Reclusive matriarch Liz has spoiled her wedding to seagoing con man Jason by telling everyone that she was only marrying him to keep him from telling that she’d murdered her first husband and he’d buried the body in the basement. Fake Shemp Burke has found a gun and points it at every other character.
Jason denies Liz’ story, knocks the gun out of Burke’s hand, and runs out of the house. Burke runs after him and fires a couple of shots at a figure he assumes to be Jason, though it could be the sheriff or a small child or some other target of convenience for all he knows. The original Shemp Howard might have thought that last display of stupidity was a bit over-the-top for the Three Stooges. On Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn has a bit of fun with Burke’s carelessness. His whole post about this episode is funny.
Out in the woods, Liz’ brother Roger looks directly at Jason, fails to see him, and moves on.
The sheriff comes and tells Liz that he is very sorry for bothering her with all of this, and assures her that his men will do everything they can to catch Jason and make things as easy for her as they can. Meanwhile, he needs some help digging up the body buried in her basement.
Liz has loudly refused to talk to her lawyers, a wildly bad move in our world, but under Soap Opera Law she has every reason to believe that, as a good person who has already suffered for her deeds, all she has to do is to tell the authorities about a bad person who has profited from his iniquity. The sheriff’s attitude confirms this assessment.
Liz tells well-meaning governess Vicki that she often went into the room where Paul is buried and cried. Vicki had heard sobbing coming from that room several times in the early days of the show, as had housekeeper Mrs Johnson on her first night in the house. At first, the show was equivocal as to whether it was Liz crying or a ghost. That equivocation fit with the show’s initial attitude towards the supernatural, which was to hint that there might be literal ghosts in the background, but to use the word “ghost” primarily as a metaphor for unresolved conflicts based on past events. Eventually, they showed us the door to the room locked from the outside while sobbing came from the inside, confirming that it couldn’t have been Liz. This week the show is committing totally to stories of the paranormal, yet they retreat to the idea that The Sobbing Woman was Liz all along.
A woman named Mrs Johnson joins the domestic staff of the great house of Collinwood. After reclusive matriarch Liz has sat with her in the drawing room for a few minutes, Mrs Johnson rises to begin her duties. Liz asks her to wait, and stammeringly warns her that some members of the household may seem unfriendly at first. She isn’t to take notice of that- they simply need time to get used to having a new person around when they have been so isolated for so long. Mrs Johnson takes this warning in stride, and again thinks she has been dismissed. But a second time Liz asks her to wait. She tells Mrs Johnson that she needn’t go into the closed-off portions of the house,* and particularly emphasizes that she wants her to stay out of the basement.
Liz’ nephew, strange and troubled boy David Collins, is not at all happy with Mrs Johnson’s accession to the household establishment. When his aunt begins to introduce them, David cuts her off, saying that he had met Mrs Johnson in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. He asks Mrs Johnson why she wants to work in the house. His level tone shocks his aunt. She takes David into the drawing room while Mrs Johnson goes upstairs.
When Liz reproves him for rudeness, David asks if he will have to apologize to Mrs Johnson again. He explains that the Collins family’s arch-nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, had made him apologize to Mrs Johnson in the restaurant after he yelled at her to “Shut up!” Liz says that for once Burke did the right thing. David then asks if Mrs Johnson is going to be his jailer. Liz asks him where he got such an idea. David starts talking about ghosts, and Liz can’t take it anymore. She tells him to go. He complies, still eerily calm.
In the next scene, we’re back in the drawing room. Gruff caretaker Matthew is working in the fireplace. David sneaks up behind Matthew and startles him. He asks Matthew what he’s scared of- is it ghosts? Matthew says he doesn’t talk about such things. David keeps needling him. Matthew gets more and more agitated, David stays absolutely in control of himself.
Mrs Johnson comes in with a ham sandwich and a glass of milk on a tray. She tells David she’s been looking all over the house for him. He protests that he doesn’t take his meals on a tray, but in the kitchen. When Matthew warns him not to make a mess, he gladly sits down on the couch and takes hold of the sandwich. Matthew sulks away.
Mrs Johnson wheedles David into talking about the closed-off rooms of the house. She asks him what he sees there. He asks if she believes in ghosts. She says she doesn’t. He says, again in the blandest possible voice, “You will.”
Matthew returns in time to hear Mrs Johnson encouraging David to describe the closed-off rooms. He sends David to the kitchen with his tray, and scolds Mrs Johnson for asking questions about matters Liz doesn’t want anyone looking into.
When the clock strikes 3 AM, Mrs Johnson shines a flashlight directly into the camera. She is inspecting the basement. She tries the door to the locked room. She can’t open it, but looks into whatever she can. Suddenly, something grabs her from the darkness. She looks down, and sees David’s complacent grin.
Cheshire cat
Mrs Johnson tells David she came down to investigate a noise. That doesn’t impress David, perhaps because it doesn’t explain why she was opening drawers and cigar boxes. For his part, he tells her that he’s there waiting to see a ghost.
David tells Mrs Johnson that his aunt will be very upset if he finds out she was in the basement. She tries to bluster her way out of trouble, but David tells her not to worry- he won’t tell. She asks why not. Because, he says, she’s a friend of Burke Devlin. She denies being Burke’s friend. He says she must be- otherwise, when she publicly accused Burke of causing the death of beloved local man Bill Malloy, he would have been angry. Burke’s mildness persuaded David that the accusation was a little drama the two of them were acting out. Returning viewers have seen enough of Burke’s temper to know how David came up with his premises, and those who saw episode 79 know that his conclusion is true.
David goes on to say that he thinks Burke must have sent Mrs Johnson to the house to spy on his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. This is also true. Before she can try to deny it, David says that he is all for this mission, because he hates his father and hopes he dies. Mrs Johnson is shocked, both by the words and by the altogether relaxed demeanor with which David speaks them. She must never have met a nine year old sociopath before.
Mrs Johnson resumes her bluster. David assures her that he won’t tell Liz he saw her if she doesn’t tell that she saw him. He goes upstairs, disappointed that he missed seeing the ghost. Mrs Johnson stays downstairs, and after a moment hears a woman sobbing inside the locked room. She tries the door again- it is covered with cobwebs, and obviously hasn’t been opened in a very long time. She knocks, and the sobbing desists.
We’ve heard the sobbing woman before. She drew well-meaning governess Vicki to the basement in the first week of the show, and when Matthew found Vicki down there he rebuked her fiercely and reported to Liz that he caught her “snoopin’ around,” the supreme evil in Matthew’s moral universe. When Liz talked to Vicki about the incident, she amazed Vicki by denying that she had heard any sobbing. Eventually, Vicki forced Roger to admit that he had heard the sobbing many times over the years, and that he had no idea what it was. The reappearance of the sobbing woman promises a resolution to a long-standing mystery.
*Several times in the episode, Mrs Johnson mentions the disused “east wing” of Collinwood. We’ve heard a good deal about a closed-off west wing, and it will be years before the show confirms that there is also an east wing. So “east wing” is probably a blooper today. But it is clear that the house has multiple closed-off sections, and in episode 84 there is a distinct suggestion of a sealed east wing. So if it is a blooper, it is a felicitous one.
Roger’s mounting anxiety about what Burke may learn from Sam leads him to alternate in each scene between yelling and begging. Depicting this, Louis Edmonds’ chews the scenery so hard that he momentarily loses track of Roger’s mid-Atlantic accent and slips into his native Louisiana drawl, yelling at Vicki “Jes supposin’ you a-tell me how long you wah standin’ in that doah-way?” Perhaps this is Marc Masse’s “David Ford Effect”– Ford came to the show from a long engagement as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, maybe they’ve decided to transport Collinsport from Maine to the Mississippi Delta.
At the Evans cottage, Sam gives Maggie a sealed envelope to be opened in event of his death. Maggie is bewildered and upset. Surmising that her father’s trouble is to do with Collinwood, she wishes that the mansion would burn to the ground. Sam waxes philosophical, opining that “Ghosts of the past don’t live inside a home. They live inside each man. They fight for his soul.. twist it into something unrecognizable.”
Moments later we find out that Sam is wrong, ghosts totally live inside a home. In the middle of the night, Vicki is awakened by the same strange sobbing she had heard in episode 4. She follows it to the basement. Last time she was in the basement, in episode 6, Matthew found her there and spoke sharply to her. Now Roger finds her there and yells at her. As she had stood up to Roger in the drawing room earlier, so she stands up to him now. After their showdown, he even admits that he has heard the sobbing woman many times, and says that she may be “one of our ghosts.”
I divide the series into several periods, the first of which I call “Meet Vicki.” The major story-lines of the Meet Vicki period are all in a down-cycle during this episode. Roger’s panic and Sam’s melancholy are part of the Revenge of Burke Devlin story, but Roger’s activities today do nothing to advance that story, and Sam’s letter will become one of the most tedious MacGuffins in a series that is notorious for forcing the audience to sit through overlong contemplation of its MacGuffins. Roger’s angry reaction to finding Vicki in the basement touches on the Mystery of the Locked Room, which is connected with the question of why Liz became a recluse. Those stories haven’t advanced for weeks. The sobbing woman revives the question of whether the house is haunted. While Roger’s admission that he has heard the sobbing marks the first time one character knows what another is talking about concerning the ghostly happenings, it does not prompt any further action. The question of Vicki’s origins is at a stalemate, the romance between Carolyn and Joe is dead in the water, and David is so alienated right now that they can’t do much with Vicki’s attempts to befriend him.
So the Meet Vicki period has reached a dead end. Tomorrow we’re going to meet someone else, and a new period is going to begin.
Interesting how the early episodes tiptoe towards the supernatural. Burke, Roger, and Carolyn all use the word “ghost” metaphorically, to refer to unresolved conflicts from the past that are still causing problems in the present. Liz and Vicki, each in her turn, responds by saying there are no such things as literal ghosts, only to hear the first person assert that there absolutely are. Giving this same little conversation to both Liz and Vicki is one of the ways the show tries to establish Liz and Vicki as mirrors of each other, of presenting Liz’s current life as a possible future for Vicki and of Vicki as a revenant of Liz’s past.
The sobbing sounds Vicki hears in this one are the first occurrences that would have to be explained as the act either of a ghost or of someone trying to make Vicki believe there are ghosts. The next such moment will come in episode 14, and there will be several more in the weeks and months ahead. This tiptoeing is what the Dark Shadows wiki on fandom tracks as “Ghostwatch.”
In view of the near-sexlessness of the later years of the show, it’s striking how frank this one is. Roger’s aggressiveness towards Victoria is plainly sexual. Liz catches him trying to sneak into Victoria’s bedroom, he derides her attempt to regulate his “morals.” He offers Victoria a drink, they talk about pleasure and pain in words that so clearly about sex that they barely qualify as sens double. Indeed, that is the only moment in the whole series when Victoria seems like what she’s supposed to be, a street kid from NYC. And the flirtation between Uncle Roger and his niece Carolyn is so blatant that it’s a wonder how Louis Edmonds and Nancy Barrett keep the scene from making the audience either laugh or feel ill.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 