dumb vicki – Page 4 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 84: Ten hundred years

In the great house of Collinwood, strange and troubled boy David Collins tricks his well-meaning governess, Vicki, into a room where he locks her up. Hardworking young fisherman Joe comes to the house to tell his sometime girlfriend, flighty heiress Carolyn, that he can’t spend the evening with her because he has a date with someone else.

I suppose this is one of writer Art Wallace’s diptych episodes, in which the contrast between a pair of intercut scenes tells us more about the characters than we would gather watching either scene straight through. Most such episodes are powerful and engrossing. Unfortunately, both of today’s topics are deadly dull. The pointlessness of the one multiplies the tedium of the other.

Joe and Carolyn’s relationship has never been interesting for one second. Their scenes are divided between Carolyn’s flagrant displays of contempt for Joe, quarrels that begin when Joe objects to those displays, and the occasional conversation about how the two of them don’t have a future. Today’s conversation between them is a break-up scene. An actual breakup would be welcome, but they’ve raised our hopes that way before. Since the only emotion Carolyn and Joe have managed to arouse in the audience is impatience, we don’t have any of the mixed feelings that could make the scene poignant or exciting.

The contrast at the hinge of the diptych is between, on the one hand, David taunting the suddenly brainless Vicki with the prospect that she will be in her prison for the rest of her life and, on the other, Carolyn dismissing the suddenly self-assertive Joe with the prospect that they will never see each other again. Joe’s uncharacteristic strength is more appealing, and better grounded in what we’ve seen so far, than is the uncharacteristic stupidity that led Vicki into David’s trap. But even if the breakup is the real thing this time, it’s hard to feel much relief when we know that we’re going to be locked up and miserable with Vicki.

There is some trivia in this one that will appeal to confirmed fans of Dark Shadows. It’s the first time we go inside the west wing; we get a look at a corridor and at the room where Vicki will be confined. Vicki and David talk about the long, twisting way they have taken, suggesting that it is a very large place. Much larger than reclusive matriarch Liz suggested in episode 2, when she told Vicki that the whole house, including the closed-off portions, has a total of 40 rooms.

Also, Vicki mentions that the west wing has been closed for 50 years. David picks up on “50 years” in a story he tells to frighten Vicki, ensuring that it will stick in the audience’s mind. Yet Liz, who is supposed to be in her 40s, has a conversation with her daughter Carolyn in which she remembers a time when far “fewer rooms were closed off.” That suggests that there is not only a locked-up west wing, but perhaps an east wing as well. That won’t be confirmed for four years, but it is implicit here.

Reminiscing about the way the house used to be, Liz says “There’s nothing in those rooms now but ghosts and memories.” In fact, the rooms in the west wing, like the abandoned Old House and the basement, are stuffed to bursting, not only with antique furniture, books, trunks, vases, paintings, rugs, and other things that could be sold at a high enough price to finance a considerable amount of work on the house, but also with old newspapers, tattered clothing, helpless governesses, and other unsaleable items that should not be kept in storage. For his part, David tells us that the west wing is full of mice, and we see so many cobwebs that the air quality in the occupied parts of the house must be severely affected by its dust. The Collinses really ought to empty their disused spaces and hire a couple to keep them clean.

No abandoned corridor would be complete without a full-sized metal candelabra in front of a porcelain vase resting on a dedicated stand

Apparently executive producer Dan Curtis insisted as a point of visual style that abandoned buildings be shown crammed with stuff. Today, that means that Vicki’s failure to pick up any of the blunt objects surrounding her and start beating the door down makes her look like an even bigger idiot than she already does for falling into the trap in the first place. The window is too high for her to reach, but with so much furniture and so many other objects in the room it would be no trick for her to stack something up she could climb on. After all, animal behaviorists give intelligence tests in which they get baboons to pile one thing on top of another so that they can reach a piece of fruit dangling from the ceiling. Too bad Vicki doesn’t have a baboon with her to give her some guidance.

Episode 83: I resign from the idiots union

In the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki makes unsuccessful attempts to reason with strange, troubled boy David and with David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger. At the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn, it dawns on hardworking young fisherman Joe that Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, would like to date him.

A fancy fountain pen Vicki found on the beach has gone missing from David’s room. After the two of them have spent a few relaxed moments looking for it, David declares it isn’t in the room. He suggests a ghost might have taken it. Rejecting this possibility out of hand and seeing no other explanation, Vicki concludes that David must be hiding the pen from her. She calmly asks him to return it; he indignantly denies having taken it. Exasperated with him, she raises her voice.

We cut to an outdoor setting, where we see Roger burying the pen. The audience saw him steal the pen at the end of yesterday’s episode. Roger is afraid the pen will be a piece of physical evidence implicating him in a homicide, so he is desperate to get everyone to forget that it exists. Why he doesn’t throw it in the ocean, or in a trash can, is never explained.

Roger returns to the house and hears Vicki and David yelling at each other about the pen. He goes upstairs to make inquiries. He takes David’s side, leaving both David and Vicki staring at him in astonishment. Roger then talks privately to Vicki, and urges her to forget about the whole thing. She reluctantly agrees never to speak of the pen again, to anyone. Roger visits David in his room, extracting the same promise from him. David tells Roger that he will get even with Vicki for her false accusation against him. Roger, eager as ever to get Vicki out of the house, has no objection to that idea. David glares out the window, looking directly into the camera and muttering to the audience that he will settle his score with Vicki.

David tells the audience of his plans. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

The B-plot is much friendlier. Joe and Maggie are nice, attractive young people who have known each other for a long time, have fun together, and share many interests. Maggie is single, and Joe is at the end of a dull and mismatched relationship with flighty heiress Carolyn. There is no reason why they shouldn’t become a couple.

In fact, that is their biggest problem. As soap opera characters, they can have a romance if and only if there is some obstacle between them they will have to overcome in a dramatic fashion. Maggie and Joe are so obviously well-matched that generating such an obstacle will require the writing staff either to dig deep into the characters’ psychology and to expound that psychology in a superlatively well-crafted plot, or, if that is beyond them, to do something dumb like have them get bitten by vampires.

Joe stops by Collinwood to see if he can talk to Carolyn. Vicki tells him that Carolyn isn’t around, but asks him to stay for a while anyway. Vicki is nervous. She explains that “You don’t know what it’s like to be alone in this house with David.” Joe asks Vicki if she thinks he is an idiot for trying to resuscitate his relationship with Carolyn. When she can’t say he isn’t, he announces that he’s resigning from the idiot’s union and leaving for a dinner date. We know that he’s going to Maggie’s house, but he doesn’t tell Vicki that.

Joe may be resigning from the idiot’s union, but it looks like Vicki is ready to fill his place. David looks at her with undisguised hostility and tells her that he has indeed hidden her pen. When she asks where it is, he points to the closed-off part of the house. Vicki tells him no one can get in there; he shows her a key, and says that no one but he can. She is clearly on edge throughout the whole scene. After some protest, she follows this person she has just said she fears into a locked area to which he has said only he has the key. All that’s missing is a gigantic sign made of electric lights spelling out the words THIS IS A TRAP.

Future writing teams will gradually transform Vicki from the intelligent, appealing young woman we have come to know into a fool who will get them from one story point to another by doing or saying something stupid. We’ve seen Dumb Vicki in one or two fleeting moments already, but those moments haven’t really damaged the character yet. She is just on screen so much of the time, and is so consistently the innocent party in whatever conflict is going on, that when the writers paint themselves into a corner she is the only person available to take some insufficiently motivated action that will solve their problems for them.

This time, though, the episode is credited to not to any of those future writing teams, but to Vicki’s creator, Art Wallace. And her inexplicable action is going to stick us with her in a frustrating situation for days to come. As Vicki, Alexandra Moltke Isles follows David into the place of confinement with slow steps and her neck bent, as if she has resigned herself to being sacrificed. That’s an intriguing acting choice, but there is nothing at all in the writing to suggest that her spirit has been broken in that way. My theory is that Wallace, who will be leaving the show in a few days, is losing interest in the work, and Mrs Isles is trying to salvage what she can from a weak script.

Monday’s episode was so washed-out I thought it was a kinescope, and I said in my post that it was the first one of the series. Apparently it wasn’t- that episode is taken from a surviving videotape, just one that is in bad shape. This one really is the first episode to come down to us on kinescope. It really doesn’t look any worse than do prints like Monday’s.

PS- This is the only episode from the first 42 weeks that Danny Horn discussed on his tremendous blog Dark Shadows Every Day. He includes an analysis of it in the middle of a long riff about #1219, the “missing episode.” His remarks are hostile, unfair, misleading, and absolutely brilliant. I recommend it to everyone.

Episode 38: The Count in his castle

Vicki first met Matthew in the basement of Collinwood, back in episode 6. So the basement is Matthew’s territory. Not even the cottage where he lives is more so. Before we ever saw it, we heard him go on about how it was a gift from Liz. When we do see him there he’s having an uncharacteristic moment, baking muffins. The basement is the dusty, forbidding workspace is where we expect to find a dusty, forbidding workman like Matthew.

In his remarks on episode 37, Patrick McCray complained about “writing shortcuts that occasionally make Victoria look like a moron.” I didn’t quote him in my post on that episode, because I don’t agree with his assessment of the scene- he thinks Vicki is falling for Roger’s obvious lies, I think she is disregarding them because she knows she has him where he wants him and is about to squeeze some information out of him. But this opening scene is definitely a case of Idiot Plot. Vicki chased David into the basement in episode 6, only to be menaced by Matthew and scolded by Elizabeth; she followed the sound of the sobbing woman there in 37, to be yelled at by Roger. Those were moments of hot pursuit, when she could claim that in the heat of the moment she forgot Elizabeth’s prohibition on going to the basement. But now, she’s just looking for some books. There’s no reason she couldn’t have asked Liz about the books before going to the basement. What’s more, she’s going after those books only because David, last seen telling her he’d make her wish she had never come to the house, suggested she go after them. I realize she’s had a stressful few days, but unless she’s had a massive head injury off-camera, going to the basement at David’s suggestion is inexplicable.

Of course, the out-of-universe explanation is obvious- a new actor is taking over the role of Matthew, and they want to introduce him on this set. On the one hand, the scene is a reprise of the first introduction of Matthew, thereby making it clear that this is a new start for the character. On the other hand, because it is his territory, and our point of view character is trespassing there, he is all the more menacing to us than he would be if we met him in someone else’s space.

I think Danny Horn described Thayer David’s acting style well when he said that “He’s loud, and disruptive, and he plays to the balcony. Not this balcony, naturally; I mean the balcony in the theater next door.” He’s relatively subdued in his first outing as Matthew, but the appliances the makeup shop constructed on his face prepare us for the titanic approach he’ll be taking in the weeks ahead.

Matthew goes upstairs. In the foyer, a more or less neutral space among the residents of the estate, Liz gives him a shopping list to take into town. She then asks him into the drawing room, her home base. There, she asks him to do something horrible- take the blame for Roger’s car crash. He is shocked at the request, and asks for an explanation. She doesn’t give him one, but he agrees anyway. Thayer David’s anguished face shows the terrible price Matthew is paying for Liz’ insistence on covering up what really happened between David and Roger.

This encounter closes the story of Roger’s crash. Along with the Mystery of the Locked Room, Vicki’s search for something David might like, and the talk about ghosts, it ties Thayer David’s Matthew in to four of the stories we’ve been following.

We next see him in town, ordering coffee at the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn. There he’s tied in to a fifth story, The Revenge of Burke Devlin. The Inn is Devlin’s territory, and Matthew encounters him there. Still unhappy because of Liz’s shocking request, Matthew is in no mood to be diplomatic with the known enemy of the family he is sworn to serve. He tells Devlin that if he makes trouble for Liz, “I’ll kill you.” Devlin tries to reason with him, asking if it makes a difference whether the family deserves trouble, to which Matthew does not respond kindly.

Even before Matthew came to town, Devlin had met another Collinwood resident at the restaurant. Carolyn sits at his table and notices he is reading The Count of Monte Cristo. She summarizes the plot, and realizes that it is one of the sources of The Revenge of Burke Devlin story-line. She’s so self-aware it wouldn’t be surprising if she and Burke started gossiping about what the new writers coming on board next week have in mind for their characters. She drops the subject, and immediately starts wheedling him for a date. When he begs off, she deliberately leaves a ring behind.

Back at Collinwood, Carolyn and Vicki talk on the landing overlooking the foyer. This is the first conversation we’ve seen in that space. A couple of times, we’ve seen David Collins standing up there by himself, looking menacing, or as menacing as a not-very-tall nine year old boy could. In the years to come, a succession of villains will take turns declaring themselves to be Master of Collinwood by standing on this spot and looking at the camera. The last of these will be the ghost of Gerard, played by an adult actor about the same height as the nine year old David.

This time, the space is not being used to suggest menace, even though the camera is shooting up at the same drastic angle. Instead, it is a relatively intimate place, separated from the public-facing foyer by the stairs and leading to the bedrooms. Carolyn and Vicki are there because they are at home. Carolyn confides in Vicki about her plan to leave the ring where Burke would find it, obligating him to call her and return it. Vicki confides in Carolyn about the sobbing woman, and Carolyn admits to having heard her many times, and to having lied when Vicki asked her about the sounds her first morning in Collinwood. The friendship between Carolyn and Vicki is settling in as a wide-open information exchange, a regular channel not only to keep the audience up to date on what’s happened in previous episodes, but to make it possible for characters to learn enough about what’s going on to make plans and take action.

Back down in the foyer, Liz talks to Vicki about the basement. Vicki tells her that she can’t believe in ghosts; Liz assures her there’s no one being held in the locked room. Liz offers Vicki the key to the room and invites her to let herself into it and search it. Vicki declines the offer. Liz repeats it, doing everything she can to show that she has nothing to hide. Vicki declines again, and turns away. As soon as Vicki can’t see her, Liz’ face resolves into an expression of immense relief.

Over the closing credits, ABC staff announcer delivers the usual blurb for “Where the Action Is.” He trips over the title. It sounds like he’s stifling a laugh or is distracted or something. Unusual to hear him commit a blooper!

Episode 28: Just curious

I think I said everything I wanted to say about this one in the comment I left on John and Christine Scoleri’s Dark Shadows Before I Die. So here it is:

“Idiot Plot” is a term for a story that can go on only if the characters in it are dumber than the average member of the audience. When Vicki left the valve where David could steal it in episode 26, Dark Shadows had its first Idiot Plot.

Now, just two days later, we have our second. The restaurant is open for business, and Maggie says in so many words that Roger is a frequent customer there. So he should walk right in and lay hold of David. But unaccountably, he waits for Maggie to let him in. She turns her back on David, calls Roger by name, and declares that she’s been tricking David into staying, all while David is a few feet away. Even worse, we have a number of scenes suggesting that Maggie had searched the hotel extensively for David and failed to find him, when he was simply hiding in the very telephone booth she herself had used a few minutes before.

Art Wallace is the only credited writer for the first eight weeks of the show. I’m sure he had some help, but not enough, apparently- these two episodes not only disappoint viewers who expect a well-constructed drama, but also do serious harm to the characters of Vicki and Maggie. Vicki has to be so sweet and innocent that unless she’s also as smart as she’s seemed in the first five weeks, she’ll get pretty cloying pretty fast. And Maggie, whether it’s the original wised-up dame who’s everybody’s pal but nobody’s friend or her successor, the nicest girl in town, has to produce witty dialogue and see through people’s attempts to deceive her if she’s to contribute to the story. Casting either of them as Designated Idiot is a sure way to put her on an ice floe to oblivion.

Two other things:

Interesting to see the first scene between Maggie and David. Especially so knowing that these characters will become important to each other later on, but already so as confirmation that the hostility Maggie had expressed towards the Collinses in general in Episode 1 isn’t going to define her character.

The picture of Lyndon Johnson in the sheriff’s office is apparently there to promote ABC’s coverage of the Luci Johnson’s wedding that weekend, but it’s a very odd choice of image. You’d expect the president’s photograph in a government office to show him from the chest up, showing his full face, with his eyes looking at the viewer and a calm or cheerful expression. But this picture is an extreme closeup of his face in profile, and he appears to be wincing. On a wall otherwise decorated with wanted posters, it communicates something less than unqualified admiration for President Johnson. If, as Roger implied in episode 26, the sheriff owes his office to the support of the Collins family, the picture would suggest that the Collinses were not LBJ fans.

I’ll also mention that Marc Masse’s entry for this episode on his Dark Shadows from the Beginning features one of his most outlandish accounts of a control room conversation between director Lela Swift and executive producer Dan Curtis. If you miss the sensibility of the 1970s National Lampoon, you’ll enjoy reading it.

Episode 26: I want that valve!

At the end of episode 25, Vicki found the bleeder valve in David’s room, evidence that the boy tried to murder his father. In this one, she tells David she has the valve and leaves it in a drawer in her own room while she goes to tell Elizabeth about it. When Vicki and Elizabeth go to look at the valve, it is of course missing. Elizabeth chooses to believe that this means that she does not have to think any more about what Vicki has told her.

I lamented this in as comment on John and Christine Scoleri’s blog Dark Shadows Before I Die:

Watching the series first time through, it bothered me that Vicki didn’t bring the valve to the drawing room and show it to Liz. She knows David is a clever, mechanically competent little fellow, and no respecter of private property. Why on earth would she leave the valve in a dresser drawer which she knows he likes to riffle through and to which he has had considerable time to find or make a key?

That time, I could come up with an explanation. She is in shock, bewildered by the confirmation of the dark suspicions we’ve seen forming in her mind, and isn’t thinking straight.

(SPOILERS FOLLOW)

This time, though, I’m coming to the episode having seen the series through. This is the first time they resort to Idiot Plot- a story that would resolve itself immediately if the characters behaved as intelligently as would the average member of the audience. And it’s Vicki supplying the idiocy. Later on, they will rely heavily on Idiot Plot, and because she is so much the point of view character Vicki winds up as the Designated Idiot. That will ultimately destroy her character and drive her off the show. So I can’t help but feel sad now when I see this first appearance of Dumb Vicki.

The other scene is between Roger and the sheriff. In Collinwood, Elizabeth is trying to protect her image of David by forcing Vicki to pretend she hasn’t seen the valve; at the sheriff’s office, Roger is trying to impose his image on Burke by forcing the sheriff to arrest him. Vicki resists Elizabeth throughout this episode, but we are in suspense how long she will be able to hold out. The sheriff resists Roger, making a display of his blase attitude while Roger is in the room but showing great unease as soon as he leaves.