dr peter guthrie – Acilius on Dark Shadows

Episode 487: No homicidal tendencies

For its first 38 weeks, Dark Shadows was the story of well-meaning governess Vicki and her attempt to make her way through life on the great estate of Collinwood. One by one, Vicki’s problems were either solved or forgotten. From week 43 on, the show has focused on vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas has refused to involve Vicki in his life, leaving her confined to B plots at best.

The current B plot is about Vicki’s relationship with a man named Peter, who keeps trying her patience and ours by pretending to be named Jeff. Peter/ Jeff’s shouting voice, which he uses by default, makes him sound like he is suffering from severe gastrointestinal distress. He has a habit of manhandling people around him, causing them obvious discomfort. These bad habits, and several others, are less the product of the writing or direction than they are symptoms of the casting of Roger Davis as Peter/ Jeff. Alexandra Moltke Isles, like all the other actresses, is so ill at ease when she is in proximity to Mr Davis that it is impossible to believe that Vicki is in love with Peter/ Jeff.

Peter/ Jeff had been connected to the A plot through his boss, mad scientist Eric Lang. Peter/ Jeff has total amnesia. Lang released him from a mental hospital and told him that he was suspected of strangling two women by the waterfront in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He used Peter/ Jeff as his assistant in an experiment that is supposed to free Barnabas from vampirism. Now Lang is dead, and Peter/ Jeff goes to his house to search for the file on his own background.

There, he meets Barnabas. The two of them display hostility to each other, but the scene fizzles out as it becomes clear that Barnabas has no motivation to oppose Peter/ Jeff’s goals and wouldn’t be in a position to stop him if he did. Peter/ Jeff finds a paper which proves that Lang was lying, and he is not a murderer after all. With that, he and Vicki both lose whatever reason they had to be on the show.

On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn summed this up memorably:

His file from the mental institution had those three magic words: “No homicidal tendencies.” As something to be proud of, that’s a pretty low bar, but he seems happy.

Unfortunately, that basically nerfs Jeff’s entire storyline. He’s not working for Dr. Lang anymore, and the secret that Lang was holding over him — the idea that he might be a murderer — has just dissolved.

This is just throwing a story point away, rather than advancing anything, and Jeff is left at a loose end. He has no job, no family, and no real connection to a story. Now he doesn’t even have homicidal tendencies. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.

Danny Horn, “Episode 487: Precious Moments,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 24 September 2014

Peter/ Jeff goes to share this news with Vicki. It’s a tribute to Mrs Isles’ acting ability that she makes us believe Vicki is bewildered that Peter/ Jeff thought he had homicidal tendencies. Mr Davis usually seems angry enough to kill someone, as for example at various points in today’s episode when Peter/ Jeff’s joy leads him to wrap his hands around Vicki’s throat, plant a rather painful-looking kiss on her, pick her up, and point her underwear at the camera.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die, whose caption was “No homicidal tendencies? Are we sure about that?”

Lip-wrestling isn’t usually a combat sport. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The highlight of this episode is a scene between Julia Hoffman and Timothy Eliot Stokes. Julia is Barnabas’ best friend. She has decided to take over the experiment after the death of her fellow mad scientist Lang. Wicked witch Angelique is trying to prevent her helping Barnabas, and so Julia turns to Stokes, a sage in the ways of the occult.

Stokes is the second such character on Dark Shadows, after the ill-fated Dr Peter Guthrie. Vicki recruited Guthrie into her battle against undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins in #160 and Laura killed him in #185. We haven’t heard about Guthrie since the end of the Laura story, but the show went out of its way to remind him of us when it showed Lang’s death yesterday. Like Guthrie, Lang died as the result of an indiscreet word from housekeeper Mrs Johnson to an undead witch in the drawing room at Collinwood. Also like Guthrie, Lang is a paranormal researcher who is deeply involved with a tape recorder.

While these similarities served to remind us of Guthrie, they also reminded us of the radical differences between him and Lang. Guthrie was as sane and law-abiding as Lang is crazed and lawless. Seeing Stokes today, we recognize him as Guthrie’s successor, and wonder if his fate will be any different.

Julia is deeply troubled because of a dream she had last night. She was so very upset by it that she was up all night chain smoking.* It was no ordinary nightmare, but part of “The Dream Curse,” a piece of mental malware Angelique has sent to infect one character’s mind after another. Julia recaps the Dream Curse to Stokes while looking into a convex mirror. It’s a striking visual.

Julia recaps the Dream Curse. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

It doesn’t look good for Stokes. Angelique is a supercharged force of destruction, and Julia withholds several crucial pieces of information while recruiting him to the fight against her. Julia does not identify Angelique as the witch. She can’t tell him about Barnabas’ vampirism or about Lang’s experiment without incriminating herself in many felonies, including murder. When Vicki was recruiting Guthrie to the fight against Laura, a far less formidable adversary than Angelique, she held nothing back and ensured that her friends gave him their full support. If Stokes is going to survive, he will need more backing than Julia can offer him.

*Fans of Dark Shadows wince when they see Julia smoking; Grayson Hall had asthma.

Episode 486: Endless corridors of trial and error

Today’s cast includes a vampire, a wicked witch, two mad scientists, a Frankenstein’s monster, and an irritable housekeeper. The deadly menace turns out to be the housekeeper.

In a laboratory in a house by the sea, mad scientists Eric Lang and Julia Hoffman are trying to transfer recovering vampire Barnabas Collins’ “life force” into the body of the creature Lang has built for the purpose, a creature Barnabas has named Adam. In the drawing room of the great house atop Widow’s Hill, wicked witch Angelique disrupts that attempt by sticking a pin into a clay figure that she addresses as “Dr Lang.” It is unclear how Angelique attached the clay figure to Lang, though since it has roughly the same acting ability as Addison Powell the pairing seems natural enough.

Lang gasps for air. Julia helps both him and Barnabas. Barnabas gets up from the operating table and declares he will go to the great house and stop Angelique. Lang tries to tell Julia how to carry on his work, but keeps breaking down. While Julia is out of the room getting some heart medicine, Angelique removes the pin from the clay figure. During that moment of relief, Lang is alone in the lab. He turns on his tape recorder and says that if both Barnabas and Adam live, Barnabas will be free of the vampire curse. Adam will drain it from him, but will not suffer from its symptoms. If Adam dies, Barnabas will revert to active vampirism.

Angelique resumes tormenting Lang as Julia returns to the laboratory. Lang cannot keep his breath long enough to tell Julia his message or make it clear that she should listen to the tape. Angelique says that Lang has suffered enough for tonight, and that she will put the pin away. As she is about to do so, the door to the drawing room opens and housekeeper Mrs Johnson comes in. Mrs Johnson startles Angelique, who inadvertently drives the pin through the clay figure, killing Lang.

This is the second death to which Mrs Johnson has contributed. The two cases are very similar. She unknowingly gave undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins the information she needed to cast the spell that killed parapsychologist Dr Peter Guthrie. Guthrie resembled Lang not only in holding a terminal degree, studying the uncanny, and doing battle with an undead witch, but also in his use of a tape recorder. In #170 and #171, Guthrie recorded the audio of a séance; in #172, Laura erased the recording and replaced it with the sound of fire; and in #185, he was on his way to get his tape recorder to use at another séance when Laura cast the spell that killed him. Mrs Johnson is a menace to a very specific kind of person.

Barnabas comes to the great house and threatens Angelique, calling her by the name “Cassandra,” the alias under which she has married sarcastic dandy Roger Collins and found a place in the house. At first he says he will burn her if Lang dies. She pretends not to know what he’s talking about, and says that she will expose him as a madman. He looks at her neck and leans in, a sign that his vampire urges are coming back. The telephone rings, and Mrs Johnson enters. Angelique/ Cassandra explains their compromising position by claiming that she was fainting; with that, she shows that her threat to air her complaints is a bluff, since she could easily have demanded Mrs Johnson call the police.

Barnabas is getting thirsty. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Mrs Johnson says the call is for Barnabas. It is Julia reporting Lang’s death. Barnabas makes some grim remarks to Angelique/ Cassandra, then goes back to the laboratory and talks with Julia. She is distraught, but agrees to pick up where Lang left off.

We end with a dream sequence. Angelique has loosed a “Dream Curse” on the people of Collinsport. One after another, they have the same basic dream, in each case beginning with an appearance by the next person to have the dream beckoning them into a haunted house attraction and ending with a door opening to expose something the previous dreamers didn’t see. Julia’s dream begins with Mrs Johnson, telling us she will be the next up. It proceeds with her walking through a foggy room, including a clear shot of the fog machine. It ends with the sight of a skeleton wearing a wedding dress and the sound of Angelique’s distinctive laugh, telling us that the position Angelique has gained by marrying Roger is particularly dangerous to Julia. Since Julia lives in the same house as Angelique and they know all about each other, this is not exactly a major revelation.

Featuring a very special appearance by the fog machine. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The dream involves the beckoner’s voice reciting a little bit of doggerel. As it goes on, some beckoners say “through endless corridors by trial and error,” others say “through endless corridors of trial and error.” I prefer “of trial and error.” That implies that the corridors are themselves made up of decisions people have made and of the consequences of those decisions. Saying that the characters are moving through the corridors “by trial and error” means that the corridors exist whether anyone engages with them or not. We saw Angelique start the curse, so we know it isn’t something that has been out there in reality all along, and it expresses itself in dreams, not in anything that persists when people stop paying attention to it. Besides, the whole idea of drama is to show decisions and their consequences, so “of trial and error” is better on every front.

Episode 291: Doctor Hoffman has fooled us all

Up to this point, Dark Shadows has been scrupulous about avoiding references to Christianity. Of course, that was necessary- you can more or less casually drop in an image from ancient Greek mythology, for example, because not many people put a lot of energy into wondering whether they ought to be worshiping Zeus. But Christianity is very much a live option nowadays, with the result that even a subtle allusion to it tends to take over the audience’s reaction to whatever story you’re telling and turn their reception of it into a theological debate.

It can be particularly hard to steer clear of Christian ideas when you draw elements from stories that were first told in cultures where Christianity was so heavily dominant that people simply took its major concepts for granted and used them without thinking. To take an obvious example, vampires are an inversion of Jesus. Where Jesus is the ultimate example of self-sacrifice, the vampire is a metaphor for selfishness. Where Jesus’ resurrection represents his final victory over death, the vampire’s resurrection leaves him under the power of death every dawn. Where Jesus invites us to drink his blood and eat his flesh and thereby join him in eternal life, the vampire drinks our blood and annihilates our flesh in order to subject us to his indefinitely prolonged dying. Where Jesus commands his followers to spread truth wherever they go, the vampire’s existence depends on lies and secrecy. It’s no wonder that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is all about people using crucifixes and communion wafers to contain and destroy the sinister Count.

The scene that closed Friday’s episode and that is reprised in today’s opening is, I think, the first to include a recognizable allusion to the Christian story. In the Gospels, the first human being to learn that Jesus has been resurrected is Mary Magdalene. She learns this when Jesus interrupts her attempt to mourn his death and calls her by name, and that act of naming creates a new kind of relationship between them and a new place for her in the history of the cosmos. In Dark Shadows, the first person to find out that Barnabas Collins is a vampire otherwise than by becoming his victim is Dr Julia Hoffman. Barnabas learns that Julia has caught on to him when she interrupts his attempt to kill her and calls him by name, and that act of naming creates a new kind of relationship between them and a new place for her in the narrative arc of Dark Shadows.

Furthermore, Jesus had, before his death and resurrection, freed Mary of seven demons who possessed her. The memory of that past liberation was the original basis of her devotion to him. In this scene, Julia, as the anti-Mary Magdalene, promises that she will free Barnabas of the force that has made him a vampire. Hope for that future liberation is what stops Barnabas from murdering Julia, and will become the basis of their initial collaboration. Julia’s promise is not based in any claim of divine power, but in a lot of pseudo-scientific gibberish derived from the 1945 film The House of Dracula, in which a mad scientist tries to cure Dracula of vampirism by an experimental treatment that involves the participation of several other characters from Universal Studios’ existing intellectual property. The echo of the Mary Magdalene story also evokes the “meddling in God’s realm” theme of that and the other monster movies Universal made in the 1930s and 1940s.

Julia is not the first scientist on Dark Shadows to offer to help an undead menace to rejoin the world of the living. That was Dr Peter Guthrie, parapsychologist, who in #184 told blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins that if she would stop trying to incinerate her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, he would help her. Laura laughed at Guthrie’s offer, and when he said that his research into conditions like hers “has been my life,” she remarked that she found his choice of words strangely apt.

As a humanoid Phoenix, periodically burning herself and her sons to death and then reappearing in a living form, Laura was not part of any mythology as familiar and well-articulated as are the vampire stories from Bram Stoker, Universal Studios, or Hammer Films. The only really well-known thing about Phoenixes, beyond their rebirth from ashes, is their elusiveness. That the Fire Bird can be seen alive or not at all is a recurring theme of medieval and early modern literature based on Celtic and Germanic folklore, and a reason why the Phoenix is so often associated with the mysterious realms that figure in the legends of the Holy Grail. It is essential to Laura that we cannot understand what she is thinking, or even be sure if she has an inner mental life at all. Not only can Laura not give up her plan to burn David alive and retain a sense of menace. If we so much as catch her thinking about Guthrie’s offer, she will cease to be any kind of monster. So it is no surprise that she responds to Guthrie by killing him the moment opportunity presents itself.

Vampires, by contrast, combine decades of prominence in popular culture with a deep resonance for those who identify with their individual compulsions and social isolation. That gives storytellers a whole warehouse of resources to use when shaping a vampire into an image in which the audience can recognize themselves. So when Julia tells Barnabas that she has spent her whole life looking for someone like him to use as an experimental subject, he doesn’t have to make a snappy remark like that Laura made to Guthrie. He takes it in, and spends the rest of the episode weighing whether to cooperate with Julia or kill her.

Barnabas takes Julia back to his house. While she is in the basement picking out a room to use as a laboratory, Barnabas tells his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie that he has decided to kill her after all. Willie protests, and Barnabas goes back and forth on the question. When Julia comes back upstairs, Barnabas sends Willie away.

As Barnabas moves in to kill Julia, she tells him that her survival guarantees his. She explains that this is because his former victim, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is not dead as everyone has been told, but alive and well-hidden. Maggie is suffering from amnesia covering her time with Barnabas. Julia is Maggie’s psychiatrist, and if Barnabas cooperates with her experiment she will see to it that Maggie does not recover her memory.

Julia betrays Maggie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

From our first glimpse of Julia in #265, she has been a mysterious, forbidding figure, harsh with Maggie and indifferent to the usual norms of medical ethics. But she is, after all, a doctor, and so we’ve been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Now that we’ve heard her tell the vampire that she will abet his crimes by using her professional skills to ensure that Maggie’s psychological injury will not heal, we realize that she is not a maverick, but a mad scientist.

Again, the echo of the story of Mary Magdalene in the opening adds to the shock of Julia’s willingness to betray Maggie at the end. Mary was Jesus’ most faithful disciple, accompanying him to the cross when the men he had called were all busy denying him and looking for places to hide. It is also traditional among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Roman Catholics to name her in prayers for healing, because of old stories that she had healed people of blindness, mobility impairments, and leprosy, among other conditions. So Mary Magdalene is the most trustworthy of healers, and it is startlingly appropriate that Julia, as her exact opposite, is the least.

Episode 231: Anyone’s blood

Today is only the second time we hear a voice announce a recast over the opening title. The first time was in #35, when David Ford took over the part of drunken artist Sam Evans from wildly incompetent actor Mark Allen. This time Robert Gerringer is taking over the part of addled quack Dr Woodard from Richard Woods. Woods only played the role twice, and neither time could he find a way to distract the audience from the ignorance of medicine that the writers showed in their scripts.

Gerringer’s lines don’t make much more sense than did the ones they dumped on Woods, but he acts up a storm. Woodard is examining Sam’s daughter Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Unknown to Sam or Woodard, vampire Barnabas Collins has been sucking Maggie’s blood. Woodard is firm with Maggie when she resists his examination. He seems to be somewhat on edge, just enough that we wonder if there is more to it than the difficulties we can see Maggie giving him. Perhaps he is thinking something he isn’t saying. Woods never managed to make us wonder if his version of the doctor was doing that.

When Woodard and Sam leave Maggie’s room, Woodard assumes an alarmed tone. He tells Sam that Maggie is on the point of death and needs a blood transfusion at once. By showing us that Woodard was concealing the true nature of his concern when he was with Maggie, Gerringer gives substance to our hopes that the character’s nonsensical words and deeds will turn out to be a screen hiding something interesting.

Maggie’s boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, joins Sam and Woodard. Woodard asks if either Sam or Joe has blood type A. Joe does. Woodard doesn’t ask about Rh factors or Joe’s medical history or anything else, he simply marches Joe into Maggie’s room and the bodily fluids start pumping right away. Joe holds Maggie’s hand at first, but her violent protests force him to let go.

In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Professor Van Helsing and Dr John Seward give blood transfusions to the vampire’s victims. That novel was written in 1897, and blood types weren’t discovered until 1900, so Van Helsing and Seward take blood indiscriminately from all the men cooperating in the effort to defeat Dracula. Van Helsing is particularly enthusiastic when he learns that Arthur Holmwood has given blood to Lucy Westenra, because Arthur “is the lover of her!” Van Helsing is Dutch, and speaks in a vaguely comical broken English. Woodard doesn’t seem particularly excited that Joe is “the lover of her,” but audiences who had read the book will recognize the allusion.

At this point in the production of Dark Shadows, the tentative plan was that Dr Woodard would become something like the expert on paranormal dangers that Dr Peter Guthrie had been during the Phoenix storyline, and that Barnabas would be destroyed in episode 275. Like Stoker’s Dracula, the Phoenix arc had featured a group of stout-hearted men and one valiant young woman coming together to do battle with an undead menace. Dr Guthrie had been their Van Helsing, an expert from out of town who leapfrogs over some weaknesses in the evidence actually available to the protagonists to get them to the same level of understanding that the audience has been given. Also like Van Helsing, Guthrie is the first to realize that the one female member of the team is the key to the success of their efforts, and so he insists on putting her in situations the other men regard as too dangerous for her. As Mina had been instrumental in the destruction of Dracula, so well-meaning governess Vicki is the person who finally thwarts the plans of the Phoenix.

If Woodard and Vicki are going to destroy Barnabas in #275, we have to wonder what story the show will have to tell in #276. The only other plotline going at the moment is the blackmail of reclusive matriarch Liz by seagoing con man Jason McGuire, and that can’t continue indefinitely. Not only will Liz run out of things for Jason to take away from her, but Dennis Patrick, the actor playing Jason, will leave the show no later than the end of June. Since the end of June is when #275 will be airing, we can hardly expect Jason to take the show over after that time.

In fact, Jason is an in-betweener brought on the show to clear away the last non-paranormal plot elements left over from the period before the show became a supernatural thriller in December 1966. By the time he leaves, both the reason for Liz’ long self-immuration in the great house of Collinwood and the identity of Vicki’s parents are supposed to be laid bare for all to see. Neither of those secrets ever generated an interesting story, but as long as they are around it is at least theoretically possible that the show will become a conventional daytime soap opera again. Without them, they are altogether committed to the spook show route. Destroy Barnabas, and you just have to come up with yet another menace from beyond the grave.

I remember Gerringer’s acting style from the first time I saw Dark Shadows. That was back in the 90s, when it was on what was then called the SciFi Channel. He so perfectly represented the doctor characters on the soaps my mother used to watch when I was a kid twenty years before that seeing him in the middle of a story about a vampire told me everything about the strangeness of a conventional daytime serial switching to a horror theme. If that guy is the one to drive the stake through Barnabas’ heart, or if he is even part of the team that finishes him off, it will be a statement that the makers of Dark Shadows have decided to stop being silly and start imitating The Guiding Light.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, was particularly frustrated with the dialogue in this episode. As Maggie, Kathryn Leigh Scott does a good job with nonverbal communication creating the image of a reluctant patient trying to get out of her skin, but her lines consist chiefly of repeating whatever is said to her. The other members of the cast are equally effective at projecting concern for a loved one whose grave illness they don’t understand and can’t help, but their lines too are so heavily loaded with repetition that we started to suspect that Malcolm Marmorstein was writing for a cast of myna birds. In particular, Woodard’s lines to Sam in the living room repeat the word “shock” so many times that they start to sound like he’s stuttering.

The original choices for the roles of Sam, Joe, Dr Woodard, and Maggie.
Photo by Bird Ecology Study Group

In his post about this episode, Danny Horn complains that there is not a single interesting still image in it. I agree with that, though I would say that the actors’ movements tell a story. Granted, it is a story that could have been told in a tiny fraction of the actual running time, but they deserve credit for holding the show together when the script gave them zero support.

Danny says that the episode would have been just as good if it were a radio show. Mrs Acilius says that it would have been “a thousand times better” than it is if it were a silent movie. Maybe they could compromise, and it could be presented with neither audio nor video, and the audience could spend the 22 minutes doing something else.

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 184: It’s been my life

Parapsychologist Dr Guthrie visits blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins in her cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. He tells her that his researches have led him to the conclusion that she is “The Undead” and that she poses a danger to her son, strange and troubled boy David. She replies that he is being preposterous, but she doesn’t deny anything he says.

Guthrie says that she is probably wondering why he has told her these things. The audience certainly is- Laura has already tried to cast a paralyzing spell on Guthrie, and can hardly be expected to grow more benevolent towards him now that she knows that he has figured out her nature and has told her he is “closing in on” her.

Guthrie explains to Laura that their meeting marks a significant moment in the history of the world- a scientist has come face to face with a being who has died and returned to walk the earth. He wants to learn from her, and offers to help her if she will stop trying to claim David. He tells her that an effort to bring science to bear on cases like hers “has been my life.” “What an interesting way to put it,” Laura responds, in her unforgettable sardonic tone. She dismisses his offer, and tells him he is powerless.

In a way, it’s too bad Laura doesn’t take an interest in what Guthrie might be able to do for her. That’s quite an idea, a scientist trying to help an undead being and to explore the realm of the supernatural thereby. It suggests the 1945 Universal movie The House of Dracula, in which a blood specialist treats Dracula for vampirism, with apparent success. That doctor then encounters the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster. He attempts to treat them also, but things eventually go awry. The House of Dracula runs for 67 minutes; it might be interesting to develop a story like that in a daytime serial, where you have as much time as the audience and the network are willing to give you.

Guthrie is trying to organize a séance to contact Laura’s chief adversary, the ghost of Josette Collins. He tells hardworking young fisherman Joe* that they will have to recruit drunken artist Sam Evans to join them at the séance. Joe laughs at the thought of how Sam will react to such an invitation. Sam’s daughter, Maggie, is Joe’s girlfriend; Joe stops laughing and is a little bit scared when he thinks of Maggie’s likely reaction. But Guthrie insists that Sam’s participation is essential. Josette took possession of Sam to paint pictures that gave them some of their first and clearest warnings of what Laura might do to David, so he has already been one of her most powerful mediums. Joe agrees to ask him.

At the Evans cottage, Joe pitches Sam and Maggie on the séance. Sam at first finds the notion hard to take seriously. The more he thinks about it, the more convinced he becomes that Guthrie’s theories are correct and that it is his duty to participate. Maggie is dead set against her father having anything to do with Collinwood or the supernatural. She has worked on getting him to forget the paintings he made under Josette’s influence and his belief that Laura was responsible for the fire that injured his hands shortly after he painted them. As an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, Maggie is in the habit of heading Sam off when he’s on his way to do something weird. Usually Joe is her most reliable ally and greatest help in looking after her father. Today, she reluctantly gives in when Sam and Joe both think the séance is a good idea.

In the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, Dr Guthrie is studying some documents. We see Laura staring into the fire in her cottage. Her eyes are superimposed over the image of Guthrie as he becomes ill.

Joe comes in and sees that Guthrie is struggling for breath. He asks Guthrie if he is all right. Guthrie complains of the heat. Since Joe is still wearing his heavy coat and looks perfectly comfortable, he ought to know that isn’t much of an explanation. He mentions that he has completed some tasks Guthrie asked him to perform. Guthrie has no idea what he’s talking about. When Laura attacked Guthrie in episodes 175 and 176, it was through a spell that hit him while he was in this same room. Then also, he had difficulty breathing during the attack and a gap in his memory afterward.

That time, well-meaning governess Vicki came into the drawing room and saw Guthrie suffering the effects of the attack. The attack abruptly ended. While Guthrie was recovering, David came back to the house and told him and Vicki that he had interrupted Laura a few minutes before while she was staring into the fire at her cottage. After David gave Vicki and Guthrie a full account of the incident, they sent him off to have dinner followed by two desserts- cake and ice cream.

That day, Vicki recognized the symptoms of Guthrie’s attack as the same those reclusive matriarch Liz exhibited after a confrontation with Laura and before she lapsed into a catatonic state from which she has not yet recovered. From this, Vicki concluded that David must have stopped Laura while she was in the process of casting the same spell on Guthrie that she earlier cast on Liz. Guthrie agreed with Vicki’s analysis, but was confident he could defend himself against any further spells Laura might cast. He never explained what his defense would be.

Whatever protection Guthrie thought he could give himself against Laura’s powers obviously isn’t working, at least not while he is alone. After Joe goes away, Laura resumes casting her spell.

While Guthrie struggles in the drawing room, David strolls into the foyer. The ghost of Josette manifests on the staircase above. She takes a few steps down towards him and points to the drawing room doors.

Josette sends David to rescue Dr Guthrie

David realizes Josette is telling him to go into that room at once. He obeys, and finds Dr Guthrie on the floor by the fireplace, apparently near death.

*Who is evidently fishing again. Months ago, Joe got a white-collar position in the offices of the cannery, a position he accepted only in order to make enough money to buy his own boat. Today David asks him when he will take him along on the boats, and Maggie mentions that he’d recently lost his watch in a mackerel net. They never told us that he’d gone back out, and indeed he was carrying papers back and forth from the office as recently as #174.

Episode 176: Hearts of flame

In his 1957 novel David and the Phoenix, Edward Ormondroyd depicts a friendship between a benevolent Phoenix and a preteen boy named David. The Phoenix’ enemy is a bespectacled man known simply as The Scientist. At the end of Chapter 8 (“In Which David and the Phoenix Visit a Banshee, and a Surprise is Planted in the Enemy Camp,”) the two of them play a nasty trick on The Scientist which temporarily disarms him. In Chapter 9 (“In Which David and the Phoenix Call on a Faun, and a Lovely Afternoon Comes to a Strange End,“) the Phoenix warns David that he will be back:

He could not help laughing now and then over the Scientist’s defeat. But whenever this came up, the Phoenix would shake its head with a kind of sad wisdom.

“My boy, there are certain things, such as head colds and forgetting where you have left your keys, which are inevitable—and I am afraid that the Scientist is, too.”

“Oh, Phoenix, you don’t think he’ll come back, do you?”

“Yes, my boy, I do. I can see the whole train of events: He will recover from his fright. He will be curious about the Wail, and will return to investigate it. Once here, he will remember us, and we shall have to take him into account once more.”

“Oh. Do you think it’ll happen soon?”

“Oh, no, my boy, nothing to worry about for the time being. But we must remember that it will happen some day.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right. I think he’s hateful!”

“I cannot disagree with you there, my boy. Of course, I have no doubt that, in general, the advancement of science is all to the good. Knowledge is power. But on days like this I sometimes wonder…. Does it not seem to you that the highest aim in life at the moment is to enjoy the sunlight and allow others to do the same?”

“You’re right, Phoenix—but then, you always are. I was just thinking the same thing. It’s funny … I mean … well, you know. Why can’t people leave other people alone—and—and—well, just enjoy themselves and lie in the sun and listen to the wind?”

“That is the way of the world, my boy. Getting and spending, and all that sort of thing. But come! Why should we worry over the follies of the rest of the world? A day like this was made for living, not thinking. Begone, dull care!”

And they would forget the Scientist and watch a pair of butterflies chase each other instead.

Dark Shadows’ Phoenix is the none-too-benevolent Laura Murdoch Collins, and its David is her son. Laura has not told her David of her true nature. She desperately needs to persuade him to leave his home and to follow her into the flames of her next pyre. Evidently she has to be sparing about the details of what she has in store for him if she is to win him over. So in our story, David will not help the Phoenix do battle with The Scientist.

We open today with Laura staring hard into the flames of the hearth in her cottage on the great estate of Collinwood, casting a spell on her enemy. This enemy, like the one Ormondroyd’s Phoenix confronted, is a scientist, but he has a name. He is Dr Peter Guthrie of the psychology department at Dartmouth College, of all places.

Guthrie is in the drawing room of the great house, some distance away, stumbling about and gasping under the pressure of Laura’s spell. Well-meaning governess Vicki enters and urges Guthrie to “snap out of it!” He tells her that he can’t, and continues writhing about while Laura’s staring eyes are superimposed above his image.

All seems lost for Guthrie, when David strolls into Laura’s cottage and calls to her. She doesn’t react. David finally puts his hand on his mother’s shoulder and shakes her, breaking her concentration. At first she wants him to go away so that she can resume casting her spell on Guthrie, but when he becomes angry she asks him to stay. She has been saying that she has very little time to complete the task that brought her to Collinwood- evidently she is not sure she will have time to repair even one quarrel with David.

In the great house, Guthrie is recovering. Vicki tells him that his symptoms are those which reclusive matriarch Liz exhibited shortly before she lapsed into a catatonic state from which she has yet to recover. They are sure that Laura is responsible. David returns and they talk with him. They realize that he interrupted Laura while she was casting a spell. David goes off to have a dinner which will be followed with two desserts- cake and ice cream. Vicki and Dr Guthrie are starting to make a plan to oppose Laura when the front doors of the house fly open and reveal her standing there.

Laura’s appearance in the doorway is a very effective moment. It seems that Laura has come to the house to intimidate Vicki and Dr Guthrie, to show that while he may have escaped her spell and they may have learned something about her methods, she can move so much more quickly than they can that they are after all helpless against her. Once that point has been made, there isn’t much reason for the episode to go on.

Diana Millay and John Lasell do what they can with the scene between Laura and Guthrie in the drawing room, which is a lot- Millay was superb at blitheness, John Lasell at conscientiousness, and those are the notes their characters strike throughout the exchange. But the lines don’t make any sense. Guthrie asks Laura if she isn’t surprised to see him up and around- why would she be? He knows that she was interrupted before her spell could be completed. He tells her what he does and doesn’t know about her supernatural powers. Why would he tip his hand that way? He tells her that once he has figured her out, he plans to reveal his knowledge to the world. So he is letting her know that he hasn’t revealed anything yet, and won’t reveal anything or recruit any allies if she can stop him before he gets all the answers. Guthrie has been represented as a shrewd operator up to this point- apparently the spell Laura started casting on him has knocked his IQ down by three or four standard deviations.

Another question that comes up when we see Laura confronting Vicki and Dr Guthrie in the foyer is why she doesn’t attack Vicki. It was Vicki, through her boyfriend Frank, who brought Guthrie to Collinwood. Flighty heiress Carolyn is temporarily in charge at Collinwood in the absence of her mother Liz, and Carolyn is dependent on Vicki for a hundred things. Carolyn is an opponent of Laura’s and would likely be immobilized if Vicki were out of action. Laura’s estranged husband, Roger, relies on Vicki to look after David, and would be even more eager than he already is to get rid of David if he had to take care of the boy himself. Laura’s sometime boyfriend, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, is the closest thing she has to an ally. Vicki has some influence over Burke, and has used it to bring him to question whether he ought to trust Laura. In every connection, Vicki is Laura’s chief adversary. Yet Laura has not attacked her directly, and the show has not explained why she hasn’t.

It isn’t like they don’t have time to develop a story point that would explain this. They have had as many as three episodes in a row (for example, #161, #162, and #163) which consisted entirely of conversations in which characters recapped conversations from previous episodes, conversations which themselves were nothing but recap of still earlier episodes. They could have dumped some of that recap and shown us some kind of event that would have explained why Vicki hasn’t yet been a target of Laura’s power.

Episode 175: A few simple facts

Parapsychologist Peter Guthrie calls on blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins at the cottage where she is staying. He tells her that the charred remains of an unknown woman found in the burned ruins of her apartment in Phoenix, Arizona have inexplicably vanished from the morgue where they were being kept. Laura reacts to this news with shock. Guthrie asks her why the news means so much to her. She denies that it means anything to her, and demands he leave. She warns him that something will happen to him if he doesn’t leave her alone. He asks what she means by this warning, and she refuses to answer.

Guthrie was usually rather quiet and retiring from his second appearance, in #161, until yesterday. He first showed anger then. He’s agitated again at the beginning of today’s episode, and he holds his ground with Laura. Evidently he is ready for a confrontation.

Dashing action hero Burke Devlin charges into the cottage. He is rude to Guthrie, who makes a few pointed remarks and then leaves. Burke takes over asking Laura questions she won’t answer. When he too leaves, she looks exhausted. She hastens back to the hearth and sits by the fire, which seems to be the source of her energy.

Guthrie returns to the great house of Collinwood. He calls for well-meaning governess Vicki. Then Laura’s face is superimposed on the screen. Guthrie wobbles, takes his glasses off, and falls down.

Yesterday, we saw that Guthrie was considering the same three explanations of Laura’s relationship to the supernatural that the audience had in mind when we had the same information he has now. Perhaps a supernatural force has followed her to Collinwood and is doing things she knows nothing about. Perhaps a supernatural force is attached to her and acts on her unconscious impulses without her knowledge. Or perhaps she herself is the force, and is actively making the strange goings-on go on.

Today, Guthrie takes an interest in Laura’s reaction to the news of the vanishing corpse. A focus on this reaction makes us wonder just how Laura works. We have gathered that she is a humanoid Phoenix, who achieves a cyclical immortality by periodically incinerating herself at some point before reappearing as a living being. We also know that the charred remains of two other Laura Murdochs who died by fire were buried in the town of Collinsport in previous centuries- the body of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge in 1767 and of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe in 1867.

Now it is 1967. The corpse in Phoenix had been identified as Laura Murdoch Collins, and has disappeared. Perhaps we are to gather that when the humanoid Phoenix incinerates herself, she initiates a multi-stage process. The fire separates the woman into a dead body and a living Doppelgänger. The Doppelgänger is surrounded by magical occurrences, and as she gathers strength she is able to direct these magical occurrences to bring the process to its climax. Laura’s shocked reaction to the news that the body has disappeared, coupled with her signs of tiredness and her repeated assertions that she is running out of time, suggests that the disappearance of the body is an event outside her control. It marks the end of one stage of the process and the beginning of another. Evidently it means that Laura has even less time to complete her task than she had thought. If that is how it works, then we would expect that the charred remains deposited in the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and in the tomb of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge would also have vanished, and that the coffins in those places would also be empty.

Episode 167: The power to do more

We open in the drawing room of the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Well-meaning governess Vicki is taking a page from her adversary, blonde fire witch Laura, and staring into the flames of the hearth. She delivers a speech to visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie. Even though today’s script is credited to Ron Sproat, the speech is full of the kind of elevated language and overwrought imagery fans of Dark Shadows usually associate with writer Malcolm Marmorstein. I suspect Marmorstein actually wrote this speech. Marmorstein’s flowery gibberish will defeat actor after actor until a Canadian character man with a Shakespearean background joins the cast and gets it all to himself. From him, it will sound gorgeous.

As Vicki, Alexandra Moltke Isles delivers the speech with her back slightly arched, her shoulders still, her face rigid, and her voice raised to an almost operatic level. It’s as big a performance as we have seen her give, and it very nearly sells the purple prose she has to utter. She’s describing a dream that her charge, strange and troubled boy David, told her that he had while he was staying with his mother Laura. There’s fire, and it’s very dark, and David and Laura are alone in infinite space, and a whole lot of other hugger-mugger.

In several of Vicki’s scenes with her boyfriend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, Mrs Isles has had to project this combination of a personality forceful enough to lead a battle against supernatural evil with a mind struggling to find its way through a situation with no conventional points of reference. In those previous scenes, that combination was a feature of Vicki and Frank’s relationship. Playing the same combination in a scene without Frank, it becomes a feature of Vicki’s characterization. She pulls it off as well as anyone could, considering the lines she has to say.

Guthrie’s speeches are just as badly overwritten. John Lasell takes a different approach to them. He hunches his shoulders forward, speaks in a quieter and slightly higher-pitched voice than usual, and looks at his feet a lot. He is giving his scene partner as much room as possible for her larger than life turn by making himself very small. It’s a challenge to remember anything that is said in this scene, but the image the two actors create lingers. We see Vicki as the leader ready to drive the action on behalf of the forces of daylight and Guthrie as the sage seared by his contact with the powers of the dark.

In the cottage on the grounds of the same estate, Laura is talking with her estranged husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger. She says over and over that she hasn’t much time- she must take their son David immediately. Roger asks why she is so hurried all of a sudden. She tries to evade the question, stirring his suspicions.

Roger tells Laura that he can’t oblige her in any case. He must stay on the good side of his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz. Liz is dead set against Laura taking David. Laura cast a spell on Liz a couple of weeks ago, and now she is in a hospital, catatonic. Roger lives as a guest in Liz’ house and receives a paycheck from her business. If she returns and finds that he has sent David away with Laura, she might put him in a position where he has no alternative but to work for a living. Laura should know her husband well enough to know he would go to any lengths to avoid that horrifying prospect.

Back in the great house, Guthrie talks with Vicki and flighty heiress Carolyn about his idea of holding a séance. Carolyn talks through her feelings about it, and decides that her initial reluctance is a matter of fear. Roger comes in, and they tell him about the idea. Louis Edmonds has a lot of fun with Roger’s lines denouncing Guthrie’s “quackery.” Roger ultimately agrees to participate if it will get rid of Guthrie. When he learns that Guthrie wants Laura to take part as well, he reacts incredulously.

When Guthrie first came on the show, it was indicated that he would be staying in the house. But at the end of this scene, Vicki shows him out. Evidently he has taken rooms somewhere else. It’s confusing.

Carolyn is sure Laura can’t be talked into attending their séance. Nor does she see any other reason to keep her around. Over Vicki’s objections, she declares that she will confront Laura with evidence that she has been lying about what she did the night Liz was taken ill, and that once she has done this she will order her to leave the estate.

Carolyn does go to Laura’s cottage. She leads Laura to repeat the lies she told. When she springs the evidence on her, Laura tells more lies. Carolyn refuses to accept them, and Laura makes a menacing reply. Carolyn holds her ground, but does not order Laura to leave.

The episode originally aired on Valentine’s Day in 1967 (as they would say on the show, exactly 56 years ago!!!!) Mrs Isles was in the spirit of the holiday, as witness her blowing a kiss to the camera while holding the slate.

The announcements over the closing credits are delivered by someone other than ABC staff announcer Bob Lloyd. It sounds like the same voice we heard giving the announcements at the end of #156. I miss Bob!

Episode 160: Another moment in this house

Reclusive matriarch Liz is in a catatonic state, and her doctor is at a loss to explain why. Well-meaning governess Vicki has confided in her boyfriend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, that she thinks Liz is the victim of blonde fire witch Laura. Frank has sent for a Dartmouth psychology professor, Dr Peter Guthrie, whose research concentrates on reports of paranormal phenomena.

Keeping vigil in Liz’ room, Vicki tells Liz’ daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, that she and Frank have sent for another doctor. When Carolyn asks what Dr Guthrie specializes in, Vicki claims not to know. A few minutes later, Dr Guthrie shows up and has a brief conversation alone with Vicki. He asks her if she knows what he specializes in, and she immediately gives the correct answer. Now that the audience knows without doubt that Vicki was lying to Carolyn, she asks Dr Guthrie what she should tell the others in the house if they ask about him. He says that he is in fact a psychologist who studies psychosomatic ailments, so she can tell them that. When he says that he is uncomfortable with secrecy, Vicki asks him if he understands why absolute secrecy is necessary in this case. She doesn’t leave him much choice but to agree.

Dr Guthrie takes his first look at the drawing room

The whole episode is very awkwardly written. There’s so much repetition, unnecessary dialogue, and unexplained change of attitude from scene to scene* that it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that it could have been five minutes long. But the actors make me glad it went the full twenty-two minutes. It’s interesting to see Vicki manage Dr Guthrie in the same way Liz manages everyone- at first she is understated and demure, and before you know it she is so fully in command that you would feel like a ruffian if you were to disobey her.

John Lasell’s performance as Dr Guthrie is tremendous. He disappears into the character- I’ve never had a harder time recognizing the same actor in two roles than when I found out that the same man who played the quiet, methodical, entirely trustworthy scientist from upper New England in Dark Shadows also played the floridly romantic, flamboyantly sinister, and emphatically Southern John Wilkes Booth in the Twilight Zone episode “Back There.” Every fine muscle of his face and eyes represents a well-thought-out acting choice. When it is Lasell’s turn to take the spotlight, he not only commands the screen, but creates a whole new atmosphere- when he’s on, the show suddenly feels like a primetime broadcast or a feature film. And when he’s around, the whole cast, even Joan Bennett who spends the entire episode being absolutely still, is obviously having fun giving a performance.

*For example, a few minutes after acquiescing in Vicki’s insistence on secrecy, Guthrie demands of the apparently reluctant Vicki and Carolyn that they maintain secrecy. In the interval, we saw Guthrie so absorbed in his examination of Liz and the young women so distraught about her condition that it doesn’t feel like a contradiction, but that’s a credit to the actors, not to the script.