Airdates: July 22 - August 2, 1966
THE PLOT
Roger Collins is recovering after his car's brakes failed on the windy road down from Widows' Hill. The crash was no accident. A bleeder valve was removed, causing the brakes to gradually fail. Roger is convinced that Burke Devlin caused the wreck, as is Elizabeth. Carolyn (Nancy Barrett) insists that Burke couldn't possibly have done it - all the while plagued by guilt that, if Burke did try to kill her uncle, then she was responsible for bringing him there.
Burke seems almost startlingly blase about the accusations, maintaining his cool in the face of a confrontation with Roger and a visit from the town constable (Michael Currie). He even commissions Sam Evans to paint a portrait of him: A portrait of the exact kind that hangs in the drawing room at Collinwood...
THOUGHTS
The Gothic atmosphere has largely vanished by Disc Three, as the mechanics of the Burke/Roger plot overshadow the series' other elements. The show now seems to be borrowing more from film noir than from Victorian Gothic, though I'm sure that particular pendulum will swing back again.
This is not to say that the show's gotten worse. Though the pace isn't as driving here as it was during the Disc Two episodes, the story is still ticking along at a much better pace than one would normally expect of a daytime soap. The Burke Devlin plot continues to generate interest. If the writers focused solely on the "car accident," then the story would become tiresome very, very quickly. But we also see Burke making tantalizing phone calls to put his own plan into gear, and we see him engaging Sam to paint his portrait. The juxtaposition, between Roger's desperation as he tries to get Burke arrested, and Burke's calm calculations as he works on his own agenda, is very effective.
I will say that the timeline is starting to become a bit of an issue. In Episode 19, Sam apologizes to Vicki for spooking her "the other day." The other day" was, of course, that morning. In Episode 25, Elizabeth laments that Vicki has been wondering why she was hired by strangers "from the day she walked into this house." The day she is referencing could also be described as "the day before yesterday." These are matters that would have been invisible to viewers watching one episode per day five days a week. But watched in closer proximity, these timeline-bending references start to stand out a bit.
Cast & Characters
Any Dark Shadows drinking game would be incomplete without having an entry for "Vicki launches into a story about something that happened to her in the foundling home." Alexandra Moltke's performance as Vicki is much better by this point than it was at the start... but I have already devised a special eyeroll that belongs solely to anytime Vicki starts a sentence with, "When I was in the foundling home..."
I noted in my last review how quietly impressive Frank Schofield's background performance as Bill Malloy is. Three discs in, and he's still consistently excellent, rarely fluffing a line, always completely in character. Other actors also fare well. Michael Currie stumbles over some his lines, but has a general authenticity in his role as the town contable. Kathryn Leigh Scott loses the bad wig and immediately looks much, much more attractive. Her performance also improves, and she gets some good material in Episode 22, in some very well-scripted and acted scenes opposite Mitchell Ryan and Mark Allen. And it's always a pleasure to see Barnard Hughes, who pops up on the last episode of this disc as Burke's nervous researcher, Bronson.
Finally, David Henesy's David continues to emerge as a rather well-scripted child character. It's unusual, in 1960's television, to see a regular child character who is as completely self-absorbed, manipulative, and dangerous as David. And all of David's behavior is understandable, through the eyes of a child. His father threatens to send him away. It's an offhand comment, but one David takes to heart. He has an excellent understanding of mechanical things, and takes action - and then is absolutely certain, and terrified, that he is going to be discovered. Mix in Roger's antipathy toward him, with Roger reacting to David's worries in the worst possible way in every scene they share, and the characterization is believable in context. It works, not least because there is something genuinely spooky about the way Henesy lurks in corners, and looks at the camera - an acting no- no that actually helps to make David feel a bit "off."
Gaffe of the Week
The key scene of Episode 24 is a meeting between Burke and the town constable (Michael Currie) - a scene which is initially made up of a series of minor gaffes. None of them on their own would be anything special. But it's the combination of them: Mitchell Ryan, stumbling over a few lines; Michael Currie, straining a bit too obviously to hit his mark for a close-up; audible talkback on the soundtrack, which is actually louder at one point than the character dialogue; then the recurrence of that talkback while Ryan is speaking, prompting the actor to really emphasize an odd word in mid-sentence in an attempt to coverup the production noise. Wrap it all up together (and all of these hit within a space of about 2 minutes' screentime), and it's absolutely priceless.
Overall
Three discs in, and the series is still holding my interest. The Burke Devlin plot is ticking along particularly nicely, with the final episode on the disc benefitting from an extremely well-scripted scene between Devlin and Bronson, in which we finally learn something of Burke's plan... and it's a plan that actually makes sense.
The episodes on this disc are less atmospheric than the earlier discs, but some of that atmosphere comes back in the last two episodes, through a nice slow pan of the empty drawing room and a couple of nice close-ups of doors opening, with a gap between that and the person behind the door appearing.
A final thought that really struck me during the scene between Roger and the constable is how much I actually like the way the people in this show tend to talk around situations before getting to the point. I know some of that is just a function of this being a daytime soap, where padding out scenes is a prerequisite. But Carter's deflecting Roger by talking about his sandwich, then putting Roger off while taking a call about a missing dog, are little things that make him feel authentic.
For all the flubbed lines and intermittently stagy performances, this show has created a feeling of authenticity about its setting and characters (particularly the peripheral ones). That goes a long way toward maintaining my interest in a 45-year-old daytime soap, and - along with the eventual vampires and werewolves - may well be one reason why this show has endured in the popular imagination for so very long.
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