Burkesplaining

Burke Devlin sucks. You love him and you hate him and he sucks. And that’s today’s lesson.

This is a quintessential ‘Monday’ episode of Dark Shadows, lots of talk with little forward momentum, which is even weirder because we’re entering Week 13 of their 13-week series order. Obviously, by this point a decision would’ve been made whether to renew or cancel (I wonder which…?), but you still expect a touch of pizzazz.

Instead, the most notable detail about this episode is that Burke Devlin is an Asshole or, as Burke Devlin would put it…

Who’d have thought a nice guy like Burke Devlin had no concept of consent?

Burke’s entire attitude as he storms into the Evans house unasked and uninvited is one of smug, menacing entitlement. He relishes in throwing his weight around, encroaching on, cornering and shaming his captive audience.

But it turns out that what is affirming and badass when tried out against a foppish aristocrat and a hard-nosed cop is unsightly and grotesque when turned on a middle-aged alcoholic and two young women.

This is most obvious in Burke’s treatment of Maggie Evans, a girl who has known him since she was very young, who held him in high esteem (and, indeed, was the only resident of Collinsport happy to see him again), and has privately told her father she’s always liked him.

And how does Burke reframe that fondness, when Maggie nervously points out she isn’t sure she can set aside an extra place for him at the dinner she prepared with her own two hands?

He shames her, his sole defender in this town. What’s worse, he drags the entirely uninvolved Victoria Winters (who, I remind you, he is Very Hot for) into the spectacle.

What’s more, the slick bastard suggests he doesn’t need Maggie to prepare any big meal to accommodate him.

So long as Maggie gets the hell out of the room to make it so he can work on her father in relative privacy.

Burke even tells Maggie not to look at her father for approval before she puts on a happy face (genuine or coerced?) and goes to Make the Man His Sandwich.

It’s like something out of a goddamn Flannery O’Connor. I half expect Burke to pull out a gun as he dissonantly monologues about his childhood in the Dust Bowl.

And of course it’s supposed to be threatening. Burke knows Sam lied to the police. Unlike with Roger, however, he doesn’t know why he would and what his connection to the Bill Malloy affair (and, by extension, the case of 10 years ago) has to do with anything.

And on the one end, we should be rooting for him to clear his name. But why is he making it so goddamn hard?

Case in point?

The hell he did. I like to think half the reason for him storming here at this very moment was so she could witness him acting like a big man.

Victoria, however, unlike some people is not impressed by caveman shows of affection. If anything, this encounter appears to turn her off Burke more than anything else that has yet happened between them, and that’s saying something given their second conversation had him spitting donuts in her face.

Burke is eager to explain…

Yeah, you don’t look the Champion Potato Peeler of all time in the eye and tell her to make you a sandwich, you son of a bitch. Are we supposed to think this is charming, how he casually orders these girls around so that he can intimidate a man in peace?

The energy of all this is so weird. I feel like I’m about to watch a triple murder capped off by an arson.

All the energy of that one relative who starts talking about 9/11 at Diane’s wedding.

Of course, Burke’s trial was the subject of conversation quite literally the minute before he showed up. Vicky admits this and Burke takes advantage to seize control of the situation. Naturally, without its consent.

Be that as it may.

So now we get Burke’s side of the story, which differs from the party line…er, I mean Sam’s version…in one key way:

One begins to understand why the jury didn’t eat this story up…

Well. It’s been suggested since the beginning that that’s the real truth here. Roger was the man behind the wheel. This is the first we hear though of why… Because Roger took the wheel. Was it to admonish his wasted companion, or out of fear for his safety?

I know this is likely not intentional, but Roger taking the wheel from Burke is oddly tender, and it makes the eventual betrayal of Burke having to see Roger testify against him in court all the harsher.

They must really have been great friends…

Ahem.

The girls are surprised at the suggestion that Roger was responsible. We might be too if this hadn’t dragged on for 13 weeks and the average viewer figured it out within the first four.

So Burke went to prison on the testimony of his dear “friend” and the girl he “loved” (okay, okay, lay off…), who were subsequently married with a child of (allegedly) their own.

Enough to get anybody pretty steamed. It’s a wonder he didn’t think up a more exciting plan of revenge than being repeatedly falsely implicated in new crimes while occasionally meeting with his accountant.

We certainly understand how Burke’s opinion of childhood patrician Sam has changed in all that time, entirely over the course of his return to Collinsport.

The idea that comes out here is that both Burke and Sam have been used by the Collins family. If Burke is correct (and, honestly, how can’t he be?), Roger used him to keep his own ass out of prison, counting on his cushy position in the town’s social strata (one he had entirely inherited, not earned). Sam has likewise been used to protect that same position, though we do not yet know in what capacity except, most likely, as some kind of witness.

Burke determines to push back against that. it’s the entire core of his revenge. But Sam, as much as he may often have tried, has had no such luck.

Which is perhaps the reason Sam beats it to the kitchen in record time.

Victoria is all “I don’t think Mr. Collins would LIE?!?!?!” and…

Girl.

Maggie points out that Burke himself said he couldn’t remember all the details too well. He could very well be wrong. This gives us the Burke Devlin mission statement:

Maggie goes to get that dinner that I’m sure nobody is hungry for at this point, only to discover that Sam has done the most natural thing and escaped through the back door.

Well, they say “back way”. I’d be just as pleased to imagine Sam forcing himself through a window in his haste.

Sam’s disappearance rips Maggie’s mask off entirely as she demands to know what the hell is going on here, all the reticence and politesse she’s been hiding behind for the last 12 weeks entirely shorn away.

She’s waited long enough for her answers. But it looks like she’ll have to wait a little longer.

Hey, remember that dude at the front desk?

Kinda crazy Dark Shadows got a character actor as recognizable as Conrad Bain and only used him three times in the entire first year. We first saw the incorrigible Mr. Wells in the first episode, where he was Destroyed by the newly arrived Burke.

His second appearance was at the start of the show’s third week, in which he and Cursed!Sam flirted over coffee for no other reason than to pad out the episode’s length. Nevertheless, it provided us with an early Dark Shadows ship for these two gross-looking older gentlemen in period dress.

But now, exactly 50 episodes after his last appearance, Mr. Wells will have to prepare himself for a frightening reality:

No reference is made to their first encounter, which is all very well because it was stupid and it doesn’t do anybody any good to think about it. Indeed, the only reason Mr. Wells is back in this episode is so he can be a Gossipy Ho and the equivalent of a mini-boss that Sam has to fight in order to get what he wants: the confession he wrote and then entrusted to Maggie, forbidding her to open it until “something happens” to him.

Over the past 24 hours, Sam has reevaluated that decision and decided it’s okay as long as Roger knows the letter exists. He doesn’t like the idea of it hanging around where anybody, especially his daughter, can read it, and wants to reclaim it and, presumably, destroy it.

Maggie told Sam earlier that she has entrusted the letter to the hotel safe like a sensible person. The letter is, like many of the great treasures of folklore, guarded by a Sphinx, only instead of riddles, we get Gossipy Hoeishness.

And Sam’s Dad Jokes are no match for him.

As Wells retrieves the letter, he pivots to what assuredly must be today’s talk of the town.

Yeah, really weird to accept that kind of person couldn’t swim. seems like a hard thing to suspend belief for. But I’m told such people don’t mind these things because of St. Elmo, so…

The catch comes when Wells points out he can’t give Sam the letter without confirming with Maggie that he can take it. I don’t know why he didn’t do this before he opened the safe, but whatever.

Sam insists that, since he wrote the letter, he has a right to take it out.

Regular reminder to Save the Post Office. It’s what Conrad Bain would wait, and he was on Maude, so by extension you owe it to Bea Arthur.

Sam of course can’t have Maggie knowing about this gambit, but the noble Wells is unwilling to broach the sacred trust of their union (I guess he liked the other one better), prioritizing matters of the purse over matters of the heart.

That brings to mind who does run this hotel/restaurant cobo that appears to be the most thriving non-fish-related business in town? Who exactly do Wells and Maggie report to? At least I can infer that the Blue Whale is run by the most consistent actor on the show. He’s always there.

Speaking of the Blue Bartender.

Maggie knows her father well enough to immediately check with the local booze den for clues as to his whereabouts, but of course Sam hasn’t been by the Blue Whale tonight.

Maggie rounds on Burke, wondering why Sam would run and I will direct you to another example of Dark Shadows’s excellent blocking.

We get another round of Burke badgering and cajoling Maggie for the crime of defending her father in the face of horrible and (given how little she, most people, or any of us at home know) unfounded accusations.

It’s gross and seedy how he presses in on her, making impositions, speaking as if her father’s purported connection to Malloy’s death is her fault.

But every time she repeats it, she seems to believe it less and less. But she must, for the same reasons that Elizabeth must protect her brother.

Without her family, what does Maggie even have?

Burke wonders if Malloy spoke to her about Sam in the moments before his death. Maggie knows he did, but she lies.

It’s Victoria who comes to her new friend’s defense, telling Burke to back the fuck off.

There are a few coarser words that come to mind, but yes.

Damn straight. It’s refreshing, after weeks and weeks of Carolyn tripping over him and Maggie acting like he’s nothing more than an old friend, that someone finally points out that Burke is a heinous cretin who continually steps on people’s toes for the hell of it and seems to enjoy making people…even people not in his collection of enemies…squirm.

Even better, it comes from the girl this show keeps trying to prop as his love interest. Then again, something tells me they’d sooner change Vicky to fit Burke than the other way around.

Vicky does tell Burke about Malloy coming to Collinwood the night of his death. It’s easy to forget, given how much of that meeting has since been relitigated, that Burke doesn’t know about that yet.

Of course, Vicky didn’t witness much Burke wouldn’t know already, and she doesn’t tell Burke the very significant detail about the phone call she overheard after Malloy left.

You and me both, sister.

Burke tells Maggie about the meeting and its purpose, saying that whether she likes it or not, Malloy knew Sam was implicated.

And just like that, Maggie has some idea of why Sam has been on pins and needles since Burke returned, and where this new tension between Sam and Roger has come from. All it took was one guy to tell her.

And one writer to get the memo that sometimes storytelling requires telling a story rather than just teasing it for weeks on end.

Would’ve still been nice to have Maggie find out on her own, but Vicky just found her first ever clue in her search by looking behind some paintings. It’ll be a while yet before Dark Shadows’s heroines begin being proactive.

Except he doesn’t wait. He actually leaves and it can’t be doubted he’s going to try looking for Sam.

See? He gets to be proactive.

Guess who has work in the morning on top of a whole meal of leftovers to put away and a sink full of dishes?

Victoria apologizes for how things turned out, and Maggie gives us this zinger.

That’s the strongest language that has yet been used to describe Burke. Sure, Roger’s always talking shit about him, but he’s never gone so far as to call him a psychopath. It’s refreshing. Burke is technically right, but it’s still refreshing.

Maggie’s great dillema here is that she can’t believe her father is tied up in all of this…but it seems she does and is deep in denial. Perhaps she has suspected this entire time and now that she’s hearing someone else say it, the harsh truth has made her realize just what a horrible reality it would be if the man she looked up to for so much of her life was, in fact, a lying criminal.

Maggie has to hold onto that. It’s quite literally all she has.

Isn’t that depressing.

Victoria attempts to cheer Maggie up by proposing a theory so stupid, I have to believe in earlier times Art Wallace would have rode it for weeks.

That he just got the wrong idea about Sam and told Burke he was part of the whole thing and then just up and drowned on the way to the big meeting, as you do.

But Maggie can’t hold onto that for very long. Her conviction in her own words falters almost immediately.

But Vicky doesn’t let up, assuring Maggie there will be an answer. But I hope for their sakes neither girl lets it be. This offers an excellent chance for us to get double girl detectives to counterbalance Burke’s rugged vigilante and David’s kid investigator act. Finally, Maggie has a personal stake in the Burke Devlin story: clearing her father’s name. Vicky’s connection remains more tenuous, but she is Maggie’s friend and is uncertain how to feel about Burke. Helping solve Malloy’s death could well clear some of that up. Vicky has access to the Collinses, Maggie to the ears of everybody in town from the other end of her coffee counter. Together they’d be a formidable team.

Oh well.

It turns out Burke isn’t expending too much energy searching for Sam either, having already returned to his hotel for the night.

I can’t understate how uncomfortable I get every time Mitch Ryan touches his face these days. Mind you, even with the…thing from the now that’s a really weird acting choice.

I just noticed for the first time that cool porcelain (?) apple thing on the desk. Is it for mints? Matchbooks? A cool ashtray? Who knows? But there’s volumes of scholarship to be found on that lamp.

You can tell Burke is really tired because he doesn’t expend an once of energy to destroy Wells this time.

This proves beneficial for Burke because Wells goes on to mention, in passing, his earlier encounter with Sam.

Burke tells Wells to give him word if Sam turns up again, but as it turns out…

He doesn’t have to.

Sam has decided that if Burke wants so badly to speak with him, he’ll let him speak. There’s no use in running. I guess after two girls half your age made a show of standing up to the local bully, there’s nothing else to do but try your own turn.

After all, like Burke said, there’s only so long a man can let himself be stepped on..

This Day in History- Monday, September 19, 1966

Indonesia formally decides to rejoin the United Nations, revising their January 1965 decision to withdraw. I guess it’s nicer having an illusion that you have any kind of say in things in the East Asia of the 1960s.

Ronald “Buster” Edwards, one of the suspects of 1963’s Great Train Robbery, turns himself in to Scotland Yard. He and his accomplice James White would be sentenced to 15 years but would be paroled in 1975 because Great Train Robberies are cool.

The U.S. Navy’s first attack helicopter begins operations in the Mekong Delta. 50 years later, the humble attack helicopter will become the only joke in the arsenal of an army of Very Online conservative trolls.

Badass newscaster Soledad O’Brien is born and ready to kick your ass.

Timothy Leary announces the formation of the League for Spiritual Discovery, the official faith doctrine of psychedelia and my new favorite belief system. Turn on, tune in, drop out, children.

You Know This Guy From That Thing!

Conrad Bain stands out in the supporting cast members we’ve discussed to this point in that you are very likely to have seen him in other things.

It really is impressive a character actor of Bain’s stature was booked on a show as esoteric as Dark Shadows, and even more shameful he was utilized so briefly.

Bain got his start on crime procedural soap The Edge of Night in 1956, playing the first Dr. Charles Weldon. In the early ’60s, he appeared on similar shows to many other covered in this section: The Naked City and The Defenders in 1961, and the Peter Falk vehicle The Trials of O’Brien in 1965.

A series of similar TV and TV movie roles followed into the next decade, where Bain would get his first regular role on Maude, co-starring alongside Bea Arthur herself for six seasons through to 1978.

In 1979, he would land on The Facts of Life and its subsequent spin-off, Hello, Larry and, most notably, Diff’rent Strokes, where he became the archetypical sitcom father he is most associated with today.

Bain retired from acting in the ’90s, save for a brief reprisal of his Diff’rent Strokes character in the finale of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He passed away in 2013, at 89.

Behind the Scenes Shenanigans

In a break from the earlier established pattern, Francis Swann doesn’t take the reigns from Art Wallace at the start of this week. Wallace will write two consecutive weeks for the first time since Swann came on board. Swann will resume writing duties in Episode 66.