Red Flagapalooza

Last week saw the most dramatic escalation we have yet seen on the acid trip that is Dark Shadows. In the space of three episodes, our heroine was duped, deceived, and damned by her demented nine-year-old charge David who, irate that she had accused him of stealing the sterling silver filigreed fountain pen neither of them know is a vital clue to the murder mystery that has dominated the show for the past two months, locked her in a room in the sealed-off wing of the house, thereby placing a main character in deathly peril for the first time in 85 episodes.

And, yes, we have had what Wikipedia’s entry for this show called “an attempted murder and an actual murder”, but Malloy was a supporting character who died offscreen, and Roger’s safety was assured within an episode of that inane car crash, so there.

Even more shocking: last week ended with Vicky being visited by the ghost of Bill Malloy, who warned her to leave Collinwood or die. Shocking in itself, this also is a major turning point for the series. Up to this point, the few supernatural events we’ve seen have been isolated from the other characters, occurring only so that we, the audience, can be privy to them. Now, however, the worlds have begun to merge.

And only a week out from Halloween. I wonder if Dan Curtis was doing it on purpose.

Vicky is sidelined in her own monologue, the action instead pivoting to the other members of the merry household.

Liz asked him this two episodes ago, but those were written by the now-departed Art Wallace, and if we’ve learned anything about Francis Swann since he came on board, it’s that he doesn’t give a damn what the other guy wrote, it’s his script now.

Not that different from writing regimes on soaps now, in point of fact.

But, yeah, it’s not a good idea to have one writer in charge of a soap opera. We saw how that got with Art Wallace writing 40 uninterrupted episodes, necessitating Swann’s arrival in the first place. It’s hard to imagine Swann won’t burn out just as fast, if not faster.

But before he does, he’ll give us some real bangers, so there’s that.

Roger and his patrician boredom are back from wherever they’ve been since burying the SSFFP in the woods someplace. He and David readily unite to share a complete disinterest in the whereabouts of the show’s ostensible protagonist.

It’s that aggressive way he says it that should really clue them into something being up here. But, as we know, they aren’t very good at seeing through this kid’s crap.

Looks like it’s gonna be a long haul.

The Collinses continue conferring as to Vicky’s whereabouts. But they don’t really. Elizabeth is very pointedly the only one who gives a crap. At a side comment about Carolyn being out, Roger shows considerably more interest in her whereabouts which, while keeping with his many psychoses, also demonstrates that the topic of Victoria Winters historically holds very little oomph around here.

She’s gone out without her purse many times. In fact, the one time she has gone out with a purse, it was so Joe could see it in Burke’s hotel room and Get the Wrong Idea about something that went virtually nowhere.

This is weird, because David could easily say he hasn’t seen her since their lesson today, and nobody here could dispute that. Roger even appears to realize this, wondering if he saw Vicky since he saw her and David together, providing David an easy out to claim just that.

Again, the show vacillates as to just how effective a criminal mastermind David is. He’s apparently totally capable of sabotaging his father’s car to assure a life-threatening crash, but he can’t effectively dispose of the evidence, or keep a straight face when questioned about it. We see that here, but somehow it’s even less capable of standing up to any kind of scrutiny.

Elizabeth dismisses David, who pauses on the stairs for a very soapy bit of Talking to Himself:

Talking to oneself is a soap trope that is today virtually extinct, except on such programs as Days of Our Lives, in which it is allowed to exist primarily to reinforce the air of charming cringe the show weaponizes to survive in this jaded age.

In earlier eras, monologuing and asides were important devices for the audience’s benefit, allowing them to catch up as to villainous schemes, for example, if they had missed an episode. Soaps nowadays indulge (or overindulge) in flashbacks to serve these same purposes, but for the thrifty, just shuffling a character off to be alone was the most effective way.

That doesn’t mean I’m about to let this instance slide. We already know David is the reason Vicky is missing. We know this because we just saw Vicky haplessly pleading with the David she has convinced herself is still outside the locked door to let her out. It serves no functional purpose having David talk to himself like this, and it’s actually kind of embarrassing. Maybe Francis Swann watched some soaps for the first time and decided to rip some things off.

Nobody can be bothered to give a damn about Miss. Victoria. Winters. So it’s a good thing we can have Roger spoiling for some tea.

You weren’t allowed to have gay characters on TV in those days, of course, but Louis Edmonds certainly found a way, didn’t he?

One delayed music cue later, and it’s time for the scary half of the episode:

Explicit pederasty.

As in the previous two episodes, the increasing tension at Collinwood is juxtaposed with the Perils of Carolyn Stoddard, which have themselves increased from her quarrel (incited by Messy Bitch Roger, I might add) with Joe, to the point where she has accompanied Burke Devlin from the local watering hole to his hotel room, and is now engaging in their favorite bit of foreplay: remarking how she is much too young to be with him.

This is by far the most intimate situation we have yet seen these two in. Sure, they had something resembling a “date” before, when Carolyn pursued Burke to Bangor to have French fries with him, but that was treated more like Burke was humoring a teenager’s crush.

This is…different.

Sometimes I tell myself that the show doesn’t want us to think too much about the obvious age difference between Burke and his nemesis’s niece, a gap that, recalling that Carolyn is 17 and Burke somewhere in his mid-30s, is at least 15 years wide.

But it seems whenever I tell myself that we aren’t meant to think about it, the show draws intense attention to that very subject:

Because it isn’t pretending. Burke is much older. This relationship reeks of predation. And, while soaps have a history of pairing younger women with older men, they don’t often do this with high school age younger women, not even in the Swingin’ Sixties when, if anything, the majority of that demographic was spending their days swooning over mostly age-appropriate teeny boppers.

Ever since their first meeting, Burke and Carolyn have given off this weird, toxic energy. He threatened to paddle her before they’d even been introduced. He spent their first proper meeting lying to her about what he wanted and why he was in Collinsport. He tricked her into defending him when he was suspected of causing Roger’s car crash during the suppository saga. He has repeatedly interfered in her relationship with Joe, while at the same time courting Victoria in a way that actually seems sincere, a dynamic that has increasingly driven Carolyn’s paranoia and, more than once, convinced her that Vicky ought to leave Collinwood after all, even if she always seems to walk back that idea as soon as having it.

Most recently, he has disgusted Carolyn by admitting to her he was using her as a proxy in the war he intends to wage against her family. In-universe, that happened yesterday.

And now here they are, in his hotel room, having a toast to each other. And just laughing it off how wrong and twisted their little dynamic is.

And for the life of me, I can’t tell whether it’s on purpose.

Okay, so the leading man just implied it’s cool to hit on an 8-year-old. This can’t be something we’re supposed to jive with, right?

It’s fairly clear Vicky and Burke are supposed to be the “A-couple”, right? I mean, just last episode, Burke told Sam Vicky is the one person at Collinwood he wouldn’t want to “scare”. Besides making this business with Carolyn look even seedier than it already is, the intention would appear to be that Vicky and Burke are what the kids call “endgame”, and Carolyn and Burke are some sort of narrative roadblock.

But are we supposed to understand that Burke is being nefarious here? Or are we to believe this is an innocent, only slightly illicit, tryst? It doesn’t help that these two have had far more romantically-inclined scenes than Burke has with Victoria, and they even seem to have chemistry with each other, to the point that they’re actually fun to watch, if you can get the bad taste out of your mouth.

Great idea. You turn on the radio, I’ll call CPS.

Burke switches on the radio, and ABC announcer Bob Lloyd (who reads the slating before every episode, and also informs you which now-forgotten show will be airing in primetime tonight after the credits) makes a cameo as a traffic reporter or something.

The primary purpose of this news report seems to be to remind us that the storm is an isolating event. It has trapped Burke and Carolyn here…to the extent that anybody feels trapped. In fact, they are together on a little island of their own making. We don’t know what either of them want…we know Carolyn, at least, doesn’t even know what she wants.

Burke tunes the radio, and we get some soft jazz to really set the mood.

And, you know what…it does. Because this is…it’s kinda hot. And that’s what’s crazy about it. Nancy Barrett and Joel Crothers always seemed like a high maintenance girl and the sad gay friend who she takes to Chili’s with her so that guys don’t hit on her. Mitch Ryan and Alexandra Moltke have never really shed the lukewarm diffidence of acquaintances from the same office pool. The only real spark of romantic chemistry to this point have been between Kathryn Leigh Schott and Joel Crothers as Maggie and Joe…

And, hard as it may be to admit…between Nancy Barrett and Mitch Ryan as Burke and Carolyn. This is never more apparent than now, once they’ve dropped the whole coquettish fun and games nonsense that characterized Carolyn’s pathetic pursuit of Burke for these many weeks. The romance still feels wrong, inappropriate, and destined to turn out ugly, but these performers are selling a deep, sexy infatuation that is all the sexier for its forbidden-nature.

That…that’s soaps, guys. Christ, did somebody give Francis Swann uppers?

I guess Carolyn doesn’t, but her portrayer, on the other hand…

Or, yanno, a bicycle. But the ‘carriage’ thing is just so that Burke can go back to being gross:

“A lady’s carriage” is a genteel expression referring, not to a literal carriage, but to how a lady of gentle birth “carries” herself. That is to say, it’s about posture. But something tells me either Burke or Swann think it means something a little more direct…

It cannot be understated what a saving grace these actors’ chemistry is. The guy just said she had a nice ass, and now she’s making parking puns, and somehow I’m not vomiting. I am unnerved and a little freaked out, but I haven’t been sick yet, so that’s something.

I should also point out that the…God forgive me…script is actually quite good, and certainly Swann delivers a majority of good scripts this week, among the best he ever did. I guess he kicked it into high gear when he became the only writer.

Carolyn points out at one point that she is, in fact, a member of “the Collins family [Burke has] declared war against”, which demonstrates to us that she, at least, hasn’t forgotten that. Burke’s response…

What the hell is he talking about? The only reason anybody’s talking about the “so-called war” is because Burke declared it. Yesterday. There was no reason for him too, and they probably still wouldn’t have figured it out, if he hadn’t said anything. And before you start wondering what the rationale is here, Burke doesn’t give one. I guess he just thinks it would be unpleasant conversation, and might give Carolyn second thoughts about whatever he imagines the situation is gonna look like in an hour or so.

We’ve had quite enough of that, I think.

Again, this shouldn’t be as fun to watch as it is, but…acting, I guess.

When Burke admits “there were a few” (poor things), Carolyn looks off into the distance, the glass to her lips and says…

Listen…you know I don’t ship it, but this is the first time any of this has seemed like something other than a sex crime waiting to happen.

In what might be a half-hearted attempt to ape Art Wallace, we segue from Carolyn talking about the future to David looking in his crystal ball.

Roger catches David and we get another round of sparring between these two.

Roger wonders what David is doing with the crystal ball he periodically remembers exists.

This is one of those clean energy divining spheres. Very ahead of its time.

I love the positive relish with which Roger says that, like at this point, the only catharsis he can imagine for his son is his sister punishing him, because God knows nothing he does will work.

David declares he’s looking for Malloy’s murderer in his crystal ball, because he hasn’t been doing a lot of that lately since all the pen problems began.

Roger continues to be exasperated with all talk of Malloy’s murder. There’s less of the usual hysteria and panic, though, presumably because, with the coroner’s verdict and the pen literally buried, Roger believes he’s in the clear, and currently nothing he or we know suggests otherwise.

Roger then wryly suggests David put his “mystical powers to more practical use” and determine what happened to Vicky. It is from this we get the impression Roger very quickly figured out David had something to do with Vicky’s disappearance.

And of fucking course he did. I’ve sat on it up to this scene, but we do recall that it was Roger who implicitly cosigned David’s desire to get vengeance on Vicky for accusing him of stealing the SSFFP last week. Roger clearly intended that David would attempt some violence on Vicky that would get her out of the way and out of Roger’s hair, now that she has again become a liability by virtue of simply finding the pen in the first place. It’s unclear how severe Roger expected David’s revenge to be, but considering that he himself has already been on the receiving end of such violence, he certainly knew it would be life-threatening…

And he went along with it anyway. Of course, in such a way that it couldn’t be traced back to him. And, who knows, if David were to get caught, maybe he’d be rid of him once and for all.

Roger may not be Stefano DiMera, but as far as schemes go, this is pretty evolved for him. And certainly very heinous.

So David decides to humor his Dad and consult his “friend in the crystal ball”.

Just imagining Matthew entering the room during all this, shaking his head, and beating a retreat.

David, of course, reports no shocking discoveries, but Roger is fine with this:

Ooh, la.

Poor Victoria is literally jumping at shadows, getting all antsy at mysterious creaking noises. Quite clearly, she hasn’t forgotten the ghostly apparition she witnessed earlier in the night. It’s unclear whether she believes what she saw was truly a ghost, or if she just thinks she’s losing her mind so she can fit in better with every other person in this house, but we can agree that she is having an Unfun time.

This isn’t really funny, but given they cut right to the empty passage outside as she keeps talking to the imaginary David…

It’s a little funny.

Burke is regaling his vic…er, date, with a tale of one of his many travels, in this case to Rio de Janero. You may recall he told Vicky about Norway a few nights previously. Given the tone of these two stories, I get the impression he was only trying to impress one of these girls.

Things are getting closer and hotter and I’m not sure what it says that this is the first “sexy” scene on Dark Shadows. I mean, the first romantic scene happened two weeks ago, so maybe it isn’t a surprise.

I am so disgusted with myself for being into this. Honest to God. But I can’t help it. There is an undeniable, compelling energy between these two. Just the way she looks at him as he gently kisses her hand…ach. Just for heaven’s sake.

Thankfully, however, the script has a built-in cold shower for us, as Burke, apropos of nothing, takes his shoes off and props his feet on the coffee table.

Oh, great, more of this.

So it’s gross that he’s weaponizing her infatuation with him for punch lines, but somehow it’s almost cute. Maybe it’s the public domain jazz on the radio.

Burke says he has, once, and we get the impression he’s talking about David’s mother, the mysterious and disappeared Laura Collins, who Roger so hastily married once Burke was out of the way 10 years ago.

Poor, forlorn, lost Carolyn wonders if falling in love is always “such a painful experience” and, with that surprising tenderness he manages only so often, Burke tells her…

It’s just…it’s incredible. It defies words how good it all is, I…I can’t believe it. What an excellent series of scenes, and absolutely no flailing from Mitch Ryan. Just stunning.

Pity the rest of this episode is wheel-spinning nonsense.

So Roger continues prying, and David isn’t giving him an inch, and just when you begin to worry this merry dance will persist for the next eight minutes, Elizabeth shows up, having found the key to the East Wing in David’s room.

So David denies knowing what the key is or why it was there, Roger makes a biting comment about one of his “pet ghosts” doing it, David latches onto this theory, Liz doesn’t buy it, and then we get some unnecessary convoluted information about the key.

…what? This comes right after Liz says there’s “no other key” like the one David has, but if all the duplicates have the special top…

And that isn’t even a blooper, it was clearly in the script. It just makes no sense and was totally unnecessary. Unlike the locked storage room in the basement, it hasn’t been established that Liz is the only one with the key to the East Wing. All this word salad is redundant and confusing but, thankfully, never needs to be brought up again, so we can let it rest.

So David, worried Liz will unlock the door, explore the East Wing and, eventually, find his prisoner, admits he knows what the key opens, saying only that he “found it a long time ago”, which is probably true, if vague, and so Liz lets the matter rest, because it’s totally unlikely David would have some more valid reason for not wanting her to open that door and look around inside.

That’s your problem, then.

Joan Bennett then bends down to kiss him on the cheek, but David Henesy misjudges her approach and turns his head the wrong way, and so this happens:

The best part is, little David seems to be resisting the impulse to crack up right after.

So, Liz goes to put the key away and Roger goes right back to Queening.

You know things are bad, when it’s Roger Collins calling bullshit.

Act IV begins with another attempt at copying Art Wallace’s favorite gag:

Now, what exactly is Carolyn having trouble believing?

Oh, boy, this is about to be a doozy.

Carolyn and I probably had the same reaction: when your date starts talking about ethnic cleansing, it’s time to plan an escape strategy.

Given this story quickly becomes a thinly-veiled allegory to Burke’s own situation with Carolyn, it’s hopeful to believe he’s just making this up, and it has nothing to do with, say, the “Indian chief” Burke told David he betrayed at the tail end of the suppository saga.

Of course, screwing with the natives does tend to be a quick ticket to ghostly torment in stories like this, so perhaps…

It’s dialogue like that that makes so much of the rest of this forgivable.

As what? Sexual assault? Because, buddy, I’ve got 86 episodes worth of receipts…

Is…is Burke suggesting Carolyn quit him while she still can? Because if you wanna talk about mixed signals…

Not gonna argue, but geez, honey, raise your standards.

Burke offers to drive Carolyn home, but she reminds him his presence isn’t exactly welcome at Collinwood.

And then…this happens.

I know this is hard to believe, but this is the first non Joe/Carolyn kiss in the entire series. On a soap opera. And the same woman is part of both kisses.

But, yeah, this is a fairly major step for these two. Carolyn and Burke have moved beyond their jokey little flirtations and advanced to something truly resembling an affair. And, while Carolyn’s tempestuous feelings are a matter of record, it remains a big question mark just how Burke feels and what he wants from the young heiress.

Which is why it’s a good thing Francis Swann has decided to make people talk to themselves all of a sudden:

So…so is he still using her? Because if so, I think we just got juked by a daytime soap opera from the Johnson administration.

And a Monday episode at that.

Back at Collinwood, Roger raises a lonely toast of his own:

So, yeah, he’s totally figured out what’s going on, and he thinks it’s pretty funny. Which, of course, it isn’t.

There’s a protracted bit with Vicky throwing a glass against the bars of the window, presumably so it makes a noise. And then that doesn’t work, so she hatches another plan where she uses a bobby pin or something to push the key out of the keyhole and then slides a piece of paper under the door, hoping to catch the key and bring it to her side of the door…

Still, points for effort for everybody involved. And I mean in general. Great episode. Except for the incest kiss, I think that was a bit much.

Behind the Scenes Shenanigans

This week returns Francis Swann to the writer’s chair. Following Art Wallace’s departure, Swann will be the sole writer on staff for the next several weeks before the new team shows up. So get excited for that.

This Day in History- Monday, October 24, 1966

The retrial of neurosurgeon Sam Sheppard, accused of murdering his wife in 1954, begins. Sheppard will eventually be found not guilty, thanks mostly to the efforts of his attorney F. Lee Bailey, who rose to stardom because of this case and would go on to represent O.J. Simpson when he was accused of murdering his wife, which does make one wonder about the first guy’s innocence, doesn’t it?