Book of the Dead

Sometimes things just don’t turn out the way we imagined they would.

But Victoria Winters hasn’t been given an inch in the pursuit of that mystery, and it’ll be a while yet before she does. What she has been given is a slew of new, unrelated mysteries to contend with.

What does Burke Devlin want? What’s so special about Sam Evans that Roger doesn’t want her to see him? Why does Elizabeth Stoddard never leave Collinwood? What is the true origin of that mysterious sobbing she has heard, twice now, echoing through the darkness of the great house?

And now, most recently: Did she really see a dead man at the foot of Widows’ Hill tonight? And, if she did, who was he, and how did the body vanish so quickly?

These same questions are, of course, being posed to us. Victoria Winters is our surrogate. We learn the secrets of this world along with her, the consummate outsider to the drama and intrigue of the Collins family and those with whom their paths cross.

Certainly, these latest questions are compelling. They’d better be. The survival of the show depends on them.

And if you thought turning the show into a murder mystery was a desperate attempt to save the ratings, just wait until you see the marvel that is this episode!

We begin with Carolyn, resplendent in her sexless poncho nightgown (seriously, her mother’s bedclothes are more sensual) dropping in on Vicky who, you may recall, has agreed to sleep with her.

I mean in bed together. Because she’s frightened. And girls love cuddling in bed when they’re frightened, isn’t that right, fellas?

Considering David has multiple times (including, maybe, tonight) broken into her room to vandalize, steal, and plant evidence for an attempted murder, you’d think she would but apparently it’s very easy to forget you sleep across the hall from a nine-year-old psychopath.

Carolyn points out she’d lock and barricade the door if it were her, and Vicky gives us this observation:

Sure, but the downside is, you barely feel it.

(I am desperately concocting ghost jokes and I’m terrified of wasting any)

Vicky hasn’t even been in Collinwood a week, which both feels like a surprisingly short time (framed for attempted murder, go on a date,  find a body in the backyard) and an excruciatingly long one (learn nothing about herself, have multiple iterations of the same three conversations, learn nothing about herself, almost leave her job twice, learn nothing about herself, learn nothing about herself, learn nothing about herself). I don’t know what is gotten by drawing attention to it, outside of the fact that this episode is trying something new.

On top of all the “something new” already being tried. Bear with me.

Carolyn tells Vicky that things at Collinwood have always been “strange”, but not the way they are now.

How do you “drive by” Collinwood? It’s the sole structure on top of a hill. The road up to it presumably only goes one place. People would have to go out of there way to gawk at the “haunted house” and then make a U-turn on a road that, apparently, is treacherous and prone to accidents.

But considering there’s fack all else to do in the vicinity, I guess people just make do.

Vicky points out Carolyn almost said this all began when Vicky arrived. I’ve noted before that the “inciting incident” of the drama should have been Victoria, since she’s the POV character, the heroine, and the person who’s quest we were (supposed) to be here to follow. But, since Vicky’s story has moved so sluggishly over the last 10 weeks of storytelling, the onus has instead gone to the other character who arrived in Collinsport back in the first episode: Burke.

Why not? If you played the Dark Shadows Drinking Game and only followed the rule about drinking whenever someone says his full name, you’d die before Roger’s car crash. Burke’s plan may also be slowly paced, ill-explained, silly and riddled with holes, but at least it exists. Burke has also featured in major storylines in a way the heroine just hasn’t. It was he who ended up resolving the suppository saga, after all, and now with Bill Malloy’s murder, Burke stands to play a part as dual investigator (Malloy was going to help him clear his name) and even a potential suspect.

Vicky, by contrast, exists on the periphery of these stories. Her great involvement in the suppository story was in finding the suppository when David hid it in her room to frame her. But after this, David ran away and Vicky, rather than going to look for him, frustratedly tried to explain herself to Elizabeth. Even her (oft repeated) testimony of her encounter with Burke in the garage ended up being of incremental importance since Burke’s innocence was proven by evidence the Consteriff found off-screen!

And now…sure, she and Carolyn appear to be the first to have found Malloy’s corpse, even if they don’t know that’s what they found, but it was solely by happenstance. An accident. Things just happen to Victoria Winters. She is, at best, a passive protagonist. At worst, she’s just passive, and no protagonist at all.

What I’m saying is, Carolyn is right to say this all began when Burke came back. There’d have been no attempted murder and (we can be fairly certain) no murder without him. And it’s hard to see how things would be much different if Victoria hadn’t shown up.

They end up relitigating Vicky’s first meeting with Burke way back when. Carolyn wonders if Victoria wishes she’d heeded Burke’s advice and headed home.

She’ll be here a while.

I’ll spare you the brunt of the ensuing discussion about the dead man, which is mostly just a recap of everything that happened last episode, which was itself mostly just a recap of the previous episode, along with other recaps of things that had already been discussed in the episode.

Carolyn suggests the tide could’ve carried the body away.

Tides are fairly basic Social Studies curriculum. Third/fourth grade level, usually. How does one get qualified to be a governess again?

Carolyn gives us a cogent lesson about tides that Francis Swann likely double-checked the Encyclopedia Brittanica for, or whatever people did to learn things before the Internet.

Sounds like my ex-husband! But seriously folks

Carolyn muses, again, about the potential identity of the potential dead man. For some reason, she does this with a wistful smile on her face.

Carolyn points out that they’ll find out who he was eventually when the man is reported missing, at which point Vicky makes the fairly obvious connection…

Carolyn’s got a case of Denial with a Capital D, which is better than that other Capital D problem she’s got. Denial, at the very least, can’t be prosecuted for sex crimes.

It makes sense, of course, that Carolyn (only 17!) would be reluctant to accept the fact that a man she’s known all her life and very likely saw as a father figure (we know she sees her uncle as…considerably not that) is dead. But Vicky is a practical young woman who can’t turn away from an obvious fact. For now.

Carolyn insists she’d have known if it was him. This is the same person who believed Burke was going to go to Venezuela because she read it on a piece of paper placed conveniently where she could find it after he conveniently left the room long enough for her to read it.

Actually, to make it easier, this is the same person who believes Burke, period.

Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts. We hear about ghosts and ghoulies every other episode these days, which is a refreshing break from that suppository span in which no reference was ever made to the gothic trappings this show is supposed to have. Still. It was cute in the beginning when ghosts were used consistently as a colorful metaphor for peoples’ troubled paths, but I am quite sick of all these cutesy references to ghost stories and portents and all the rest of that.

Put up or shut up.

Oh well.

No, sometimes they engage in charitable work, like teaching old misers the meaning of Christmas.

Vicky, who is entering Week 11 of being a tiresome skeptic (though not really so tiresome since she has little reason not to be), repeats that there’s no such thing as ghosts.

I guess we just forgot about the Weeping Woman Vicky has heard twice out of the five nights she’s been here. She and Carolyn even had a frank discussion about it not terribly long ag…

Ooh la.

Carolyn claims to have heard something. What it was, who knows. But she heard it, and that’s gonna have to tide us over while we go elsewhere.

The long-suffering Maggie Evans is trying to get her plastered father into bed, but that lovable old sot Sam is stubborn as ever.

In a rare change of pace, Sam actually answers Maggie’s questions, this time pertaining to his worries.

We know that last episode/earlier in the evening, a nervous Roger called Sam to ask if he’s seen Malloy at all today and he, apparently, hasn’t. We also know that Sam and Roger are both prime suspects with significant motives for wanting to get him out of the way: saving their own hides before Malloy could make good on his vow to clear Burke’s name.

That Roger appeared to seek honest confirmation from Sam at least suggests they weren’t in it together, which may not come as much surprise given they hate each other so much (and, indeed, could both benefit from framing the other for the dirty deed…).

What could be a surprise is the plain fact that it’s Malloy who’s vanished and not, oh…Sam.

But I’ve got that line of talk stowed away for a few episodes. I’ve got to ration my hot takes.

One of Dark Shadows’s greatest assets is its stable of supremely talented actors that can say stupid shit and making it sound halfway presentable. Dave Ford is one such actor, which is good because at this point in the series, he gets most of those lines.

“Pop, did you soil yourself again?”

Sam admits to Maggie that Malloy failed to show up to an “appointment” he made with him. This is another point in Sam’s favor. After all, for someone who usually goes to such lengths to keep things from his daughter, is it likely Sam would’ve made such an allusion to that fateful meeting if he had gone so far as to take out the man who’d arranged it? Or is this another careless drunken slip-up, of the kind that started Malloy’s quest in the first place?

Maggie wonders if Sam’s fear extends to his own safety.

Same.

Sam reminds Maggie (and us) of the letter he entrusted to Maggie two nights ago: his safeguard against harm. Maggie assures him it’s safely tucked away.

Then it has the protection of Mr. Wells’s mustache upon it.

Sam has already revealed the existence of the letter (and alluded to its contents) to Roger, when he stormed in to interrogate him only a little while after Sam drunkenly spilled (part of) the beans to Malloy. Roger surely knows that if he steps even a toe out of line, Sam’s insurance policy will cook his goose.

It’s an interesting set-up, and one wonders what will come of it.

Keep wondering. We’ve got bigger things to attend to.

But the slumber party is put off as Carolyn again hears a mysterious Thing going Bump in the Night. Vicky tries to write it off…until it happens again, a much more distinct, thudding noise.

Where else? Sure, there are over 40 rooms in this house, but we’ve only got sets for half a dozen of them.

Having ruled out the adults (Carolyn heard Liz and Roger go up to bed a little after they did), Vicky decides it’s that little son of a bitch David.

I feel that, whenever David does do something heinous again, he’ll be able to deny it in no time flat using all Vicky’s empty ‘Gotcha’ moments as precedent.

So Vicky checked David’s room and found he was asleep, and neither girl has the clarity of conscience to suggest Matthew is downstairs taking bites out of the furniture, so the inquiry rests.

Says the person who was just doing the blaming.

Carolyn notes David gets blamed because he usually is responsible. And he has been. The mysterious doors that opened behind Vicky on her first night were implied to be David following her. The letter moved from her dresser to the bed was him reading it. The letter vanishing was him stealing it. Vicky even noted that the ‘DEATH’ graffiti on her mirror tonight was in David’s handwriting, whatever his denials.

About the only things that don’t seem to have been on David are the second instance of the locked East Wing door opening (we know David has some kind of access to that part of the house, but he’d already run into town when that happened) and, of course, the Mysterious Woman both Cursed!Sam and Matthew insist is the ghost Josette Collins, “the wife of the madman who built this place”, as Carolyn colorfully termed her so many weeks ago.

Carolyn tries to urge Vicky to check with Liz and Roger to see if they now what’s up, but Victoria is naturally not thrilled at the prospect, to the point of stumbling on her line.

Or smelling them. I’m told there’s something up in the atmosphere.

The girls’ conversation increases in volume, perhaps to help drown out what sounds like a real whizz-banger of an argument from backstage. This one is so loud, I can hear it on my crummy laptop with the volume only 75% of the way up.

But Dark Shadows from the Beginning has you covered there.

Carolyn brings up the missing watch that brought her and Vicky out to the cliff in the first place, saying she’ll find it in the morning.

What? Lying awake at night starting at noises? Honey, welcome to my world.

Vicky, in true Victoria Winters fashion, seizes on a chance to make this about her past, noting that birthday presents would mean something to her because she doesn’t have a birthday.

Just imagining Mrs. Hopewell singing ‘Happy Birthday’ as her eyes struggle to escape the prison that is her skull.

She’s right. In other news, who wants to marry me?

Back at the Evans household, Sam tells Maggie to go to sleep.

At least he admits it.

Maggie tries to placate her father, saying Malloy could just as easily have left town and will be back in a few days.

Apropos of nothing, Sam mentions Burke, calling him a “harsh man”.

Nope, Swann. You are not giving Maggie Evans the Devlin Disease. Fuck off.

More importantly, we have Sam seem to cast suspicion on Burke, somebody who would not immediately be obvious. It’s true that Sam and Roger had more to lose but that doesn’t mean Burke is innocent. As I mentioned in an earlier episode, Burke may not have liked the idea of heeding Malloy’s ultimatum and sought to remove him from the picture so he could continue his plots against the Collinses unimpeded. Maybe he even forced the truth out of Malloy before doing the deed, and even now knows what Malloy did (which, admittedly, still wasn’t much, but was something).

Sam brushes off Maggie’s questions (what else is new), insisting he doesn’t know what he’s talking about half the time.

Same again, but I can’t get away with telling people that.

Maggie proves more tractable, though it’s probably just exhaustion, and agrees to go to bed. With her gone, Sam goes to the phone…

Also perhaps the most disturbing screencap I’ve yet taken for this blog.

The girls are startled from their un-sleep by the ringing of the phone from downstairs, which does not seem enough to waken David (lost in violent fantasies), Elizabeth (she’s at that age), or Roger (hangover).

Victoria hurries to answer the phone while Carolyn freaks out at the trick shutter that starts flapping at rando intervals.

That plot device being that Carolyn is too unsettled to want to stick around alone.

Vicky answers the phone, and we get basically a rehash of that time Sam called Collinwood and Liz picked up and Sam didn’t want to speak to anybody but Roger and then hung up and Liz never mentioned it again.

Hearing Vicky’s voice, Sam promptly hangs up, which does nothing for the girl’s nerves.

At which point there is another mysterious banging noise. And it is, indeed, coming from the drawing room.

Victoria decides there’s no use the both of them cowering like this: she’ll go and investigate. It’s nice to see her being proactive, even about something as stupid as this.

Carolyn then provides me with another favorite Dark Shadows quote:

And Vicky provides another favorite line, and the ultimate ethos of the spunky, plucky heroine she was always supposed to be and cold have kept on being if things hadn’t been things.

That’s the goddamn spirit. Vicky’s bravery even galvanizes Carolyn, who accompanies her into the drawing room to behold…

An open window.

*insert Meryl Streep “Groundbreaking” meme*

There is a brief scare when they first notice the curtain moving as if of its own accord, but this is quickly dispelled when Victoria goes over and finds the window unlatched. Not surprising, I suppose, Liz undoes it to stare out into space about five times a day. Maybe she just forgot to close it this time.

Victoria writes it off as the wind and Carolyn notices something fairly peculiar…

You’ll recognize that as the Collins genealogy that inexplicably exists (“O, the proud and storied history of this sardine-canning family!”), first introduced to us a couple of weeks ago, when Roger walked in on Carolyn reading aloud from it. That was also a Swann episode, incidentally, so the entire handling of this book as a plot device belongs to him.

Having concluded that the sound they heard was the book falling from the table, Victoria sees satisfied…

Victoria, desperate for a “logical explanation” does what we all do when struggling to explain the unexplainable: pull something out of her ass.

This is very quickly dismissed, but I won’t rule out the possibility of a whimsical Collinwood Cat breaking in at odd intervals and working mischief. Pissing in Roger’s sock drawer, for example.

With this, Carolyn insists they go back to bed and, at this point, there’s nothing else for it.

And so it is that, alone in the dark, under the painted eyes of so any long-dead ancestors, the illogical, the unexplainable, the supernatural finally comes to Collinwood.

There is debate for what the first “supernatural” occurrence on Dark Shadows, a soap that is now known for nothing but supernatural occurrences, is. Why not Episode 4, and the first instance of the Weeping Woman? Why not Episode 27, when the door to the East Wing, just locked by Elizabeth, opens before Vicky’s eyes? Maybe Episode 30, when Victoria sees a shadowy figure in between flashes of lightning that may be Roger, but that Roger himself claims wasn’t? Could it be as recent as Episode 50, and the graffiti on the mirror that David insisted he had nothing to do with?

All could be candidates, some more strongly than others (I’m partial to insisting the Weeping Woman segments, being themselves manifestations of Josette, are irrefutably “supernatural occurrences”).

So why is this, the opening of the book by the unseen hand, treated as the very first time Dark Shadows stepped into the realm of the supernatural?

I would suppose because it’s more obvious. The other things can be written off as hallucinations (maybe Vicky was just nervous and imagined the shadow man), deception (we only have David’s worth he didn’t graffiti the mirror, and that isn’t much), and the workings of an old house (maybe Elizabeth was right and the East Wing door only opened because of a distant draft from somewhere deep in the sealed off part of the house).

But this is irrefutable. Sure, it doesn’t happen where the characters can see it, leaving open the window for our Skeptic Victoria Winters to continue being a doubter. But for us, the audience, it removes that lingering uncertainty. Finally, we know something the audience surrogate doesn’t.

Yes, Virginia, Dark Shadows is a ghost story. You weren’t fooled. The ghosts of Collinsport aren’t just poetical metaphors. The undead walk in Collinwood.

The party line is that Dark Shadows was never supposed to have explicitly supernatural elements, just as it was never supposed to have a thriller/suspense whodunit. That the inclusion of ghosts that were more than just whispered stories were borne from the same desperation that gave us the mystery storyline in the first place.

I’m not so sure. Mind, I have no evidence, but I have a hard time believing Dan Curtis could envision this old dark house full of secrets and legends and ghost stories, that he could imagine the tragic figure of Josette Collins, and the wailing widows, and see them as nothing more than thematic set dressing.

It’s all good and well to contrast Elizabeth to the Widows and draw some parallel between Carolyn and Josette’s shared feelings of imprisonment in Collinwood. Both are valid and very likely intentional. But that Curtis never intended to go beyond that…

That’s probably what he wanted everybody to think. And then he would sit on it and…well, see what happened. How people reacted to the show, what they responded to or what they didn’t. And, when the time felt right…boo!

Either way, I think it’s safe to say he wouldn’t have unveiled Josette at this point if it weren’t for the flagging ratings. Murder and a dose of the undead? Much more watchable than the suppository variety minute.

But, fascinating as this all is, we’re not done with the episode. Which is weird, you’d think they’d have ended with that, but no.

It turns out the irrepressible Maggie heard Sam’s aborted phone call and she, naturally, wants to know who the hell he’s trying to call at 1:00 in the morning.

Not so. You made two ice cream sundaes for Roger’s son, who this could just as easily have been.

Sam revives the tired old saw about Roger trying to stop him from doing Burke’s portrait and he just sounds so tired of that plot device, and for good reason.

It’s such epic trollery that they were all like ‘Hi, here’s a ghost! Now back to these two people having the same conversation they’ve been having for 10 weeks!’

If you were watching this show in September ’66 and you got up near the end of Act III to, oh, answer the door or go to the bathroom or have a cigarette and you came back in time for Act IV, you’d have no idea the show had just gone full haunted house.

And you would go on not knowing that for almost a month.

Sam claims Roger is anxious Burke not be kept in Collinsport (or “Collin port” as the very tired-sounding Dave Ford pronounces it), which he would be if he stuck for the whole portrait commission. It’s the same bullshit we’ve heard 1,000 times, but more infuriating because of what we just saw in the immediately preceding scene.

Can you blame him? Have you read this script?

It’s a testament to Dave Ford’s talent that even when he is obviously bored with his shitty script (this happens much more later on), he is able to lend some degree of elegance and cadence to his words. It’s probably that voice of his.

Maggie reminds Sam of Burke’s visit earlier in the day (she refers to it as “yesterday”, which I guess is true because it’s after midnight) to ask those uncomfortable questions Maggie wasn’t able to stick around for.

But, yanno…

He doesn’t. What else is new?

The girls return to Vicky’s room to continue the SLUMBER PARTY, which is less kinky every time we revisit it.

We have to suspend disbelief, not for ghosts and such, but to imagine that Vicky was somehow unable to recognize Sam’s very distinctive and sexy voice on the other end of the phone. She does tell Carolyn the one word he said: “Collins”.

Well, it could’ve meant Carolyn, since that’s her middle name or something.

Carolyn wonders if it could’ve been Malloy on the phone, but Vicky is doubtful.

Okay, wow, anybody ever tell this lady not to make generalizations? She’s right, but even so.

That he did, God bless him.

Carolyn confides in Vicky her belief that Malloy has a “crush” on her mother. And it seems like a weird time to bring that up, but…

Well, that’s just depressing.

Vicky tells Carolyn about Burke’s visit to Collinwood earlier in the day looking for Malloy and, naturally, Carolyn gets all pressed that nobody told her earlier, but who cares, really?

Not at all dear. He left just as he came: fast.

Let’s ask new Chin Whiskers.

Sam tells Maggie he has no idea where Malloy is and how is this conversation still happening?

Maggie tells Sam all about Malloy pressing her about him yesterday (which in this case was two days ago, taking into account it’s after midnight, so Swann made a continuity error in one of Maggie’s “yesterday” statements) about “important information” Sam apparently has.

Now our man Dave seems to come alive. He really encapsulates the entrapped frustrations of Sam, someone who wants to do right but (in the words of the old tune), “not right now”.

And, yes, Sam is my Miss Ohio.

Maggie points out that, if Sam revealed this information in the letter he gave her, she is sure as hell gonna read that letter.

Sam, suddenly on the defensive, demands Maggie get that letter out of the safe and into his hands come morning and leave the empty envelope where it is, presumably so the threat of the confession will live on which… Isn’t a very sound idea, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work on Roger.

Maggie makes to go and read the letter herself, but Sam grabs her.

He insists she swear on her mother’s name not to read the letter. Maggie doesn’t do this because they have no intention of ever naming her mother, but says she won’t read it.

No, but he has. And she knows it.

So about that ghost…

This Day in History- Tuesday, September 6, 1966

Among the less fabulous assassinations of the late ‘60s, Hendrick Verwoerd, the Prime Minister of South Africa and architect of apartheid, is stabbed to death in Parliament by, get this, a white supremacist who thought he was too lenient against South Africa’s Black population. The architect of apartheid. Too lenient. Isn’t history great?

Birth control advocate and Christian bogeywoman Margaret Sanger dies. No, they do not sell baby parts out of abortion clinics. Not even Dan Curtis could concoct such an absurd plot device.

The Canadian (and first ever) premiere of Star Trek on CTV. It would premiere in the States two days later and become a pop culture sensation, etc. etc. but we’ll talk more about that when it comes.