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Carolyn Has Eyes for Burke


Meant to post this last night but my computer was misbehaving...

Well, at this point, Dark Shadows is very much the soap opera. Boy, is poor Joan Bennett struggling with her lines. The discomfort in the fast, pressure-cooker work schedule shows terribly on screen. The value in camerawork and production is pretty shoddy. Normally, I don’t quibble on such matters (flubbing lines doesn’t bother me, but I do feel a horror come over me when you see actors caught in the middle of trying to remember dialogue), but the way the camera is struggling to capture actors on the sets, the zoom problems, it is really noticeable just how detrimental not having enough time to get things right can be to a show, regardless if it is episodic comedy performed live in front of a studio audience, Saturday Night Live, or the soaps. Bennett does express her character’s feelings well, even if you can tell she is summoning the script word for word, page of dialogue per page of dialogue right there in front of us without much rehearsal time or takes to get performance and everything just right. This episode further widens the already constantly-opening gap that is forming between Carolyn and Joe’s relationship as her attraction for Burke Devlin can no longer be contained. She damn near salivates, her smile gushing “I want you” while the three of them converse in the Blue Whale as bee-bop music plays on the juke and customers jerk-twist to the beat. Joe wants to get as far away from Devlin as possible, not hiding his disdain for the man. You know where Joe stands and his frustration with Carolyn results in him walking out as she would prefer to hang around with Devlin. But Devlin insists they find Joe and fix this whole mess before things get out of hand. Meanwhile, Elizabeth, Vicky and Matthew talk about Roger’s car’s brakes and the news wanting a story on the wreck. What seems like a sure thing that Devlin tampered with the brakes—Vicky did catch him by the car with a wrench in his hand—might not be as cut and dry as we might assume. He could very well be just a red herring…

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