Whodunit?

I need a goddamn cigarette.

If that’s the case, you’d think she’d look more, well, horrified.

Today is Dark Shadows’ big pre-Thanksgiving cliffhanger, the last episode contemporary audiences would’ve seen before a four day weekend. Therefore, it ought to be action-packed, suspenseful, and brimming with new information that will dramatically alter the course of the show.

And it’s…well, there is some new information.

We begin with the exact same location footage that ended last episode, with Victoria Winters approaching the Old House to look for David, only for a mysterious figure to push one of those masonry pottery things suburban people put on their garden fences off the roof to shatter mere inches from her feet in what is the third attempt on Vicky’s life in as many nights, and the first such attempt to be made following the arrest of prime suspect Roger Collins.

This is the beat we expected was coming, following the surprisingly lowkey, recap-filled nature of Monday’s episode, which featured Roger in police custody but stubbornly refused to do anything more than have Roger bluster that he’s innocent (even offering a potential new alibi for one of the attempts on Vicky’s life) and the other characters to restate the facts of the case, a not-very-subtle indication there was more to come and, somehow, the character that has seemed like the only suspect for weeks, isn’t the culprit.

The ‘We were wrong! The killer’s still out there!’ beat is familiar to consumers of mystery and horror. The protagonists have a brief reprieve believing the threat is gone, only for their lowered guard to give the monster a new opportunity to strike, leading to a desperate chase that usually takes up the entire last act before the true reveal.

But this is Dark Shadows, they’re desperate to boost the ratings, they know this story has been a snore for almost its entire runtime, and they’re eager to get onto more insane things by this time next month. So we don’t get another week or two of “Roger must be innocent! Who is the real killer?”

Instead, they just frigging show us. On Tuesday. And then they reuse the footage at the beginning of this one, in case we need to be reminded.

For, indeed, the location footage of the stone jar (or, as they insist on calling it “the urn”) being pushed off the roof explicitly shows Matthew Morgan pushing the jar. And it isn’t an accident. We are deliberately meant to realize this. It’s the only reason Liz called Matthew on the phone, asking him to search for David on the cliffs, while casually mentioning Vicky was going to check the Old House. They spelled it all out for us a few minutes before it happened which, while clumsy, was at least more clues than we’ve been getting here.

So, yeah, that’s where we are with this. Vicky didn’t see Matthew trying to kill her, but we did. We know Matthew is responsible for at least one attempt on her life. And, you know what, if he’s responsible for one why not the others? And if he’s responsible for all three, then isn’t the only explanation that he is the…

But wait. Wait. I’m…I’m getting ahead of myself.

So let’s return to the current crisis. Vicky has almost been killed. She runs desperately to the first place she can think of for help…

So you can see where this is going. Vicky races to use Matthew’s phone, but before she can dial for help…

Yep. That’s what this is. We’re here. We made it. Oh Jesus.

A breathless Victoria tells Matthew she needs to call the sheriff, but he puts his big, meaty paw down on the hook and gives her one of his meanest Morgan mugs.

I have a lot of conflicting feelings about how to cover this episode. Part of me, the part that loves the mystery genre and hopes to one day sell paperback period intrigues at whatever bookstores survive the plague and collapse of civil society, wants to leave you, the reader, with a sense of mystery here. It would be cheating for me to tip my hand and, to be quite frank, I can’t stand commentary blogs of any work that flagrantly spoil incoming developments with abandon.

On the other hand, I know the show doesn’t want us to have any mystery at this point. Whatever else is going on here, we already know Matthew tried to kill Vicky just now. The why and the how are still up in the air, but we know that much, and the audience member begins to fill in blanks anyway.

I should also tell you that this episode, while it seems like the Big Reveal, is determined to reveal nothing until we get to the last few minutes. Just like the episode that came before.

You also know that this episode aired near the end of November sweeps, as the big cliffhanger before an extended holiday weekend, so the format is certainly also a clue that a big reveal was coming, and what’s a bigger reveal in a mystery story than, well, solving the mystery?

For a certain definition of ‘solving’, that is.

The fun thing about this, at least, is that I get to decipher more Thayerisms. That’s always neat.

Vicky explains that someone tried to kill her.

I know you’re probably wondering how Vicky can be so stupid as to not put two and two together right this instant. I mean, as far as she knows, the only people out and about on the grounds tonight were her, Matthew, and David somewhere, and obviously David (whatever his killer instinct dictates) probably can’t budge solid marble off a rooftop with any degree of ease.

But, you see, there’s no silver filigreed fountain pen to point the way anymore, so it’s no surprise she’s got blinders on.

Vicky and Matthew will spend most of this episode frenetically pacing around the set and debating whether or not Vicky was really almost killed. In lieu of subjecting you to that, I will tell you a story of my lost youth.

When I was about 14 years old, I wrote my first screenplay. Before you start muttering about me, yes, I am aware it sucked, and it did. But it was a bold attempt on my part and nobody can ever take that away from me.

The screenplay was for a mystery film about a series of murders that take place on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. It was essentially a plagiarized riff off 2009 CBS miniseries Harper’s Island, a show of which I sincerely believe I am its biggest remaining fan.

That’s a working stove, by the way. But back to the story.

I had a general outline for the first two acts or so of the script, but as I reached the end, and as more and more characters were killed off, I came to an unsettling conclusion…

I didn’t know who the murderer was.

Now, I could’ve just gone back and rewritten some scenes, changed some plot beats, seeded some foreshadowing into the script to match the ending I was rapidly and desperately concocting in my brain.

But I’d had such fun writing all those scenes! Why should I go back and change them? Revisions are silly and gay, etc.

(I had a big storm coming)

So I just picked the killer I wanted and had her show up in the last act, insisting her murder (I’d had the main characters find her hanging from the ceiling fan because I was also ripping off Agatha Christie) had somehow been faked, while not explaining how she faked it or even how she knew the characters would find her body the way they did when they did. She got the big motive rant, she explained why she killed all those people and, I’ll tell you, I at least had that part figured out, because I believed it was the one part anybody cared about.

I had enough self-awareness to understand that I couldn’t just ignore the fact that I hadn’t foreshadowed or in any way indicated this character was the killer, however. That would be bad storytelling!

So, instead, I had one of the protagonists, after the killer’s big monologue, loudly exclaim “BUT THERE WERE NO CLUES!”

“Aha!” I said to myself, “Now, I’ve referenced the script’s downsides in the text! It’s ironic now! I am above the law!”

So, the Clueless Mystery is a trope. It’s also the oldest type of mystery narrative. The most common competent variant is a story where you do not follow the detective and are not privy to the inner workings of his mind.

Edgar Allan Poe, whose 19^th century gothic writings are a major influence on the skeleton of Dark Shadows, also has his hands in the Bill Malloy story, as he has hands in all mystery stories, given he is the innovator of the detective story as a genre. The adventures of his eccentric super sleuth C. Auguste Dupin (most famously, The Murders in the Rue Morgue) are all notably without clues. Dupin generally just surveys the crime scene, notes a couple of things and then announces who the killer is at the end. There are occasionally some clues, but they are hidden in the text and the narration does not spend much time dwelling on them, effectively shutting the reader out so they can be more in awe of that smug prig Dupin declaring the Monkey Did It.

Er…spoilers, I guess.

French writer Gaston Leroux (most famous for The Phantom of the Opera) has a more egregious example with The Mystery of the Yellow Room, in which the detective gathers clues off page, also revealing that he had information key to solving the mystery before the events of the book even happened. This is more offensive; there are no clues at all. The detective may as well have pulled everything out of the ass. You may be able to figure out whodunit, but not from information within the text, unless you’re remarkably sharp.

Sherlock Holmes is also like this in almost every iteration. Holmes’s genius and Watson’s baffled cluelessness is the proto-detective formula, after all. We’re entirely shut out of Holmes’s thought process, and his deductions are often patently ridiculous (he can tell how far someone’s walked by looking at their scuffed shoes, for example) to the point that he could just say anything and we’re expected to go along with it because He’s a Genius. This version works most of the time because Holmes’s wild conclusions are often surprising but make sense when he describes them. We’re more invested in his deductive process than whether the mystery itself makes logical sense.

The Clueless Mystery can also be played for laughs, as in 1985’s Clue, where the mere fact that everything is wild contrivance is part of the ride. Nobody is watching Clue for the mystery of it all, you know.

But then there’s what I did back when I was 14. My mystery had no clues because I didn’t determine who the killer was until I was almost finished.

And that’s what Dark Shadows is doing now. Or, rather, they did know who the killer was once…and then they changed their minds.

And so we are here.

See, that’s a clue for Elizabeth. She sent Matthew to look for David at the cliffs and Victoria to search for David at the Old House. David returned independently from the cliffs without encountering either of them. If Liz gets curious about this, she may conclude Matthew was never at the cliffs at all, raising the question of where did he go and what he was doing and, conversely, why Vicky also hasn’t yet returned from the Old House.

To be…somewhat charitable, there have been clues over the last week that Matthew Morgan, and not Roger, was the one responsible for the attempts on Vicky’s life. Also, I’m getting tired of using that phrase, but it’s the neatest way to say it, so I’m stuck.

That’ll teach him. But we have worse disciplinary problems to discuss.

Notably, Liz wonders why Vicky hasn’t come back yet, while at the same time not bothering to question why David and Matthew’s paths never crossed, despite them (allegedly) being in the same vicinity.

So there could’ve been a clue, but it’s ignored for narrative convenience. Because Elizabeth isn’t allowed to be suspicious yet.

Which brings us back to The Clues, copyright trademark.

Let’s begin with Attempt 1: “Someone tried to get into my room last night.”

To this point, Roger Collins has seemed like the most obvious candidate as the man who tried to get into Victoria’s room. He had motive: he knew Vicky now knew that he was in possession of the silver filigreed fountain pen the night Malloy died, placing him at the scene. Roger had also, through their conversation that evening, realized Vicky had lied about where she went when she left the house and went into town.

He also had opportunity: he lives in the same house, obviously and, while we don’t know where his room is, we do know he sleeps on the same floor. Also, he turned to the screen after Vicky went upstairs and ominously said “Pleasant dreams, Miss Winters” to nobody in particular, which has to count for something.

But there’s the mystery of where Roger obtained a key for Vicky’s room. He told Sheriff Patterson in Monday’s episode that he doesn’t have access to that key, or a master key for that matter. His sister, however, obviously has the keys to every room in the house, and it’s not like Roger wouldn’t have been able to steal them somehow.

Also, Vicky told Burke (apparently, since Burke repeated this to Patterson) that she saw a tall figure standing in the doorway when the door opened. Roger is the tallest Collinwood resident.

As if that wasn’t damning enough, Roger inexplicably ran into the room barely 10 seconds (I timed it at the time) after Vicky’s screams forced the would-be intruder to flee.

BUT CONSIDER

Matthew Morgan is also very tall. He may not live in Collinwood, but unlike Sam (the other suspect), he has access to the great house. It’s established in Episode 104 that it’s Matthew’s responsibility to fix and replace locks at Collinwood. Indeed, Liz puts him on changing the lock to Vicky’s room in the wake of the break in. We’re even shown him tinkering with locksmithing when he switches the locks to the East Wing in Episode 95.

As for Roger just showing up without seeing Matthew? Er…maybe he hid in the East Wing. I dunno, I’m just talking about the clues, I’m not dissecting the goddamn case, that’s a headache for next episode.

So, Attempt 2: “Someone tried to run me down”, or as I have not-quite-accurately been calling it “the hit and run”. Technically, it was a hit and run attempt, but semantics.

So, the facts of this attempt are trickier. While Roger was originally heavily implicated, having been out driving at the time of the crash, he apparently has an alibi for the time of the attempt (8:00), via an anonymous gas station attendant. This alibi has not yet been confirmed, but there’s no reason to believe it won’t be.

Meanwhile, Sam Evans was also considered as a suspect, having desperately quizzed Vicky as to what she did or didn’t know about the Malloy case at the Blue Whale. Sam took his daughter’s car (unusual for him; he prefers to walk) that night and drove to the beach. Unlike Roger, he has no alibi. However, Sam’s motive isn’t as strong, because he had every reason to believe Victoria was convinced Roger was the murderer and he stood little to gain by going after her.

Matthew owns a car of his own, we saw it in the garage at the onset of the suppository drama. Matthew was also in town most of yesterday, having been purchasing the materials for Vicky’s new lock. Liz did ask him in Episode 104 to ask Mrs. Johnson if she wanted to go with him, but we don’t know if the new housekeeper did. It’s entirely possible Matthew was alone in Collinsport, and alone on the roads that night. He has no alibi.

Matthew mentions this in reference to not knowing about Roger’s arrest until Vicky tells him. Which brings us to this latest attempt, the one we know he was behind.

Matthew didn’t know Roger was arrested last night. He hadn’t spoken with anybody at Collinwood all day until Liz called him when she was looking for David. If he had known, he may never have tried to kill her.

But then…wait.

Matthew objects to Vicky suspecting Roger. As ever, he prioritizes the privacy and the dignity of the Collins family above all else. He even seems ignorant of the fact that Roger was the prime suspect. Vicky tells him all about the sterling silver filigreed fountain pen and he sounds totally oblivious. He’s the last person on earth to be told it exists!

So he was never trying to frame Roger. He doesn’t want any police trampling around the Collinwood estate and the many secrets of its residents. Regardless of Old!Matthew’s contempt for Roger, it doesn’t seem like sending him up for murder was ever the intention.

I’m worried about the coherency of my thought process here. I can’t get the requisite kicks out of Liz treating this comment like its ordinary childish gibberish which she hears every day.

Matthew has opportunity for the three attacks, sure. But motive? I just…I don’t understand the motive! I don’t get the thought process. I don’t get where Roger’s story fits into this.

To be quite honest, I don’t understand how any of this fits into this.

But we’re barely halfway into the episode, so maybe they’ll figure something out by then.

Frank is here to pick Vicky up for that dinner date they arranged last episode. He’s also doing his damnedest to suck all the energy out of the scene, but that’s just his resting state, it’s nothing special.

This, again, is another opportunity for the reviving of Clues about Vicky’s mysterious absence. Frank chips in by sounding dowdy and disapproving, which is a helluva way to speak to the lady signing your paychecks who is also Joan Bennett.

Says the lady who sent Vicky out alone with all these things happening to her. I resent these continued attempts to make Frank sound reasonable. His only mode of speech seems to be lecturing.

Frank is apparently able to shame Liz enough that she decides to accompany him on a search of the grounds for Vicky. Just like he was able to convince Patterson to question Sam a second time for no real reason. He must have shocking powers of charisma that those of us in the viewing audience are tactically blind to.

The little search party returns at the start of Act III, having had no success. Presumably, they only went as far as the Old House and didn’t search anywhere else.

It turns out that they noticed the broken “stone urn” in front of the Old House, so they aren’t completely oblivious. Frank is worried, because he’s the love interest and we’re supposed to find it sexy when he’s concerned for the woman’s wellbeing. This also means Liz must temporarily transform into a dunderhead who needs this painstakingly explained to her.

Why, so you can whine at him too?

Frank asks for the sheriff’s number, and I screamed “It’s 911, you idiot!”, but it turns out 911 wasn’t a direct line for emergency services until 1968. See, I’m learning to correct myself. My 14-year-old self would be aghast.

Liz decides to first try calling Matthew, finally realizing that he may have seen Vicky while he was out, which is as close to figuring out the Clue as we can expect given the information she has access to.

I’d say the gaslighting is bad now, but by the end of 1967 Victoria Winters might as well be HVAC certified. The thing here is that Matthew is bad at gaslighting. Roger, at least, is charming about it. Also, Vicky knows that Matthew knows about her fears of someone breaking into her room. They were all in the same room discussing it last week.

So, Liz calls and Matthew pretends he hasn’t seen Vicky.

That may be the reason this episode bothers me so much. It’s one thing that they’re clearly doing…this with Matthew and, just so you don’t think I’m skimping, I have a whole spiel for this racked up, but the fact that we have to play this little game where Vicky doesn’t start figuring out Matthew’s reasons for keeping her here are sinister until 13 minutes into the episode are baffling. This is the big cliffhanger episode! You either go out with a big bang, or a major resolution. Matthew pushing the urn onto Vicky was a big bang, but that was the cliffhanger leading into this episode. Vicky isn’t confronting Matthew, and Matthew isn’t telling her anything. There is no reveal, and there’s no action set-piece, just more recapping, but this time with dramatic tension because we, at least, know what’s going on.

For the record, whatever dispute there may be over the authorship of Episode 107, this episode is a product of Sproat’s pen. I’m still affording him a grace period despite this because, let’s be real, it’s not an enviable position to put the new writer in charge of resolving the biggest story.

Moreover, none of this was his idea, but we’ll get to that.

Oh, I might as well say that this phone conversation is a nice parallel (possibly unintentional) to Liz calling Matthew during Vicky’s dinner with him back in Episode 13. In that instance, Matthew was outraged to learn Liz hadn’t sent Vicky over to meet with him and, realizing Vicky had lied, sent her off.

It was also the episode where Old!Matthew almost choked to death on eggs. We’ve fallen so far from God.

Matthew claims to Vicky that the “her” he told Liz he hadn’t seen was Carolyn, but Vicky sees through this immediately, because Carolyn is with a friend to “get her out of the house”, presumably because all her crying about Roger was getting grating.

There are lots of pieces here that need to be lined up. We have Matthew’s slavish loyalty to Elizabeth and the Collins family. We have the peculiar timing of the three attempts on Vicky’s life. We have the nature of Roger being the primary suspect, and the dubiousness of the odd story he told. We also have literally every scene Matthew has been in since this story started.

We also have the fact that he has lied to Mrs. Stoddard, about pushing Malloy’s body back into the sea when he found it at the base of Widows’ Hill. He admitted the truth the next day, sure, but he still lied in the moment. And I can’t tell if that’s a continuity error or just Matthew losing his mind.

What are we to make of all this? Some of the pieces fit, but others seem to contradict each other. If you stood far away, sure, it might all begin to make sense, but it all false apart under the slightest scrutiny.

The thing is, Thayer David is in a state of constant suffering here. I’ll have plenty of time to discuss this as we go on, but there is reason to believe that he had different ideas of what this character was supposed to be, and this development was practically spitting in his face.

Vicky points out that she certainly didn’t imagine the car that tried to kill her and Matthew starts blustering how it could’ve been an accident.

They’re lucky this shot is so cool because I am spitting mad at everything else.

You’re probably familiar with this cliché. A character is tipped off to the nefariousness of the villain by a slip of the tongue, in which they admit something that only the bad guy would know. It’s old as dust.

My objection to this “8:00 in the evenin’” bit is that it’s unnecessary. Even if Vicky came into this weirdly hostile interaction with no clue what was going on, we saw her getting tipped off (and wanting to get away) once she realized Matthew lied to Elizabeth on the phone. That should’ve been good enough. And even the way Matthew says that “8:00 in the evenin’”, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to squeeze the time in there. He could’ve said “lonely country road at nighttime” or “in the dark”, but no, he speaks exactly, and that’s what finally clues Vicky in.

Give it Alexandra Moltke, she knows what this moment is supposed to be, and she delivers is beautifully, speaking in this hushed little whisper as the reality and graveness of the situation descends on her.

In fact, she’s doing great with this episode. You can tell she was excited to have reached this pivotal turning point in the storyline. You never get to her sound so angry and determined as she does when she quizzes Matthew as to his slip of the tongue.

Sadly, Vicky is only allowed to commandeer a situation for so long before things go south.

It’s intense, pulse-pounding dialogue like that that really heightens the dramatic tension of the moment.

Okay, that’s more where I was expecting this would end up.

Sheriff Patterson arrives at Collinwood and starts staring into that whelp Frank Garner’s soul.

Liz and Frank debrief Patterson on the Vicky situation. He resolves to search the area with his men and shuts down Frank’s attempt to insinuate himself in the search because he feels the same way about Frank as we do.

Okay, so somehow, when we cut back to Matthew’s house, he isn’t beating Vicky to death with his hands. That’s another problem with this episode, there are so many moments when it feels things between these two are about to explode, and then they kind of do, but then it’s back to form. This was the worst possible way to handle this reveal. I’m not even sure we can call it a reveal because we still know next to nothing. This is mystery malpractice.

At the end of Act III, we saw Matthew haul a screaming Vicky away from the door, and now he’s standing over there with his back to her while she stands right next to the phone. It’s nuts.

Oh, and there are things to be said for the brutalization of women in a genre catered to women. Believe me, I’ve got that in the can too. This episode is essentially the Hell’s Waiting Room of the last act of this damnable storyline.

This works as well as you’d expect. Vicky insists she doesn’t believe Matthew killed Malloy, even pointing out he had no reason. I’m glad they reminded us of that.

Vicky cleverly claims she feels sick and would like a glass of water.

He offers the whiskey because he seems to believe she’ll be able to run away if he goes to get a glass of water. Of course she would’ve, but she still tries to run away when he goes to get the whiskey, so it’s not like it makes much difference.

I will now transcribe the following sequence, verbatim. Matthew hauls Vicky to his cool recliner.

Matthew: “Yew were lyin’ ta me! Yew do think Ah killed Malloy!”

Vicky: “No, I don’t!”

Matthew: “AH HAD TEW! Ah didn’t have any choice!”

And there you have it. The culmination of almost 60 episodes of television: the murderer just comes out and tells the heroine he’s the murderer, with absolutely no prodding because “it had tew come out”.

Which, I guess it did. I mean, I’m not sure how longer they could’ve sat on this. I’m glad Matthew’s decided enough is enough and it’s time to live his truth.

Well, at least this storyline has stakes now. It took them long enough.

So, that’s the big Thanksgiving cliffhanger. They expected audiences to wait four days for them to even attempt to explain any of what we just watched, never mind how it relates to the last three months of storytelling.

So tune in next time. I’m sure they’ll think of something.

Behind the Scenes Shenanigans

Episode 108 is the last Dark Shadows episode whose release order matches its number. Well, technically, that was 107, because Episode 108 is really called Episode 108/109/110. This was because ABC’s numbering system required Monday episodes to be numbers ending in a 1 or a 6, Tuesdays ending in 2 or 7, Wednesdays ending in 3 or 8, and so on. That’s why we don’t go from 108 on Wednesday to 109 on Monday. The next episode will be 111. This is suitably confusing, of course, and it’ll make it slightly trickier to make sweeping declarations as to how long it’s been since such and such a thing has happened, but we’ll manage.

For the curious, there are 20 preemptions over the course of the series meaning that, while there are 1,225 episodes of Dark Shadows, the final episode’s “official” numbering is 1,245.

Interestingly, this episode was filmed two days before it aired to even out the taping schedule. They filmed the subsequent episode (111) the next day, by which point the usual gap of about a week remained between episodes record and airdates.

This Day in History- Wednesday, November 23 – Friday, November 25, 1966

A fairly boring day in history. Shame. The Beatles came out with “Lonely Hearts Club Band” the very next day, but there’s no Dark Shadows for that day, so..er…

Well, take it, I won’t tell if you won’t.