Tag: mitch ryan

Episode 64: Collinwood breeds murderers

Dashing action hero Burke Devlin goes to the local tavern, The Blue Whale. He sees Matthew Morgan, maniacally devoted servant of his foes, the wealthy Collins family. Matthew demands that Burke leave town. When Burke refuses, Matthew calmly informs Burke that he will kill him. Mitch Ryan plays Burke’s reaction to this announcement with a priceless look of disbelief. There’s a flicker of light in his eyes in the first second of the reaction, and he holds it long enough to be hilarious to watch:

Burke's reaction
Burke is stunned by Matthew’s casual announcement

Their conversation devolves into a bar fight. After the sheriff breaks it up, Ryan again has an opportunity for a memorable facial expression:

Burke recovering from the bar fight
Burke recovering from the bar fight

Burke has been obnoxious enough, and Thayer David’s Matthew is engaging enough, that we found ourselves cheering Matthew on and laughing when Burke lost the fight.

In the sheriff’s office, both men get stern scoldings, Matthew for assaulting Burke, Burke for interfering with the police investigation of the death of beloved local man Bill Malloy. The sheriff releases both, warning Burke to stay away from the estate of Collinwood and Matthew to stay on it. Alone in the office, he calls reclusive matriarch Liz to warn her that Burke might be coming to Collinwood, and asking her to call him if he does.

Liz tells first the sheriff, then her daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, that she doesn’t think Burke will come to the estate. The sheriff had previously assured Matthew that Burke wouldn’t go there “if he knows what’s good for him.” If soap opera characters knew what was good for them, they wouldn’t get much screen time, so of course the episode ends with Burke entering the house.

Episode 49: Where are we all heading?

Maggie Evans is working the counter in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. We open with her on the telephone, explaining to her father Sam that she hasn’t seen Bill Malloy. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin comes in, orders breakfast, and asks Maggie if she’s seen Bill Malloy. Hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell comes in, scowls at his bête noire Devlin, and asks Maggie if she’s seen Bill Malloy. Flighty heiress Carolyn Stoddard comes in. Carolyn already knows that Maggie hasn’t seen Bill Malloy, so she talks about her car.

Maggie and Carolyn are both cheerful when the episode opens, and by the end the men have dragged them down into gloom. Joe is in a sour mood, not only because shares the universal worry about where Bill Malloy is, but also because of the steadily mounting evidence that Carolyn doesn’t have any intention of getting married. Burke is in a towering rage because of his suspicion that either the dastardly Roger Collins or the drunken Sam Evans did away with Bill Malloy to prevent Bill from clearing Burke of the manslaughter charge that long ago sent Burke to prison. Sam is wallowing in despair, as per usual.

Maggie goes home to the Evans cottage to find that Burke is there, confronting Sam. The two men have been yelling at each other about not knowing where Bill Malloy is. After Burke leaves, Maggie tries to get Sam to tell her what’s going on. He refuses to do so. Downcast, she turns to go back to work. Before she leaves she asks her father “Where are we all heading?” After she’s gone, Sam looks at the closed door and says “Towards death, Maggie darling. We’re all heading towards death.”

Carolyn goes home to the mansion at Collinwood with Joe. They start to hug and kiss when there’s a knock at the door. Carolyn answers. It’s Burke, demanding to speak to Roger. He wants some answers, mainly about where Bill Malloy is. Joe and Burke wait in the foyer while Carolyn searches the house for Roger.

Burke gives an angry and not very coherent speech denouncing the Collinses. Some commentators think the evident difficulty Mitch Ryan has with this speech is a sign that he was drunk during taping. Ryan did have a drinking problem, and admitted that in the 1960s he sometimes showed up to work drunk. But the speech itself is so awkward and weird that I suspect there is another culprit aside from alcohol- uncredited additional dialogue by Malcolm Marmorstein. Be that as it may, the speech rubs Joe the wrong way, and by the time Carolyn comes back and tells Burke that Roger isn’t home, Joe is in a worse mood than ever.

Episode 22: I only run from enemies

This episode doesn’t intercut scenes as Art Wallace likes to do. Instead, we have four distinct scenes in succession, to only one of which do we cut back. First, Maggie and Burke at the Evans cottage; second, Sam and Roger at the restaurant; third, Sam, Maggie, and Burke at the Evans cottage; fourth, Carolyn and Roger at Collinwood; then, a reprise of Sam, Maggie, and Burke at the Evans cottage.

The first two scenes don’t give new information. Burke and Maggie do some recapping for the audience, then Roger and Sam reenact the exchanges they had in week one about the danger Burke represents to them both.

When Sam joins Maggie and Burke at the cottage, he jumps to the conclusion that Maggie has told Burke the secrets of the Evans family. Looking at the lines, I guess this was supposed to show that the tough facade he maintained in the face of Roger’s menacing crumbles when he finds Burke in his house, but since Mark Allen’s portrayal of Sam consists entirely of bellowing his lines it doesn’t really come off.

Burke offers Sam $1000 to paint a portrait of him that will fit on the walls of Collinwood, of a size and style that will fit with those of the Collins ancestors. In episode 11, Burke had asked Roger if Liz would want to sell the house or the business; Roger reflexively responded “You know she wouldn’t!” Asked what the “business deal” was he wanted to discuss with Roger at the Blue Whale the night of Roger’s crash, he claims that he wanted to talk further about buying the cannery. Now we have indications that his plan, whatever it is, will leave him in control of the house.

Roger and Carolyn discuss Burke. Carolyn says that she doubts Burke’s guilt, Roger loses his temper and says that he doesn’t care whether Burke is guilty or not. He then apologizes, explaining that he didn’t mean to say such a thing.

Usually the other actors manage to do a good job despite Mark Allen, but Mitch Ryan has a lot of trouble in this episode with the level of his voice. Even before Allen enters, he’s alternately too loud and too soft in the two-scene between Burke and Maggie, and from the time Allen enters his voice is never at a well-modulated level. I can only surmise that Allen bellowed his way through rehearsal as badly as he does through the finished episode, and that Ryan was trying to figure out how he was going to fight his way through the problem.

Episode 21: “Carolyn’s mother is a witch.”

In the teaser, Carolyn asks Vicki what’s on her mind. “The meaning of life?” “No, just the opposite- death.” Exchanges like that go a long way towards explaining the appeal the show has to depressives. Casting makes a difference, too- actresses Nancy Barrett and Alexandra Moltke Isles seem to be far from death-obsessed, so they can deliver the most preposterously gloomy lines without boring the audience.

After the first break, Vicki and Carolyn are having breakfast in the kitchen. As it always does, that set creates an intimate atmosphere which makes it seem natural that the characters should share confidences. Carolyn confesses her feelings of guilt at having brought Burke to the house; Vicki confesses that she doesn’t believe Burke tampered with Roger’s brakes. For some reason, Vicki tells Carolyn that when she was six years old, an attendant at the foundling home played a prank and told her that her birth parents would be coming for her. All of Vicki’s stories about her childhood are like that, it’s no wonder she feels at home in Collinwood.

There’s a scene between Bill Malloy and Burke in Burke’s room. It’s always interesting to see actors as talented as Mitch Ryan and Frank Schofield playing off each other. It is puzzling that a Collins family retainer as loyal and intelligent as Bill would go to Burke before the police have a chance to question him or search his room and tell him everything he knows and suspects about the crime. But Roger has already tipped his hand to Burke, so another indiscretion isn’t going to damage the prospects of the prosecution by much. This scene, in which Burke is eating breakfast while Bill is confronting him with his suspicions, is intercut with the scene in which Vicki and Carolyn are eating breakfast and consoling each other. So, opposite extremes- former friends in a hostile setting, new friends in a nurturing setting.

Carolyn tells Liz that Vicki doesn’t think Burke is guilty. Liz responds that she doesn’t “care what Miss Winters thinks.” Liz then collapses into pity for Carolyn and guilt about herself as a mother. She remembers that when Carolyn was a child, she would come home from school crying because the other children taunted her, saying that “Carolyn’s mother is a witch.”

That’s an interesting story, because it implies that Carolyn went to the school in town. How did she get there? It’s much too far to walk. Did a school bus come up the hill to Collinwood to pick her up and drop her off? That’s a bit hard to imagine. Liz doesn’t want anyone around the place. Sooner or later, some adventurous child would slip off the bus with Carolyn and go exploring the grounds, no doubt finding a way into the house itself. Roger didn’t live there until recently, and Liz has never set foot outside the grounds since Carolyn’s birth. The only servant on the estate is Matthew, and he and Carolyn are not at all close, not as they would be if he’d taken her to and from school every day in her childhood.

That leaves Bill Malloy. He comes to the house more or less daily to go over business with Liz- perhaps he used to combine those visits with picking Carolyn up for school and dropping her off afterward. He is very close to her, calling her “Princess.” He’d have to pick her up very early in the morning, since his responsibilities involve supervision of the fishing boats. She might still have been in her pajamas. She’d have needed to get dressed and have breakfast at Bill’s house. We learn later that he has a housekeeper who has been with him many years; much, much later, that housekeeper will reminisce with Carolyn about brushing her hair for her when she was a little girl. So maybe that was it…

Vicki talks with Liz and Carolyn about the private investigator Burke has hired to look into her background. Liz doesn’t want to talk about anything that touches on how she heard about Vicki and what she knows about her, but by a skillful line of Socratic questioning, Vicki leads Liz to the conclusion that something about her origins might be embarrassing to someone associated with Collinwood. Liz walks out of the room, as Euthyphro walks out when Plato’s Socrates springs a similar trap for him, and we can see how smart and determined Vicki is.

Scenes that focus on the question of Vicki’s origins tend not to get much attention from fandom, perhaps because the whole story-line ultimately fizzled out with no resolution. But watching it forward, not thinking about what comes later, we can see some strong scenes devoted to it.

Episode 20: A mockery to the future

In episode 18, Roger (Louis Edmonds) had demanded Vicki (Alexandra Moltke Isles) come with him to Burke’s hotel room, where they will tell Burke (Mitch Ryan) about all the evidence they have connecting him to Roger’s car wreck. Vicki repeatedly protests in that episode that it would be better to take this information to the police. In this one, they arrive at the hotel, and again Vicki objects that they really should be going to the police. Roger, however, is a man obsessed. He asks Vicki to wait in the restaurant while he goes to Burke’s room, telling her that it may not be necessary for her to join him.

Sam (Mark Allen) comes to the restaurant looking for his daughter Maggie. Finding that Maggie isn’t at work, he invites himself to Vicki’s table. Their previous encounter had been a strange and frightening one on the top of Widow’s Hill; Vicki is no more comfortable with Sam now than she had been then. He bellows at her, she reacts with quietly frosty disdain. These attitudes may have less to do with the script or the direction than with Mark Allen’s limitations as an actor; he bellows all of his lines in this episode, and quiet frostiness is as effective a technique as any other for holding onto the audience while sharing a scene with an incompetent loudmouth.

There’s no incompetence in the scenes in Burke’s room. Louis Edmonds and Mitch Ryan were first-rate stage actors, and their confrontation is a terrific fireworks display. When Roger brings Vicki up to tell Burke what she saw him do in the garage, she again plays the scene quietly, an effective counterpoint to the artillery blasts the men have been letting loose.

In the Evans cottage, Sam finds that Maggie (Kathryn Leigh Scott) has been home all this time. When Allen bellows at her, Scott bellows back at him, a far less effective tactic than the quiet intensity Mrs Isles had used earlier. The scene has some potential- the situation is that an alcoholic finds that his adult daughter has been checking up on him, he resents it, and they have a fight about all of the ways in which she has been forced to take on the parental role in their relationship. But as a shouting match, it might as well be about anything, or about nothing.

Returning home after their confrontation with Devlin, Roger and Vicki say goodnight in the foyer. Time and again in these early episodes, people have urged Vicki to leave Collinsport while she still can. Even in this episode, Burke had told her that. But as they part ways for the night, Vicki to her bedroom and Roger to the brandy bottle, Roger tells her that as a witness, “you can’t leave now.”

That line is effective enough, but if the scene between Sam and Maggie had worked it would have been very powerful. The Evanses, father and daughter, are a case of two people who are trapped, trapped in Collinsport, trapped with each other, trapped with his alcoholism and her sense of obligation to keep him alive. As written, the scene could have brought all that out, and induced a claustrophobic sense in the audience that would have made Roger’s line feel like a death sentence. As ruined by Mark Allen, it just leaves us with the sense that we’re watching a show that needs some recasting.

Episode 7: Nowhere- Everywhere- Perhaps I was here.

Vicki and Burke run into each other at the Collinsport Inn where Maggie serves them coffee, Roger lets himself into the Evans cottage where he makes demands of Sam, Maggie tells Roger that Burke and Vicki are sharing a table and he runs away.

In these interactions, we see Burke using his considerable charm to try to get information out of Vicki, Roger using his social position to try to bully Evans the father while Evans the daughter exposes his cowardice, Sam wallowing in self-pity, Maggie letting information out indiscriminately, and Vicki taking it all in, cautiously.

Marc Masse’s post about this episode on his Dark Shadows from the Beginning has some interesting stuff. Both Mitch Ryan as Burke and Mark Allen as Sam are required to talk with their mouths full; both of them have mishaps, which he records with gifs showing matter falling out of their mouths. He also has these intriguing paragraphs about the character of Sam Evans:

One thing about the Evans cottage you notice in this episode is that when Sam walks in the door you can see houses across the street, a setting that would suggest a quiet, cozy cul-de-sac near the waterfront. Sam has neighbors, but none ever come calling. One gets the impression that Sam is troubled about something and just wants to be left alone, but time and again unwanted trespassers will just keep barging in, like this nervous, frightened man who lives in a mansion on the hill who busts in to order him around and warn him to keep certain information secret that might be damaging to the both of them. There will at one point be a cannery plant manager who just walks in without knocking while he and Roger are arguing about Burke Devlin, the plant manager telling Sam that if he wants privacy he should keep his door locked. But even that wouldn’t work, because as time goes on the trespassers will only become more aggressive: a fire goddess who, by staring into a blazing fireplace miles away, can make Sam fall asleep on the sofa with a lit cigarette to ignite a nearby newspaper so that he burns his hands badly enough that he can no longer paint; a newly risen vampire who sneaks in through the French windows to make a blood bank of his daughter; a Frankenstein monster who lets himself in for food and shelter and who knows where the cutlery is kept; a werewolf that doesn’t even bother with locked doors and just crashes in through the nearby window. The Evans cottage is a hub of activity for invasive beings with criminal intent.

But now, in the relatively sane and quiet summer of sixty-six, all Sam Evans has to do for a little peace of mind is assure his unwanted patrician visitor that he will not do or say nothing to jeopardize the agreement the two apparently made that ties them together like conspirators – because that’s what they represent to the viewer, two people who keep information away from others, information the viewer at this point is also not fully privy to.

But the one salvation for Sam Evans is that, unlike Roger Collins, he does seem to have some remnant of a conscience about whatever unsavory information ties these two unlikely co-conspirators together, and therefore a soul that may be worth saving.

Marc Masse has more use for Mark Allen’s acting than I do- I would say that he tends to be monotonous, his voice either a constant whine or a series of bellows. So I find it difficult to think of Sam Evans #1 as a soul worth saving. But this is a most insightful passage.