Don’t you love seasonal tension?
Sadly, almost is the operative word there.
Victoria’s monologue today is about how the letter she received from the foundling home on Monday/this morning has brought the truth of her quest back to her. But there seems a collective understanding that, milquetoast as the drama surrounding Roger’s crash and the missing suppository may be, it is the most interesting thing on the show right now, and Victoria hasn’t made an inch of progress in her so-called “quest” for her past in a month’s worth of episodes.
Perhaps for this reason, the monologue mentions that the letter has…
…it has? Why? Seriously, why should David give a hot damn about the letter? Isn’t he more concerned with covering his ass for attempted patricide? Last time we saw him, he went to comical extremes to sabotage the police investigation. That seems to be his biggest priority, and understandably so.
It comes off as just a cheap way to reinvest audience interest in what is supposed to be the driving question of the show, by connecting it to the current storyline while providing no actual cogent connections between the two.
But, yeah, David is reading Vicky’s mail because he just likes fucking around with her, I guess, and then…
Now, Liz may have fallen for the old ‘very obviously conceal something behind my back’ trick, but Roger is powered by impotent rage and impotency in general. He knows David is screwing around in the governess’s room, and he wants to know what’s up.
Roger already knows about the letter because Liz futilely attempted to make him interested in it a couple of episodes ago. His primary concern now is…paternal moralizing?
It’s kind of weird seeing Roger attempt to instill values in his son, especially so considering he also attempted to break into this very room while its occupant cowered in silent terror on the other side of the door, but hypocrisy is a parent’s prerogative.
David, however, isn’t here for this moralizing, and so opts out.
You have to appreciate that Louis Edmonds doesn’t really run out of the room, rather engaging in a healthy jog, perhaps frightened of what might happen if he used his full power and ended up actually catching up to the kid.
He does, eventually, catch up to David.
Not a child psychologist, but I’m betting something to the effect of “Fuck you, Dad.”
We then get a detailed and condescending explanation of why it’s bad to read another person’s male, courtesy of this paragon of moral virtue.
Bob Saget eat your heart out.
He really is giving Roger everything he needs. Roger prompts David to explain why he wanted to read the letter in the first place, which really is a great question since it has nothing to do with anything.
So David developed this harebrained theory that Roger was planning to realize his scheme to “send him away” by shipping him off to Vicky’s foundling home. It’s odd that he manages to simultaneously be concerned by this and going to prison, as if they’re exactly the same thing, but one doubts they make many Vicky Winters’s in State Pen.
We’re prevented from having to deal with more of this by the phone ringing.
It must be insulting to be an actress with the resume of Joan Bennett and still having to pretend to be on the phone every other episode, but money’s money.
It is Vicky, not Roger, who enters, despite Roger leaving David when he heard the phone ringing. Maybe he got lost.
Vicky wants to talk about David.
But Victoria is finally sick of everybody acting like There is Nothing Wrong With David. It may have taken her all ten episodes since that crash, but she’s finally barking up the right tree.
Vicky reminds Liz of when the “sheriff” was here, at the same time suggesting that by now the scripts have been updated to reflect the reality shift, as well as the costumery.
For us, that was two episodes ago, for Vicky, maybe an hour or two. We don’t have much reason to believe this isn’t happening at the same time as Episode 24, given there isn’t much overlap and the ‘afternoon’ will continue well into next week anyway.
So for a character on this show, Vicky has put things together with an admirable quickness. Why should David be so concerned about being arrested?
It’s kind of odd how Liz, who was the first person to warn Vicky that David wasn’t like other children, is resistant to the idea that ‘Unlike Other Children’ might have dark implications outside of, oh, night terrors and attempted suic…
Wait, why hasn’t Liz even told anybody that David tried to kill himself last night? Sure, Roger would probably think it was funny and takes notes on the method for the future, but shouldn’t this be something the governess should know?
Liz insists that they know very well Burke was the one responsible for the crash. There are no other suspects.
Yeah, that again, but not as a joke.
Roger returns with the letter, explaining David’s bit of thievery. He remarks that David’s gotten the silly idea that Roger wants to have him arrested.
Vicky tries to initiate a full discussion of the letter and its implications, but Liz wastes no time getting rid of her, A.) because nobody gives a crap about Victoria’s past and B.) because she needs to tell Roger what to say so he doesn’t make a transparent asshole of himself again.
Canon: Liz doesn’t think Roger is a person.
Meanwhile, David is researching his next crime:
Victoria returns to resume their lesson on Maine history, which was mercifully cut short by the arrival of
David guesses Roger has told her about the letter.
Victoria continues channeling 1st grade teacher energy to communicate to this nine-year-old by telling him that “no one gets you into trouble but yourself”, and the face David Henesy makes at her is really something to be believed.
Are you keeping track of the number of times Roger has been right? I’d add it to the drinking game, but I don’t think there’s been any reason yet.
David wonders what’s so important about the letter. The real answer is absolutely nothing beyond this week, but Victoria appears to consciously play on a suspicion, managing to successfully catch David off guard.
Victoria has finally drawn a connection between the mechanic magazines and the mechanical failure that caused the Rogermobile to crash.
Continuing down this line, Vicky wonders why David was so frightened in the presence of the Sheriff/Constable/Long-suffering Publicly Servile Idiot, indicating she is the first person not to buy the “impressed with the dignity of my badge” excuse.
Kinda remarkable how he held out this long if this is how he unravels. Oh, the magic of serialized storytelling.
Vicky points out that the foundling home is only for orphans anyway, so David’s concerns Roger will send him there (which he may even actually have, as I can’t for the life of me think of any other reason he’d want to bother) are baseless and absurd.
He then explodes, insisting he didn’t have anything to do with the car, a suspiciously specific denial that may even have flown under the radar last week, on Monday, or even in yesterday’s episode, but that the strictures of narrative now demand Vicky actually recognize as strange.
Alexandra Moltke gets a lot of flack, but there is something about the flat, dispassionate, knowing manner in which she says that that really makes the whole scene. For us, it’s also gratifying because after ages of everybody and their mother acting completely oblivious in ways that contradict that they are supposed to, variously, be intelligent, curious, and even outright hostile to (and therefore more likely to be suspicious of) David, here we finally have somebody catching on this little rat bastard.
And even better: she’s the star. She’s the one we were promised would be finding things out. Sure, this has nothing to do with the thing she’s supposed to find out, but she’s doing something and it helps justify her existence, which is a fine thing.
Elsewhere, Liz has just told Roger all about the letter.
Liz brings up that it was likely Burke who hired the detective to investigate Vicky’s background and Roger seizes on that at once. Roger points out that the police can easily trace Strake’s past clients via a background check but Liz, knowing we can’t have too much happening, intervenes.
Roger’s response is to bellow “THAT’S RIDICULOUS”, but sadly the camera wasn’t on him, robbing me of a prize GIF.
Joan Bennett then tells the teleprompter that Victoria’s curiosity is a dangerous thing.
And the best/worst part is? She’s right. Her reasons for engaging Miss Winters have nothing to do with the accident. Or anything. At all.
Living for that side-eye. Joan Bennett was reportedly appalled at how her makeup looked on TV, but the rigor mortis effect really helps deliver those death stares.
Liz explains that she’s most worried about Vicky snooping around for answers again.
Roger, again, tries inquiring about Vicky, but Liz remains stubborn in the face of explaining anything to anyone, including the guy she intends to help her lie.
It feels like Liz already told Roger the story about Victoria being recommended him by someone at the foundling home etc. etc., but Roger acts like he’s hearing it for the first time because there hasn’t been enough recapping today.
Ah, the magic of laughter.
Liz debriefs him on the lie he must tell Victoria, at the same time insisting she’s told Roger everything he needs to know.
Did…did hocus pocus mean something else in 1966?
When pressed, Liz only says it’s a private matter that has nothing to do with Roger or Burke either.
Roger suggests he might refuse to lie, but Liz is sure he won’t.
Nice to hear a balding 37-year-old (at least) man say “You don’t own me, Ma”, only to be shut down by Ma.
There are two flies buzzing around Joan Bennett’s head as she says all this. Muggy summer months, you know.
But the threat seems to have its maximum effect, which means we can return to history lessons.
Hopefully he won’t have to recite that for the test.
Things have apparently softened enough that David is suddenly conciliatory:
He wants her to know that he believes her about his idea about the foundling home being nonsense…
This little skeezeball.
Vicky tells Roger they were just “having a discussion about honesty.”
Close enough.
Roger takes Vicky aside to discuss the letter with her. As they leave, David asks if the “Sheriff” has arrested Burke yet.
He’s right. Roger has anxiety down to a martial art.
While they’re gone, David resumes his ain’t shittery, ransacking Vicky’s room just as he did all those episodes ago/last night.
Roger sits Vicky down to dispel her fears and forget his lines.
You can’t blame him for thinking about lawyers. Who else will he turn to when Liz evicts him for fucking up the one thing she asked?
Roger tells her that Burke, or whoever is behind the inquiries, can learn nothing because there is nothing to learn, and he’s only looking because he’s a wretched schemer and things of this nature.
Victoria herself reminds him of the recommendation story, and it becomes clear that Roger forgot Vicky already mentioned this to him back in the second episode.
Vicky immediately sees through all of this garbage, telling him she checked with the foundling home and knows that nobody was recommended to anybody by anyone.
Roger’s solution? He was recommended Victoria by someone, but not somebody who was at the foundling home!
Which begs the question how does Roger know that if he gives so little of a shit about Victoria and her past? Educated guess?
So it was an anonymous philanthropist in New York who recommended Victoria to him. Roger even explains what anonymous means (“I can’t tell you her name”), as Louis Edmonds continues elegantly flailing through a scene Alexandra Moltke hasn’t screwed up once.
The phone rings, putting an end to more of this nonsense.
When in doubt over title, just resort to gendered honorifics.
Carter tells him about his meeting with Burke, and how Burke denied everything.
Roger basically admits he sees the local police stooge as a personal servant, which would be appalling if he didn’t say it so earnestly.
I imagine Carter weeping at the other end.
Roger announces he intends to have a talk with the sheriff. By way of parting, he tells Vicky what she should do with the letter and, by extension, her quest.
The show certainly will.
Vicky returns to her room, dejected and despondent yet again. She soon finds she can’t tear up or throw away the letter, as it’s gone missing.
Sick of being tooled around, she barges into David’s room…
Moves to the shelving…
Goes to the dresser…
Those suppositories, always turning up in the strangest places.
This Day in History- Friday, July 29, 1966
General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, President of Nigeria, is taken hostage in the city of Ibadan as part of a military mutiny. He and city Governor Fajuyi are subsequently executed in the woods ans the military Chief of Staff becomes interim president.
Folk musician and largely overrated figure of this period odf musical history Bob Dylan is injured in a motorcycle accident near Woodstock (not yet famous for that), New York. He goes into seclusion for over a year, leading to panic and speculation that Folk Jesus was gone forever.
But there’s always Peter, Paul and Mary.
Kooks of Collinwood 