Father Figures

Her name is Victoria Winters…

Well, at least you have a job.

Wait till a bunch of assholes in Silicon Valley invent the gig economy.

Well, from a certain point of view, Maggie Evans’s professional life is much less dominated by the Collinses. Every other Collinsport local we know, not counting one-shot numpties like Dr. Reeves and Mr. Wells, is either directly cutting a check from the Collins businesses (Malloy, Joe), beholden to the Collinses for uncertain and possibly legally fudged reasons (Consteriff, Matthew), or living in constant fear that the Collinses will destroy his life (Sam).

Maggie, in retrospect, only needs to worry about the Collinses as far as they worry her father and, while that has been the only thing resembling a story this bright-eyed young lady has had since we began, it still sets her up neatly away from the web that the Collinses have exacted over the town.

Also, Maggie is the only person we’ve seen who both has a job and does it. The Consteriff doesn’t count, that tiddlywinking of his was not “doing a job”.

Today, Maggie is typing menus by hand on an actual typewriter, because she is the only person that works at a diner that sees about four customers a day if they’re lucky. Her relief shift, Susie, has quietly peaced out after three episodes and won’t return (with a new face at that) for just under 30 more, so she has her hands full.

Black coffee? We know what that means…

Malloy has inexplicably become the most proactive character on the show in the space of a week. After being the only person in the Collins orbit actively attempting to figure out what Burke Devlin wants in town rather than, yanno, just fretting about it, he actually sat down with Burke and promised to help clear his name, implicitly suggesting as he did that he will help get Roger Collins justice.

Later that same day (and in the very next episode, which is wild for Dark Shadows standards to this point), Malloy visited Sam Evans and caught him butting heads with Roger, a tense altercation that, thanks to a later drunken admission from Sam, Malloy now knows is based in Roger’s fear that Sam knows something that can put him in prison.

My name is Victoria Winters, and the supporting cast is getting more to do than I am.

Malloy is continuing his investigation by pressing Maggie.

We know that Maggie has noticed her father acting strangely, to the point where he has become combative and hostile with her for nothing more than attempting to help him. But Maggie is smart enough not to go flapping her lips about this. We know that, despite Malloy’s 30 year friendship with Sam, he’s in deep with the Collinses. And Maggie knows, even if nobody will admit it, that Sam’s fear is all bound up in that family’s business.

Give it time, sweetie.

You know what I love? Continuity errors.

A reminder that this is the first week written by someone other than Art Wallace. Francis Swann has so far mostly lived up to the promise he was brought on board for: speeding things up so people stop changing the channel before the title card comes up. We have had various encounters, clashes, suggestions of potential twists and turns all spinning from the (Wallace-penned, admittedly) cliffhanger ending of Episode 40: Sam’s drunken admission.

Of course, when you change writers on any program, you can expect occasional continuity errors. Doubly so in the days when TV episodes were made to be watched once, then thrown into a vault and maybe eventually taped over with an episode of Wheel of Fortune or something.

It’s just a little unusual for these continuity errors to come up within three episodes on a soap opera. Malloy recalls seeing Sam “last night”. Besides that whole episode being set in a vague late morning/early afternoon time span (Burke and Carolyn had lunch last episode), it has not been night at any point between then and now. You might initially suspect we skipped ahead a little without addressing sunset/sunrise, but no. Our guy just got his wires crossed. Interestingly, this discrepancy only comes up for that meeting. Nothing else that happened between Episodes 38 and now will be referred to as happening yesterday/last night, which is kind of weird, but better for our purposes, because it makes it easier to ignore the continuity error as just an honest mistake.

Later errors, though…

So Malloy claims Sam getting drunk and incoherent during their visit was “for his own good”, and to her credit, Maggie doesn’t hurl that black coffee in his face.

Shows what you know, honey.

At least Malloy is being honest about his crude and immoral methods. He presumably understands that drunken confessions aren’t admissible in court, however, which is no doubt why he’s pressing on.

Maggie is concerned that whatever info Malloy is after will hurt her father. Malloy claims he doesn’t want to hurt Sam, which would be easier to believe if not for, well, everything, but…

Well, yes, I suppose clearing a man’s name and absolving him of a ten year burden of guilt is a noble aspiration…

…huh?

So it’s not like a surprise that Malloy’s motives for helping Burke are rooted entirely in protecting the Collinses, especially Elizabeth, who appears to treat him as her sole confidante and equal, but if you think you’re reading something more explicit into that word choice, well…

You’re right.

Maggie continues to use the many puzzle pieces in her possession to rationalize that whatever Sam knows, it must involve either Roger or Burke, considering how wound-up Sam’s been about both of them this whole time.

Maggie talks about her aborted attempted to call Roger earlier and Sam’s very Not Suspicious reaction when he found out.

It shouldn’t be that deep, right? Like, the whole town knows about the manslaughter trial, they all know Roger testified against Burke and Burke swore to come back for revenge. That gives them an immediate ‘thing’. Is the inclusion of Sam into the intrigue really enough to throw people off what this is all about?

Noble words until we remember how the last guy who said them lived his truth.

Yep, that’s how people talk alright. Definitely something a 23-year-old diner waitress would say. Given how KLS falters, though, it might be the line was originally more fluid but she temporarily lost her place and had to recover.

Either way, Maggie quite exactly touches on exactly what the whole thing is about. This isn’t some ancient mystery, or anything, the pieces are right there.

Maggie even supposes that perhaps Burke wasn’t guilty and is back for revenge and that is exactly what’s going on, but we can’t have any big hoopla about it until the other shoe drops, whatever it is and wherever it’s going.

That would appear to be the only valid mystery left in any of this.

Well, not in so many words, but Maggie has been part of the same show we’ve been watching, so she can make some conclusions.

Malloy decides that the best way to answer the question is to go right to the source.

Not Sam, no, Roger who, naturally, would give a round honest answer regardless.

While Malloy goes to make a call, the ostensible protagonist shows up, if you can believe it.

If you’re wondering what Maggie’s doing, she’s rearranging the letters on the big board that tells you how much everything is. ‘How much everything is’ is usually a dime.

I’ve expressed many times before how it would be nicer if this show’s three young women characters interacted more. It’s mostly just been Vicky and Carolyn and their relationship is…

Fraught, to say the least.

Vicky’s interacted with Maggie much more than Carolyn has, but even that isn’t very much. Still, they seem to have more in common besides the similar hair color that was supposedly so damning they forced KLS to wear a beehive on her head for three weeks.

For one thing, neither of them is rich. For another, they’re both working people, and they lack the built-in air of mystique and secrecy that hangs over Collinwood and its blood residents. While Vicky’s raison d’etre is searching for her past, Maggie’s by and large seems to be just making do. They are both, on the surface, easy for young women of the ‘60s to relate to, in a way Carolyn “torn between my uncle and his ex” Stoddard isn’t, funky dancing be damned.

It just so happens that one of these relatable young women ends up having a personality to match.

Ahem.

Ah, yes, the unearned hubris of that one commuter at your college who could not stop talking about mass transit.

Maggie goes to prepare the weary Miss Winters a soda. Malloy returns from making his phone call.

Violated.

Vicky, overhearing, calls out to him.

If you’re wondering whether Vicky and Malloy have ever interacted before, the answer is they haven’t in all of Vicky’s three days (four nights) in Collinsport. They seem to know each other’s faces, and it’s possible Vicky glimpsed him during one of his visits to Collinwood in Episodes 9 or 17, but this is the first scene they’ve had together.

I can forgive this inconsistency, because the fact that Vicky is the lead and has been on this show almost two months and still hasn’t met everybody in the core cast is absurd. Now, however, she has.

Vicky, presumably remembering Elizabeth’s request to her from earlier, wonders if Malloy has seen Carolyn, which he of course hasn’t because Carolyn is off getting filigreed to the nth degree.

Malloy assures her that he will…

Which is a great way of blowing off the lady paying your bills, but anything for the Greater Good, right? It can’t possibly be hard to call her and bullshit your way through a phone conversation. Liz has so many every day, she’ll probably never even notice Malloy half-assing before she hangs up and tries Ned Calder again.

Maggie comes by and offers the cogent suggestion that known sherry-fiend Roger Collins may be day drinking.

I mean, it is the only other meeting place in town. It’s not like the Collins’s taxes are going to a public library.

Malloy prepares to continue his quest and Vicky, no doubt weary of being blamed for everything at every time, wonders what she’ll tell Mrs. Stoddard about Malloy blowing her off.

Very helpful, Bill. You’re great.

Anyway, it’s nice seeing two girls sitting together and not talking about penis. Rare enough on soaps, then. Somehow, just as rare now.

This is probably not a reference to a literal comic strip character, more an example of a prevalent comic strip trope. Still, in a world where nobody seems to own a television set, or even a radio, this is a fairly buzzy pop culture reference.

Maggie tries to check Vicky’s temperature on the situation up at Collinwood.

I like how Vicky has made her own ceaseless futility into a joke. We stan a destructive coping mechanism.

Who the hell said that? RuPaul said “If they ain’t paying your bills, pay them no mind.” They are paying Vicky’s bills. She can pay them all the mind, and dish on their shit to those people who pass as her friends.

Vicky is surprised to learn Sam is caught up in the intrigues at Collinwood.

This, of course, isn’t true, but Vicky has no way of knowing the strange man she’s had several uncomfortable (and then, suddenly, quite comfortable) encounters with is Sam. Which is natural, because it would be totally absurd if there were only one other named family in this town.

Ah, soaps…

But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

But that’s not for another 100 or so episodes.

Maggie muses very prettily on the hard work Sam had to do, raising her as a single father, and how idyllic her childhood was until, suddenly, it wasn’t.

And he does still. It’s really a heart-rending thing to see her speak of this man she saw as a hero be torn down by such poisonous self-loathing, and how she had to witness that through her childhood, into her adolescence and now her adulthood, feeling always helpless in the face of it, and wanting to help him though she never knew how.

What a poignant narrative. It could be a story all on its own. But it isn’t a story on its own. Rather, it’s bogged down in another more convoluted, aimless story in which neither father nor daughter is the main character.

But not really. I mean, the answer is right there, it’s not like Art Wallace was crafting a stygian labyrinth here.

Maggie even casually says she has no idea who bought all those paintings and Sam has never even tried to tell her which…it’s right there.

As we already gathered a few episodes ago, Sam blew all that money anyway, which is why Maggie is working here now.

It doesn’t say Maggie began working at the diner 10 years ago. We don’t know how fast Sam blew all the money. But Maggie would’ve been 13 a decade ago, so it’s unlikely she could’ve been doing this exact job.

Unless she was. Which is…rather unfortunate.

Vicky, who understands Dickensian backstories, expresses sympathy and wishes she could do something to help.

Aw. Friends let friends divulge their miserable pasts to each other.

So after spending almost half the episode in the same place, we’re now switching gears, back to the Crusade of Bill Malloy, who has arrived at the Blue Whale looking for answers and, because it is a Wednesday episode, won’t get any.

Joe arrives at the bar, asking our old friend the Nameless Bartender is he’s seen Carolyn.

Joe turns around and discovers his absentee boss.

And what follows is one of the greatest scenes in the pre-Barnabas era, no I am not joking.

Joe tells Malloy that Liz has been looking for him all day.

Malloy remains dismissive, saying he’ll get in touch with Liz when there’s something to get in touch about. Malloy, who seems to be at least a little soused, goes on, speaking of himself in the third person, which is TV lingo for “Drunk”.

Malloy insists Joe have a drink with him and Joe, no doubt remembering his last bout with the stuff, declines.

My baby’s committed himself to self-improvement. All he has to do is decide girls aren’t worth the trouble and he’s free.

Malloy admits he knows he isn’t helping himself or anybody else having a drink. Because he is still Bill Malloy, he has to take an opportunity to shit on Sam as he does.

Malloy admits he’s drinking to keep from grappling with a rapidly manifesting ugly truth.

Frank Schofield has really been earning his money these last few episodes. This little monologue he gives now is perhaps his crowning achievement on Dark Shadows:

Joe really has been treated to some impressive speeches lately, huh?

But it is such a poignant character note and is a good way of reminding us why Malloy exists. He is a fundamentally decent man, dedicated to helping a family and business he has deep care for. He is intelligent enough, at least, to guess just what Sam was talking about, and what that means about Roger’s guilt and Burke’s innocence.

But it isn’t Roger he cares about hurting, nor Burke he cares about helping.

It is, as it so often is in stories of loss and duty, love that stays him and haunts him. And that’s what makes it personal. Otherwise, there’s no reason to care about Malloy’s agenda and his alliance with Burke. Everybody hates Roger and just about every character would cheer if he were put away, even people fundamentally allied with him like Carolyn who, nonetheless, would support Burke anyway.

But Malloy doesn’t want to hurt the one person he has admitted to respect more than any other in the world. Because nothing is more important to Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard than family. We’ve seen the things she’ll do to ensure that.

But if Malloy doesn’t do all he can, Burke will destroy her family anyway. What price, then, is Roger if he is delivered to save the rest of the Collins empire from ruin? More important than the empire…Elizabeth herself?

So this is a good change. It’s a new writer using a character that could always have been better utilized, using him to further himself and the rest of the canvas. That’s good television writing, and good soap writing in particular. Our daytime soaps today with their over-bloated casts full of contract players who don’t ever do jackshit could take a lesson from these episodes of a genre-buster drama in late August ’66.

Joe, who is a good person who deserves better, offers to take his obviously suffering boss home.

Malloy then decides to roast Sam again. I know why he’s on his mind and everything, but I still can’t help but feel for the guy.

Joe remarks that Sam’s been drinking as long as he can remember which…is odd, since Joe is about 21 or 22 and Maggie just told us that Sam started drinking ten years ago, which is barely half Joe’s lifetime. But hyperbole and it gives Malloy an excuse to give us the same story of Sam’s downfall, but in his words now which are, of course, less skewed by sentiment than Sam’s daughter.

Which gives Malloy a chance to talk about his past for basically the first time, like ever. You see, it all began 20 years ago which, in this context was, yanno, the Great Depression. Malloy thought he’d conquered his problems then…

Joe can commiserate. He’s already made a great stink of his own fear that the house will swallow up all his hopes and dreams too. Which speaks to the problem of hanging all your hopes and dreams on a singular, and very fickle, person, but I digress.

Malloy, just like the lady he admires so much, ships Joelyn, but presumably has been under a rock for the last 43 episodes.

This could just be him being disingenuous to cheer Joe up, since he personally witnessed the beginnings of Carolyn’s fateful trip to Burke’s hotel room the day after he arrived, and had an entire arc in one episode baiting Cursed!Sam with info about Carolyn and Burke’s movements.

This raises all of Malloy’s red flags, even as he claims that the whole Carolyn and Burke thing doesn’t make sense.

So I am going to wag my finger at Francis Swann for this one. This could very well have been avoided.

And Joe, figuring there’s no use playing at respectability when he’s the town tosspot, orders a drink.

Am I a hypocrite for endorsing Joe working to stay sober as much as him getting drunk? Yes. But the essay about soap stan logic can be saved for another day. Barnabas Collins could inspire several books all his own.

Back at the diner, Maggie is plying Vicky with an extra soda.

My girl living paycheck to paycheck and is so impressed at the idea of having a friend that she wants to give her free food.

Conversation turns now to Vicky’s life and times, so I hope Maggie is brewing extra coffee.

“Mausoleum” is practically a routine nickname for Collinwood at this point, ever since Carolyn back in the first week. But Francis Swann has only written three episodes, and the word’s been used by two characters already, so it’s by no means isolated. It is difficult to give a large cast their own unique turns of phrase, though, and I guess “mausoleum” is a fairly conventional way to describe a big spooky house on top of a hill, so it’s excused. You can’t say “shithole” on daytime television, after all.

Good to see her using that word outside of the opening monologues.

Yeah, that thing that happened. Please stop talking about it. Maggie, perhaps understanding that nobody wants to even think about the suppository saga ever again, intervenes.

Well, she seems to hold one 20 minute lesson with David every day, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and say she has too much time off, especially if she’s making as much as all the talk early on implies.

This seems like an amazing perk but I guess after the kid you were hired to tutor tried to frame you for murder, it’s the least they can do to ensure you don’t do the smart thing and leave.

Maggie takes this opportunity, then, to invite Vicky to dinner at her place, which is very nice of her, really, and I have little snarky to say about it because this is a very genuine, agenda-free friendship and it’s a good thing to see on a show like this.

Vicky happily agrees, before noting the lateness of the hour and saying her goodbyes.

She puts a single coin on the table. It was very probably a nickel, and that very probably includes her tip, and it very probably would be considered a generous one.

And, as Vicky leaves…

Just when it was looking like this would be Sam’s second absence since the recast. He really has become the veritable star of the show.

Maggie doesn’t turn to see Sam enter before Vicky leaves, so we avoid the whole “Oh, you do know each other thing!” for…some reason. It’s not like Vicky realizing she’s already met Maggie’s father would change much. After their first meeting, they’ve had mostly…okay-ish interactions, so long as you ignore the subtextual hatred in their second meeting. That was all an accident.

Oh gee. And Sam is, indeed, very much an OG. Sam tells her he knows Vicky, but “she doesn’t know me”.

Sam has claimed a donut from that tray without paying for it or washing his hands.

Okay, now I’m gonna have to yell at Francis Swann. Sam has spoken to Vicky three times. Once on Widow’s Hill her first morning at Collinwood, a second time at this very restaurant the night of Roger’s car crash, and a third the following night when Vicky was on her way back to Collinwood from an outing.

The meeting Sam appears to be referring to must be the first one, as he mentions “not wanting to see her hurt”, and that is the meeting when he suggested Vicky leave. Maggie wonders why Vicky would be hurt and…

Ah, naturally.

Sam, of course, has every reason to believe something terrible is going to happen at Collinwood. He was just there in a desperate attempt to speed that “something horrible” along, but he lost his nerve. Not that he has any intention of telling Maggie this. He’s given her far too many clues already.

Then, just to make it clearer…

And Sam, again Very Subtly, declares he will go and join him, putting his unfinished donut on the countertop as he does so.

I can only assume Dave Ford resented having to say that, because I would.

The Calamity Howlers, but the way, are doing just dandy.

Joe is telling the story of his drunken adventure at Collinwood last night. Real last night, not last night as Malloy understands it, which is really “this morning” or, at most, “earlier this afternoon.”

You’ll also note that, despite ordering a beer, Joe hasn’t touched it, which indicates he does still possess self-control and regret for making an ass of himself, which is the bare minimum, sure, but still pretty impressive for a guy on this show.

Oh boy. Here we go.

We now get Malloy’s version of Sam’s impressive moment in Dave Ford’s first episode.

Unlike Sam, though, Malloy can draw from personal experience as a rationale for this. In many ways, in fact, he is an older counterpart to Joe, even a little bit in physical appearance. There’s also the fishermen thing, the honesty, the word ethic, the general decent values…

And, as we learn in this scene, the pining for a woman holed up in the house on Widow’s Hill.

Oh. Boy.

So there we have it, actually textual confirmation that Malloy was into Liz as far back as 20 years ago and, if he had worked up the nerve to make this known before the arrival of (supposedly) smarmy charmer Paul Stoddard, would have changed the entire history of Collinsport.

There’d be no Carolyn, for one thing. Depending on various nebulous factors, there may not even have been a Victoria Winters. Would there still have been a manslaughter trial? More tenuous question. But something tells me things would’ve been very different if Liz had a husband who’d stayed.

So Sam enters just as the bouncy tunes start playing on the juke.

Malloy is all “I hoped you’d be along!” even though he was here looking for Roger, but any chance to make fun of Sam naturally gravitating toward the booze bin, I guess.

So Joe is unceremoniously shooed away so the two older gentlemen can talk.

Last night meaning this morning, or at the latest, earlier this afternoon.

Malloy lets Sam squirm, refusing to actually say whatever it was Sam told him while he was blasted.

Malloy wonders if Sam has seen Roger.

This was a better deflection than usual. Typically he starts blustering and sputtering and talking about how he hates injustice. Sam does lay it on too think though, saying they have “nothing at all in common” as if Malloy didn’t catch him and Roger together, not last night, but this morning, or at the latest, earlier this afternoon.

You’ve read this blog long enough to understand there’s ample gay subtext here, but it isn’t fun enough for me to point out. Regardless, if the bartender is hearing any of this, I’m sure he’s got quite a different idea of the narrative.

We then smash cut with absolutely no warning to Collinwood and the door knocker going nuts.

We’re already at our character limit for this episode, so it’s Vicky, who I guess has been back all of five minutes, who hurries to get the door.

Joe is here to tell Liz about seeing Malloy, as he promised. He could’ve called to tell her this, of course, but we had a few more minutes to fill and (maybe too much to hope for) maybe they’re learning televised phone conversations don’t make for riveting storytelling.

They’re not about to pay Joan Bennett to show up for two minutes at the end of an episode, so Vicky explains Liz is “resting” and she’ll tell her later. And now for the real reason for this scene.

At which point the PHONE RINGS, so yeah it was too much to hope for.

Vicky quietly signals to Joe if he’d like to speak to her but Joe has suffered enough and doesn’t.

Oh shit…

After the call, Vicky confirms that Carolyn did lunch with Burke but it “wasn’t planned” which, sure it wasn’t for Burke, but Carolyn didn’t follow Burke to Bangor for nothing.

Well, as I’ve discussed often and eloquently, Carolyn is Joe’s world, at least for now, so…

Vicky’s never gonna tell anyone how Burke told her he wasn’t interested in Carolyn. Also kind of left out here is that Joe walked in at the end of that date. Not sure if this is Francis Swann not knowing what the other guy wrote or if he saw that and decided it was stupid soap opera stuff not worth pursuing.

Joe prepares his exit, mentioning as he does that Malloy is with Sam at the Blue Whale, obviously worried.

They’re watching the bartender laugh raucously with the two extras. God knows what they’re talking about, but it’s Collinsport, so it probably involves teenage girls.

Sam appears to be psyching himself up, yet again, to just have out with the truth.

Malloy picks this up and runs with it.

Huh. This is the first we’re hearing about the occupants of that fateful car. Roger was already pretty clearly indicated, especially since it’s now all-but certain he was the real driver, but Laura, the woman who was, at the time, Burke’s “girl” and who promptly after married Roger (possibly carrying Burke’s child) was not before indicated as a passenger as well.

And so, Sam leaves, confirming that there is something, but not doing a thing to describe it.

Which is very similar to how Sam ended his conversation with Roger in Monday’s episode, so the writer is already recycling lines.

Great. But at least we’re getting somewhere.

This Day in History- Wednesday, August 24, 1966

This was quite a significant day on many fronts. One could go so far as to say maybe humanity was trying out a new writer as well, but this writer did not have very many high aspirations.

The Soviet Union launches the Luna 11 space probe to take photos of the Moon from orbit. Due to technical screw-ups, however, the camera gets wonky and all the Russians get are pictures of empty space. Not that it matters, it’s not like there’s anything interesting on the Moon, you know.

Two significant Chinese cultural figures die in different circumstances both connected to Mao’s revolution. Li Da, a Marxist philosopher who had been expelled from the Communist Party in June, succumbs to complications from diabetes. He had been denied medication. Elsewhere, Lao She (not at all to be confused with the similarly named stereotypical gangster from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), a novelist, commits suicide after being tortured by the Red Guards. He was an art collector, which was deemed an antirevolutionary activity because culture is decadent and decadence and bad and…

Well, listen, it wasn’t the most ideologically sensible revolution.

Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is performed for the first time. It is a tragicomic spinoff of Hamlet and provides the source material for The Lion King ½, one of the greatest films ever made.

And, most regretfully, Jim Morrison’s The Doors begin recording their self-named debut album, which would be released early in the next year.

Oh no, Collinwood Kook! You don’t like The Doors? What’s wrong with you?

You’ve read this far. You know exactly what’s wrong with me.