Spinsters and Shut-Ins

THE TIME: August 10^th, 1966

THE PLACE: McGreedy’s Greengrocer and Fine Linens, Anytown USA

THE PRINCIPLES: Eudora Pecksniff, venerable age, happily widowed, and Eugenia Spendthrift, austere age, regrettably wedded.

Eugenia: 75 cents for this dinner set! I swear, this is highway robbery!

Eudora: I tell you, Eugenia, these thieving Timothy’s have me in a mind to do something very unchristian.

Eugenia: You’ve not done an unchristian thing since you wore white stockings to Mass!

Eudora: Well, give me a nice sturdy wrench and five minutes of time and I’ll see to it nobody scams us again!

Eugenia: Have you been reading those bathtub novels, again, you old Delilah?

Eudora: Better! There’s this delightful new program on the ABC!

Eugenia: I don’t believe in television!

Eudora: Neither did I! In fact, I would’ve turned the thing right off, but this program got me hooked! It’s one of those serials!

Eugenia: In my house, we eat Cream of Wheat!

Eudora: No, you ninny! The daytime serials! It’s called Dark Shadows and it’s ever so interesting!

Eugenia: It must be, if it’s got you talking wrenches and vengeance.

Eudora: Well, it’s really quite a lovely story. All about this little piece of metal, a real humble thing, about the size and heft of one of Dr. Pendergast’s little thermometers, you know the ones…

Eugenia: Gah!

Eudora: Oh, don’t be so stuffy! It’s for the young people, they’re all in for things like that.

Eugenia: Immoral and disgusting! What kind of program…

Eudora: Well, I only think it must be for the young people. The man at the end always talks about Where the Action Is, and I’m quite sure they’ve got the rock n’ roll there.

Eugenia: And so the whole show is about this little thermometer?

Eudora: Yes, yes! First, you see, the little boy took it out of his father’s car…

Eugenia: What was it doing there?

Eudora: My dear, I’m sure I don’t know! They did that a whole month ago! I can barely remember my breakfast. But you must watch it! It’s the most novel thing!

Eugenia: If I watch your darned rectal thermometer story, will you stop talking about it?

Eudora: Oh, but the whole point is to talk about it! I haven’t found a single person anywhere that’s even seen it!

———————————————————————————————————

Ah, but these ladies will be in for quite a shock when they tune into ABC this afternoon. For Dark Shadows, ladies and germs, is Moving On.

It’s weird, really, in retrospect. You think about General Hospital and you might think Luke and Laura, or maybe you’ll think about Robin and Stone and the AIDS crisis, or maybe the Metro Court hostage crisis, or Casey the Alien. The show has been on almost 60 years! People with all levels of knowledge, casual to intimate, will have different touchstones depending on when it was most important in their lives.

But back in the day, when new soaps were still a thing… How did you describe them to others? What if, for example, your show had been on for a month and a half and had, for more than half that time, been focused, not on the ghosts and ghouls its name, theme music, setting and general atmosphere seem to suggest, but on a tiny piece of metal some kid stole in an attempt to kill his father?

And I know you’re sick of suppository jokes, and I know you think I’m masking the point: the real story was that the child tried to kill his father, which is appropriately gothic and therefore fits neatly into the show’s purview, but if you’ve been watching along, you likely already know this story was hampered by pacing problems, inexplicable character decisions, and a laughably unsatisfying resolution.

Vicky Winters’s monologue seems even to reference the fatigue of this story.

But now that that suppository’s popped out, I’m sure things will relax right quick…

Okay, okay, sorry. Had to get it out of my system.

It can’t possibly be any wonder ratings flagged over Dark Shadows’s first month (though I should point out this ratings average is now about the same as The Young and the Restless, the highest rated U.S. soap still on the air).

By now, we’re halfway into the seventh week of the show’s initial 13 week order, which more-or-less approximates to half on the whole thing. If the ratings didn’t improve by Episode 65 (and, technically, by about ten episodes before then, due to the discrepancy between shooting and air dates), Dan Curtis’s dream would be canned.

Something had to be done.

You have an idea of what that will be, of course, but the delightful vampire character is still well over 100 episodes off. In truth, a variety of smaller changes were made to the fabric of the show to carry it out of the dark, deep, murky mires of the suppository saga.

The next few weeks will be a testing ground for the show Dark Shadows wants to be. This period doesn’t really belong to any of the pre-Barnabas stories, which otherwise tend to run into each other fairly smoothly, though it does eventually begin setting up the next one.

So where do we go now, when all traces of the suppository that has for so long haunted us are finally stripped away?

Yep, it’s Vicky, standing in her room holding her angsty cradle letter, not to be confused with that other letter that David stole for no reason other than to force movement in the suppository story.

The question of Vicky’s past has fallen by the wayside even quicker than you might’ve expected it would. While the other big arc (Burke’s revenge) saw fits and starts of something passing for movement (commissioning the portrait, meeting with Bronson) during the storyline, Victoria hasn’t learned a damn thing since she got here, except that Burke hired a detective to investigate her past and, yanno, maybe they can talk about it over dinner sometime.

Yet still, somehow, Vicky is convinced answers are around the corner…

Liz’s heart may as well be as paneled as the walls of her great house for how forthcoming she’s been. Vicky’s lucky Liz didn’t send her up for the suppository thing on a whim, much less tell her anything she wants to know.

Before you get too worried this episode will hinge very much on Vicky’s past, Carolyn returns from her fool’s errand to go looking for David.

Carolyn, as the only member of the household (not counting the indentured servant) to not have been present for the Suppository Spat, must now be informed in sober tones that, indeed, her little monster of a cousin tried to kill his father and, before you ask, no, we aren’t doing anything about that.

This is prefaced by the unusual outburst…

Which is cutely similar to mother and daughter’s very first interaction way back when. Art Wallace is desperately trying to remind us of the stories this show has had going since Day 1 that were inexplicably sidelined for that little prick in the bum.

Naturally, happiness isn’t very easy, even for wealthy white women with doting mothers and Nice Guy boyfriends.

Yanno, I should be complaining, but after so long talking about David’s psychosis, and Liz’s obliviousness, and goddamn Consteriff Carter’s incompetence, it’s nice to be able to discuss Carolyn’s bald-faced privilege. Like returning to tea with an old friend you never much liked before, but got nostalgic for as the years went by, and now that you’re with them again you kind of remember why you never liked them, but, well, you’ve met plenty worse people by now.

Naturally, the piece of the tale of her homicidal cousin Carolyn is most interested in is when the big hot stud of a man came to the house.

We don’t dwell on this very long, thankfully, because Carolyn gets to ‘Told ya so’ her mother and not get smacked upside the head for it.

Carolyn remarks that, if nothing else, they should at least be glad it’s all over now, but Liz isn’t so sure.

God, I hope not.

Carolyn, I should note, isn’t all that put out about the whole ‘Let’s cover up the attempted murder’ thing. If nothing else, she’s more dubious Liz’s admittedly herky jerky plan to tell everybody the suppository just fell out will be believed, presumably not having been informed that the role of local law enforcement is currently being played by a carelessly animated scarecrow.

Carolyn’s horniness for Burke has directed just about every decision she’s made since she met him, and her relief that he wasn’t responsible for trying to kill her uncle has been swift as it has been exasperating.

But she is right. Liz can’t possibly believe that Burke, who now has intimate knowledge of David’s movements tonight and witnessed first hand the scene upon their return to Collinwood, will accept the story. We happen to know he knows the truth. Wouldn’t it be a delightfully soapy turn if it’s Burke who reveals the truth to the world, reigning down the very scandal Liz is trying desperately to prevent, leaving the Collinses vulnerable as he reigns destruction on them?

It’s actually commendable how quickly the show will stop mentioning the suppository at all. Obviously, they’re not gonna drop it now, the same week the story wrapped, but they are industriously committed to ensuring the thing spins off no new stories whatsoever. Which flies into the face of soap opera story structure, but what do I know?

I like how she disguises Carolyn’s unease that they’ll let an innocent man continue to be suspected of a horrible crime as her just having a girlish crush which, in the end, is basically all this is anyway.

It’s more awkward when a cousin is doing the paddling.

Carolyn goes to make tea and Liz cautions her…

Art Wallace must’ve been reading paperback romances. Anything to understand those pesky dames. It can’t be a coincidence that the suppository saga was a sausage fest, with rare interjection from the femoids.

She, likewise, isn’t ready to marry long-suffering Joe Haskell. Remember him? He clocked a total two episodes in the entire suppository saga, and both of them were to appear flummoxed as Carolyn interacted with Burke during their meal.

On that subject, Joe and Carolyn do go on a lot of dates, don’t they? This is our third night since the show began, and the first one where they haven’t been ‘dancing’ at the Blue Whale, and they had a lunch date today. This is what happens when you have no friends.

It’s about damn time. You know how damn long it’s been since we’ve gone back to the Blue Whale?

Joel Crothers must now prove his metal after an almost ten episode absence by carrying on a drunken conversation with a glass of booze and, you know, he really rises to the occasion.

Neat revelation: if Joe’s confidences in the glass-as-Carolyn mean anything, he thinks the main reason old girl hasn’t married him yet is…

Which is ridiculous, but may also be true, per Carolyn’s own words. Before Burke was even a consideration, Carolyn’s opposition to marrying Joe was that she didn’t want to leave her mother alone in Collinwood. Or, at least, that’s what she said to avoid discussing her fear of growing up.

Joe’s night is about to get that much better.

The only conceivable reason Burke can have for bothering Joe, who vehemently wants nothing to do with him, is that he just wants to bust the kid’s balls.

Watch out, fellows. Burke Devlin is about to lecture us about the Temperance movement!

Big Wheel. Like those tricycles toddlers ride. Also another euphemism for Burke’s penis.

Joe’s resentment of Burke is entirely understandable of course. This grinning asshole rode into town on his Big Wheel and grabbed the attention of every schmuck he clapped eyes on, right down to his girlfriend. As far as Joe is concerned, Burke being a suspect in an attempted murder investigation hasn’t been enough to stop him preening about like he’s God’s gift.

Burke Devlin! A scheming, slimy crook who tried to get Joe to prostitute himself for secrets. He gets everything. And Joe, an honest, kind, all-American fella is left in the dust.

There it is again, and again from Joe. Early Dark Shadows’s preoccupation with the end of the world continues apace. Collinsport is the beginning and the end…it is all things past (Vicky’s search, Burke’s trial, the decaying legacy of Collinwood) and all things future (Burke’s vengeance, David’s madness, the fate of Carolyn’s happiness).

For Burke, Collinsport is both an end and a beginning. His world may as well have ended when he was convicted a decade ago. But now he is back to stake his claim on the place and start anew.

But for Joe, an enterprising young man who works hard and has humble ambitions, the beginning and the end have always been the same: Carolyn Stoddard. And every time it seems like things may be beginning to work out, things get all the more difficult.

The fact of the matter is Burke isn’t even lying. But he seems totally cool letting Carolyn think he might wanna steal her and seeing what goes from there.

Now properly greased, Joe is no longer of a mind to quail helplessly as Burke wags his dick in his face.

It’s nice that, at his most unfiltered, the worst Joe can come up with for his worst enemy is “Big Wheel” and “girl stealer”. Why this type wasn’t more popular half a century ego escapes me.

We’re about to get the B-side of Lady Aberlin and Daniel Striped Tiger’s “Am I a Mistake?”

Joe explains the real reason he’s so down in the dumps…

Enjoy the brief register of panic in Burke’s eyes.

You might recall the tale of Joe’s coworker Jerry Gerse, with whom he was going to thrown in to buy a fishing boat so they could start their own business and be well on the road to financial independence, fast tracking his marriage to Carolyn as well.

It turns out, though, that Jerry has had to put his plans on hold because his wife has discovered she is pregnant.

All well and good, until you stop and think about the timeline here.

Joe told Carolyn about his plans to buy his own boat in Episode 8, which was yesterday afternoon.

Joe told Carolyn that he and Jerry and thrown in to buy the boat together in Episode 24 which, besides being Joe’s most recent appearance before this one, was this afternoon.

So, apparently, in the intervening not-quite-twelve-hours since Joe exuberantly gave Carolyn the news at lunch, Mrs. Gerse discovered she was with child, Jerry told Joe, and now Joe is drowning his sorrows at just how quickly his life has gone into the shitter.

It’s kind of hilarious how Dark Shadows had it in it to painstakingly, laboriously, redundantly proceed through every single beat of the suppository’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, but the Rise and Fall of Joe Haskell happened entirely off-screen in a comically condensed timeframe.

But, hey, if they’re fast-tracking other stories into motion, they must be realizing you can’t have a soap opera without things happening.

Burke “Why Don’t We Just Print More Money” Devlin.

This is, of course, just an overture so Burke can repeat his offer from his first meeting with Joe: to inform on the Collinses for cash. And here, again, is a flicker of an interesting story. The newly demoralized “good boy” who now feels he has nothing to lose and everything to gain by getting his girl out of the house they both agree is imprisoning her. Will he take the bait? Will he betray his values? Will he make a deal with the devil?

All fascinating questions, but there’s a mother and daughter tea party going on.

Liz repeats that the primary function of Carolyn getting married is to get her out of the house because there’s no such thing as “college” or “employment” or just “young woman of means living in the big city” in 1966. That Girl wouldn’t premiere until September, after all.

Things turn to the subject of Liz not sending David to the loony bin, which really seems like something one of them should’ve brought up before, but I digress.

Don’t threaten me.

Well, Carolyn, there’s this thing called the Double Standard…

Carolyn wonders what Roger thinks.

In reality, she just tells the transparent lie that Roger agrees with her, as if he’s always gotten along just swimmingly with his son and would hate for him to be ever be sent away, which is why he was always telling David he wanted to send him away, starting this all to begin with.

If nothing else, Carolyn hasn’t reached the romanticizing serial killers portion of ill-advised hopeless romancing.

Then, like a real sport, Liz (who really hasn’t been doing much to earn hearts these last few episodes) tells Carolyn she has to leave, because David is more important now.

And Carolyn, therefore, is the proverbial chopped liver. Nice.

Remember how Victoria was in this episode?

Carolyn pops in to visit our girl.

I occasionally realize new things as I write these, but if Vicky doesn’t have a literal birth certificate, how is it that she’s able to drive? In this day and age, you need a birth certificate, social security, college transcripts and the Code of Hammurabi to get a driver’s license. Is Vicky a legal unperson, or is this just another marker of an age before stifling bureaucracy became the national response to crisis?

Sorry, Carolyn, but if you did remember it by heart, you’ll know it’s cannot, rather than can’t.

Carolyn is here to tell us dinner’s in half an hour, which is a little strange, since it’s been nighttime for a while. Then again, the entire household spent the whole evening looking for the missing kid, and the only servant on the property almost choked to death on his own cooking, so we must assume Liz just does it all herself. Probably in the blazers and brooches.

Naturally, things turn to the drama of the evening. Carolyn at least has the tact not to be upset to Vicky’s face that David will be sticking around since that kid is, you know, the girl’s job security. She’s more concerned that Victoria might think they’re a bunch of sick fucks

Kooky, in fact.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Carolyn proceeds to make a listicle.

Don’t want to break her flow, but there are definitely other crazy things that Roger has done.

Carolyn wonders how Vicky can even stand to stick around here, pointing out that she hasn’t exactly found anything out about herself, which may be Art Wallace’s way of telling us the pacing was all part of the plan which I’m sure he doesn’t realize is the problem.

Though, technically, it isn’t really that surprising that Vicky hasn’t found anything out yet. She’s only been here about 48 hours. It’s just those 48 hours for her have been eternity for us.

Victoria correctly deduces that the reason Carolyn is being weird and existential is that Liz is talking about the M word again.

And here we are, back at one of our earliest observations… Vicky and Carolyn are both searching for their roles as grown women in an unwelcoming world. Vicky is impeded by a lack of information, a cloud of secrecy that has obscured and maybe even robbed her of identity. Carolyn’s problem is the opposite. She is a prisoner of her family’s legacy and is caught between remaining a Collins and carving out a legacy of her own.

Coming of age stories about young women! The bread and butter of the soap opera genre since our girl Irma Phillips got the radio to broadcast Painted Dreams. Why this was sidelined in favor of the suppository, I will never understand.

Vicky proceeds to abruptly, and boldly I might add, ask Carolyn to lend her her car so she can run an errand in town. If this sounds exactly like the kind of thing she tried to talk Carolyn out of doing way back then, that’s because it is.

But when a guy offers you dinner and a dossier, by God you take it.

As Carolyn leaves, she points out.

 Because Art Wallace thinks it’s cute to link scenes with similar pieces of dialog, Joe is currently bemoaning the predicament of the Collins family to Burke. He too sees them as an obstacle to the wedding, but not for the same reason Carolyn does. He believes Carolyn can’t leave the house, can’t bring herself to do it, while Carolyn doesn’t want to bring Joe into it.

I’m kidding. He isn’t that much of an asshole.

Seriously, what is Burke’s motivation here? He’s just cleared himself (if not officially) of attempted murder, he knows the truth to the whole affair, and can weaponize it against his enemies at any time. He’s on top of the world, and here he is choosing to troll this kid for shits and giggles.

 

A cute mouse.

Joe declares that he knows exactly what’s happened to Carolyn at Collinwood and whoo boy, if you’re smelling a “This ain’t it, Chief” then you’re right…Chief.

The clueless gender politics of Dark Shadows make this whole thing even harder to parse than it might already be. Obviously, Joe isn’t entitled a wife in Carolyn, but Carolyn has also repeatedly disregarded, disrespected and even admitted to stringing Joe along, so it’s a tenuous situation in which it seems the most palatable outcome would be for everybody to just try other options.

Or…or we could storm out with vengeance in our hearts. Something has to happen at some point, after all.

Indeed, a soused Joe turns up at Collinwood just as Vicky is preparing to leave.

Elizabeth comments “You’re drunk” as if she were commenting on the weather and Joe just bullies on past them, demanding to speak to Carolyn.

As strange and out-of-nowhere this whole thing is, it certainly is a refreshing attempt, the first of quite a few we’ll be getting from Dark Shadows’s post-Suppository era. It may have originally been another month before something gave with Joe and Carolyn, and now things seem to be getting somewhere. Sure, it would’ve been nice if this all had been seeded beforehand, but at this point, I’ll take anything.

Whoa! Joe is violating, as the kids say.

Rather than toss Joe out or call the cops (not that he’d be much help), Liz settles for speaking about Joe as if he isn’t in the room.

That expression has fallen out of common parlance in recent decades, but what it means is Joe might be ready to be Carolyn’s caveman, so maybe things will work out for them yet.

Carolyn does, eventually, come downstairs and I can’t help but wonder where the other people in the house are. David, understandably, has been said to be catatonic in his room, but am I to believe Ms. Roger Collins didn’t jet onto the scene at the first whiff of Drama?

That was almost a GIF, but I figure nobody knows what “potted” means anymore and they’d all get the wrong idea.

Joe parades everybody into the “council room” and I guess everybody is enjoying this enough to actually listen to him.

Is this It, Joe? I daresay It Ain’t.

My God! Her life may as well be over!

The problem, Joe says, is that Carolyn has resigned herself to a life of spinsterdom, no different from Eugenia and Eudora, growing old with her mother in this house forever. Ironically, Liz has a similar fear, which is why she wants Carolyn to marry so badly. It’s only Carolyn who doesn’t really know what she wants but, whatever that may be, being a shut-in likely ain’t it.

Just as Ain’t It as Joe. Victoria tries to take her leave, but Joe has decided she may as well be a part of this because, really, what else does she have to do?

The going theory is vehicular homicide, but I guess life of matronly celibacy has some weight too.

This is…actually true, from Carolyn’s own lips. Say what you like, but Joe at least seems to get the psychology, even if not the motivation. And it isn’t so much Liz’s fault as it is something nebulous and intangible as most of our anxieties are.

In fact, from a poetic point of view, isn’t anxiety nothing more than a Dark Shadow, hovering over us until…

!!!

Since it can’t get any funnier than that weird little pratfall, the ladies escort Joe to the sofa where he desperately gives our heroine a message…

She should be so lucky.

A bit of the sting is taken out of Joe’s words when, as he blacks out, he admits that it doesn’t really matter what he says because, one way or another…

So he can’t quit Carolyn even if he wants to. Les affaires!

Carolyn assures her mother that nothing Joe said is true.

Vicky certainly doesn’t. She peaces out at once, eager to make her own bad decisions for a change.

Ah God.

This Day in History- Wednesday, August 10, 1966

The U.S. Department of the Treasury discontinues the two-dollar bill. Over fifty years later, we somehow still have pennies.

Lunar Orbiter 1, the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the moon, is launched from Cape Kennedy to scope out sights for the moon landing. The American public would have another three years before being disappointed that there is, in fact, no hidden city on the other side.

Murderer James Donald French is put to death by electric chair. He probably didn’t say “French fries” before the ordeal, but that didn’t stop the zeitgeist from saying he did.

This Guy Was in That Thing!

I really didn’t want to spend time on this, but it behooves me to point out that Harvey frigging Keitel is in this episode, as one of the dancing extras in the Blue Whale.

Keitel’s filmography is extraordinary and includes such films as Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, That Night in Varennes, The Last Temptation of Christ, Thelma and Louise, Reservoir Dogs, Sister Act (Stuart Damon remains the only DS cast member to appear in the sequel), Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds and The Irishman. So basically every film that asshole in your film class couldn’t shut up about and also Sister Act.

Before Dark Shadows he had appeared only as an uncredited Nazi on Hogan’s Heroes. His appearances in the Blue Whale in this and the next episode are only his second TV role. There. I acknowledged Harvey Keitel. Where’s my money?