Victoria Winters develops a reputation among Dark Shadows fans as something of an imbecile, but it has been noted that this is an unfair descriptor in the pre-Barnabas era. Vicky is plucky, inquisitive, and for the most part, doesn’t take bullshit.
And yet, she still has failings.
Vicky isn’t alone in assuming David is (much, much, very much) more innocent than he appears, of course. Despite Roger’s constant bitching, Carolyn’s “little monster” comments and Liz’s repeated admonitions of David’s ‘strangeness’, none of them seem willing to accept that David may actually do anything strange or monstrous.
Part of this is, of course, required by the horror genre. The evil in plain sight must remain in plain sight, because it’s scarier when things we’re familiar with in our own lives do, well, horrible things.
The other part is mandated by the soap opera format, where storylines must play out in five episode intervals every week, with all the major beats carefully tailored to occur on Fridays, to keep audiences hungering for more over the weekend.
As it happens, this is a Friday episode. The last two cliffhanger Fridays were fairly lacking, because they both illustrated things that had to happen. Of course Vicky will stay in Collinwood. She’s the literal narrator. And of course Burke was bound to come to Collinwood eventually. That’s the only reason he’s here.
Because making the Creepy Child explain himself forces him to humanize himself, even in a small way, and the more human the Creepy Child appears, the less scary he becomes.
You’ll note David has changed clothes again. This, also, will never be explained, but I guess David Henesy was able to get off easier than his adult costars, even in an age before child acting unions.
Roger is looking for his car keys, and you’d better believe Louis Edmonds pulls out all the stops.
Considering how reluctant he was to meet with Burke at all, he really is in a tizzy about this dinner date.
David insists he won’t let Roger send him away, and then he indulges his little diva with a dramatic exit.
Vicky tracks Roger down in a pathetic-yet-sincere attempt to rope him into her surefire plan to win David’s heart: Magazine subscriptions.
Roger is more focused on carrying on his mission to see Vicky delivered the hell out of this house.
Before this can get any weirder, Liz arrives and gets conscripted into the Quest for Roger’s keys. Vicky suggests she knows where they are…
Vicky mentions she saw Roger’s keys in his car but not, yanno, locked inside his car, because not even Roger Collins’s luck is that bad.
Yet.
And yet, even now, Victoria won’t tell anybody about encountering Burke at the garage, hovering over Roger’s car with a wrench in his hand.
Here is the man she has been repeatedly warned is a danger to this family, a man she knows Roger is worried might influence her against the family, and here is an opportunity to prove her loyalty to the Collinses against this stranger who has done the bare minimum to prove his decency to her…
But Roger refuses, point blank, to pick up some Highlights for his emotionally stunted child, so maybe it’s no surprise Vicky doesn’t want to protect this guy.
Roger parts by almost cheerily warning Victoria that, given enough time, David will “destroy” her.
You might be familiar with the concept of ‘dramatic irony’, which turns up a lot in daytime drama. The device is premised on we in the audience knowing something that the people in the show don’t.
When Roger chuckles that David is bound to destroy Victoria, we let out a little snicker, knowing that, (somehow) oblivious to everybody, David is working to destroy somebody in this room…
And it isn’t Miss Winters. At least, not yet.
So maybe she didn’t say it before because she didn’t want a repeat performance from Roger. And she didn’t tell Liz at the end of Episode 13 because…time constraints?
Either way, Liz doesn’t seem concerned enough to change her resting state of slightly perturbed staring.
Liz wants to see Roger before he goes. She tries, yet again, to dissuade him from going, but Roger desperately wants to see his sworn enemy for whom he possesses no affection, no sir, not at all.
Roger’s argument seems to be that, even though he thought Burke was here to ‘destroy’ him, the fact that he has yet to be destroyed proves that Burke may not be as dangerous as he appears.
And yet he so casually throws around that same ‘d’ word with reference to his son, never once wondering if maybe his judgment just sucks.
The whole thing reads like a concerned mother warning her kid away from going out with that dangerous rogue who hangs around the pop stand.
Swift recovery, Louie.
Elsewhere, Vicky is forced to break the wretched news to David.
Vicky decides it’s best to lie to this child who already actively hates his father and knows he hates him back, claiming Roger was just ‘too busy’. Meanwhile, she could become this kid’s best friend in five seconds by telling him his father is a giant slimy ass-crack, and David was right about him all along.
Perhaps most amazing about this is that the incurious Victoria never bothers to ask for any explanations as to these sentiments, so as far as she knows, David wants his father dead because he didn’t buy some Highlights.
Vicky can’t leave well enough alone, but instead of asking David why he feels so strongly about his father, she simply harps on the fact that Roger won’t send him away because…
Because.
Not everybody…David knows his mother loves him and also maybe Elizabeth, but that’s apparently up in the air. But, Vicky, insists, what about her? She thinks he’s pretty swell!
This child is the realest damn person on this show. On another soap, the role would be occupied by an 80-year-old divorcee and/or widow.
Victoria decides to win David over by telling him some sob story about a “girl” at the foundling home. Because Victoria is every grade school teacher you ever loathed thrown into a blender, we must assume the “girl” is shorthand for Vicky herself, and that this story is Vicky describing an experience of her own in an ultimately futile attempt to appeal to this child.
And, because she assumed nobody liked her, she drove everybody away. Like that.
Now, mental health wouldn’t be invented for another half century or so, but Vicky’s insistence that loneliness and depression are self-instigated factors we are entirely responsible for might not be the best things for a troubled child to internalize?
No lie, Vicky’s story’s ‘happy ending’ comes with an arrival of a “man” who spoke to the “girl” for a good long time and taught her the value of self-esteem.
This is why you should never tell a child about your personal life. They will callously weaponize it against you and make you out to be a sentimental idiot.
We never hear about this “girl” and “man” again, but the way Vicky tells the story does suggest she was speaking of herself, implying she had seen a therapist when she was at the foundling home. This would be an interesting detail to further flesh out Vicky’s past in a way apart from her futile ‘search’ but despite, or perhaps because of that, we will never hear about it again.
Anyway, David has a better idea for how hypothetical “girl” should have handled her problems.
Now, this was 1966, more than 30 years before Columbine, 35 years before 9/11, and over 40 years before the American news cycle would be a dizzying haze of disturbed white boys walking into schools, shopping malls, office buildings and night clubs to wreak bloody havoc over slights ineffectual or imagined.
Believe it or not, a very realistic toy gun was an essential part of the 1960s boy’s toolkit. Soldiers had guns to shoot pinko Vietnamese! Cowboys had guns to shoot pinko Indians! Astronauts had guns to kill pinko Martians! Guns were such a valued part of the American entertainment sphere, that every western was legally obligated to reference guns in titles, opening sequences or theme music, or else be cancelled.
But something about a troubled, scrawny, white boy brandishing a gun and talking about lining his enemies up and shooting them one by one is a little too close to home for my sensitive 2019 brain.
We should never blame third parties for the actions of the disturbed, but Victoria’s entire attitude to this has been a patrician condescension. She suggests David’s doubts are nonsensical, that his father loves him (when she has it from the horse’s damn mouth that he doesn’t), and that David, who has lived with his father his entire life, “give him a chance” as if he’s only known Roger as long as she has.
Ah, yes. I’m sure him finally saying that, but in a creepy monotone while staring off into space, proves at last that Victoria’s “Stop being so crazy!” technique is the future of child pathology.
Speaking of giving people a chance, Roger is ready to make a leap…
As he heads out, Roger finds David waiting for him.
David asks if Roger is taking his car out tonight. Rather than wonder why he’s asking such a weirdly obvious question, Roger responds in the manner of the cartoonishly unrepentant murder victim on a crime drama.
David asks if Roger really meant it when he said he wanted to send him away and, rather than do what most parents would do and offer some vague platitude, Roger just fucking leaves.
A little bit later, Burke calls Liz, presumably to ask if his date is still on.
What time is it, anyway? It’s been nighttime all week. Maggie was expected to be on the clock in Episode 12, Matthew had ‘suppah’ in Episode 13, and Joe didn’t pick Carolyn up for her date until Episode 14. With all that, it feels like it should be much later than whatever time it actually is.
Liz, unsettled, asks Vicky to sit with her.
The sense of foreboding, as if the house is trying to warn them about something. It’s another gothic trope at least as old as House of Usher. Liz, as a self-imposed prisoner of the house, must have a stronger connection to it than the others…
With the possible exception of David, who claims to be in communion with…whatever other things hang out around the paneled walls.
Liz asks Vicky what the hell is the matter with David tonight, presumably under the impression that Vicky has by now had more than two conversations with him.
She can see it, at least. Liz, at any rate, can’t explain why Roger hates that poor little scamp. For that matter…we don’t really know either. It’s easy to forget that, because Roger shows such a practiced disdain for everything and everyone he encounters.
If the oily clothes and the mechanic magazine and the giant suppository weren’t all big enough hints, the fact that Roger is in his car should be enough to tell you that something very bad is about to happen to him.
Soap opera viewers know that, whenever a character is physically shown in a moving vehicle, something terrible will happen. Usually a car crash that can result in miscarriage, coma, amnesia, manslaughter, homicide or, if the actor’s contract is up, death.
As Matthew Morgan so delicately pointed out to us before…
And it turns out Roger lacks both those things.
At which point, we get a smash cut to a ringing telephone as the show goes to its last commercial.
Liz goes to silence the horrendous bleating of 1966 telephone technology, and finds David creepily staring at the phone without making any moves to answer it.
Liz answers the phone and gets News from Somebody, requiring a patented soap opera one-sided reaction:
As it turns out, Roger has been in a horrible car accident.
It took 15 episodes, but something interesting finally seems to have happened. Let’s see how long it takes for them to ruin this too.
Oh, and sidenote: the credits play over David’s room.
This Day in History- Friday, July 15, 1966
China successfully launches a dog into space. It returns alive and apparently enjoyed the trip such that it recommended the same route to his homegirl, who would enjoy her own space adventure on the 28th.
In true American fashion, the United States ignores condemnation from allies and ramps up its bombing attacks in North Vietnam, flying 121 bombing missions, the most since the war began.
The first liver transplant from a chimp to a human occurs. The two-year-old recipient does not long survive the operation, putting a kibosh on what would have been a very grotesque Disney Channel Original Movie.
Kooks of Collinwood 