Victoria Winters is currently in Bangor attempting to find out more about her past. Burke Devlin is also in Bangor, doing vaguely explained “business” pertinent to his destruction of the Collins family. This mutual absence means that there isn’t very much left on the home front to move the plot forward.
But that won’t stop Dark Shadows from spending 20 minutes doing nothing. Again.
We begin right where we left off, in a matter of speaking, on the other end of Richard Garner’s phone call from last episode.
This episode is going to be a real pain in the ass to go through. There’s so much nothing in it, and it’s quite clearly a placeholder, shoved right in the middle of the week so that things of substance can happen on Friday.
I’m going try my best to serve you the full Episode 93 experience. First, we have Liz and Roger arguing about Roger’s flippancies.
It turns out that Roger somehow hasn’t noticed Victoria has left. He’s cool with this at first, thinking she stuck to her guns from yesterday and left Collinwood, and is disappointed to learn she’s just taking a few days off, as well as quietly freaked that she’s with Burke.
Yes, this entire episode will just be reactions to Vicky being with Burke. That’s the entire through line of the script. Ink was spent on writing it, and precious film was used to record it.
“Halfway” is a bit of an understatement. Also, I’m fairly certain Burke is David’s best friend. That’s the entire problem.
Time is now spent debating whether or not Vicky encountered Burke by accident, or if they had conspired to go off to Bangor together. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Roger suspected Vicky was a pawn of Burke’s way back in the beginning, but he went so long after that that you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s since realized the theory is wrong.
But we need something to manufacture conflict in this episode and it might as well be this.
Liz tries to spice this up by reminding Roger that Vicky has never been certain about the alibi she provided for him, regarding the night of Malloy’s death, but Roger dismisses this as the case has already been closed. The fact is…Vicky knows nothing she can tell Burke about the Collinses. There’s the Malloy apparition, but that isn’t hard evidence and it doesn’t even directly implicate the Collinses specifically, as Victoria herself told Burke in Monday’s episode. This drama is false, not just in-universe, but for the audience too.
Which is the worst kind of drama.
Something almost resembling real contention comes up when Roger learns that it’s largely on David that Vicky decided not to leave, at which point Louis Edmonds performs his regular duty of elevating even the worst episodes of this series.
Roger encounters Carolyn on the stairs, where we’re treated to some considerably worse dialogue.
This is all so hilariously bad. Well…no. This would be fun if it were hilariously bad. Like the suppository saga and Amos Fitch. This is just boring. It’s not even fun to hate Carolyn the way it was in Monday’s episode. She starts ranting about how treacherous Vicky is for spending time with a man who vowed to destroy the family, despite the fact that Carolyn herself kissed the guy two nights ago. And of course this isn’t addressed and we’re given none of Carolyn’s perspective over how she really feels about this.
Carolyn replies that it’s “almost as strange as the attraction between Vicky and Burke”. This is so bad, you guys. So horrible. And we’re not even halfway through.
Act II brings Roger to David’s room, where we see he has been forced to draw with a sad normy pen.
Roger starts lecturing David about his change of heart over Vicky, tacitly wanting to know why he didn’t buck up and let her pack her bags after going through all the trouble of trying to kill her.
This is as close to confirming evidence as we ever get that David is responsible for the graffiti on Vicky’s mirror in Episode 50. It probably was him, after all, given the Dark Shadows ghosts appear to have more restraint. For now.
Anyway, David is sketching Malloy’s ghost which is, of course, the reason he doesn’t want Vicky to leave, not that Roger gets this right away.
Obviously, that’s not what he means, which leads to David telling him he hopes Malloy appears to Vicky again so that he gets a chance to see the ghost, which leads to the only dramatic highpoint of the episode…
Honestly can’t tell if Louis Edmonds screwed up his line or if Swann’s script is just that bad today. But going by everything else, I’ll say it’s the latter.
So, a reminder, that the primary threat to Roger’s security is now the alleged words of a ghost, something both more and less pressing than the pen ever was, because there’s nothing Roger can do about it. It’s unclear if he really doesn’t believe in the ghost or not, but it’s an unpredictable barrier that has chosen to manifest itself only after every earthly option has been tried.
Which means, yes, the sterling silver filigreed fountain pen was the last straw for the restless undead. Make of that what you will.
There. That’s the single interesting thing that happens in this episode. Roger hits his son, something we were told he did, but have never actually seen. It’s a really good stage slap too, I think it even made contact, so it’s a good thing this set was the Wild West and there were no child labor laws.
So this is a significant moment for Roger as a character. The reaffirmation that he is abusive, coming so soon after he manipulated an already hysterical Victoria in an attempt to get her to leave Collinwood, works a good way toward hardening edges that Edmonds’s performance have softened.
And then David runs off to tell Elizabeth and a terrified Roger goes after him, begging him to stop.
This is why the character can’t be what Art Wallace originally wanted him to be. He’s too silly and fun and charming. Even his worst moments are lightened by his complete inability to be menacing. It’s remarkable.
Oh for God’s sake.
David runs in, claiming, in histrionic tones he must’ve picked up from Dad:
We love a stunt queen.
It’s always more chilling than anybody behind these things could’ve ever intended when David talks about his father being controlling, emotionally and even physically abusive and nobody believes him. We’ve been dealing with it from the beginning. Given we’ve actually seen Roger being abusive on screen, the coming gaslighting is ratcheted up to 100.
You know that Carolyn Stoddard: an excellent judge of character. Roger, however, is out and proud about hitting his son for boasting about the indefatigable power of the vengeful dead.
Liz, evidently not trusting Roger to be the adult in this situation, orders him out of the room. Roger tries to warn David of something…
But he loses courage and leaves. Which is just…it’s incredible. He lives in constant fear from every member of his family. If he killed Malloy, it’s a miracle he didn’t trip over his own feet and fall into the sea instead.
This is after Roger admitted to hitting him, by the way. Carolyn is just a rare form of psychopath this week, isn’t she?
Liz takes David up to his room but, before he leaves, he gives us one parting message:
This really is just a clipshow of the previous 92 episodes, isn’t it?
The remainder of the episode is primarily concentrated on the Perils of Carolyn Stoddard.
Burke, of course, isn’t back yet, so there’s nobody to take her call. Elizabeth comes back and Carolyn starts venting to her by breaking Vicky’s confidence and telling her all about her mission to Bangor, most of which Liz already knew from Garner’s call, of course, but not everything.
Reminder that Vicky wouldn’t even have encountered Burke before getting on the bus if Carolyn hadn’t called him in the first place.
For whatever reason, Richard Garner didn’t see it necessary to tell Liz Vicky was curious about one name on the ledger sheet in particular. This seems to be solely so they could waste more time in this episode with Carolyn now telling Liz about “B. Hanscom”, allowing us to get Liz’s perspective on the situation.
Even with Liz knowing very well who Hanscom was, we still don’t get to know his first name. I can’t fathom why. Swann seems to have convinced himself that making every step along the path to Vicky’s origins vague as possible will keep people tuning in.
As further evidence to this point, Carolyn tells Liz about Betty Hanscom.
So that’s either a lie, or we’re supposed to believe Vicky isn’t a carbon copy of the lady in the painting. Whatever. In any case, Liz recalls that Betty was Hanscom’s “daughter, or niece, I forget which”.
Which is patently absurd puffery. Why waffle on this point? We already know from Sam that Betty died 25 years ago, so can’t possibly be Vicky’s mother. Her explicit relation to Hanscom doesn’t matter as much. If Vicky is, say, Hanscom’s daughter, with Betty being a (much, much) older sister, that’s one thing. Or if she’s descended from Hanscom’s brother (if Betty was his niece rather than daughter) or a child of his besides Betty, making Hanscom her great-uncle.
It’s also absurd that Liz would forget whether her butler (a not at all invisible figure in the running of a great house) had a daughter or not. There is no reason for there to not be a cogent answer on just who Betty was to Hanscom.
And yet we’ll never get one. We pivot right back to yelling about Burke Devlin.
Yeah. “Becoming” an obsession, sure.
I really wish I could lean into this as teenage infatuation, but it’s looking more and more like psychosis. I don’t think it’s supposed to. I just think it’s a hallmark of Swann’s weak character writing.
Liz takes this as an opportunity to tell Carolyn about When She Was a Her Age.
Malloy getting friendzoned from beyond the grave.
Anyway, it turns out Liz is talking about someone I honestly thought we were all supposed to have forgotten by now:
You may recall that Ned Calder was kind of a big deal in that interval between the suppository saga and Malloy’s murder. He was the former manager of the plant, who had been in love with Liz before she was swept off her feet by Paul and, some months before the show began, tried to propose to her again, only to be turned down, at which point he took off and now works some new job in Portland.
We never actually saw Ned Calder. In fact, our exposure to him was primarily through a seemingly never-ending chain of phone tag Liz played with him, in which she tried to convince him to come back to the cannery to work, at which point he said he would only do so if she agreed to marry him, proving that he is, in fact, a Real Asshole. Not that anybody onscreen shared that opinion.
You’d think that, in the wake of former plant manager Bill Malloy’s death, the topic of Ned coming back for the job would be revived, as would the dangling marriage proposal. I mean, the storyline is right there.
But no. This is the last onscreen mention of Ned. We never see him, and he’s quickly forgotten about. The only reason Liz brings him up here is to compare him to Joe Haskell.
Except Joe would never dangle a marriage proposal as a weapon. If he was capable of something like that, he’d have done it more than 80 episodes ago, but instead he just lets Carolyn turn him down time and again, treating the whole thing like a joke.
They had almost this same conversation two weeks ago, before Joe told her he’d made plans with Maggie (having thought with good reason that Carolyn was done with him forever) and Carolyn immediately reverted to form, giving him reason to believe (again) that she was done with him forever.
I highlight this dialogue both because it’s rare introspection on Carolyn’s part, and because it’s heartening whenever Swann references something that happened before he joined the writing team.
So Carolyn decides that she’ll “surprise” Joe by asking for a date tonight. This is not 48 hours after she blew up in his face which is also the last time they seem to have spoken to each other. More insultingly, it seems like she’s only doing this because Burke isn’t around. Unless Liz really has gotten her to change her mind, in which case this girl desperately needs mood stabilizers or something.
Yes. It is very much the other way around. Don’t expect to see any of that though.
She’s lucky she’s cute, or else this would be insufferable. Regardless, it’s impressive how, rather than apologizing or explaining herself in any way, Carolyn’s go-to strategy is to play dumb. I can almost believe she really is smarter than she’s been letting on.
On her way out of the room, Carolyn finds herself colliding with Roger this time, so she can show off her newest mood swing.
Nothing is ever wonderful for Roger, though, so he goes on into the drawing room and has his latest version of the Same Conversation with his sister about Malloy’s ghost. At least the Same Conversation topics are getting marginally more novel.
This time around, the subject is brought up with regard to Vicky’s “stories” of the ghost making David so irrational that Roger couldn’t help but hit him. Naturally, Liz isn’t buying this and maintains a tacit belief that Vicky saw something.
Roger goes back to telling Liz to sell Collinwood to Burke, laboring under the delusion this will remove all their problems. Elizabeth doesn’t want to sell Collinwood, and nothing has happened since the last time they had this conversation that could change her mind. If anything, Burke trying to acquire the competing cannery makes her less likely to capitulate to his maneuverings. I honestly don’t know why they’re even having this conversation except to pad out the episode.
Roger threatens to leave with David if Liz doesn’t sell.
Get his ass.
And, because we haven’t yet repeated every talking point…
And, just like that time so long ago, Liz refuses to answer him, claims there’s nothing nefarious going on, and dismisses Roger’s allegations that Burke and Vicky have been hand-in -glove from the beginning.
Essentially, nothing has changed. But don’t worry, we’re back to Vicky next episode.
Can’t believe that’s become something to look forward to.
This Day in History- Wednesday, November 2, 1966
Israel achieves a successful test implosion of a nuclear bomb, putting them on track to be the latest entry into the forty year international dick-swinging competition that miraculously didn’t annihilate the global population.
Six American soldiers and one South Korean were killed by North Korean troops in the Korean Demilitarized zone. The attack follows a call by North Korea’s Kim Il Sung in early October to “struggle against U.S. Imperialism”, and coincided with President Johnson’s visit to South Korea.
The U.S. passes the Cuban Adjustment Act, granting permanent residency to any citizen of Cuba who legally immigrated to the U.S. from 1959 on. The Act affects 123,000 refugees who had fled the regime of Fidel Castro.
Kooks of Collinwood 