Mixed Moralizing

In today’s Dark Shadows, somebody’s hair got stuck on the establishing shot.

Besides the hair, you’ll surely notice that it’s a new day. This is the ninth in-universe day in the series (yes, I will keep tracking these because I am a Lunatic), and puts us a week out from the first full day we were shown, the one that culminated in Roger’s car “accident”, kicking off the suppository saga. In the real world, that would’ve aired three months before this. This storyline doesn’t even have a full three months left in the tank.

So Vicky’s monologue is kind of a desultory reminder that “not everyone agrees” with the coroner’s verdict. We know exactly who this is referring to, of course, which brings us to everybody’s favorite plotters.

Sorry, shouldn’t have invoked thoughts of hot mayonnaise. God forgive me, etc.

So, Burke and Mrs. Johnson are meeting in person again, this despite there being little forward momentum in the push to get the good housekeeper installed at Collinwood. In-universe, Carolyn first brought the notion up to Liz two nights ago, shortly after Burke “subtly” put the notion into her head. Carolyn then saw Mrs. Johnson the next morning and spoke to her about the position, promising good news and…then nothing else has happened short of Carolyn mentioning it to Liz sometimes.

Burke asks if anybody saw Mrs. Johnson come up, because secrecy is still important to this part of his plan, at least.

Much earlier on, Roger described Wells as a nosy gossip who might even be susceptible to bribery. He was likewise characterized as a busybody in his last physical appearance in Episode 61, when Sam tried to swindle the do-nothing letter out of the safe, so it doesn’t seem like “oblivious” is the best word to describe him.

Of course, those episodes were written by the other guy, so.

Burke apologizes to Mrs. Johnson for having her come over, noting it’s riskier to meet at her place, which is when Mrs. Johnson reminds him it’s Malloy’s house, not her own, and she “only worked for him”.

This is weird, oddly specific clarifying dialogue, presumably included because Mrs. Johnson looks and acts like she was married to the guy and, indeed, being madly in love for him appears to be her central motivation in helping Burke catch his killer. I don’t know why Francis Swann decided to clarify this point in such a slipshod and clumsy way (as if Burke wouldn’t know she “only worked for” Malloy), but it’s probably because he just isn’t good at writing for television.

I just really love Clarice Blackburn’s delivery. I know I say this every time she’s on screen, but she has this perfect balance between high melodrama and all the nuances of the bitter old spinster in the little village, and she moves between those channels perfectly, sometimes within the same line. This style of acting is ideal for soap operas, but you’d be hard pressed to find any but the old pros (and then, not even all of them) who keep to the tradition nowadays. Which might be why the soaps have a mostly unfair reputation for being “boring”.

Burke cautions Mrs. Johnson not to display her outrage over the verdict publicly, to mitigate suspicion. This is very high talk, given how he’s been acting, but I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way. The idea seems to be that if “someone” (presumably meaning Roger) found out that Mrs. Johnson still believes Malloy was murdered, he wouldn’t want her coming to work at Collinwood, which is fair. And also very on the nose, because Roger just learned who Mrs. Johnson was and where she might soon be working at the end of the very previous episode.

Burke then turns to the audience and tells us what he wants.

You’re probably wondering why Burke is now cavalierly talking about his other plans with Mrs. Johnson, or why he’s talking about them at all, as if he feels the need to remind us, the audience, what he’s doing and why, in the very same week where an entire episode was spent on him telling the majority of the cast exactly what he wanted to do to them.

And, again, I will tell you: this writer isn’t very good.

After the titles, Mrs. Johnson reminds Burke that she only cares about one of those goals: avenging Malloy’s death. The way this is going, I half-expect her to tell him “Sonny, this alliance is only temporary”.

The phone rings, and some unseen person tells Burke that they (well, probably he; Burke only teams up with women if he thinks they’re hot and/or they make their own mayonnaise) saw Roger and Sam conferring at the Blue Whale last night. The implication is that, even long after the departure of his private dick, Wilbur Strake, Burke has a network of local spies.

Don’t expect this to go anywhere.

Burke immediately prepares assumptions about Sam and Roger’s argument.

This is something of a reach, which is why it is true.

Burke asks Mrs. Johnson what Malloy thought of those two men. We learn (well, we kind of already knew, but anyway) that Malloy “had no use for Roger” and didn’t much like his coming back to Collinsport. More definitively, we are told of Malloy’s opinion of Sam Evans.

So we’re back to vacillating between these two points. Art Wallace had it that Malloy and Sam were quite good friends. Indeed, this came up a lot in the episodes between Malloy hearing Sam’s drunken ramblings and then disappearing. Swann, however, has periodically indicated that Malloy and Sam weren’t close at all, muddying the water for no reason that I can see, except that he just didn’t think it was important. Which it isn’t, really, anymore, but still…some consistency would be nice.

Mrs. J notes that Malloy would often bemoan how Sam had “gone to seed”, though he never said why he thought this. We know that Malloy didn’t know why Sam went to seed. He may have put two and two together by the day he died, but technically, his death still occurred without him learning what, exactly, Sam even had on Roger to begin with, so all this speculation is just wheel-spinning.

Maggie and Sam are back in today’s episode, but to no great consequence, unlike the fever dream that was the last one. Here, their role is primarily to serve as a Greek Chorus and, when the characters requiring chorusing aren’t around, to have more of the Same Conversation.

Sam wonders if the coroner’s verdict has moved the town gossip past the matter of Malloy’s death.

The invocation of “football” marks the second instance of the show attempting to align itself with the world outside the TV. The first was Malloy’s throwaway mention of “fireworks” in the second week, in an episode that was filmed on Independence Day (though the show itself aired two weeks later). Of course, Malloy meant “fireworks” in the figurative sense, so it was either a coincidence, or an in-joke on the part of Art Wallace.

This mention of an ongoing football season, the second mention of the sport in as many episodes, confirms that Dark Shadows exists in a time vaguely aligned with that of the audience watching the show: mid-October.

Of course, later revelations will say we’ve been in mid-September for all 79 episodes to this point, so even in universe that comment makes sense.

Maggie makes an innocuous comment about Sam being worried, which leads to him protesting too much for the hundredth time, insisting he hasn’t spared a single thought to the coroner’s verdict since it came down.

And this on-brand continuance of transparent denial leads Maggie to wonder if this attitude is connected to Roger and Sam’s conversation at the Blue Whale. Note that she doesn’t even mention how Roger closed off that evening by insulting her for having a job, leading to Joe almost punching him in the face, because for this episode, Maggie exists solely to be the sounding board for the most perennial of this show’s Same Conversations.

You’re probably wondering how long they can possibly sustain this. Like, we’ve been doing this since Episode 12. Maggie still had a wig then.

Back upstairs, Burke explains that he intends for Mrs. Johnson to discover evidence against Roger by simply…being a housekeeper. Like she’ll walk in to collect his dirty laundry and catch him fondling himself over pictures of corpses.

If it sounds ludicrous to you that this is essentially Burke’s entire plan at this point, sure. But remember that Roger can’t walk into a room without pantomiming the fact that he is a nefarious, wretched criminal, so there might be more sense to this than there initially appears.

So, this is the second time these two have talked about Vicky. The first time, Mrs. Johnson almost seemed to suggest she thought Vicky had something to do with Malloy’s death, noting that she was the one who found the body and wondering if he was pointing a “finger of suspicion” her way.

This invocation is milder and serves primarily as an excuse for Mitch Ryan to stumble through Vicky’s entire history as he knows it which, same as the rest of us, isn’t very much.

Mrs. Johnson proceeds to do what nobody else has done in all this time and come up with an entirely rational, if boring explanation for why Vicky hired a completer stranger to come to Collinwood.

Mrs. Johnson notes that, since Liz dismissed all the staff at Collinwood 18 years ago, following the disappearance of her husband, it might make perfect sense that she bring in an outsider, uncolored by any stories and rumors about the Collinses family.

Obviously, we don’t want the boring explanation to be true, but it’s odd how nobody else in the show has ever considered this as a possibility, not even Vicky herself.

Burke realizes that, since Maggie is working the counter this morning, Sam is likely to be having breakfast. This has mostly been borne out since Sam’s recast, we have seen Sam and Maggie having morning chats at the counter a few times before, though it’s unclear how Burke sees this as conventional wisdom given he usually isn’t a part of those scenes. Maybe he heard it from Mr. Wells, who wouldn’t know the nose on his face unless someone else was writing for him.

The two decide to head down for breakfast separately. As they go, Burke reminds Mrs. Johnson that, for the sake of their ruse, “We don’t like each other very much”, at which point Clarice Blackburn slays me where I sit yet again.

Immediately after her departure, Burke gets a phone call from nonother than his cadaverous business associate James Blair.

Burke tells Blair to make himself known to Frank and Richard Garner, Elizabeth’s attorneys and, while not letting on he is working for Burke…

One of the many problems with this storyline is that you have to read lines like that over several times in order to figure out what he’s talking about, or if he’s made some sort of flub, and even then it may not make perfect sense because this has been an arc where everything happens (whenever anything does happen) offscreen.

In this conversation, there are two major oversights, both of which Francis Swann should’ve been well-aware of. One: while it makes sense for Burke to insist on secrecy and discretion in his dealings with Mrs. Johnson, because to this point nobody knows they’ve teamed up, it makes no sense for Burke to insist on secrecy in his plan to buy up all the Collins debts because he just told them all he intends to own all their property. That episode happened in this same week. So, even though the Collinses don’t know exactly how he plans to acquire everything they own, they know he’s planning to.

The other sticking point is Blair himself. While it might be possible for him to present himself to the Garners as an unaffiliated accountant, the Collinses already know Blair and Burke are working together. Carolyn saw them together and, in an episode that aired this very week, told her mother about it as she finally realized Burke wasn’t being funny when he told her he and Blair were conspiring to buy everything the Collinses own.

The best way to handle this, of course, would’ve been to never have the events of Episode 76 happen because from now on every move Burke makes and every attempt by the Collinses to match him will be colored both by Burke’s stupidity in telling them, and the Collinses lack of organization in attempting to coordinate against him. But the cliffhanger was Burke showing up at Collinwood, and I guess they were running out of things for him to scream about.

Father and daughter’s banter is interrupted by the arrival of the ten cent-tipper herself: Mrs. Johnson. Maggie steels herself for another round of harassment-by-customer and goes to do her job.

Before you assume Maggie’s use of the wordy ‘typographical error’ is a result of the shorthand ‘typo’ not being popularized in 1966, allow me to clarify that, no, “typo” derives from the late 19^th century and the rise of mass-market printing. Learning to type was still something of a prestige skill in the mid-century, however, so there was perhaps an assumption the average viewer of a daytime soap wouldn’t know the word “typo”, but would recognize the full form.

But that’s just nerd stuff I can’t imagine you’re interested in. Let’s hear about how regular Mrs. Johnson is.

That’s three diuretics in one meal. I don’t know if this was done on purpose to establish the kind of person Mrs. Johnson is, or if this is just the sort of well-rounded breakfast a middle-aged American woman would be expected to indulge in in 1966.

Maggie returns to the counter and makes a catty remark.

In this episode, we have the rare treat of seeing Sam express concern for somebody other than himself and his one surviving relative. Sam rebukes Maggie for being snide about Mrs. Johnson, noting she’s been through a lot lately, and can’t be expected to be pleasant. If I were writing this soap, I’d already be drafting a romance subplot for these two in which Maggie has to learn to put aside her resentment of Mrs. Johnson for her father’s sake, but who knows, that might as easily have gotten the show cancelled long before the vampire showed up.

Maggie then wonders if she should say anything to Mrs. Johnson about Carolyn wanting her to be hired at Collinwood, something which Vicky told her and Joe last episode. But…here’s the thing. Even before that episode, Maggie knew Carolyn wanted to hire Mrs. Johnson. She also knows Mrs. Johnson knows, because she was present in that scene. But, again, that episode was written by the other guy.

Maggie adds that she doesn’t trust Mrs. Johnson because of…

‘Female intuition’ is a concept that suggests women are more in tune to the feelings and intentions of others. It isn’t really pseudo-science, but it’s also likely not an ingrained talent women are born with. In media, it tends to be a somewhat backhanded attempt to allow female characters to ‘make up’ for physical weaknesses in comparison to men. Maggie, of course, is right not to trust Mrs. Johnson. Conversely, other women on this show like…oh, Carolyn, haven’t yet had one flicker of intuitive guidance, so it’s a real mixed bag.

Burke arrives and Maggie gives him a nice warm greeting, because I guess it no longer matters that he accused her father of being a lying criminal a few nights ago. But, again, that was all written by the other guy.

Burke, because he has to be That Guy, brings up the coroner’s verdict, suggesting Sam must be “happy” about it.

At which point, somebody decides to start a round of dinner theater.

There is a special kind of beauty in the fact that Burke told Mrs. Johnson to pretend they don’t care for each other and, instead of simply being lightly contemptuous, or even outright ignoring him in public, her response is to launch into a community theater production of The Crucible.

Mrs. Johnson stops short of actually accusing Burke of murder (presumably understanding that would be a bit much), but suggests Malloy was so agitated by Burke’s return that he…I guess stumbled into the ocean one night, I guess.

The ante is upped by the sudden arrival of a third party.

The days of it being a big deal when David runs off from Collinwood are well behind us. It’s just regular practice for him to show up in this place halfway through an episode to defend the lecherous creep he’s inexplicably fond of.

Burke restrains David from attacking Mrs. Johnson with his hands and tugs him into the next room. I should just clarify that neither Sam nor Maggie say anything in any of this. They just gawk in evident confusion as a relatively tame scene escalates into a three-ring circus generated by a Mad Libs page.

The subsequent scene is very special because neither Mitch Ryan nor David Henesy seem aware of what their lines are. A simple transcription won’t do this inane madness justice, so please enjoy the entire mess.

Everything about this is insane. The way Mitch Ryan keeps dropping leads for Henesy to pick up on. The way Henesy pivots from “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about” to “there’s something wrong” to “I’m sick!” like Thanos is desintigrating him. The way Mitch seems to decide this is quite enough and they walk off to the next set, leaving the audience no indication of whether this scene has run too long or too short. It’s a miracle Dave Ford and Clarice Blackburn don’t tap dance these two off the set to distract us from the mess.

Anyway, Dave Ford’s pants are pretty high up.

Mrs. Johnson is made to justify her accusation against Burke…not that it matters, it’s all just padding. The whole episode, really, is padding, with the most significant development being what we just saw: David’s first encounter with the woman he has convinced himself will be his “jailer” based on approximately zero evidence.

So Burke takes David up to his room and locks the door.

Burke makes this show of checking the kitchen and bedroom areas of his suite, as if to find spies. I assume this is for David’s benefit, but I don’t know why Burke thinks he has to convince David there’d be people spying on him. The kid’s paranoid enough as it is.

Here, we finally learn the reason for David’s latest impromptu visit to Burke. At least they didn’t wait another two months this time.

So there actually is an internal justification for this. David heard from Elizabeth in his last appearance (yesterday afternoon, in universe) that Burke meant harm to the Collins family and, therefore, he is forbidden to see him again. This led to him and Carolyn having a juvenile fight that didn’t make anybody look good except, I guess, Matthew. Burke, again, has nobody to blame but his own stupidity in just showing up at Collinwood and giving the whole-ass flock of geese away.

Burke’s natural solution to this problem, of course, is to lie: he points out that David suggested Burke come and live at Collinwood the last time they spoke, yesterday.

I’m not sure if I can buy David, who is intelligent enough to engineer a car crash dangerous enough to kill somebody, falling for this stupidity. He’s nine, not six. But a good argument can be made that he just doesn’t want to believe Burke is bad because he’s the closest thing to a father figure he’s ever had.

The throughline for David this week is that he has “divided loyalties”. Matthew warned him against this in Tuesday’s episode, and David brings it up again now, along with an inexplicable historical analogy that I’m sure Francis Swann thought was very clever.

Aw crap, here we go. Still, they were doing the American Revolution a few days ago, so at least the history curriculum is moving smoothly.

The “General Lee” analogy does help explain that weird statue of the shirtless Black laborer in the Collinwood foyer. Also, he compares Burke to Grant, and Grant was an alcoholic, so…

So…okay, I guess we might as well talk about this, since there’s precious little else to do. It’s perhaps easier than ever now to contextualize America’s, er, soft-handed approach to the evils of the Confederacy over much of the last century and a half. The idea that General Lee was some great American hero fighting for what he believed in is, of course, propaganda, and the backlash to it has received a mainstream platform only relatively recently.

So it’s not shocking that a soap opera airing in the mid-1960s, three years after the March on Washington, one year after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and two years before the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., is having a child character treat the two sides of the Civil War as equally justified.

It’s sad. But it’s not shocking.

You heard it here first, folks: Burke Devlin would rather the Confederacy continued to exist as a separate nation. Maybe Francis Swann eventually retired from the whole soap opera gig and wrote the prototype to that horrible Confederacy AU the Game of Thrones guys were working on for HBO.

So David crosses over to the table, and we get another indication of why he might’ve come here: to return the picture he stole. Remember? That thing. As David does this, he bemoans that “they” will probably beat him when he comes back. We already have it from him that Roger apparently does this, but this time, it’s painted as an obvious lie in an attempt to elicit sympathy. Liz certainly isn’t the type to condone hitting him and, if you ask me, Roger’s metamorphosis into a genteel imbecile might mean we’re crawling toward retconning all that alleged paternal abuse.

This is significant only in that it allows David to bemoan that this violence will only get worse is they hire Mrs. Johnson to be his “jailer”, finally connected the two halves of this unremarkable episode together.

So now Burke breaks his own rule to indicate good feeling, and no animosity, toward Mrs. Johnson. I can only assume this is intentional and a way of showing us Burke actually cares about David, while also not wanting to castigate the woman giving her all (and indeed, putting more on the line than he is) to help him.

Which is true, just like Burke telling Carolyn what Blair was about is true. David mentions, as an aside, that Liz is considering hiring Mrs. Johnson, which Burke clearly takes as good news, using this to turn David around on her, by reminding him what a housekeeper does.

All of a sudden this has turned into a kid’s program, and we’ve reached the part where our hero learns a moral. He even tries to prove this by admitting to Burke that he stole the picture and came back to return it but…Burke won’t let him do that, because I guess morals are for chumps.

Burke then claims he “meant for” David to have the picture, letting him keep it. And I think this is supposed to show us what a nice guy Burke is, beneath everything else, but the fact is that David was ready to admit he’d done wrong and apologize, right after Burke affirmed in him that apologizing was a noble thing to do. Burke basically took that away by lying, all so that David ends up liking him more. So it’s emotional manipulation. It’s nice emotional manipulation by the standard Burke has gotten us used to, but emotional manipulation all the same.

Meanwhile, everybody’s having a nice conversation, and Sam has even lit a cigarette.

Mrs. Johnson surprises Maggie by asking for another piece of toast, indicating she likes her “cooking”, to the extent that making toast counts as cooking.

See, it all plays out like the denouement of a children’s cartoon, with the two younger characters being told by their elders to treat the mean old woman with respect and whoa, turns out she’s not so bad after all and even likes toast!

This is almost surreal. I keep waiting for there to be some nasty, insidious twist, but, no, this entire thing is totally heartfelt and played completely straight.

And it all ends with Burke getting David hot chocolate. This has to the be the most earnest thing to happen on this show in almost 80 episodes, and I can’t tell if this is a good or bad thing. There isn’t even anything close to a sinister undercurrent. It’s not like Mrs. Johnson is planning anything nefarious. Technically, her motivations are good: to find evidence pointing to Malloy’s killer. It’s wrong that David hate her for baseless reasons and, therefore, good that he’s apologized.

I honestly… I don’t know what the point of this was. I mean…it was largely a waste of time but…It was nice.

So…er…be good to people today. Say some apologies. It’s what Burke Delvin would want and, this time, that isn’t a bad thing.

This Day in History- Thursday, October 13, 1966

Not much. The guy who played Mr. Belvedere died.

Er… See you next time!