The Beginning, Collection One - Disc 4

Episodes 28 - 35

Airdates: August 3 - 12, 1966


THE PLOT

Vicki has seen the missing bleeder valve from Roger's car, and she now knows that it was David who attempted to kill his own father, and that Burke is innocent. David panics, fleeing with the valve into town. His plan is to sneak into Burke's room and plant the valve there. But when Burke finds him lurking by his room, it isn't long before he figures out exactly what David is up to.

Meanwhile, Vicki finds herself with time again to pursue her quest for her own past. If anyone at Collinwood has answers, they aren't saying. But she does know of one man who hired a private detective to search for the same answers, a man who is willing to share his findings with her: Burke.


THOUGHTS

As the first episodes on this disc unfolded, I started to become a bit impatient with the "car accident" plot. With David going up to plant the evidence in Burke's room, it seemed that the writers were engaging in the time-honored soap opera technique of dragging out a subplot until every bit of entertainment value has long since departed. Then an interesting thing happened. At the end of a lengthy, often charming scene between Burke and David, Burke sends David into the bathroom to wash up... and then walks right to the place where David hid the bleeder valve, pulls it out, and shakes his head at the spot the boy has gotten himself into. With Elizabeth basically admitting that she knows that David is guilty, and his father finding out soon after, a plot turn that seemed to be trying to further extend this subplot instead ends up wrapping it up.

The door is closed firmly enough that the plot feels satisfactorily completed, but we are left on an ominous note. David is far from a sweet, innocent cherub, after all. Roger's warning that he is a troubled boy who is likely to become worse, not better, doesn't seem terribly far-fetched. If his aunt will shield him from the consequences of attempted murder, then why should he consider the consequences of whatever he might do next?


Recasting of the Week

It is a time-honored soap tradition that when an actor either moves on or doesn't work out, the producers don't write out the character. They just change the actor. Wouldn't it figure that not only does that happen startlingly early in this series' run, but it happens with one of the better-acted supporting characters.

Mark Allen is gone, with the role of Sam Evans now played by David Ford. Ford's Sam appears in only one episode on this disc. My first impression is that he is not an improvement, but I'll withhold judgment until I've had a little time to get used to him. I will miss Mark Allen, though, who was quite convincing playing the tortured Sam, and whose booming voice was a good fit for the potentially overblown "poetic" dialogue which, thus far at least, doesn't sound nearly as convincing coming from Ford.


Cast & Characters

One thing the car accident subplot has done, beyond simply chewing up episodes while delaying the trigger on Burke's revenge, is to really focus on David Collins. How odd it must have been, for viewers of mid-1960's daytime television, to witness a 9-year-old boy who not only attempts to kill his father, but who willfully tries to shift that blame onto others, who runs to his aunt claiming that his governess "tried to hurt (him)," and who growls at that same governess - the show's audience identification figure - that he hates her. There's often a pause in David Henesy's performance, and he often looks up at camera - probably a simple matter of getting indications about what he should do. But it helps to create the sense of something "off" about David. He's also almost frighteningly good when he growls his hatred of Vicki. Small children often say they "hate" others. When David wheels on Vicki, though, he truly sounds as if he means it.

Unfortunately, not all of the characters are developing quite so well. Joe Haskell has got to be about the most tedious character imaginable. The show keeps trying to cram him down our throats as a "really nice guy." But his repeated whining about wanting to marry Caroline (the subject of very nearly every scene in which he appears) has passed the point of being potentially sympathetic, and now passed the point of being merely tiresome. At this point, it's downright obsessive.

In real life, Caroline's loving mother shouldn't keep trying to push her into his arms - She should be trying to get him away from her daughter, with police intervention if necessary. I'd half expect him to start going after people with an axe... only I fear Joe will never do anything half so interesting, since being boring appears to be his mission in life. No disrespect to actor Joel Crothers, who has been generally competent in his performance, but Joe ranks highest on the list of characters I would like to see slip off the top of Widows' Hill.


Final Note

The Collinwood sets deserve special praise. The sets representing the entry hall, the drawing room, and the upstairs areas are extremely well-designed, particularly by the often creaky standards of 1960's television. The house's internal architecture - at least with regard to these major areas - is always clear to us when watching, and each set feels like part of the same house. Given that these are the key sets of the series, it is worth observing just what a good job the production team did in creating them.

Unfortunately, I have already come to dread any scene set in "The Blue Whale." That set is almost laughably poor, and the canned music makes the overall impression even worse. It doesn't help that the scenes set in there (frequently ones involving Joe and Caroline) tend to be the weakest of the series. On my relatively new and brief wish-list for the show, top of the list is... Well, top of the list is "Joe Haskell has a tragic accident," but second on that list is "No more Blue Whale."

The show itself remains entertaining. Once the "car accident" plot is tied up, though, the last couple of episodes go by very slowly, with most of the momentum gone.  Hopefully, Burke's true revenge plot will kick in soon, and things will start gathering steam again.


Previous: Episodes 19 - 27
Next: Episodes 36 - 44


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The Beginning, Collection One - Disc 2.

Episodes 10 - 18

Airdates: July 8 - 20, 1966


THE PLOT

Elizabeth Stoddard and Roger Collins' anxieties about Burke Devlin's return seem to be confirmed when Burke comes to the house to confront them. Burke does not act like a man seeking vengeance, but his pleasant conversation is marked by multiple inquiries about buying the Collins house and business, and he clearly does have some resentment toward Roger. Nevertheless, he extends an olive branch, asking Roger to meet him for a drink in town to discuss an unspecified "business deal."

But when Roger heads down the steep, windy road to town, his brakes fail. Was it an accident? Was it Burke? Or did someone closer to home have a reason for wanting to see him dead?


THOUGHTS

My last review got so overstuffed with initial thoughts that I forgot to mention the title sequence. Dark Shadows has a truly splendid title sequence, very atmospheric and effective in terms of both the visuals and the music. The waves, beating upon the rocks, followed by a dissolve to the wonderfully spooky main house, with that eerily dissonant main title theme playing over it. It's simple, but hugely effective, and one of the most iconic US title sequences I can immediately think of.

As this disc rolls along, taking us to the start of the series' fourth week on air, we get a bit more of the backstory behind Roger and Burke parcelled out to us. One of the more interesting revelations is that Roger's own presence in Collinwood is only barely tolerated by Elizabeth, and that only because of David.

It does stand out how compressed the action really is. The first disc took viewers across a single night and day. The second disc makes that seem positively sprawling by comparison, with the nine episodes of this disc taking place entirely over the course of a single night! Part of this is a function of the show's theatrical nature. Scenes are long, static, and talky, with an episode cutting between what amounts to only two or three scenes. The result is that 30 minutes of program time encompasses probably about the same amount of time in the world of the show.


Cast & Characters

The cast continue to grow into their roles. As was the case on Disc One, Mitchell Ryan's Burke and Louis Edmonds' Roger continue to carry the bulk of the plot, with the Burke Devlin plot getting even more of the focus than was the case on Disc One. Mitchell Ryan continues to be the cast standout, though he is getting increasing competition for that title from Mark Allen, whose Sam Evans is becoming a genuinely interesting and sympathetic figure; and Frank Schofield, who gives a quietly and consistently excellent background performance as Bill Malloy. Meanwhile, as good as George Mitchell's performance continues to be, I'm seeing one problem with his casting as the character develops: When Elizabeth warns Vicki about Matthew's potential for violence, all I could think in response was how basically old and frail he seemed.

Victoria Winters moves from the spotlight to the background on this disc. She isn't even in Episodes 9, 10, and 17 (not counting the ubiquitous voice over intro.), and she is far less dominant in many of the remaining shows than she was in the first disc. As the other characters become more familiar to us, it becomes less important to have her as our "eyes" into this world. This creates the risk of Vicki becoming irrelevant, particularly with her own storyline being the weakest of the major throughlines at this point. Still, Moltke's performance is improving. She gets some pretty good scenes opposite young David Henesy as the troubled David (who also gets substantially more development on this disc), and she shares a quite memorable scene with Louis Edmonds in Episode 12, reacting to his story about "the widows."


OVERALL

Still very early in the series, we're already getting some payoff from the initial episodes. The episodes of this disc contain major plot developments, and I found myself downing three episodes per sitting this time out. All the characters advance, and all of the actors are improving in their roles.

On the downside, the occasional technical fluffs and forgotten lines are also increasing in frequency.  Louis Edmonds' recovery from mispeaking "100 miles" in Episode 17 is hilarious, in that he actually draws a lot more attention to the fluffed line than if he'd just kept going. Still, the series is improving on all other fronts, and is already delivering on much of its initial promise.

...And still nothing more supernatural than a creaky door and a particularly loud wind in sight!

Previous: Episodes 1 - 9
Next: Episode 19 - 27


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The Beginning, Collection One - Disc 1.

Episodes 1 - 9

Airdates: June 27 - July 7, 1966


THE PLOT

After growing up in a New York orphanage, young Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke) receives a job offer from out of nowhere: Come to the small New England fishing town of Collinsport, and act as governess to the troubled young David Collins (David Henesy). The job is sound, the wage is fair, but Vicki has her own reasons for accepting the offer, hoping to find a link to her own unknown past.

She is not the only stranger on the train to Collinsport. Also arriving in town is Burke Devlin (Mitchell Ryan), a man with a past of his own. When Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds), brother of Collins matriarch Elizabeth Stoddard (Joan Bennett), hears that Burke is in town, he immediately flies into a panic, certain that Burke Devlin has come to destroy him!


THOUGHTS

"You make it sound like some old English novel!" Vicki protests when Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott) urges her not to go up to Collinwood.

That line pretty much sums up the feel of early Dark Shadows. Long before it became a show about ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and time travel, this was a soap opera inspired by Gothic romances - more Daphne Du Maurier than Bram Stoker. Those early episodes, long before the introduction of vampire Barnabas Collins, have been relegated to being a mere curiosity. But there is something to be said for the early series' slow build.


The Pilot Episode

The pilot episode is both superb and dreadful at the same time. It is a wonderfully-structured pilot, adroitly introducing the principle regulars and the three major plot arcs for the early part of the series. Pretty much everything that happens in the rest of Disc 1 is set up in this pilot: Victoria's search for her past, her difficult assignment with David, and Burke Devlin's return to town and unfinished business with the Collins family. The script even does a good job of tying all of those plot strands to Victoria's arrival in Collinsport.

On the other hand, the episode suffers from something that's par for the course for daytime television in any era: acting and dialogue that frequently ranges from poor to dreadful. All of the actors are at their worst here. Louis Edmonds is a particular offender, with his Roger Collins being so arch in the pilot (and to a lesser extent, the second episode) that his scenes veer into unintended comedy.


Cast & Characters

All of the performances settle down nicely as the disc rolls on and the actors find their characters. Moltke is a good choice for Victoria. She is extremely appealing, with enough humor to offset the potentially grating naivete required of the character. Edmonds quickly finds his feet - a good thing, since Roger's desperation carries most of the momentum on this disc.

Mitchell Ryan is probably the cast standout. Even in the pilot, he manages to convey an actual character around scenes that too often require him simply to be "gruff" and "mysterious." He also has notably more screen presence than most of his co-stars, and it is not hard to see how he went on to much better things in the '70's. Burke Devlin seems positioned to act as the catalyst for the early storylines, and the scenes revolving around his storyline carry far more interest at this point than the Victoria or David material.

Some of the best acting actually comes from some of the most peripheral characters. Mark Allen's Sam Evans is convincingly haunted, and has a blisteringly good scene opposite Louis Edmonds in Episode 7. George Mitchell and Frank Schofield, as the Collins manservant and the manager of the Collins fishing fleet, respectively, both convey an authenticity as New Englanders, and both make memorable impressions with limited screentime. Of the more major supporting cast, Nancy Barrett does a strong job of seeming genuine even when struggling with strained dialogue.


OVERALL

It's not great television, and I won't be reviewing it using the same standards I use for my Star Trek reviews, or even my Doctor Who ones. To review episodes of a 1960's soap that was practically shot as live using the same scale as prime-time television would not only be unfair, it would be frankly ridiculous.

Taken as what it is, however, and with the right amount of willingness to take some wooden acting and bad dialogue in stride and laugh at the archness of much of it, I have to admit that this is fun. Probably more fun than I expected it to be.

Next: Episodes 10 - 18

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