The Scarecrow and Mrs. Johnson

We jump right into the mire today.

But none of them are really doing anything about it, which brings us to the point of the episode, something so fucking weird there couldn’t have been a single person in the audience who saw it coming.

You didn’t miss anything. It’s Mrs. Johnson, housekeeper to the late Mr. Malloy, introduced to us two episodes ago. She is here, meeting with Burke at his invitation because, you see, they are going to work together to find Malloy’s murderer.

‘What?’ I hear you ask, ‘When did this happen?’

And I will tell you: offscreen at some point between Episodes 67 and this one, so probably during Episode 68, which Burke wasn’t in to begin with. See, it makes perfect sense.

This is clearly an asspull, a contrivance to expedite the forward momentum of a severely flagging story. For a murder mystery, we haven’t gotten very much mystery, mostly the same dry recaps of evident facts we were already getting.

The expansion of Mrs. Johnson from an offscreen supplier of incidental information to an active character in the plot is a little awkward, but is buoyed by the strong and dynamic performance of Clarice Blackburn, which we got tastes of in her first appearance, but which really shines through here.

So Burke and Mrs. J are united in being the only people on canvas (well, except David, I guess) who believe for a certainty that Malloy was murdered.

So right off the bat: Mrs. Johnson doesn’t like the Collinses. Burke doesn’t like the Collinses. They have something in common, and I’m pretty sure they’re closer in age than his other love interests.

But, er, I think Mrs. Johnson’s heart lies elsewhere.

So we’re leaning into this, I guess. Malloy had feelings for Liz, Liz never returned them (or even knew they existed), and Mrs. Johnson had feelings for Malloy, which we assume he, likewise, never returned.

This is treated as overt fact, with Burke outright wondering if she was “very fond” of Malloy.

So this is kind of silly. But they needed some motivation for her to want to help Burke in his revenge, and I don’t think an ordinary employer/employee relationship was sufficient.

Something about this is that it keeps Burke relevant. Sure, he called James Blair in his last appearance, but if you think that’s going to go anywhere anytime soon, I have a bridge to sell you. Burke’s revenge is currently codified into the search for Malloy’s murderer. The thing is, up to this point, Burke’s vigilantism hasn’t gotten anything done besides make a few people uncomfortable.

This is an active alliance, and promises interesting story momentum of the kind we very desperately need.

But Burke is still Burke and, therefore, an asshole. He grills Mrs. Johnson on the subject of the fateful telephone call Malloy made before she left. Burke suggests the purpose of the call may have been to lure Malloy out to his death.

I don’t know what Burke thinks he’s accomplishing acting like this. Maybe bullying women is just a habit by this point.

When Burke mentions how Malloy’s watch purports to show the time of his death, Clarice Blackburn provides us with what can only be described as a Spectacle.

When Burke mentions Malloy didn’t disappear, but washed up at Collinwood, Mrs. Johnson gets very excited.

It cannot be understated how ridiculous the concept of Mrs. Johnson is. We are to believe she is infatuated with a man we know for having the exact manner of the fisherman on a bag of frozen shrimp. We are also to believe he never knew she was in love with him because he was lusting after his boss, an aging Hollywood starlet with a comical mid-Atlantic accent. Because of this, the housekeeper develops a deep resentment of aforementioned Hollywood starlet who, it bears mentioning, it doesn’t seem she ever met.

All these factors combine to ensure she is desperate for revenge, so she teams up with the man the love of her life was dedicated to stopping from destroying his employer’s family. Also, she dresses like a cartoon widow and gets sentimental over watches and believes in “signs and omens”, whatever those are.

It is so easy for this to be absurd. But Blackburn sells it. This introduction is word perfect. All of a sudden, it’s like she was always here, like there is no Dark Shadows without Sarah Johnson. It is such a captivating performance, I’m frankly at a loss for words.

But that’s a lie because I just wrote three paragraphs about it.

Making her superstitious is also nice, because this show has kind of been resisting that. Sure, people occasionally talk about “ghosts” in a metaphorical sense, and David still believes he communes with the Widows of Widows’ Hill, but we don’t really have any of that classic “superstitious villager” thing you’d expect from a story set in a tiny New England town.

The “finger of suspicion” is an old expression that means what it sounds like. In the 1950s, Al Lewis and Paul Mann had a hit with a song by that name. I most associate the expression with the PC Point and Click adventure game based on Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun, where you play, not as Hercule Poirot, but as Poirot’s dipshit friend Hastings guiding Poirot’s actions in what amounts to a hyper-realistic LARP session (Christie’s estate didn’t want players to actually play Poirot out of concern any mistakes they made would reflect poorly on the great detective’s genius; I guess they didn’t get how video games work). Poirot lets Hastings use “the Finger of Suspicion”, a plate with an actual fucking severed finger in it, that points to the names of the story’s suspects to give the player hints on who to see next.

I’m not joking. This is a thing that exists.

Anyway, back at the cannery, Joe arrives at Roger’s office, thinking he’s been summoned by the boss, but surprise, surprise.

The real reason for this set-up is because this is the most usable cannery set. Sure, they built kind of an office for Joe several weeks ago, but it didn’t seem like a finished set and was just a desk with some furnishings around it.

So, last episode it was a source of cheap drama that Carolyn was upset Joe couldn’t leave work to go for lunch with her. Then this got resolved when Joe called her back and they agreed to go out for dinner tonight.

Bitch, you thought.

You’d probably expect it to have ended there, as so many other petty Joelyn conflicts have over the last 14 weeks (that sound you hear is me choking back a scream at how much of this I’ve covered and how very, very much more is still to come), but you’d be wrong, because Carolyn has now come back to the office to entice Joe away from his job.

So Carolyn tries to pull Joe away from work.

Carolyn offers to “fix it with Uncle Roger”, who I guess now has unquestioned authority at the plant with Malloy dead. I don’t know, they don’t really follow through on what happens to that job opening. It’s not like Ned Calder’s every gonna show up to take it.

Anyway, Joe jokingly threatens to break Carolyn’s neck if she tries the nepotism game and, yes, that’s a really fucked up thing to say to your girlfriend, but in the Dark Shadows universe, it is cute pillow talk. It’s like how Joe calls Carolyn “idiot” as a pet name. It’s remarkably sweeter than Burke threatening to paddle her, treating her like a four-year-old, and gaslighting her about Venezuela.

It’s probably something of a ‘better him than us’ mentality, come to think of it.

She sure as hell does. Sadly, we won’t get a mental institution for a couple hundred episodes, so in the meantime, we’re stuck with the Power of Positive Thinking.

Carolyn diagnoses her ennui (if that’s what this is, but really who the hell knows or cares) as being brought on by her distressing conversation with Burke this morning. Joe, naturally, is immediately on guard at the thought that that Bastard Devlin was making trouble for his girl. It’s actually cute to see him get all protective, it’s just sad that we all know this show could never allow a simp like Joe to get one up on everybody’s favorite lantern-jawed chad.

Back with Collinsport’s new power couple, Burke is telling Mrs. Johnson he isn’t sure whether Malloy really cared so much about proving him innocent.

There’s something so earnest about this portrayal, how effortlessly it goes from high theatrics to a pleasant old church woman. I’m not sure that Mrs. Johnson would be fun to hang with, per se, but you’d still want to be in the same room as her, just to spectate.

So Burke basically admits everything: he tells this woman he is meeting with for the first time (having presumably never really known her at any time in his life before this, except maybe as a passing acquaintance over a decade ago) that he is “planning to ruin the Collins enterprises”, and Malloy was helping him clear his name only to stop his plan from continuing.

He tells her this, basically admitting that, if his theory is correct, Malloy is only dead because Burke allowed him to get involved in his conspiracy, and he doesn’t seem to expect Mrs. Johnson to be upset with him.

But she doesn’t. And I guess that’s…fine. We already know she blames the Collinses more than anything else for controlling and, eventually, derailing Malloy’s life. She probably sees his death more as a result of his association with the Collinses than a one-time alliance with Burke.

She doesn’t seem to understand that her reassuring presence is help enough.

So Burke broaches his new plan to figure out the extent of the Collinses involvement in Malloy’s murder.

A little conspiracy. As a treat.

So that’s the plan. Get Mrs. Johnson a job at Collinwood so she could go undercover and, maybe, eventually, happen upon clues.

That Agatha Christie PC game had a better grasp on detective logic, but I guess if I had access to an embittered housekeeper, a spooky old house, and a debilitating alcohol problem, I’d come up with something similar.

So, just like that, Mrs. Johnson is a more proactive member of the canvas than Victoria Winters, and she’s only been around for two episodes.

Anyway, Carolyn and Joe are making out, but Joe is still aware he has a job and can’t slip off.

Yay for nepotism.

You’d think it’d come up more that Joe has to work every day of his life, but Carolyn is always free to run around and bother whoever she wants, but this never becomes a point of contention in their relationship. It’s treated as entirely normal and not worth of any scrutiny.

It’s an accurate diagnosis. Carolyn only ever seems to seek Joe out these days when she disagrees with Burke.

So Carolyn tells Joe that Burke thinks Roger is guilty of murder plus manslaughter and then, weirdly, Joe tells Carolyn how Burke used to be engaged to Laura before the trial. It’s not weird that he knows this, because it’s presumably old gossip, but why doesn’t Carolyn know this?

Again, she was seven years old ten years ago, she wasn’t an infant, she must’ve had some awareness of what was apparently the biggest scandal in town, one that actively involved her own relatives.

Either way, we get something out of Joe’s relation of this story: a perspective into his own character. Carolyn wonders if Joe thinks Burke has resented Laura dumping him for Roger all these years.

So, Joe sees himself as the Burke of ten years ago, with the Burke of now being the Roger of that time. Joe clearly has no sympathy for Burke as he currently is. But does he ever think that, in the right (or wrong) course of events, he may end up very much like him?

It’s not like Carolyn gets very much out of this, by the way, she still wants to cajole Joe away from the office.

Carolyn’s response is, literally, “What about me?” which is so on the nose, I have to believe Francis Swann knew exactly what he was doing and how it looked and didn’t care.

Anyway, if you think that’s weird, Burke is currently telling Mrs. J that Roger must be guilty, though he has an alibi courtesy of Victoria Winters. Mrs. Johnson provides the most sensible explanation.

She says it so frankly too, like it’s obvious which, well, it could be. We know it isn’t quite that clear, because Victoria, as far as she knows, was speaking an approximate truth. But this highlights a weird weakness of Burke: he has trouble imagining Victoria (who he has already more or less blamed for this very thing) actively deceiving him.

Not that she is deceiving him, but this underscores the embarrassing infatuation he has with her. She’s his ‘weakness’.

Mrs. Johnson continues to be tres Jessica Fletcher, suggesting Vicky is defending Roger because she knows her job is on the line. This indicates a reptilian bloodlessness perfectly suited for detective work. Maybe she can take over Burke’s role on the show.

This is so embarrassing, and Mitch Ryan always seems uncomfortable when he has to play Burke being softened by Victoria, probably because it always seems so unnatural and unearned. When Burke interacted with David, for example, the humanity was much easier. You could see the bond of trust forming between them. Burke and Vicky have interacted loads more than Burke and David, but it’s still hard to buy that he is sincerely fond of her.

But it’s a romantic trope that the hard-nosed cynical man is smoothened by the efforts of the bright, sunshiney virgin girl, so here we are.

Mrs. Johnson basically tells Burke to suck it up and get his head in the game, and I wouldn’t be mad if this dynamic drove the next month’s worth of episodes.

This escalated so quickly. We just found out these two knew each other 12 minutes ago, and now she’s telling him not to think with his dick. I think we’ve saved the entire Burke Devlin arc.

Burke agrees, then, that either Vicky was lying or was mistaken (if true, it’s closer to the second one) about Roger’s alibi. Mrs. Johnson learns from him that Vicky was the one who found Malloy’s body and “finger of suspicion”.

I wish it were anything close to that intriguing, but Vicky was just looking for her friend’s watch.

Anyway, Joe is now embarrassing himself to all his colleagues.

So it turns out nobody’s willing to fill in for Joe so he can sate his girlfriend’s infantile whims.

There’s this bit where somebody calls Roger’s phone looking for Joe, and it’s his supervisor and then he has to get back to work and it seems like a really hasty way to end this scene. They agree to just go out for dinner like they originally planned and that’s it.

I wish that were a burn, but we’re not supposed to think about Carolyn being unemployed and totally without ambitions.

So Burke gives Mrs. Johnson a mission: apply for a job at Collinwood, something that nobody has done in 18 years. It seems like a tall order, and Burke doesn’t seem to have any ideas but

OH SOMEBODY’S AT THE DOOR

So Burke hides Mrs. Johnson in the other room like she’s some girl he picked up at a bar.

Carolyn tells Burke that she spoke to Roger and, surprise, surprise, he denies killing anybody.

Carolyn insists there must’ve been “some other way” the accident happened but, of course, has no such ideas. She then goes to get a drink of water and Burke has to stop her because that’s where the Other Woman is hiding.

Burke goes in to get the water for Carolyn and, as he does this, appears to have an idea, as illustrated by the weird sex criminal smile he gives Mrs. Johnson before he leaves.

Burke returns to Carolyn and immediately begins back-peddling, suggesting he’s only been wound up lately because of Malloy’s death.

So, again, Burke and Malloy weren’t friends. We know that Francis Swann has figured that out by now because Burke explained the nature of their partnership to Mrs. Johnson earlier in the episode. In this context, however, it seems he’s consciously lying to build his case to Carolyn.

And, indeed, his case is…quite something.

So this is convenient and also, by the way, the only reason we even had those embarrassing Joelyn scenes in this episode, to justify getting Carolyn here for the last act.

Basically, Burke goes on about how Mrs. Johnson is lost without Malloy and with no job to support herself and what a sad, shameful state of affairs that is. He starts gassing Mrs. J up, talking about what a great housekeeper she is, how she’d be a marvelous asset to any home, especially a great house on the crest of a lonely hill, should such a place exist.

Congratulations, honey, you just got Venezuelaed. Again.

There’s a weird parallel to this and the ending of the last episode, in which Roger manipulated David into sabotaging Victoria out of Collinwood, making the boy think it was own idea. Though it seems Burke hasn’t had to do nearly as much work to get Carolyn on board which is…sad but expected.

Wow, this is sad.

Burke then reassures Carolyn, saying she does “everybody a favor just by walking around and letting them look at” her which…well, I’m sure she thinks that’s a high compliment, and that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?

Carolyn departs, shrouded in glory and validation and, just like that, Collinsport’s answer to The Scarecrow and Mrs. King is in business.

Are in business? Whatever.

This Day in History- Thursday, September 29, 1966

“Black Thursday” marks the beginning of a massacre of Ibo refugees in Nigeria. At least 1,000 people are slaughtered before the government intervenes. Death tolls have been estimated to be high as 30,000.

Hurricane Inez lands in Hispaniola, Haiti and the Dominica Republic. More than 1,000 Haitians are killed and 60,000 rendered homeless.

Bujar Nishani, the current President of Albania (he’s been in office since 2012, which…what are Albanian term limits? I mean, I guess if Romney won in 2012, and then again somehow in 2016, he’d only be on his way out now; what the hell is that timeline like? Do I even want to know?) is born.

Bernard Gimbel, who founded the now defunct department store chain of the same name, as well as Saks Fifth Avenue, dies at 81. Saks is now most known for selling hideous crap at exorbitant prices. You might as well give JC Penney your money before they totally go under.

The Chevy Camaro goes on sale in the U.S. It quickly becomes an American icon and one of the most popular cars of the late ‘60s, appearing in a variety of contemporary as well as retrospective media as emblematic of the times.