Help Wanted

Television is a medium suited to rapid evolution. It’s necessary that a program constantly attune itself to the needs and expectations of its audience, and shift accordingly, attempting to always entertain, fall in line with general expectations, but still manage to surprise and titillate enough that audiences return and, ideally, grow.

Dark Shadows, in its first 16 weeks, has been very bad at this. Every attempt undertaken to speed the story along seems to produce the opposite effect. A boy attempts to murder his father? A month of long, dry conversations debauching in an empty climax. A man’s body is found floating in the sea at the foot of a cliff? Two months of repetitive discussion, empty accusations, redundant wordplay, and only the barest suggestion of forward, mystery momentum once every two weeks or so. A rival attempts to purchase all the property of the central family? Four months of conversations, intimations, threats of violence, occasional literal violence, until finally the rival, for no reason at all, just tells the family what he’s planning, provoking a shockingly blasé response.

It’s as if Dark Shadows were openly resisting being interesting. Even the two suggestions we’ve gotten since Episode 52 that Collinwood and its environs are actually haunted by at least one actual ghost have gotten no follow-up, or caused any change in the wider scope of the narrative.

And so we come to Week 17. It’s momentous in a lot of ways: it is the last week written by this show’s very first writer Art Wallace, it places a main character in actual peril for the first time in the series run…

And it changes the game in a way so stark and sudden that there can be no going back.

Which is perhaps why it’s frustrating we begin the week with the life story of Matthew Morgan.

See, it’s phrases like ‘narrow, lonely life’ that make me think this show is trying to be polite about our man’s mental faculties.

So we have some more of that new batch of location footage they curated after the first 13 weeks. Eventually, they’ll exceed the scripts they wrote to suit this footage, and we’ll see almost none of it ever again. Including this one of Thayer David walking the streets of Essex, Connecticut.

Matthew stops in at the Collinsport Restaurant, where he finds Burke, who’s changed clothes, despite this being the same day as his last appearance.

This is the first appearance of Mitch Ryan in a turtleneck sweater. Roger wore a classic fisherman’s knit sweater once in the first week, and Joe frequently wears turtlenecks under that cute jacket of his. But no other man on this show can…er…fill a turtleneck quite so well.

Matthew orders a black coffee from Susie, the waitress who isn’t Maggie, and proceeds to sit, uninvited at the table of the man he tried to strangle to death three nights previously.

There is, naturally, some unresolved tension here. But, don’t worry, Matthew is ready for what the kids these days call a Redemption Arc.

Of course, he isn’t Tom Felton, Adam Driver, or a cartoon Fire Prince, so nobody is buying it. We’ll talk more about how only hot guys can be redeemed when we get the awkward vampire with the terrible haircut who lots of teenagers still somehow found irresistibly sexy.

Matthew attempts some kind of weird appeal to Burke’s humanity, pointing out that he is very wealthy and, because of this, doesn’t need to buy Collinwood. This makes the bold assumption that Burke has any motivation besides pettiness which, of course, can’t, by nature, be moved by appeals to humanity. It’s just the rules.

I’m left to wonder, again, what the narrative goal was in having Burke tell everybody what he was planning last week. It honestly doesn’t seem to have changed things. Nobody has ratcheted up the defenses. Indeed, Elizabeth hasn’t changed her plans, and Roger was almost willing to sell Burke the house if it meant he got off his ass about the manslaughters and the murders Burke thinks he did. We got some conflict with David’s “divided loyalties”, allowing Francis Swann to put to paper that the Civil War was a Fine People on Both Sides chapter of history, but that could as easily have happened without Burke tipping his hand to everybody.

I mean…we do get Matthew sitting here and attempting to mediate with Burke, as if he’s the crazy one, rather than just remarkably unsubtle and perhaps not very imaginative.

That is…Burke believes he will be able to eventually persuade Mrs. Stoddard to sell him Collinwood. This, perhaps, is connected to his call to James Blair last week, about finally purchasing those debt notes. The plan seems to be to make it so the Collinses will need to sell Collinwood out of financial desperation.

This plan, again, would’ve worked better if they didn’t already know he wanted to buy the house, meaning they’ll see him coming from a mile away.

Also, I think Mitch misses the ash tray there, but he avoids leaning to reach it, supposedly so as not to spoil the admittedly excellent blocking.

Matthew supposes Burke is doing all of this because of Malloy’s death which…no, he isn’t, but we get a whole recap conversation about how the coroner decided it was an accident, so Burke should stop, and a thousand other things we’ve heard from the mouths of multiple characters over the last week.

Burke points out that’s high talk coming from the guy that tried to kill him in public which…it is. And I can’t even use my usual ‘the other writer’ did it excuse because Wallace wrote that episode too.

Also, since this is Wallace’s final week, I feel I should scatter praise throughout these reviews. Don’t expect Swann to get much of this when we finally wrap his run up. But the dialogue flows so perfectly in this scene that you begin to forget how stupid the premise is. Wallace knows just how to make Burke sound and, for once, his smugness comes off as justified. Where does Matthew get off, talking like that?

Anyway, Burke pays his check, but conspicuously doesn’t seem to leave a tip,

Burke proceeds to give Matthew some “reassurance” which sounds more like a threat.

By which, he means, he’ll keep Matthew around the house once he buys the place.

Is Mrs. Johnson aware of the clause in her contract that mandates she serve as Matthew’s concubine? Because I have a feeling she’d object.

Matthew objects, saying Collinwood will burn before Burke ever gets his hands on it.

See? That’s damn good dialogue. It makes this piss-poor, useless scene almost worth it.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a plot utility to this. There is. Burke mentions the “rumor” that Mrs. Stoddard is hiring a housekeeper, because I guess we’re supposed to expect that that’s the next big bit of gossip after the mysterious death investigation.

The purpose of this is to get Matthew to admit that Mrs. Johnson is coming up for a job interview today, which he does, acting all smug because clearly Burke doesn’t know Liz Stoddard the way he does.

It’s almost sad.

I’m also not sure why Burke had to tip his hand…again. Obviously, since Mrs. Johnson is allied with him, he would know eventually. There’s no reason at all for him to intimate he’s curious to the other guy who works at that house.

We then get an idea why Burke would do something so pointless and wreckless: male insecurity. After Matthew leaves, Burke hurries to the phone booth and dials Mrs. Johnson who, I guess, hasn’t left for her interview yet, to demand answers as to why she didn’t tell him. This, despite the fact, she only got the call earlier today, and presumably had to put some time aside to prepare for the interview as, if it goes badly, there is no plan.

Again, it’s Mrs. Johnson putting her ass on the line for this. Burke is content sitting in the background, pulling strings and thinking about what a clever fellow he is. In fact, he’s entirely absent from the rest of the episode until the very end because, again, his plans only seem to move forward when he isn’t directly moving them.

Back at Collinwood, Liz reprimands Matthew, but not really, for seeing Burke, or “Devlin”, as she calls him.

Oh. She does. Er…

Okay. Sure. Yes. Part of the family, who lives in the shack at the other end of the property and does all the heavy lifting and is spoken to like a domesticated animal. Part of the family. There is nothing strange about this arrangement at all.

Conversation turns to the subject of Mrs. Johnson.

Whereas Matthew put on a show for Burke that he was totally cool with the prospect of Mrs. Johnson, he seems to have reservations about another new face. Which makes sense, given he still hasn’t entirely warmed up to Vicky Winters. I wonder if he’s worried about being replaced by another inexplicable character archetype?

It’s odd how the prospect of a Matthew/Mrs. Johnson rivalry is suddenly in the top five things this show can do to be firing on all cylinders, but that’s just where we are. The business of Mrs. Johnson being hired, or not, is now the biggest point of contention on the entire show, and the axis on which the narrative’s future rests.

We need some new writers.

Act II begins with some location footage of Mrs. Johnson’s cab arriving, and Matthew staring with some hedge clippers.

Mrs. Johnson arrives, allowing us to continue saying that every core character to this point has gotten to see the Collinwood foyer/drawing room set.

The two ladies size each other up, Elizabeth getting weirdly philosophical, as is her wont.

This isn’t the best way to open a job interview, but Liz can probably count the number of outsiders she’s seen in the past 18 years on one hand, so we can let this slide, I think.

Yeah, she probably has a touch of cooking sherry on Friday nights and imagines herself going around the drawing room in Liz’s blazers and brooches, letting Malloy take her on the velveteen stairs.

That’s what this is, of course. Malloy was Elizabeth’s closest friend and confidante, and Malloy loved her for years, but was never able to tell her as much, while Mrs. Johnson was in love with Malloy, but never able to tell him as much. And now she’s jockeying for a job at the house of the woman who, she feels, was too frigid and unavailable to be worth any of Malloy’s time.

This would be really soapy if we had a writer who could logically guess what kind of things women talk about with each other. Or, you know, a woman writer, but…don’t hold out hope for that.

Mrs. Johnson wonders if Liz is looking to replace Malloy at the cannery and, again, this point is weirdly dodged, like they’re hoping to just usher it out of sight and mind until the audience forgets. Which is basically the plan, really, I don’t know why I use the word ‘like’.

These are two great, skilled professionals, and I wish we could get a more conventional sort of soapy banter for the two of them. But alas. We’re relegated to bearing witness to a very uncomfortable job interview.

If you’re like me, you hate telling people about yourself, especially if your career depends on it. My first job interview after I got my undergrad, I was so nervous in the waiting room that I frantically wrote out the lyrics to three Anne Murray songs in my daybook.

Those songs, by the by, were ‘Snowbird’, ‘A Little Good News’, and ‘You Needed Me’.

Nobody likes job interviews. They’re uncomfortable, embarrassing and, in the hands of the wrong recruiters, downright cruel. As a writing device, though, lots of interesting potential emerges.

You can write an interview between two characters with a dynamic like this, making it into a sort of duel of words. You can hide innuendo and subtextual meaning into the answers Mrs. Johnson gives. Through the power of subtext, you can allude to Mrs. Johnson’s scheme with Burke, her love for Malloy, Liz’s relationship with Malloy, even the reason she hasn’t had help at the house beside Matthew for 18 years.

This is Dark Shadows, however, so what we get is Joan Bennett looking desperately at the teleprompter while Clarice Blackburn gently attempts to save her from drowning in a sea of banal dialogue.

The “yes” Mrs. Johnson gives is very quiet and subdued. It probably wasn’t even in the script, just Clarice Blackburn helping a girl out by creating a pause for a teleprompter check.

Mrs. Johnson gets emotional talking about Malloy which…this is gonna kill the mood, I guess. Liz consoles her by saying we can’t “control accidents”.

Job Interview Faux Pax 1: Suggest your previous employer was murdered.

If Elizabeth thinks this is at all weird, she doesn’t linger on it.

Way to take credit from Carolyn, but, in Liz’s defense, I would be embarrassed to admit I was needled into this by my teenage daughter delicately implying I was getting too old to do laundry and stuff.

The implication is that Liz doesn’t want any of the personal business of the family getting out around town…namely to the likes of Burke Devlin who, Mrs. Johnson affirms, she doesn’t know well and doesn’t much care for. At this point, I can well believe only half of that is a lie.

Job Interview Faux Pax 2: Insist very often how much of a gossip you are not.

Then again, protesting too much is the Collins family’s love language, so this may be understandable. Maybe this thing is going better than I thought.

Liz takes Mrs. J on a tour of the house during the act break, after which things seem to be going Just Fine.

Mrs. J is on to start any time, but Elizabeth is still unsure. Liz has Matthew give Mrs. Johnson a lift back into town, which I’m sure was supposed to be a nice gesture, if it weren’t for the fact that Matthew seems like the kind of guy who picks up girls on the road and never drops them off.

As she goes, Mrs. Johnson decides to hype herself up just a little bit more.

A bit much. The people who live here don’t even like it that much. It gets called a ‘mausoleum’ about once a week.

So after they’re gone, Liz returns to the drawing room and stares at Jeremiah’s portrait for…reasons.

The domestics arrive at the Collinsport Restaurant, where Mrs. Johnson prepares to order lunch because it’s afternoon now, I guess. This is another of those days that take a while, but none will ever be as long as the Suppository Day.

It’s now time for my favorite thing: A crack pairing.

Matthew attempts to convince Mrs. Johnson not to take the job. The “ghosts of Collinwood” are mentioned, and we learn that, despite apparently believing in “signs and omens”, Mrs. J doesn’t believe in ghosts. We kind of waffle on this point.

Of course, his ulterior motive is to remove the risk of ‘snoopers’ at Collinwood, or whatever he wants to call them now, but it’s also kind of gentle in how he talks about it, like he is concerned for the woman.

He even wonders why she doesn’t go to live with her daughter who, I guess, is out of town. I don’t think we ever learn where that particular member of her family is, at least.

It’s tender! He never talks like that. It’s almost as though we’ve found the only other human being he respects. And the fact that both of them are older women means Matthew Morgan is a King.

But Mrs. Johnson refutes the idea that she could go off and retire, not wanting to be a “shadow in someone else’s house”. And I believe that too. Sure, she has her own ulterior motive, but Clarice Blackburn sells the idea that this is a woman who needs to be active, she needs to do something in order to feel valued. She can’t just stop.

They’re alike in a lot of ways. Both very devoted to their employers, and both willing to go to extremes to them. We’re not yet sure if Mrs. Johnson would hide a body for her boss, but…even so.

Also, does Mrs. Johnson know about Matthew pushing the body into the surf? It’s unlikely that would’ve been publicized, actually, so probably not. I imagine this scene would be less amiable, then.

Another of those scenes too good for the premise. Mrs. Johnson may be working to find a murderer at Collinwood, but she still has it in her to respect a man who would go to lengths for the people he works for.

It’s mind-boggling, really, how Mrs. Johnson has become the most powerful woman on canvas and, indeed, one of the most powerful characters overall. By choosing to be loyal to Burke, or to the Collinses, to investigate or not, to keep private what she learns (if anything) or not, she now has the most power to affect change.

That’s pretty cool. It’s strange. But it’s cool.

So Mrs. Johnson puts off her lunch to visit Burke upstairs, and he proceeds to do what he’s best at: be a major dick.

The thing he’s objecting too here is that Elizabeth didn’t hire her on the spot, as if that’s how these things work. You get the impression that Mr. Oil Striker hasn’t had to sit many job interviews.

Mrs. Johnson isn’t about to let this guy blame her for inadequacies he made up.

Damn straight. He’s belittling his closest ally for no reason at all. Taken with her scene with Matthew, one begins to wonder if Mrs. Johnson’s loyalties will remain true in the face of this abuse, if Burke’s undoing might actually be an ornery old spinster.

It’s not the worst way this whole slog could end.

Burke apologizes, but we know how well those are worth, and then announces his intentions to go to Lookout Point in search of…

Well, more on that in the next installment of Collinsport Contrivances.

Matthew returns to Collinwood, where he and Liz talk about Mrs. Johnson some more.

I’m not sure the residents of the house are the authorities on being “well-balanced”.

Still, Liz makes up her mind in record time, hurrying to her favorite appliance.

Well, that was pretty fast by the standards of this show. You’d think they’d have made you wait at least until Friday. But this show has other things planned for the weekly cliffhanger, something leagues beyond hiring some new help.

Liz might have. But I’m starting to think the show will be just fine.

Behind the Scenes Shenanigans

As mentioned above, this is the final week for first writer, and series bible “designer” Art Wallace. Francis Swann resumes the writer’s chair in Episode 86.

This Day in History- Monday, October 17, 1966

An earthquake in Peru kills over 100 people.

The government of Zambia acquires the Lochinvar Ranch, turning into a wildlife preserve. We don’t do that very much in America, if anything, it’s the opposite.

The 23rd Street fire sees the deaths of 12 FDNY firefighters in what was, at the time, the deadliest day in the history of the New York City Fire Department. The dubious honor would eventually be claimed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks with claimed…well, considerably more lives.

In lighter news, NBC premiered Hollywood Squares!