Hot girl in the city/Clam chowder lookin’ iffy…
Dark Shadows is remembering its roots this episode. Well, rather, it’s remembering that it has roots, but it’s still gonna be a while before those roots get watered. The point is, shock of shock, our heroine is doing something.
Today’s episode sees Burke descend from his solitary roost in his room.
Yeah, that “investment banking” firm that they keep reminding us isn’t illegal at all. I’m not saying the Burke Devlin story would be more interesting if he were a mobster (that’s the least of the Burke Devlin story’s problems), but it would be a nice diversion.
Burke proceeds to wax reminiscent about the still missing (as far as he knows) Bill Malloy, going on at great length about the man as if he’d suckled at his breast…
Er. Beard.
We heard this the first time around during what ended up being Malloy’s last meeting with Burke back in Episode 45. This time, Burke adds a wistful story about how Malloy used to encourage him to climb up the masts of fishing boats.
Yes. The water. Which Malloy couldn’t swim in and was apparently deathly afraid of.
Burke continues gassing Malloy up in what is really a very exasperating manner to the point that Maggie has to interject.
And so she tells him what by now every other person canvas except, I guess, Joe and David know: that Malloy is dead and his body has been dredged up from the sea.
This leads to even more of Burke talking up a man who spent his every waking hour since he got to town trying to get Burke out of it.
Having first badgered the police dispatcher or somebody for information on Malloy, Burke returns to Maggie and starts on about what a great dude that guy who hated his guts was.
Could that be because you spent the first month of this program making vague threats of violence to people?
There’s a glimmer of humanity in Burke here, as he bemoans the “death of honesty”.
The thing is Burke is an inherently selfish person. Everything he does, he does for his own gain, always thinking of what can be gained from it. Because of this, it can be easy to see this solemn eulogizing, this lamentation at the demise of the noblest man in Collinsport (there’s still Joe, and he never threatened to wreck a family to get a shitty venture capitalist cleared of a crime he’s already served time for…) is out of character.
But it isn’t. Because Burke isn’t really lamenting Malloy. By decrying how easily some men (let’s be honest, it’s Burke and it’s 1966, he’s only thinking of men) can do good for goodness’ sake, he also lambastes himself for living a life on the other side of the street.
Does Burke regret his fortune, his ruthlessness, his ambition? Unlikely. Does he regret entering into an alliance with Malloy that, from his point of view (even if Maggie cannot…or is reluctant to…see it) sealed his fate? I think so.
The murder of Bill Malloy is a storyline designed to improve Dark Shadows’ ratings, targeting especially suspense, tension, intrigue, and mystery, seasoned with a dash of the supernatural for the first time, all to keep audiences tuning in day after day. An unintended (I have to believe it was unintentional) extra plus is that Burke Devlin, for the first time, seems halfway human.
Ever since Malloy failed to turn up at the meeting, Burke has been irate, agitated, shaken. Even his silly reminiscing earlier in this episode can be seen as a desperate, almost childish attempt, to hope that the Matter of Malloy, like every other matter since he came to Collinsport, turns out his way.
But it hasn’t. Malloy was supposed to clear his name. and now he’s dead. And Burke has gone from being closer to the truth than he’s been in 10 years, to seeing, almost knowing for a certainty of that truth…and knowing he has been responsible, even indirectly, for a new human tragedy.
And Mitch Ryan sells the hell out of this. The powerful anger, the earth-shaking timbre of his voice, the steely gaze with which he penetrates Maggie’s doubtful eyes as he insists Malloy was felled by his own goodness.
That is acting. That’s a leading man. That’s a soap opera. And that’s Dark Shadows. Whatever some fans of this program might tell you, those last two are inseparable. And that’s the magic.
Burke further shakes Maggie by turning things to her father, clearly already beginning to form a picture most of the rest of the cast currently lacks the pieces to put together themselves:
Maggie insists that Sam took it hard as, after all, he and Malloy were good friends. This is, of course, borne out by on-screen evidence across a few episodes, except two episodes ago when Maggie remarked to Sam she was surprised that he was so worried about Malloy because she didn’t think they were close friends. Explanation? That episode was written by the new guy.
Maggie by now has so many pieces to judge that there is some dread thing binding Sam and Roger and it involves Burke. And now Burke is aware of a similar connection, though neither knows what it is and neither can talk about it with the other.
Burke excuses himself to harass the sheriff again, creating a dramatic vacancy for another character to sweep in.
Victoria attempts to be sassy, noting Maggie’s less than warm reception.
…act?
It’s not like Vicky is oblivious to the fact that a man considered a local institution was just found dead. It’s odd she’s acting so cavalier, but it’s nice to see her smiling for a change.
Maggie takes the opportunity to ask Victoria how the Kooks of Collinwood are handling this business, but before Vicky can answer Burke comes back to ask the exact same question.
If it seems like a long time since Vicky and Burke shared a scene, that’s because it has been. This is their first time together since that pointless and aborted dinner date they had right in the aftermath of the suppository story, in which Burke took advantage of presenting evidence that his nemesis’s son had tried to kill said nemesis in order to ask Vicky on a date because she gets his juices flowing I guess. Vicky agreed, on the stipulation that Burke show her the file he had his private detective write up on her, which made the whole thing more like prostitution than an actual date.
In any event, the whole thing was a bust since the file (and therefore, Burke) had nothing on Vicky she didn’t already know herself. Burke offered to help her in any way he could in what remains the one seemingly selfless act he has had so far, but that hasn’t gone anywhere.
I guess Francis Swann saw no reason to further that thing that was supposed to be the show’s primary romance. He did give us Carolyn having french fries with Burke at a grown-up restaurant, though, so there’s that.
Back to that same question, Burke immediately begins grilling Vicky as to how Roger took the whole thing. Victoria, who got to witness a bit of Roger’s dinner theater solicitude before leaving the house, claims he was “very upset.”
Burke isn’t convinced and Victoria is shocked that he would speak so callously and…I’m sorry, I get it’s something of a shocking statement to accuse somebody of feigning grief for a dead person, but Vicky has firsthand experience of just what a disingenuous prick Roger is. It is not at all out of the realm of possibility he could be putting on an act.
It can go next to the war memorial and the new housing project and the new road and other fascinating things.
Burke decides to take matters in his own hands and pay his own visit on the sheriff. With him gone, Vicky wonders what crawled up her prospective love interest’s ass and died.
Act II opens with Patterson returning Burke’s call and Maggie telling “Mr. Patterson” (even now, we can’t get the cop’s title straight!) that Burke’s on his way, because phone tag is a necessary part of Dark Shadows.
Maggie tries to fish for info of her own (at least she tries these things), asking the Sheriff how Malloy died, presumably because she didn’t at all like Burke implying he’d already staked his bet on foul play.
Patterson, however, doesn’t deign to tell her.
Art Wallace is the originator of what is perhaps the only intentional running gag in Dark Shadows’s first year: namely that Maggie can’t make good coffee, despite this being half her job. The earliest instance of this gag is way back in Cursed!Sam’s penultimate episode, when Sam commented Maggie’s coffee tasted terrible. This could easily have been him being a shithead, but the point is reinforced here with Maggie being self-deprecating over her own brew here at the restaurant.
This will be reinforced, over and over again, by multiple characters to varying degrees of sincerity for the next several months, so look forward to that.
Victoria again wonders What Crawled up Burke’s Ass and Died, but it’s not much like Maggie could tell her anyway.
…almost?
In a sweet little reminder of just how far we’ve come (and how far we have yet to go), Maggie notes her warning to Vicky her very first night in Collinsport.
But in a friendly way. If anything was aggressive about it, it was the wig.
Victoria maintains her original position that, despite everything (and by now, she’s seen Some Shit at that place), Collinwood is just a dreary house inhabited by weird eccentrics. And, anyway, only one of those eccentrics has demonstrated murderous tendencies…
Yeah, that one.
It’s nice seeing Maggie demonstrate what we are repeatedly told is the common local aversion to Collinwood that, despite being repeatedly told of it, we don’t get to see. Malloy and the Cop of the Week never displayed any aversion to the great house, Malloy for fairly obvious reasons. Sam’s aversion is more mired in his own baggage. There’s a touch of it with Joe who, with Maggie, is the closest to “ordinary Joe” (ha) in town, but a lot of that is still tied up in his torrid romance with Carolyn.
Maggie has played nice about the legends of Collinwood for all this time, even as her father’s well-being (even, perhaps, his sanity) has steadily deteriorated since the arrival of Burke Devlin and this new tension between him and Roger. For Maggie, her life is her father, and his life is bound in a destructive and inexplicable way to the house on Widows’ Hill.
And now, at last, we begin to see cracks forming in the wise-cracking waitress’s chipper, snarky façade. How she be expected to go on, day in and day out, with her father refusing to tell her the truth, acting like something horrible could happen to him at any moment, and now a dead man turning up who Burke just heavily implied could well have died in connection to her father?
Kathryn Leigh Scott is a star. This has been evident ever since Week 12, when her breakout performance liberated her from her wig and the fairly narrow role that had originally been envisaged for her. In the ensuing weeks, Maggie Evans has been allowed to develop a touch more heart and humor, demonstrating an honest-to-God tenderness with her father that demonstrates she truly loves him, that he may well be the only thing she has, so of course she wants to take care of him.
But that’s all. I’ve already discussed the troubling habit of giving Maggie the Same Conversation, and it is the most repetitive of the many Same Conversations that currently pepper the landscape of this show. She’s worried about her father, he tells her nothing, she wants to read the letter, he tells her to destroy it, etc. It’s the same old thing, and she deserves much more than she’s getting.
Here, early on in Dark Shadows’ 12th week, we get an idea that this will all soon change, as Maggie’s destiny begins to become linked to Victoria’s story.
Vicky explains her story, basically word-for-word to what she first told Carolyn way back in the beginning. It’s depressing that so little has changed for her in all that intervening time, but there we are. It serves as a refresher for us, with an added reminder of Vicky’s new desperate hope: that Maggie’s father can help her in her quest.
I guess Patterson is already anticipating the moment in the police procedural when the criminal is cornered and the cops get to pull a daring and entirely unsafe siege on whatever shopping mall, warehouse or senior home the perp has holed himself up in.
Patterson is speaking to HARRY, asking him to keep an eye on Sam, who he intends to question later. I don’t know why he isn’t immediately going to question him now, but we can only have too many things happen in the same episode.
Imagining Harry spying on Sam through two holes cut in a newspaper add for Dettol.
This phone call gets us up to speed on the other initiatives we’re waiting on in this mystery of ours: the tide charts (not ready yet) and the autopsy report (not ready yet). We’ll get at least one of them before the episode is out, though. That’s something.
Burke arrives at the station, as Maggie told Patterson he would, because screw spontaneity.
Burke gets right down to brass tacks, demanding info on Malloy, as if he’s entitled to that.
For a guy who grew up collecting bottlecaps for pocket change, he really is a puffed up son-of-a-bitch, isn’t he?
Patterson continues to prove that he has more of a spine that the sniveling lickspittle who used to occupy his chair.
Oh good. A new excuse to keep Burke around. The Venezuelan thing has been stale, the suppository matter’s been all cleared up, and I’d be pleased if we never mentioned that stupid portrait ever again.
Why does Patterson find Burke suspicious, you may ask? Isn’t he, after all, the person with the least to gain from Malloy’s death?
No.
I’ve already noted that Burke standing to benefit from the meeting going as planned does not immediately vindicate him. He may have killed Malloy anyway in order to continue his scheme against the Collins businesses unopposed. As a bonus, he now knows the identity of Malloy’s “hole card”: Sam Evans, even if he doesn’t know why Sam had that honor (then again, neither did Malloy, exactly).
Anyway, Patterson also has no way of knowing that the meeting really was about Burke’s manslaughter charge. He’s only spoken to Roger about it so far and he made very sure to cast Burke as an irrational hysteric with regard to that.
What I’m saying is, the Collinsport police are shit, but George Patterson is the best of the lot. At least at this point in the story.
In any case, Burke doesn’t mind having to stick around.
We stan a sassy cop queen.
But, yes, we see now a narrative forming of Burke as the vigilante detective. He has a personal stake in Malloy’s death, even without being one of the active suspects. If he truly is innocent, he is in the position of finding out who it was that murdered the man who could’ve cleared him. Naturally, he seems to have already alighted on a (indeed, the most obvious) suspect, but it’s still there.
I don’t want to step too heavily on the toes of Dark Shadows from the Beginning, which in its equivalent past for this episode, goes on at length on the parallels between Mitch-as-Burke and the title character of contemporary primetime drama The Fugitive, suffice to say it’s reasonable to assume that’s what they were going for insofar as Burke’s role in this storyline. Does it work out?
Ha.
Patterson gets a phone call from “the Doc”. You remember him? Tiny, weaselly fellow. Had a merry hat? Looked like he’d walked out of Petticoat Junction?
Patterson is given the tea on Malloy’s autopsy. Seems informal not to have the doctor bring it to the station himself, but that venerable actor didn’t exactly have the best of times on this show before and we can’t go around replacing all the town officials with professional character actors.
Burke does, which is an achievement on Patterson’s part. I doubt the last guy could’ve made Burke do anything.
Indeed, the new sheriff has no shortage of interesting and noble qualities. I will now draw your attention to my personal favorite:
I am not telling you that I find Dana Elcar physically attractive. I am, however, telling you that Sheriff George Patterson has the nicest ass in Collinsport. Sheriff Cakes is not to be fucked with. I am aware my opinions on this subject may by controversial and alarming and, perhaps, you are even worried for my health.
Thank you, but I’m fine.
So Burke is put to the question about his last conversation with Malloy in the Blue Whale and the subsequent meeting he never turned up to.
Patterson, like a good (okay, decent) investigator, plays dumb, as if he’d never heard of the meeting before. His composure only slips when Burke tells him Malloy called the meeting intending to clear him of his manslaughter charge.
Patterson notes the biggest hole in the story: why Malloy, who was devoted to the Collinses his whole life long, would go to any lengths to harm the family that way? Burke can’t exactly answer this honestly, given that would presumably involve him going into detail on his (all very legal, I assure you) plans to destroy everything the Collinses own, so there goes that.
This is one of those sneaky references to the suppository story in which we’re supposed to imagine Patterson was the sheriff then too. Specifically, this refers to the Greatest Suppository Episode, when Burke raced back from Bangor (drink) on learning Carter had had his room searched (Carter having been strong-armed by Roger).
Which he did, and our sassy cop queen tells Burke as much.
Does he believe that? Who knows? Let’s go elsewhere.
Vicky is telling Maggie about how Roger almost pissed himself when he heard she was planning to have dinner at her place. Maggie, who this entire time has known that Something Stinks between Roger and her father, takes this much more seriously than Carolyn did and, at last, we get the blessed hope that two of the stalest things on this show: Vicky’s quest and Maggie’s conflict, may at last see some forward momentum.
Maggie is notably skeptical that Sam can possibly know anything about Vicky’s past, but she’s open to the idea.
That house being Collinwood. But what if they’re elsewhere in town? In a cozy studio with an enormous window and an impossibly sexy bearded man?
Maggie is galvanized by Vicky’s quest in a way nobody anywhere has been since Carolyn first heard about it in Episode 5. It’s enough to get you excited too, at the prospect that maybe this shit is actually going somewhere.
LETS FUCKING GO, GALS
Patterson’s interrogation continues apace.
Time to update our timeline! I’ve bolded the new stuff.
- 8:00 – 9:00: Burke sees Malloy at the Blue Whale. Malloy tells him about the meeting and the “hole card” that’ll be waiting there.
- 10:00: Malloy sees Roger at Collinwood at around 10:00 to make him go to the meeting. It is apparently a 10 minute trip from Collinwood to the cannery, presumably by car.
- 10:30: Roger leaves Collinwood.
- Burke is still at the Blue Whale. He is observed by the bartender and “one or two” other patrons.
- At about this same time, Malloy is at home. Mrs. Johnson observes him taking a phone call. He departs within the half hour.
- 10:45:
- Burke drives from the Blue Whale to the cannery.
- Presumed time of Malloy’s death, judging by his stopped watch.
- 11:00: By now, Roger, Sam and Burke are all at the cannery for the meeting.
- 11:20: Elizabeth calls Malloy and gets no answer.
- 11:30: Burke goes in search of Malloy, to no avail.
- 12:00: Roger returns to Collinwood. Liz is waiting up for him.
Patterson divulges the contents of Malloy’s autopsy, which I’m not sure is entirely above-board, but the contents are blasé enough that it might be justified. It turns out that Malloy, who was found floating facedown in the water, died of drowning.
Gasp.
There is one interesting detail: a blow on the head. But this could easily be attributed to the many rocks on the shore. Of course, Malloy could still have been pushed. It’s the likeliest explanation anyway, but there’s no evidence for or against at the moment, so we’re stuck.
It’s the resting state around here.
Malloy’s pocket watch was recovered from his body, despite the corpse being in the water for almost two full days. The watch was stopped at 10:45, providing the moment of death.
The broken watch with the exact time of the murder is an ancient detective fiction trope. It was so oversed as a plot device that superior mystery writers often played with the trope. The most notable example is probably Agatha Christie in Murder on the Orient Express, in which the broken watch is deliberately turned to the wrong time to obfuscate when the murder actually occurred.
I wouldn’t hold out hope for any similar levels of cleverness here, though. Even outside television, the American mystery story always relied more on violence than craft.
The American mystery story also relies a lot on the square-awed hero making bold proclamations.
So that’s where we’re going. Most of this week is spent casting roles in the noir drama they’ve decided this show needs to be now.
Victoria attempts to pay for her lunch, but Maggie offers her (another!) meal on the house.
I’m gonna assume that’s a joke.
Burke comes back.
Thankfully, Victoria has a built-in excuse to say no and off she goes.
Burke tries to corral her on the way out, reminding her of their missed dinner date.
Victoria tells Burke she can’t as she’ll be dining with the Evanses. The mention of Sam catches Burke off guard, but he doesn’t do anything to dissuade her. And I don’t think he could’ve anyway. Victoria knows what she wants and she’s gonna do it.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
This Day in History- Tuesday, September 13, 1966
Balthazar Vorster is sworn in as the new Prime Minister of South Africa because the last one got killed for, uh, not being racist enough, I guess. He was unanimously elected by the…er…Nationalist Party, which I guess tells you something about his politics.
Kooks of Collinwood 