The Emancipation of Sam Evans

She’s talking about the ratings.

We’ve just kicked off a strange, nebulous post-suppository era on Dark Shadows. It remains unclear what this most unconventional of daytime soaps wants to be. The last two episodes featured, shock of shocks, interplay and development between the show’s only current romantic coupling and the still nascent relationship between the two leads. We can say what we like about the respective pairings of Joe/Carolyn and Burke/Victoria, but you can’t deny “romantic troubles” are more freely associated with this genre than “murderous child”.

A perhaps just-as-pressing question is the fate of little David Collins. Since the show took the cowards’ way out, choosing not only to have the Collinses isolate the secret of how their heir tried to murder his own father via stolen suppository, but to also have Liz override Roger’s insistence on sending Roger away, presumably to a special school for gifted young murderers/Hogwarts/The X-Men/the horrible warlock school from American Horror Story: Apocalypse.

This second thing makes more sense to us, at least. Why send away the lovely little gem that is David Henesy? He kicks ass, can hold his own against stage greats like Louis Edmonds and Mitch Ryan, and no matter what wretched shit David does, Henesy ensures you never stop feeling at least a little bad for him and the miserable circumstances that motivated what he did.

It doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that we wouldn’t feel this way if a more typical child actor was in the role, so I guess we lucked out.

But this still leaves the conundrum of what we’re to do with David now. How do we walk back the fact that he tried to kill his father? How do we address it? How do the other members of the family address it?

At least the shadowy corner behind the stairs makes sense. This kid is screwed the second Carolyn turns around.

But before that happens, we get to hear Carolyn speaking to Joe who, despite everything that’s happened tonight, is eager to give his girl the tea.

Joe has charmingly decided to pretend to be drunk in an attempt to ingratiate his girlfriend and, given Carolyn’s taste, it seems to work. Their happy chuckle concluded, Joe tells her about his meeting with Burke. Carolyn is delighted at the idea Joe listened to her inane request to apologize to the guy who’s gotten his rocks off by stepping on Joe’s rocks since he arrived, but Good Ol’ Joe is quick to debase this.

We’ve really got him steamed if he’s saying heck.

It’s up to you to decide whether or not it’s in character for trademark “Decent Guy” Joe Haskell to gleefully tell his girlfriend how he totally saw her friend with the guy said girlfriend has the moisties for but as President of the Joe Haskell Stan Society, I can tell you that this is entirely justified because we all know Burke just told Vicky he has no romantic interest in Carolyn, even though he’s been happily letting her think she has a chance with him since their first meeting, so Joe is only expediting a situation that otherwise may never have been resolved, and haven’t we as viewers of this program had enough of things never being resolved?

You’ve gotta imagine David on the other end hearing all this and fuming that Burke would even dare get messy with that basic wretch Victoria Winters. But, yanno, he tried to frame both of them for attempted murder so he’s provided them some delightful ice breaker conversation.

Carolyn returns to the foyer and, I shit you not, just finds David standing there.

This is the first Carolyn has seen David since learning he was responsible for the crime she worried she’d enabled Burke to commit. As a matter of fact, this is her first time seeing David ever. She’s the last member of the household to interact with him, not counting (as always) Matthew Morgan, but he hasn’t been seen since, quite literally, the beginning of the suppository saga, so that isn’t surprising.

We already know very certainly how Carolyn feels about David. She’s the one that keeps calling him the “little monster”, after all, and has gleefully informed Vicky of his various depravities since she got here. Now, indeed, she seems properly validated and able to take the high gr…

This works too.

David maintains his winning record, pushing Carolyn off him as easily as if she were made of paper and watching as she sulks off.

So if you had “David becomes the asshole little brother from 80s teen girl movie” on your post-suppository BINGO card, congratulations.

Now, how many of you had ABC announcer Bob Lloyd chiming into the opening titles to tell us…

The…the who? The what? The why?

I’ve committed myself to holding off from talking about this until we get to the scene in question, but GAH, I AM SO PISSING EXCITED and…

But first we have to deal with David doing the asshole little brother thing.

It turns out that, as part of her new policy of Amnesty for Suppository Stealers (ASS), Liz let David out of his room because there are no consequences in the house of Collins.

David wonders if Carolyn knows where Roger is.

You know shit’s bad if not even Unca Roger can buoy her spirits. Carolyn tells David to “find Miss Winters”, I guess so he can make her consider suicide, but she already knows very well that Miss Winters isn’t around, so she must just be planning ahead.

David rues the day Vicky ever darkened their doorstep and, where Carolyn earlier in the evening faced her mother’s wrath to defend her new (only?) friend, she now gives a burn that would be devastating if it weren’t wasted on a nine-year-old.

I mean, as much as I resent the looming battle between a 17 and 20-year-old over 37-or-so-year-old dick, if it means Nancy Barrett gets to hone her skills as That Bitch, fine. Every soap should have a That Bitch and Carolyn, with her wild spirit, vivacious attitude, and lusty nature should’ve been that since the beginning. The closest thing we’ve had in her stead was Roger and he’s not a very effectual That Bitch because he always loses.

David throws the façade about not listening in out the window, saying he knows Carolyn likes Burke Devlin in a tone I am perhaps just imagining sounds like jealousy.

You have to admire his pluck. He just barely skated away from going up for attempted murder and he’s already determined to make the family regret not sending him to Arkham Asylum when they had the chance.

Carolyn, however, isn’t here for David’s shit and caps off her very first scene with him doing what nobody else has had the gumption to do in 35 episodes.

Nancy Barrett’s voice reaches inhuman levels, unheard of on a show where the loudest timbre is usually Mitch Ryan enunciating sandwich ingredients. Dark Shadows is not (yet) a show punctuated by regular roars and screams, so Carolyn letting the little monster have it comes off as truly shocking and, dare I say, satisfying as well.

But, nice as this is and everything, it’s time for the REAL fab shit to get stirred.

HI MY HEART.

Okay, so now we can return to the enigmatic voice from the beyond who told us over the titles that, indeed, the “role of Sam Evans will now be played by David Ford”. The Voice From the Beyond never lies, except when he tells us F Troop is going to be fun tonight. And, true to his word, here is David Ford, now inhabiting the role of Maggie’s father, Roger’s reluctant accomplice, and Mr. Wells’s secret love Sam Evans.

Now, we haven’t seen Sam Evans, originated by character actor Mark Allen, since Episode 22, when the suppository story was just beginning to go from “Wow! Things are happening! How refreshing” to “Wait, really? This is what we’re doing now?” You’ll recall his role in the episode was to be approached by Burke to commission a portrait which, not that he said this, he intends to hang in Collinwood as part of his “plan” to exact “revenge” on the Collinses.

Mentions of Sam since then have been entirely relegated to Roger learning about this portrait commission from Maggie and getting Very Cross about it because it violates their little agreement from their first interaction back in Episode 7. Otherwise, it may be easy to forget there ever was such a man as Sam Evans because, really, he hasn’t done much to distinguish himself.

Maggie has recently been able to distance herself increasingly from the bubble of “diner chick with shit Dad”, though her appearances since Sam’s disappearances have numbered exactly two. Still, we have been treated to a delightful character transformation motivated entirely by one actress’s charisma.

Now it’s her Dad’s turn.

The circumstances surrounding Mark Allen’s departure from Dark Shadows are myriad, sordid, torrid, and a helluva story which I won’t go into because the industrious Prisoner of the Night at Dark Shadows From the Beginning handled it all years ago. So, for the interested, The Perils of Mark Allen sheds light not only on the ouster of the actor from the show, but on the internal politics on a television set in the mid-60s. As I have said elsewhere, I have no reason to doubt the blog’s findings, but I trust you to form your own conclusions.

Now Mark Allen, whatever the caliber of his work prior to Dark Shadows, never did much to impress. In fact, he often came across as just as drunk as his character, even in scenes where one can’t fathom he actually would be drunk. Stammering inelegantly, blubbering incoherently, and coming off as either a bumbling idiot or an incontinent monster (his treatment of Maggie comes to mind), the man did nothing to acquit himself, and Art Wallace’s script (“You don’t exist AT AWWWWWWLLLLL!”) did nothing to fix matters.

Perhaps you noticed Sam kind of dropped off the map. Maybe you didn’t. After all, Bill Malloy and Joe Haskell were last spotted that same week, and only resurfaced in this one too. Even if you noticed his absence, I have a hard time believing you missed him.

But Dark Shadows isn’t through with Sam Evans yet.

Enter David Ford.

This isn’t one of my actor deep-dives, but I will say that Dave Ford was, unlike Mark Allen, not a professional TV actor. He was, however, a stage performer in the vein of Mitch Ryan, Louis Edmonds and newly-christened That Bitch Nancy Barrett. And, if you’ve been watching along, you may recognize that this is a Very Good Thing.

This was his first true television role, coming in on a Friday episode whose cliffhanger is, minor spoilers, so insignificant that the true cliffhanger might as well be that there’s a new Sam Evans and oh my God, he isn’t a bag of shit.

A sidenote, since I’m already talking this much, about the history of recasts as applied to the soap opera. Because soaps are very…exhaustive pieces of media, often going on for hundreds of episodes over many years and even decades, recasts are a natural part of the experience, usually because an actor leaves or is fired or gets significant DUIs or just acts in general like a giant toehead rather than a sexy, vivacious heroine.

Soap fans are used to recasts, is what I’m saying and one of the greatest sins of this so-called era of “peak TV” is that audiences of “cerebral” television programs are often taken aback on the rare instances when “The Other Darrin” enters stage right.

A notable example is noted Tits and Dragons manic-depressive slog Game of Thrones, very loosely adapted from George R.R. Martin’s noted, rich and actually good high-fantasy epic A Song of Ice in Fire. In Season 4 of the show, the character of Daario Naharis, a mercenary soldier of fortune in the retinue of (then, mostly at least) heroine Daenerys Targaryen, was recast.

The character debuted in the third season, whereupon his performance was lampooned as something closer to “real” fantasy like Lord of the Rings which, I guess, is bad, so he was recast with someone studlier, sexier and more generic to better fit the tone of the series. He then proceeded to do significantly less and less until they just wrote him out before diving completely off the quality cliff in the last two seasons.

So “mainstream” television isn’t very good at recasts. Soaps, however, are required by cosmic laws to never take themselves too seriously, and so soap fans (mostly) are the same and are (usually) able to appreciate a good recast. Operative word there is good and Dark Shadows will give us quite a few examples of both good and bad recasts.

Dave Ford is one of the good ones.

Right off the bat, we see Dave Ford’s Sam possesses something Mark Allen’s could never aspire to: charm. He immediately detects Joe is hungover and empathizes, highlighting also the traits of empathy and situational awareness, two other things not present in his predecessor.

This is comforting, reassuring. It softens the blow of seeing a drastically different face inhabiting a name we have come to associate with another. That’s important for a recast: good first impression.

He has a sense of humor too!

Granted, this also comes from Art Wallace’s script, but we’ve seen before how badly his words crash depending on who’s saying them. Ford is a natural, coming off as a patrician, not a bully, an adviser rather than an antagonist. We can believe that he does have a daughter who, despite everything, affectionately calls him “Pop” to this day. We can believe, also, that maybe she is justified for worrying for him, not just out of obligation but, maybe, because he really is a good guy too, that he is worth protecting.

Speaking of his daughter, that’s why Sam’s here, to pick her up from a shift that must’ve been at least 12 hours given she was working the at lunchtime and it must be very late at night by now. You might recall a similar thing almost happened last night/more than 20 episodes ago, around the time of Maggie’s Emancipation, but some fuckery involving Burke and Mr. Wells and associated bullshit waylaid that.

Maggie has taken a half-hour (could’ve lengthened it to three-quarters, but our girl has restraint) break, leaving the counter unattended, which is fine because there are no customers as usual.

Sure, Joe is a creature of one mind, but the entreaty is special. One, because this presents a male dynamic not overladen with threats of violence/homoerotic subtext (I mean, unless you’re really looking for it), and two because it allows Sam to reach out from the bubble he’s been encased in to affect another story, to prove he can be a dynamic character, a mainstay, a force rather than a plot device.

And the response? A knowing chuckle and…

Sam deduces Joe is having girl trouble.

“I don’t even know what to do with my own life” >>>>>>>>>>>>>> “YOU DON’T EXIST AT AWWWWWWWWWL”.

There’s something to be said for self-deprecation delivered with a smile. For one, it’s more tolerable to a viewing audience, and two it’s more relatable because, well…isn’t that how we manage? Or at least try to?

Mark Allen saw “alcoholic single Dad” while Dave Ford saw “alcoholic single Dad”. He doesn’t erase the alcoholism, but he paints a portrait of the man who might lurk beneath the disorder.

Joe notes that Sam has always seemed like a fellow who knows what he’s doing.

Complete with a stage flourish, God bless him and God bless the guerilla casting departments of classic soap operas.

An aside that there is no fucking way Sam’s “façade” worked at all when he was played by Mark Allen. Like, not at all. That man looked like he would wander into McDonald’s at three in the afternoon and start crying for a McRib. Absolutely nobody, not even Joe, would’ve assumed he had his life together.

But with Dave Ford you can see it. It also helps that his pants don’t go up to his gut and he hasn’t yet spilled anything on himself.

Sam excuses himself to visit Burke because New Sam means we can finally move the show along.

Just a banner day for everybody, all around.

Speaking of Burke, he is resolutely going to town on that steak dinner he paid for and that Vicky Winters opted out of in a rare instance of That Bitchery herself.

You’d think Burke would be relieved at the knowledge he is now the tallest person on the show, but oh well.

Sam realizes he’s walking in on dinner.

He’s even got conventional wisdom! I can believe he might be beneficial to society!

Burke offers Sam the extra steak.

God, I wish she had.

Sam, aware of the earlier gossip thanks to Shade Queen Mr. Wells, assumes the young lady is Carolyn, as further evidence that Burke has been making a spectacle of himself with somebody he regards as a means to an end.

I…don’t think that word means what he thinks it means. But Burke assures Sam that he wasn’t dining with “little Carolyn”, perhaps intimating that he thinks there might actually be some scandal associated with his coupling with a teenager.

Dave Ford flubs a line for the one time in this episode, tapering off to a gentle meander as he works his way through Carolyn’s connection to Burke’s nemesis Roger, but he recovers quickly enough, even if he can’t manage a Louis Edmonds level of ‘Yes, and?’ yet.

Sam is quite obviously fishing for information, inquiring as to the status of Burke’s conflict with the Consteriff, a quaint reminder that this was a valid concern last week and that the town has not yet been informed that there they live in a land without justice.

In the end, Sam reveals that…

Oh thank Christ. This show is learning to cut its losses. Burke, naturally, isn’t as satisfied.

Sorry, just imagined him lounging on a Roman sofa in a chiton.

Sam claims he’s too busy to make time for the painting and says some BS about being commissioned by an ad-agency in Boston, presumably to draw posters for very strong sedatives and cigarettes for nursing mothers.

Burke presses, however, presumably for no other reason than because he wants to do right by his old friend.

That is close to the heart of Sam wanting to peace out. Roger threatened him about intercourse with Burke. Not that Roger visited Sam since he learned about the portrait, but we can chalk this up to Sam just not being the same in the morning.

We return to Collinwood as the clock strikes eight and, I’m sorry, I refuse to believe Burke met David, David returned to Collinwood, the suppository was revealed, Liz lied to the Consteriff, Joe got wasted, and Vicky dined with Burke all before 8:00, but as far as time-related chronologies go that’s nothing. Eventually, they’ll forget what year it is.

You know things are another level when there’s six people in the episode.

If we do have to leave the Old Adventures of New Sam at least it’s for a good old-fashioned snipe fest.

Regrettably, Vick’s heart just isn’t in it which I guess is justifiable since she just braved dinner with the world’s biggest blowhard only to learn, in her own words, “Nothing I didn’t know already”.

This is obviously passive-aggressive bitchery, but I can understand the residents of this house not trusting other people with their automobiles.

Victoria Winters so rarely does anything badass, but she gets credit for going hungry rather than having to eat Burke’s meat.

CHILD

And, yes, this is a stupid fight over a stupid man. It’s old as the genre. And Vicky and Carolyn are no Sharon and Phyllis, nor any flavor of Liz and Sam (not even the much mocked Alexandra Moltke…who gets an unfair shake from a lot of fans) ever gets quite as bad as Kelly Monaco.

Vicky, presumably aware that it’s stupid for anybody to want to have dinner with Burke, attempts to explain.

Which is a fair opening, but Vicky ruins it (How do you ruin this? How?) by saying Carolyn doesn’t even know Burke anyway and then mentions that she’s “always thought of [Carolyn] with Joe”. Nowhere does she say that Burke flat out told her he has no interest in Carolyn which, you know, might be a thing Carolyn should know. Instead, she comes off as smugly saying Carolyn already has somebody and, while that’s true, it does nothing for anything.

Those…those are things Vicky did. Many times. Carolyn isn’t lying.

Vicky’s response, said as Carolyn gives this murderous face to her?

Listen. Only Joe gets to call her that.

Vicky, smiling like this is all very funny (which it is for us, but if I were her, I’d be worried for my safety) explains that it was all “very innocent”, which isn’t how I would explain agreeing to have dinner with a man so I can read the dossier he had a private detective compile on my origins, but I guess if we take “innocent” to mean “virginal”, then sure, Vicky’s very innocent and the Double Standard means it doesn’t matter whether Burke is.

She’s graduated from “I beg your pardon?” Maybe she’ll start saying “heck” next.

Elsewhere, Sam downs a drink while Burke sizes him up like this is some kinda casting couch thing.

We can talk about the devasting effects of addicts turning their struggle into a joke as a desperate attempt to cope, but it plays much better on TV than the alternative. Sam even says he told Maggie he’d slow down. It’s unclear when this happened given it didn’t come up in their scenes in Episode 22 and Maggie has since been working Egyptian slave hours, but it’s a nice sentiment all the same.

Burke continues to press as to why Sam would throw away $1,000 (which is $7,990.90 in 2019 money, according to Morgan Friedman’s handy inflation calculator) so abruptly.

Fine, I’ll level with you. Of the many things Dave Ford has that Mark Allen doesn’t, the most convincing is sex appeal. There, I said it. I am a slut for Dave Ford as Sam Evans and you will have to take it or leave it, but if you take it, know that I will not shut up about it whenever he’s on screen.

Sam claims that “money is only money”. Burke agrees…

And Sam is caught off guard. Again, we have the suggestion that Sam’s complicity with Roger was based in money, that Sam was more-or-less bribed to do…something that, compounded with Roger’s testimony, led to Burke’s conviction. Burke doesn’t know this and one of Roger’s (many) fears is that he will find out, especially if Sam hangs around him.

Burke, perhaps remembering his encounter with Roger at the restaurant prior to all the suppository shenanigans, guesses that this pressure is being applied by Roger for some reason.

Very likely that that uber-hot expression of intense concentration is just TV novice Dave Ford looking at the teleprompter, but do you see that chest hair? Because it’s right there. Lela Swift did that for us. She knows what an audience needs.

Burke accurately supposes Roger is worried that the prolonged exposure to Sam Burke will get from sitting for the portrait will enable Burke to “find out things”, possibly connected to Roger. Sam dismisses this as nonsense…

The actual expression is “cat on hot bricks”. Alternately, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Tennessee Williams play Dave Ford had recently distinguished himself in, playing the fittingly named “Big Daddy”. It was in his role in that play that he came to the attention of our friends at Dark Shadows, landing him the role. Art Wallace, being informed of the origins of their new Sam Evans, might’ve been attempting to be cute with an in-joke nobody in the wider viewing audience would’ve known (unless they were Connecticut-based theater buffs), but would become identifiable to fans with access to the Internet over half a century later.

Still funnier than those stupid attempts to link scenes together with dialog.

Burke raises the commission price to $1,500 ($11,986.36!) and Sam just about has a sexual experience.

And Sam caves. So, yes, Virginia, there is a stupid plot device portrait. But, hey, if it means more Sam Evans, that is suddenly a viable consequence.

On his way out, Sam returns to the restaurant where Joe is still fighting his way through cups and cups of black coffee because that’s what everybody believed (and still believe) fixes hangovers.

Joe prepares to leave, but Sam is in the mood to talk.

The sheer physicality of Dave Ford is such a stage actor thing. Joel Crothers even looks a little surprised, so maybe it was impromptu.

Joe wonders if anything is wrong.

He returns to the topic of Joe’s girl trouble with a new vehemence that instantly makes Dave Ford’s mark on Dark Shadows as the one, the only and forever, Sam Evans. Joe says he only wants to be happy.

Joe says he has no desire to leave Collinsport. He likes it here.

That was a monologue, ladies and gentlemen. Dramatic, flourishing, breathless and desperate, speeches of this sort are commonplace on the stages where David Ford earned his living and, indeed, they will in time become bread and butter on Dark Shadows. This is the first of many and it lands solely on the strength of Dave Ford’s performance. Joel Crothers appears totally struck through the whole thing and it isn’t hard to see why. David Ford loses his shit, but in a way that is controlled, elegant even. There is fear and terror, anger and sadness, guilt and regret, a hurricane of emotion delivered in a shocking tidal wave determined to overwhelm all it comes in contact with.

It is but a taste of what is to come. And we have dear old Dave to thank for it.

Back at Collinwood, the B-plot has to wrap up sufficiently, so Carolyn calls Vicky back into the drawing room because in the five minutes since we last saw her she’s had a come to Jesus and realizes she was wrong except this is one of the only times that she really wasn’t.

This bitch isn’t even genuine enough to construct a coherent sentence.

Carolyn admits that she was jealous of Vicky having dinner with Burke but, rather than say it’s silly to be jealous because Burke ain’t shit, she claims only that Burke means nothing to her, something that’s harder to believe every time she says it.

Which is a neat self-diagnosis wherein Carolyn again highlights her flighty nature, adding a supposed desire for new things like Burke. Rather than empathize with her friend over this…

I might as well tell you that Art Wallace is among the better Dark Shadows writers when it comes to women.

Carolyn supposes she must be crazy after all, and Vicky helpfully suggests she “stop being so sorry for” herself.

I have an idea, but you couldn’t say it on television in 1966.

I can’t understate that these two women are having a conversation about how Carolyn will almost certainly go nuts the next time she sees the Hot Man. Like, as far as Art Wallace is concerned, Carolyn will randomly turn into Mata Hari the next time Burke comes by for donuts.

Carolyn attempts to frame this as looking out for Vicky’s safety.

Is this really happening? Is Carolyn rendered so insecure by Vicky and Burke that she’s now joining the laundry list of people trying to get her to leave? I can’t tell if this is Ain’t Shit behavior or evidence of rapid evolution in Carolyn’s That Bitch progression, because she does it all with a perfectly straight face.

Might as well point out the contrast in the two monologues. Sam tells Joe to get Carolyn out of Collinwood before she’s ruined by the place and Carolyn tells Vicky to get out of Collinwood before she ruins her. So maybe Art Wallace can be clever in ways that aren’t completely obnoxious.

Vicky, however, reassures Carolyn that she has no intention of leaving, which is nice and, again “Nothing we didn’t know before”. Left alone, she makes a phone call, because it’s been too long I guess.

I swear to God.

Burke apparently isn’t there, so whatever Vicky was going to say is lost to time. Maybe that they couldn’t see each other again? Maybe the opposite, picking a date for their dinner? As fun as it is to imagine Carolyn being disingenuous, though, it’s almost impossible to try the same trick with Vicky.

Vicky notices somebody trying to get into the drawing room…

And what does David have to say?

And then he runs up the stairs. And then the episode ends.

That. That’s the first Friday cliffhanger of the post-suppository era. Told you it was gonna suck.

But…at least Sam Evans isn’t a bag of shit?

This Day in History- Friday, August 12^th, 1966

Three gunmen shoot and kill three plainclothes London policemen in what becomes known as the Massacre of Braybrook Street. The last time multiple London policemen had been killed was 55 years earlier in December of 1910. The British public was so scandalized that even known criminals provided information on the gunmen leading to all three being arrested before mid-November. This is a very British news bit.

China’s Defense Minister Lin Biao is elected First Vice-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, serving second only to Mao Zedong. He was all-but anointed to succeed Mao, but they had a falling out leading to what we might politely term a cessation of existence in 1971. He did, in fact, outlive Dark Shadows by about five months.