victoria winters – Page 15 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 283: The shock of recognition

Four and a half weeks ago, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, escaped from vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas managed to scramble Maggie’s brains sufficiently that she has amnesia covering her time as his victim and much of the rest of her life as well. She is now a patient at a mental hospital called Windcliff, where her care is supervised by Dr Julia Hoffman.

Maggie’s family doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, is an old friend of Julia’s. He had recommended Maggie be sent to Windcliff. He had also come up with a cockamamie scheme to protect her from her captor by hiding her there and telling everyone in and around the town of Collinsport that she was dead. If he had known that the captor was a vampire, this might have made some kind of sense- no character on Dark Shadows has ever heard of Dracula, so they don’t know how to fight against vampires. But he doesn’t know that, so his plan is just a way for the writers to stall while they try to come up with more plot points.

Today we open with Woodard in Julia’s office, complaining that she isn’t communicating with him about Maggie’s case. She tells him that there have been no developments worth reporting. Returning viewers know that this is a lie, because in a session we saw yesterday Maggie remembered a lot of sense impressions from her time of captivity and Julia told her that they represented tremendous progress. Woodard tells Julia that a lack of new information is no excuse for her failure to return any of his last six phone calls. He says that she seems to be intent on hoarding any information she may glean from Maggie as her own private possession, an impression he describes as frightening.

Julia responds to this characterization with a display of offense, and Woodard apologizes. She then brings up an idea that occurred to her at the end of yesterday’s episode. She says that Maggie’s memory might improve if she takes her to visit Eagle Hill Cemetery, where she was found wandering early in her illness. Woodard objects strongly that Maggie’s condition, as Julia has described it, is so delicate that such a visit might do her permanent harm. Julia retreats and promises she won’t actually take Maggie to the cemetery. This is such a flagrant lie that the camera momentarily goes haywire, focusing on Woodard’s chair rather than his face.

Woodard leaves, and Julia calls Maggie in. She’s already wearing her coat. She asks where Julia is going to take her, and she tells her not to worry about that.

On the great estate of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is staring vacantly into space while listening to an antique music box Barnabas gave her as part of his plan to subject her to the same treatment he inflicted on Maggie. A knock comes at the door. Vicki closes the music box and goes to answer it. It is her boyfriend, fake Shemp Burke Devlin.

Burke is waging a determined battle against the story, and he is fighting dirty. He doesn’t want Vicki to have anything to do with Barnabas, or with the ghost of Josette Collins. When Vicki says she wants to lay flowers on Josette’s grave in the cemetery, where we know she will cross paths with Maggie and Julia, he resists furiously. When she reminds him that she has had dealings with Josette’s ghost, he says “Or you think you have.” In previous episodes, including yesterday’s and Monday’s, he knew she had, and in an earlier period of the show he knew that several other characters, including some of the most level-headed ones, had also encountered Josette’s ghost. When he starts belittling Vicki for believing in “the spooks of Collinwood,” it therefore comes off as an especially crude instance of gaslighting. The Mrs and I aren’t much for profanity, but we both cussed at the screen when Burke was disgracing himself this way.

Julia and Maggie are in the cemetery. I believe it is the first time we’ve seen the set in a daylight scene. You can see the shadows of the foliage on the soundstage walls, and the corners where the walls meet. I can’t believe the director meant for us to see those things, but I kind of like it- the situation needs a touch of unreality, and the obvious falsity gives it the feeling of a black box theater.

Some of the shadows on the wall that Art Wallace spoke of

Maggie is agitated. Julia tells her to calm down and that everything is all right. I’m no expert, but I kind of doubt that talk therapy involves a lot of “Calm down!” and “Everything is all right!” It reminded me of this Saturday Night Live sketch from the 90s, in which Patrick Stewart plays “Phil McCracken, Scottish Therapist,” a psychologist who won’t stand for any emotionalism from his patients.

Vicki and Burke see Julia and Maggie in the distance. When Maggie turns to face them, Vicki recognizes her. Julia whisks her away before Burke can see her. When Vicki tells Burke she saw Maggie, he immediately unloads on her with the same garbage he handed her at Collinwood. He declares that Maggie is dead, that Vicki knows she’s dead, that she can’t possibly have seen her, that “there is a resemblance, THAT’S! ALL!” When he asks “What’s wrong with you?” I stopped the streaming and shouted at the screen “She’s wasting her time with you, you ******* ********, that’s what’s wrong with her!” To that, Mrs Acilius said that we should just restart the show and get through the scene.

Part of what makes Burke’s behavior so infuriating is the writer’s fault. A first-time viewer, unaware that what Burke is telling Vicki are delusions that suggest she is crazy are in fact things he knows to be true, might think that he is being reasonable in dismissing ideas about ghosts and the like. But even that viewer will realize that a person ought to be nicer about it. When Vicki says she saw Maggie, Burke could easily have suggested that they go up to the woman and introduce themselves, thinking that a closer look will disabuse her of the notion. But actor Anthony George must also bear part of the blame.

George C. Scott famously told Gene Siskel that there are three things to consider in evaluating an actor’s performance: first is to make the audience believe that the person they are looking at is the sort of person who might do the things the character does. This is in turn dependent on casting- put the wrong person in the part, and all is lost. Second are the choices the actor makes in the key emotional moments. Performers have any number of options as to how they will use their faces, voices, and limbs to show a character’s feelings, and those who make a lasting impression are those who make choices that are at once totally unexpected and perfectly logical. Third is the zest of performance, the actor’s joy in the opportunity to create a character. If that doesn’t come through, nothing else is worth much.

As Burke, Anthony George fails all three of these tests. Burke would have been a difficult part for anyone to take over, both because the originator of the role, Mitch Ryan, was so memorable, and because the character had lost all connection to any ongoing storylines by the time Ryan left. And by his own admission, George knew nothing about soap operas and had no idea how to play a romantic interest on one when he joined Dark Shadows. That’s where he fails the casting part of the believability test.

As for the skill part, George has something going for him. He is always mindful of his physicality, moving only those parts of his body he needs to show us who he is and keeping the rest of himself admirably still. He also keeps his voice remarkably consistent, both by holding a steady level of volume and maintaining a simple, precise pitch. In these and other ways, he shows impressive levels of technical proficiency as an actor, but the result is a mannered, unconvincing performance. His Burke doesn’t seem to be a real person. As a cardboard figure, he becomes an abstract symbol of whatever he’s doing, and when he’s doing something bad he’s hard not to hate.

Since he makes one choice for each resource available to him and sticks with it unvaryingly throughout the episode, he doesn’t give the audience any surprises. Nor does he yield anything to his scene-mates. They always know exactly what’s coming from him. George’s eyes are always watching another actor intently, as he watches Alexandra Moltke Isles intently today, but nothing in her performance can divert him from his plan, not in the smallest particular. When Burke isn’t listening to the other character, as he isn’t listening to Vicki, George’s disconnection from the other actors makes Burke seem like an irredeemable jackass.

Nor does George show any zest for the part. He covers his discomfort with soap acting by plastering on a smile whenever the script allows it, but he is stiff when Burke ought to be loose, cool when he ought to be warm, and loud when he ought to speak with a quiet, nuanced voice. The result is just sad and awkward. When Burke is being pleasant, we can feel sorry for George, but when he has to play the scenes like the ones Burke gets today we just want him to get off the screen and leave us alone.

Compare George’s Burke with Grayson Hall’s Julia, and you will see how an actor can determine an audience’s reaction to a character. Julia is a terrible therapist. She lies repeatedly to Woodard in the beginning, denying the severe breach of ethics and disturbing disregard of public safety involved in covering up what she knows and suspects about Maggie’s experiences and running an unconscionable risk with Maggie’s mental health by taking her to the cemetery. She lies again to Maggie at the end, promising that they will duck into the Tomb of the Collinses only for a moment and then refusing to let her leave there when she starts to show a violent emotional reaction. Her methods are so unorthodox and so harsh that we suspect she is not interested in helping Maggie at all. Because we have known Maggie since episode #1, and Kathryn Leigh Scott’s performance as Maggie renews our fondness for her every time she appears, we ought to feel deep hostility towards Julia.

But we don’t. In fact, Julia quickly becomes (almost) every Dark Shadows fan’s favorite character. The George C. Scott tests tell us why. Hall’s manner is so intense that we can believe her as a mad scientist; her uninhibited use of every facial muscle, of the full range of her vocal output, and of subtle tricks of movement she learned from choreographers when she appeared in musicals may have produced a style that no acting teacher could recommend as a model, but they do mean that every moment she is on screen she is doing something we wouldn’t have predicted; and she’s clearly having a blast. She can do things vastly worse than what makes us hate Burke today, and we will still want her to come back again and again.

Closing Miscellany

The opening voiceovers aren’t usually the best-written parts of the show, but there is a particularly bad bit in today’s: “Hidden deep in the cliffs of Collinwood, the majestic, ancient rocks that separate the Earth from the sea, there is a tiny cove carved by a long-ago sea. No one at Collinwood has seen it, and no one will ever see it.” If no one ever will see it, why bother telling us about it? The narrator tells us that it is because “the Earth knows how to hide its secrets well. Sometimes men, too, must hide secrets.” Does this mean that “no one ever will” discover the secrets the characters are hiding from each other? That isn’t a very promising thing to tell the audience of a soap opera, a genre which is all about unsuccessful attempts to keep secrets and their aftermath.

Maggie tells Julia that she doesn’t recognize the name Collins. She has lived her whole life in the town of Collinsport, where most people are employed by Collins Enterprises, which is owned by the Collins family who live at Collinwood. That’s some pretty widespread amnesia she has.

The show has been going back and forth on the dates when Barnabas and Josette Collins originally lived and died. Today we get a long look at Josette’s tombstone, giving her dates as 1800-1822, and another at the plaque on Barnabas’ little sister Sarah’s resting place in the mausoleum, with the dates 1786-1796. Those dates fit with a remark Barnabas made to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie in #271, that Sarah lived long before he met Josette, but not with his remark in #281 that Josette had been dead for “almost 200 years,” much less with a book we saw in #52 that gave her dates as 1810-1834.

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 274: Compare a crime to an adventure

For sixteen weeks, from March to June, seagoing con man Jason McGuire had lived the high life blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz. Now the blackmail scheme has blown up in Jason’s face, and the police have given him until sundown to clear out of Collinsport. Looking for someone else to exploit, Jason has come to the Old House on Liz’ estate, where her distant cousin Barnabas lives with Jason’s onetime henchman Willie.

Jason lingers outside a window. He sees Willie bring Barnabas a chest full of jewelry. He hears Barnabas and Willie talking about Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, whom they abducted, held prisoner, and, they believe, killed. He is still listening when Barnabas and Willie start talking about well-meaning governess Vicki, to whom Barnabas plans to give the same treatment.

A bit later, Jason finds Willie in the woods outside the house. He demands Willie meet him in the Blue Whale tavern at noon the next day and give him a pile of jewels from the chest. He tells Willie that he knows what he and Barnabas did to Maggie and what they are planning to do to Vicki. Willie agrees to the meeting.

We cut to the tavern. Jason is waiting at the bar when Vicki comes in. She grimaces at the sight of Jason, then asks Bob the bartender if he has seen Liz’ daughter Carolyn. Bob shakes his head no.

Jason insists on talking to Vicki. We do not know what to expect from this conversation. Jason is a villain who has often taken pleasure in being cruel to Liz and other characters, and the scenes in which he threatened Liz were so repetitious as to constitute cruelty to the audience. He believes that Barnabas is a serial killer of women, and his plan to squeeze money out of Barnabas requires him to turn a blind eye while he continues in that career. On the other hand, Jason showed genuine and unselfish concern for Willie when he was ill, and actor Dennis Patrick has taken every opportunity to play him as a comedy villain, with whom we can empathize while he scrambles to keep his lies from being exposed. So we can easily imagine Jason wanting to give Vicki some kind of warning.

Jason begins their talk with a question about Carolyn. Vicki tells him that Carolyn left the house because she believed the false story that he had used to blackmail Liz, and expresses her intense disapproval of him. He makes some defensive and self-pitying remarks, and Vicki continues to tell him how bad he is. He tells her that she will soon suffer hardships while he is far away, laughing at her. She says she doesn’t know what he means, and he refuses to explain. She says “There is nothing as sad as a hollow threat.” At no point in any of this had it seemed that Jason was about to warn Vicki of Barnabas’ plans.

As Vicki is going, Jason says he wonders who she really is and where she comes from. He then says that she does not know the answers to those questions. He says that he was in Collinsport 18 years ago, and he might know them. That stops Vicki in her tracks. She turns, looks at Jason, and asks him what he knows. He says that whatever he knows, he will take with him. She says that he is only trying to hurt her. He asks if he is succeeding. She goes.

It has been a while since we last heard about Vicki’s quest to solve the riddle of her origins. That story element never amounted to much, in part because, as Wallace McBride pointed out in a Collinsport Historical Society post in 2020, the very first episode of the show ended by showing us Liz and Vicki as each other’s mirror images. From that point on, everything has pointed to Liz as Vicki’s biological mother. Art Wallace’s original story bible for Dark Shadows had suggested that Liz’ ex-husband Paul Stoddard would be revealed as Vicki’s father and some other woman as her mother, but Art Wallace also said that the story might be better served by saying that Liz was her mother by another man, and that seems to be what they have tacitly done.

Art Wallace’s plan had also been that Vicki’s origins would be revealed at the climax of the blackmail story. It is not clear when they gave up on that. Since the actual episode, #271, runs drastically short, it is possible that they changed their minds only a few days before taping.

One of the possibilities was that Liz would admit that she was Vicki’s mother and Jason was her father. They haven’t done much to suggest that there ever was a sexual relationship between Liz and Jason, so this possibility lurks far in the background. If it were to turn out to be true, Jason’s indifference to Barnabas’ plans for Vicki becomes all the more chilling. Since Stoddard was also indifferent to Carolyn’s well-being, it would give Liz’ two daughters something miserable to have in common.

Jason was a friend of Stoddard, so he might have some information that would be meaningful if they are going for a twist in which all the hints that Liz is Vicki’s mother by another man were false and another woman were her mother by Stoddard. At any rate, when Jason says that whatever information he has will leave with him, it seems that he is telling the audience that the quest for Vicki’s origins will never be resolved.

Willie shows up at the tavern and gives Jason one piece of jewelry. Jason is loudly dissatisfied with this. Willie leaves him.

Later, Jason breaks into the Old House. As he enters, three notes ring out on the soundtrack. I sometimes laugh at this three note motif with my wife, Mrs Acilius. Not only because “dum, dum, DUMM!” is a corny way to end a show, but also because it often follows a three syllable closing line. So if the last words spoken before we hear it are “I want more!,” we will sing “I- want- MORE!” Since Barnabas is a far more dangerous person than Jason knows, this time Mrs Acilius sang “You- are- DEAD!”

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 254: As much fun as a bag of spiders

Reclusive matriarch Liz and well-meaning governess Vicki are in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Liz is depressed because her daughter Carolyn is dating motorcycle enthusiast Buzz. She asks Vicki if she has any idea how to break Carolyn and Buzz up, then answers her own question. Liz knows that Carolyn is protesting her engagement to seagoing con man Jason McGuire, and that only by breaking it off with Jason can she change things with Carolyn.

When Liz claims that she is marrying Jason because she wants to, Vicki says it’s none of her business. Vicki has seen abundant evidence that Jason is blackmailing Liz, and won’t pretend she hasn’t. She manages to be quite respectful to her employer without backing down an inch. Despite herself, Liz is impressed with Vicki’s firmness and diplomacy.

Alexandra Moltke Isles was cast as Vicki because she and Joan Bennett looked so much alike, and this is one of the scenes that uses their resemblance to show Vicki as a reflection of Liz. As Vicki is finding tactful ways to express her suspicions, she says things that we have heard Liz say and that we know she is thinking. Each time she does so, Joan Bennett does a quarter turn one direction from the shoulders and a quarter turn the other direction from the neck, as if she were being twisted open. When Liz tells Vicki to stop, she calls her “Victoria,” a name we haven’t heard her use since 1966, and when Vicki asks permission to leave the room she responds, in a near-whisper, with the usual “Vicki.” This alternation also suggests twisting, and to regular viewers who remember that Liz has a secret connected with the fact that “Her name is Victoria” it is another twisting open.

Meanwhile, Jason is entering the Blue Whale tavern with his former henchman, Willie Loomis. Jason wants to confront Willie with the fact that he saw him in town earlier in the day selling a piece of jewelry. Willie says that he was selling it on behalf of his employer, wealthy eccentric Barnabas Collins. Jason knows of Willie’s obsessive fascination with jewels and his tendency to steal them, and does not believe that Barnabas would entrust him with such a task. What Jason does not know is that Barnabas is a vampire and Willie is his sorely bedraggled blood-thrall. As such, Barnabas has a power over Willie that makes it rational to entrust the most remarkable tasks to him.

Carolyn and Buzz enter. They almost leave when Carolyn sees Jason and Willie. Jason and Willie rise and meet them at the door. Jason assures Carolyn that they were just going. Before they do, he taunts Carolyn with his engagement to Liz.

On Tuesday, Carolyn and Buzz started dancing together in the drawing room. Buzz made a few very graceful moves, saw Carolyn going into the Collinsport Convulsion, and sat down to observe. Today, Buzz sees two background players twitching awkwardly while the jukebox plays and declines Carolyn’s invitation to join her on the dance floor. He wants to stop drinking, saying that he is looking for something that will make him feel like he’s never lived before, while “drinking only makes you feel drunk.” It sounds a little bit like he’s going to offer Carolyn a drug stronger than alcohol, but by the end of the scene he just wants to get back on his bike. Liz’ fears to the contrary, Buzz seems pretty darned wholesome.

While Carolyn and Buzz are on their way out of the tavern, hardworking young fisherman Joe comes in. Carolyn asks Buzz to wait outside while she talks with Joe. Buzz reluctantly agrees to spend a few minutes alone with his bike.

Carolyn and Joe were dating when the show started, and there was a whole storyline about how they were tired of each other and couldn’t get themselves sufficiently organized to break up. Their scenes together reminded us that the 1960s were the decade in which Michelangelo Antonioni used the cinema to explore the nature and significance of boredom.

But they are far from boring today. After he and Carolyn finally called it quits, Joe started seeing Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie is now missing and feared dead. Carolyn sits next to Joe at the bar and expresses her sympathies. When I say that Nancy Barrett’s acting style was to throw herself unreservedly into whatever the script gave her character to do that day, it may sound like I’m saying she was undisciplined or that she lacked subtlety. That is not at all what I mean, and in this scene she does one of the most delicate drunk acts I’ve ever seen. Carolyn sits a fraction of an inch too close to Joe, tilts her head back a fraction of a degree too far, opens her eyes the tiniest bit too wide, and speaks ever so slightly too slowly. No one of those signs would even be noticeable by itself, but together they make it very clear why Buzz was anxious that he and Carolyn should leave their drinks unfinished.

Back in the drawing room, Jason is badgering Liz into setting the date for their wedding. Carolyn and Buzz come back, and Jason tells them he and Liz will be married two weeks from tonight. Carolyn says that she and Buzz ought to get married the same night. Buzz is delighted when she first says this, and is still smiling when she insists she is being serious.

Buzz delighted with Carolyn’s proposal.
Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

My wife, Mrs Acilius, urged me to call this one “A piece of that action,” something Jason says to Willie. Trekkie that she is, that seemed irresistible to her. But Joe’s line that Buzz seems to be “about as much fun as a bag of spiders” is the funniest of the many witty lines in today’s script, and when you remember that Dark Shadows has, since December of 1966, been basically a horror story, you have to think that in its terms a bag of spiders might be a lot of fun. So that had to be the title.

Episode 251: Madness preferable to sanity

We reprise the final scene of Friday’s episode, in which vampire Barnabas Collins catches his prisoner Maggie Evans trying to stab him. He flashes his fangs at her.

The first time around, this had been the climax of a number of powerfully realized scenes, so it still carried a punch despite the silliness of the fangs. From a standing start, though, the result is a bad laugh.

In the 45 seconds following the first commercial, ABC staff announcer Bill Rice* summarizes the action of the previous week’s episodes.** This recap comes so close to exhausting every event we saw in those 110 minutes of scripted drama that regular viewers will have another unintended laugh.

The recap was inserted because many ABC stations preempted Dark Shadows to cover a United Nations debate about the Vietnam War. The show was about as resolutely disengaged from contemporary politics as it was possible to be, but conjoining US policy in Vietnam with a character like Barnabas, who combines a vast capacity for killing with a desperate need to be loved, does bring certain thoughts to mind.

Barnabas and Maggie have a conversation about his inclination to kill her. Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood-thrall Willie Loomis joins in, saying that Barnabas will have to kill him first. This would not seem to present Barnabas with any difficulty at all. Willie wouldn’t be missed- everyone else on the show remembers Willie from the days before he met Barnabas, when he was dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis, and has been urging Barnabas to get rid of him. Nor would it be especially difficult for Barnabas to replace Willie- he just has to bite someone else, and that other person will become his new slave. But Barnabas stands around arguing with Willie and Maggie. When someone knocks on the front door, he scolds Willie for failing to keep it locked, such a humdrum complaint under the circumstances as to bring another bad laugh. Barnabas leaves Willie and Maggie in the basement while he answers the door. Before he goes, he sticks out his lower lip, a facial expression known as “pouting.”

The visitor is well-meaning governess Vicki, who tells Barnabas that the sheriff has ordered that no woman go out alone at night. Some think it strange to send a woman out alone at night to carry this message to a man who is indoors, but considering what we’ve seen of the sheriff, doing the exact opposite of what he commands would seem always to be the wisest course.

Vicki notices an antique music box on a table in Barnabas’ front parlor. Vicki admires its tune and makes a few not-very-coherent remarks about “the past” while it is playing. Barnabas has been using this music box as a tool to hypnotize Maggie into believing that she is his long-lost love Josette. After Vicki leaves, he opens it again, then looks at the door through which she left. He turns his head and smiles, looking very much like someone who has just had an exciting new idea.

Meanwhile, Maggie and Willie talk to each other in the basement. The two of them had one of the most electrifying scenes of the entire series down there Friday. The last traces of that energy have been piddled away by the time Barnabas comes back downstairs and resumes his conversation with them.

Willie urges Barnabas to look at Maggie and see how beautiful she is. Barnabas says “No” and looks away. Coming at a moment of high dramatic tension, this might have been powerful. When we sit down as an audience, we enter into a sort of agreement that if the show includes something worth seeing, we will look at it. So when we see a character refusing to look at a sight as well worth contemplating as was the young Kathryn Leigh Scott,*** we might be shocked. But there has been too much idle chatter, and the memory of Barnabas’ pout is so fresh, that all we can think of is a petulant child saying “I don’t wanna look at her!”

Barnabas announces that he will not kill Maggie right away. He tells her that he will make her suffer torments worse than anyone has ever known so that death will finally come as a blessed relief, then locks her up in the prison cell in the basement of the house. What, your house doesn’t have a prison cell in its basement? It’s a standard feature of homes in Collinsport, as we will come to see in future episodes.

Barnabas goes to the great house of Collinwood and talks to Vicki. He brings a handkerchief that, legend has it, was a gift from the queen of France to Josette. They babble about “the past” and Barnabas invites her to drop in at his house “some day.” He says “day,” even though he’s busy being dead every day until sunset. And doesn’t specify when- any old time, if she hears screams coming from the basement she’ll probably just ignore them.

Evidently Barnabas is thinking of Vicki as a backup Josette in case Maggie doesn’t come around. This marks a retreat from #240 and #241, when strange and troubled boy David Collins, who has seen Josette’s ghost many times, saw Maggie in the gown Barnabas gave her and said that she must have been Josette because she looked “exactly the same” as he had seen her before. That suggested, not only that Barnabas chose Maggie because of her looks, but also that he might be right in thinking that she is Josette’s reincarnation. This storyline is modeled on the 1932 Universal film The Mummy, in which Imhotep’s idea that Helen Grosvenor is the reincarnation of his lost love Princess Ankh-esen-amun is substantiated when Zita Johann plays both roles. If Vicki and Maggie are interchangeable, then all of that goes by the boards.

*Presumably no relation to the main character of Gene Roddenberry’s 1963-4 CBS TV series The Lieutenant, one episode of which was written by Art Wallace.

**As transcribed by the Dark Shadows wiki:

For those who have missed the last few episodes of Dark Shadows: Elizabeth Collins [Stoddard,] at Jason McGuire’s insistence, has taken Vicki, Carolyn, and Roger into the basement room and convinces them that it holds no mystery. They don’t realize that beneath the flagstones on the floor is concealed the room’s secret—the body of Elizabeth’s husband, Paul. Elizabeth, now realizing that the secret can never be told, announces to the family that she and Jason will be married. Maggie Evans escaped from Barnabas and attempted to get to her father, but was recaptured and told by Barnabas that unless she assumes the identity of Josette Collins, she will die. Realizing that she can never escape, Maggie attempts to destroy Barnabas.

***Or for that matter as is the not-so-young Miss Scott of today, she’s one of the best looking octogenarians around.

Episode 229: A very sick girl

The opening voiceover tells us that “Evil reaches deeply into man’s soul, turning his heart to stone, transforming him into a vile monstrosity, and it is horrible to observe this process in an innocent and not be able to recognize it or prevent it.” Without that introduction, first-time viewers would have no reason to assume that Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is going through anything other than an ordinary sickness that has her looking bad and snapping at people.

Kathryn Leigh Scott does play Maggie’s moodiness very well. She does an especially admirable job in the scene where she yells at her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, and orders him out of the house. After Joe goes, Maggie looks directly into the camera, and returning viewers will recognize that she is well on her her way to becoming the undead.

Meanwhile, well-meaning governess Vicki and dashing action hero Burke are dressed up and having dinner in Collinsport’s only night spot, The Blue Whale. Most of the time, The Blue Whale is a waterfront dive with frequent bar fights. But when Burke and Vicki dine there in their good clothes, the place transforms into a respectable restaurant, as it did in #189.

Burke and Vicki recap some plot points surrounding the great estate of Collinwood. Later, Maggie’s father Sam comes in and tells them of her condition. Vicki replies to Sam’s description with “Now let me see if I understand this. You said that yesterday she was sick and she collapsed, and last night she was up and around, and this morning she was sick again?”

In his post about this episode on his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn’s response to this line is “IT IS NOT OKAY TO SUMMARIZE A RECAP THAT HE JUST SAID ONE SENTENCE AGO.” It’s true that the episode is heavy on recapping. A defter writer than Malcolm Marmorstein probably would have started the scene with Vicki putting this question to Sam, leaving out the recap that it re-recaps. But Vicki’s question itself is a good moment. As she delivers it, Alexandra Moltke Isles uses her face to show Vicki coming to a realization that has so far eluded everyone else.

Vicki recognizes that Maggie’s symptoms are identical to those which sorely bedraggled blood-thrall Willie Loomis displayed a couple of weeks ago. As she explains this, we see Burke gradually catch on and Sam absorb the information. Up to this point, everyone has been remarkably obtuse in failing to make this connection- the same doctor who examined Willie examined Maggie today, and doesn’t give any sign of recognizing it, or for that matter of understanding anything else relating to medicine.

As Vicki was the only character yesterday who escaped the long-running Idiot Plot that goes on because everyone fails to notice the abundant evidence that reclusive matriarch Liz killed her husband and buried him in the basement, so she is the only character today who spots the obvious similarity between the cases of the two victims of the vampire. The show is still sputtering along, but in a Smart Vicki turn like this we can find a glimmer of hope that it will start moving soon.

Episode 228: An unending succession of demands

We start with the twelfth iteration of a ritual that has been numbing our minds since March. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire makes a demand of reclusive matriarch Liz, in this case a position as Director of Public Relations for the Collins family business. Liz resists. Jason threatens to expose her terrible secret. Liz capitulates.

Liz’ daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, is fed up with Jason’s endless impositions on her mother and everyone else in and around the great house of Collinwood. She knows that Jason was a friend of her long-absent father, Paul Stoddard. When her uncle, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, tells her that some belongings of Stoddard’s are kept in the mysterious locked room of the basement of Collinwood, Carolyn decides she wants to go into the room and examine them.

Liz has the only key to the room, and hasn’t let anyone in it in the 18 or 19 years since Stoddard disappeared. She is shocked when Carolyn asks for the key. She tells her that they have nothing of Stoddard’s and that the room is empty. Roger and well-meaning governess Vicki are there when Carolyn presses Liz on the subject and Liz becomes agitated.

Later, Liz talks to Vicki privately and apologizes for her tone in that conversation. Vicki can’t believe that the locked room is empty. Vicki turns away from Liz, looks down, and says she can understand that it would be painful for her if Carolyn went through Stoddard’s belongings. We’ve seen Vicki try to lie on several occasions. She has always been unsuccessful at it, in part because she has mannerisms like these that give her away.

Liz is so desperate to recruit an ally that she ignores Vicki’s tells, and immediately confirms that she is keeping things of Stoddard’s in the room. She must not realize that Vicki is an inept liar, because she asks her to back up her own lie and to persuade Carolyn that the room is empty.

In the study, Vicki finds Carolyn searching for the key to the locked room. The two women argue a bit about whether Carolyn ought to let herself into the room. Vicki turns away from Carolyn, looks down, and asks her to consider that her father’s things might not be in the room at all. Since these are the same mannerisms that told us she was lying to Liz, at first we think she is getting ready to repeat Liz’ lie to Carolyn.

Vicki looking like she’s about to lie to Carolyn

Carolyn asks Vicki what she is talking about. She turns to Carolyn and says that she wonders if there is something hidden in the room that would be far worse to uncover than a few random possessions of Paul Stoddard’s could be. With that, we cut to the closing credits.

The whole story of the locked room is a case of what Roger Ebert famously called “Idiot Plot,” a story that would end immediately if any of the characters were as smart as the typical member of the audience. No one has seen or heard from Stoddard since he disappeared. Liz hasn’t left the house since that night. She fired all the household staff, replacing them with a single extremely unsociable man, and discouraged strangers from entering the house. She is terrified of anyone entering a room in the basement that she locked shortly after Stoddard left, and is now flagrantly being blackmailed by a man who was around at that time.

It’s refreshing that Vicki is the one who seems to be figuring out that Stoddard’s corpse might be buried in the locked room. Again and again, the writers have painted themselves into a corner and found themselves able to get from one story point to the next only by having a character disregard all available facts and logic and do something inexplicably foolish. Since Vicki gets more screen time than anyone else, it has usually fallen to her to be Designated Dum-Dum. Indeed, the writers will eventually rely on Dumb Vicki so often that the character becomes unusable. But today, we get a look at Smart Vicki, and that version of her is terrific.