david radcliffe – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 191: Everything will be complete

We open in an old, abandoned fishing shack loaded with junk, much of it made of dry, brittle wood. The floor of the shack is on fire. Flames leap from the floor several feet up to the ceiling. Over the next half hour, none of the junk will catch fire, nor will the walls. During that period, strange and troubled boy David Collins and his mother, blonde fire witch Laura, will stand around in the shack, carrying on a conversation. David slowly recites the legend of the Phoenix. There are also several cuts away from the burning shack. We see well-meaning governess Vicki in the drawing room at the great house of Collinwood; we see reclusive matriarch Liz in her hospital room in Boston. Evidently it’s one of those leisurely shack fires that don’t demand your undivided attention.

In the pre-credits teaser, Laura calls David to come to her, deeper into the flames. He takes a few steps in her direction. After the credits, David is back where he started. This sets the amazingly dilatory tone that persists throughout the whole episode.

David has got this far towards Laura at 1 minute 35 seconds into the episode.

In the drawing room, Vicki is shouting at the ghost of Josette Collins, asking where David is. My wife, Mrs Acilius, says that on this viewing of the series she is starting to identify with the ghost of Josette. Josette must be getting pretty frustrated that after everything she and the other ghosts have done to try to explain the situation to them, the living still don’t get it. Vicki really ought to have thought of the fishing shack several days ago, when a ghost told her that there would be a deadly fire in a very small house by the sea, but it doesn’t dawn on her until some minutes into today’s episode, by which time a wooden shack would have burned to ashes.

Laura asks David to tell her the legend of the Phoenix. He announces the title: “The Legend of the Phoenix!” Then he looks at the teleprompter, intones a few more words, and looks at the teleprompter again. It is very unusual for David Henesy’s memory to fail him, and even more unusual for him to bellow his lines like some kid actor on a 1960’s TV show. Usually he’s letter-perfect and remarkably natural. But Diana Millay is also a good study, and she’s looking at the teleprompter today as well.

Maybe writer Malcolm Marmorstein didn’t get today’s script to the actors at the usual time. It’s easy to imagine that the producers might have kept sending Marmorstein back to do rewrites- this is the grand finale of the most ambitious storyline they’ve had, and it stinks to high heaven. Maybe by the time they realized they weren’t going to get a decent piece of writing out of Marmorstein, it was too late for the actors to learn their parts properly.

In a hospital room in Boston, flighty heiress Carolyn is sitting with her mother Liz. Liz has been in a catatonic state and off the show since #160, immobilized by Laura’s evil spell and Joan Bennett’s annual five week vacation. It’s the first hospital room we’ve seen on Dark Shadows, and it comes equipped with Ivor Francis, who would be one of the busiest and most distinguished character actors on American television in the 1970s. Francis plays the doctor who very patiently and calmly tells Carolyn that there isn’t any point in sitting with Liz tonight. Francis is always interesting to watch- you can tell that the doctor has a thousand interesting things on his mind, and are engrossed in his every word, expecting him to say one of them out loud. But of course he never does.

Vicki makes her way to the shack, where the fire hasn’t made the slightest progress. Maybe the real danger David is facing is asbestos exposure. Vicki tries the door and finds it locked. She stands at the window, which has no glass but is crossed with stout wooden beams, and shouts at David to come out. Laura urges him to finish telling the story of the Phoenix, Vicki urges him to stop telling the story and get out of the shack. Vicki can stick her hand into the shack, but can’t quite touch David.

Laura looks up at Vicki and says that David can’t hear her. Vicki keeps talking, and Laura sounds as exasperated as we imagine Josette must be. After all the research she and her allies have done, hasn’t she figured out that this was what was going to happen?

Returning viewers share Laura’s exasperation, because we know that Vicki has indeed figured it out. She’s spent weeks warning all of her friends that exactly this scenario would play out. But suddenly today she has forgotten everything. It’s the ultimate Dumb Vicki moment, when the writers paint themselves into a corner and escape by making Vicki act like a moron. Marmorstein has to keep the shack burning and David in it from 4:00 to 4:30 PM Eastern time, and if that means Vicki has to develop some kind of amnesia, too bad for her.

Laura says that David, like her, will attain immortality if he burns in the fire. We know that is false.The ghost of David Radcliffe, a son whom she burned in a previous incarnation, spoke through David at a séance the other day and told us that he was separated from his mother in the fire and has been an unquiet spirit since. Laura may not know this, and may sincerely believe that David will share in her resurrection. But Vicki was at the séance. It’s a bit odd she doesn’t try to correct Laura on this point, since they have plenty of time for chit-chat while the flames burn in place.

In Boston, Liz wakes up. Evidently Laura’s impending immolation has broken the spell she cast on Liz. After some minutes of preliminaries, Liz starts shouting “David! Fire! David in fire!” Carolyn and the doctor try to calm her, but she keeps shouting. Almost 300 miles away at Collinwood, David can hear Liz’ voice.

After he hears Liz, David can hear Vicki as well. Evidently all of Laura’s spells are breaking. Laura keeps pleading with David to join her in the flames, Vicki keeps yelling at him to stay where he is. Two minutes before the end of the episode, a burning beam falls, and Laura looks terrified. She delivers her lines after this with the utmost intensity. In an Archives of Television interview, Diana Millay explained that the beam wasn’t supposed to fall, that she really was frightened, and that after all those weeks on the show she had developed a maternal feeling for David Henesy that nearly led her to break character and try to protect him at that moment. She uses those feelings to great advantage, selling the audience on the idea that this is Laura’s last chance to take David with her into the flames.

Finally Laura tells David it is too late. David looks back and forth between Laura in the flames and Vicki at the window. The flames consume Laura as she cries out “From these ashes, the Phoenix is reborn!” David is horrified as he watches his mother disappear in the blaze.

David pulls at the window in an attempt to escape. Vicki calls him to come out the door. He does, and she embraces him as he weeps.

David tries to get out through the window

The climactic moment of *Dark Shadows* 1.0

The last couple of minutes of the episode work well enough to show us what we are supposed to be feeling. Mostly that is down to the emotions Millay and Henesy are able to project when they aren’t burdened with a lot of lines they got at the last minute and that don’t make much sense anyway. It also rests on the foundation of the only relationship that has been interesting every time we’ve seen it, the growing friendship between David and Vicki.

Now that David has chosen the life Vicki is offering him over the death his mother represented, that relationship has nowhere to go. None of the unresolved stories has ever been interesting, and there is no reason to suppose that will change now. So today marks the end, not only of the Laura arc, but of Dark Shadows 1.0. ABC has renewed the show for thirteen more weeks, taking them to episode 260. At this point, there is no indication of what they could possibly do to keep the characters busy for that long.

Episode 190: Always

Strange and troubled boy David Collins has run off to be with his mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson had been keeping an eye on him yesterday, and only let him out of her sight long enough for him to escape because she had to answer a telephone call from well-meaning governess Vicki. Vicki had set Mrs Johnson to watch David, because she knows that if he gets loose Laura is going to burn him to death. So it was an act of inexplicable stupidity on Vicki’s part to make that call.

Today, the show lampshades this problem, having Vicki say that she assumed someone else would answer the phone. But the whole reason Vicki was giving orders to Mrs Johnson in the first place was that no one else was at home. They take a moment that made Vicki look dumb yesterday and turn it into one that makes her look twice as dumb today.

Vicki and her allies, dashing action hero Burke and hardworking young fisherman Joe, remember something that happened at a recent séance. David had channeled the ghost of David Radcliffe, the son of one of his mother’s previous incarnations, whom she had burned to death one hundred years ago. David Radcliffe had said that there would soon be a deadly fire in a “little house by the sea.” Laura has been staying in a cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, and it could meet that description. Burke and Joe head for the cottage while Vicki and Mrs Johnson stay in the great house.

We see David enter an old fishing shack on the estate. As he does so, he shines a flashlight directly into the camera, creating a halo of light that fills the screen. He does this three more times during this brief scene.

While David settles in at the fishing shack, Burke and Joe go to Laura’s cottage. When they arrive at the cottage, Burke shines a flashlight directly into the camera. He’s way behind David, he only creates a halo effect once.

He and Joe don’t find Laura or her luggage at the cottage, but when they see the wood-fire still blazing in the hearth they know that she must have been back since leaving on a bus early this morning. Burke wonders if David might have gone to meet Laura at the long-abandoned Old House on the estate. This leads to a spectacular dialogue flub:

Burke: Maybe she asked him to meet her up at the Old House. I think I’ll go and check.

Joe: Want me to go with you?

Burke: No, I think we should stick together… No, no… we can’t stick together. You go down to the greenhouse and look through the woods. I’ll go up to the Old House.

This may not look like much on the page, but as Mitch Ryan delivers it his mangled lines are good for a laugh out loud. Joel Crothers can’t hide his confusion while Ryan is stumbling:

Back in the drawing room at the great house, Vicki has called the bus company. We see her on the telephone protesting “I don’t understand!” As Dumb Vicki becomes a bigger and bigger part of the character in the months ahead, we will hear those words many, many times.

The bus company tells Vicki that the driver reported a weird story about Laura. She was sitting next to an old lady. The old lady nodded off and when she woke up, Laura was gone. The bus had not stopped while she was asleep- Laura simply vanished into thin air. As a frequent user of mass transit, I enjoyed the idea of something uncanny happening on a bus. That was definitely the high point of the episode for me.

In the fishing shack, David hears Burke and Joe approach. He hides in a wooden crate. They don’t think to walk around it, or turn it over, or tap on it. Apparently whatever has knocked three or four standard deviations off Vicki’s IQ is contagious. Joe does give us one flashlight halo, but otherwise the scene is a bust.

The Three Stooges couldn’t have missed that kid

Laura materializes in the corner of the fishing shack, holding a lantern. David sees her and expresses only very mild surprise that he didn’t hear her coming in. Within seconds, he is acting as if it is perfectly natural for her to be there. Considering that there is only one door and he is standing directly in front of it, his rapid acceptance of the fact that she has somehow managed to insert herself into the shack ought to be a chilling sign of the power she already has over his mind. We’ve seen too much dumb behavior on the part of Vicki, Burke, and Joe today for that to land, so the impact of the scene is blunted.

Laura gives David her lantern and instructs him to look into the center of the flame. Several times we have seen her sit with him by a hearth and urge him to look deep into the flames, but this is the first time she or anyone else on Dark Shadows indicates an object held in the hand and directs someone to “look into the center” as a means of inducing a trance-like state.

Alone in the drawing room, Vicki senses the presence of her chief patroness, the ghost of Josette Collins. She catches the scent of Josette’s jasmine perfume while spooky music plays on the soundtrack and the picture goes out of focus. She keeps asking Josette what she is trying to tell her. It takes her quite a long while to figure out that Josette is reminding her of the fishing shack.

While we were watching this scene, my wife, Mrs Acilius, wondered how exasperated Josette must be getting with the dimwitted living beings she has to work with. She imagined Josette at each turn of the Phoenix story starting to get her hopes up- “OK, they’re getting it!”- only to be disappointed time and again. In #149, she literally paints a picture for them, and they still can’t figure it out.

Meanwhile, David is complaining of the cold and saying that he’s tired. Laura refuses to take the lantern from him, quietly urging him to peer into the center of the flame, then talking about sleep. When he drops the lantern and sees the floor catch fire, he says they should get out. She tells him everything will be all right so long as they stay inside. We end with animation effects suggesting that fire is starting to surround them, while David stands quite still.

Episode 187: Exactly one hundred years (reprise)

Yesterday’s episode ended with a séance in the long-abandoned Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Strange and troubled boy David Collins was possessed by the spirit of David Radcliffe, a boy who died in 1867. David Radcliffe and his mother, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, stood in flames, refusing to be rescued, and burned happily to death. Through David Collins, David Radcliffe told well-meaning governess Vicki and drunken artist Sam that he wanted to be with his mother forever, but that he was separated from her when they died. He also tells them there will be another deadly fire very soon, in a small house by the sea.

Vicki, Sam, and others suspect that David Collins’ mother, Laura Murdoch Collins, is a reincarnation of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. A humanoid Phoenix, she will burn herself and somehow rise from the ashes. The voice of David Radcliffe, someone of whom David has never heard, confirms their fear that Laura will take David with her into the flames of her latest pyre, and that he will burn to death there.

During the séance, dashing action hero Burke Devlin and hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell had waited outside the Old House. When today’s episode opens, Joe has apparently taken Sam home. Burke carries David into the great house on the estate, with Vicki walking beside them. David is awake and keeps protesting that he can walk, but Burke insists on carrying him to his room. Burke has never seen David’s room before, and David enjoys telling him how to get there.

Vicki is very serious. She tells Carolyn that their friend, parapsychologist Dr Guthrie, was killed in a car crash on his way to the séance. They both believe that Laura somehow caused this crash, and lament their apparent helplessness before her. Vicki also recaps the events of the séance, leaving Carolyn terrified that Laura will take David soon.

Burke comes down and says that David wants Vicki. Vicki goes up to David’s room with some extra blankets; he is already in bed. He asks her what happened to him at the séance. Vicki lies to him, claiming that he just fell asleep and started dreaming. We know that Vicki is a deeply honest person, largely because she is such an inept liar. When she is about to say something that is not true, she looks down, stiffens, and starts talking fast. Most of the time, Vicki’s attempts to lie precipitate an immediate disaster, and this is no exception. David blows up at her and declares that he is going to go to his mother in the morning and tell her he wants to live with her from now on. It would be hard enough for Vicki to respond to this under any circumstances, but having just told David an obvious lie she can barely find words suitable for mumbling.

Downstairs, David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, comes home looking miserable. Carolyn tells her Uncle Roger that she has bad news for him. She means Guthrie’s death, which Roger says everyone in town already knows about. He expresses regret that he behaved so churlishly to Guthrie when Guthrie was only trying to help.

Roger proceeds into the drawing room and sees Burke. Roger and Burke are bitter enemies, and when Carolyn said that she had bad news she may well have been thinking of the fact that Burke was in the house. But Roger knows about that, too. He crossed paths with Joe, who brought him up to date. Roger and Burke agree to set their differences aside for the duration of the crisis.

Vicki comes down and tells Burke, Roger, and Carolyn about David’s decision. The four of them collaborate on a plan to keep David away from Laura. Burke will take David on a fishing trip in the morning. Once they are well away, Roger will go to the cottage on the estate where Laura is staying and throw her out.

Roger and Burke go together to David’s room and tell him that Burke wants to take him fishing. David says that he has to see his mother in the morning. Burke keeps pushing the idea, describing a fishing lodge at a lake in northern Maine that can be reached only by seaplane, where he might catch a record-setting muskie. David can’t resist that. Roger says he will tell Laura about David’s decision while he and Burke go away.

Roger and Burke do a good job of co-parenting David. There was some talk early in the Phoenix storyline about which of the two of them was David’s biological father; this scene shows that that was always the wrong question. If they were truer to themselves, Roger and Burke would forget their differences permanently, set up housekeeping together, and David would have two dads. Burke and the Collinses are rich enough and powerful enough to ignore convention, and people in town gossip about them constantly anyway, so why not.

Back in the drawing room, Roger and Burke are confident they have matters under control. Vicki isn’t listening to them. She looks at a contemporary newspaper clipping about the deaths of David and Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and notices something she had overlooked before. The fire took place “Exactly one hundred years ago!” The others dismiss this as a coincidence, but Vicki declares that the fire in which Laura will lure David to his death will happen within 24 hours.

Once you start telling stories about the supernatural, you cut yourself off from the usual laws that we see operating in our daily lives. You need some other system of cause and effect to maintain suspense. Dark Shadows settles on anniversaries as forces that can make things happen. Vicki had noticed hundred year intervals between the fiery deaths of women named Laura Murdoch, but this is the first time an anniversary is explicitly presented as the cause of an event.

Episode 186: An extraordinary ordinary life

Hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell is having a drink at the bar in Collinsport’s tavern, The Blue Whale. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin enters and annoys Joe by sitting next to him. Burke and Joe had some conflicts earlier in the series, and Joe had formed a decided dislike of Burke in those days. The conflicts are no longer generating any action, so Burke has been trying to befriend Joe. Joe isn’t having it.

Burke tells Joe that he hears he has been having some adventures. Joe says that he doesn’t know what Burke is talking about, and isn’t sure he cares. Burke says that he has heard that Joe and parapsychologist Dr Guthrie went to the old graveyard north of town, opened a couple of graves, and found them empty. This is true, and since the only people who knew about it were either sworn to secrecy or strangers to Burke Joe is mystified as to how he found out.

Burke tells him that well-meaning governess Vicki told him. “Vicki wouldn’t tell you that,” says Joe. Burke explains that she had to tell him, because she needed his help. Strange and troubled boy David Collins adores Burke, and Vicki is the leader of a group who are afraid that David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, is going to burn David alive.

Burke dated Laura years ago, and was still hung up on her when she came back to town. He’d been urging David to get closer to his mother and to go live with her. He several times made it clear that he hoped to marry Laura and become David’s stepfather. Vicki laid out the evidence that she, Dr Guthrie, and the rest of her group have assembled in support of their view about Laura’s unearthly nature and horrifying plans. Since he heard Vicki out, Burke has joined her side.

Joe is taking all this in when we hear a tinkling sound and a muffled voice. The bartender comes to him and says “Mr Haskell, there’s a call for you.” I believe this is only the third time we’ve heard the bartender speak, after #3 and #156.

We see Joe take the call. He is shocked by what he hears. He returns to his spot and tells Burke that Dr Guthrie is dead. His car ran off the road and burst into flames.

Joe mentions Vicki and David, and Burke is alarmed at the thought that Vicki and David might have been with Guthrie. Joe calms him, explaining that Guthrie was on his way to meet Vicki and David. They, along with drunken artist Sam Evans, are waiting for Guthrie at the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. They planned to hold a séance there to contact the ghost of Josette Collins, in hopes that Josette, who has been giving them hints and clues all along, will be able to tell them how to defeat Laura. Burke insists on going to the Old House with Joe.

Joe and Burke exchange all this information in normal conversational tones punctuated with shouts. We don’t see any other customers, but the bartender is right there, and while they are on the way out we even see him react to their mention of the séance.

Bob the bartender, wishing those two would keep their gobs shut

I’m sure they are relying on the bartender’s professional discretion. Still, they are catching on that Laura is extremely dangerous, participating in séances can wreck the reputation of people in the businesses Joe and Burke are in, and Joe and Guthrie’s grave-opening expedition was quite obviously something that could get them sent to jail. You’d think they would want to spare him the responsibility for so much sensitive information. It’s just inconsiderate to dump all that on a guy in return for the tips you give him for two beers.

At the Old House, Vicki, David, and Sam spend more than one scene waiting for Guthrie to show up. There is quite a bit of filler in this episode; when Sam says “I hate waiting like this!,” we can sympathize. Even after Joe and Burke show up with the news of Guthrie’s death, there is yet another scene of filler, in which Sam rants about Laura as the cause of Guthrie’s death and can’t decide whether he is willing to join Vicki and David in going through with the séance.

Of course they do go through with it. A ghost begins speaking through David, but it is not the spirit of Josette. It is David Radcliffe.

David Collins had not heard of David Radcliffe, but Vicki and others know that in 1867, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe burned herself alive with her young son David. A contemporary newspaper account reported that David Radcliffe happily joined his mother in the flames, refusing to be rescued. Vicki and her group believe that the current Laura Murdoch Collins is a reincarnation of that other Laura Murdoch, and that, as a humanoid Phoenix, she achieves a cyclical immortality by burning herself alive and rising from the ashes. They fear that Laura Murdoch Collins will take David Collins into the flames with her, and that he, like his namesake, will choose to burn to death.

They do not know whether David Radcliffe shared his mother’s immortality, or whether David Collins will rise again if he burns with his mother. The show has repeatedly identified ghosts as unquiet spirits of the dead, so David Radcliffe’s appearance as a ghost speaking through David Collins would by itself militate against the idea that Laura’s resurrections are shared by her sons. In his speech, David Radcliffe describes himself being held by his mother while the fire rages and wanting to be with her forever, but ends with an tortured cry as he asks where she has gone. In agony, David screams and collapses.

This scene is a remarkable tour de force for David Henesy, and completes the audience’s understanding of what Laura is and what danger she represents. Her son is a means to the end of her own immortality, not a partner in that immortality. That Laura Murdoch Collins gave her son the same name her previous incarnation gave to the son she killed for her own sake shows that it was her plan all along to make him a human sacrifice to her inhuman survival. If Vicki can rescue David from the fate Laura has in store for him, she will not only prolong his life, but give him an altogether new life and give him herself as the mother of that life.

So, there are two sources of suspense. First, what further obstacles will Vicki encounter on the way to rescuing David, and what will be lost as she makes her way through them? There might be further deaths- Guthrie might have been the most readily disposable character on the show at the end of last week, but there are several others without whom Dark Shadows could go on just fine. There could also be lots of changes in relationships among characters, or in the personalities of characters we like as they are.

That brings us to the second source of suspense. It is a question that has been on the minds of regular viewers since the Phoenix story began approaching its climax. What will the show be about once Laura is gone? The only consistently interesting relationship on Dark Shadows so far has been that between Vicki and David, and once Vicki has established herself as David’s de facto mother that is going to be defined pretty securely. There might be periodic threats to their friendship, but once Vicki has managed to replace David’s mother there won’t be much doubt that she can overcome any lesser disruptions.

Art Wallace’s original story bible for the series, Shadows on the Wall, called for Laura Robin Collins to die under mysterious circumstances and for Vicki to be put on trial for her murder. That does not sound promising. We’ve spent months of episodes, most of them dismally slow-paced, figuring out information about Laura. Most of the characters now know as much about her as we do. An entire narrative arc spent rehashing what they’ve already rehashed beyond endurance would be impossible for even the most devoted fans to watch.

Vicki is to some extent based on Jane Eyre, a governess who ends by marrying her charge’s father, Mr Rochester. David’s father is named Roger, which is as close as they could get to “Rochester” without making people miss Eddie Anderson. They brought up the idea of Vicki and Roger going on dates in #72, #78, and #96, but in each case Roger was merely trying to keep Vicki from making trouble for him, very possibly by killing her.

Further, the show has been hinting very heavily from the first day that Roger is Vicki’s uncle, the biological daughter of his sister Liz. Wallace McBride mentions the single most compelling piece of evidence:

In Dark Shadows, your reflection always tells the truth.

Duality was a series theme from the very first episode, which implemented a shocking amount of symbolism in its photography. As a daily series, it was never designed to withstand the scrutiny of re-runs, let alone the far-flung fantasy concept of “home video.” The series was as disposable as a newspaper, something to be enjoyed for a few minutes and then forgotten. The writers and directors of Dark Shadows did not get that memo, though, and set about creating afternoon entertainment that was more psychologically complex than it had any right to be.

The first episode established this dynamic immediately. Victoria Winters is riding on a train through the night, her reflection in the glass beside her. We discover that she’s a “foundling,” anonymously abandoned to the state as an infant. She’s traveling to Collinsport, Maine, to take a job — and to learn the truth about her own mysterious past.

In other words, she’s looking for the real Victoria Winters — represented throughout this episode by her own reflection. We see Victoria reflected back in the window of the train carriage, the mirror in the restaurant of the Collinsport Inn, and in a mirror (in a flashback!) at her bedroom at the foundling home.

Most telling is the reveal in the episode’s final scene. When she arrives at her destination, the doors of Collinwood open to show Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard standing in the entrance, looking very much like Victoria’s reflection. (For me, this is all the evidence I’ve ever needed that Liz was Victoria’s mother.)
“In Dark Shadows, Your Reflection Always Tells the Truth.” Wallace McBride, Collinsport Historical Society, 18 April 2020

Among soap opera characters, attempted murder is frequently a prelude to romance, and an engagement between two people who are, unknown to themselves, closely related can build suspense as we wonder whether a third person who does know the truth will tell before it is too late.

But as Roger’s character develops it becomes ever clearer that he is not interested in marrying anyone. He is a narcissist, a coward, and devoid of family feeling. Worst of all, he’s spent all of his money. If she marries him, Vicki will either join him as his sister Liz’ charity case or get a blue-collar job and support him in a style to which he has no conceivable intention of becoming accustomed. That might work on another show, but it doesn’t sound at all right for Dark Shadows.

There are some odds and ends lying around from previous storylines, but those didn’t take off the first time we saw them and aren’t likely to be any more exciting now. Why is Liz a recluse? They haven’t shown us anyplace she’d be interested in going. Will Burke be avenged on Roger? Not if it requires writing Roger off the show- he’s hilarious. Will Joe marry Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town and daughter of Sam? Why not, they’re happy together and no one is against it. Will a serious romance blossom between Vicki and instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank? That’s such an urgent question that no one has noticed Frank isn’t on the show anymore. There just isn’t an episode’s worth of story in any of those questions. You may as well ask whether any more of Burke’s custom-made fountain pens will show up in town, or what happened to the dartboard Roger used to have in his office, back when he had an office.

Once it finishes with Laura, Dark Shadows is going to need a reboot. Both Laura’s storyline and the one that immediately preceded her, that of crazed groundskeeper Matthew Morgan, led us into the supernatural back-world of the show’s universe. That’s clearly where Dark Shadows 2.0 will be heading, and probably in a way too dynamic for the wispy presences of Josette and the Widows to survive. There may also be an attempt to mine some of the leftover pieces from Shadows on the Wall, but it’s hard to see how anything in there will get you very far.