Men at Burke

Too. Many. EMOTIONS.

“I have been swept up in the whirlpool of emotions.”

But not to the point where Victoria Winters has been allowed to do anything. If nothing else, the storyline to come will present both good and bad things for the ostensible heroine of this program. On one hand, she will (eventually) have more to do, on the other, the legendary massive idiocy of the character begins to manifest herein.

But not today! No, she isn’t in this one. It’s still the Bill Malloy Variety Minute and the Big Beard’s got a plan.

“Hello? This is Malloy. Put Roger Collins on.”

Didn’t we see this before?

“Get a message to him! Tell him I’m waiting for him!”

Oh, he’s calling Roger again. Okay. Had me going there for a second.

Malloy’s meeting with Roger is a last ditch attempt to handle the scandal of the manslaughter charge before going to our noble friends the police. And considering how quick the Consteriff was to lick Roger’s ass when his elected office was threatened, I think whatever form of vigilantism Malloy is planning is the more sensible solution.

Burke has returned from Bangor a whole episode (the establishing shot that opened this one seems to want us to think it’s still daylight, but it sure doesn’t look it in the Blue Whale) after Carolyn. Maybe he and Blair did shots and crank called Mr. Harris’s bank.

Burke is surprised to learn that Malloy knows about his trip to Bangor, but he really shouldn’t be given how his every move is subject to ten minutes of gossip for every new person who hears it.

Doubly fast if it’s about the Devlin.

“Mr. Malloy, I think if you sat down with me and had a drink, you wouldn’t sound quite so cryptic!”

Wanna bet?

Malloy accepts the offer, of course, as he is fixing to give Burke much-needed tea.

This is a good opportunity to point out the absolutely darling clam-shell ashtrays. The tackiest prop on this show by a league.

To illustrate Malloy’s new focus, he doesn’t order booze, but coffee, while Burke orders his preferred scotch and water. Francis Swann can’t be bothered to remember what day Art Wallace said it was, but he knows Burke has a usual.

“I want you to know one thing first off, Burke. I don’t like what you’re trying to do to the Collins family.”

That Malloy sees assisting Burke is a necessary evil shouldn’t be a matter of consternation. It’s clear he didn’t like Roger first off, perhaps had always felt an uncertain suspicion about Roger’s part in the crash. Burke’s return galvanized this and Malloy is urged to action, not so much out of a thirst for justice but, as we have been oft reminded these last few episodes, out of the love he bears for Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard and the empire she inherited and presides over.

“Me? But I’m not trying to do anything to them!”

Look, this was all but ironed out in the actual meeting these two had to make this alliance in the first place and obviously Swann knows that scene exists because it’s the sole reason for any of Malloy’s actions in all three of the episodes Swann has written with him. So maybe Burke’s just being a tool as usual.

Malloy throws the fact of James Blair into Burke’s face having, you will recall, learned about the fellow from his sweaty, half-dead counterpart Mr. Harris just a little while ago. If Burke truly doesn’t mean the Collins family any harm, why is he coordinating with an investment banker for the sole purpose of buying them out?

I should point out that Mitch Ryan is taking a page out of Mr. Harris’s book and looking rapidly and frequently at the teleprompter. Again, he was very busy on the Broadway stage at this time, which might be why he only appeared in two episodes this week, but still.

“Burke, I’ve known you ever since you were a boy!”

This isn’t true, but you’d still need some convincing to believe Frank Schofield and Mitch Ryan were any more than a decade apart, right?

Burke’s excuse is…certainly an attempt.

“Did it ever occur to you that a man like Mr. Blair has any interests? And those interests cold include the Collins enterprises!”

Burke tells Malloy the same tale he told Carolyn, that he and Blair were meeting for a social visit. It just so happens that Malloy has it from the melting wax figure’s mouth that Blair was actively attempting to buy Collins debt notes, taken with Burke and Blair meeting in Bangor, and the fact that Burke hired a private detective to get a lay of the land before he ever got to town…

Seems pretty open and shut.

Burke insists that if he were planning nefarious, he wouldn’t have invited Carolyn to his table. We also know he told Carolyn exactly what he was planning, framing it as a joke so her pretty dumb self could laugh it off, so…

“Yeah. And no doubt you’d have told her he was planning to rob her family.”

Malloy ain’t no trick bitch.

Malloy repeats his ultimatum from the morning: if Malloy can prove Burke’s innocence, will Burke leave town and abandon his plans against the rest of the Collinses?

“The ones who didn’t have anything to do with that **accident** you were in ten years ago.”

“Let’s see, David wasn’t even born yet!”

Depending who you ask, though, the seed had quickened by about that time.

Too little for even Burke’s notice, imagine that.

At least not until after the fact but go off.

It would seem that way.

Mind you, this is simply a redux of their first conversation on the matter back in Episode 39. On one hand, it’s important to remind the daytime audience what happened last week because there’s no home video, DVR, and not even Soap Opera Digest. On the other, it’s possible Francis Swann just wanted to remind himself, like his weird fascination with Elizabeth being homebound back in his debut episode.

“Tell me, Malloy, is it your sense of **justice** that’s been outraged?”

Malloy doesn’t explicitly say he now believes quite conclusively that Roger is the real devil here, but he doesn’t have to.

“You know, Malloy…you’re one of the most completely honest people I ever met! And that includes myself.”

Burke enters into a pretty reminiscence of “15, 16 years ago”.

“You gave me my first job. I remember I was a green boy and you paid me a man’s wages!”

Malloy is immune to this sentiment, insisting he only did right by Burke because it was the right thing to do. It’s an interesting detail that further binds the two characters. That it hasn’t come up in any of their previous interactions indicates it may be an invention of Francis Swann, but it could just as well (like Roger blowing the inheritance and Malloy having feelings for Liz) be something from Wallace’s series bible that he just didn’t get around to putting in the script because of his manifold pacing problems.

Malloy tells Burke he’s put all his cards on the table but one. And he’s waiting for that one to show up.

Another awkward pause, but it almost fits.

“If he doesn’t come in, I’ll have to go lookin’ for him!”

Field trip!

In what has to be an intentional punchline, after a whole week of various characters complaining about Roger’s work ethic and general attitude of laziness, the first time we see him at work, he’s throwing darts.

Mind you, the footage of the dart hitting the board was no doubt filmed outside of this scene, and likely somebody better suited threw the dart. Not that my people aren’t good at precision sports, but did you see how Louis Edmonds wound up that shot?

So this is our third new set this week. Unlike Joe’s office, we’ll see it often. Unlike the Bangor Pine Restaurant, we’ll even see it fairly regularly for a while. It’s a nice, good sized office, which makes sense since, even regardless of Roger’s last name, it presumably used to belong to Ned Calder, who actually managed the plant, rather than Roger who…pretends to and then complains when Malloy actually does it.

Roger’s in that headspace where he might assume this new haircut is for him. But Carolyn isn’t even here for him.

“I am **shamelessly** chasing Joe Haskell!”

Not as shamelessly as you’ve been chasing the other guy, honey, or you’ll already be wolfing down french fries and Shirley Temples with him.

“That’s my fate! **Always** second choice…”

“Not always! You’re my number one favorite uncle!”

Distant supernaturally immortal cousins however…

Roger sits at the desk just as his phone rings, and we get a delightful example of the hard work this man does for all his 15 weekly minutes of business.

“Yes? Well, now, that is not the job of this department.”

Sir, this is the IRS.

“If you will study the work chart that I drew up…”

You mailed us the sheet music to “Hello, Dolly” instead of your taxes.

“You will discover that you should be talking to Hanley in the marketing department…”

Sir, I’m beginning to doubt this is even a real business.

And then he hangs up. Also, what kind of marketing does a tuna and sardine canning company even do? When was the last memorable add you saw for tinned fish? This has to be the least glamorous soap opera family business in the genre’s history.

She loves the idea of sitting on your ass and acting important without actually doing anything. That’s the entire core of Burke Devlin’s appeal.

“You don’t think I’m paid my magnificent salary for being a figurehead?”

Well, we did just see you blow somebody off via bureaucracy, so…

“Why not? You make a very **good**, figurehead!”

THIS GIRL HAS GROWN INTO A WOMAN/AND HER UNCLE’S REALLY INTO THAT JIVE…

Carolyn tells Roger about her encounter with Malloy at the Blue Whale, and then at Collinwood.

That’s him.

Carolyn notes that she’s never seen him so distraught, but she doesn’t know what since she was busy making sure Harris didn’t drown in his own juices.

“Mr. Malloy said there was something he **had** to do! And he was going to do it with or without Mother’s approval!”

Well, shit and breadsticks.

Not content to cool his heels while this man hides behind his dartboard, Malloy has made the journey himself to find his last card.

Roger’s strategy, faced with a man he has every reason to believe now knows a powerful and destructive secret about him?

You guessed it: patrician condescension.

“This is my office, Mr. Malloy, and I will see you when I decide, not at **your** pleasure…”

But Malloy isn’t going anywhere.

Clearly seeing she isn’t needed around here, Carolyn excuses herself to find Joe, adding further credence to the theory that she will only ever see him as an excuse.

“Unless you want me to stay, Uncle Roger?”

She’s willing to cut a bitch for her uncle, gotta love her. I bet she could do it too.

After she’s gone, Malloy gets right to business.

“I thought you were gonna meet me at the Blue Whale.”

“I can’t very well meet you **there** if you’re **here**, now can I?”

Er…fine, if that’s what you wanna run with, sure.

Super sassy, Roger. I like that they’re incorporating pieces of the set into the script. I wish more soaps would do that.

“If you ask me, it was Elizabeth who kept you out of prison in the first place!”

But there is a noticeable change in Roger’s composure as he says that. The guy is scared. So scared that he does exactly what he did to the Consteriff during the suppository mess: professional blackmail.

“Are you forgetting that you’re employed by the Collins family?”

Malloy insists he is concerned with defended the “good name of Collins”, which we’re meant to believe is a real thing, though I’ve seen precious little evidence of this except that they’re good for the economy I guess.

Malloy admits he doesn’t know much, but somebody else does.

“A man who’s drunk more than he is sober!”

Hey, pot, this is kettle.

“If you think that, why don’t you run on over to the Sheriff’s Office and tell Jonas Carter…”

Oh good, he still exists.

Roger says Sam’s slander doesn’t matter.

“It won’t be over until Burke’s innocent, and he’ll drag down every member of the Collins family the way he was dragged down.”

Malloy repeats Sam’s very words from “last night”, or rather this morning or at the latest earlier this afternoon.

“‘I am the only thing that stands between Roger Collins and a prison sentence.‘”

Malloy insists Roger go to the police before it’s too late, and Louis Edmonds leans back, saying in a cool, barely contained rage.

And Malloy departs.

They couldn’t even show the bullseye hit the board, which is a handy metaphor for Roger’s efficacy.

Anyway, Carolyn has put on a little black dress and is reading family history because.

“Jeremiah Collins, sixth generation descendant of the founder of Collinsport. In 1830 married Josette Lafreniere of Paris, France. The construction of Collinwood, the family mansion, was begun the same year.”

“If you had known what you were starting, would you have still done it?”

So the Collinses are one of those families who have genealogical histories in leather bound books, like one of the noble houses of Britain. Quite something for a fish canning enterprise.

This gives us a lot of information about the Collins history for the first time in ages. We have an exact date for Jeremiah’s marriage to Josette and the construction of Collinwood (though some of Victoria’s monologues have already alluded to the great house standing for “over 130 years”), and we even have a maiden name for Josette.

The French surname “Lafreniere” is the original French of the name “Freeman”. It means “place of ash trees”. Ash wood is used often in the making of tools, baseball bats and archery bows, and is a frequent choice for staircases.

The Ancient Greek mythographer Hesiod wrote of the Meliae, a family of wood nymphs who derive from ash trees. In Norse myth, the world tree Yggdrasil is an ash, placing the tree at the center and source of all worlds.

In this, Josette can be seen as being pulled forcibly from her world and made to assimilate with one cruel and unfamiliar, leading to her sorrow.

Or they just looked up French names in a guidebook and ran with the first one they saw, I dunno.

They allowed more time than usual to elapse in the act break. Not only has Carolyn changed clothes, but she and Roger have returned from the plant. Who knows if Carolyn ever even bothered to see Joe?

He’s not being a pervert, he’s talking about the genealogy thing.

Roger sits down with his newspaper and reading glasses as if I couldn’t love him enough and Carolyn, no doubt ruffled at this over-ordinary behavior, presses him on Malloy.

“The only thing I got straightened out was Mr. Malloy!”

Dig all those coupons in the back. Save 10 to 50% off. I haven’t seen deals that good since they closed all the Pier Ones in the outer boroughs.

Carolyn admits she figured Malloy was cross about Burke.

Her destructive obsession with the family nemesis is now a cutesy joke.

Carolyn admits she had lunch with Burke. Roger is, indeed, the last to know.

Carolyn clumsily “explains” that she thought if she and Burke became friends, maybe he would stop caring about revenge, and I can’t tell if she believes this (in which case: stupid) or if she’s lying to placate Roger (in which case: no imagination).

“He was **certainly** nice enough to me!”

Watch it, Kitten, you’ll give Unca Roger a complex.

“And he gave me a present, to prove it!”

Roger probably has every single thing Burke gave him during their “friendship” locked in a cigar box in his room. Some nights, he sits on the bed in his slippers and weeps into it.

So Carolyn goes into her purse and takes out that silver filigreed fountain pen, you know the one, and Roger loses his shit.

He says this with more quiet fury than anything he said to Malloy earlier.

If you needed any more proof that Roger is an aging queen, his outrage isn’t simply that she accepted a gift from his enemy, it’s that she accepted an outrageously expensive gift.

“Have you any idea what a gift like that cost? You can’t possible keep it!”

I know it’s a sterling silver (filigreed) fountain pen, but I feel like this argument would have more weight if it was something more readily acceptable as expensive, like a fine brooch or some other type of jewelry, rather than a pen that we’re supposed to believe is silver but is very likely just covered in glitter.

“I told you he wanted something from you, he’s paying you in advance!”

Roger is this close to calling Carolyn a painted whore over a pen.

Real great, hot glue gun shit. A drag queen couldn’t have done it better.

“It’s bad enough that you would accept a gift like this from any man, but it’s unthinkable that you would accept it from Burke Devlin!”

Roger comes dangerously close to giving his niece good advice for a young woman (know your worth, don’t let scumbags buy you, etc.) but it’s all weighed down by the lingering thought that he almost certainly wouldn’t be this pissed off it was another man who’d given her the pen.

This is such a great, stupid scene. Roger was just threatened by Malloy to go to the police or be ruined, he knows Sam has told Malloy something about the power he has over him, and there’s the ever present threat of Burke trying to prove all this, and everything is encroaching closer and closer on him and the thing that pushes him over the edge is Carolyn being given a silver filigreed fountain pen.

He even insists that he will return it to Burke himself, as if that’s gonna help Burke’s vendetta.

And she storms off in a pique. Beautiful.

The phone rings.

“Roger, I have to know if you’ve decided to do anything about that matter we discussed.”

Roger’s response, verbatim, is: “I have decided I don’t need you to tell me what to do.” Which is continued princely handling of the situation.

“Have you no loyalty at all, Malloy, to the family that hired you?”

But of course Malloy does. That’s why he wants to ruin Roger’s ass so hard.

“And as long as I work for the Collins family, I’ll do what I think is best for ‘em!”

So Roger has transcended any attempt at controlling this situation. We’re just in perpetual temper tantrum mode until something gives.

But at least he got this bitching pen out of the deal.

Back at Roger’s office, which is where Malloy was calling from because they weren’t going to build three different office sets, ol’ Big Beard rapidly hatches a contingency.

And, in a delightful inversion of Malloy’s first attempt to call Burke’s room, Burke now has every reason to want to hear from him, and he does.

“Can you meet me at the Blue Whale right away?”

I get that the diner isn’t a very dramatic place for a meeting like this, but that dive is rapidly becoming the central spoke of Collinsport intrigue. I guess it’s better than, like, Days of Our Lives where weddings, fights, drug deals and murders all occur on a plot of Astroturf that remains green in all seasons.

Back at Collinwood, an abashed Carolyn attempts another entreaty to her uncle, as he hydrates.

There’s no way he’s bringing that pen to Burke sober.

“I suppose I’m **really** in disgrace if even **you** won’t talk to me.”

We’ve reached Roger’s nadir. Not even his niece is willing to indulge her vaguely Oedipal obsession with him.

“Come on, Kitten, don’t make me seem worse an ogre than I am!”

But Roger does, in fact, have layers.

Roger even goes so far as attempting to return the pen.

“I don’t want it now. You made it seem, I dunno, **sordid**.”

Well, in point of fact…

Carolyn, regardless, proves to soften beneath Roger’s attrition and admits following Burke was a stupid thing to do. Roger is surprised that she followed Burke, presumably having thought this whole thing was a planned date, as if Burke would open himself up to that level of police investigation.

“Maybe I was just being a lady private eye!”

You still had to place the suffix “lady” before things when you were talking about them. “Lady” doctor, “lady” scientist, “lady” director.

Also, dig Roger’s little smile there. Perhaps he recalls his own childhood dreams of being a “lady private eye”.

Carolyn tells Roger about what she did discover: Burke’s meeting with Blair, Mr. Harris’s subsequent heart attack when he learned Blair and Burke were connected, and Malloy’s more convincing heart attack when he learned the same.

Roger isn’t at all pleased to learn Malloy was at the house, although we were told that’s fairly regular proceeding.

“What did all this…sleuthing do? Did it pay off?”

Well, like she was saying…

Carolyn explains that Blair was looking into the Collins interests and even Roger possesses enough financial literacy to know what that means.

“So **that’s** why Mr. Malloy’s on the warpath.”

“He thinks Devlin’s making his move against our family and he thinks he knows a way to stop him.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to be his sacrificial lamb!”

Roger Collins sees your family legacy and raises you his fine ass. He doesn’t care if the whole family’s ruined and turned out on the streets, he isn’t going to prison, he is much too delicate.

And on a certain level, I guess he has to be admired for it, as much as you can admire anybody in a story full of amoral, calculating crooks.

Malloy and Burke meet at the Blue Whale. Again.

“Making the Blue Whale your office now?”

Leave the set designers alone.

Malloy says he wanted to see Burke before he took things any further.

“I want you to know that whatever happened to you ten years ago had **nothing** to do with Elizabeth Stoddard!”

What vehement denial. We also have reason to believe this is false and Malloy knows this, but he still loves the woman enough to ensure (or at least attempt to ensure) she is left out of it.