Her name is Victoria Winters…
Who’s gonna tell her?
It’s lunchtime at Collinwood so, naturally, Carolyn Stoddard has just gotten out of bed.
Carolyn and her ridiculous nightgown are heading upstairs with the necessary beverage when Elizabeth summons her, not to chastise her for bringing food and drink outside the kitchen (sorry, war flashback), but to break the news to her about her dead surrogate father, in what I’m sure will be a tasteful and delicate manner and, because of this, take a very long time.
That was my entire college experience. But I had lots of night classes. I was really very responsible, which is why I’m blogging about a soap opera that went off the air 50 years ago.
Elizabeth, either to soften the blow or to further extend this Monday episode, opens by returning Carolyn’s watch to her, noting that Joe found in when he was here earlier.
Yeah. Like Joe is.
Carolyn prepares to call her long-suffering boyfriend to thank him for his service, but we can’t have that, so Liz interrupts to tell her about the aforementioned dead surrogate father.
The phone rings with a comical precision before Liz can elaborate. The function of this being that Carolyn ends up hearing about Malloy’s body being found from an anonymous guy (HARRY???) at the Sheriff’s Office.
This leads into a painfully protracted explanation of how the body disappeared and what Matthew did and all that. It’s basically the same as when Liz told Roger last episode, complete with similar interjections of disbelief from the other party.
Which leads to Elizabeth defending Matthew, which is objectionable but also the least she can do after essentially training the big lug in the art of lying to protect his employers.
The main highlights of this scene (really, this whole episode) is Nancy Barrett. Having mostly been given flirty, funny, antagonistic and occasionally (okay, often) imbecilic material to work with, now she is given something to really sink her teeth into, as she grapples with the ugly truth that the closest thing she ever had to a father…is gone. Forever. And there’s nothing to be done about it.
It’s in times like this where the excellent mother/daughter chemistry between these two shines most brightly. For a moment, you forget how shallow, self-absorbed and generally bratty Carolyn is and remember she’s, after all, just a teenage girl. A very lonely, lost teenage girl.
Liz ushers Carolyn upstairs to get dressed (anything to get her out of that hideous smock) and heads to the phone to contact Roger…
What do you expect?
What is surprising is that Roger Collins has deigned to visit the local booze den, wearing the snazziest goddamned hat you ever did see.
While it isn’t surprising that Roger would be attracted to establishments where liquor is consumed, it is a bit shocking that high and mighty Roger Collins would bring himself to this hole in the wall. It’s like seeing an investment banker in an Applebee’s.
But Roger isn’t here to whet his whistle. He’s looking for someone.
Naturally, Sam is no stranger to day drinking. It’s already confirmed Maggie has this place on proto speed dial for when she loses him, which seems to be fairly often.
That’s how I feel about Applebee’s, in point of fact.
Sam breaks the news to Roger about Malloy, but Roger thinks he already knows. They milk about a minute out of this before Sam tells Roger Malloy isn’t just presumed dead…the body’s been found.
Back at Collinwood, Vicky is making a very made bed. I guess things got a little messy when they were sleeping together.
Not helping, Vicky.
For all the male homoerotic overtones in Dark Shadows, there is precious little in the style of our dear friend Sappho. The closest we really have at this point is Vicky and Carolyn, which isn’t that surprising, because they’re two of the three women in this show under the age of 30, and we only have one other female character on canvas, and she’s one (or two) of the younger girl’s mother.
Soaps: The woman’s genre.
Did anyone ask?
You can tell Art Wallace is back because Victoria is making a comment about her past as if anybody around her is expected to care.
On a brighter note, you can also tell Wallace is back because Carolyn begins talking about Life.
Remember The Room?
Carolyn breaks down crying and, considering her other emotional displays, it’s pretty big of Victoria not to assume she’s getting emotional over a boy or a pen or her uncle being mean.
In what is the best work she has yet done on this show, Carolyn tells Vicky what Matthew did, framing it in the context of the ghost stories that have played the great house for so many generations.
And, unable to carry on any longer…
I joke about Dark Shadows’ many pacing problems. But things like this…people breaking news to each other, speaking about their feelings in a bold, theatrical style are the essence of soap operas. We don’t need to hear bankers and accountants and lowly city officials debating about mortgages and suppositories for five weeks, but we do want to see characters react with genuine, heartfelt feeling to major changes in their lives, good and bad. That’s the magic of the soap opera format…you see these characters five days a week. You get close to them, develop associations you would not usually make with characters on once-weekly programs. That closeness is a special thing, and it makes emotional moments like this (which writers also have more time for due to the format) all the more special.
Elsewhere, Roger is asking similar questions.
Having called the Coast Guard to confirm Sam’s story (helluva phone conversation that must’ve been), Roger returns to his associate.
Roger informs Sam that the sheriff has ordered an autopsy. As Roger was when earlier informed of the possibility, Sam is likewise taken aback.
Why so shaken, Sammy?
Roger makes clear the reason he sought Sam out today. The same reason he came to him the very first night: covering his own ass.
Roger tells Sam with vehemence that if it comes out Malloy was killed, he will “do everything in my power to help find the man who was responsible.”
If that sounds like he’s compensating for something, congratulations for watching this show.
Sam gets ballistic when he learns Roger told Patterson about the meeting at his office the night of Malloy’s death.
But, as Roger points out, there would’ve been no point lying since Burke surely won’t hesitate to tell the truth and make them look all the worse.
We’ve finally gotten the Sam Roger was so worried about: Terrified Witness. And it came about entirely without influence from that damned portrait.
Carolyn’s renaissance (I’d call it her Emancipation, but that comes much later) moment continues apace with a meditation on life and happiness.
Who doesn’t like a dose of existentialism with your daytime drama?
Art Wallace really loves car accidents, doesn’t he?
To get your mother into bed? Either way, it seems he told Princess a more sanitized version…
Christ. Heavy stuff, and watching it in the Year of Our Lord 2020, it feels real as ever. We never do know, do we? We never know what might happen, what might derail us on the path of life. Illness, accident, violence, instability. Any amount of hardship, be it financial or familial, romantic or personal. So many things can happen that take our dreams off the table, maybe forever.
And yet we live on, putting those precious dreams off for the next day and the next day and the next, because there just isn’t time.
Sure, you might find it corny. I might have too, once upon a time. But dammit, she’s right. An important point is being made on a soap opera from 1966! It’s a timeless point, a lesson as old as mankind. If you want to do something with your life, do it. At least try.
It’s what Dan Curtis did. He turned out okay in the end.
Elizabeth arrives and the spell Nancy Barrett cast breaks for the moment. Vicky gives Liz her condolences, but Liz doesn’t seem to care very much about her opinion, instead going right back to her daughter.
Couldn’t Vicky do that? She already is dressed, has precious else to do, and isn’t in a state of great emotional distress.
Even weirder, Liz subsequently gives Vicky the day off. Well, technically, she gives David the day off from his skewlwork.
Something tells me David might kill Vicky for making him get fresh air, but whatever. Liz also asks Vicky not to tell him anything about Malloy, both of them seeming to have forgotten the child saw Malloy’s death in his scrying Orb and claims it was his father who killed him, but I digress.
At least everybody gets a day off.
Art Wallace takes this opportunity to return to something first brought up in his last week on the job (and, indeed, a piece of his original series bible)…
If Liz thinks it’s at all weird that Vicky is planning to visit the town drunk, who made a strange and inexplicable trip to see her at this house a few days ago (in fact, the very same day Malloy was last seen alive), and who Roger just confessed was present at that meeting Malloy called and never showed up to that same night, she doesn’t say anything.
Back at the Blue Whale, Sam sensibly points out that lying is much harder than actors, salesmen and the President of the United States makes it look.
Reminds me of my ethics teacher back in high school. I forget the context, but he would tell us “Life will come at you like a ton of bricks!” And, of course, us boys would laugh because he said “come”.
What I’m saying is, Sam Evans is very much like an aging Irish priest, right down to the alcoholism and propensity for poetical speeches.
Christ, the script is really good this episode. Nobody in real life would ever talk like that, of course, and if it weren’t Dave Ford saying it, it would probably sound terrible, but he is saying it and it just sounds excellent.
Roger points out that, as long as their lies match, it’ll be their word against Burke’s.
Roger then sits down so he can get the best of the excellent lightning the Blue Whale set provides in this quieter moments.
Roger notes that if Malloy had shown up at the meeting and done what he wanted to do, Sam’s ass would be rotting behind bars right now. He neglects to point out that his ass would also be behind bars for something considerably worse, but that would defeat his point.
Roger then suggests (without so much as saying) that Sam may even have killed Malloy to keep that reality from coming to pass. It’s unclear if he believes this (probably not, since he currently looks guilty as sin), but he is clearly willing to weaponize Sam’s suspiciousness against him to cover his own ass.
That certainly won’t look suspicious. Roger should’ve made up something, a manufactured reason, and then fed it to Sam. Tell the sheriff Roger and Malloy were arguing about employing Sam to paint a new sardine ad campaign. Roger, of course, would be on Sam’s side (this is called a concession, very selfless in these matters) and would have to employ Sam to actually produce those ads to make everything convincing. Rope in Hanley from marketing. Maybe it’ll shut him up for a while. And then Sam is making a paycheck, so he has less reason to drink himself into a self-aware confession.
As to why Burke was there? Who knows? Maybe he and Malloy were conspiring to ruin Roger and get him out of the company. Neither of them ever did like him very much, you know…
But that would require Roger to be good at cooperating with people, namely Sam, and we’ve seen over and over that that’s just one (of many) thing(s) he can’t do.
That should work out.
Remember that thing that happened?
That was a valiant attempt to remind us of the uber-casual way this show revealed Collinwood was actually haunted about a week ago. We won’t be seriously revisiting that for a few weeks yet, but thanks for the hope, I guess.
You know what else is haunting the house?
They rarely get so obvious as that. Note, however, that neither of these girls seem to need it that much, in contrast to their older male counterparts.
Carolyn is flipping through the family history again, idly wondering if Liz will add Malloy to it, in honor of his years of service.
Tact, honey.
Is Carolyn (albeit jokingly) stoking the possibility (which she first alighted on way back in the first week) that she and Vicky may be blood relatives? Remember how that’s supposed to be a big deal?
Well, the guy who intended it to be a big deal is writing this week, so expect to see a little nudge forward where that’s concerned.
Vicky asks for a lift into town, mentioning the dinner invitation Maggie gave her a couple of days ago before we all got distracted by the Dead Man at the Foot of Widows’ Hill (copyright trademark). Victoria notes that she’s been considering Carolyn’s speech, as we all have.
If it reminded the ostensible protagonist that she has a quest to follow, that’s alright by me.
Though, of course, Victoria will never quite attain her dream. Eventually, she’ll even stop pursuing it, as the increasing madness of the world around her gets harder and harder to ignore, consuming her and every last flicker of the purpose that brought her to Collinwood.
A cautionary tale, maybe. Or a result of that One Man’s Dream evolving.
Victoria tells Carolyn about Roger’s insistence she not seen Sam, and her desperate belief that this is because he doesn’t want Sam to tell her something about herself. Carolyn notes that this is patently ridiculous and Vicky even agrees, though she notes she doesn’t have any other leads at this point, which is just the depressing truth.
Carolyn is about the last principle besides David and Retcon Sheriff not to have any scenes with Sam. Before you ask, those two will beat her to it. Which is funny considering…
But we’ll get to that.
Roger returns to Collinwood, destroying Carolyn’s excuse for going into town, which I’m sure she’s glad for. Elizabeth approaches him, wondering if he’s heard about the Body No Longer at the Foot of Widows’ Hill (copyright pending).
Once more, with feeling.
Maybe a little less feeling.
In a scene weirdly similar to the landmark pilot of Twin Peaks, Roger suggests they close operations at the plant for the rest of the day. There are a lot of things in common between Dark Shadows and Twin Peaks, which in many ways is a spiritual successor to DS, adding a touch of the gothic to the primetime soap rather than the daytime. The parallel scene even involves a body washed up out of the water…except that Malloy wasn’t wrapped in plastic, regrettably.
“THIS is HOW GREEEEVING hoo-mans spake IS IT NOT?”
With no reason to go anywhere anymore, Carolyn gives Vicky her car keys for the trip into town. Vicky is smart enough not to tell Roger where she’s headed, but Carolyn has no such scruples, though she at least waits for Vicky to be gone.
This Day in History- Monday, September 12, 1966
School integration begins in Grenada, Mississippi. At one school, a mob of 150 whites bar Black teenagers from high school. 35 students are beaten and a 12-year-old boy hospitalized. Eight members of the United Klans of America (yes, there was a union for the Klan) would be indicted for conspiracy to violate civil rights…and would later be acquitted. Because America.
The landmark 1966-67 television season continues apace with the premiere of The Monkees on NBC. Created to lampoon British Invasion musicians, most notably The Beatles, Davy, Micky, Peter and the other one would go on to have seven gold records and inspire hordes of teenage girls and young homosexuals.
Daydream Believer, baby…
Behind the Scenes Shenanigans
As discussed last episode, 56 is the first to be filmed at the newer, but really older and shittier, studio Dark Shadows would remain in for the rest of its run. Filming took off for a week while they moved, so from now on, episodes will be filmed only one week, instead of two, ahead of airing.
This will come back to bite them in the ass, in true Dark Shadows tradition.
Kooks of Collinwood 