Nobody Burkes the Devlin Inquisition

Victoria is reading in bed, simultaneously monologuing to us about how “the fear of darkness is only for children” because, in case you haven’t gotten it yet, she isn’t afraid of you.

But she’s no idiot (yet). She’s only been here one evening, but it’s long enough to know that there is something about the house on the crest of Widow’s Hill that radiates menace. The secrets the inhabitants of this house hold close to them, the sudden bursts of anger and fear she has witnessed tells her all is not right…

And the feeling that she is being watched, followed through these shadowy rooms by an as yet unseen person…

Maybe the same person she hears walking up the stairs?

Victoria tries to busy herself by brushing her hair…

But the steps get louder and closer…

Until they’re right outside the door.

And she can do nothing but wait, paralyzed…

She can hear Elizabeth and Roger arguing right outside. Elizabeth orders him away… The threat seems to have passed.

That, ladies and gents, was the first genuinely tense, and therefore frightening scene on Dark Shadows. A girl waits, trapped, behind her door, hearing a man try to get in, the same man who, earlier in the evening, shook her roughly on the edge of a cliff, and is saved only at the very last second by a woman she already knows is lying to her.

The fear of darkness may only be for children. But there are other fears, and Victoria Winters is not immune.

So Liz gets her brother downstairs, whereupon he pours a drink and she pours a can of whoop-ass.

Well, hell. So, whatever weird stuff was going on between Roger and Carolyn last time, they clearly want us to get this implication.

Roger’s obviously drunk and he was obviously trying to force his way into Vicky’s room. There are some things you just can’t say on daytime T.V., certainly not in June ’66, but the implication is clear.

Roger, however, insists he only wanted to ask Victoria about the man on everybody’s lips…

The name has as instantaneous an effect on Liz as it had on Roger. Not least of which, we get to hear Joan Bennett’s delicate diction…

If you’re playing the Dark Shadows drinking game, I might advise you to mix yourself a short this episode. It’s chock-full of Burke.

This was the first foray into daytime for just about every actor in the cast, but Joan Bennett’s film training has prepared her for some of the rules of the trade, such as looking into the distance and saying things like…

Not that she plans to do anything about it, to Roger’s chagrin. Roger insists Burke “isn’t the same kid who worked for us 10 years ago”. He was just trying to ask Victoria if Burke had said anything that might give a clue as to why he’s back.

That he was trying to do this after midnight and through a locked door is just a polite misunderstanding.

These two continue Acting, and the whole scene turns into flailing and pacing and exaggerated gestures, just like the Bible says.

The real zinger comes when Roger cries out Burke is here to…

If the impression you’re getting is of a very bad breakup, that’s more or less accurate.

Elizabeth suggests that Roger behave like a Collins. American soaps, being so often modeled around big old money families, frequently use this kind of theming, wherein the actions of one relative are compared disparagingly against some template of family behavior.

The Newmans on The Young and the Restless, for example, are expected to be ruthless in business and fiercely loyal to their own (whatever ‘their own’ might have done to them in the past). The Hortons on Days of Our Lives are expected to be moral beacons, upright in the face of adversity, and morally unquestionable. The Cassadines on General Hospital are expected to be conniving, ambitious, not afraid to go to the extreme to get their ends…

So what is a Collins of Collinsport expected to be? Liz thinks methodical, patient, calculated, but Roger thinks that’s only Liz’s own cowardice and hesitation on full display.

Now that Roger has sufficiently violated his sister, here’s the peanut gallery to be embarrassing.

You’d think she was being sarcastic, but you’d be sorely mistaken. This girl is too far gone.

So we’ve discussed at great length Carolyn’s unseemly fixation on her uncle, but I don’t think we can absolve Roger completely in this, given he unironically calls her ‘Kitten’ and nobody bats an eyelash.

Kitten very much wants to know who’s trying to kill her fiancé, I mean uncle. Is it Burke Devlin?

You’ll notice this episode is very restrained. There’s really only one line of inquiry and his name is Burke Devlin and what Burke Devlin wants and why Roger is afraid of Burke Devlin and whether Victoria can tell us anything about Burke Devlin and what Burke Devlin wants and why we should be afraid of Burke Devlin.

But, see, the problem is we already know what Victoria knows about Burke Devlin: next to nothing. Maybe if Roger had held the piss in back in Episode 2 before

He’d know this. We also know Carolyn doesn’t know about Burke Devlin because we saw Vicky ask her last episode.

So really, this whole episode is 20 minutes of Nobody Knows What’s Up With Burke Devlin, which is fine for Liz and Roger, but it’s not very compelling T.V.

After assuring Carolyn that Burke Devlin is not anybody dangerous and means nobody any harm, she is next ordered to bring Victoria downstairs to tell everybody all about her interactions with Burke Devlin who is not anybody dangerous and means nobody any harm.

After Carolyn is gone, Roger swallows what remains of his lips and tells Elizabeth that, whatever she want. He’s not Isaac. He’s not Jeremiah.

Speak your truth, sis.

Because we seriously have too much time this episode, we now get an entire scene wherein Carolyn convinces Vicky to go down to Roger. He is, believe it or not “a really nice guy.”

Carolyn describes the rough go Unca Roger has had of it recently, including a wife she doesn’t seem at all happy to acknowledge and a son he can’t stand.

Victoria finds it tasteless that Roger expects to interrogate her in her bathrobe at the witching hour, at which point Carolyn says that’s the point, because…

They don’t have a clue.

I guess it’s something that nowhere in any of this does Vicky tell Carolyn her uncle tried to break into her room. I guess she wants to keep the dream alive.

Again, doors seem to open when Vicky’s back is turned. This time, though, she doesn’t even bother with investigating.

So, again, we already know that Victoria can’t really tell them anything interesting. This does not stop the Collins siblings from grilling her on Burke Devlin and every detail of their limited interaction. We are only halfway into the episode, by the way.

They milk every detail of the story for far more than it’s worth. For example, there’s some dickering about Vicky’s exact words. She didn’t meet Burke on the train, she met him on the train platform. This distinction, you see, is very important.

The inquiry appearing concluded, Liz hurries to wrap things up, but…

ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT

You’d think Liz would intervene on Vicky’s behalf, but she must be tired and just gives up, leaving Victoria at Roger’s mercy.

But don’t worry, he’s a “nice fellow”.

Roger proceeds to prove his niceness with a due display of decorum.

He does offer Vicky a drink, but she thinks brandy ‘burns’ and…

One of the magical things about Dark Shadows was they were able to get away with all sorts of stuff, all comfortable in the knowledge that nobody gave a toss what was airing on daytime television. Still, this feels like the fourth time someone has intimated nonconsensual sex with the heroine, and we haven’t finished the first week.

Roger continues to grill Vicky about Burke Devlin, implying she’s been ‘less than frank’.

Now would be a good time to point out that, technically, Victoria is being dishonest, in that she’s leaving out the most significant thing we, the audience, saw come out of her and Burke’s discussion about Collinwood:

He told her not to go.

Roger eventually gets this out of Victoria and, yanno, all his earlier questionable behavior aside, he’s not exactly wrong that it’s weird Vicky just neglected to mention this before.

Roger gets this cockamamie idea in his head that it’s no coincidence Burke and Victoria arrived on the same train. He doesn’t outright say Vicky’s a plant, but it’s clearly what he thinks.

Naturally, it is quite a coincidence. As our friend Mrs. Mitchell…

…pointed out in the first episode, the train doesn’t make regular stops in Collinsport anymore. So it is weird that two people, one with a past at Collinwood and one with a future there, got off the train on the same night.

Naturally, this was a narrative device to introduce the two leads of the show, but whatever his mannerisms suggest, Roger does not know he’s on T.V.

Isn’t it strange, he wonders, that wealthy Burke Devlin chose to slum it on the train with penniless orphan trash like Victoria Winters?

Screw the ghosts and vampires. I’d have checked out right here.

This cross examination almost makes the ten minutes of redundant questions worth it.

Vicky decides she’s had enough and takes her leave.

She doesn’t seem to consider that Roger may have been shooting for that outcome.

Anyway, it’s 2:00 AM!

Vicky is in bed when, out of nowhere, a woman begins to cry.

You and I have watched enough horror movies to know never to walk towards the creepy crying noise in the Old Dark House, but the closest thing Victoria seems to be familiar with is “old English novels” where the frightening twist is usually something to the effect of ‘we will all die eventually’, so maybe she’s justified in figuring she can take it.

What follows are an excellently atmospheric series of shots as Vicky roams the house, looking for the source of the sobs.

But there’s nobody anywhere, and the sound stops eventually.

All told, it’s something how strong and eerie the beginning and the end of this episode are, compared to how plodding and repetitive the brunt of the middle is. This sequence, like the scene of Victoria in her room before the titles, is one of the most effectively ‘scary’ in the series, certainly in the pre-Barnabas era.

Anyway, Victoria returns to the foyer…

And then this EERIE AS HELL REVEAL…

It’s David! As played by the legend: David Henesy, who can snatch the award for best child actor in the history of the American soap opera.

Granted, the competition ain’t much.

Realizing she almost soiled herself over a nine-year-old boy, Victoria composes herself for her first meeting with her new charge:

Honey, you’re no Mary Poppins. David, establishing a trend, makes his feelings quite clear:

Finally, someone who says what they mean!

This Day in History, Thursday June 30, 1966

Founding of the National Organization for Women (NOW) at the close of the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women. Eventually, Carolyn Stoddard will get the memo and work on liberating herself.

President Charles de Gaulle of France withdraws from NATO on the same day as he signed an agreement with the Soviet Union to cooperate on space exploration, because those were serious priorities for world powers in the 60s.

The Beatles (we were going to get to music eventually) began their Japanese tour at Budokan Hall, Tokyo.