Episode 83 is the first of a special breed of Dark Shadows episodes that survives via a technology called kinescope.
What is kinescope, I hear you ask? What a fine question. I will tell you. If you do not want to know, simply use the find-in page function to skip ahead to the text I DON’T CARE GET ON WITH IT, you swine.
Kinescope was the proto-videotape, the technology used to preserve film and television in the 1940s and ‘50s. Basically, they put a camera in front of the film recorder, and just filmed what was going on on the display, giving a sort of second-hand copy, which would be preserved. It’s how live performances and events were saved before videotape, though the practice was utilized post-1956 in certain avenues of television, including soap operas. It was important to preserve these things because master-tapes of daytime television would often be re-recorded, due to how expensive film was. It would be cheaper to record a new Password over an old Young and the Restless, for example, rather than buy extra film. There’s a reason most Dark Shadows episodes were filmed in one take.
It’s really impressive that so much Dark Shadows survives at all. Only one episode is truly considered lost media, and even that one survives in audio format. The remaining missing master tapes are substituted in the home video release with the kinescopes. Almost all the kinescopes are from the first year, with some spilling into the last months of 1967, and very few past that point.
So, all kinescopes are in black and white which, for now, won’t be much of a change. Otherwise, it’s a grab bag. Some have almost perfect picture quality, of the standard with the master tapes. Others look like dogshit, especially those from the next pre-Barnabas storyline. Audio is always wonky, a little louder than it should be.
This, the first kinescope episode, is fairly inoffensive. Indeed, you probably wouldn’t have noticed the difference if I hadn’t said anything.
We begin with some more new location footage, of Roger heading out onto the Collinwood terrace in his boss ass coat and hat.
Back at Collinwood, Vicky returns to David’s room to collect her teaching supplies and finds her supposit…I mean silver filigreed fountain pen is missing and then David shows up and they argue about it, because the pen is now the primary driver of narrative conflict and possibility and we have just have to live with that.
I was a child once. Perhaps you were too. Perhaps you are a child right now. What are you doing here? What’s wrong with you? Regardless, you are probably familiar with the unpleasant feeling of being blamed for something you didn’t do. It might have been an older sibling, or a cruel ‘friend’, or a suspicious teacher, or a ghost even, perhaps. It’s a horrible feeling. It’s even worse if you have a reputation for not telling the truth otherwise, which means you’re suspected automatically, even if you really are innocent this time.
And welcome to the central conflict of today’s program.
They don’t bother to keep us in suspense about the pen for very long, dissolving to Roger just burying the thing in the woods someplace.
And that’s it. He buries it in an unclear location, presumably some distance from Collinwood, unless he’s an idiot and buried it close to Collinwood. Either way, it’s buried. So long silver filigreed fountain pen, I’m sure we’ll never hear from you again.
There are many reasons this plan isn’t as clever as Roger seems to think it is, and I will address most of them later. For now, let’s just imagine an alternate universe where super-paranoid Roger gets into his car, drives into Canada, finds the highest cliff, and chucks the thing into the darkness. And then he wakes up the next morning and the pen is next to him in bed like a grim token of all his sins.
Back at Collinwood, David offers a theory for the missing pen.
Again, Vicky draws a distinction between “ghosts and widows” as if the Widows aren’t supposed to be ghosts. It’s unclear why she does this, except to avoid confusing new viewers, who might not immediately make the connection. But then, what new viewers, amirite?
Vicky proceeds to make broad generalizations about the sprits of the damned, which I think is a little bigoted, but let’s let that slide for now.
And here we go.
So, for one thing, it isn’t groundless that Vicky accuse David, who has more than once broken into her room to vandalize, steal, and plant incriminating evidence among her possessions. He also spent most of the previous episode coveting the pen in a manner nobody could describe as “subtle”. So it’s not like she’s being unfair.
Still, you can’t help but sympathize with David who, after all, had nothing to do with this one, and in fact, seems to be thinking in the right direction here…
Yeah. Why not? Vicky rules him out because they were in the drawing room together, appearing to selectively forget that, for a while after that, she and David were in the drawing room together, and Roger wasn’t. There’s no rationalization for this, she just forgot about it, I guess.
I suppose one reason Vicky is unwilling to accuse Roger is it’s totally absurd to imagine a fully grown man stealing a pen from his son’s bedroom. And yet here we are.
The closed off wing of the house. Remember that? Like the locked door in the basement, the east wing is one of the “Mystery Boxes” introduced at the very beginning of the series run. As with the locked door in the basement, we have yet to get even the slightest hint of what may be hidden inside. We were treated a glimpse of David sneaking out of it early in the suppository story, but that has never been explained or even hinted at again.
So, in some ways, it makes sense that it’s David bringing attention to it again. It’s still abrupt and out of left field, but when so much pure nothing has been happening for all these weeks, anything at all is abrupt and out of left field.
David claims that the ghosts live in the closed off wing. I guess that makes sense, actually, they must get lots of privacy that way. Before Vicky can argue this any further, Roger shows up.
A riot? It’s slightly raised voices between a child and his governess. Roger must get terrible migraines.
So they explain the situation to Roger and, I assume he must’ve realized this would happen. He stole the pen from David’s room. Not that I expect him to have reservations about framing his son, I mean…the kid did try to kill him and proceeded to be let off the hook for it. But even so.
Surprisingly, Roger doesn’t side with Victoria in accusing David, even though that’s the only explanation besides him being responsible that makes any sense.
So, on one hand, it’s nice to see Roger defending his son against a crime he didn’t commit. On the other, this is emotional manipulation, because Roger created the circumstances that put David on the spot to begin with, basically engineering a situation in which David would be grateful to him.
So, it’s acting nice, but doing bad things. Like Burke preventing David from apologizing (for actually stealing from him), by claiming he always intended him to have the stolen photo to begin with. So maybe both David’s Dads suck at this.
Christ, this is sad.
But David still takes advantage of the opportunity to rub it in Vicky’s face that Roger isn’t on her side.
Anyway, now for some weird, out-there, irregular stuff. Let’s get some young people falling in love.
Joe has come to pay a visit to the lovely Maggie Evans, who is back behind the counter for the second time today. Don’t bother trying to figure out her and Susie’s schedules, there’s no sense in any of it.
This is Joe and Maggie’s first scene together since their also out of left field, and also very welcome dance at the Blue Whale, exactly a week ago. Joel Crothers and Kathryn Leigh Scott have proven to have an irrepressible chemistry that looks like it can give this show something it desperately needs: a couple to root for.
Maggie realizes, in fact, that the Collins cannery traffics in little, not big fish, and Joe runs with that.
I like the knowledge that, at some point before we met him, Joe had un-bitter days. Though I guess his night with Maggie counts as one of them. Ahem.
It’s sad this is the one chance Art Wallace ever got to write these two, because he was clearly feeling himself here.
They’re just two young, working people with a little history, chatting it up and being cute with each other. It’s the most effortless relationship on the show, the only one without baggage, or darkness, or any agenda for either party. I hate to use this word…but it’s pure. And it’s desperately needed.
Joe intimates (after Maggie brings it up) that Carolyn is on the outs with him.
It was subtler last time, but Maggie clearly has no patience for Carolyn dicking Joe around as she’s been doing, and she’s not at all afraid to speak her mind.
Joe tells her about Carolyn’s tantrum from Friday’s episode, after Roger told her about his dance with Maggie last night, how Carolyn told him never to speak to her again.
See, she gets it.
This, again, goes to the fact that technically speaking, Carolyn is right about Joe and Maggie dancing. However, as we mentioned last time, that’s a minor offense in comparison to all the shit she’s put Joe through. Indeed, Carolyn was introduced flagrantly dancing with other men while on a date with Joe. So it’s hard to have any sympathy for her here.
The dynamic between Maggie and Joe (Jaggie? Maggoe? My head wants Jaggie but my heart wants Maggoe) reminds me, if you’ll forgive me doing this again, of a song from Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon album, which wouldn’t be released for four years, but I will still bring up anyway.
In “Conversation”, Joni puts herself in the role of a young woman who’s friends with a young man with whom she has…conversations.
“He comes for conversation/I comfort him sometimes/Comfort and consultation/He knows that’s what he’ll find…”
The man has a girl of his own, you see.
“I see him in cafes/And I only say ‘Hello’/And turn away before his lady knows/How much I want to see him…”
Joni knows the girl doesn’t treat her man the way he ought to be treated.
“She removes him, like a ring/To wash her hands/She only brings him out to show her friends…”
And, at the end of the day…
“I want to free him.”
Maggie wants to free Joe from Carolyn. Hello, maybe that would be good for Carolyn too. It doesn’t seem like they make each other very happy.
Joni Mitchell tends to be critical of her earlier work as being “twee”. This presumably counts everything before Blue, so “Conversation” must be in that category and it is one of the lighter songs in Mitchell’s catalogue. But of course it is. It’s a young woman’s song. She was 26 or 27 at most when she wrote it. There’s something achingly human (and achingly young) about falling in love with a friend and realizing his other half isn’t good for him. It’s timeless, as true a feeling now as it was in 1966.
That’s the magic of Maggie Evans. We want what she wants. And there’s also some magic in Joe. He’s a stand-up, good guy. He should be freed. And if Maggie can free him…more power to her.
They talk about the promotion Joe was offered today, and how Joe turned it down.
She knows what he wants. She understands him. It seems Carolyn does too, but she never seems very interested in anything he wants. While she has objected to both the promotions her mother has offered Joe, both times it was because she was (rightly) upset at the idea it was all to expedite her marriage to Joe. She doesn’t seem to care at all what he does otherwise.
There’s this short, beautiful pause where Maggie points out he does love her, with this distant little smile on her face, as if half-excited, and half-nervous at what he’ll say next.
Joe wonders what he should do, and that’s great: women love men valuing their opinions. She even gives him a numbered list, so you can tell this is the first time this has ever happened.
This is a very subtle stroke of Wallace’s, especially for a guy who likes to “connect” scenes with incidental dialogue. You’ll note that way back in Episode 16, Carolyn mused to Burke that she thought he was the kind of man who’d knock her over the head and drag her off if he wanted to…and Carolyn liked that about him and, indeed, was disappointed when Joe balked at the suggestion.
He certainly can do that, yes.
So, yeah, back to the pen, because that’s what we’re all here for, after all.
Roger calls Vicky down to the drawing room and embarks on a level of playacting I would describe as “inspired” and also thoroughly unnecessary. First, he apologizes for being short with her upstairs. Then, he casts doubt on David’s guilt anyway.
Why would he do this? For his scheme to work, Vicky must believe David is the one responsible because, if it wasn’t him, there was only one other person with motive and opportunity…
It’s like what Burke’s always doing to Carolyn: suggesting the truth in the expectation that the other party will be too abashed to actually believe it. And, as always, it works.
Victoria points out it isn’t the pen itself, more the fact that David is lying and lying is bad. She’s living in the wrong house.
Very good question.
Roger suggests that preserving “peace and quiet” around the house is more important than keeping people from doing crimes, which is well in line with everything we know about him, and tells her the best way to ensure this all goes away is just…
To forget about the pen. Like, stop mentioning it, and then David will stop mentioning it and, I guess, then it’ll be like nothing ever happened.
That’s his plan. Just have these people, who now have very vivid, emotional memories attached to this pen, forget all about it. This was all he had after “send her to Florida”. There was no other contingency.
The thing of it is…Vicky can’t just forget the pen. Burke is going around town talking about it. He’s already mentioned it to the sheriff. Vicky isn’t likely to “forget” before the next time she and Burke run into each other. Likewise, David is friendly with Burke and, despite Liz’s best efforts, probably won’t stop devising ways to reach him… This thing was too big to contain even before Roger stole the pen. Him taking it just makes him look responsible. He was trapped the second Vicky found the pen in the first place. All that matters now is how we get from Point A to Point B.
And…er…well, it’s not as cut and dried as you’d suspect, so I guess this show is learning.
And here’s another masterstroke from Art Wallace; something completely perfect, very subtle, sewn into the fabric of the narrative in the show’s very first week. Only audience members who were there at the very beginning would’ve had any chance of noticing the wink he’s giving here. And, even then, it’s been almost four months, which is plenty of time to forget an incidental piece of dialogue. I’m sure if I had been watching from the beginning in 1966, without the benefit of home media, I’d never have noticed either. This is just something a writer who cares about his craft does, for the sake of the craft and nothing else.
In Episode 2, Carolyn and Joe’s introduction, Carolyn tells her mother that she wants a white knight to take her from Collinwood…and Joe isn’t that knight. She doesn’t say why, though. She never does.
And here, 81 episodes later, Maggie tells Joe that he is a white knight…Carolyn can’t see it. But she can.
I’m honestly kind of in awe here, so I hope this was intentional and not just reusing a phrase.
Maggie frames this, not as Joe being a great catch (she would appear to have some tact), but by saying Collinwood is no place to not want to be rescued from. She references her one visit to the place, twenty episodes ago now.
They keep talking about the east wing. I can’t imagine why…
Joel Crothers continues having just a fine time. It’s great to see.
These two are so natural together. It’s superb. Maggie must have the same vibe because, as Joe departs, she invites him to dinner with her and father tonight.
And there’s a loaded statement. Because, indeed, Maggie wants to free him. And we want her to. For the good of everybody.
They’re in love. I’m in love. It’s great. Now, let’s watch a father bribe his son.
Like hell Roger has a million dollars.
So Roger gives David the same performance he just gave Victoria, just changing the words here and there. He ought to hire a copy-editor.
Indeed. Louis Edmonds made a mistake right there.
So Roger reaffirms he believes David is innocent, and that Miss Winters was “hasty” in accusing him. He gives David some cheap pen he probably bought for a penny as a replacement, because he’s a callow son-of-a-bitch and that’s why we love him.
Roger, in return, solicits the same “favor” he asked of Victoria: that David forget all about the pen for all time. David has all the sense Hermes gave a hemorrhoid, however, and notes it isn’t easy to simply banish a single specific thing from one’s mind for the rest of eternity.
Well, yeah, there’s that too, but Roger reassures David Vicky has been sworn to the same secrecy.
Which Roger allows, of course, as David still being mad at Miss Winters is the next stage of the plan he’s pulling out of his ass in real time.
David wonders if Roger knows who took the pen.
Oh, to be an emotionally disturbed nine-year-old boy in a house full of robots, guns and ghost friends.
They never directly revisit Roger’s “Who’d you rather be rid of: me or Miss Winters?” ultimatum from Episode…er…68, but this is basically the narrative fulfilling it anyway. Roger gently nudging, without outright directing, David to do harm to Victoria. And it works.
So that’s where we are now. Roger knows exactly what his son is capable of, because he was almost killed by his son’s capabilities, so this is essentially him given a child carte blanche to murder the babysitter, a woman Roger has been actively cultivating a friendship with for days now.
It’s the most sinister Roger has ever been. Never, as a murder suspect, has he seemed more than a frightened, cornered coward. Now, however, there is something downright and deliciously sinister about him.
And all for the want of a silver filigreed fountain pen.
Night falls over Collinwood as we enter Act IV. The wind is howling, and there’s reports of thunder in the distance, as David steals up behind Victoria.
The kinescope adds to the eeriness. The vaguely distorted audio makes David’s voice sound that much sharper, louder. The poorer quality kinescopes are just painful to listen to, but here the experience is almost enhanced.
Vicky tells David that there’s nobody around. It’s just her and him at Collinwood. Makes you wonder where Elizabeth is. Playing footsie with Matthew?
Well, anyway, no sooner has David confirmed that they’re all alone does he run off without an explanation, which is an immediate clue that Something’s Going On. Vicky doesn’t seem to understand this, instead giving chase…
Only to be waylaid by a visitor.
Joe’s visit is a reminder of how wildly disparate the two halves of this episode are. It’s weird to even think all this pen chicanery at Collinwood exists in the same world as Maggie and Joe commiserating over a diner counter.
Joe is here to see if Carolyn is back from her temper tantrum-induced flight. She, naturally, is not, which gives Joe the privacy he needs to ask a question whose answer is vitally important to his progression as a character, which is why something crashes to the floor somewhere on the set, producing a godawful clanging noise right ahead of it.
And Vicky, without the worry of Carolyn close at hand, desperate for consolation and advice she won’t heed, gives him the most honest answer she ever will:
She says it lightly, like a joke, but I get the impression she means it, that she’s been finding it harder and harder to side with Carolyn in her continued drama over Joe. You get the sense she feels bad for him. And, again, in any other soap, you’d expect these two to already be gravitating toward each other, but they dropped the ball on that a while ago, and good thing, because I like the other option better.
Joe takes his leave. Vicky, not thrilled at the idea of staying the night with David, tries to convince him otherwise, but…
I didn’t know the NYPD Union took memberships from Maine.
Thinking she must’ve offended him, Vicky apologizes for what she said, but it’s less that that’s got him moving. Not wallowing in the mistakes of his past but, instead, turning toward a more hopeful future.
Well, at least he’s gonna have a good time this evening. The same can’t be said of poor Miss Winters who finds herself, again, alone in an old dark house, with a dangerous, small boy who wants revenge for a crime she did not commit.
She goes upstairs to track David down, finding him in the hallway outside his room. After confirming that Joe is gone, David reveals, with an unsettling calm.
This is legitimately unsettling. More so since we just saw David at his softest last episode. The idea that he can turn it on and off is immensely disturbing.
David claims he did take the silver filigreed fountain pen…
The closed off wing of the house. David is willing to retrieve it, but only if Vicky goes with him.
You’re probably getting a lot of red flags here. Congratulations, you’re better at this than Victoria Winters.
David also reveals he has a key to the wing, retroactively explaining how he was able to slip out of the closed off wing the last time, so long ago, which also happens to be the last time that area of the house was even close to relevant.
So, Vicky rightly thinks it’s ridiculous to follow a disturbed child into a mysterious, abandoned place with nobody around to help her, but damn it all, we need something to happen, and she’s willing to take one for the team.
See you on the other side.
This Day in History- Wednesday, October 19, 1966
Conglomerate Gulf and Western Industries saves Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy, beginning the era of “corporate Hollywood”. Yay.
In not-quite-unrelated news, uber-cool nerd director Jon Favreau is born. Iron Man still holds up, and his Jungle Book is the best of the Disney live action remakes. Not that that means much.
Shameless Plug
I wrote a fanfic oneshot about Joe and Maggie, based entirely off my tangent in this post! It’s barely three pages, and I feel it can be understood as a reworking of their scene in this episode, but who cares? It’s Dark Shadows fanfic and I wrote it and I think that’s neat, and if you want to read it, just click the link.
I DON’T CARE GET ON WITH IT
Got you, didn’t I? Get back to the top of the page, you can stand to learn something today.
[If you did read this far, God bless you.]
Kooks of Collinwood 