diana millay – Page 2 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 278: If you become Josette

The first major villain on Dark Shadows was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, played by Louis Edmonds. Edmonds was a master of the sarcastic remark, so that Roger was often funny. But no matter how often he made the audience laugh, Roger was never a comic villain. That requires a character we can empathize with as we watch them scheme and plot, scramble and improvise, in pursuit of goals that could not be achieved without ruining all the fun. We laugh when we recognize our own foibles in an outlandish character, and laugh again when we realize that our ability to feel with others encompasses even those whose feelings have led them to do dastardly deeds.

Roger’s personality was too cold, his motives too contemptible for us to empathize with him. Where a comic villain thinks fast and puts himself in ridiculous situations, Roger stuck with his fixed ideas, using the same tactics time and again to bully his unwilling co-conspirator Sam to stick with their plan. Even when he bumbled about with a damning piece of evidence, a fountain pen left at a crime scene, he was never the coyote caught in his own over-elaborate trap, but a criminal in a police procedural. He was a melodramatic villain who was only incidentally funny.

The first supernatural menace on the show was Roger’s ex-wife, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, played by Diana Millay. Millay was hilarious, every bit as funny as Louis Edmonds. It was a shame the two of them didn’t play a married couple in a long-running comedy. They could have raised sarcasm to heights previously unknown to humankind. But while Millay gets laughs every time the script gives her the least chance, Laura was even less of a comic villain than Roger.

It is clear that Laura is a malign presence from beyond the grave and that, if she is not stopped, she will burn her young son David to death. But everything else about her is an impenetrable mystery. She is not part of a familiar mythology, and even the most basic questions about her remain unanswered. We cannot empathize with her motives, since we cannot begin to guess what her motives are or even be sure if she has motives.

The first comic villain on Dark Shadows was seagoing con man Jason McGuire, played by Dennis Patrick. Jason had his first comic turns only after he had been on the show for weeks, during which time we had been subjected to many iterations of a dreary ritual in which he made a demand of reclusive matriarch Liz, Liz resisted, he threatened to expose her terrible secret, and she capitulated. When his henchman Willie slips out of Jason’s control and he starts scrambling to contain the damage Willie is doing to his plan, Patrick finally gets a chance to play Jason as a comic villain, and the result is very engaging. But those scenes are scattered too thinly through Jason’s long-running, relentlessly monotonous storyline to make him a success as a comic villain.

Now, the show has struck gold. Vampire Barnabas Collins is becoming a pop culture phenomenon and bringing the show the first good ratings it has ever had. They have to keep Barnabas on the show indefinitely, and he has to be the most important character. That presents a practical difficulty. Vampires usually figure in folklore and fiction as unstoppable killing machines. Daytime soap operas explore the shifting relationships among large casts of characters. It’s going to be hard to maintain that cast if Barnabas sets about murdering everyone. To square the circle, they try to redefine Barnabas as a comic villain.

Barnabas is giving a costume party for his distant cousins, the living members of the Collins family. He has invited well-meaning governess Vicki to attend and to wear the dress of the legendary Josette Collins. In the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, Vicki had developed a close friendship with Josette’s ghost, so she is excited about this. For his part, Barnabas has borrowed an evil scheme from the 1932 film The Mummy. He will erase Vicki’s personality and replace it with Josette’s, then kill her so that she will rise as a vampiric Josette. So he is glad she likes the dress.

Barnabas asks Vicki to come to his house and help him pick out the antique clothes that the family will wear at the party. She enthusiastically agrees, saying that she loves to go through trunks full of old clothes. The clothes are in a trunk in Josette’s old room, which Barnabas has restored.

In the room, we see the ghost of Barnabas’ 9 year old sister Sarah sitting on the trunk. She vanishes a second before Barnabas and Vicki enter. Both of them have a strong feeling that someone just left the room. Barnabas tries to dismiss the sensation as nervousness, but Vicki has had too much experience with ghosts to be put off so easily.

Vicki has been our point of view character for most of the series. At first, that was because she was a newcomer to the great estate of Collinwood and the nearby town of Collinsport, and so we would learn everything we needed to know as we listened to people explain things to her. Later, it was because she was the key protagonist in the stories, so that the action got going once she knew what was going on. So when Barnabas equals Vicki’s sensitivity to Sarah’s presence, he is presented to us as another possible point of view character.

Barnabas keeps talking about the Collinses’ eighteenth century ancestors in terms that make it obvious that he knew them, so that he more than once has to clean up after himself with remarks like “I would imagine.” He does alarm Vicki when he blurts out something about what will happen to her should she “become Josette.” He hastens to say that he means that Vicki will become her for the duration of the party.

Vicki goes back to the great house and talks with Liz about the party. Liz smiles happily, the first time we’ve seen this expression on her face in the whole run of the series.

Vicki goes on about Barnabas’ connection to the past, saying that he gives the impression of someone who really is misplaced in time. She has the feeling that he needs to recreate a bygone era, and that he is doomed to be unhappy because of the impossibility of traveling backward in time. Vicki does not know what Barnabas’ plans for her are, but she understands his motives perfectly and empathizes with him deeply. That Vicki, Barnabas’ intended victim, can feel this way suggests that we can, too.

Back in Barnabas’ house, Sarah reappears in Josette’s room and sees her blue dress. She is excited to find it. She looks at her reflection in the mirror and smiles. Her good cheer is emphasized when her musical cue, an excerpt from “London Bridge,” is for the first time played in a major key.

Sarah’s reflection looks like it has never seen a ghost before

The minor key was appropriate during Sarah’s previous appearances. The first several times we saw her, Sarah was associated with Barnabas’ imprisonment of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie was the victim of Barnabas’ first mad attempt at Josettery, and Sarah intervened just in time to keep Barnabas from killing her. The other day, Barnabas killed Jason, and we saw Sarah when Barnabas was forcing Willie to help him hide his old friend’s corpse. Barnabas isn’t killing anyone today, so Sarah can be a bit more cheerful.

Sarah helps to establish Barnabas as a comic villain. As the ghostly sister who returned to the upper world when Barnabas was loosed to prey upon the living, Sarah and he are part of the same eruption from Dark Shadows‘ supernatural back-world into its main continuity. Perhaps she personifies his conscience, certainly she gives him an occasion to make schmaltzy speeches about his days as a human. More important than either of these, when we see that Barnabas’ 9 year old sister is his most powerful adversary, we begin to wonder just how seriously we should take him.

Closing Miscellany

Yesterday and today, Alexandra Moltke Isles delivered the recorded voiceover monologue at the beginning of the episode. The first 270 times she did this, it was in character as Vicki. Now, they’ve given up the idea that Vicki or any other one character will eventually find out about everything that we see on screen, so the openings are delivered by whatever actress is available as a nameless external narrator.

In those first 270 outings, Mrs Isles sounded like Vicki. She adopted Vicki’s distinctive way of speaking, carefully articulating one word at a time and often ending sentences with surprising little inflections- a curl of uncertainty here, a touch of breathy optimism there, a falling note of despair in another place. The voiceovers were usually remarks about the weather or the sea that were supposed to involve some vague metaphor for events in the story, so that it is open to question whether it was really worth Mrs Isles’ time to put so much effort into creating a character with them. But I guess a pro is a pro, and it was a matter of course that she would do her best no matter how little she had to work with.

In these last two, she has used a relatively flat voice, with none of Vicki’s particular vocal traits. The pacing has been structured, not around sentences, but around an attempt to convey an overall sense of urgency. They sound very much like The Narrator. I wonder what Mrs Isles would have made of The Narrator if the voiceover passages had extended beyond the opening moments and run through the episodes.

There is a famous production error under the closing credits, when a stagehand shows up in the window, realizes he’s on camera, and makes himself all the more conspicuous when he tries to escape from his predicament.

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 185: Soon we may know all there is to know

Strange and troubled boy David Collins finds visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie writhing in agony on the floor of the drawing room. David calls for well-meaning governess Vicki.

As Guthrie struggles, the image of David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, is superimposed on the screen. This visual effect lies somewhat beyond Dark Shadows’ ability to achieve clearly. One of the hallmarks of the show is its ambition; time and again, their reach exceeds their grasp. But that adds to the excitement of it- there is always the chance that the next time they try something extraordinary, it will actually work.

Look at this pile of shapes long enough, and you’ll make out an extreme closeup of Laura over an image of the struggling Guthrie

Guthrie clutches at David. David is a true New Englander in his reaction to Guthrie’s touch. When a man hugs him, he recoils and gives a horrified look.

As Guthrie holds onto David, we see Laura looking confused. Apparently her spells don’t work against someone in contact with David. As he regains his strength, Guthrie thanks David for saving him and tells him that he is “the key.”

Guthrie is getting some people together to have a séance in the Old House on the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood. The ghost of Josette Collins has been trying to warn people about the danger Laura poses to David. Josette spends most of her time haunting the Old House, so he thinks she should be able to speak most clearly there.

After David rescues him, Guthrie knows that Laura is trying to use her powers to silence him and that he will be helpless if he is alone. He gets into his car to drive by himself into town and back. Vicki knows that Laura is nearby and has been thwarted because David was out of her control. She leaves David alone just inside the front door while she wanders off for several minutes. Malcolm Marmorstein wrote today’s script, so those are only the most glaring of several inexplicable acts of stupidity in it.

While David is standing in the entryway waiting for Vicki, Laura sweeps in and asks him to come away with her at once. He tells her that he can’t go tonight- Vicki is going to take him someplace special. When Vicki finally drifts back in, she stands her ground. She tells Laura that “Soon, we may know everything there is to know.” She is wearing a very sweet smile when she says this, but Laura’s reaction and the background music both make it obvious that it is a threat.

After Vicki and David leave, wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson comes out and tells Laura that “his nibs”* Guthrie can’t hide everything from her with his whispers. She saw the table and four chairs they took to the Old House, and it’s her guess that they are going there to have another séance. She also tells Laura that Guthrie is by himself on the road into town at the moment. Laura seems very interested, as if this is information for which she will find a use.

Vicki and David enter the Old House. Vicki sets up the table for the séance and tells David that they will be trying to reach Josette. He is jubilant at the prospect.

Drunken artist Sam Evans shows up for the séance. He and David have a pleasant conversation about the portrait of Josette hanging above the mantle. Sam is impressed by its artistic achievement, and amazed at its fine condition amid the decay of the long-vacant mansion. Indeed, the fact that the canvas is unstained by mold after decades in an unheated building is some of the most blatant evidence that more is going on in the Old House than meets the eye.

On the road, Guthrie starts talking to himself, complaining about the other drivers using their high-beams. Eventually it dawns on him that Laura is causing him to see a blinding light. This realization takes a frustratingly long time. It does make sense if you stop and review what we have seen so far. Laura’s spells disorient and confuse the people subjected to them, so we can figure out that Guthrie might still have some brain fog as the result of his experience at the beginning of the episode. But as this scene is written, it feels like Guthrie is just an idiot who doesn’t know that he should pull over when he can’t see the road.

The car crashes. We see Laura in her cottage, a satisfied look on her face. In the flames of her hearth, we see Guthrie’s car blazing. We’ve just seen the first on-screen murder in Dark Shadows.

I’ll miss Guthrie, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that he is killed at this point in the show. His role was to figure out what the audience knows about Laura, to present this information to Vicki and her friends, and to isolate Laura from any potential allies. He has completed all of these tasks. That leaves only three paths forward for him.

The first is what actually happens, for Laura to kill him. That gets him off the show, precipitates a crisis that gives the “Phoenix” storyline its climax, and establishes Laura beyond all doubt as a deadly threat who must herself be destroyed in order for the other characters to be safe.

The second path would be for Guthrie to defeat Laura. Within the series as it has been developed so far, that would be unsatisfying. Laura has deep relationships with all of the main characters who were on the show before Guthrie joined the cast in #160, and she has been driving the story for months. If Guthrie is the one to stop Laura, we’ll be left wondering why we bothered with the first 32 weeks.

In particular, the only relationship on the show that has been interesting every time the characters are on screen together is that between Vicki and David. At first David hated Vicki, then they became fast friends, now we are afraid Laura will turn him against her. The logical way to crown that storyline would be for Vicki to rescue David from a danger that has been looming over him all his life. So the Laura story really ought to end with Vicki saving David from Laura.

That resolution comes with its drawbacks. It is so logical an outcome that we’re all expecting it. So it won’t come as a surprise, and we don’t know whether the show is up to developing a convincing, dramatically powerful sense of inevitability.

An even more serious problem is that once Vicki has rescued David from Laura, there won’t be anywhere for the show to go. The other stories have all either been resolved or been lying around doing nothing for so long that there is no reason to think they will ever become interesting. If Guthrie, rather than Vicki, rescues David, that might represent a new start. Dark Shadows would relaunch as the occult files of Dr Guthrie. If they had gone that way, it’s hard to see what use a show like that would have for the existing characters and setting.

The third path was suggested yesterday. Guthrie tipped his hand to Laura, telling her virtually everything he knew. He explained that he was doing this because he wanted to study her. He wants to stick around as the friend and associate of a domesticated Laura.

Laura laughed at Guthrie’s idea. She has her plan, and she is uninterested in any alternative Guthrie might present. Further, she is the wrong sort of character to keep on Dark Shadows indefinitely. When she was first introduced, Laura was thoroughly mysterious, vague, and insubstantial. She was the perfect adversary for Josette, the Widows, and the other wispy presences that make up the supernatural back-world behind the action that we see.

In recent weeks Laura has become more dynamic and has forced Josette more and more into the foreground. If she were to have a friend with whom she could discuss her problems and plans openly, Laura would be so strong that her mere presence would rip the crêpe-paper world of Josette, the Widows, and the rest of them into tiny shreds. If they are going to scrap that side of the show’s universe, they would probably be better off doing it with a fresh character who hasn’t already been defined in relation to everyone else, and certainly better off if the character came with a more familiar mythology than they have given Laura.

Besides, if they keep Laura on the show they’ll face complications with the actress. Diana Millay is getting more and more visibly pregnant, a big problem for a character who is supposed to be something other than alive. And after her son was born, she scaled back her acting career. After Dark Shadows, she appeared briefly on The Secret Storm, then retired altogether to concentrate on writing. So even if they had wanted to keep Laura on the show, Millay might not have wanted to commit to an indefinite run on a daily production.

So, death it is for Dr Guthrie. It’s too bad they didn’t bring actor John Lasell later in some other role. He had a tremendous range- an actor who could play both the understated, virtuous, and thoroughly Yankee scientist Dr Guthrie and the flamboyant, sinister, and very Southern John Wilkes Booth of the Twilight Zone episode “Back There” could be effective in any part.

John Lasell as John Wilkes Booth in “Back There.” Image by imdb.

*The first time we hear this expression on Dark Shadows.

Episode 178: Bake me a cake

We open in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie is trying to talk hardworking young fisherman Joe into helping him open a grave. Joe’s ex-girlfriend, flighty heiress Carolyn, is alarmed by the idea, but is on Guthrie’s side. Guthrie recaps the current storyline until he bores Joe into submission. Joe goes off to get his tools.

Guthrie, Carolyn, and Joe make their plans

As Joe, Joel Crothers does manage to hold the audience’s attention. While the other actors are starting to seem bored with the endless repetitions, his shocked interjections make him seem like someone learning these bizarre facts for the first time. With so much time spent selling old rope, it is genuinely surprising to find oneself taking an interest in anything about the dialogue.

We cut to stock footage of the Moon behind clouds, then see blonde fire witch Laura staring out the window of the cottage on the estate. This is the first time we see that footage coupled with the sight of a supernatural villain staring out a window, but it won’t be the last.

Laura’s estranged husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger drops in on her. They recap the same material Guthrie has been going over.

When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius became frustrated. Laura tells Roger that Guthrie is not simply a psychologist- he is a parapsychologist. Roger is appalled by this news. Mrs Acilius was appalled that Roger, who has always been presented as a reasonably intelligent person, is suddenly so dumb that he hadn’t figured it out yet. After all, Roger and Laura had both participated in a séance Guthrie had organized- wasn’t that enough of a clue for him?

My interpretation is that Roger isn’t being dumb. He has said time and again that he regards Guthrie as a quack. I think that up to this point, he has assumed that Guthrie was just making stuff up as he went along. When Laura tells him that Guthrie is a researcher specializing in psychic phenomena, he is stunned to realize Guthrie isn’t improvising- he is a committed to a systematic plan of quackery. The missus seemed to find that interpretation intriguing.

Roger is stunned deeply enough, in fact, that his resistance to the idea that there might be something seriously weird about Laura starts to break down. Roger runs through all the unexplainable occurrences that have taken place since Laura has come back to town, and insists she tell him anything she might be holding back. Roger usually responds to information that inconveniences him by declaring that he will erase it from his memory as soon as possible, but it seems that he can no longer seal off the warning signs about Laura.

As Roger talks to Laura, she realizes that he might be about to become a lot less manageable. Her look changes from irritation to worry to a brief, beautiful moment when she is clearly thinking of casting a spell on him. I missed that bit when we were watching the episode, and Mrs Acilius had to point it out to me. I must have been looking away- as Diana Millay plays the scene, the flickering thought is easily legible on her face.

Roger goes to the great house and acts like he owns the place. Carolyn and Guthrie play along with him. He orders Guthrie out. Guthrie goes quietly; it’s time for him to meet up with Joe anyway. Carolyn pleads with him to give Guthrie a chance. After yet more recapping, he breaks down and admits that it is possible that something supernatural might be going on.

We see Guthrie and Joe at the door of the building in which the crypt they want to open is located. They try vainly to open the door. They knock and get no answer. They are about to give up when the doorknob starts to turn. The door opens, and they peer inside with startled looks. This is a reprise of the ending of #153, when well-meaning governess Vicki and her boyfriend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, came to the same door with the same result. Vicki and Frank had been led to the building by the ghost of Josette Collins, and did not know what they were to do there. Guthrie and Joe have decided to go there because Guthrie’s analysis has led him to the conclusion that they have to open the tomb of L. Murdoch Stockbridge. That difference in context doesn’t make today’s conclusion any more exciting than that one was, but at least it marks a certain measure of progress in the development of the plot.

Episode 173: Don’t work me

We open in the cottage on the great estate of Collinwood. Blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins is pleading with dashing action hero Burke Devlin to help her. Laura and her husband, high-born ne’er do-well Roger Collins, are divorcing. Laura wants to leave with their son, strange and troubled boy David. Since Roger is all for this plan, Burke is unsure why she needs his help. Laura’s lines aren’t much, but Diana Millay delivers them in such a perfectly sardonic tone that we laughed out loud. And not only us- here’s Mitch Ryan breaking character to laugh on screen a second before the opening title

David finds his governess, the well-meaning Vicki, arranging flowers in the drawing room of the great house on the estate. David is furious with Vicki and everyone else. Wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson has told him that there was a séance at the house last night, and that his buddy, the ghost of Josette Collins, spoke through Vicki. David feels that Josette belongs to him, and is outraged that he wasn’t invited to the séance. Vicki is shocked that Mrs Johnson told David about the séance.

David asks Vicki why the séance should be kept secret from him. She tells him that it isn’t a secret, it is just something he ought not to know about. This distinction doesn’t make any more sense to David than it would to anyone else. It seems that Vicki is being sincere, but she has a complicated thought to express and has not had time to work out a way to express it clearly. Seeing David’s frustration, Vicki tells him that she can’t explain the matter any further. Vicki reaches out to caress him, and he pulls away, asserting that they can’t make up. He announces that he is going outside to play. Entirely unruffled, Vicki asks to go with him. He refuses and stalks out of the house.

Through the first months of the show, David hated Vicki and she struggled to befriend him. This scene is a well-realized glimpse into the friendship that has developed since then. Even when David is very angry with Vicki and doesn’t think she is being fair or honest with him, he knows that she will be patient and affectionate. When he says they can’t make up now, we know that they’ve made up before and hope to see them make up again.

Laura and Burke are still talking in the cottage. Burke very much wants to be with Laura, and agrees to help her persuade David to leave Collinwood and live with her. They talk about the mysterious illness that has overtaken reclusive matriarch Liz and led to her hospitalization. Burke is startled when Laura says “That was hard enough to arrange.” Seeing his expression, she hastens to explain that all she meant was that she had a hard time persuading the family to send Liz to a hospital where she could be cared for properly. Burke doesn’t seem to be quite convinced.

Following Laura’s suggestion, Burke finds David at the old fishing shack, a location that has never before been seen or mentioned. He tells David he would like to take him fishing, and encourages him to go live with Laura. David is excited about the proposed fishing trip, but confides in Burke that he still has mixed feelings about his mother. When she first came to Collinwood after several years when she was far away, David had been afraid of Laura. He likes her now, but the fear still complicates his feelings towards her. As David Collins, David Henesy does a superb job depicting these conflicting emotions.

Vicki shows up. She scolds David for going so far from the house without telling her where he would be. When Burke and David bring up the idea of a fishing trip, Vicki says it’s still winter and they should wait until it’s warmer. David had predicted Vicki would say no, and turns to Burke when he is proven right.

Over Vicki’s objections, David leaves for his mother’s cottage. Vicki stays with Burke, who asks her what she has against Laura. He tries to talk her out of her misgivings, but when Vicki carefully lays out the inexplicable events that have surrounded Laura’s return, he falls silent.

Burke and Vicki start their conversation

Burke has heard all of these facts before, but Vicki’s quiet candor connects with him. She looks up at him very steadily, keeping both eyes on him the whole time. Closeups concentrating on Vicki’s eyes do tend to make Alexandra Moltke Isles’ strabismus noticeable, but the extraordinary stillness of her body turns that to advantage. It’s as if she is concentrating so hard on telling the straight story that she can’t keep her eyes in place. She speaks in a quiet, level voice, and uses the simplest available words. Of all the attempts characters in today’s episode make to persuade each other of things, only this resolutely plain one has the desired effect.

In the cottage, Laura and David sit by the fire. He asks her what happened at the séance. She denies that anything at all happened, except that Vicki got upset. She tells David that Vicki is a high-strung and nervous person whom he ought not to trust. David’s two scenes with Vicki today are enough to show even a first-time viewer that he is unlikely to accept this description of her. He doesn’t protest, though. He seems anguished when Laura tells him that Vicki and her friend Dr Guthrie may lie to him even about her.

Burke comes in. He tells David it’s getting dark, and David grumbles that he’ll have to get back to the great house to stay out of trouble. Burke confronts Laura about the strange goings-on Vicki has enumerated. Laura points out that for Vicki’s suspicions of her to have any substance, she would have to be a superhuman being. She invites Burke to touch her. She asks him if she seems to be anything other than a woman pleading for help, if she seems to be any different than she was when he loved her before. He turns away. With a bleak look on his face, he says “Don’t work me, Laura.”

Episode 163: Poor relation

At the end of last week, reclusive matriarch Liz left the estate of Collinwood for an extended stay in a hospital. It would seem that she took all of Dark Shadows‘ plot points with her. This is the third episode in a row in which we see nothing but characters reprising conversations that didn’t advance the story the first time we heard them. Writers Ron Sproat and Malcolm Marmorstein have been in charge of the scripting for twelve weeks, and they are clearly in big trouble.

This one has a bizarrely dumb opening. Yesterday, strange and troubled boy David took Dr Peter Guthrie, visiting parapsychologist, to the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood. Dr Guthrie told David that he would leave him alone in the parlor for a few minutes to try to summon the ghost of Josette Collins. David stared at the portrait of Josette over the mantelpiece until it transformed. It became a painting of David and his mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, in flames.

Today’s episode picks up at that point. Dr Guthrie finds David standing on what returning viewers will recognize as the exact spot where he had left him two or three minutes before. Even someone who had never seen Dark Shadows before will look at the set and see that David occupies what must be the most conspicuous location in the entire house, between the foot of the staircase, the fireplace, and the front door. Inexplicably, Guthrie comes downstairs calling “David! Da-a-a-vid!” and announces “I was looking for you!” In a later scene, David will tell Laura that Dr Guthrie is nice but not very smart. After this senseless exchange, that line draws a laugh from the audience.

A conversation between Laura and her estranged husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins includes a couple of interesting remarks. Roger wonders whether Laura will succeed in what they both want and persuade their son to leave with her after their divorce becomes final. Laura’s assurance that she can win David over after a single night alone with him (“That’s all I need, Roger–one night…one night alone with him and you’ll never be troubled by him again…because he’ll belong to me…completely”) is delivered in the same jarringly sensual tone she had used talking to David in #159. Considering that David has already tried to kill his father, the suggestion that the danger Laura presents to David is something to do with Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex is not far to find.

Roger says that when they lived together, Laura’s receptiveness to other men’s attention made him jealous. She contradicts him, saying that the only reason he ever wanted her was that his nemesis, dashing action hero Burke, wanted her. We’ve seen time and again that neither Roger nor Burke is ever as excited about anyone else as they are about each other, and we’ve been invited to wonder what exactly went on between them before they became enemies.

When David comes to Laura’s cottage, the two of them talk about the idea that he might leave Collinwood and live with her. He brings up a point he hasn’t in their previous discussions of this matter, saying that well-meaning governess Vicki will lose her job if he does that. When Laura says that Vicki can get another job, and will probably get married and have children of her own soon, David insists that Vicki loves him more than she does anyone else. This is a touching moment for regular viewers, who saw David move from hatred of Vicki to friendship for her in the one narrative arc of the first several months of Dark Shadows that worked every time we saw it. The Laura story, whatever else it may be, is the grand finale of that theme, and therefore the logical conclusion of the show as we have known it so far.

Mrs Acilius and I agree that the best part of the episode comes in the four seconds after Laura hears someone knocking on her door. As we’ve seen several times, she is sitting motionless, staring into the fire, and only after the second knock does she stir. This time Diana Millay does a particularly good job of looking robotic while Laura tears herself away from the flames.

It registers on Laura that someone is knocking on the door

The best thing about the last two weeks has been the addition to the cast of John Lasell as Dr Guthrie. As of this writing,* it would appear that Mr Lasell is still alive; I’ve found addresses for John Whitin Lasell, Jr, aged 95 years, in both Los Angeles and Orange, New Jersey. Oddly enough, there’s also a Post Office Box in his name in Franklin, Maine. Franklin is about 40 miles from Bangor, down towards the coast where Collinsport would have been.

IMDb says that Mr Lasell was born 6 November 1928 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Wikipedia agrees about the date, but says that he was born in Williamstown, Vermont. The 1940 US Census records the 11 year old John W. Lasell, Jr, as a resident of Northbridge, Massachusetts and gives his birthplace as Massachusetts. There is a memorial to John W. Lasell, Sr, in Northbridge, commemorating his heroic death in the Second World War. So I think we can be confident that John Junior was a Bay Stater by birth. I’m inclined to think Wikipedia’s claim that he was born in Vermont is the result of confusion with dairy farmer John Elliot Lasell. John E. Lasell actually did live in Williamstown, Vermont, and does not appear to have been any relation to the actor. Also, Mrs. John W. Lasell, Sr, the former Frances Sumner, lived into her 97th year, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that her son is still around in his mid-90s.

*3 February 2023

Episode 139: Are you going to Madagascar?

High-born ne’er do-well Roger Collins walks in on his estranged wife, the mysterious and long-absent Laura, fending off an attempt by his arch-nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, to plant a kiss on her. Roger is equipped with a bolt action rifle.

Great emphasis is placed on the rifle. The most prominent set in all of Dark Shadows is the drawing room in the great house of Collinwood, and it was altered yesterday to put a gun rack on its wall. This will startle regular viewers who remember that in episode #118 reclusive matriarch Liz had to go to the back part of the house to dig up Roger’s almost-forgotten guns. Now, those guns are on display in the family’s main dwelling place and holiest shrine.

It is 1967 and everyone associated with the creative side of the show is connected with the NYC theater world, so there is approximately a 100% chance that we are intended to read these scenes in Freudian terms. The gun is a phallic symbol, but a corrupted, sickened one- it promises, not pleasure and the creation of new life, but pain and killing. In the context of Roger and Laura’s dead marriage, it demonstrates that Roger’s sexual frustration has warped him and led him to violence.

Roger declares that Burke is trespassing on his property and bothering his wife, and declares that no court in the world would convict him of anything were he to shoot Burke to death. He also says that killing Burke would give him great pleasure. Burke asks him why he doesn’t do it, and Laura wearily complains that she had enough of these sort of encounters between them ten years ago.

Laura’s remark comes as a jolt. Ten years ago, Roger and Laura were not a long-separated couple in the process of divorcing- they were not yet a couple at all. As far as the world was concerned, she and Burke were involved with each other, and Roger was a friend who sometimes tagged along on their dates. That was the situation until a fatal hit-and-run accident involving Burke’s car. This is the first time the three of them have been alone together since that night. After the accident, Laura and Roger testified against Burke. He went to prison and they married each other. When Laura says that the way Roger and Burke are carrying on now is the way they interacted ten years ago, she is saying that even when she was ostensibly Burke’s girlfriend the two men were more excited about each other than either was about her. Perhaps Laura was the one who tagged along on Roger and Burke’s dates.

Burke grabs the gun. He and Roger struggle for it. It fires into the ceiling, and Burke tears it from Roger’s hands, flinging it to the floor. Burke picks it up. Roger rants and raves, vowing to kill Burke. Yet he does not make any protest when Burke walks off with the rifle, even though the rifle is a valuable piece of property and a central feature of Collinwood’s decor. Roger can attempt to express his masculinity only in conjunction with Burke. When Burke removes the phallic symbol and silently leaves, Roger is struck mute.

After Burke leaves, Roger and Laura continue to develop the themes of powerlessness and sterility. Having none of the influence over her an ongoing sexual relationship might give him, he complains of her disloyalty to him and of his humiliation in the eyes of those who might see her socializing with Burke. He tries to assert power over her with threats of legal consequences if she goes along with Burke’s plan to reopen the hit-and-run case. Laura agrees that she cannot help Burke without losing the one thing she wants to gain, custody of their son, strange and troubled boy David. Roger completes the image of his own emasculation with a parting remark that he will be happy to see Laura leave with their son “if David is my son.”

There is something of a fault with the production. Neither Laura nor Roger is in a position to bring new life into the world, and we are in doubt as to whether Laura is, strictly speaking, alive at all. Yet as Laura, Diana Millay is quite visibly pregnant, and she will only get “pregnanter and pregnanter” as the story goes on. Her style of acting, her personality, and her looks are so perfect for the part that it is impossible to imagine anyone else playing it, but it was very confusing to present her as an avatar of death and the unreal past when she is such a strong visual symbol of life and the growing future.

After Roger flounces out of Laura’s cottage, she goes to the window and calls to David. We see David asleep in his room in the great house. He is writhing on his bed, hearing his mother’s voice and having a nightmare. Well-meaning governess Vicki wakes David, telling him that it is 10:30 AM.* David tells her that he had the same nightmare he did the night before, in which his mother beckoned him into a firestorm. Vicki tries to assuage his fears, purring lovingly at him, but he is still deeply disturbed.

Roger enters and tells David to come along and see his mother. David flies into a tantrum, insisting that he will not see her and that no one can make him. When Roger threatens to beat him, David clings to Vicki and pleads with her to stop his father from hitting him. Vicki calmly states that “No one is going to hit you,” underlining Roger’s lack of authority in his relationships with both David and the hired help. David runs off.

Vicki sits on David’s bed and tells Roger that she has a theory about David’s behavior. She believes that he really wants to see his mother and that her love is tremendously important to him, but that he has worked himself into his current state because he is afraid she will reject him. This theory has a very substantial basis in fact. When Laura first came to the house in #134, David was extremely eager to meet her, until he suddenly asked Vicki “What if I do or say something to make her hate me?” From that moment on, he has become more and more reluctant to see Laura. Vicki tells Roger that she will work to arrange a meeting between mother and son in a situation where he will not feel pressured to perform in any particular way.

Vicki shows up at the cottage carrying a tray of tea things. Laura is impressed with the breakfast. Vicki shares her idea of arranging an apparently chance meeting during the walk she and David take around the grounds every afternoon beginning at 4:30.** Laura does not eat or drink anything during her breakfast with Vicki, but she does ask a series of questions about David. Vicki enthusiastically tells her every nice thing about him she can think of, leaving out such awkward incidents as his attempts to murder Roger and Vicki herself.

Laura chooses the top of Widow’s Hill for their “chance” meeting. This is rather an odd place considering that it is likely to be getting dark by 4:30 PM in early January in central Maine, and Widow’s Hill is a place from which people famously fall to their deaths. But, Laura is the boy’s mother. Besides, the other option was the greenhouse, and they don’t have a set for a greenhouse, so Vicki goes along with it.***

At the top of the hill, David asks Vicki why she wanted to go there, and starts talking about how dangerous it is. He noodles around at the edge of the cliff, alarming her, but he says he knows the ground so well it isn’t dangerous for him. After a minute, David says it’s boring there and he wants to leave. Vicki scrambles for a reason to stay, and finds a ship on the horizon. That catches David’s attention. He watches it, wanders ever closer to the precipice, and talks about sailing around the world.

That’s when Laura shows up. In episode 2, Roger introduced himself to Vicki by startling her while she stood on the edge of the cliff, nearly prompting her to fall to her death. In #75, Vicki returned the compliment. Now, Laura simply starts talking while David is on the precipice. Shocked to hear her voice, he jumps back.

Laura goes on about how David was always interested in exotic places when he was a little boy. He looks petrified, but does agree that he remembers those conversations. She reaches out and calls him to come to her. He recoils, slips, and ends up clutching the side of the precipice. That’s what’s known as a “cliffhanger ending.”

*In many markets, ABC affiliates ignored the network’s recommendation that Dark Shadows be broadcast at 4:00 PM and showed it at 10:30 AM. Hearing Vicki mention this hour makes me wonder if we are supposed to think of the action of a soap opera taking place, not only on the date of the original broadcast, but at the time.

**4:30 was the time when Dark Shadows ended in markets where the ABC affiliate went along with the network’s recommended schedule. Mustn’t have people outdoors between 4 and 4:30!

***Mrs Acilius pointed out this consideration when we were watching the episode.

Episode 138: You should know about the Grim Reaper

The authorities in Phoenix, Arizona have asked the sheriff in Collinsport, Maine to inform high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins that they have identified the charred body of a woman as that of Roger’s wife, mysterious and long-absent Laura. The body was found in what was left of Laura’s apartment in Phoenix after a fire destroyed the building, and the woman was Laura’s age, height, and build. Since Laura was the only person associated with the building whose whereabouts were unknown, the identification of the remains as hers seemed secure to the Arizona authorities.

It seems less so in Collinsport, as Laura is no longer absent. She’s been back in town for days. She has been staying at the Collinsport Inn, where she met several old acquaintances. They recognized each other and engaged in conversation. She has come to the great house of Collinwood, where she talked with Roger and other members of the family, and will be staying in the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the estate. Only her son, strange and troubled boy David, has expressed any doubt as to her identity, and no one takes that doubt literally.

If the sheriff knew that he was living in a soap opera, he might suspect that the woman who has come to town is a previously unknown evil twin posing as Laura. If he knew that his particular soap is loaded with supernatural storylines, he might try to figure out what sort of uncanny being she could be. But he seems to be under the impression that he lives in the world. When at one point Roger tells him to “Stop being melodramatic,” it doesn’t occur to him that he has no choice but to be melodramatic. So, all he can do is ask Laura if she knows who the dead woman might have been. When tells him she doesn’t, he leaves.

Roger is eager to divorce Laura and send her away with their son, David. After the sheriff goes, Roger expresses his consternation at the news of the fire. Laura has nowhere to take David. When she tells him that she never planned to take David to that apartment, but that she had “made a commitment to another place,” he is instantly relieved. He does not ask where that other place is. His interest in where Laura or David will be or what they will be doing is exhausted the moment he learns they will be far away from him.

Someone else is visiting Collinwood tonight who wants more from Laura than Roger does. That is Roger’s nemesis and Laura’s ex-boyfriend, dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Flighty heiress Carolyn has gone to get Laura’s bag from the Collinsport Inn and bring it to her aunt. While in town, she met Burke. When she told him of her errand, Burke volunteered to help her carry the bag. Now she and Burke are in the drawing room at Collinwood. They kiss, and he persuades her to let him carry the bag to the cottage. When Carolyn says that she is jealous of his interest in her aunt, he assures her it’s “all business.” She tells him he can’t fool her, to which he replies “Yes I can.”

Burke kisses Carolyn. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

As Carolyn, Nancy Barrett plays, first, excitement as Burke moves in to kiss her; then, a mixture of frustration and confusion, as she begins to suspect that he is only using her to get to Laura. Regular viewers have seen Burke several times after a flirtatious scene with Carolyn, and each time he has switched immediately into hard-driving businessman mode the moment she wasn’t looking. With her performance in this scene, we start to wonder if she is about to catch on that he doesn’t have any feelings for her.

Roger finds Burke and Carolyn in the drawing room. He is furious with Burke for coming to the house, and with Carolyn for inviting him in. He and Burke rage at each other. As Roger, Louis Edmonds does a superb job of simultaneously conveying white-hot rage at Burke and a much colder anger towards his niece. Up to now, Carolyn has responded to her uncle’s prohibitions against seeing Burke flippantly, but this time she seems to accept that she has gone too far. After Burke leaves, she kisses Roger on the cheek and whispers “Goodnight, uncle,” sounding genuinely chastened. Roger is usually a difficult man to take seriously, but Edmonds’ tremendous performance in this scene leaves her with no choice but to give a hushed reaction.

Placing this scene after Roger’s blasé reaction to his wife and Burke’s cynical toying with Carolyn makes the point that Roger and Burke are more excited about each other than either ever is about anyone else. The show embeds their emotions in the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” storyline. Burke is trying to send Roger to prison, and is scheming to enlist Laura in his efforts. Ten years ago, Burke was imprisoned because Roger and Laura testified that he was driving his car, with them as passengers, when he ran down a pedestrian and left him to die. Before the accident, Burke and Laura had been a couple; the day Burke was sentenced, Laura and Roger were married. Now Burke hopes Laura will say that she perjured herself, and that Roger was driving.

Burke’s plans never quite make logical sense. Were Laura to confess to perjury, she would be in as much legal trouble as Roger. Even if she struck a bargain to keep herself out of prison, she would certainly not advance her goal of taking David by alienating Roger and branding herself a criminal. It is difficult to see what incentive Burke imagines that she has to join him.

At the cottage, Laura is sitting by the fire, staring off into space. When Burke knocks on her door, she continues staring. In Laura’s scenes by fireplaces, the spooky music, the slowly panning camera, and Diana Millay’s rigid posture all combine to create the impression that what we see when we look at Laura is only a fragment of a human being.

Laura stares off into space. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Once Laura lets Burke in, he talks her into closing the door, pushes himself close to her, and insists on telling her about the demands he will be making on her. He wants her to testify against Roger, to restore the years he spent behind bars, and to love him. When she tells him that the things he wants are not in her power to give, he refuses to take no for an answer. Over her objections, he takes her in his arms and forces a kiss on her. As Burke kisses Laura, the door opens and Roger appears with a gun.

Burke kisses Laura. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Burke’s demand that the past be undone and his attempt to force Laura to feel love for him show the unreality of his ambitions. He claims to represent “Honesty and the Truth,” but everything he clamors for is an empty fantasy. So much so that we wonder if what he really wants might be something quite different from what he keeps saying he wants.

Episode 123: A nice dungeon

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 mystery woman in her stylish hat. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

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:

Old friends meet in new places. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

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.

Episode 731: Mrs. Burns

In which I say that a cult practicing human sacrifice would have to be pretty small to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities.

Episode 731: Mrs. Burns