All Choked Up

Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there. I’ve been so tense lately.

So is she. It’s understandable, isn’t it? We’ve gone two and a half weeks with, to put it charitably, not a lot happening, which isn’t very encouraging when your drama is built on the premise of delivering passion and intrigue to housewives and shut-ins.

But there must be something to Lucky 13, because it looks like things are coming to a head now.

We joke a lot about Burke and Roger being exes, but behold Roger’s reaction when Burke attempts his usual manner of self-effacing charm:

If one can be gay, why not two?

Burke repeats the party line that he’s just visiting Collinsport, but the Queen isn’t buying it.

Read: “My fast-track toward middle-age hasn’t taken away my sexuality.”

Please monitor Roger’s eyes.

For a guy who took every opportunity to avoid this confrontation for as long as possible, Roger does jump into it with zeal now.

Burke insists that that was a long time ago, so Bygones, and then Roger looks at the camera and, though I cannot explain it, channels the spirit of Frieza from Dragon Ball Z.

Roger insists Burke was guilty for the mysterious death of Whoever That Was, while Liz breaks her neutral moderator stance to point out there was evidence against him.

Burke treats this with a glib affirmation…

How very convenient. There may have been other witnesses to testify (we later learn there was at least one other), but that Roger was apparently some kind of star witness, and his evidence is always treated as being the clincher that sealed Burke’s fate…

Well, suddenly, this whole thing seems open-and-shut. Even if we still aren’t much closer to figuring out what actually happened, or even who died.

We also learn here that Burke only served five years of his sentence, which is a very writerly way of handling his backstory…pick a neat number like 10 (or, say, 18, which is the same length of the American youth’s minority, and therefore easy to visualize in human terms), and then divide it in half.

Five of Burke’s backstory years were spent behind bars. Then he was released on good behavior, somehow ended up in Montevideo, and spent the next five years getting rich in never-fully explained ways.

Roger reminds Burke of his extraordinarily unsubtle interrogations of Vicky and Joe, also mentioning again his much-less compelling piece of evidence the coincidence that Burke and Vicky arrived on the same train.

We mentioned this last time that, while it would be interesting if Burke had manipulated his meeting with Vicky, that theory was blown in the water when he had his private eye sniff around Vicky’s past.

Burke dismisses his friendship with Vicky as nothing more than an interest in a “lovely young lady” which does absolutely nothing to distract from the age gap thing, but I don’t know why I draw attention to something that draws attention to itself every week anyway.

Said young lady is currently touring the location sets.

Victoria Winters, as usual, is on a mission, but this time she has a clearly defined goal, and her findings may benefit not just one, but two of her quests: the one that doesn’t matter (her past) and the one that kind of matters (Burke’s past).

This quest brings her to the latest of the Dark Shadows O.G. sets. We’ve seen almost all of them by now, but this still won’t be the last.

Matthew’s cottage…

Is a quaint, one-room set that illustrates the Collinwood caretaker’s Spartan nature, and love for painted lamp shades.

You can’t really be mad with Matthew here. This girl just walked into his house uninvited. This is a busy man, he sacrifices his posture and enunciation every day to keep those pricks on the hill living in comfort. He needs, in his own elegant dialect.

I don’t know about you, but the second that man took his tongue into his teeth and starting fussing with that hot plate or whatever it is in his hand, I would have turned on my heel and gotten the hell out the door.

But Victoria Winters is equal parts brave and stupid, and will not be easily turned away. She offers to help Matthew make suppah.

Does this look like the face of a man who accepts help from anybody for anything? He could be starving to death in the desert with scorpions crawling out of his ears and Satan dancing on his belly, and he would tell you to hurry up and get out because the big house might call at any minute, and anyway scorpion bites are no matter to anybody but queers and Bolsheviks.

Still, Mattew agrees to let Vicky sit and talk, with the unspoken agreement that she watch him eat.

Victoria has managed to suffer this long enough to ask if any of the Collinses have a connection to Bangor (drink!), which you may remember is the same place she received those checks from for all her childhood.

Matthew makes one thing very clear before he says anything: he won’t say a word unless Liz knows Vicky is here.

Vicky decides to get creative and say that yes, she does, while doing this:

The armchair psychology that you can tell someone is lying if they look off to the side while answering you is nonsense, and yet you get the idea Alexandra Moltke accepted it both as gospel truth.

Nonetheless, Matthew is surprisingly satisfied and mentions the one significant connection this very wealthy, prominent family has with one of the largest cities in the state:

A trial.

Ah yes, manslaughter: for when you want your character to kill somebody, but in a morally ambiguous way.

We just learned from Maggie last episode that Burke’s crime included a man being killed. This clarifies the case somewhat.

As with everything else, Matthew isn’t keen on Vicky poking around these things, but somehow he’s warmed up to her enough to ask her to tea.

Vicky even volunteers her own sorry life story to him.

Methinks he’s going soft for her.

One way or another, this line of inquiry ends, as all Vicky’s lines of inquiry end, with nothing. The only connection between the Collinses and Bangor is the Devlin trial.

Roger, perhaps bothered by the increasing sexual tension, decides that the sight of Matthew might be enough to dull his passions. Really, he just wants Liz gone so he can have private words with Burke.

One way or another, Liz leaves and Roger demands the truth.

Rather than a repeat of the Venezuela Question, Burke HONEST TO GOD says…

I don’t care what you have to say about “more innocent times”. You’ve been watching along, you are aware this show has intimated incest, sexual assault, and child murder on a consistent basis for 13 episodes, so when I say there is No Heterosexual Explanation For This, I expect to be taken seriously.

Though, of course, incest and sexual assault were ultimately much more palatable to 1960s audiences than the suggestion of Gay Stuff. But even so.

Regrettably, this is not slang for “How’s your new cabaret act?” though for all that counts, it might as well be. In the grand tradition of accidental homoeroticism in fiction, the inclusion of a woman for the two men to fight over only makes the gay undertones more obvious.

We’re supposed to read this as Roger resenting some sort of spark between Burke and his wife, but the way our man Louis Edmonds plays it, he might as well resent Burke for loving his nameless wife over him.

Continuing to lay it on thick as apple butter, Burke points out Roger and his as-yet-unnamed wife were married the day after he was convicted.

We’re supposed to read the impromptu marriage as suspicious in a different way, of course, which is made quite obvious by the mentions of the trial in the other storyline this episode, but there’s only so much of this I can take.

Topping it all off is that, somehow, even after everything, Burke is still able to convince Roger to pour one last drink.

The man remains winsome even with a plate of donuts in his mouth! Surely, no other actor can hope to match up to…

Credit where it’s due, for an antisocial hermit, Matthew’s a fairly good host.

Matthew’s response is something akin to “HECKHA”, followed by an “A-yup.”

We might forgive that strange noise for a bit of throat clearing, but then Vicky asks how to get to Bangor and Matthew does this.

I might as well point out that, no, Matthew choking on his food and needing to tidy his face up in front of his guest was, like the Devlin Donuts debacle, not part of the script.

Film is expensive, more so in 1966 before everything went digital. Soaps, with their rigorous production schedules, couldn’t be expected to stop to correct things like that.

That’s why you get things like actors flubbing their lines, and stage-lights and teleprompters occasionally appearing in the shot. They didn’t have the luxury of extra takes.

Some stars, like Louis Edmonds and Mitch Ryan (as we saw) have a remarkable talent for turning these embarrassing moments into magical spectacles all their own.

But…not everyone is as lucky.

Poor George Mitchell might have been convulsing on the floor, spittle dribbling from spasming lips, and Alexandra Moltke would have been required to remain in her seat and ask him about trains.

Recovering somewhat from his attack, Matthew tells Vicky, unprovoked (!) all about how Roger and his wife never lived a day in Collinwood together, and moved to Augusta right after they were married. Roger and David only moved in last month.

Why he thinks this is relevant to Vicky’s own search is a mystery, but it ties into the stuff happening in the other half the episode…

Art Wallace thinks he’s very clever. Frequently in these earliest episodes, scenes are linked by cutesy pieces of dialog where something a character says at the end of one scene, is echoed, or referenced, or answered by another character at the beginning of the subsequent scene.

Some very few times, this works, but most of the time you end up feeling equal parts sympathy and exasperation with the writer.

Burke asks if Liz would be interested in selling the house and the business, which is pretty blatant telegraphing after all the absurd hoops he jumped for to dupe Carolyn, and when Roger says no Burke literally pulls a…

Complete with the theatrical glance at the wristwatch. It’s no Venezuelan Caper, but it works just as well on Roger.

Like so much else, it’s unclear how this visit to Collinwood benefits Burke’s scheme, but ‘seeing Roger’ must’ve been a significant selling point.

That, and screwing him around.

Then Burke puts up a dap, or whatever the kids are saying.

Burke asks if they can try to forget the past and Roger almost tenderly says…

Burke, with much use of his hands, then asks Roger to come to town to talk a ‘business matter’ over. Specifically…

Hard to tell if this is all bullshit, or Mitch Ryan forgot a half-page monologue.

Either way, the meeting will be at the Blue Whale, and I think we can agree it’s been far too long.

Back on Micktoria’s date…

We’ve reached the part of the evening where Guy impresses Girl with improbable stories of derring-do.

Matthew tells Victoria of a time when his car went right off the road on the way down Widow’s Hill because he hadn’t checked his brakes.

The Law of Conservation of Detail mandates that something about this story must be important later in the narrative, or else it wouldn’t have been mentioned. But every other episode mentions Vicky’s search for her past, so this law isn’t completely infallible.

Telephone call!

Two-timer.

Liz is calling for firewood to fulfill Roger’s B.S. excuse to get her out of the room. You know where this is going…

• Matthew casually mentions Victoria to Liz.
• Liz is surprised Victoria is there.
• Matthew says Vicky told him Liz knew he was here.
• Matthew is betrayed.

Could be worse. For a while there, he was pretty close to puking on her.

On the way out, Vicky, apparently deciding she hasn’t pissed off the paranoid neurotic enough, decides to break into his car.

This was referenced by earlier dialog, where Matthew mentioned Vicky could find time tables for the bus to Bangor in his station wagon, but that Vicky still feels comfortable poking around in there after breaking that man’s heart indicates a shocking flagrancy that I can’t help but admire in our milquetoast heroine.

Vicky’s expedition is interrupted by the sight of something strange going down in the garage…

Burke then turns to Vicky with a wrench (though, at this distance, it could be a screwdriver, or a scalpel) and greets her with an almost cartoonish casualness, as if they were encountering each other at the fill-up station.

Burke very not suspiciously claims he was admiring Roger’s car.

And the weird wrench he’s holding just happened to be on the driver’s seat. What’s more, Roger doesn’t know he’s here.

Vicky points out that Roger has something of a Devlin-complex, so maybe Burke should leave. Burke, by turns, shades Roger’s choice of automobile upholstery.

Considering adding a ‘Liz with tea tray’ rule to the drinking game.

Liz asks Roger if he believes Burke’s claims that Everything is Fine and Nothing is Wrong. Roger would like to believe Burke’s attitude is

Which is an odd word for the situation, but given the long, awkward pause, it’s likely Louis Edmonds forgot his line. It’s been a day for that.

Roger tells Liz about Burke’s proposed ‘business matter’ tonight.

Roger concedes maybe Burke does want to move on, but he’ll never know unless he takes the dive and goes for it.

In sum: maybe this has nothing to do with a torrid gay romance, but it’s better than what we actually get, so from now on, it is what I want it to be.

And, anyway, that’s the prime way of enjoying this show: make it what you want it to be. It’s all soap fans have been doing with their shows for the last twenty years.

Liz meets Vicky as she returns to the house. Liz isn’t upset about the Matthew stuff, but she does warn her…

She ain’t seen nothing yet.

So, Liz is a Micktoria shipper confirmed?

As Liz departs, Victoria asks if Roger intends to use his car tonight. Hearing he might, Vicky drops this vital info…

That works too. Not like there was anything strange or suspicious going on before. Certainly not.

No sir.

Moving on…

This Day in History- Wednesday, July 13, 1966

I haven’t been able to find much of import for this, the day Matthew Morgan almost died on camera.

Had he passed away today, he would have shared a death date with Reino Ragnar Lehto, former Prime Minister of Finland.

…no news is good news?