Disturbing the Peace

There is an increasing sense that something is happening here. What it is, however, is not exactly clear.

There hasn’t been much in the way of hope on Dark Shadows lately. Fear is another story. There are constant, never-ending reservoirs of fear, usually about nameless and nebulous things like “the past” or “the ghosts” or “the truth”.

The recent suspicious death of Bill Malloy has given context for these fears, of course. In the uproar it has produced, we see the long-standing fears and (Vicky’s favorite word) tensions gain a new context.

Hope is in short supply. This ends up being Dark Shadows’s resting state, but it manages to skirt away from being as maudlin as it sounds.

The episode begins with Elizabeth and Carolyn, Maggie having departed Collinwood in the minute or so between this episode and the last. Carolyn is salty about Maggie’s unprecedented presence at the house, and the fact that they were talking about Big D.

So, newsflash, Carolyn is kinda being a bitch about this. We already saw her being dismissive of Maggie’s concerns when they interacted last episode. Now she dismisses Maggie as “the waitress from the hotel restaurant”, which certainly sounds like a class-based dig.

Are these the seeds of some kind of girl rivalry? Those do exist on soap operas, you know, they’re so notorious that one of the most commonly associated “soapy” images is two middle-aged women with shoulder pads going at it in a lily pond.

Often, these rivalries are about men, which gets soaps a lot of rightfully earned scorn from feminist thinkers. And, if Carolyn vs. Maggie is a rivalry, so too does it appear to be oriented around a man. Just not a mutual love interest.

Maggie has it from Burke’s own lips that he intends to (as far as she knows) slander an (as far as she hopes) innocent man: her father, and by extension Roger Collins. Carolyn doesn’t really know about Sam’s connection to all this yet, but she does know that Burke has it out for her uncle and has since he set foot in town and began lying to her about it.

Regardless, Carolyn has decided to cape for Burke despite all this overwhelming evidence, because our sprightly heroine has no self-respect.

Even if he hadn’t, there is the cogent fact that Burke has ill intentions for Carolyn’s family and has demonstrated this numerous times. Alas, Carolyn is in Bitch on Wheels mode today, and not for the preferable righteous reasons. Those don’t manifest very often in this era of the show.

What we have now is Carolyn aggressively picking apart that one sentence she heard her mother saying, because this is the less important half of the episode and we simply must kill time somehow.

I mean…yeah. And yet Carolyn keeps at it, and Liz ends up, you guessed it, accounting for every word she said.

Carolyn’s response to this is to say that she’s “defending a man who’s never done a thing to harm us”.

Let’s…uh, well, let’s unpack that, huh? So, overtly, this seems true, right? It is by now old news that Burke wasn’t, in fact, responsible for the suppository incident. Carolyn even brings that up here in a rare reference to that debacle.

We know that Burke is planning banal financial subterfuge, too tame to even be termed “crimes”. Liz and Carolyn, thanks to the sweaty Mr. Harris, also have reason to believe this, knowing of Burke’s association with that dapper corpse Mr. Blair who is interested in buying up the Collins debts.

It certainly sounds like Burke is up to something, but neither mother nor daughter bring this up, presumably because Art Wallace is aware of just how underdeveloped the “revenge” part of Burke’s revenge is at this point, and it would only be underscoring that to mention it now.

Liz’s insistence that Burke will surely attempt to use Malloy’s death against the family strikes a chord with Carolyn, who remembers Matthew saying a similar thing at the Blue Whale.

I love this old couple. They were in the last episode too, just sitting there, having this weird, lukewarm-looking dinner date. Are they married? Is this a rare night out for them? Why is she scratching her eye? Is he trying to play footsie? Does she not want it? I have so many questions.

Matthew’s waiting has paid off. Don’t ask why he thought he was bound to see Burke if he just hanged around the local booze bin long enough. I mean, he actually lives right above the only other local hangout, but they don’t have a cool surf rock soundtrack there, so…

It’s presumably been some time since Burke’s encounter with Sam, in which he abruptly decided to clear him of suspicion in the matter of Malloy’s death, if not in the matter of his manslaughter trial. He expresses some desire to see Roger, asking Matthew if he’s seen him which, of course, he hasn’t.

So now we get more Tough Guy Matthew. We saw him before back in Thayer David’s first episode, when he explicitly threatened to kill Burke. The show will try very hard to remind us of this fact in the coming minutes.

It’s nice, seeing somebody physically and vocally capable of intimidating Burke Devlin who, this week especially, has been especially keen to throw his weight around like an aggrandizing bully.

So Liz calls the Blue Whale, and is told that Matthew isn’t there.

That’s strange. Regardless.

Liz claims she had no idea when she said what she did that Matthew would decide to take matters into his own hands. She says this after warning Victoria exactly 51 episodes ago that Matthew is certainly capable of getting violent when it comes to protecting her, and knowing that he’s already disposed of incriminating evidence simply to keep people from bothering her.

Liz subsequently gets a call from our man the Sheriff.

Something funny about this scene is that you can hear the respective actors echoing from the neighboring sets as they enact this phone conversation. It’s so community theater.

Patterson wonders if Burke has come up to the house, as he’s on “a rampage”.

But that’s neither here nor there.

Liz also warns Patterson that her mentally special groundskeeper might be in for a rampage of his own.

Back at the Blue Whale, they’re playing the sex music over Burke and Matthew’s conversation.

Burke assumes Roger sent Matthew here to bully him into his place. But, no, as we discussed last time, this was Matthew’s own extraordinarily ill-advised choice.

Not even Liz knows Matthew is here, as he confirms that he instructed the bartender to lie to Liz when she called.

How admirable. He’s even breaking personal codes for the sake of his love for her. I’m swooning.

Burke demands to know what exactly Matthew is planning to do that Liz won’t approve of and, yanno, you can’t fault Thayer David for doing his job.

I don’t know why Burke is surprised. Matthew told him as much before, didn’t he?

Be that as it may, I’m not sure that’s the right thing to say in this situation. Burke, of course, not one to back down in the face of a threat, maintains he intends to find Malloy’s murderer, and if it makes trouble for Mrsh. Shtoddahd, so be it.

He says all that like it’s one sentence, by the way.

He pronounces it “erotic”, to the point where if you were watching on a contemporary TV set, it’s almost certain that’s the word you’d hear.

That tears it. Burke just impugned the honor of Matthew’s beloved. This cannot stand.

So the bartender and some pleasant looking old gentleman struggle in vain to break up the fight, but things don’t cool off until Patterson arrives in his cowboy hat and Cakes.

So Patterson leads them outside and the bartender and the other guy share some silent gesture remarking as to the state of our fallen world.

So Patterson hauls the ruffians in and immediately begins behaving like an exhausted high school principal, telling the offenders where to sit and taking on the air of an embittered divorcee who gets irrationally envious at the shouts of children.

He also ought’ve booked Matthew for deliberately concealing a corpse, but whatever.

So again, Matthew must defend his agency, insisting nobody sent him to “chase Burke out of town”. Of course, he’s worried this will now reflect poorly on Mrsh. Shtoddahd. Strikingly, everybody seems to have great difficulty grasping that Matthew may have just done something of his own volition. It’s completely foreign.

I don’t think it’s controversial that Matthew is the instigator here. He got it into his head that Burke was going to make trouble, threatened Burke, and then attacked Burke. Burke is only guilty of egging him on, but that’s thoroughly embarrassing victim blaming of the kind that shouldn’t be tolerated for a second.

Which must be why Patterson moves right onto it. He treats Matthew and Burke as if they’re equally culpable in the violence and basically orders Matthew to sit in time out while he deals with Burke.

Again, if Patterson didn’t arrest Matthew for the actual crime he committed, I doubt he could be taken seriously getting moralistic over this.

So with Matthew out of the way, Patterson gets right to quizzing Burke as to his erratic movements tonight following their confrontation in Friday’s episode.

Burke insists he is trying to find the murderer, blah, blah, blah, Patterson insists he doesn’t know that it’s a murder, blah, blah, blah…

We get the first mention of the coroner’s verdict which, after finding the body and getting the autopsy, is the next in the agonizingly long procedural chain following Malloy’s death. We, the audience, are given the hope that the whole “accidental drowning” thing will be dropped wholesale once that verdict comes in. It isn’t very dramatic of a reveal and would likely happen offscreen, as the discovery of the body and the conclusion of the autopsy were, but if it forestalls more of the Same Conversation, more power to it.

Also, Burke calls Matthew a “slob”, which I guess is polite parlance for an ableist slur of some kind.

Burke is right to be outraged. Matthew physically assaulted Burke in a room full of people, and the sheriff is instead giving Burke the cross-examination. He’s understandably ruffled. Might the power of the Collinses be such that Burke ends up the villain in this too?

I guess. It’d be easier if Burke tried harder to seem less villainous himself.

Anyway, back to people being despicable.

Again, we here at Kooks of Collinwood don’t endorse paddling one’s children, but this would be a good time for it.

Carolyn continues to pose herself as Burke’s sole defender, prompting Liz to tell her the reason Maggie came to Collinwood, and the “accusations” Burke is making about Roger and Sam.

This is mostly more recapping, but it does give Carolyn pause.

Guess you shouldn’t have been such a callous bitch, huh?

The most obvious explanation would be that he believes them to be true, but that doesn’t seem to occur to our Kitten. Liz tells her the accusations are untrue and leaves it at that.

We here at Kooks of Collinwood don’t endorse shaming your children into abiding the party line, but we acknowledge there are exceptions to every rule.

Patterson is irate to learn of Burke’s visit to the Evanses.

Probably.

Why doesn’t he lock Burke up? Obviously, he was the victim in the Matthew affair, but he still wreaked hell at the Evans house tonight, causing significant distress to the inmates of the house and repeatedly insinuating he intends to pursue vigilante justice for a crime that, officially, hasn’t been proved to exist yet.

I guess he’s afraid of being sued, just as much as Consteriff Carter didn’t want Collins anger to cost him his job. If nothing else, Dark Shadows is honest about the state of American law enforcement, then as now.

Burke tells Patterson he’s cleared Sam of suspicion, without providing any of the reasons for this, again probably because Art Wallace knows they don’t sound very convincing. Regardless, Burke doubles down on the belief that the murderer is Roger.

To make the message clearer, Patterson stimulates his nipples in front of a captive audience.

We’re given another dose of the increasingly tiresome “Burke as vigilante” arc. I mean, I guess it’s cool that Burke has been angry and yelling at people, but he’s uncovered very little, and none of his decisions make much sense. He basically cleared Sam because of vibes.

This man is one smart comment from handing out suspensions, you mark my words, young man…

So the warning not to meddle sets up stakes. Burke is obviously not going to drop his investigation, therefore he will likely transgress on this warning sooner or later. Patterson will then have no further excuse not to throw him behind bars. It would be a natural escalation of this scene, reinforce the sheriff as a character with teeth, and add a layer of desperation and righteousness to Burke’s cause.

And, naturally, it won’t play out that way.

God, this is embarrassing.

So Burke heads out and Matthew comes in to get his stern lecture for, you know, strangling a man in public.

Patterson basically tells Matthew to just confine himself to Collinwood and not show his ugly mug in town, which I’m sure will be a great comfort to all local infants and widows.

I got really excited when Patterson mentioned a Collins farm, but it turns out this is a weird blooper and he probably meant something like “garden” or whatever. I imagine Widows’ Hill wouldn’t be a good place for livestock, anyway, imagine all the cows that would errantly wander off the cliff.

Patterson then reiterates that Burke certainly won’t go anywhere near Collinwood ever again.

Set a timer.

This is an allusion to Liz and Malloy’s gambit way back in Week 2 to send Carolyn on a cross-country road trip with Malloy’s niece or great-niece or whatever.

Had Carolyn agreed, she likely never would’ve encountered Burke at his hotel room, Burke wouldn’t have brought her to Collinwood, he wouldn’t have been implicated in the suppository thing, Carolyn would never have been given a sterling silver filigreed fountain pen to misplace and, very possibly, Malloy would…

Well, he’d probably still be dead. Doesn’t seem like Carolyn had much impact on that.

She’s known him for six days. Liz even points this out, but adds a softer touch.

Easier said than done, of course. I wonder if Liz’s comments here are reflective of her own experience of her missing husband? Does she believe her faith in him was misplaced?

Liz then cedes the reigns, somewhat, to Carolyn, saying she should ask Burke about his accusations if she must. She admits she isn’t happy about this, but notes that Carolyn ought to make her own decisions which is… A fairly mature choice.

Isn’t that sweet?

Carolyn heads to bed, Liz calls the Sheriff’s Station to ask about Matthew, a knock comes to the door…

Here we go again.

This Day in History- Thursday, September 22, 1966

Ansett-ANA Flight 149 crashes on a sheep farm in Queensland, Australia, killing all 24 passengers and crew. The crash is attributed to an engine fire. No conspiracies here, and it occurred in a majority white, non-Soviet country, so there exists very little in the way of sensationalist media about it.