We’ve reached the spot that could’ve been the end and, in many ways, we’re back at the beginning.
Well then.
We’ve reached the end of these first 13 weeks, an episode where, if the network had so decided, Dark Shadows may have met an unceremonious end.
It didn’t, of course, not at all, and the decision not to cancel had already been made by this point, with the order being extended to another 13 weeks that would’ve seen the show go to the new year. Dan Curtis has the chance to continue refining his dream, and the long-suffering cast and (longer-suffering) crew will continue to collect a paycheck.
Still, let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s pretend that Dark Shadows was never renewed and Episode 65 was its last.
Is it a good place for an ending?
I’ll let you be the judge.
We begin with a sight that is by now quite familiar: Burke standing in the Collinwood doorway, staring down one of the inmates of the house, in this case our Mrs. Stoddard.
He demands to know were Roger is.
Basement, closet, it all comes to the same thing these days.
Liz, as she has before, tells Burke to leave. Burke, as before, won’t be moved until he gets what he wants. We know, however, that Roger isn’t in the house because Maggie made a whole show of coming to Collinwood for the first time in her life just to speak to him and she didn’t get to because he was just not there.
Leave it to Burke to say it like it’s a threat.
The secret joy of this episode is that Burke will soon learn he can’t bully Liz the way he did Sam. This is, after all, her house.
“Young” man.
Burke uses his impoverished upbringing as an excuse for his coarseness, which I’m sure is meant to be a contrast to the silver spoon stuffiness of the Collinses, but this guy’s been wealthy for the last five years and his response to that is just to be a major asshole, so maybe poverty has nothing to do with being a dick?
Mitch Ryan makes cluelessness sound so confident he ought to be a politician. Ayo.
Burke has mentioned his lobster pot-repairing father once before, on his first visit to Collinwood back in Week 3. Art Wallace seems to intentionally be invoking that here, as he has with so many earlier pieces of information, as if aware that the dedicated and exhausted audience of this show is bound to forget the many plot threads and backstory nuggets his scripts did nothing to follow through on over the summer months.
And there we are again, with one of Burke’s axioms, which can just as easily be the moral of pre-Barnabas Dark Shadows as a whole: patience. Art Wallace certainly advocates patience, though its end result, payoff, isn’t something he seems intimately acquainted with.
This son of a bitch.
The cold fury of Elizabeth Stoddard is always a sight to behold, especially on those rare occasions where it’s directed as the right person.
You might think this is an obvious telegraph of Burke’s nefarious designs on the Collins property, and it is, but it doesn’t matter because be did this same thing back when he first came to Collinwood in Week 3 and nobody noticed anything weird then.
This is what passes for a sick burn on Dark Shadows, but I am all for unironically cheering it.
Instead of responding to any of Liz’s questions, Burke paces around the drawing room like an animal, sizing up the joint and making callous remarks as to how expensive everything is.
He must be Nouveau Riche, that isn’t a chest, it’s an armoire.
Burke alludes to the “handyman” who roughed him up tonight and, while Liz could benefit from plausible deniability here, she instead almost takes responsibility…
In the immortal words of Monique: I would like to see it.
Liz tells Burke that the sheriff only just called to let him know if Burke tried making any trouble at Collinwood, but Burke is unintimidated and intends to wait for Roger regardless.
You know it’s a big deal when Liz doesn’t make a phone call.
Roger is currently on the town.
He’s calling Maggie, determined to find Sam. Maggie, of course, wanted to speak to Roger earlier this very evening. Lots of this show is just people wanting to speak to other people.
It appears that the offscreen Maggie tries to get a word in on this subject, but Roger rapidly shuts her down.
Worth a shot, I suppose.
This all ends up moot, of course, when Roger notes the man himself walking in.
Roger promptly drags a reluctant Sam to a table where we get another of those Edmonds/Ford match-ups that make this show fun to watch during these frustrating dry spells of actual content.
Roger wants to know everything Sam told Patterson this afternoon. We already know Roger won’t learn anything groundbreaking here because Sam told the agreed-upon story and didn’t say anything suspicious at all.
This is what used to be called “chemistry”. If any of the male/female pairings on this show had this kind of energy, we’d be in business.
This rapidly escalates into one of the greatest bloopers of all time, and you will not convince me this isn’t a blooper.
So basically, Roger has enough of Sam’s silliness and forces the drink away from his mouth, only for physics to take their natural course…
The glass flies across the table, scattering ice cubes everywhere. There is this moment where Roger (or, well, Louie Edmonds) stares at the mess in this lost, forlorn way, as if fearing an expensive second take will be called and Dan Curtis will flay him alive, but then Dave Ford swoops in, in character, all “Look what you did!” It could be Ford chastising his colleague for breaking the flow of the scene, it could be Sam bemoaning his lost drink.
AND THEN LOUIE GIVES US THE BEST AD LIB SINCE “100 MILES”…
What? What does that have to do with anything? Is he threatening Sam’s life again? It would certainly be in character. But the fact is, the line doesn’t have to make sense in context because it is still in character and the momentum of the scene continues uninterrupted. It’s the magic of daytime.
We have more banal recaps of Sam’s interrogation, which leads into recaps of Burke’s episode at the Evans house.
Sam is surprisingly assertive. I guess after facing Burke this seems like small potatoes. It’s also hard to be scared of a guy who nearly pissed himself on camera.
And, for once, Sam feels he has nothing to lose. So emboldened, it must be easier imagining Burke fucking up your worst nemesis for shits and giggles.
Back at Collinwood, somebody would appear to have bugged the proverbial clam chowder.
Liz surprises Burke by not calling the sheriff and further disarms him by inviting him to tea.
And here we see the true magic of Elizabeth Stoddard. Burke’s bullying chauvinism, that has so characterized him this week especially, has no power over her. She can’t be cowed, can’t be intimidated and refuses to quake in fear of him.
What’s more, she disarms him with the very womanly traits he scoffed at her for. Tea and conversation rather than threats and intimidation.
She even asks cutely emasculating questions, telling him there’s no need to be nervous (the insinuation that he might be nervous irks him visibly).
It’s a real masterstroke of writing, and a testament that, whatever his faults, Art Wallace truly does get the characters he created.
Changes? Like the war memorial, the new housing project…
We get another S-tier fumble on Joan Bennett’s part:
The camera isn’t hard on Joan, of course, but you can still see the moment where she realizes she fucked up and said the wrong guy’s name. Guess you can’t blame her, Roger is the guy she shares most of her scenes with.
Elizabeth continues with this banal small talk and me, idiot that I am, determine to find some kind of meaning in it.
I want to believe these include those waterfront houses Burke is planning to purchase, you know the ones that were mentioned way back in the episode with Bronson? It would at least provide some context to that plan Burke is supposed to have.
I want to believe this is just Mitch fucking up a line again because as a line in a script that somebody wrote, it truly is terrible.
Now it’s a party.
I’m not sure why Vicky has changed her clothes and hair following her aborted dinner date at the Evanses. Sure, Maggie put on an updo as well for her trip to Collinwood. Wardrobe inconsistencies are pretty rare on Dark Shadows, so it’s worth pointing out when they do happen.
Victoria is understandably surprised that Burke is here at all. Liz takes this as an excuse to leave the two of them alone while she gets tea, because maybe Art is realizing these two have done next to nothing romantic together and, given how their last interaction ended, maybe he should get on that.
And just like that, Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard successfully renders the Devlin speechless, impotent and clueless.
You love to see it.
Victoria demands to know what Burke intends at Collinwood, having finally cottoned on to the fact that his presence usually means nothing good.
So he can still stand to be a condescending jackass to his primary love interest, that’s comforting.
Vicky guesses Burke is here for a repeat performance of his scene at the Evanses: to accuse Roger of being responsibility for the crash that sent Burke to prison.
Gotta love how bloodless lizard (LIZard?) Mrs. Stoddard left her hapless governess to deal with the vengeful egomaniac while she prepared tea. Shows how valuable young Miss Winters is to the fabric of the household.
An absurd number.
Victoria asks what Burke intends to do.
So long as you drive sober, sure.
There’s this interesting pause here, after Vicky wonders if Mrs. Stoddard knows what Burke intends.
At which point, he asks Vicky how his little buddy (and possible son) David is doing. And we get another stroke of subtlety on Art Wallace’s part, intimating that Burke is beginning to have second thoughts, maybe a little about harming Elizabeth (who, after all, is the only character to this point able to best him) and, especially, little Davey.
But the fact is, Vicky is involved and has been and is by now kind of caught up in it. We return to the question of agency: Vicky chose to come here, and she has repeatedly chosen to stay, but how much of those choices are really her own? She is kept in Collinsport out of a personal duty to discovering the backstory to a scrap of paper she was left on a doorstep with as an infant.
None of the dramas that have unfolded around her since she’s arrived have anything to do with her at all and, indeed, all of them could’ve happened without her for all the role she’s had in furthering story. And yet she is involved, not solely because of her search, but because the aura Burke radiates is inescapable in its toxicity.
She was always gonna be part of it, from the moment she went up to him on that train platform. I guess that’s part of the problem.
Oh no, the big tough guy didn’t count on something as trivial as love interrupting his big tough plans. You can change him, Victoria! As long as you abandon whatever remains of that used Kleenex you call your dignity, you can make him a respectable member of society!
And people think the vampires are Problematique.
Okay, so either Mitch fucked up, or Art made a continuity error within his own script. Again. The dinner party was this same night. Even better, Burke “interrupting” it happened in this same week of episodes.
The constant attempts to get Vicky to have dinner with him are as close to a “thing” as these two have yet been given. It’s kind of toothless as a romantic plot device, bears nothing unique to the characters or their situation, and offers no perspective into the hearts and minds of either Burke nor Victoria. More thought was put into the weird faux-pederasty as that is Burke/Carolyn.
Says the guy who is dedicating massive amounts of time, money and energy into acquiring the big, dark house.
Vicky even points out Burke could just as easily pursue those excitements rather than his revenge.
But he can. If it weren’t for his absurd ego. As I said way back in the beginning, revenge is one of the most consistent themes on Dark Shadows, the show returning to it again and again. Burke is simply the first case study and, in many ways, the saddest, despite everything.
Back at the Blue Whale (cue music), Sam is just concluding his recap of the night’s adventures with the saga at Burke’s hotel room which, sadly, isn’t as thrilling as it sounds.
Roger wonders why Sam bothered to go to him at all if he didn’t reveal the truth.
Which Sam did. Somehow. Which leaves Roger.
Roger takes this opportunity to remind Sam that “whatever happens to me, happens to you”, a reinforcement of the fact that, if Burke finds out what Roger did, Sam ends up implicated as an accessory.
That may be so in-universe, but Dave Ford was two years younger than Louis Edmonds, so…
Ah, yes, the well known opposite of ‘blessing’: Ashes. You’d think “curse”, but as we’ll learn eventually, Roger won’t be able to get away from either of those things in due course.
Roger gets up to go, but Sam stops him.
“Some time ago” was approximately two days, but close to 30 episodes ago, so…
So Sam appears to have reconsidered Roger’s offer in light of the recent ratcheting up. Is he prepared to uproot himself and ditch town, taking Maggie with him and departing wholesale from the Dark Shadows canvas?
Sure sounds like a major copout.
Nevertheless.
Act IV opens with Sam calling Maggie while a really cool Bossanova beat plays on the juke. This is the second new theme in the last two episodes. I didn’t remark too much on the more of the same surf rock tune that was introduced last episode, but this one merits remark for channeling a whole different brand of ‘60s music.
After the call is concluded, Roger rejoins Sam and tells him he’s reconsidered his reconsideration, proving that the original reconsideration was just a ploy for faux dramatic tension.
Be that as it may, however, Sam is in top form tonight.
Sam points out that if he fled town in the midst of all this, he’d look extraordinarily suspicious, and Roger would benefit by dint of that. He has no intention of helping Roger in this way.
Which brings me to wonder: was Sam ever serious about wanting to accept the offer, or was the whole thing a bluff just for the joy of watching Roger squirm?
Well, shit.
Anyway, back to Burke and Vicky having a genuine, agenda-free conversation for what must be the first time.
Just imagining Burke going on the Maelstrom at EPCOT. Back when there was a Maelstrom at EPCOT.
Burke mentions his father loved the sea, “but never got much chance at it”, whatever that means.
This is probably meant to be a rare moment of human introspection, but Mitch lost his footing partway through the line and now “not too healthy” sounds like a weak euphemism for an embarrassing social disease like alcoholism or something.
Gonna be honest, I didn’t think our Victoria Winters was fond of riding bareback.
Burke suggests Victoria would’ve had a better chance making her dreams come true if she’d just run away.
As we’ve seen time and again.
Burke notes that he wishes Vicky would run away, from Collinwood. But remember that the chaos he believes hangs over Collinwood is one entirely of his own making. As far as he knows, there are no ghosts or ghouls or anything like that. It’s a monster that he has created, but it’s supposed to be noble that he at least wishes Vicky weren’t hurt by his own machinations.
I don’t buy it. I wonder if general audiences did back in September ’66.
Smooth.
Victoria tries to go smoother, throwing it right back at Burke: Where does he belong?
Liz returns with tea, but before the pleasant social event can commence that special someone finally returns.
She informs him of their guest.
And that’s the end of Dark Shadows’s first 13 weeks. Roger must prepare to see Burke, an interaction of the kind we have seen multiple times before over the last almost three months.
Sure, the context has changed slightly, thanks to Malloy’s death. But as it happens, the pieces are remain in the same place. Burke’s plan hasn’t advanced very much, if at all. Vicky and Burke’s relationship is more friendly, but not by much. Roger still hates David, Burke knows only shadowy rumors about Sam’s connection to Roger, and nothing else, and Victoria has only just learned a big clue about her past, and even that seems deliberately dressed up like it means nothing.
Was it necessary that 13 weeks be spent on this little story? How can it be that we’ve gone from summer to autumn on less than a week of in-universe time? How can this show have had one attempted murder, one actual murder, and visible evidence of a ghost, only for things to be so…
Samey?
Dark Shadows has avoided its first brush with cancellation. But it’s gonna have to do a lot better if it wants to make it past the next 13 weeks.
This Day in History- Friday, September 23, 1966
President Johnson signs the Fair Standards Amendment into law, extending the minimum wage to a much wider variety of worker, effective February 1967. What was the minimum wage, you ask? $1.00.
Kooks of Collinwood 