This week in TV Guide – Dark Shadows from the Beginning

Episode 75: On a Clear Day, You Can See Murder

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“Roger’s tension is increased. Learning about Burke’s meetings with Vicki, he…once again…probes, endlessly wanting to know every word that was spoken between them…feeling, more and more, that Vicki and Burke are united to harm him” (Shadows on the Wall, p. 50)

That was supposed to have been the aftermath of the brake valve caper which led to Roger’s accident back at the end of the third week.

It is now Friday October 7, 1966, and Dark Shadows is airing an episode that concludes its fifteenth week on the air. Roger spends the first half of today’s episode admiring the view from atop Widow’s Hill, when Vicki, herself out for a walk with a view, happens upon Roger there: “Not planning to jump, are you?” She reiterates the line Roger startled her with back in episode 2, and here today Roger offers a belated but good-natured apology.

That’s Art Wallace for you, always reprising an earlier situation but with none of the story resolve such repetition might bring about. In yesterday’s episode, David was sneaking into Burke’s hotel room just like in episode 29. In episode 73, David stole away from Collinwood into town and Collinsport Inn to visit Burke but stopped in at the restaurant downstairs for a sundae, just like in episode 28.

Two weeks from now will have the run of episodes 81 to 85 where David locks Vicki away in a secret room in the closed off wing of the house, on the pretext of having something important to show her – not a filigreed fountain pen, which is a prop and product of the TV series itself along with the indeterminate side avenue into mystery and suspense with the death of Bill Malloy. These will be the final week of episodes written by Art Wallace. What should be happening right around now with today’s episode between Roger and Vicki according to the series bible is more tension:

“Roger’s pressure on Vicki is heightened. Playing on her unsureness, on her growing tension, he tries to get her to leave. Roger and David….almost seem to be working as a unit in their constant harassment of Vicki. They make the legends of the old house seem alive as they surround her with constant reference to the horrors that live with them” (Shadows on the Wall, p. 55).

Instead we have a dead plant manager, a silver filigreed fountain pen found on a beach, and up until this afternoon a prime murder suspect who on this fine day tosses pebbles instead of governesses over the edge of Widow’s Hill, all because too many ABC affiliates across the country thought it would be a great idea to fit Dark Shadows in at 10:30 am instead of 4 pm where it belongs.

TV Guide_Dark Shadows listing Monday 3 October 1966_10.30 am_page A24_ep71

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Episode 74: Celebration Day: Death Has Come at Last

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“Accidental death due to drowning. I think I’ll have it cast in bronze.”

The main thing to be taken from today’s episode is how each of the interested parties have reacted to the news of the coroner’s decision, that Bill Malloy’s death was the result of accidental drowning.

You would expect that Burke should be outraged, because this would leave him hanging with no hope now of clearing his name which is what Bill Malloy had promised would come of the meeting he had arranged that night in Roger’s office.

Generally though most of those involved would be relieved, especially Mrs. Stoddard and Carolyn who considered Bill near and dear, that no violent act on the part of person or persons unknown had befallen the man and that at last the matter could be brought to rest.

It’s Roger’s overreaction that stands out as suspicious; all that expansive euphoria, celebrating with drinks and a carefree stroll along the cliffs – where Bill’s body had washed up just a couple nights earlier – as though Roger were a terminal patient who had just been handed a clean bill of health and the renewed lease on life that would naturally go with such news. There’s just too much of a joyous plateau for comfort.

Either the producers and writers of Dark Shadows have suddenly decided to just make a red herring out of the entire Bill Malloy mystery story or someone has decided that Louis Edmonds is too good of an actor to let go, considering that Roger’s character is, or was, scheduled to be killed off at some point, after Victoria Winters makes one too many visits over to the Evans cottage while hearing Sam’s tongue getting loosened over liquor to reveal details of what really happened ten years ago with the Burke Devlin manslaughter story.

Most likely it’s the latter point, because things in life tend to happen for a reason.

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Episode 71: School’s Out for Roger

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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.

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Episode 66: A Killer Alibi

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Set only in Collinwood, Monday’s episode, number sixty-six in the series, is a study in minimalism with four actors in the cast and only two sets in use. It’s just as well that they save a little in the budget to start the week, given how Dan Curtis is planning something big for Friday.

You’d figure David and Carolyn would be downstairs with all the raising of voices this evening in both the Collinwood foyer and drawing room over Burke’s unwanted presence there, but as noted above the week’s budget also calls for a slight cutback in realism. We’ll check in with the little monster and the belle of the ball as the week moves on. Today is for voicing suspicions in the death and disappearance, and subsequent washing ashore and pushing away, of Bill Malloy – specifically, on whether it’s reasonable to consider whether both Roger Collins and Matthew Morgan have been working as a team.

There is also ample room in today’s episode to explore the lonely plight of Victoria Winters’ upbringing in the foundling home in New York, with Mrs. Stoddard’s obvious pangs of guilt on full display but who is nonetheless unable to reveal the maternal truth the viewer by now is certain she has been keeping from the young governess. Sadly, today’s episode thus represents yet another lost opportunity in the story of Victoria Winters.

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