We got the best description we can hope for today of the accident that has been a major component of the show for nine months. I'm sorry that a man (even a fictional, never-quite-named man) was killed, but I found the description of his death to be disappointing. There were no fireworks in Sam's narrative. It's possible that the original version of the accident, the one that didn't make it into the show, was much more interesting, since the original idea was for Roger to go down in flames. And who can blame Dan Curtis for keeping Roger on the show, given what we've seen of Louis Edmonds? A year later it would have been simple: Roger would have been killed trying to escape his fate, and a few weeks later we'd have had Louis Edmonds in a new character, and maybe the residents of Collinwood would have commented on the new character's uncanny resemblance to Roger, or maybe they wouldn't have noticed it. But at this stage of the show, an actor played one character (or maybe two actors played one character), so the accident had to be played down so Louis Edmonds could be kept on the show.
Here's my question: if there had been socialized medicine in the US in the 1950s, so that Sam didn't have to worry about medical bills for his wife, what excuse would the writers have given him for keeping quiet about the accident? Golly, imagine a world in which $15,000 would not only pay those medical bills but would even leave a little left over for some roses. Of course, that was back in the days when $15,000 would buy you something more than a cup of coffee.
I liked the wrangling between Sam and Maggie. I didn't enjoy it, but it struck me as true to life. Maggie finds out that Sam did something unforgivable, and then Sam makes Maggie do the work of figuring out what comes next. Yup, that rings true. I wasn't particularly impressed with Kathryn Leigh Scott's acting - something about that didn't ring so true - but the scene was well-conceived.
At this point, I guess Willie's function is to give further proof that Jason is a bad guy, though that seems unnecessary: Dennis Patrick and Jason McGuire have, between the two of them, managed to make Jason's villainy quite clear. I suppose, however, that Willie does cast an interesting light on the type of bad guy that Jason is. When Jason is talking to Elizabeth, what he wants is a comfortable life with a money and high-class lodgings and expensive clothes. If Jason enjoys Willie's company, that suggests that Jason also wants more rough-and-tumble fun than a comfortable life can give him. What exactly is Jason's idea of a good time? If Jason and Willie had been someplace else - someplace where Jason didn't have an image to maintain - when Willie started that fight in the Blue Whale, would Jason have joined in, fought dirty, and enjoyed it?
