Your comment about the corners reminds me of that story about the Winchester heiress who had her house built without any right angles. She was afraid she would be haunted by the ghosts of the people who had been killed by the rifle her father (I think) invented. It also makes me think of The Legend of Hell House--the original movie, that is.

So maybe I was on the right track with my thought of the sink and the drain, and the wide corners are intended to funnel the ghosts into the West Wing - glug, glug, glug.

The upstairs hall at Collinwood has been bothering me for the last couple of days.  Its corners don't make right angles.  And it seems to me that if this had been the case in other episodes besides today's and yesterday's, I'd have noticed it before.  This suggests that the upstairs hall set was not assembled properly for its latest use, which of course has me happily imagining the whole process of putting the set together, with boards dropped on toes, and a couple of crew members being more interested in their upcoming cigarette break than in their work.

Or else the odd angles are there on purpose, to draw our eyes to the door of the West Wing, like water in a sink inexorably drawn to the drain.

Or else I'm imagining things.

In other news, Burke needs to hire a Vice President in charge of Human Resources to do his hiring for him, because Bronson isn't a very impressive specimen.  Burke tells him not to drink too much, and instead of thinking, “I’ll make a better impression if I stick to ginger ale,” Bronson says, “ I know my limit,” and pours himself some more.  And he didn't make sure he had all his work with him before he left New York for the wilds of Maine.  Was Bronson really the best that Burke could do?

Oh, dear, I'm sorry you went to such trouble, Midnite.  What I had in mind at the time I wrote my comment was a time when Julia got what I perceived to be a wholly unnecessary lift home to Collinwood.  But my impression is that #10 on your list was also an unnecessary lift.

Loved how Liz TOLD Roger to come up with a believable story to satisfy Vicky’s curiosity or else. Heh.

Good old Collins imperiousness.  But Roger came up with quite a smooth little story.

When Vicky said, "David!" as she realized the precious letter had been taken from her drawer, that was, I think, the first time that I felt her as a real person.  Maybe it was because her voice wasn't as high as usual.

The Desk in Vickie's room is clearly deeply scarred.

I didn't see that at all.  I need a bigger TV.  Movie screen size.  But where would I put it?  Meanwhile, all I thought as the closing credits rolled over Vicky's room was, "That's a nice room."  Oh, and I keep wondering if the chair at Vicky's desk is the same one that is used in the drawing room, but I never can remember the embroidery on it long enough to check the one against the other.

I like seeing early Maggie collecting and spreading gossip through the town.

Is Burke starting to think twice about having come back to Collinsport?  History repeats itself.  He believes himself to have been railroaded into jail ten years ago, and now it looks as though it could happen again.  Burke is a rich, powerful man now, apparently, but Collinsport may be too much for him.  Or else maybe it's staying in Room 24 that's too much for him.

I liked the description of the boat Joe hoped to buy with his friend: it needs some work.  Oh, gosh, don't they all!

That landing in the Evan's cottage is a total waste of space to nowhere.

Do you mean the landing just inside the front door?  I think it's got to be there.  The Evans cottage - or, since we're quoting Luciaphile today, Casa Evans - has no foyer the way Collinwood has, and I think it has to have some sort of foyer surrogate.  Likewise, I'm figuring the reason the screen door is split in two is so the Evanses can have a Collinwood-double-doors surrogate.  I'm waiting to see what they use for a tower surrogate.

Somewhere or other - probably in My Scrapbook: Dark Shadows Memories, or whatever that book is - Kathryn Leigh Scott talks about what a disaster she was, on the very first day of the show, at making sure she got to the right mark all the time.  That may or may not be the case, but if it was, she sure had picked up a lot by the time she did today's episode.  There was lots of movement for Maggie around the Evans living room, along with handling the newspaper and the coffee cup.

I liked the scene with Roger and Carolyn, too.  I feel I've spent all my time complaining lately, so it's good to know that I'm not simply shutting my eyes to the possibility being pleased.

Does Carolyn drive?  It seems she's always being driven around by Joe or Burke, or bumming rides from Bill.

It seems to me that what happens more than once (though I can't cite episode numbers for you) is that somebody drives into town from Collinwood and gets a lift back from somebody else, leaving the original car stranded.

As DarkLady has noted, Maggie now goes wigless.  Kathryn Leigh Scott said somewhere that one day Dan Curtis saw her own hair, and liked it better than the wig.  I'm wondering about this story.  I think that I have also heard that KLS tried out for the role of Victoria Winters (and at this point I'm thinking she would have been better in the role than Alexandra Moltke, but that's another subject), so Dan Curtis might well have seen KLS's hair before she got the role of Maggie.  Never mind.  At the moment I'm more interested in Maggie than I am in KLS, although KLS is very interesting.

We've got three situational characters: Maggie in the coffee shop, Mr. Wells the hotel clerk, and Bob the Bartender.  Any one of them could become a more prominent character in the show, and I'm rooting for Mr. Wells.  This is despite that fact that I know perfectly well that Maggie's bound for glory and Mr. Wells is not.  Of course, Maggie had an unfair advantage right from the start in the form of a drunken father, but anything can happen on Dark Shadows, and advantages can be thrown away.  (We're watching one being thrown away right now, in the form of Mitchell Ryan as Burke Devlin, but that's a long throw.)  But my understanding is that KLS isn't one to throw away advantages, and furthermore that she'll find advantages where other people saw blank space.  Oops, I said I was interested in Maggie today and not KLS, but I guess KLS is what makes Maggie interesting.

And yet, 45 years later, if you ask the man on the street about Conrad Bain and Kathryn Leigh Scott, he's more likely to have heard of Bain than of Scott.