Must be Seeing Things

Her name is Victoria Winters and she’s just walked into a crime scene.

You know, those horrified shrieks Alexandra Moltke and Nancy Barrett (but really Moltke) are belting out are the first high screams of any kind on Dark Shadows. We get lots of yelling. Especially from Mitch Ryan and Frank Schofield (bye boy), but not terrified screaming which, again, is odd given the gothic tones we were repeatedly told they were going for.

But it’s a new age on Dark Shadows. And now there ain’t nobody shying away from scaring you.

We don’t even get a real extended teaser before the opening titles, as we’ve been accustomed. After a brief monologue from Vicky, we see the reshoot of Friday’s cliffhanger and then bam.

All within a minute. This is common practice for most of the soaps still on the air. Reshooting (or just reairing already shot) ending scenes to open episodes with, especially after cliffhangers. Eventually, this is what Dark Shadows will do every episode, but not for a while yet, making this exception to the rule all the more startling.

This is a Big Deal. We killed somebody. Not just some hokey nonsense about a swapped out suppository and

There’s no almost this time. Just was. A man is dead. Multiple characters have motives. The question now is Who, What, Where, When and Why?

The oldest questions, and the simplest. What better way to ensure you stop bleeding your audience?

Act 1 begins with Roger where we left him.

Liz returns, presumably right after that ominous portent from David that I guess she didn’t stop to quiz him about.

She wonders if Vicky and Carolyn have come back yet.

Except Roger was well in earshot when Vicky and Carolyn went out. Add to the list of weird inconsistencies as we switch writers. Our man Francis Swann is back this week. I can only assume he was hired at this time because the genre he had most experience in was the noirish thriller of the kind Dan Curtis was desperate to ape for this storyline.

The exact dimensions of this house confuse me. We assume this window faces the sea because we can always hear the waves roaring right outside it. Vicky’s bedroom is apparently above the drawing room judging by what side of the corridor it’s on. Also, Carolyn seems to look down to the water when telling Vicky that ghost story we are apparently supposed to have forgotten she’s already told her (as of last episode at least).

David has been shown in exterior footage to have a room overlooking the outside of the house, as we saw when he watched Roger drive off on that fateful night. and yet, a few episodes later, he seemed to try to throw himself from the window and into what must’ve been the sea below.

Or maybe I’m just drawing a conclusion there.

My point is, it would’ve been funny if Liz opened that window and heard all those screams carrying on the wind.

Roger attempts to placate his sister’s nerves the only way he knows how: being a dick.

Silly Roger. Nobody on this show has friends.

Perhaps the one point most tellingly against Roger is just how guilty he seems. No intelligent man would be so brazen about Malloy’s disappearance. He’s practically been skipping ever since the guy vanished, whereas he was a quivering mass of pus not 24 hours before.

No competent criminal would ever be so obvious.

But then, who’s to say Roger’s competent? Certainly not as much as Malloy who, Liz informs us…

Get used to that phrase and its many variations. Mind that nobody ever talked the guy up this much when he was alive. But that’s life, I guess.

Liz notes that today was the first day Malloy never showed up to work. This isn’t true. The first day was yesterday, that day when he went around town during work hours day-drinking and confronting people. Though I guess he must’ve gone to work in the morning because he brought some papers for Liz to sign. Still, he never went back to work that day, as noted by Joe when he saw him.

Ah well.

We may well all be if you don’t contact your representative to tell them to preserve funding for the USPS. Victoria Winters isn’t the only one who gets mail.

Anyway, Liz wonders if they should call the police.

Always cool as ice.

Roger suggests Malloy wasn’t at work on purpose, which is about as bold as Sam suggesting to Burke that Malloy missed the meeting because he was embarrassed or something.

Before Roger can be pressed to explain that stupid theory, the girls return Hysterical as Hell.

In keeping with her original characterization as somebody who keeps cool in crisis (enjoy that while you can), Vicky explains to Roger, as best she can, about…

Thankfully, the ladies are too distracted to notice Roger shitting his pants in the corner.

Liz, ever one for sense and sensibility, sits the girls down and prompts them to explain because we’re still a daytime soap and it’s still Monday and we still have to recap things for the audience but mostly just to fill time.

Liz doesn’t seem to believe the story, while Roger, in the tones of someone trying not to faint, asks who it was, as if they could see that in the middle of the night, from the top of a cliff we’ve repeatedly been told is very high and constantly buffeted by a furious ocean.

Carolyn (who I sadly can’t get a screencap of for this) says, in ringing hysterical tones, “Well, you don’t think we went down there for a look, do you?”

Liz defers to Roger as the One With a Penis Who Also Owes Her Many Favors to haul ass out to Widows’ Hill “with a flashlight” to see what’s up.

Roger isn’t amused.

There’s spooks out there and he’s ascared.

Roger declares these are ridiculous fancies and he won’t waste his time pursuing them and, yes, that’s how we’re spending this episode: debating whether or not there is a body there and whether or not we should go see because we can’t fix all the pacing problems by switching the writers and killing somebody off.

Roger points out that even if there is something down there, it shouldn’t be him who has to go check it out. They have an indentured servant for that.

Good question. They took all that time to recast him and he hasn’t turned up in 13 episodes after his first appearance.

Liz sees the wisdom in utilizing the actors you have on contract and contacts Matthew at his house.

I’ve missed those dulcet tones.

Liz begins explaining to him what happened, beginning with the girls going to the edge of the cliff.

Good question.

Matthew seems taken aback to hear of this purported dead man and promises to go out and have a look for himself.

The phone call concluded, Liz tells Carolyn that sometimes “the light plays strange tricks on the water” and maybe it was a rock. Vicky points out the thing was moving, not like a rock, and Roger interjects…

Giant, man-sized seaweed. I’m sorry, I just can’t believe we’re spending this much time on all this.

Useful life skills. It’s a wonder she doesn’t have a career.

Victoria, no doubt still thinking of the DEATH incident, wonders if this could be “some trick of David’s”, as if he hasn’t already proven himself to be capable of murder.

Stuff a pillowcase with leaves, put it in clothes, push it off a cliff in gale-force winds. Kid stuff.

Bold of her to assume he was being sarcastic. Neither that line, nor the one after it (a dry “incorrigible monster”) seemed like sarcasm. That’s literally just what he calls his son on a regular basis.

Anyway, our favorite mentally handicapped groundskeeper’s got a flashlight and is on the case.

Matthew appears to see something…maybe. The lighting is perfectly ditch weed but imagine how much worse it’d look on the average 1966 television screen.

Back at Collinwood, the Same Conversation persists.

See, that’s sarcasm. And, indeed, if Carolyn were serious about being That Bitch we all know she can be, she’d have slapped him for that. But no.

Roger reminds Carolyn of the legacy of dead women jumping off Widows’ Hill.

This is the first reference we’ve gotten to Josette possibly not killing herself. Until now it’s been taken for granted that she, possessed by sorrow and loneliness, threw herself from the hill and her weeping ghost purportedly still haunts the house.

The idea that she may have been murdered is entirely new, and you can see why it was crafted…to add another sense of spooky parallel to this case of evident homicide. For, indeed, if the body was found on the base of the cliff, doesn’t it stand to reason it may have been pushed from there?

Either way, keep a bookmark in that detail for later. Much, much, much later.

Returning to the story of the “three people” first (well retconned first) mentioned last episode, Roger gives the identity of the second woman.

In the original, Episode 9, version of the story, both the dead women after Josette were governesses. This new version, which has only two dead women with the prophecy of a third, is much more palatable. Already having two dead governesses is a little ridiculous. The fear that our heroine may be the next dead governess is still a little ridiculous, but it at least works better.

Liz dismisses the legend as silly superstition and suggests everybody Go the Fuck to Sleep. This is absurd, because they all know Matthew has been sent out to see what’s up, so why shouldn’t they wait for him to come back? Besides that it would give Liz time to concoct one of her famous face-saving lies.

But that would imply she’d have something to gain for lying about the body, eh?

You know, it’s nice that she’s gone so long without talking about Burke. Sorry, I couldn’t help but notice. She didn’t namedrop him last episode either.

The blocking in this shot is perfect, but also, Vicky is looking at him like she’d like to throw his ass off Widows’ Hill.

Funny story about that… But later.

The frightened Carolyn asks if she can “bunk” with Victoria tonight. Look at that. Murder, ghost stories, prophecies of doom, the shade of Alfred Hitchcock, and girls sharing a bed. I don’t know what demographic Dan Curtis thinks this show is for, but he’s sure as hell courting them for all it’s worth.

Vicky takes Carolyn aside for some cocoa.

Carolyn wonders who the body was and Vicky can only hope it was a stranger because I guess that would make it more convenient.

Carolyn doesn’t voice the obvious rebuttal: that they both know somebody who has been missing all day. It’s not like she needs to. It’s certainly on both their minds.

Swann’s trying on his Art Wallace hat, God bless him.

Projecting, honey.

In an effort at returning to form (and also to eat up more time), Liz repeats her earlier question about Roger’s mysterious meeting with Malloy last night.

Roger insists the ‘business disagreement’ he told Liz he and Malloy had had last episode came from, get this, Roger being too creative for him.

It turns out sex sells everything but sardines.

Liz plays along with this, pointing out that while Malloy may lack initiative (except, yanno, the initiative to take the entire Burke Devlin situation into his own hands, to the point where it may very well have killed him), she has a solution.

Oh we’re…we’re still talking about that, huh?

I mean, right? Roger has either forgotten or Francis Swann has forgotten that Roger spoke with Ned when he returned Liz’s call two nights ago and Liz knows this from Victoria. Nevertheless. Roger resents the idea of Ned coming on because he thinks he can do the job himself.

Liz points out that if Roger has “free rein”, the Collins empire “would disappear from the face of the earth”, which is a total burn that has been totally substantiated by what little evidence we have.

Ah, yeah, pampered white guy rocketing toward middle-age believes he is a disenfranchised underdog. It is, truly, a tale as old as time and it’s funny only because Louis Edmonds doesn’t try to sell it as anything to be taken seriously, which is something all those people cast as “aggrieved but ~sympathetic~ men” in contemporary media might want to consider.

Liz then adds that Ned refused to come back anyway, which begs the question of why in God’s name we’re talking about this. I know Francis Swann has a real fixation with this considering how hard he went on it in the Mr. Harris episode, but nobody cares and it doesn’t seem like any aspect of the show is moving toward this being a story. I don’t get it.

Was the alternative to killing Malloy bringing on Ned and giving Liz a love triangle? Is that why Malloy seemed a little sour on Ned the first time he heard (Wallace episode) but more positive the second time (Swann episode), by which point his death had to have been a finalized story beat?

We’ll never know, but I can now tell you without fear of spoiling you that we will never see Ned Calder and never learn anything more about him except that he was a competent manager who used his position to leverage a marriage proposal from Liz and got butthurt when she behaved like a sensible person and told him to fuck off.

Liz points out that Malloy would have to approve any of Roger’s undefined fabulous “ideas”.

I swear, Swann’s back one episode and we’re already back on the “horny Liz needs a man” train. It’s embarrassing.

Thankfully, this is put to heel by the arrival of Matthew.

As a matter of fact, the ambient wind from Widows’ Hill is nowhere in evidence in the bits of foliage that dress the outside of Collinwood, but those wind machines are expensive and heavy, so cut them some slack.

Roger gets impatient, and I can’t blame him. This guy is taking his time.

Yes, and?

Carolyn and Vicky hurry in from their cocoa making or whatever.

Matthew must be thrilled. He’s never had this many people look him in the eye without fainting or succumbing to sepsis.

Oh. Well.

Huh.

This is certainly a development. In true Dark Shadows fashion, it seems to exist solely to prolong resolution because we can’t after all have the proof the dead man they saw was a dead man the very episode after they saw him. It’s against the rules. Or at least, that’s the assumption being operated under here.

Carolyn wonders aloud if all the folk stories about Collinwood and its ghosts are true. I dunno, she told Vicky two days ago that she is well aware of the ghost lady that cries in the basement some nights and just lives with it, but that was written by the other writer and maybe we can give this one the benefit of the doubt and assume Carolyn is talking about the very specific legend about the cliffs and stuff.

Matthew who, you will recall, is now a superstitious lunk, gives us this tidbit.

Liz, who you remember considers Matthew a “friend”, has little patience for this.

Wow.

He’s gotten to the ‘intense physical contact’ stage of drunkeness. The train is never late.

Victoria wonders whether the body could’ve been washed out to see.

Not sure if making yourself the Dead Body Expert is the best way to acquit yourself, Rog.

Liz, apparently tired of Matthew exceeding his Talking to His Betters allotment, thanks him and more or less tells him to fuck off, which he does, at which point Liz more or less tells the girls to fuck off, which they seem reluctant about but don’t argue, at which point Liz more or less tells Roger he’s about to get fucked because she wants to talk to him.

Alone, Vicky and Carolyn assure each other that they are not, in fact, crazy, and there was, in fact, “a dead man at the foot of the cliff” and, ergo, Something Strange is Going On.

Or maybe not.

We shouldn’t be surprised that Carolyn is so easily swayed. Burke Devlin has lied to her in just about every meeting they’ve ever had, and she’s still ready to surrender herself body and soul to him.

Vicky asks Carolyn if Matthew has any reason to lie…

A question almost verbatim what Liz is asking Roger in the very next room, because I guess Francis Swann is trying out some of the other writer’s less flattering qualities.

A better question is whether a man with a brain made of mincemeat and mayonnaise is capable of lying, but I guess Roger is learning tact. Liz notes in particular that Matthew was acting “strangely”, and I know this is only the second time we’ve seen him since the recast, but “strangely” would appear to be his default setting.

Roger pooh-poohs all his sister’s worries, of course…

“Flotsam and jetsam” is maritime legalese used to designate shipwrecks. In pop culture, the term also lends a name to the sea witch Ursula’s moray eel sidekick’s in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.  It’s also a thrash band. Neither of those things existed at the time this episode aired, so I guess they were banking on the average 1966 American housewife recognizing the term.

Anyway, this same point keeps being beaten into the dust, as if they want to demolish every last bit of thrill you may have gotten from that big cliffhanger in the first place.

Roger then more or less tells Liz to fuck off and Liz surprises me by not kicking him in the teeth.

It seems impossible that Roger couldn’t have something to do with this at this point. His change of mood when Malloy failed to turn up, his repeated insistence that there was no body at all, and now the return of his nervousness from before. I’ve gotta say, if this is supposed to be a big show-saving mystery, it certainly isn’t doing much to mystify.

You know it’s bad if he’s appealing to Sam.

 Because we can only have so many actors in an episode at a time, we don’t get to see Sam’s reaction to being called at an ungodly hour of the night (though Roger prefaces this by saying he “knows you’re a night owl”, which is a weird and oddly affectionate thing to say, but whatever), nor how he answers the enigmatic question…

Sam evidently has not, and if he wasn’t already suspicious about this phone call, Roger gives him a whole new reason to be, with…

It’s impossible that somebody this oblivious could’ve committed a murder. Clearly, we’re missing something.

Back at Matthew’s cottage, the caretaker is indulging in his nightly rations.

He’s about to turn in for the night, when a knock comes to the door.

He’s got that ridiculous hippy-dippy grin on his face, like he’s being visited by a head of state. This is probably the first time Liz’s come to his house in 18 years.

Liz makes herself at home and promptly voices the very concern she had earlier spoken to Roger about, because who needs spontaneity when you can telegraph all your story beats minutes before they happen?

Matthew says some hokum about how the light was “tricky” and he was almost fooled himself and that’s why he climbed all the way down the very tall suicide cliff buffeted by furious winds.

You know, in retrospect, it’s a very good thing for this family that Matthew lacks the cogency to grasp the concept of a lawsuit.

God, but doesn’t she look fierce as hell in that head-scarf? Imagine the powerhouse career she could’ve had, at this same age, in the big pictures, if it weren’t for sexism in Hollywood.

Matthew says that, in truth, he did expect to find Malloy down there. As, you know…all of us did.

We’re supposed to believe that Matthew is social enough to not only go into town regularly (as we saw in his last appearance, when he charmingly threatened to kill a man in a public place) but engage in regular conversation with the townsfolk, to the extent that he can give Liz what the crime procedurals refer to as “the local temperature” about Malloy’s disappearance.

Now, it’s possible I’m just prejudiced against the guy, but I have a hard time believing his is a face people like to open up to, unless he’s shaking them by the collar and demanding they tell him where the Bixby Brothers hid Captain Steeplejacks’ gold.

In the course of this discussion, Matthew mentions that it’s been noticed Malloy’s car remains in front of his house, something Burke already told us when he went searching for him last night. this is likely something Liz knows already as well, but we don’t dwell on it as Liz asks Matthew for his opinion for what I’m sure must be the first time in his life.

Thanks for trying anyway.

Liz comments that Malloy was “looking into something very important” for her. What? Is she referring to his investigating Burke? That thing she repeatedly told him not to do, up to and including the last time she saw him? I mean, yeah, he told her he was going to look into it even without her permission, but this is a fine time to suddenly claim he had her blessing the whole time.

We return to Matthew’s primary preoccupation: Those meddling kids. Or townsfolk. It comes to the same thing. His primary concern is the protection of Collinwood’s secrets, which is why the only thing both versions of him have in common is terrifying Victoria for going into the basement: there are some (many) things in Collinwood that are just off limits to outsiders.

But, as Liz notes, the disappearance of Bill Malloy is a trifle too serious not to touch Collinwood. And there’s very little even Matthew’s…er…charms can do then.

Matthew offers his own theory as to Malloy’s absence.

The implications of the statement aren’t lost on Elizabeth, who asks if Matthew can take her to the cliff himself.

She of course must clarify that this is not a date.

Back at Collinwood, Vicky and Carolyn are going out.

Again.

Vicky is insisting that, since Carolyn still can’t get to sleep, they make “doubly sure” there isn’t a corpse at the foot of the cliff and, I’m sorry, this entire episode could’ve been ten minutes long and even then might’ve been too much.

Carolyn points out when she wanted to make sure, she didn’t want them to do it, but something heroic and studly and filled with masculine prowess…

Or him.

Carolyn overrides Vicky’s objections and attempts to convince him/eat up more time before the episode ends. Roger, as ever, behaves as if the entire thing is a mildly amusing cocktail party joke, whatever nerves he was jumping on before seemingly dissipated.

I think he’s lost track of his own point.

Roger keeps refusing and, at this point, I can only imagine the real reason is he doesn’t want to get his shoes muddy and there is nothing in Louis Edmonds’s delivery to convince e otherwise.

Major props to Vicky for insinuating this man who has repeatedly intimidated, threatened and bullied her is a lickspittle coward, but Roger has no male pride to wound.

Still, Roger accedes to accompany them, if they give him “one good reason”.

Before Carolyn can answer, we’re spirited off to Widows’ Hill and the most intimate moment of Matthew Morgan’s life.

Matthew points out the spot Carolyn and Vicky indicated, and Liz reacts with shock…

It would appear that the frightful sight was, indeed, nothing but a clump of seaweed in the moonlight. The scary thing is this show has disappointed its audience enough over the last 50 episodes that that might even be true.

But what else are false leads for but to make the final true lead all the more satisfying, huh?

Matthew is thinking of ghost stories too. He warns they’d better hush up about the frightful sight of the night.

I should note that they don’t show us this alleged clump of seaweed. Maybe they didn’t want to waste time shooting another location bit (since this storyline was conceived late, the shot of the body in the waves was not one of those filmed before they started regular production; only a very few location shots were filmed during the course of the series). Since Liz reacted as though she were truly surprised, it stands to reason it was there. Still. There’s room to doubt anything we don’t see with our own eyes. And even some things we do.

Elsewhere, Roger seems to have forgotten the “one good reason” he asked Carolyn to provide, instead just flat-out insisting he won’t go.

He then claims he doesn’t want any of this disturbing tale getting to David, as if he seriously expects anyone to believe he gives a damn about the emotional health of his child.

Victoria takes the mention of David as an opportunity to finally tell him about the graffiti he (allegedly) scrawled on her mirror earlier in the night.

Recall it was flat-out confirmed earlier that Roger beats his son, but with every episode that passed after that, it has become harder and harder to believe this man can beat anything except himself as he drunkenly sobs at his own reflection at the bottom of a bottle.

Elizabeth returns to put everybody’s minds at ease.

Roger goes so far as to suggest Vicky was already “expecting to meet death” thanks to David’s bit of trickery messing with her mind.

At least he does his job.

 Liz is upset to hear what David did, but Vicky tells her not to discipline David because that would upset him. Every time I begin to think she’s good at her job, she does some shit like this. Oh well.

Anyway, Vicky tells everybody about David’s little prophecy from before…that Malloy is dead.

Seems like everything is pointing at Roger. Which, in most mystery stories would be just the thing that cleared him.

…right?

We’ll have to find out. This giant time-waster of an episode has crawled to an end.

This Day in History- Monday, September 5, 1966

While Bill Malloy’s (alleged) corpse wasn’t dredged up from the deep today, in the real world, a new type of bacteria, thermus aquaticus, was gathered by scientists at Yellowstone National Park. Coincidence? A very boring one.

Pilot Nguyễn Văn Bảy becomes the first North Vietnamese fighter ace, shooting down his fifth airplane. The American pilot survives and ends up serving as prisoner of war for more than six years. But good for the other guy, I guess.

Comedian Jerry Lewis hosts his first annual Labor Day Telethon, raising over one million dollars for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, with $1,002,114 in pledges in the New York City area alone. If the idea of a bunch of celebrities doing variety show stunts so that sick people can afford treatment sounds weird to you, welcome to America.

Also, NASCAR happened, but who gives a damn.