The Girl Who Cried ‘Uncle!’

Victoria Winters has had a bit of a time adjusting to her new circumstances. Still, she’s aware other problems loom beyond her sphere of influence. She knows there are people in Collinsport with “hopes and dreams and unexpressed fears”.

It’s possible she’s thinking about the man who, earlier this evening, joked about her committing suicide, suggested his son might try to kill her and, on learning that some strange man had offered her a ride so she wouldn’t have to walk the whole way to town, nearly pushed her off a cliff and went running off into the night.

We can only hope an evening drive has calmed Roger Collins’s neuros…

Or not.

We talked a lot about Carolyn’s privilege, but think what it says of Roger that he can just storm up to a house in a residential district in the middle of the night, and hammer on the door screaming without attracting any notice.

I mean, privilege, or else everyone in town just ignores him. Both might be true.

As soap operas continue, they gradually get more and more into the groove of expecting you know what’s going on. As I’ve written before, they’re designed so you can theoretically jump in at any time and be caught up relatively quickly.

Contrast the opening to this episode with that from last episode. There, Vicky’s monologue all-but restates her journey and her motivation, that she’s come to Collinwood to find herself and won’t be turned back no matter what.

The episode itself begins right where we left off, with Liz welcoming Vicky to the house. Even if you missed Episode 1, you’ll get a pretty good idea fairly quick.

Episode 3, however, begins with…

Which demonstrates an astounding faith by Dan Curtis and the rest of the crew in the audience’s willingness to play along. Or else an extraordinary apathy to what that audience expects.

I think it helps in the long run.

Who is Roger looking for? Why is he freaking out so badly? Is there any doubt he’s been driving drunk?

Never mind that now: Vicky Winters is writing a letter.

Someone knocks on Vicky’s door, and her reaction says it all…

Her trepidation is natural. But her visitor is neither of those people.

My Gran did laundry in a house-dress like that.

Carolyn is supposed to be rebellious and fun, but she dresses in clothes more suited to the Amish commune. Her pale frocks are, maybe, excusable (fashion doesn’t arrive on Dark Shadows for some time; they were on a budget), but this frilly nightgown doesn’t quite mesh.

But maybe that’s on purpose. After all, Carolyn is still Mommy’s Little Girl. And Liz wouldn’t let her daughter sleep in a negligee, would she?

The two girls hit it off somehow…

The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allen Poe, is considered the birth of the ‘haunted house’ genre of gothic/horror fiction.

The short story, if they never made you read it in high school, is about a man who visits his friend at an Old Dark House that aforementioned friend believes is ‘alive’. It concerns twin siblings: an eccentric brother and a perpetually ill sister, whose mysterious ‘undeath’ is inexorably tied to the fate of the house.

Contextually, there isn’t much in common between Usher and Dark Shadows. Both the Usher siblings are half-sane recluses, and it’s possible we’re meant to think the same of Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, the woman who hasn’t left her house in 18 years, but we later learn she’s one of the saner members of the household.

The most significant theme the two works share in common is that of fear, and people crippled by it. The Usher siblings are seized by fear, as the Collins siblings are, though their fears drive them to do different things. Liz’s fear drives her into the shadows, Roger’s fear drives him out into wild, frenzied action.

Even Carolyn is gripped by fear…a fear she may end up trapped in this house as her mother has always been.

Well, anyway, back to something we’ve never seen before: somebody thinks Vicky should leave.

Carolyn clarifies that she doesn’t want Vicky to leave. In fact, it’ll be a BAWWWWWWLLL to have company, but why would she consign herself to suffer like this?

But Vicky, as we’ve discussed, is in this for the long haul. Nobody’s protestations are gonna chase her away.

Carolyn’s happy to hear it.

Carolyn invites her new best friend to ask any question she likes.

Vicky asks who Burke Devlin is and, for the only time in living memory, that name means nothing to anyone present.

Vicky clarifies that Roger seems to know who he is. The mention of her uncle gets a…er…strange reaction from Carolyn.

That’s…er…quite a gasp to use when talking about one’s uncle.

What a strange euphemism.

Sends you where? WHERE DOES HE SEND YOU, CAROLYN?

I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill, but I do believe the fine cast and crew at this 1966 daytime serial are intimating this 17-year-old is in love with her gay uncle.

But maybe I’m just overreacting. It might be that Carolyn’s fascination with her uncle has nothing to do with romance…

Okay, so…so maybe she wishes her mother would let her marry her uncle. Maybe that’s a thing they broadcast to an audience of housewives and shut-ins on daytime television during the Johnson Administration.

For the record, Vicky doesn’t seem to find any of this strange at all. If anything, she thinks it’s endearing that Carolyn is stuck between the boy next door and the man next degree of separation.

So Carolyn feels stuck in a rut. She has no choice. Her whole life has been aggressively planned out for her. Victoria, by contrast, has no such problem…she has no money, no prestige, no birthright…and she can, theoretically, choose to do whatever she likes…even if that means staying in ‘The House of Usher’.

Ain’t that something?

Back at the Blue Whale…

Joe has returned to meet with Burke, as Burke requested, though Joe makes a point of noting he doesn’t know why he actually listened to this strange man who threatened to spank his girlfriend in front of half the town.

Burke’s got questions, see. About Carolyn Stoddard. And now that Wilbur Strake has gumshoed off the face of the earth, somebody has to pick up the Creeper slack around here.

We’ve got three lines in three places today, which is about as much as it ever gets for a half-hour soap, certainly Dark Shadows.

We have Carolyn and Victoria at Collinwood talking about Roger and Joe, we have Burke and Joe at the Blue Whale talking about Carolyn, and we have Roger and Maggie at the Collinsport Restaurant talking about…

Maggie and her wig (who is clearly aggressively campaigning for separate billing) demonstrates a true service-worker fortitude for dealing with middle-aged creeps coming in before closing…

Roger makes his agenda quite clear: he wants to know where Maggie’s father is. He’d like to see him, he claims, because he’s found a buyer for one of his paintings.

Maggie suggests Roger should have banged on the door to rouse her father from his drunken slumber.

If you’ve ever worked a service job, you know exactly what is being communicated when Maggie informs Roger they’re closing in five minutes and begins promptly clearing away silverware.

But Roger Collins is rich and angry and will not be deterred.

He says he heard Burke Devlin has checked in. Maggie then supplies us with a trove of information. Burke is very wealthy now, he used to pose for her father, and her father hasn’t mentioned him in years.

Roger’s ears must be burning, because back at Collinwood, the girl he almost pushed off a cliff and the girl whose abjectly in love with him are having a grand chat.

Carolyn is taking Vicky on a tour of the house and, in Collinwood, that means looking at paintings.

Like old Uncle Isaac, who founded the Collins enterprise and isn’t as important in the long-run as you’d think.

Jesus Christ, girl.

But…what’s THAT behind them?

Vicky notices the open door, but Carolyn shuts down her concern.

Though whether she means people listening at doors, or the house being alive, is unclear. For the record, while this seems like the first overt supernatural occurrence on Dark Shadows, there’s a thoroughly rational, if no less disturbing (and only implied) explanation.

But we’ll get to that.

Meanwhile, Burke makes clear he knows everything he needs to know about Joe.

As with ‘banging on doors is not in my reportoire’, Burke claims he need resort to no such tactics and praises Joe’s ambition which, if you’ve ever watched a mob movie or General Hospital, is always the first step to corruption for these impressionable young dream boats.

Burke’s got Joe down pat: he wants to marry Carolyn, he’s frustrated that Carolyn won’t leave her mother alone at Collinwood, and he wants to buy a boat so he can start his own enterprise independent of the Collins business.

Has he got an offer for him…

Burke offers to cover the expenses of the exact boat Joe wants (let’s not ask how Strake learned all this by posing as a real estate salesman), if Joe informs on the Collins family to him.

Carolyn, of course, is more interested in men who can cock a hip.

Maggie is still trying to close and Roger is still refusing to move his tuckus, but never fear: a new character is here!

Maggie’s “Oh, Jesus Christ” at this new arrival is palpable, but both the men immediately forget she exists. Malloy, as Roger informs Malloy and the audience, is the manager of the Collins business. As an added tidbit, he also reminds Malloy that he is peeved that Malloy only brings business matters to Elizabeth rather than him.

Before Roger can remind Malloy about himself any further, the one character on this show who actually bothers to sound like he might live in Maine gets to business.

Burke Devlin is back in Collinsport. Malloy expects Roger to be concerned about this, but Roger, as we know, has never been concerned about anything in his life and acts like this is all totally cool. After all, it’s been 10 years, and Roger can’t concern himself with the “goings and comings” of an ex-convict.

It’s nice that after Malloy’s entire function in the story was given a two paragraph explanation, they were still able to give us key details by way of conversational speech.

But Roger’s flip attitude doesn’t send Malloy no place.

At the Blue Whale, Burke gets a call from Strake who informs him ‘someone’ is on the way.

Burke thanks him for his help and tells him to back to New York, presumably to watch his wife wiggle. It doesn’t matter, we’ll never see him again.

Burke returns to Joe, who seems to be working up the courage to tell him where to stuff his money…

Told you it’d come up.

Burke tells a story about how he met a stranger in a dive in the Uruguayan capital who, somehow, someway, put him on the path to being rich.

If this seems like a fascinating story you’d like to learn more about, real sorry! We’ll never hear of it again.

Joe, however, won’t be suckered. If he ever makes it big, it’ll be on his own back. Himself. He’s not about to sell anybody out.

Joe is rescued by the intervention of Malloy who, as Joe’s boss at the fishing fleet, has every right to curtly dismiss him, whereupon he begins grilling Burke as to his intentions.

Burke is confident that word of his return will spread from Joe to Carolyn to Roger and soon “those ghosts will start rattling around again”.

Another mention of ghosts. First it was Roger, not wanting to see them disturbed. Now it’s Burke, who seems to live for nothing else.

Burke’s motives become clearer: he wants revenge against the Collinses for whatever happened to him 10 years ago. Malloy’s elegant response:

We’ll have plenty of time to talk about revenge and how it applies to Burke as we wade through the pre-Barnabas era. But the price of revenge, is a theme oft explored in fiction. Dark Shadows ends up being, in many ways, about revenge, and Burke Devlin is the prototype for so many stories and heroes, villains and in-betweeners that follow.

But we’ve got an episode to wrap up.

Vicky and Carolyn return to the former’s room, whereupon Vicky discovers…

Carolyn seems to get an idea who’s responsible for this invasion of privacy but, as her mother before her, decides not to tell her, only suggesting she get a good night’s sleep because…

Good to make friends.

This Day in History- Wednesday, June 29, 1966

The U.S. began bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, North Vietnam’s biggest cities. In your latest reminder that Not Much Has Changed, it was later concluded that the raids did little more than to escalate the conflict and has no great effect on Vietnamese morale.

Also in fun, light-hearted news, China tested its first missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Suddenly, Carolyn cooing about her uncle isn’t so alarming.