The Inner Torment of Sam and Carolyn

David Ford is now portraying tormented alcoholic artist, Sam Evans. He looks and performs the character differently. To me, Sam is less pitiable. He doesn’t wax poetic in that life-is-falling-apart jumbled-nerves kind of way. With the beard and gruff appearance, he doesn’t look like an artist as much as a dock worker for the fishing fleet. Sam certainly is involved in this episode as he tries to convince Burke to release him from the portrait job, to no avail, and warns Joe, drinking black coffee to knock off the ill-effects of the booze, to get Carolyn away from Collins Port. Carolyn just has the hots for Burke and David, sneakily listening to her conversation with Joe, exploits her jealousy upon learning that Vicky was found in Devlin’s room having what was believed to be dinner. Carolyn, all bothered and pissed, angrily confronts Vicky, but this all blows over when the true intentions of the meeting are revealed. The sooner the relationship between Joe and Carolyn dissolves the better as far as I’m concerned. How Dark Shadows Creative could get that much mileage out of a mismatched couple with little chemistry—absent a couple of long kisses—is beyond me. Seeing Joe continue to languish in this fiasco that is considered a relationship really is a bit tiresome because it is obvious to all involved that Carolyn just is not into him as he is her. Still, I reckon we will get more and more of this storyline as it just will not die, although it is written in sand that Joe and Carolyn are dead in the water. David is still mad at Vicky, trying to turn others against her because she caught him red-handed with the valve. I won’t lie: I am so ready for some fresh storylines and a little bit of the supernatural included to spice things up because I find everything a bit stale at the moment except when Roger is on screen polarizing people with his antagonistic tone. David really has become the show’s go-to-villain the way he stirs up controversy and drama, pitting everyone against Vicky because she is a threat to him getting “sent away”. Like many a criminal, he points the blame at her instead of accepting his responsibility for all that has happened. I would really like to write something a bit more interesting but right now I seem to be covering the same material, nothing exciting or new materializing. I keep my head up as I know good times are ahead, particularly when Barnabas Collins and Willie Loomis shake things up in Collins Port.