Burke Devlin, Burke Devlin, Burke Devlin

In today’s episode, Victoria Winters informs us that “the battle for Collinwood has been joined” which, like many things on our nascent supernatural soap opera, sounds much more compelling than it really is.

She refers, of course, to Burke Devlin’s most recent visit to the house, covered in the previous episode in which Burke, in a wroth over the coroner’s verdict, declared openly his plans to ruin the Collinses to those very Collinses faces for the first time, literally declaring war and bringing this series’s oldest (insomuch that it was introduced at the same time as Vicky’s arc, making them equally old) narrative point to the forefront for the first time since the show’s first month.

This episode serves a usual Tuesday function of spinning wheels and drawing battle lines so the audience can begin to expect what is to come. This doesn’t make for very interesting TV, as we’ve seen with numerous other Tuesday episodes, but this one is at least unique in making everybody look like a complete moron, something that won’t be nearly commonplace until Collinsport goes full Negative Zone in a year or so.

Witness, for example, Carolyn acting brand new about things that were obvious to the entire audience over 30 episodes ago.

That is, in fact, what was said. Francis Swann wrote that episode, which is probably the one reason Carolyn’s bringing it up. Carolyn acts like Burke telling her exactly what he was doing, but framing it as a joke, is some sort of act of criminal genius and not, in fact, him betting entirely on her being a naive idiot, which is just what it was.

Sadly, Liz can’t rip Carolyn’s head off for this, because the writer himself thinks this was all very clever of him, and, after all, it’s perfectly normal to be rendered incapable stupid by Sexy Men. Just take Liz’s word for it!

Wow, okay, didn’t need that image. This goes along with Swann writing that sweaty, gross banker insisting Liz needed a man like Ned Calder to run her life. He clearly doesn’t see Liz nearly as capable as Art Wallace, the writer who invented her. It doesn’t precisely give us a lot of confidence in his ability to manage character writing and, indeed, judging by his clumsy attempt to move the Burke story forward this week, I don’t think he’s all that good at the job he was brought on to do in the first place: make things move faster. The Burke story has gotten some momentum, but not at all in a way that makes internal sense. Burke coming up to Collinwood and just telling everybody what he intends to do is contradictory to his earlier stated gameplan, and the coroner’s verdict doesn’t seem like a sufficient enough infraction to get him so sloppy. Wouldn’t it have been better to have the Collinses learn of Burke’s plans accidentally? If, maybe, Vicky or Carolyn overheard him speaking to Blair on the phone, or if Burke began making maneuvers (yanno, actually doing something instead of having meetings about doing something) to acquire Collins businesses and Joe or someone found out and tried to warn a careless, oblivious Roger, who was too preoccupied with the Malloy stuff to pay any mind?

Things get even sloppier when Carolyn tries to suggest Burke is manipulating David, pointing out he was at Burke’s hotel room when she came there earlier in the day. There’s a major hole in this argument, which Liz herself points out.

Is Carolyn so stupid that she doesn’t realize her own hypocrisy and the way Burke has been using her? Or are we not supposed to recognize her arguments as weak and badly thought-out because they are simply the attempts of an underpaid daytime television writer trying to pad out a script?

Carolyn’s answer to this is that she thought she could guilt Burke by telling him he would never get to see her again if he kept making his accusations against the Collinses. Despite not seeming to have any ground in reality in the episode in which these scenes happened, it’s just…sad. Carolyn honestly seems to believe she had enough leverage with Burke to hold their relationship hostage and expect he would subsequently back down.

In the end of it, it comes down to one thing, which Carolyn admits: she just doesn’t understand her feelings.

This is a perennial problem with Carolyn as a character. Of course, it also allows unskilled television writers to have her do or say whatever they thinks works best without having to justify it in a way that makes sense.

This does give us an opportunity for something Swann particularly enjoys indulging in: Paultalk! Joan Bennett looks off into the teleprompter and begins to monologue.

I appreciate this attempt to explain to us what a “stranger” is.

This man was, of course, Elizabeth’s missing husband Paul. Last episode came the dramatic (if, in-universe, underplayed) revelation from Roger that he had observed less-than-savory scenes between Liz and her husband, considering they had an unhappy marriage. Now, in only the second instance of Carolyn discussing the father she never knew with her mother, we learn that Elizabeth has drawn comparisons between her seduction by Paul and Carolyn’s dalliances with Burke, which goes a long way to explaining her wariness of their burgeoning relationship. It’s much more than Liz simply being wary of Burke as an enemy of Roger’s. She sees a younger, more naive, more susceptible to pain, version of herself in her daughter.

The increased talk of Elizabeth’s missing husband (another mystery as old as the show itself) in the last two episodes suggests the matter of Paul Stoddard will soon prove important.

Sorry. This discussion doesn’t even have anything else to do with the rest of the episode. Neither character references Paul again.

What we do get more of is Davey Boy.

He’s wearing that weird boarding school-looking suit again. I honestly have no idea why this outfit is part of David’s wardrobe. You’d think for someone so afraid of being “sent away”, he’d avoid dressing like he was lining up to be considered by the Sorting Hat.

Anyway, David has a question and only one man around the house can answer it.

Well, the radiation accident that made him like this, for starters.

This episode introduces the most human view of Matthew we’ve gotten since Thayer David assumed the role almost 40 episodes ago. He assumes the role of a patrician wise man who young people approach for advice. Indeed, given his age and gender, he’s the one paternal substitute David has at Collinwood. Which explains a lot.

It perhaps isn’t at all surprising that Matthew’s view of morality boils down to “do whatever Mrsh. Shtoddahd says”. Of course, this isn’t helpful for David, as his trouble is being caught between what his aunt wants…and what Burke wants. Or, rather, his affection towards one of them over the other.

Whs Matthew proposes is a difficult dichotomy, not just for a child, but for anyone. It can be difficulty remaining loyal to people…especially if the people to whom you pledge your loyalty don’t always do what you agree with. It may not always be morally good to cosign people who do questionable things. Matthew’s logic is more Medieval serf than anything else: what the liege lord says goes.

None of this stops David from thinking Matthew’s “smart”, though.

Matthew’s uncomfortable ranting about how he’d do “anything” for Mrsh. Shtoddahd is cut short by David apropos of nothing bring out a photo he claims Burke gave to him, depicting his “first oil strike”.

So, this seems to be Swann’s way of addressing the class disparity arguments raised in the previous episode: did Burke earn his wealth in a way the current generation of Collinses didn’t? The picture may as well have been conceived out of thin air, and has never been indicated once before in the narrative before being clumsily trotted out to illustrate a point.

We know Burke made his fortune in investments, but the money to get started in investing has to have come from somewhere. Perhaps this was a South American oil rig. This would line up both with his meeting the “character” in a pub in Montevideo, and in his (real as well as sham) business dealings in the oil-rich nation of Venezuela.

So while it meshes neatly with the established lore, I don’t think it resolves the question of Burke honestly coming by his money. While it’s backbreaking work to labor on an oil rig, the work is also exploitative and depends upon the manual labor of underlings who do not share in the wealth earned by the big guy. Since it was “Burke’s” first oil strike, that means this was his own rig, not a team he worked on.

The ethics around oil drilling wouldn’t be questioned for decades. There’s a reason the Carringtons of Dynasty were an oil family. I won’t concern myself with that. But I do think that Burke as a man who quite literally had a lucky strike, which he then capitalized by investing in the work of others (and buying the debts of those who couldn’t afford to, as he plans to do with the Collinses) does very little to establish him as a counterpart to the Collinses. Sure, he got his hands dirty, but if anything, his money comes from less honest quarters than theirs.

Of course, it could just be my silly fancy that there was any intention at all put into the logistics of Burke making his fortune. It’s just as likely nobody put more than a minute of thought into it. And they might as well not have, for all the difference it makes in the end.

Carolyn arrives to fetch David for Elizabeth. David gets angry at Carolyn telling her mother about how he saw Burke today, which leads Carolyn to bringing up the last time David ran from home to see Burke, way back in the suppository days. Carolyn notes that they almost called the police.

I guess he forgot how he was terrified of police attention of any kind back then, which is the precise reason he ran off to see Burke in the first place. That is to say, Swann forgot.

Matthew takes this time to warn Carolyn of associating any further with Burke, comparing him to a “wounded tiger”.

He’s even giving weird kung fu movie parables! I don’t know who thought up this new direction, but I’ll take it.

So Liz sits David down and tells him she wants to talk about Burke.

This disingenuous comment is proved even moreso by a scene from last week in which David and Liz actually talk about Burke before he runs out to see him. This is either David being a kid or Swann not doing the reading and I’m leaning toward the latter, because Liz doesn’t even clock him on this.

Of course, this conversation ends up mirroring that one pretty well, only this time there’s a real, rather than imagined, threat for Burke to pose. Liz tells David Burke’s intentions toward the family, to the boy’s disbelief. This despite David knowing enough about Burke’s hate-on toward the family that he sought to frame him for attempted murder, which is the only reason he even met Burke in the first place.

David continues to insist that there’s no way Burke could mean him any harm, since he got him a present, of course referring to the crystal ball we haven’t seen much of lately. When Liz points out that was more like a bribe than a gift, David insists:

Well.

David proves intractable. This isn’t made better by Liz literally telling him he’s “either for me or against me”, which isn’t the best messaging to give an impressionable and mentally disturbed child.

Back in David’s room, Carolyn discovers the photo of Burke and we realize that David was lying again. He stole the picture, but not from Burke…from Carolyn. This doesn’t do anything to resolve the mystery of when Burke gave it to her, but who cares.

Matthew yet again insinuates himself into the role of family counselor, objecting to Carolyn’s notion that David will lie to her about how he came by the photo.

The sad thing is, Matthew seems to honestly believe this simplistic logic, that families have perfect, undivided loyalty, and are complete hive minds with no interpersonal disagreements. Maybe this is why he obeys Liz to the letter…because she is the only family he has.

Carolyn informs Matthew of Burke’s ultimatum, and he’s pretty surprised. Which, okay, yeah, I guess that’s fair, but he acts like it’s totally brand new that Burke might have had any kind of wide ranging plans against the family to begin with, despite trying to kill Burke to prevent perceived plotting against the family, an incident that was referenced as recently as last episode.

Everything about the way Nancy Barrett delivers that line gives the impression we have briefly entered a parallel universe in which Carolyn is Carrie Bradshaw and Matthew is her gay best friend.

Anyway, back to the grown-ass woman holding her affection hostage from a little boy to ensure loyalty. David proves harder to move than Liz clearly thought he’d be, insisting he will not denounce Burke, because Burke (who he has met twice), is his only friend.

And, at the heart of it, that’s all you need to know. Because David’s situation is, at heart, a sad one. He was raised in an environment without love and is naturally suspicious and wary. His friendship with Burke is a direct result of their mutual animosity toward Roger. He is starved for love.

This is further informed by the conversation’s sudden pivot to the subject of Mrs. Johnson, the potential hiring of whom David learned from Burke and Carolyn last week.

While Clarice Blackburn does look like the kind of wretched crone who abducts children for believing in music, it isn’t the odd word choice I fixate on here, but David’s aversion to this woman whom he has never met. It’s reminiscent of his original (and continuing, if somewhat muted) attitude toward Victoria Winters. David rejects the notion of any woman who comes into his life, except for Elizabeth, seeming to equate them all as attempted substitutes for his beloved mother.

What makes matters worse is that Elizabeth refuses to find any common ground with David. It’s believable that she loves him, but the way she shows it is by being controlling and commanding. There is no time taken to examine why David sees Burke as his only friend, or what conditions may have led this to be true.

And before we can contemplate anything about these difficult, layered topics, we get to see the little boy and the teenage girl fight over a picture of the skeevy man who’s been toying with their emotions.

Carolyn accuses David of stealing the picture from Burke’s room. David claims innocence. David accuses Carolyn of only caring so much because she’s upset Burke likes him more than her, to which Carolyn insists Burke has given him better presents than a picture… It’s a whole ordeal.

This is a tremendously stupid thing to argue about, and it only reinforces how, er, young Carolyn’s mental age is. She has every reason to claim the higher ground here, but she just can’t help arguing on David’s territory, to the point where Matthew assumes the role of the talking cheese who preaches.

And he’s right. Not just because of Burke’s bad intentions, but because Burke is the poster child for Ain’t Shit Man. It is extraordinarily pathetic that these two young people are fighting over this man’s affections and attentions, especially for Carolyn, who you would think knows better.

The sad thing is, he isn’t wrong, is he? The man on the moon in the Dark Shadows universe is a leering crag-face who catcalls teenagers.

To compensate for a very long Act I, Act IV is just over two minutes long, featuring Matthew essentially tattling on Carolyn and David to Liz.

These people keep giving Burke more credit than he deserves. Then again, I guess it feels better to blame the emotional dysfunctions of the young members of your family on a third party rather than your piss poor parenting skills.

This is all thoroughly imbecilic. One begins to wonder how long it will take before they have Carolyn pivot from acting like a 12-year-old to vamping herself up to get Burke’s attention while shafting her boyfriend from across the room.

Elizabeth is rightly exhausted, exasperated and irate. She takes both daughter and nephew to task, getting Carolyn to apologize, though I’m still not sure whether this was an offense that merited an apology. David, however, is more reluctant to apologize and, when Liz warns him against mentioning Burke’s name in Collinwood ever again, he races from the room and provides us a very accurate summary of all of Dark Shadows to this point in time.

Maybe throw a few suppositories in there for good measure. Maybe a couple of silver filigreed fountain pens.

This Day in History- Tuesday, October 11, 1966

President Johnson signs the Child Nutrition Act into law, establishing a School Breakfast Program to accompany the already-existing lunchtime equivalent. Decades later, First Lady Michelle Obama would attempt to build on this legislation by making school meals healthier, only to be accused by Republicans of hating cows and also America.

France and the U.S.S.R. sign a treaty of nuclear research cooperation that doesn’t go anywhere. Thankfully. Unless it did, of course, and there’s a secret stockpile of nukes somewhere outside Calais waiting to get revenge on almost every nation in Europe, North Africa, and western Asia.

American actor and teen heartthrob Luke Perry is born, and now I’ve been reminded that he’s dead and really shouldn’t be and that really sucks.