Victoria Winters has a brand new best friend.
Witness the new though not yet improved Roger Collins.
It’s going off the series outline, allowing the character to virtually groom the young governess with charm and deceit, but it beats the alternative of having Roger eventually killed off as planned thus consigning the talents of Louis Edmonds to the elusive realm of those famous Collinwood ghosts and legends that get spoken of so often yet never actually seen and realized in full.
Burke Devlin is on a rampage; at least that’s what the sheriff of Collinsport has been phoning various residents to warn them about. In episode 60 Sheriff Patterson reached out to Sam Evans informing him that Burke might be out his way, and that if he did show up he should just call in. The same advisory was issued in yesterday’s episode during a telephone conversation with Elizabeth Stoddard.
Thus far Devlin’s rampage has consisted of crashing a dinner party at the Evans cottage, which very nearly resulted in a sandwich, and now he has shown up at Collinwood demanding that he be allowed to speak with Roger Collins. It’s been a long day since morning broke way back in episode 53 and it isn’t over just yet, not even with today’s episode. If Devlin’s rampage is allowed to continue on unabated, it’s liable to erupt in drawing room tea.
Sam Evans likes to keep pretty much to himself. Unfortunately, a number of people continually impose on him, folks he’d rather not see or talk to. He’s a painter who’s been commissioned to paint a portrait he doesn’t want to paint, and will even feign a headache to cut the portrait sitting short. On top of this, another man he doesn’t want to see barges in to talk about things Sam just doesn’t want to talk about; if that weren’t enough, the intruder even goes so far as to seize Sam’s bottle of whiskey to prevent him from even pouring himself a drink in his own living room. On that same morning, this demanding interloper will not only consider threatening him with murder, but will also offer him a sizeable bribe to leave his life and livelihood behind. After managing to get rid of the unwanted portrait subject, he begins losing his temper while trying to usher away trespasser number one, during which invader number three, Collins family business manager Bill Malloy, just walks right in through the front door without so much as a knock. When Sam raises a complaint, Bill simply tells him it’s his own fault for leaving the door unlocked.
That’s what happens in Collinsport, if you don’t bar the door, when something from your past you’d rather keep hidden comes calling right at your doorstep. Still, it could be worse, considering what the future holds in store for Evans cottage, with the gallery of Universal monsters that will someday be encroaching on his domain; a gentleman vampire caller who just can’t keep his fangs away from his daughter, a Frankenstein type man child who breaks in to borrow and brandish a huge carving knife while Sam is away at the pub for an evening drink, a werewolf in the night who just jumps crashing through the front window hungry and growling for any kind of action it can find.
There will come a time when Sam will long for the good old days of only the year or two before when it was just Burke Devlin, the old friend he betrayed long ago, Roger Collins, the man who imprisoned him in a pact of silence, and Bill Malloy, the wise old owl who comes around asking too many questions, that he would be trying to keep from seeking him out.
First thing in the morning here in the summer of sixty-six it’s open house at Evans cottage, and no one is invited.
The Wikipedia page for Dark Shadows links the nineteenth century novel The Count of Monte Cristo with the story of Burke Devlin:
Burke Devlin’s Revenge For His Manslaughter Conviction, episode 1 to 201.
The accompanying citation, with something one would typically expect from all things Wikipedia, provides erroneous information:
“In episode 28, Burke Devlin is seen reading this novel. It similarity to events is commented upon i.e. a man returning to his home town to wreak revenge.”
They’re only off by ten episodes; and “it” should be “its” and “home town” is one word.
Now that we’ve done the necessary proofreading, let’s examine the more probable origins of the story of Burke Devlin, one of the main driving forces behind the beginnings of Dark Shadows.
Today Victoria Winters is making her first visit to the Blue Whale, while enjoying her first alcoholic beverage since arriving in Collinsport – even though she’s underage.
The character of Victoria Winters, and the actress who plays her, is barely twenty. Burke Devlin, the man who bought her the drink, is over thirty.
Evidently, the bartender didn’t ask to see the young lady’s ID. In yesterday’s episode, he wouldn’t even shut down a drunk and hollering Joe Haskell.
This won’t be the last time on the show where older men will be plying drinks on young underage girls. In those days, you could get away with that kind of thing. Dark Shadows, during that unsupervised era of daytime television, manages to do just that.
Those were the days!
Nine-year-old David Collins is disrupting the lives of the adults around him in a way that could have far-reaching consequences for all those involved. Everyone has had to suffer to some extent for David’s act of desperation against his father.
Fearing exposure after his tutor Vicki Winters had found in his room the missing brake valve from Roger’s car, David has fled Collinwood to plant the evidence in the hotel room of the man who everyone except the governess suspects as having tampered with Roger’s brake system. Unable to gain access while the man is away, David is left with no choice but to meet with him face to face.
To David Collins thus far, Burke Devlin has represented only an image, a name his mother and father used to quarrel over so long ago, a symbol for what his father both hates and fears. But what David could not have foreseen was that in no time the image would become a man who would in turn become a trusted friend.
Unbeknown to David, Burke had seen the boy hiding the object under the sofa cushions. At the end of David’s visit, while calling downstairs to have his car brought around to the front of the hotel so that Burke could drive him back to Collinwood, David changes his mind about trying to pin the blame on Mr. Devlin, but is unable to retrieve the valve from where he hid it because Burke has already found it.
Alone with his guilt, shamed with regret, and paralyzed by fear, David’s outlook is as bleak as the drops of rain falling on the windshield as Burke Devlin guides the car onward through a storm which only seems to signal portents of the certain punishment awaiting his arrival home. But what he doesn’t realize is that he may soon receive the help he needs from an unexpected source, the very man he sought to frame for the crime of attempted murder.
Continue reading “Episode 30: The Rain in Maine Falls Plainly All in Vain”
Victoria Winters is searching for her past. Having been raised in a foundling home in New York, she has taken a job hundreds of miles away in Collinsport, Maine, as a companion and governess to a nine-year-old boy only because of the anonymous letters that would arrive each month at the foundling home containing fifty dollars in cash for her care beginning when she was two years old. Because the postmark on the envelopes was from Bangor, only fifty miles away from Collinsport, now eighteen years later she thinks that by taking on this position she might find out something about her mysterious past, something more than the surname she was given because of the season of the year she was left on the front steps of the foundling home in a cardboard box, with only a ten-word note and a first name.
Two days after having stepped off the train in Collinsport, a letter sent special delivery has arrived from the foundling home detailing a visit they received from a private investigator wondering why she was hired to work for the Collins family and by whom.
No one wants to know the answers to these questions more than Victoria Winters herself, but to her dismay none of the people around her care to even discuss the matter. The only interest in her letter comes from someone who has no reason to be even remotely curious – the young boy she tutors.
One of the charms of these early episodes of Dark Shadows is something I call “scene connectors.” Someone will close out a scene with a phrase or word, like when Joe Haskell asks Burke Devlin what he wants in exchange for what Devlin has offered him, and Devlin answers, “Information.” Then they cut away to the next scene, which begins by someone else taking up that key phrase or word but in a completely different context: “But I can’t give you any information,” Maggie Evans tells Roger Collins. “Pop’s a free soul, you know that. He wanders.” Just minutes ago, Roger, who is not such a free soul, wandered into the coffee shop just before closing time under the pretext of seeing if there’s “any coffee left in the hopper.” But what he really wants to know is where Sam Evans is. You’ll recall that in the previous episode Roger exploded when he realized that Burke Devlin is back in town – and what he needs this late hour is to pin down the whereabouts of a local artist who paints seascapes and sunsets. At this point Roger has something the viewer lacks: information.
Dark Shadows from the Beginning 