Writing soap operas is hard. You have to churn out five scripts a week, have little-to-no time for edits, are beholden to the restrictions imposed by the network, a very tight budget, and the egos of producers, directors and actors, all of whom collaborate to ensure your narrative constantly changes.
The job is also very thankless. As a writer, your name is shoved into the back end of the episode, present to be glimpsed for a second or two in the end credits. In an era before Internet fandom, it is unlikely anybody watching your work would even know your name.
So we must have some sympathy for poor Francis Swann, a newcomer, not just to soaps, but to television writing in general, as he slogs his way through week after (every other, with one exception) week of episodes. The Murder of Bill Malloy was meant to make Dark Shadows more noirish, suspenseful and dramatic, to increase the stakes for the characters by evoking some of the primetime thrillers of the 1950s and early ‘60s. Sadly, a mystery narrative doesn’t translate 100% to the serialized daytime format, at least not without serious tweaking. So maybe it isn’t a surprise that we’ve been watching increments of police procedural intercut with Burke Devlin swearing vigilante justice for almost two months’ worth of episodes.
Swann has given us good things too, however. It was he that introduced the character of Mrs. Johnson, Bill Malloy’s housekeeper and to date the newest member of the canvas. Depending on whether or not there was a typo in the credits for that episode, it’s just possible he, and not Art Wallace, wrote the episode introducing the Old House and the ghost of Josette Collins. Even if he didn’t write that one, he did write Episode 52, which featured the first undoubtedly supernatural event in the series run. As recently as this week, Swann also steered Dark Shadows into true romance for the first time, by placing Maggie and Joe together in a moment of pure soapy spontaneity.
Still, there is only so much I’m willing to forgive. And when you open a Friday episode with a man wandering around his living room looking for a pen, it should not be controversial that you should be fired.
I don’t have many Dark Shadows friends in what the kids call IRL. Those that I do have, when I have mentioned the Bill Malloy story, either admit they don’t watch the pre-Barnabas episodes because they’re boring, say “Is that the one with the [redacted] who [redacts] [redacted]?” or go “Oh, yeah, with the pen!” And I have to believe, when they invoke the Sterling Silver Filigreed Fountain Pen, the primary reason they remember it is this scene. Nearly two minutes of decorated stage performer Louis Edmonds pacing around the set, muttering to himself about a pen for more than a minute.
It’s really proof of what a good actor can do because, while no amount of performance ability can make this not funny, Edmonds makes it fun to watch. The way he shakes his fist when he repeats the word “Pen!”, like he’s the Red Skull or something. And how he paces around the room muttering to himself, like a guy who’s lost his car keys. Then stands by the window, going “Maybe I changed my jacket” before punching the piano with fury as he declares he didn’t. And then he caps it off by turning to Victoria like she just caught him naked.
The Sterling Silver Filigreed Fountain Pen is, I guess, the most “memeable” thing in the pre-Barnabas era, unless you count less tangible things like people saying “Burke Devlin”. I wonder from time to time why this prop, in particular, is treated with such mocking scorn. It’s not like it’s the first tube-shaped metallic MacGuffin that has changed hands from character to character and is significant in proving somebody’s guilt in a crime.
I guess the suppository story is over and done so quickly (comparatively, I know it felt like a slog when we were covering it, but really, as an arc, it’s over in less than a month) and, as frustrating as it is, the show is also, simultaneously, introducing characters and establishing who everybody is. The world of Collinsport is still relatively new. By now, we know everybody, Vicky Winters knows everybody, and just about all necessary introductions have been made. The world of Dark Shadows isn’t strange and unfamiliar. Just as Roger and Liz now freely call Victoria by a nickname, so too do we feel at home at Collinwood. Which I guess makes it harder to take the pen seriously, even though the crime it’s connected to is literally deadlier than the crime the suppository was caught up in.
I think it’s also the way the pen bounces around. Whereas the suppository was an ever-present device within its story, the pen comes and goes as it pleases. First introduced in Episode 42 when Burke gave it to Carolyn in Bangor, it was seen quite soon after that, when Roger discovered it and, outraged that she’d whore herself out to Burke for stationary (not that he said it in so many words), confiscated it, intending to return it to Burke.
However, come the fateful meeting at Roger’s office, the pen proves missing, and both Roger and Burke promptly forget about it. This is the last anyone speaks about it for almost thirty episodes until Carolyn mentioned it in passing two weeks ago. Burke reveals Roger never returned it to him, and thinks nothing more of it. Carolyn, however, is upset that Roger might have lost something so valuable, because I guess “expensive pens” are high priority for her, right below “Burke Devlin” and several notches above “boyfriend”. Carolyn mentioned this to Roger, immediately getting him concerned as he seemed to realize his losing the pen might implicate him in, er, something he of course wasn’t able to tell Carolyn about.
In that same episode, because Francis Swann is very bad at subtlety, Victoria Winters took a walk down the beach to Lookout Point, the very place Sheriff Patterson and Company determined Malloy would’ve gone into the water. On the beach, she found the pen and pocketed it.
The pen then went another week unmentioned until today. This is probably justifiable, since Roger is the only character actively worried about it, and his concerns were realigned with Burke’s arrival at Collinwood right at the end of that episode.
So, essentially, the pen is an elusive thing. It pops in and out of the narrative and, whenever it does, it pivots the story in another direction, like a tweaky analog stick on a video game console, in this way serving not just as a Chekov’s Gun, as we discussed last time it was a point of contention, but as a MacGuffin: an item whose main relevance to the plot is that it is sought after by characters. On its own, the pen is nothing. Its value is entirely wrapped up in the meaning ascribed to it.
Anyway, back to the show. Victoria catches Roger embarrassing himself.
Cue titles.
Hilarious. I’m pissing my pants.
Victoria is looking for something too. Rather, someone: David, the boy she’s supposed to be teaching about the Civil War, and how there were fine people on both sides, I guess.
It turns out that Roger knows where David is, having been contacted by someone (Maggie?), who informed him David and Burke were together at the Inn. I assume from the wording it wasn’t Burke calling, but it’s still fun to imagine Roger’s ex phoning to say “Sorry, the kid just wanted to see me again. I guess you haven’t been treating him right. No, I won’t mention this at the next hearing,” etc.
But, yeah, Roger isn’t nearly concerned at the prospect of his two worst enemies meeting up again this time around. I guess the pen has occupied every corner of his mind.
We then learn that Roger apparently did go to the inn to pick his son up, but…
I get that I’m a squishy millennial, but there’s something off-putting about how cavalier everybody is about David just wandering the roads unattended.
This is only the second mention of the place in the two weeks since it showed up. Like the pen, they’re really holding the reins on us here.
Roger changes the subject to the question of Elizabeth hiring Mrs. Johnson to work at Collinwood, as if Vicky would’ve been given any insight to this. Since learning all about who Mrs. Johnson is two episodes ago, we must assume that this, like the pen, is something he is very nervous about. Not that he has any inkling of Mrs. Johnson’s true intentions, but I guess he can’t trust himself not to be in the same room as her without yelling “I KILLED BILL MALLOY”.
Unless, he didn’t, but at this point, they’re gonna have to craft a very creative excuse for why he’s been acting like this for all this time.
Roger seems to think that Victoria has the power to convince his sister not to hire people. I don’t know where he got this impression, but it’s probably true that he’s the least likely person in the household to convince Elizabeth of anything, so…
When Victoria wonders why Roger is opposed to the notion of Mrs. Johnson coming to work here, Roger inelegantly searches for a sufficient explanation and, not finding one, settles on:
I know that Roger apparently has never met this woman and, as a matter of fact, neither has Vicky, but neither one of them find any quibble in the suggestion that Mrs. Johnson is going to be having Collinwood Raves with the girls.
Elizabeth gives Roger one of those looks and Vicky wisely gets right the hell out of the room, abandoning him to his sister’s mercy.
Roger tells Liz that he doesn’t want Mrs. Johnson around because “she will be a constant reminder of Bill Malloy’s death”. And I’m sure he’s not lying. He’s probably afraid he’ll look at that beautiful, birdlike face and pillbox hat one too many times and collapse to his knees, sobbing for recourse.
Liz responds by Owning That Ass.
Considering he just laughed off the fact that his son’s run away from home for the second time in as many days…yeah. Indeed, he only references that now as a way to make Liz feel bad.
Elsewhere, Carolyn visits Vicky to bother her with more of her inane bullshit.
Wise words and, also, the go-to strategy for handling the question of Vicky’s story arc.
So, Carolyn is worried because Joe hasn’t called her since she broke their date “last night”. This is the last time we’ll have to worry about the Swann-induced continuity error that placed the Joelyn “broken date” from two nights ago to “last night”, a displacement that did, at least, facilitate one of the best episodes so far, as well as making the first inroads for a relationship between Joe and Maggie.
Vicky’s advice is to…call Joe. Which yeah. Yeah, that is a thing that makes sense.
That sure is how those wimmins speak, yes indeed.
But Carolyn does decide to call Joe in the end. What a striking development. You can really tell this is a Friday episode.
Roger and Liz put the subject of Burke and David aside almost immediately, which really makes you wonder why Roger mentioned it in the first place, if not just to create a faux-suspenseful hook as they changed scenes. But that’s something only an untalented hack would write.
Roger leaves the drawing room as Carolyn gets off the phone with Joe. This is all still the first act, by the way.
I need a cigarette.
Roger asks if Carolyn is sure she gave Roger the Sterling Silver Filigreed Fountain Pen and Carolyn says of course she is, because that was the night Malloy died. And she also already told him this the last time it came up in last Friday’s episode. But that wasn’t written by this guy and you get the idea.
And, yes, it’s important to occasionally recap things on soaps for the benefit of new viewers, or viewers who missed an episode, or whatever. We’ve talked about that before. But the sheer frequency with which Swann does things like this is more demonstrative of a lack of care for the material than a concern for the audience’s ability to follow the story. After all, the story moves so slowly, it’s almost impossible to lose it in the first place.
Carolyn decides Roger must’ve lost the pen on the way to the meeting, if he couldn’t find it around the house, or at the plant. Not that he ever searched his office, that would mean actually going to work.
Still, this gives Roger an idea, and an opportunity for rare location footage of the Slender Man.
This, of course, is directly evocative of last Friday’s location footage of Vicky walking along this same beach and finding the pen. Roger, of course, has no pen to find, but he does throw a rock into the sea in what I assume is frustration.
Vicky is reading a letter from…I don’t know, maybe her roommate Sandy with the ridiculous accent, remember her? This moment of peace and quiet is interrupted by Carolyn, who thanks Vicky for her advice, though I’m starting to think she ought to have said more than just “Call him”, because…
The soap opera genre famously progressed a lot in the ‘80s and especially ‘90s. Stories about race relations, the AIDS crisis, class disparity, abortion. In the last decade we had stories about racial profiling, gay marriage, and trans people. But soaps have also regressed in a lot of ways. Think about it: so many soap operas today still have women needing to be rescued by their men. But Dark Shadows in the Year of Our Lord 1966 gave us a man needing to be saved from a woman!
Carolyn begins worrying about looking presentable for Joe’s visit.
Says the girl with the tightest bob this side of Dusty Springfield. I’d be more concerned with that dowdy frock they have her wearing. I mean, all she ever wears are dowdy frocks, but this is the second worst. The worst of all is the one with the checked breast pocket.
Liz comes in, looking for David, as if Roger hadn’t already told her where he was last seen, and as if she wouldn’t have noticed him come back one room away from the entrance.
Weirdly, Liz uses David’s latest disappearance as a chance to do what I find myself doing on a daily basis.
Which is, of course, more Smooth Writing to get Carolyn to continue pestering Liz about Mrs. Johnson. I love that this has been a sustained through line for two weeks: will they or won’t they hire a maid. And it’s going on three.
Carolyn hears Joe’s car coming and sends Vicky to meet him, so she can do absolutely nothing to her hair.
Liz asks Carolyn what she observed of Burke’s attitude toward David when they were all together in Burke’s room yesterday.
This is a pretty clear misjudgment. If there’s anybody whose slavish devotion Burke “just tolerates”, it’s her.
Well, somebody said it.
So, Vicky lets Joe in, and he immediately has some questions.
She doesn’t yet, to Joe’s relief.
So here comes the sticking point. Is it bad that Joe doesn’t want Carolyn to know he danced with another girl last night? On any other soap opera, it seems clearly indicated who we should sympathize with: the girlfriend, right? I mean, it’s not like he cheated, but he still danced with another girl, and is now wary of her finding out about it!
But Dark Shadows refuses to play by anything even slightly resembling the rules of ordinary soap opera taletelling. Carolyn has spent 16 weeks’ worth of episodes terrorizing Joe, walking out on him to spend time with Burke, inviting Burke to sit with them despite knowing he has designs on her and Joe doesn’t care for him, rubbing her time with Burke in Joe’s face, and even following Burke to another city to have lunch with him at a fancy hotel.
Indeed, the only reason Joe was able to dance with Maggie at the Blue Whale was because Carolyn broke a date with him because he was reluctant to walk out of his job to have lunch with her, continuity error notwithstanding. Joe just had a dance with an old school friend, while her Dad was chaperoning.
So, essentially, the infraction list is Joe: 1 vs. Carolyn XXX (because the…the little number counter maxed out; because of how many infractions she has; get it?), which makes it much easier to sympathize with him.
Or maybe I’m just trash for Joe Haskell, that’s also possible.
She’d better get in line.
Liz comes down and takes Joe into the drawing room, wanting to talk with him. After they’re gone, Roger returns from his fruitless expedition.
It’s cute how she thinks he cares about that.
Vicky tells Roger Liz and Joe are together in the drawing room, and Roger responds with yet more of this newly-revealed contempt for his niece’s boyfriend.
Vicky reminds Roger to be nice to Joe because Carolyn thinks well of him (Does she, though?), and Roger responds…
So, this is another new thing that I guess I’ll have to credit Swann with. Roger acting as some sort of spoiler for Joe and Carolyn. Burke is already there as the romantic rival and, obviously, you can’t make Roger that explicitly. You just hint that he and his niece have unresolved sexual tension. Instead, Roger takes the role traditionally encapsulated by the traditional mother or overly conservative father, only his objections to Carolyn’s man seem to boil down entirely to “He’s poor”. Which is fine, I expect nothing less from our Rog.
Act 3 begins with Liz and Joe. We learn that Liz is attempting to dissuade Joe from his long-held dream of getting his own sailboat and going independent. Roger shows up and immediately sets about acting like a dick.
It’s the way he stands, like he has to mark his territory for the kid who threatened to punch him out in a bar.
Liz suggests that, were Joe to stay at the plant, there could well be a lucrative promotion in his future.
Roger attempts to voice some objection to this, by suggesting he ought to be consulted in these matters, but Liz shuts him up pretty promptly.
You’re probably wondering what kind of business it is that would allow a 21-or-22-year-old guy to be general manager for an entire fleet of fishing boats. Surely, there must be numerous other, older fishermen. But, with Malloy dead, Joe is the only plant employee still on the canvas, so of course he must be first in line for the job. Listen, it’s soaps. Half the people who own companies on Days of Our Lives never went to college.
Anyway, it quickly transpires Liz has further motivations for offering Joe such an exclusive job. She refers to “necessary inducements” that would, apparently, make it more likely for Carolyn to marry him.
And… If this sounds familiar to you, that’s because it is.
In many ways, this is a rehash of a scene way back in the second week which, in-universe, was exactly a week ago. In that episode, Liz awarded Joe a promotion from the boats to an office job, a post where we’ve seen him exactly once, in a set that appeared to have been hastily constructed and not designed to be shot from multiple angles, which is probably why it hasn’t appeared since they switched studios about a month ago.
In that same episode, Carolyn put two-and-two together, accusing Liz of convincing Malloy to give Joe a promotion simply to expedite his marriage to Carolyn, an idea both she and Joe found repellent. Now, Art Wallace, as always, left it open-ended whether or not Elizabeth really did that to manipulate her daughter into getting married so she could leave Collinwood, but I’ve always leaned toward that being the case.
Here, however, it’s made perfectly clear (Swann not being much for subtlety) what Liz intended. She outright tells Joe that taking Malloy’s job would put him in a good position to marry Carolyn. It’s right there, on the table.
This isn’t the first time the show has presented tweaked versions of things that already happened. The oddest thing about it, I’d say, is that there’s no mention of the promotion Joe already had. Has it been retconned away? Is Joe not in an office at all, and still on a boat? I guess, in the end, it doesn’t matter.
Roger’s cattiness (he literally tells Joe Carolyn might not want to marry him) prompts Liz to kick him out, where he encounters Carolyn…
And immediately decides to be a messy bitch.
Carolyn isn’t quick to believe this, which is more evidence Swann doesn’t want us to remember the last time this happened, possibly because he doesn’t know there was a last time.
Continuing to ease perfectly into his new role as the Bad Guy in a romantic comedy, Roger bemoans that Carolyn could do much better than hooking up with a “mere fisherman”, because that’s literally all he has on Joe. Carolyn, much like Vicky, rebukes Roger for the classist insult, wondering what’s wrong with fishermen, and then we get another horrible line that Louis Edmonds makes into music.
I’m sorry, but there’s no way Roger Collins isn’t a homosexual. No straight man would cattily make a pun out of the “more fish in the sea” expression to lead into the revelation that his gal pal’s man has been unfaithful. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.
Indeed, just like that, Roger tells Carolyn about Joe’s “date at the Blue Whale”. And, again, there is no greater motive here. This has nothing to do with Burke Devlin or Malloy’s death or the missing Silver Filigreed Fountain Pen. It’s entirely likely there could’ve been no Burke, no Victoria, no nothing that’s developed in the last 80 episodes, and Roger would’ve still done this, because that’s just how he spends his downtime.
So Carolyn takes off in a pique, ostensibly to ask Vicky if this is all true, but she comes racing right back down the stairs when Liz and Joe come into the room.
What a guy.
But yeah, Carolyn races down and, er…does what she does best.
Okay, actually, good. I’m glad she’s taking time out of her schedule to call this out. Well, call this out again. Still, consistency.
I like how she makes a big deal about getting answers from Vicky before jumping to any conclusions, but at the first possible opportunity, she jumps to some conclusions.
Carolyn barges in on Vicky who is now writing letters, rather than reading them. Maybe it’s another letter to herself. Maybe the letter she was reading was also a letter to herself. Maybe she never actually gets any mail. Regardless.
Here we go a-fucking-gain.
Carolyn wonders why Vicky didn’t tell her about Joe and Maggie being at the Blue Whale last night, and Vicky asks a succinct question.
Vicky then calmly describes what was really happening. That Joe and Maggie ran into each other, and Sam was there and everything. Things rapidly turn out to be about more than this, with Carolyn admitting she has feelings about Joe turning down Liz’s proposal. She doesn’t say it…but might she feel guilty about Joe’s independence? That he’s working so hard to earn a life with a woman who can’t love him the way he deserves? If so, it’d be a new and unique, and very sympathetic view of Carolyn’s waffling. Which is why I’m skeptical that’s the intent, but I’ll believe it anyway.
Carolyn decides she’ll take a walk to clear her head.
And Vicky replies, with a perfectly cool…
Whenever Victoria does something cool, I have to cheer and then get sad as I remember what’s to come.
Still, the girls end on good terms, with Carolyn clearly grateful for the advice and, as ever, unsure what she wants.
Downstairs, poor apologetic Joe takes his leave, Liz assuring him that Carolyn will “get over it”. If by “it” she means the misunderstanding with Joe and Maggie…possibly. But if she expects Carolyn to just forget about Elizabeth repeatedly manipulating events in an attempt to marry her off, Liz might be yet more of a sociopath than…
Well, actually, nothing’s going to top letting David off the hook for the suppository, so never mind.
Liz asks Roger to fetch Carolyn for her and then goes to her favorite place: the phone.
If you ask me, that’s the real Friday cliffhanger. Sadly, we have two more minutes.
So Roger shows up in Vicky’s room looking for Carolyn, and we immediately realize that was just a plot device to facilitate this interaction. Vicky mentions Carolyn went to Lookout Point and, when Roger mentions that’s where Malloy died, Vicky declares…
It’s also worth noting that so few good things happen to Victoria Winters that her discovery of a useful piece of trash on the beach is something she finds worth boasting about.
Vicky happily reclaims the pen from Roger and walks off to refill it while he stares after her in hapless abandon, as if he can already feel the noose closing around his neck.
This, the 16th Friday cliffhanger, is the most abjectly ridiculous one in the entire series so far, even as it indicates a significant point of progression in the floundering mess that is the Bill Malloy story. Still, at least things seem to be moving forward.
And just wait until next Friday’s cliffhanger…
This Day in History- Friday, October 14, 1966
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, returning from a tour of South Vietnam, sends a secret memo to President Johnson, noting that the North Vietnamese government “knows that we can’t achieve our goals” and “I see no reasonable way to bring the war to an end soon.” And, well…they were right.
Jo Cals, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, resigns with his entire cabinet after his own party pushes through a vote of no confidence.
The United Kingdom observes the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, in which William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II and established a new dynasty.
Kooks of Collinwood 