not Roger’s, before the night of the fatal collision. Laura is still married to Roger, though they have lived apart for some time, and she is David’s mother. The mystery woman’s reactions to Maggie’s descriptions of Roger and David would make sense if she were Laura, as would her evident affluence and her separation from friends or relatives.
Vicki’s effort to befriend David. If the woman is David’s mother, she could complicate this, the quietest but most consistently successful of all the show’s storylines.
Maggie’s reference to “a nice dungeon” is ironic. There are dungeons about, both literal and figurative. Matthew is keeping Vicki bound and gagged in one inside the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, where his helper David visits him today. David doesn’t know that Matthew is holding Vicki until the end of the episode, when he stumbles upon her. As David Collins, David Henesy gives a splendid reaction to this shocking sight:
Before the mystery woman enters, Maggie herself seems to be in a kind of dungeon. Her dungeon is built not of stone walls or iron bars, but of careless writing. Joe is filthy and exhausted after many long hours searching for Vicki, who is missing and may be in the clutches of a murderer. Even though she is Vicki’s close friend and The Nicest Girl in Town, Maggie doesn’t show a moment of concern for her. She giggles, jokes, and smiles all the way through her conversation with Joe. Not only is her dialogue out of character, it is composed entirely of cliches that remind you forcibly that you’re watching a 56 year old soap opera. For example, when Joe mentions that he crossed paths with Carolyn in Burke’s hotel room, she exclaims, “That is a convention!” The dread Malcolm Marmorstein strikes again…
*My wife, Mrs Acilius, developed this point in our discussion of the episode.
**Louis Edmonds would indeed have made a marvelous Scrooge. It’s too bad the cast of Dark Shadows didn’t get round to performing A Christmas Carol until 2021, two full decades after his death. It was a great performance, highly recommended, and is followed by a Q & A every fan of the series will find fascinating.
Each of the 1225 episodes of Dark Shadows features one name under the credit “Written by.”* A total of nine names rotate in that spot. While we know that some episodes included writing from uncredited contributors, the only such contributors we can identify come from among that tiny group of eight men and one woman. For example, Malcolm Marmorstein, credited with today’s script, wasn’t officially named among the writers until #115, but he may well have written additional dialogue as far back as #46. Joe Caldwell’s name doesn’t appear on-screen until #245, but he will actually be writing some of the scripts attributed to Ron Sproat starting this month, maybe this week.
Opinions will of course vary as to which of the nine identifiable writers was better and which was worse. Few, however, will find a place for Marmorstein on a list of Dark Shadows’ eight best writers. Although he had extensive experience in the theater, Marmorstein had none of the sense of what actors can do that Art Wallace and Francis Swann brought to the first nineteen weeks of the show. Nor did he know how to structure a drama, write crisp dialogue, or invent fresh story points. Directors Lela Swift and John Sedwick collaborate with a uniformly strong cast to put Marmorstein’s scripts on such a strong footing that at moments they seem like they are about to be good. Those brief flashes of hope are invariably, cruelly, disappointed.
There are indeed some bright spots in today’s episode. Reclusive matriarch Liz is in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Well-meaning governess Vicki and homicidal fugitive Matthew are both missing, and Liz is worried that Vicki may have fallen into Matthew’s hands. Wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson shares her conviction that Matthew has killed Vicki, and won’t stop talking about this belief even after Liz expressly orders her to do so. Clarice Blackburn plays Mrs Johnson as a woman with no self-awareness whatsoever, and no screen actor has ever had a more effective way of showing horror at displays of social maladroitness than did Joan Bennett. In their hands, this scene is laugh-out-loud funny.
A knock at the door rescues Liz from Mrs Johnson’s untrammeled morbidness. The sheriff has come to report to Liz on the state of the searches for Vicki and Matthew. Mrs Johnson answers the door and won’t let the sheriff see Liz until she’s given him a piece of her mind about the incompetence of his department. There aren’t any memorable lines in this exchange, but the contrast between Blackburn’s highly animated movements and Dana Elcar’s cheerful placidity is so obviously suitable for comedy that it feels funny.
Back in the drawing room, the episode starts to fall apart. Liz and the sheriff talk about the searches for Vicki and Matthew. The dialogue is full of repetition and wasted words. Liz asks if the sheriff has an idea where Matthew might be, to which he replies, “He could be anywhere, and everywhere.” Might he hurt Vicki? “He might, but on the other hand he might not.” After all, “he’s very unpredictable.” Then, “you know how unpredictable he is.” Yep, unpredictable, let’s repeat that word five or six more times, that’ll keep us busy until the commercial break.
They could have cut some of that smoke-blowing and replaced it with lines about what the sheriff has done. My wife, Mrs Acilius, wishes the sheriff had mentioned telephoning Vicki’s former residence, the Hammond Foundling Home, and asking people there about where Vicki might have gone and whom she might have tried to contact. That might not have led to any action, but at least it would invite us to imagine that something might be going on somewhere.
The scene between Liz and the sheriff does have an effective ending. She asks him if he holds out much hope for Vicki. He replies, “Frankly, no.” She turns to leave the room. We break for commercial on that downbeat, which lets the bleakness of the situation sink in.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins comes home. David is the one person who knows that Matthew is hiding in the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of the estate. He has been delivering supplies to him. Even David does not know that Matthew is holding Vicki prisoner in a hidden chamber. David sees that the sheriff is in the house, and asks Mrs Johnson if the sheriff has any news about Vicki or Matthew. Mrs Johnson seizes this opportunity to resume denouncing the sheriff’s incompetence, saying that the only clue he can recognize one that tells him it is time to eat and make himself even fatter than he already is.
David is about to move on when Mrs Johnson questions him about the pack of cigarettes he stole from her earlier. She sets some punchlines up for David in this exchange. She mentions that she lit a cigarette while serving David his breakfast, to which David replies by asking if she is supposed to smoke while working. She says she knows that she set her pack of cigarettes on the table when she and David were alone in the kitchen, and that she hasn’t seen it since. He suggests it walked away by itself. She tells him he’s the only one who could have taken them; he says that if he wanted cigarettes, he wouldn’t steal them, he’d buy them. None of these lines is much on the page, but as delivered by Blackburn and David Henesy, they are genuinely funny.
David goes into the drawing room and talks with the sheriff. Picking up on Mrs Johnson’s remark about the sheriff’s vigilant observation of meal-times, David asks him what it means when the whistle blows at the cannery. “Lunch,” says the sheriff. Again, not a world-class piece of comic material, but Henesy and Elcar make it land.
David then asks the sheriff for the details of his search for Matthew. The sheriff happily answers all of David’s questions in detail, as if he were giving a briefing to the state police. He tells David that anyone who might be hiding Matthew will go to jail.
This scene shows the limits of what a good actor can do with bad material. David is going to return to the Old House at the end of the episode. He will be prompted to go back there because he has learned information from the sheriff that Matthew will want to know. While there, he will set up suspense by revealing to Matthew that the sheriff has triggered his intense phobia of jail. That locks the sheriff into playing his scene with David as a babbling oaf.
In Elcar’s first episodes as the sheriff, he had made indiscreet remarks to David, but as we saw him observing the reactions those remarks elicited from David and others he seemed to be using them as ploys to advance his investigations. For example, in #59, he had given David some information that excites him and unnerves his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins.
We can see how he might use similar tactics in this situation. After all, Vicki is David’s governess, and David has spent more time with her than has anyone else. Matthew had been the caretaker in the house where David lives, and David knows him quite well also. In this conversation, when the sheriff refers to Matthew as unlikable, David becomes very excited and exclaims “I like him! Er, I did like him, I mean.” If the sheriff knows his business he might well pay very close attention to everything David says, and keep encouraging David to say more. He will certainly notice David’s terrified reaction to the idea that someone helping Matthew will go to jail, and test his reaction to further comments on related themes. But if he takes any note at all of David’s attitude, the current storyline will end within minutes. So in this scene, Marmorstein leaves Elcar no way to play the sheriff as an intelligent character.
After the sheriff leaves, David and Liz have a scene in the drawing room that builds up to a tremendously frustrating moment. David keeps asking his aunt one question after another about Matthew and Vicki, Vicki and Matthew, does Matthew have Vicki, is Vicki in danger from Matthew, then without taking a breath “Do you know any secrets about the Old House?” Liz responds “I wish that someday you’d ask an important question.”
Granted, we know that Matthew is holding Vicki prisoner in the Old House and Liz does not, but it is hard to imagine anyone failing to see the connection between these two thoughts. Joan Bennett and David Henesy had a fine rapport that made the scenes between Liz and David Collins a delight, and you can see them trying to save this exchange. David is in a panic at the beginning of the scene and gets steadily more worked up as it goes along. We see Liz observing his agitated emotional state, paying such close attention to his facial expressions, tone of voice, and frantic bodily movements that she misses key elements of his words. It’s a valiant attempt on their part to make the scene work.
David wants to go to the Old House to see Matthew. In the foyer, Mrs Johnson again confronts him about the cigarettes. He yells at her to “Get off my back!” and runs out. This might have been an attempt to show that David feels his world closing in on him, but it doesn’t succeed. We’ve already seen those two characters say everything they had to say about that topic on that set. Repeating it just feels like filler.
*There are reference works that draw on the original paperwork produced by the makers of the show; even these list one writer per episode. That’s how the Dark Shadows wiki manages to list a writer for every episode, including those that don’t show writing credits on-screen.
The actors do what they can to hold it together, and there are a couple of memorable lines. Reclusive matriarch Liz calls her daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, a “young girl” during yet another conversation pleading with her to stop dating the family’s arch-nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Carolyn asks when her mother will admit that she is a woman. “When it is a fact,” Liz replies. Carolyn declares that “It won’t be a woman who bestows that title on me, but a man- Burke Devlin!” Everyone in Collinsport seems to be living according to a rule of chastity, so Carolyn’s open declaration that she plans to have sex with Burke is rather startling.
Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, comes home. Liz tells Roger that well-meaning governess Vicki is missing and may be in danger. Roger refuses to take an interest in the matter. When Liz is shocked by his indifference, he says that she sometimes expects too much of him. Considering that Burke and hardworking young fisherman Joe are searching the grounds of the estate for Vicki, and that the sheriff’s department has been involved in the search as well, Roger’s disregard for Vicki is not merely cavalier, but childish in the extreme.
When Roger finds out that Carolyn had been on a date with Burke, he tries to take the authoritative tone that her mother had taken with her earlier. Neither Carolyn nor Liz is impressed with the attempt this boy-man is making to impersonate a paterfamilias. Liz and Roger are the prototype for Dark Shadows‘ most characteristic relationship, that between a bossy big sister and her bratty little brother. She tries to correct his behavior, and when he disappoints her she shields him from accountability. In this scene, she sees yet again how useless he really is.
Burke and Joe come to the house to report that their search for well-meaning governess Vicki has been fruitless. Roger makes one sarcastic remark after another to Burke. Louis Edmonds is so skilled at delivering acerbic dialogue that these lines are fun to listen to, even though they don’t advance the plot or add to our understanding of the characters in any way.
It’s a shame the scene isn’t better written. During the nineteen weeks when Art Wallace and Francis Swann were in charge of writing the show, they hinted that there may have been some kind of sexual relationship between Burke and Roger. This time, Burke has borrowed Roger’s shotgun, and Roger very conspicuously handles the gun after Burke returns it to him. He unloads it, and for no reason that we can see reloads it. As directed by Lela Swift, the actors are uncomfortably close to each other, and can’t keep themselves from getting closer as they exchange their wildly bitter remarks. In the hands of Wallace or Swann, or for that matter of almost any moderately competent writer, that scene would have made sense as a Freudian interlude. But today belongs to Malcolm Marmorstein, and the evidence of repressed sexuality doesn’t add up to much.
Carolyn tries to break the tension in the drawing room by playing “Chopsticks” on the piano. All she gets for her trouble is an irritated look from her mother.
Joe and Carolyn were dating when the series started. All we saw of their relationship was one breakup scene after another. They have a nice loud one today. If there had ever been anything between them, it would be a dramatic moment.
Earlier in the episode, Burke had told Joe he didn’t think he would ever really put his attachment to Carolyn behind him. We’ve seen Joe have a couple of happy dates with Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and are hoping the two of them will have a storyline together. The prospect that Burke may be right and we may be sentenced to sit through yet more bickering between Joe and Carolyn is too dreary for words.
Well-meaning governess Vicki is the prisoner of the fugitive Matthew. Matthew is keeping Vicki in a hidden chamber inside the long-abandoned Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Today, Vicki tries to reason with Matthew, telling him that it is unlikely anyone realizes she is missing now, but that they will figure it out very soon. So, while the coast is probably clear for him to make his escape now, if he waits for any length of time the place will be crawling with police.
In the great house on the estate, reclusive matriarch Liz is sharing her worries about Vicki with hardworking young fisherman Joe and dashing action hero Burke. They telephone the sheriff and ask him to come with several deputies. Liz tells Joe and Burke that Vicki was going to look for her wallet in the Old House when last she saw her; they pick up some shotguns and flashlights and head that way.
Back in the Old House, Matthew seems to be considering Vicki’s arguments. He tells her that he will indeed make a run for the spot in the woods where he has hidden his car and drive off. He also tells her that he will take her with him so as to discourage the police from shooting at him. She objects to this part of the plan, but he is too strong, and she is too frightened, for her to prevent it.
They reach the front door just as Burke calls to her from the other side of it. Matthew covers Vicki’s mouth and hustles her back to the hidden chamber. He clutches her while Joe and Burke search just outside.
The search goes on for quite some time. After a commercial break, Burke describes the house as “huge,” and says that they’ve searched most of it. He then sends Joe back to the great house to ask Liz about any parts of the Old House they may have overlooked. When they were on their way to the Old House, Joe had said they still had a quarter of a mile to go, so the total distance of a round trip between the two houses must be over a half mile.* Joe goes there, talks to Liz, and comes back. He did that over rough terrain, in the dark, while carrying a loaded weapon and looking for a lost person, so we can be sure he didn’t move particularly quickly. When he gets back to the Old House, Burke tells him that while he was away he found the storm cellar, broke the lock on its entrance, and searched it. They also remark that the sheriff and his men must be at the great house by now. So I think we can assume that Burke was in the Old House for at least an hour altogether.
During all that time, Matthew is gripping Vicki and listening to Joe and Burke. He is frozen in place, and her attempts to struggle against him achieve only a glacier’s pace of movement. We wonder how long he can stay so still, and whether she can find a way to break free. That adds up to considerable suspense.
Only when Joe and Burke are gone does Matthew relax his grip sufficiently that Vicki can let out a shriek. He throws her to the floor and tells her that it was a dumb thing to do. The episode ends with a closeup of her shattered reaction to this.
There are a couple of moments when Joe and Burke are supposed to be elsewhere, but we see the front parlor of the Old House anyway. In those two moments, we see something we’ve seen twice before- the portrait of Josette Collins hanging over the mantelpiece glows with an unearthly light while spooky music swells on the soundtrack. On those previous occasions, Josette’s ghost had emerged from the portrait and become visible to us. This time, it only glows. The glow stops when one of the men comes into the room. So Josette may not be ready to manifest herself to either of them, but she’s around, and we can expect her to come out of the supernatural back-world that the show has hinted at and implied into the foreground, where it will intervene in the action. Vicki didn’t know how right she was when she told Matthew he was missing his last chance to get away. Not only has his shilly-shallying brought Joe, Burke, and the sheriff’s department to the scene, but his defilement of the Old House has stirred up the ghosts who haunt it.
* In this episode- there are other episodes where the distance is much longer or much shorter.
Well-meaning governess Vicki has stumbled onto the hiding place of the fugitive Matthew. Matthew traps Vicki in a secret room and talks about killing her.
Back in the great house of Collinwood, evidence begins to mount that Vicki has not caught the bus she was supposed to take to Bangor, Maine. Reclusive matriarch Liz and housekeeper Mrs Johnson try to figure out where she might be.
Vicki tells Matthew that there are no police between him and his car. He says that he will go to his car and leave forever if she will stay put for a couple of hours. She tries to slip out a few minutes after he has gone. He grabs her, shouts “I knew I couldn’t trust you!” and comes at her. She moves behind the camera. He moves toward it, blocking the lens. The episode ends with a black screen, as if our point of view character is being murdered.
The actors and director do their work well enough to make us feel claustrophobic. I realize that kidnapping stories are a standard part of the genre- if you’re a soap opera heroine, it’s when they stop kidnapping you that you have to worry. But I hate seeing people in cages, and will be very glad when we move on from this.
There are a couple of efforts in this one to make our time locked up with Vicki tolerable. She keeps telling Matthew that she will do “anything you say,” and each time she does he casts his eyes down, looking as sad to hear her say it as we are. Back in the great house, Liz tells Mrs Johnson that she feels sorry for Matthew, that he was all right for the 18 years he was caretaker at the estate and that she is sure he didn’t intend to kill beloved local man Bill Malloy. Those moments take some of the edge off, but it still makes me miserable.
In episode 98, strange and troubled boy David Collins appeared to be a true sociopath, never losing his cool while he manipulated the adults around him according to his sinister plans. It was easy to see how a character like that could drive the story for a long time.
Traces of this conception resonated in David Henesy’s portrayal of David Collins as recently as this week. In #113, David Collins found homicidal fugitive Matthew hiding in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Matthew shows David the same fury he had earlier shown both well-meaning governess Vicki and reclusive matriarch Liz. Those grown women needed impressive amounts of courage to keep their composure while dealing with Matthew in that state, but nine-year-old David is as relaxed and chipper as a kitten. He simply disregards Matthew’s obviously menacing affect, and cheerfully enlists him in his scheme to send his father to prison. We can see a detached, calculating mind undisturbed by mere human feelings.
Today seems to put an end to the idea of Sociopath David. David brings Matthew a meal at the Old House. Matthew startles David, then spends a moment making vaguely creepy remarks about having frightened people in the past. These remarks suffice to petrify David. It takes Matthew two and a half scenes of happy talk to calm David’s fears. Once David has warmed up, he starts boasting about how well he knows the Old House. Matthew claims to know a secret about the place that David does not know. This upsets David. He pleads with Matthew to fill him in, and won’t let it go until they hear Vicki nearby calling for him.
Matthew hides while David and Vicki stand in the entryway talking. David’s defensive mood carries over to that conversation. He insists that ghosts really do haunt the Old House, something Vicki hasn’t denied. He tries to frighten her by talking about the multitude of rats that infest the house. Longtime resident that she was of the Hammond Foundling Home, an institution that sounds like a cross between the bleakest creations of Charles Dickens and H. P. Lovecraft, Vicki doesn’t bat an eye at the notion that she is surrounded by countless rats. Still, she does have a bus to catch, so she hustles David back to the great house on the estate.
There, David has an earnest conversation with his aunt Liz about loyalty and unfortunate people who need help. David feels unloved and expresses a longing for a friendship with someone he can trust absolutely. The unemotional iceman of #98 is nowhere in sight.
The best storyline they’ve had so far has been the budding friendship between David and Vicki. I suppose turning David into a master manipulator with no conscience and no capacity for empathy would bring that storyline to an abrupt conclusion, but the move they make here folds him into it completely. His relationships with the other characters have so far been defined for us by what Vicki learned about events that took place before she arrived at the beginning of the series. The only person David knew before Vicki came and towards whom he has changed his attitude since is Matthew, and there is a very short list of possible surprises that David and Matthew can generate together.
That raises the question of how David will meet any new characters who might come on the show. He’s nine, so presumably he will need to be introduced. He hates his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, and his cousin Carolyn has no patience for him. Liz loves him very much, but she hasn’t left home in 18 years. He often sneaks off and visits his father’s sworn enemy, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, but Burke keeps these meetings secret. So if David does interact with any new characters, those interactions are likely to be presented in the context of his friendship with Vicki. Since Vicki has more possibilities than David does to move the plot, that means that they will be presented primarily in terms of their effects on Vicki. The needy, untrusting David of this episode might get himself into trouble from which Vicki will have to rescue him, and he might get Vicki into trouble from which others will have to rescue her. But unless he gets a more dynamic character motivation matrix, it’s hard to see how he will ever contribute anything to the narrative beyond support for Vicki.
Vicki is the main character of the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, and this week is particularly Vicki-heavy. The week began with Liz preventing Matthew from breaking Vicki’s neck, and ends today with Matthew capturing Vicki when she comes back to the Old House to get something she had dropped there. The next couple of weeks will focus on her imprisonment. So if you’re going to be relegated to supporting one character, I suppose Vicki is the one you would choose. But still, it’s a shame. Not only is David Collins too promising a character, and David Henesy too talented an actor, to be reduced to sidekick status, but the notion of a show that’s on five days a week having one main character is just nuts. You need multiple sources of plot development and thematic coherence. David would be a terrific one.
Well-meaning governess Vicki visits dashing action hero Burke in his hotel room. Burke wants to express his sympathies over Vicki’s recent ordeal as prisoner of the homicidal Matthew. Vicki wants to tell Burke that, because he is the sworn enemy of her employers, the ancient and esteemed Collins family, she can never see him again. He abruptly kisses her, then apologizes. She tells him to forget about it, then leaves.
The actors do what they can with what they’ve been given. Alexandra Moltke Isles and Mitch Ryan were two of the ablest stage kissers on Dark Shadows, and their smooch looks great. But the whole theme of their conversation is a wistful sadness as the two of them wonder what might have been were it not for the conflict. In that context, the kiss is a gesture of mourning. Later, reclusive matriarch Liz will notice that Vicki is unsettled and will ask if it is because of something Burke did. Evidently we’re supposed to think Vicki is coming undone because she shared a great moment of passion with Burke, but the scene that was in the script included no such thing.
The real highlight of the episode comes later, when strange and troubled boy David Collins raids the pantry in the kitchen at Collinwood to get food to take to the fugitive Matthew. It’s our first look at any part of the kitchen since #53. It’s good to know they still have the kitchen in mind. The characters have always exchanged a lot of story-productive information during their conversations in that relaxed, intimate environment, so I hope they build that set again soon.
In the great house on the estate of Collinwood, reclusive matriarch Liz and instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank worry about where well-meaning governess Vicki has got to. Since Vicki is a witness in the investigation of the death of beloved local man Bill Malloy, and she has been the target of at least two attempted assassinations in the last 24 hours, the sheriff and his men are searching the grounds of Collinwood looking for her.
As it happens, gruff caretaker Matthew is holding Vicki prisoner in his cottage on the estate. Matthew had blurted out a confession that he killed Bill, and has now decided he must kill Vicki to keep her quiet. Vicki tries to persuade Matthew that he will be better off with her alive, but he will not change his mind. As he is putting his hands around her neck with the stated intention of breaking it, the door opens. Liz enters. Startled, Matthew unhands Vicki. She tells Liz that Matthew killed Bill and is about to kill her.
Art Wallace’s original story bible for Dark Shadows, which circulates under the title Shadows on the Wall, had called for Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, to be exposed as a murderer and a deadly threat to Vicki. Roger would fall to his death in the course of his final attempt on Vicki’s life. That was still possible a week ago.
Now that we’ve heard Matthew’s confessions, we know that Roger isn’t going anywhere. Not only does that keep one of the show’s most engaging actors, Louis Edmonds, in the cast; it also opens a long list of story possibilities. Perhaps Roger and Vicki will reenact the climax of Jane Eyre, and the dark-haired governess will marry her charge’s father. Perhaps the horrendous relationship between Roger and his son, strange and troubled boy David, will improve in some way, or perhaps David will make another attempt to kill his father. Certainly we can expect more scenes between Roger and Liz, as the show plays out the first of its signature relationships between Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother.
Further, Liz tells Frank and the sheriff that there are three residences on the estate- the great house, the Old House, and the caretaker’s cottage. One of Matthew’s previous attacks on Vicki took place at the Old House, and we’ve twice seen a ghost there who is clearly marked as someone who will be coming back again. Vicki is trapped in the caretaker’s cottage now, and the great house is the main setting for the series. By listing the three locations in this way, Liz is telling the audience to expect to see more of each of these sets, not just in this storyline but in the stories to come.
