Once again I like Barnabas telling Julia “We must trust each other.” It’s a minuscule beginning - but it is a beginning.
The writer must have consulted his great-grandmother’s how-to book for Burke’s proposal and Vicky’s response. Good heavens, she was surprised when Burke proposed! Where are we in the assumed arc of Vicky’s cluelessness? Are we still deploring the fact that although she’s smart as a whip now, she’ll eventually descend into utter imbecility? Or are we saying that the descent has already been made? I can’t keep track. I see no arc; I just see a flat line.
Still, it’s a shame that Burke’s proposal should have been like this. The relationship between the Burke and Vicky used to be interesting. It was your basic forbidden love, both because Burke was the official enemy of the Collins family, and also because Carolyn wanted Burke for herself. I never liked Mitchell Ryan’s Burke, but I sympathized with him about Vicky: she was a spanner in the works that he couldn’t dismiss. Once upon time they kissed in Burke’s hotel suite, even while they knew that there could be no relationship. And now here’s Liz smiling and doing everything she can to smooth the way for the happy pair, and Burke is objecting to things about Vicky that were part of what attracted him to her in the first place.
But they must get married, so they can move into Seaview together and endure the horrors that Seaview is concealing within its breast, or within whatever it is that passes for a breast in a house. I like the way we haven't yet been told exactly why Seaview is "Not For Sale". Obviously some Collins had a very bad experience there and is considerately trying to keep anybody else from going through the same bad experience. Burke, however, will loudly pooh-pooh all such fantasies, and buy the house, and go to his death (he's got to die so Anthony George can go off and become a famous movie star) proclaiming his disbelief every inch of the way.
