elizabeth collins stoddard – Page 6 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 282: Sense memories

We cut back and forth between an opulent estate called Collinwood and a mental hospital called Windcliff.

At Collinwood, we spend our time with well-meaning governess Vicki. From the beginning of Dark Shadows, Vicki has been the audience’s main point of view character. The audience is now made up chiefly of people who want to see how they are going to fit vampire Barnabas Collins into an ongoing series, and Barnabas’ principal concern is getting hold of a woman, erasing her personality, and replacing it with that of his lost love Josette. So of course Vicki is fascinated with Barnabas and fantasizes about being Josette.

Matriarch Liz has functioned as a blocking figure. Her goal has been to keep her secrets. Her actions in pursuit of that goal have slowed story development in a largely futile attempt to create suspense. She’s fresh out of secrets, but is still trying to put the brakes on. She keeps complaining that Vicki’s interest in Josette is unwholesome.

Liz has a point. Barnabas has settled on Vicki as the next subject of his experiment. To that end, he has given Vicki Josette’s music box. When he was trying his lunatic plan on Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, he had given Maggie the music box. Evidently the music box has some kind of magical power over the women to whom Barnabas gives it. When she opens it, Vicki sits for hours staring vacantly into space listening to its simple tune.

The previous night, Vicki had worn Josette’s dress at a costume party Barnabas hosted in his house on the estate. The party ended in a séance in which Josette spoke through Vicki. Liz mentions this possession as a sign that Vicki is becoming too involved with Josette. Vicki doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She blandly exclaims “It’s happened before!” Indeed, the show’s first séance, in #170 and #171, climaxed with Vicki channeling a message from Josette. Liz points out that this doesn’t make it better.

Vicki goes to Barnabas’ house to return the dress. She and Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie take it to Josette’s restored bedroom upstairs. There, she blissfully tells Willie she wishes she could wear Josette’s clothes all the time. Remembering what Barnabas did to Maggie and knowing his plans for Vicki, Willie winces. He hates the things Barnabas does, but is too far under his power to actively oppose him. Vicki goes on about how close she is coming to feel to Josette, and Willie winces harder. She tells him that she has been listening to the music box for hours at a time, and he shouts “You shouldn’t do that!” When she asks why not, he takes a second to come up with something that he can say. He tells her she might damage the mechanism. Still blissful, she says, “Oh, I’ll be careful.”

Willie tells Vicki that tomorrow is Josette’s birthday. Vicki is delighted with this information. She resolves to go to the cemetery and lay flowers on Josette’s grave. When she tells Liz of this plan, Liz objects to it. Because of Liz’ function as a blocking figure, her opposition implies that it will advance the plot. To appease Liz, Vicki agrees not to go alone, but to take Liz’ fellow narrative speed-bump Burke Devlin.

At Windcliff, Maggie is in session with her therapist, Dr Julia Hoffman. As a result of her time as Barnabas’ prisoner, Maggie has amnesia and can speak only with difficulty. In his effort to Josettify Maggie, Barnabas combined his own supernatural powers with sensory stimuli like the music box that were supposed to elicit the responses he had in mind. Now Julia is trying to recreate those stimuli in her effort to recover Maggie’s memories and restore her personality.

At one point, Maggie tells Julia about a sweet scent that regular viewers know to be that of Josette’s jasmine perfume. As she does so, music starts playing on the soundtrack that we have heard when Josette’s ghost has appeared. When this happened, my wife, Mrs Acilius, said “Josette is there.” Later in the episode, when Vicki is in Josette’s room with Willie, Vicki takes a whiff of the perfume. The music strikes up then too. Josette’s ghost hasn’t manifested since March- maybe the ghost’s musical cue is now the perfume’s.

Their use of sensory stimuli is not the only way in which Julia is a reverse-image reflection of Barnabas. Barnabas is a vampire, so we expect to hate him and oppose his plans. But he is also the character who makes the show fun to watch, so we find ourselves wanting to see more of him. Further, he evolves into a comic villain, with whom we identify as we see him scramble to keep his madcap schemes from backfiring. And the longer we see him, the more of actor Jonathan Frid’s personality comes through, and Frid seems to have been adorable.

Julia is a doctor trying to help a patient we know and care about, so we expect to like her and cheer her on. Yet she always seems more than a little sinister. She takes a stern, occasionally impatient tone with Maggie today, which we might think is part of her therapeutic technique. But in her previous appearance, in #265, she took the same tone with Maggie’s father, boyfriend, and family doctor, none of whom is her patient. More than once in that episode, she made remarks suggesting that she suspected that Maggie’s condition was the result of an encounter with an undead monster, then refused to explain what she meant. We wonder why she would withhold such information. At the end of today’s installment, she insists that Maggie return to a place where something terrible happened to her. When Maggie begs her not to make her go back there, we see a closeup of Julia’s face with a look of satisfaction that led Mrs Acilius to say “Julia can do ‘evil face’ as well as Barnabas can.”*

Julia’s grim satisfaction mirrors ours. Ever since Liz gave her great show of reluctance at Vicki’s plan to lay flowers at Josette’s grave, we’ve been wondering what kind of progress a stop at the cemetery could possibly represent for the story. Julia has unwittingly answered that question for us. The place she is going to take Maggie is, of course, that very cemetery.

*Mrs Acilius had a lot to say about Julia as Barnabas in reverse, this whole section is derived from her insights.

Episode 271: A secret you had no right to keep

A wedding is being held in the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood. Matriarch Liz is marrying seagoing con man Jason. Carolyn, Liz’s daughter by her first husband, Paul Stoddard, has a pistol in her purse, which she is planning to use to shoot Jason before the ceremony can be completed. Well-meaning governess Vicki is distressed, because Liz confided in her in #259 that she is marrying Jason only because he is blackmailing her. Liz killed Stoddard long ago and Jason buried the body in the basement, facts he will reveal if she does not comply with his demands. The other guests hate Jason, but they share neither Vicki’s understanding of the situation nor Carolyn’s sense of initiative, so they just stand around and scowl.

When the judge asks Liz if she takes Jason to be her lawful wedded husband, she exclaims that she cannot. She points to him and declares “I killed Paul Stoddard and that man was my accomplice.” Carolyn drops the gun, Vicki flashes a defiant look at Jason, and everyone else is stunned.

The judge excuses himself. He claims that he might be required to act as a judicial officer in a case that could arise from what Liz is about to say. That may not make sense in terms of the laws or canons of judicial conduct actually in effect in the State of Maine in 1967, where what he has already heard would be far too much to avoid being called as a witness. But it fits nicely with the logic of Soap Opera Law, in which neither the police nor the courts may be notified of any criminal matter until the prime suspect has completed his or her own investigation.

Carolyn says “You killed my father.” Before Liz can say much in response, Carolyn announces that she was about to kill Jason. Vicki’s boyfriend, Fake Shemp Burke Devlin, finds Carolyn’s gun. For some reason, Burke holds the gun up. He points it at whomever he is facing. When Jason announces he will be leaving the room, Burke is pointing the gun at him and forbids him to go. Again, giving orders to a person on whom you have a deadly weapon trained may be a felony in our world, but it is all well and good under Soap Opera Law.

Liz mentions that Vicki already knows that she killed Stoddard and that Jason has been blackmailing her. This prompts Liz’ brother Roger to tell Vicki “That was a secret you had no right to keep.” Liz responds that, had Vicki told anyone, she would have denied it and sent her away. Liz then describes the events of the night eighteen years before when she and Stoddard had their final showdown. We see them in flashback, on this same set.

Stoddard told Liz he was leaving her, never to return. She replied that she did not object to his going, but that the suitcase full of bonds, jewels, and other valuable assets he was planning to take was Carolyn’s property and would have to stay.

When the show started, just over a year ago, Stoddard’s disappearance had been 18 years in the past. So it still is, moving its date from 1948 to 1949. At that time, Stoddard was last seen six months before Carolyn was born. Later, they would say she was a newborn when her father vanished. In the flashback today, he answers Liz’ assertion of Carolyn’s right to the contents of the suitcase by saying that he has been putting up with the child for two years. We saw her birth-date as 1946 the other day, so apparently they are planning to stick with the idea that she was a toddler when Stoddard was last seen.

Stoddard and Liz quarrel over the suitcase. He confirms that he and his friend Jason have a plan to convert its contents into a big bundle of cash. He is walking away from her when she takes a poker from the fireplace and hits him on the back of the head. This may be another deed entirely unjustifiable by real-world law, but under Soap Opera Law any act committed against a man who openly despises his two-year old daughter and tries to steal from her is outside the jurisdiction of the courts.

Stoddard fell to the floor, bled, and remained very still after Liz hit him. Shocked by what she had done, she reeled out of the drawing room and closed the doors behind her. As she stood in the foyer wishing she were dead, Jason entered the house. Liz sent him into the drawing room to look at Stoddard. He came out, told her Stoddard was dead, and offered to bury him for her. After all, everyone in town knew he was leaving- there need be no scandal to cloud Carolyn’s future.

Liz asks why Jason wants to help her- he was Stoddard’s friend, planning to help Stoddard steal from her. Jason explains that Stoddard is beyond help now. Liz goes along with his plan.

In this flashback, Jason’s Irish accent is convincingly realistic. It sounds like he’s from Antrim, or someplace else in Norn Iron. That’s a contrast with what we’ve heard so far, when he’s been more than a little reminiscent of this guy:

My in-universe, fanfic theory is that Jason hadn’t been home or spent much time with other Irishmen in the years between 1949 and 1967, and so his accent drifted into a music hall Oyrish. My out-of-universe theory is that Dennis Patrick spent some time with a dialect coach after joining the show, but by the time he had learned to sound plausible Jason’s silly accent was already such an established part of the character that he couldn’t change it.

When Jason was done with his work downstairs, he showed Liz the storage room where he buried Stoddard in the floor. We got a long, long look at that floor in #249, when it was clean and tidy and there were many boxes and crates on it. When Jason left it to Liz “18 years ago,” there was dirt piled up all over the floor, a shovel in the corner, and few boxes or crates. Evidently Liz cleaned it up herself and organized its contents at some point. That doesn’t fit with the idea she had before #249, that a person entering the room would immediately discover her secret. Since Liz had often gone into the room in the early months of the show, it never had made sense she would believe such a thing, but it is annoying to be reminded of it.

In voiceover, Liz tells us that when Jason left her with the key to the room she knew she would be a prisoner of the house forever. The episode then ends, after less than 18 minutes of scripted content. That’s the shortest installment so far. The closing credits roll slowly, so slowly that they run out of music. The names scroll by in silence for 25 seconds before ABC staff announcer Bob Lloyd says “Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis production.”

That cannot have been Plan A. This episode has eight speaking parts, two segments of events set in different decades, voiceover narration, a costume change, etc. So there was plenty of stuff that might have proven impossible in dress rehearsal, requiring a quick rewrite that might have left them running a little short. But they’ve been ambitious before, and have never ended up like this. So I suspect that the late script change that got them into trouble was more complicated than that.

Art Wallace’s original story bible for Dark Shadows, titled Shadows on the Wall, called for the mystery of Vicki’s parentage to be resolved at the same time as the blackmail plot. Wallace’s first idea was that Vicki would be shown to be the illegitimate daughter of Paul Stoddard, and that Liz’ interest in her well-being began with guilt after she responded to the news of Vicki’s existence by attacking Stoddard. Wallace also said that if it were more story-productive, they could say that Vicki was Liz’ illegitimate daughter.

Casting Alexandra Moltke Isles as Vicki committed them to that second course of action. Famously, when Joan Bennett first saw Mrs Isles on set she mistook her for her daughter, and the show has often capitalized on their resemblance to present Vicki as a reflection of Liz. For example, notice how the two women stand in this shot from today’s episode:

Pay particular attention to their legs- it’s the same posture

Moreover, the ghost of Josette Collins took a lively interest in Vicki in the first 39 weeks of the show, and Josette is specifically a protector of members of the Collins family. If Vicki is Paul’s illegitimate daughter, she is not a Collins and not linked to Josette.

The only advantage we’ve ever seen of establishing Vicki as a non-Collins would be the possibility of a romance between her and Roger. Since Vicki the foundling-turned-governess is Jane Eyre and Roger the father of her charge is Mr Rochester, this is an obvious direction to go. The show took a few feints towards such a relationship in the early days, but those clearly led nowhere. Vicki came to town in #1 on the same train as Burke, so they are fated to get together. Roger and Burke openly hate each other and often seem to secretly love each other, making for a potentially explosive love triangle if Vicki comes between them, but neither Roger and Burke’s much-advertised enmity nor their barely concealed homoerotic connection ever developed into a very interesting story. The whole thing fizzled out completely months ago. So there doesn’t seem to be a point in resolving the question of Vicki’s parentage any other way than with Liz admitting maternity.

So the first question is, when did they decide that this episode would not include that admission? The short running time would seem to suggest that it was only a few days before taping.

The second question is, why did they make that decision? Liz’ line today that she would fire Vicki if she had betrayed her secret, coupled with all the remarks she has been making to Vicki in the last few weeks about how Carolyn is the one and only person she really cares about, would suggest that the producers and writers are thinking of moving away from the idea of Vicki as Liz’ natural daughter. But the directors are still committed to it, as are the actresses.

We begin to suspect that the producers and writers are hoping that the viewers who have joined the show since the vampire came on in April won’t care about Vicki’s origin, so that they can just drop the whole thing. Since the only storylines they have going are the blackmail arc, which Liz is bringing to its end with her confession today, and the vampire arc, in which nothing at all is happening at the moment, you might think they would be glad to fill some screen time with Vicki and the rest of them reorienting themselves around a newly revealed family relationship. But, maybe not!

Episode 269: To recognize hopelessness

Matriarch Liz stands at the edge of a cliff. Rather than let seagoing con man Jason McGuire blackmail her into marrying him, she has resolved to throw herself to her death on the rocks below. As she takes a running start, well-meaning governess Vicki grabs her. Vicki talks Liz out of killing herself, and Liz hugs her.

In #140, Vicki had rescued strange and troubled boy David Collins, hauling him to safety as he hung from this same cliff. He too reacted by hugging Vicki. David had been impeding the progress of the story by refusing to spend time with his mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Since Vicki is our point-of-view character, she represents the audience. To embrace her is to embrace the viewers, and to promise to do something we will find interesting, or at least intelligible. Laura’s arc consumed most of the non-paranormal story elements and committed Dark Shadows to become a supernatural thriller/ horror story.

The blackmail arc is meant to finish off the few daylight-world themes left unresolved and to complete that transformation. It has been slow and monotonous, taking a story that Art Wallace had to pad pretty heavily to fill a half hour in 1954 and stretching it over sixteen weeks. Liz’ suicidal moping has been terribly dull. As David’s embrace of Vicki at the cliff’s edge signaled that the real story of Laura and David could start and bring Dark Shadows 1.0 to its conclusion, so Liz’ embrace of Vicki signals that the she will now take action to get Dark Shadows 2.0 off the ground. That signal is amplified a moment later. Liz and Vicki are back in the drawing room, and Liz tells Vicki that she has made her want to live again.

Jason enters the drawing room. He presents Liz with a wedding ring and asks her to try it on. When she refuses to wear it before the wedding, he insists. Liz has already told Vicki about the terrible secret Jason is using to control her. Vicki offers to stay, and looks ready for a fight. The idea of a battle-royale among Vicki, Liz, and Jason is exciting, to the extent that anything within the blackmail story can be exciting, but it doesn’t come off. Liz looks confident and tells Vicki that she can handle the situation herself now. Vicki goes, and we have another dreary scene between Liz and Jason.

We cut to the Blue Whale tavern, where Vicki’s boyfriend, fake Shemp Burke Devlin, is using the pay phone. Burke is talking with a private investigator who has sent him a report about Jason. Seems like a call you’d want to take in a more private setting, but now that they have to keep the Old House set up all the time they no longer have the studio space to build the set for Burke’s hotel room. So Burke lives in the tavern now, and runs his business from there.

Vicki joins Burke. He shows her the report. Jason is wanted by the police in port cities around the world. In no country do the authorities have enough evidence against him to send an extradition request to the USA, but it does explain why he chose this time to put his sea papers away and try his luck with Liz.

Vicki and Burke go back to the house and show the report to Liz. She doesn’t care about it, and Burke admits that he has no means of fighting Jason. Jason kisses Liz, and Burke and Vicki see her recoil in disgust. If Liz has found the means to oppose Jason and break out of the dead end he has confined her to, neither they nor we can see what that means is.

Kissing the bride-to-be. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 262: Hand the world over to madmen and murderers

On Thursday, reclusive matriarch Liz admitted to well-meaning governess Vicki that she is being blackmailed. Eighteen years ago, Liz killed her husband, Paul Stoddard. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire then buried Stoddard in the basement. Now, Jason is threatening to expose this secret unless Liz marries him.

Today, Liz asks Vicki to be the legal witness at her wedding to Jason. Vicki demurs, saying that she might be compelled to speak up when the officiant asks if there is anyone who present who knows why these two people should not be joined in matrimony. The conversation then shades off into Vicki urging Liz to share her secret with her daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn. Liz won’t look directly at Vicki when Carolyn’s name is mentioned.

Word is spreading that Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is dead. Vicki had just received that news when Liz brought up the wedding. Alexandra Moltke Isles does a fine job of expressing Vicki’s emotional tumult as she reels from one kind of shock to another. When Vicki breaks the news of Maggie’s death to Carolyn and then quarrels with Carolyn about her plan to marry motorcycle enthusiast Buzz, Mrs Isles reprises this transition from fresh bereavement to festering conflict, again quite effectively.

Carolyn goes out with Buzz, and Vicki goes for a walk on the beach with her boyfriend, Burke Devlin. Each episode begins with a voiceover which Mrs Isles delivers in character as Vicki. Typically, these consist of remarks about the sea and the weather which have some vaguely metaphorical connection to what’s happening on the show. While Vicki sits with Burke and stares out at the water, she launches into one of these monologues. In response, my wife, Mrs Acilius, started laughing so hard we had to pause the streaming. When Burke joins in with the observation that it is getting dark and “may get darker”- sometimes that happens as the evening goes on, seems to be some kind of pattern there- we both burst out laughing and had to pause it again. Before we restarted it that second time, Mrs Acilius asked “What does it say about us that we are sitting here watching this? That we choose to watch it when we’ve seen it before?” I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that one.

Vicki and Fake Shemp. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Vicki gets home shortly before Carolyn. Carolyn tells Vicki and Liz that after she saw Maggie’s boyfriend Joe walking down the street looking sad, she just wanted to go home and mourn. After Carolyn leaves them alone together, Vicki again urges Liz to tell her the truth. Vicki judges that Carolyn would listen to her sympathetically in the mood she is in now. Liz says she might tell Carolyn tomorrow, Vicki says that Carolyn might not be in the same frame of mind tomorrow, Liz says she can’t do it now.

In fact, Maggie is alive- her doctor decided to promote the story that she is dead as a lamebrained scheme to keep the person who tried to kill her from trying again. The blackmail plot, on the other hand, has barely shown a sign of life since it first arrived on the show ten weeks ago.

Jason is supposed to sweep away the last non-paranormal story elements left over from the period before Dark Shadows became a supernatural thriller/ horror story in December 1966. So far he has managed to disclose to the audience, but not to the other characters, why Liz hasn’t left home since the night Stoddard was last seen. That wasn’t an especially interesting question, as they have never shown us anyplace she would want to go, and it’s the only thing he has cleared up.

Another unanswered question is the one that led Vicki to come to Collinwood in the first place. She grew up in a foundling home, with no idea of who her parents were. The show has been hinting heavily that Liz is Vicki’s mother. Indeed, when Jason was brought on the show, the plan was that the grand finale of his storyline would confirm this. If that is still the plan, then the relationships among Vicki, Liz, and Carolyn are due for a drastic upheaval. That prospect lends a certain interest to the scenes among these characters today.

Closing Miscellany

This episode originally aired on 27 June 1967, the first anniversary of the broadcast of #1.

From #1 until #248, dashing action hero Burke Devlin was played by Mitchell Ryan. Ryan showed up at the set too drunk to work when they were supposed to tape #254 and was fired off the show. Today announcer Bob Lloyd tells us that “The part of Burke Devlin will be played by Anthony George.” There was never very much on Dark Shadows for a dashing action hero to do, and now that the most popular character on it is a vampire there isn’t going to be. It was only Ryan’s star quality that kept the character on the show so long.

Anthony George had appeared in feature films in the 1950s, had guest-starred in several prime-time shows, had been a regular cast member on the hit series The Untouchables, and had played one of the leads on a series called Checkmate. When the original audience saw him, many of them would have recognized him as a famous actor and would have expected the character to go on to do something important. Evidently they haven’t given up on Burke yet. But they had better come up with a story for him- George may have had a terrific resume, but he doesn’t have any fraction of Ryan’s charisma.

Unfortunately, they have given up on Buzz. He is on screen only briefly today, and we don’t see him again. Worst of all, while his first three episodes left us with the impression that he could not fail to be hilarious, he manages not to be even a little bit funny in this final appearance. He is just nasty and inconsiderate, demanding that Carolyn forget about whatever it is that’s bothering her and come to the loud party he’s planned.

Getting Buzz off the show the day Anthony George comes on as Burke does solve one problem. As of this episode, the three young women on Dark Shadows all have boyfriends. Maggie has Joe, played by Joel Crothers; Vicki has Burke, played by Anthony George; and Carolyn has Buzz, played by Michael Hadge. Those three actors were all gay. That wasn’t widely known at the time (except perhaps in the case of Mr Hadge, who really does not seem to be making an effort to keep the closet door shut while playing Buzz,) but now that everyone knows all about it, it does seem to be a sign that the show was spending a lot of energy on things that aren’t going anywhere.

Episode 259: Mustache, must tell

Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, matriarch of the ancient and esteemed Collins family of Collinsport, Maine, receives a telephone call. Her daughter Carolyn is in jail. Driving drunk, Carolyn barely missed a pedestrian, smashing instead into a tree. The almost-victim rescued Carolyn from the car moments before the fuel tank exploded, and Carolyn rewarded her with some nasty remarks. Liz is upset that her brother Roger isn’t available to pick Carolyn up from the police station.

Well-meaning governess Vicki suggests that Liz go to the police station herself. Liz hasn’t left home under her own power for eighteen years, and so reacts to this idea with dread. Vicki talks her into it, giving Alexandra Moltke Isles a chance to show that there is some substance to her character. Looking in through the front door, we see Liz taking a series of halting, forced steps to Vicki’s car.*

Seen in isolation from the rest of the series, Liz’ march is a poignant evocation of agoraphobia. But the Liz-is-a-recluse story is a dead end. They never showed us anyplace Liz would want to go, and the reason for her staying in the house was exposed in #249 as nonsensical. Still, they’ve been presenting Liz as a recluse from the beginning, so sending her into town feels like a promise that something big will happen.

In the police station, we see that Sheriff Patterson has grown a mustache. He didn’t have one when last we saw him, in #248, and he won’t have one when next we see him, in #272. So this is our only chance to appreciate it.

Carolyn is doing a “teen rebel” bit. This would have been one thing earlier in the series, when she was supposed to be fresh out of high school and wildly capricious. But she took charge of the family business for a month early in the spring of 1967, and has been relatively level-headed since. When she makes sassy remarks to the sheriff, they are just throwing all that character development out the window.

Liz shows up, to the sheriff’s amazement and Carolyn’s. Carolyn recovers from the shock, and claims she is not impressed by Liz’ leaving the house. Liz supposedly stayed there for eighteen years waiting for Carolyn’s father, Paul Stoddard, to come back. Now she is divorcing Stoddard and marrying seagoing con man Jason McGuire. If Stoddard means nothing to Liz anymore, what’s the big deal about going into town? Carolyn then makes some superheated remarks about Liz’ disloyalty to Stoddard. Finally, she refuses to leave with Liz. She insists on spending the night in a cell.

In #244, Liz tried to tell Carolyn that her father was a terrible man who never loved anyone. Carolyn became upset and wouldn’t listen to her, then jumped to believe Jason’s stories that Stoddard was a fine fellow who doted on her. That was understandable as a first reaction to dismal news, but we’ve never seen any other indication that Carolyn is especially hung up on the father who disappeared from the house when she was an infant. All the shouting about “my father!” comes out of nowhere. The scene amounts to nothing.

Back in the drawing room, Liz has a conversation with Jason. She has agreed to marry him because he has threatened that if she does not he will reveal to the police that she killed Stoddard and he buried him in the basement. The blackmail plot has been dragging on for months, and we have yet to see anything happen between Liz and Jason that didn’t happen in the first five minutes they were on camera. At this point, scenes like this are just a test of the audience’s endurance.

Upstairs in Collinwood, Vicki hears sobbing in Liz’ bedroom. She calls to her, and lets herself in. She apologizes for urging her to see Carolyn. She suspects that Liz has something she wants to say, and gently presses her to say it. Liz finally confesses that she killed Stoddard. The whole scene is very effective, a strong conclusion to a weak outing.

*It became clear in #232 and #233 that Vicki has a car. How and when she came into possession of this vehicle has not been explained.

Episode 223: She isn’t watching over us anymore

Strange and troubled boy David Collins is in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood with his aunt, reclusive matriarch Liz. David laments to Liz that he can no longer feel the tutelary presence of the ghost of their ancestor Josette Collins. For more than 24 weeks, from #70 when the Old House was introduced to #191 with the conclusion of the storyline centered on David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, the Old House had been Josette’s sanctuary. Now it is “a new house, a new place,” and she’s gone. David is particularly sad that the house’s new occupant, the newly arrived Barnabas Collins, has removed Josette’s portrait from its place above the mantle in the front parlor and plans to hang a portrait of himself there.

Back in the great house on the estate, David sees dashing action hero Burke Devlin. He sits on the stairs with Burke and talks about his feelings concerning Barnabas, Josette, the portrait, and the Old House. Burke suggests he ask Barnabas to give him the portrait. David is thrilled by this suggestion, and declares that he will go to the Old House at once to ask him. Burke points out that Barnabas probably isn’t home. That doesn’t make an impression on David, but he does stop before going out the door. Burke asks if he is afraid to go there alone, apparently preparing to volunteer to go with him. David says he isn’t afraid, but doesn’t explain what feeling he does have that is holding him back.

David goes to the Old House and calls to Barnabas. No one answers. The howling of dogs fills the air from every side, frightening David. He calls to Josette. He does not feel her presence. The doors slam shut on their own; when he runs to them, he cannot open them. We conclude with a closeup of his terrified face.

Those three scenes might have appeared in a good episode, but this is not that episode. In fact, it is a real stinker, very possibly the single worst we have seen so far. There is one funny line, when Liz remarks that Willie Loomis’ “illness appears to have caused him no end of convenience.” And the actors and director do what they can. But the script defeats them all.

As David Collins, David Henesy appears to be delivering the lines Ron Sproat actually wrote when he says things like “If I blame [Barnabas] for anything, it’s for changing things around [at the Old House]… I just hope he hasn’t changed [the Old House.]” Some of the words that come out of his mouth may be flubs, but most of it is of a piece with what the adult actors are saying in response to him, and nothing anyone says is close to intelligible. This is one of the rare episodes when Henesy winds up roaming about the sets declaiming like some kid actor in a 60s TV show.

As well-meaning governess Vicki, Alexandra Moltke Isles is trying so hard to remember her own pointless lines that she stands stiff as a board every time she is on camera. Vicki and David’s scenes were the heart of the first 39 weeks of the show, often in spite of writing nearly as bad as what the cast is stuck with today, but their conversation on the stairs today is terribly dull to watch.

Joan Bennett and Mitch Ryan each had star quality in abundance, and so they manage to hold their scenes together. The opening scene between Liz and Vicki has some snap to it, David’s conversation with Burke is appealing, and when Liz and Burke have a scene in the study arguing about a business deal she made with a man called Hackett* things start to crackle. But even in that scene Bennett and Ryan stumble over Sproat’s awful dialogue and wind up in the ditch more than once. Her frequent glances at the teleprompter and a couple of alarmingly long pauses from him turn the crackle to a fizzle well before it is over.

Burke and Liz argue about the Hackett deal

The scene between David and Liz in the Old House is another defeat for Joan Bennett. David Collins’ nonsensical lines and David Henesy’s flailing attempts to find some kind of through line in them leave her standing in mid-air, and the scene goes on so long they repeat every point they have to make at least twice. By the third time through the sparse material they have to work with, not even she could make it interesting.

Moreover, regular viewers will be puzzled when Liz tells David over and over that the Old House and its contents belong to Barnabas. On Monday, in #220, Barnabas and Vicki had a conversation in the foyer of the great house about the fact that he was not going to own the Old House. There hasn’t been any indication of a change in that plan, but Liz goes out of her way to say three times, not that Barnabas is staying in the house, but that it is his. We are left wondering what she is talking about.

Burke and Vicki spend some time together. They stand in front of the portrait of Barnabas Collins in the foyer of the great house talking about Barnabas’ decision to hire Willie as his servant. Burke remarks that “Cousin Barnabas doesn’t seem too bright.” That’s a fun moment, but then Vicki sticks up for Barnabas and they have nowhere to go with it. The scene doesn’t end until they’ve spent a few more moments standing there jabbering.

Burke and Vicki sit on the sofa together in the drawing room. The nonverbal communication between them raises the question the show has been teasing for some time, whether Burke and Vicki are dating. As with Burke’s paternal moment with David, it shows that the actors and directors can create little stories to keep us interested when they can keep the dialogue out of the way.

Burke says he’s going to talk with Liz about a business matter that he can’t tell Vicki about. He then tells Vicki why he is concerned about the matter. These mutually contradictory lines are no better than David being upset that Barnabas has changed the Old House, and just hoping that he hasn’t changed the Old House. For a moment, friend Burke doesn’t seem too bright.

*A name we have never heard before on Dark Shadows.

Episode 47: Three calls for the ghosts of Collinwood, and none for me

Carolyn finds her mother playing the piano in the drawing room. They have a very sweet conversation about the good times they had when Carolyn was growing up. Liz laughs when her daughter calls her a “bit of a kook.”

Carolyn wants to talk about Roger and Bill Malloy; Liz doesn’t, but can’t help listening when Carolyn tells her that Roger had declared that he wouldn’t be anyone’s sacrificial lamb. Liz is troubled by what Bill had told her about Roger and the manslaughter charge that sent Burke Devlin to prison ten years before, and wonders if the sacrificial lamb has been led to the altar.

In this scene between Liz and Carolyn, we see a relationship we can care about. In the concern the two women have for Roger, we can see their wish that he would just be part of the good times, not a source of heartache.

Roger is in his office, where Bill had told him, Sam Evans, and Burke he wanted to meet them at 11 PM sharp. It’s 11:30 when we first see the three of them sitting around wondering where Bill is. Burke wants to keep waiting, the others decide to leave. Roger tells Burke that he wants to give him his pen back, feels for it in his pocket, and says he must have left it at home.

The three men in the office don’t have anything interesting to do today. They mention that they’ve spent their time talking about the weather and the price of sardines; it’s a wonder that three New England men with nothing in particular to say to each other on an August evening wouldn’t talk about the Red Sox, but I suppose the club had a bad enough season in 1966 that it would just have added to the gloom.

Roger comes home, apparently quite happy that Bill never showed up and the meeting ended without any new information for Burke. Liz confronts him in the drawing room. She tells him that Bill had told her he thought Roger, not Burke, was responsible for the manslaughter ten years ago, and demands Roger tell her the truth. He emphatically denies Bill’s charges. For good measure, he adds more lies, denying that Bill had said the same thing to him. Liz leaves him alone in the drawing room. Out of her sight, he looks stricken.

In yesterday’s episode, the clock in the foyer at Collinwood chimed at 10:10 and again at 10:30 pm. In today’s, it chimes at 11:10 and 11:30. We saw the hands on the clock each time, and today Carolyn even says that it is 11:10 immediately before it chimes. So it isn’t a blooper- they really want us to think that the clock chimes at 10 minutes and 30 minutes after the hour. That’s just a weird thing to set your clock to do, is what I’m saying. Staying home for 18 years isn’t the only kooky thing about Liz.

Episode 33: The one with Harvey Keitel

At Collinwood, Liz tells Carolyn that David won’t be going away just because he tried to murder his father. “Things will go on just as before.” On the other hand, Carolyn should marry Joe and leave the house, because “You’re the only one of us who can have a sane, happy life.” I suppose we’ve all seen that in real life, someone swinging wildly between deep denial and exaggerated despair. Two forms of learned helplessness, I guess.

At the Blue Whale, Joe is getting well and truly sloshed. Burke joins him at his table, interrupting a conversation between Joe and his whiskey glass. Joe tells Burke that he doesn’t like him, expresses his frustration with Carolyn’s refusal to get married, then goes to Collinwood, roaring drunk, and tells Carolyn, Liz, and Vicki what he thinks of them.

One thing Joe thinks is that Carolyn is doomed to be a spinster. Considering that she’s supposed to be about seventeen, that does call to mind Barnabas’ line to Carolyn in the 2012 Dark Shadows movie, “Fifteen? And no husband?”

Marc Masse brings this point out well on his Dark Shadows from the Beginning, and argues that the depiction of Carolyn may be one of the things that sunk the show with young viewers between the end of the first month and the introduction of the vampire:

You have to wonder what kind of impression the character of Carolyn Stoddard would have made to young viewers in 1966. Here she is having grown up in a mansion with forty rooms and her only option in life is to be married off before her eighteenth birthday to a local fisherman, or else face a life of lonely spinsterhood. In that respect, Dark Shadows seems to belong to the sensibilities of previous decades.

This paragraph is part of an in-depth discussion of Dark Shadows’ place on ABC’s schedule, its ratings, the show that preceded it in its time-slot, and Art Wallace’s rather antiquated view of the world. It’s all very informative, highly recommended.

When Joe passes out on the couch, Vicki goes to town. She goes to the Blue Whale, where Burke asks if she’s looking for someone. “I just found him,” she replies. Obviously, she’s talking about Harvey Keitel, who is dancing a few feet away from her.

That Harvey Keitel was once an extra on Dark Shadows is pretty interesting. If he took that job, clearly he would have taken a speaking part. I gave some thought to parts I wish he had taken in comments on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day four times: here (on episode 470,) here (on episode 769,) here (on episode 1057,) and here (on episode 1137.)

Episode 32: Where all criminals belong

In today’s compare-and-contrast, we see the sheriff and Bill Malloy demonstrating how mentally healthy people might react to the idea that a nine year old boy has devised and executed a plan to murder his father. Then we go to Collinwood, where we see how Liz and Roger react to the idea.

The sheriff can’t bring himself to say out loud what the evidence is leading him to suspect David has done. Bill can say it only in part, and then only to express shock and bewilderment.

The scenes between Liz and Roger in this episode are among the strongest in the entire series. Roger is quite drunk, almost giddy, almost laughing at the fact that his son tried to kill him. Liz cycles through a half dozen intense emotions before finally accepting the fact that David is the culprit. She orders Roger to lie to the sheriff and say that what happened to his car was a simple accident, that no one was at fault.

In response to her explanation that this is the sort of thing the Collinses have always done, Roger brings up his suspicion that David may not be a Collins at all. David was born less than nine months after Roger and Laura* were married; she’d been Burke’s girl… Liz won’t hear such things, and insists that David is a Collins, that he belongs to all of the ancestors. She blames Roger for raising David in a home where he knew nothing but hate from the moment he was born, hate he couldn’t understand or cope with.

Roger insists that David be sent away to a mental hospital; Liz says no, that he will stay in the house, that “Miss Winters and I” will give him the home life he needs. Her mention of “Miss Winters” in this connection makes it clear that Vicki is central to Liz’ plans for the future, whatever those might be.

The sheriff shows up. He’s taking his time to get to the point. Roger cuts him off: “Is it about David?” At that, even the background music falls silent. The sheriff starts talking. Liz jumps in and says that the sheriff should drop the investigation, that it was all just an accident. The sheriff looks uneasily from Liz to Roger and back again, and finally agrees to do so.

In the coda, Roger tells Liz that she will regret covering up for David. He gives her a look of contempt that is among the most powerful things I’ve ever seen on a screen. Liz is totally alone now; Roger will obey her, but he’ll never respect her again. Joan Bennett was pushed to the margins of the show in later years, but she really did fill her “Starring” credit in these first months. It isn’t every show that would present us the leading lady devastated like this.

*Aside from the prologue delivered by Alexandra Moltke Isles, there are no surviving cast members in this episode. As of 9 August 2022, it is the earliest episode of which that can be said.

**Laura’s name is first mentioned here.

Episode 25: A neat way of managing people

The episode revolves around a letter to Victoria from the Hammond Foundling Home. The letter reports that no one connected with the Home had ever heard of the Elizabeth Collins Stoddard or any of the other Collinses before the letter came offering Vicki the job as David’s governess. This letter has set Elizabeth into a panic, since it exposes as a lie her story that Roger was friends with someone connected to the Home and that that person had recommended her. It sets David into an even more extreme panic, since he is terrified that his father will send him away to some kind of institution where children are kept and the Hammond Foundling Home is such an institution.

In her panic, Elizabeth demands that Roger sit down with Vicki and corroborate her lie. Roger is worried that Burke, who has hired private investigators to look into Vicki’s background, will discover some piece of information that will damage the family, and wants Elizabeth to confide in him. He is insistent enough about this to raise the audience’s hopes that in some future episode, we will get answers about Vicki through dialogue between the two of them. For now, she shuts him down by threatening to throw him out of the house unless he obeys her.

When Roger does talk with Vicki, she reminds him that she had asked him if she knew anything about her or about the reason she was hired when they first met. He had said no, and in every way showed bafflement about how Elizabeth heard of her. He tries to explain that away by saying that he was distracted by worry about Burke, and tries to deflect further questions by saying that his contact is a donor who wishes to remain anonymous.

Vicki is obviously unconvinced. Alexandra Moltke Isles has strabismus, and in her closeups during the scene with Roger she turns this to her advantage. Her eyes seem to be moving independently of each other, a more polite expression than eye-rolling, but just as effective at communicating disbelief. Marc Masse captured the effect quite well in this still image, on his Dark Shadows from the Beginning:

Roger’s remark to Elizabeth in this line, that she has “a neat way of managing people,” applies equally well to Vicki in her scene with him. At the end of the conversation, she knows that he was lying, and he knows that she knows. She also knows that he is under his sister’s thumb, not a threat to her position no matter how uncomfortable he may find her presence on the staff, and he knows that she knows that.

David’s panic leads him to take a less devious path than does his aunt, but ultimately an even more disastrous one. He steals the letter from Vicki. His father catches him with it and returns it to her.

Vicki herself is less concerned with the letter than with a thought we saw take shape in the back of her mind at the end of episode 23. She asks David about the magazines on auto mechanics he likes to read, about how he learns to put things together and take them apart. David responds with a denial that he sabotaged his father’s car; Vicki calmly replies that she hadn’t accused him of that.

Vicki comes into the drawing room and tells Elizabeth that David has been acting strangely ever since his father’s car went off the road, that when the sheriff came he was overwhelmed with the thought that he would be arrested, etc. Elizabeth dismisses the topic brusquely, seeing no significance in it. Vicki persists in the topic, reminding her that the sheriff said they should try to think of someone other than Burke who might want to kill Roger. Elizabeth declares “There is no one else”; at that, Roger sashays into the room and declares “Except my loving son, of course.”

Elizabeth has even less patience with this remark from Roger than with whatever it is Vicki is saying, and moves along so that Roger can tell Vicki the lie she has ordained. In the course of that conversation, she again says that they don’t actually know that Burke was the saboteur, a point that is no more meaningful to Roger than it had been to his sister.

Afterward, she goes back to her room and finds that David has stolen the letter again. She goes to his room to look for it. She doesn’t find it. Instead, she finds the bleeder valve, evidence that her suspicions are correct.