Quite a Strange Crew

It is with grim resignation that Victoria Winters tells us “The ghosts of yesterday seem to tell me to turn back. But I’m here now.”

Vicki’s resilience is something we’ll be revisiting an awful lot in this era of Dark Shadows, which is remarkable considering how quickly it evaporates like sorbet in a couple hundred episodes. Nevertheless, no matter who tells her to pack up and turn away, Victoria stands her ground. She came here for a reason, and she’s going to see it through.

After Victoria looks down at the waves and provides a rare in-universe explanation for the title card, Elizabeth returns with a tea tray. You might wonder how she can be so confident she won’t spill anything on that dress, to which I ask “Does this look like a woman who has ever known fear?”

For that matter, it’s odd how well-dressed Liz is. Not that she looks like a slob in later episodes, but this is the most elegant Joan Bennett looks for the entire pre-Barnabas era. The one time Liz appears to have dressed up.

A meta explanation might be that Bennett and Louis Edmonds posed for promotional stills during the filming of the first week of episodes, and it was thought an actress of Bennett’s stature required a wardrobe to match…

But might it also be that Liz felt it important to look her best for the governess? The first person she’s had up to the house in who-knows-how-long? But why go to such lengths to impress the hired help? After all, shouldn’t Vicki be the one trying to impress her?

Hm…

Liz notes Vicki admiring the portrait over the mantelpiece.

We then learn a bit of Collins family history, but I don’t advise you pay too much attention to it in these early episodes, because it will all be changed several times over as we go.

Liz goes on to explain that the entire east wing of the house was closed off a long time ago. Returning to our list of Gothic fiction staples, it is considered opportune, if not mandatory, that an Old Dark House have a room, or rooms, sealed off from the public. Usually, there is some dread secret locked inside.

There are no shortages of locked rooms and forbidden passages in Collinwood in these early episodes, but to say there’s anything special in them is highly exaggerating the point. As with so much else about this era of the show, it’s the threat, the idea of some menace lurking in those dark shadows, that creates tension.

Victoria asks what kind of boy David, Liz’s nephew and Vicki’s prospective student, is.

Vicki, continuing with the trend, can’t Take a Hint and goes on and on about David.

Liz, perhaps not wanting to vomit on the upholstery, puts a stop to that quick enough, sufficing to say that “David is likely to be different from any boy you’ve ever met.”

More gothic tropes that as frequently show up in broader horror fiction: people ‘in the know’ explaining things in as vague a term as possible to the people not in the know, and expecting that to be just fine. I guess the strategy is to just throw Vicki to the dogs on her first day and may the best scrapper win.

Liz goes on to describe that Vicki will have “days off and several evenings a week” and…while Vicki’s situation isn’t the most egregious bit of soap opera wish fulfillment, there is something gratifying about being paid a generous sum to live in a mansion and teach some kid math.

Liz also mentions her daughter, Carolyn, Vicki’s age contemporary, and a great gal.

She doesn’t know the half of it.

Love is the groove.

I know, it’s been hard to tell so far, but Dark Shadows premiered in June 1966, and is presumably set around the same time.

It’s hard to tell most of the time, because people say things like “I beg your pardon” and “foundling home” and every word out of Roger Collins’s mouth, but the Swingin’ Sixties were going on the whole time.

For the most part, though, the culture of the decade (and the counterculture) is completely absent from pre-Barnabas Dark Shadows. The closest we get is Bob Cobert’s superb Blue Whale music, making its first appearance here.

Seriously, listen to it. You will never stop.

Also making her first appearance is the last, but certainly not least, of our sudser’s female leads.

Carolyn, the Veronica to Vicki’s Betty, the rebel to Vicki’s good girl, the princess to Vicki’s pauper. Privileged, beautiful, and perpetually unsatisfied. If Vicki is our audience surrogate, Carolyn is our audience ideal: who doesn’t want what she’s got?

After the dour conversation, the gloomy wood paneling and paintings, the tacit threats and constant warnings to go back home, Carolyn is a sudden break into a new world. Last episode, the Blue Whale was a fusty, dead place, near deserted. Now, it’s the happeningest joint in town, and Carolyn reigns over it, engaging in a dance that requires absolutely no hand-eye coordination and only occasional finger-snapping, trading moves with boy after boy…

Well, except him.

It’s quite clear what we’re supposed to get from the young man sitting alone, watching with mixed disappointment and frustration as Carolyn tears up the floor, completely oblivious.

Some things just speak for themselves.

Remember Burke and Maltese Falcon? They’re still here. At one point, Carolyn’s arm seems poised to brush right past Burke, but his attention is elsewhere…

Burke proceeds to ask Strake “Are you sure that’s Carolyn Stoddard?” in about the same tone as one might ask “Are you sure she’s 18?”

Notably, Carolyn is not. She’s 17! Burke is harder to date: he can be anywhere between 28 and 40, but that has no effect on the prison term.

I should note, for those new to Dark Shadows or just the pre-Barnabas episodes, that at some point later on, Carolyn is aged up without much note. Maybe somebody realized the unfortunate implications.

Regardless, Strake tells Burke that “it’s all in the report” as the camera pans back to the blissfully dancing Carolyn.

We never learn how, exactly, Strake got all this dirt, much less on Carolyn, but maybe it’s better not to think about that.

No sooner has Carolyn remembered her date, some guy named Harry shows up to ask for a dance.

This probably isn’t the same Harry mentioned in the previous episode as the taxi driver with the flat tire. There are more Harrys per capita in Collinsport than there are non-whites.

Anyway, Harry tries to butt in, but Carolyn’s boyfriend meekly attempts defiance, at which point…

Between Maggie and Carolyn, one begins to wonder if Vicki being how she is wasn’t quite an accident after all. I guess somebody had to be the wet blanket in the bunch.

So it goes that Carolyn finds two men fighting over her.

After poor, drab, dull Joe Haskell is suitably emasculated, Strake attempts a bit of Greek Chorusing.

I’m not joking. They just cut back to Strake wryly commenting on a dance floor squabble. Burke, perhaps remembering that he’s the leading man, asks about Carolyn’s boyfriend.

Joe Haskell, Strake informs us. A hardworking fisherman and Liz’s choice to take her daughter’s hand in marriage. Burke, clearly, had not anticipated an angle such as this. Gears begin to turn, he contemplates the differences between the rebellious Carolyn and the earnest Joe, the carefree girl and the dutiful boy, the silver spoon and the rusty awl…

Jesus Christ, Strake.

But now this big fella who actually looks like a piece of somebody tries to nab a dance, and our girl is not pleased.

But she dances anyway, because there is literally nothing else to do in this town. Joe, however, has had enough…

Big Guy informs him that “the floor is for dancers only, buddy”, to which Joe rebuts…

You can’t say Dark Shadows wasn’t pulling out its own version of ‘all the stops’ in this first week. After an atmosphere-laden first episode, all tinged with the darkness and the grimness, and the protagonist character study, we spend Episode 2 with surf-n’-turf, a bar fight, and the inappropriate observations of a talking piece of shoe leather.

The bartender, who you will quickly note is the real star of this show, grabs the phone and tells SOME OTHER GUY NAMED HARRY to send the Sheriff over, but there’s no need for that, because Burke Devlin is A Man.

This done, Burke tells Carolyn to go home. Here’s a beat-by-beat outline of that exchange…

Carolyn: Who do you think you are?

Burke: A friend of the family.

Carolyn: You can’t order me around!

Burke: Take her home, Haskell.

Joe: …

Carolyn: I said, you can’t order me around!

Burke: LEAVE, OR PAPA SPANK.

No, he actually threatens to spank her.

You may be familiar with the term “Meet Cute”, when two prospective love interests meet in an awkward, endearing, suffice to say ‘cute;’ circumstance.

I’m not sure what this is, but I’m certain it was very cute at the time.

Notably, Joe, whose biggest trait at this point is being OUTRAGED that other guys want to dance with his girlfriend, has no words for this strange older man who just threatened to spank aforementioned girlfriend’s hindquarters, but it’s possible he’s still in mortal terror of The Devlin, and therefore incapable of speech.

As they leave, Burke asks Joe, who he has just met and whose existence he only learned of minutes ago, to meet with him later and, Joe, of course has no choice to agree because Burke Devlin is Burke Devlin and Burke Devlin gets what he wants.

BURKE.

DEVLIN.

Just in case you were getting too into things happening, here’s Liz showing Vicki her room.

What a strange and ominous thing to tell the person who just moved into your house.

Earlier in this episode, Liz tells Vicki that there are 40 rooms at Collinwood, but most of them aren’t in use. Still, you’d think she could find another place to put this girl that wasn’t her own girlhood bedroom.

Unless Liz wanted Vicki to have this room…

Vicki doesn’t seem to notice any of this, however, and asks Liz a question we’ll be hearing an awful lot for the next 20 episodes and then never again: Why did Liz request her specifically? It is, after all, the question that’s been on Vicki’s mind since she first got the letter, and we know she can’t help but wonder if there is some connection between Collinsport and the hazy secret of her origins…

Liz’s answer to this Big Question?

It really doesn’t. But you can’t fault a gal for trying.

Liz explains that Victoria was recommended to Roger by someone at the foundling home, a story with so many ready-made holes, it almost seems as if Liz doesn’t care that Vicki figures out it’s exactly the lie it appears to be.

But fate intervenes this first iteration of this conversation (we’ll be getting a lot more of it) from going any longer as Carolyn returns home.

“Bigshot.”

That’ll teach him. We learn, thanks to the dramatic device of ‘talking to paintings as a vessel for your conscious’ that Carolyn feels Collinwood is a prison and resents Jeremiah Collins for building it.

Talking to paintings is so tried and true a soap narrative device that The Young and the Restless has spent decades having (Daytime)Emmy award-winning actors emote to a portrait of some dude with a pornstache.

Collinwood is full of paintings, all of the Collins ancestors, only a few of whom will ever be named and even fewer of whom will ever get backstories. Still, they help frame the house as the lonely, grim place it is, full of ghosts of a past that won’t let itself be forgotten.

And, really, isn’t Collinwood a prison? We already know the lady of the house hasn’t left it in her daughter’s lifetime. Her brother fears a new arrival will upset some unspoken status quo. And Carolyn has returned, against her will, after being loudly reprimanded in public for the transgression of being a teenager.

Remember how we talked about Victoria’s motivation being universal? Well, get a load of this:

#relatable

Carolyn, like many of us, is ‘tired of trying’. Unlike most of us, she’s rich and beautiful and has a good-looking guy who’d do anything for her. But this is a soap, and if half of soaps are about people you can relate to getting glorious lives, the other half are people you wish you could relate to complaining about those glorious lives.

Carolyn seems to have everything she wants, but she’s unfulfilled. Does that make her bratty, or does it just make her human?

Why not both?

So Carolyn tells Liz the story, no doubt tastefully omitting the man that threatened to spank her, and then…

Sure, Carolyn talks that way too.

So we get some character contrast. The rebellious daughter and the doting mother are archetypes old as time, and certainly part of the soap genre’s bedrock. Carolyn and Liz are unique, however, because their differences don’t put them at cross purposes with each other. It’s not so much a rivalry as it is a bond between mother and daughter, characterized by their differences and, because of this, my candidate for healthiest relationship on this show.

Carolyn wants freedom, she wants a life for herself. Liz wants to stay in the house. Carolyn is quietly afraid she’ll end up like her mother. Liz doesn’t seem to want that for her daughter, but Carolyn doesn’t want the life Liz is offering her…a future as Joe Haskell’s fishwife.

Carolyn doesn’t want Joe Haskell, she wants a Hwite Knight.

You know that Family Guy bit when the baby keeps pronouncing it ‘Cool Hwip?’ Nancy Barrett lives on that station.

But there are no knights, hwite or otherwise, in Collinsport. The closest we’ll get is Shakespearian-trained undead.

Regardless, Carolyn isn’t about to adopt her mother’s defeatist attitude. Maybe she can’t get what she wants, but…

It’s what we all wish we could do. Try in the face of the impossible, spit in destiny’s eye. If Victoria appeals to us because of her goals (‘Who am I?’ ‘How do I fit in?’) Carolyn appeals because of her spirit (‘I know who I am, and I’m gonna be me, whether you like it or not.’)

Meanwhile, Vicki has gone exploring…

You know she’s real fun at parties.

We then get some more of that location footage they shot, both to set the scene and to fill up an otherwise shorter-than-average episode length.

Victoria than reaches the edge of Widow’s Hill, the windswept precipice that gives Collinwood its charm. And what is a desolate, windy cliff in the middle of the night without a strange man coming up behind you to joke about falling to your death?

I’m just saying, Vicki’s having a banner evening with regard to strange men saying mildly threatening things to her.

Aw, that’s cute. He’s giving her local trivia!

Roger introduces himself and then they look at the ocean that, trust me, is right there.

Now that pleasantries have been exchanged, Vicki decides it’s time for Her Agenda and tells Roger that Elizabeth told her that he was the one who wrote to the foundling home and was recommended Victoria to come to Collinsport and be a governess for his son.

You can tell the strength of the best actors by how well they play a character whose bad at acting.

Though, perhaps Roger doesn’t care that he basically told Vicki his sister was lying.

Victoria is now full of new doubts about whether what Elizabeth told her about Roger writing writing to the foundling home and being recommended Victoria to come to Collinsport and be a governess for his son whose name is…

If nothing else, Roger sure knows how to keep ‘em on their toes. Still, this tidbit seems to make Vicki more comfortable around him. At least now she knows he can’t possibly have any romantic interest in her.

The topic of David comes up, and Roger very casually suggests his son might throw her off the cliff.

Victoria notices strange lights out to sea…

Which leads to a discussion of ships, which leads to a discussion of Victoria’s train trip, which leads to a discussion of the man she met at the train station, which leads to a discussion of how that man said he knew Roger, which leads to Roger finding out the man was Burke Devlin.

Roger proceeds to completely lose his shit, shaking Victoria roughly on the edge of a cliff.

Seriously. Roger didn’t even want Vicki at the house, and Liz hasn’t left her house in 18 years. They must have expected her to walk up or give up.

But Roger is incensed. Whoever Burke Devlin is and whatever he wants, it’s clearly nothing good for the redoubtable Mr. Collins. Maybe those ghosts he’s so afraid of didn’t need Vicki to provoke them out of hiding.

This haunting was inevitable.

So Roger runs away, leaving a very confused Victoria to return to the house, where she finds her employer playing piano with the lights off.

It’s unclear what provoked this emo sonata. Maybe this is a routine thing for Liz, a sleeping…

So either she’s passed out, burst into a fit of quiet tears, or had a spontaneous heart attack at the piano. Regardless, Vicki demonstrates true New York instincts for the first time since arriving at this place and pretends she was never there.

This Day in History

Tuesday, June 28th, 1966…not so many entertainment milestones today, but for fans of Evita, this day saw the military junta that ousted Argentine president Arturo Illia in a bloodless coup to be exiled to Uruguay.

There actually is a Dark Shadows connection to Uruguay, specifically the city of Montevideo, but that will have to wait for next episode…

And next week.