Discuss - Ep #0116

[Watching Project]

Robservations #116

[DarkLady]

We're back! Hooray!

In celebration of the new year, Elizabeth is finally actually wearing her suit jacket.

Matthew tells Vicki he's hidden his car deep in the woods. Even though Collinwood is apparently a pretty big estate, surely the sheriff could find the car!

[MagnusTrask]

Until I go back and start rewatching, I'll just mention that I've only just yesterday finished everything up through Barnabas's first episode, thanks to one here who shall remain nameless.   One odd disconcerting thing was the turning inside out of time, while I watched.   Through Burke-vs.-Roger, I was always making the mental adjustment of fictional time moving much more slowly than real time, as I watched an average of one episode per day.   Several months were actually two weeks, show-time.   At this point though, they make a couple remarks about Vicki having been in Collinsport for "months", soon if they haven't yet, and drop the "24"-like time anomaly.   We're supposed to have a fairly normal sense of time's passage.  However, I watched the whole next storyline and part of the next as fast as I wanted to, which was pretty fast.   It got me through the holidays...  I needed that experience.

It turned time inside out, though.   Right after spending months on 2 weeks of DS, I spent a couple weeks on months of DS events.   It feels odd.

Right now is where the show changes, a LOT.

[Lydia]

I kept wondering in this episode: “Why doesn't Matthew kill Vicky?”  And not in my usual “oh just kill her and put me out of my misery” way.  He had wanted to kill her before and was interrupted by Mrs. Stoddard, and now he felt even more aggrieved towards her because, in his logic, she was the reason his beloved Mrs. Stoddard had betrayed him.  So instead of talking to her, he should have been finishing the job of breaking her neck.

I also thought about rape.  Not that I expected it to happen on 1966 Dark Shadows – but, supposing this were the real world, would Matthew have raped Vicky?

Oh, gosh, couldn't Vicky have picked up something to use as a weapon before she tried to escape?

[MagnusTrask]

Matthew's a sort of innocent, in a strange way.   He doesn't kill Vicki for the same reason most people don't just kill those who get in their way, I guess.   (When he tried it with Burke, he figured Burke could take care of himself, I suppose.)   On the other hand, he also doesn't quite grasp why you aren't supposed to kill people who are creating major problems-- not because he's inherently a killer, but because he's "simple", and doesn't understand his own impulses, and doesn't have the resources in him to think much about them.   

He's not some killer or criminal on a crime/killing spree.   He wanted to be left alone to do his yard work.   Every bit of violence happened because he couldn't work out any other way to protect Liz or his own existence.   As for rape, I don't think his own particular version of a conscience would allow that, and that might be quite a leap, from hermit Mr. Fix-It to rapist. 

[Lydia]

Magnus, Matthew is deranged.  Vicky did not get in his way; rather, he got in her way.  When he found her purse in the Old House, he could have left it there, and he could have hidden in the secret room until after she came back and picked it up.  Instead he kept the purse, and he captured Vicky.  Likewise, previously, when they were at his cottage, Vicky hadn't a clue that Matthew was involved in the Bill Malloy’s murder until Matthew started behaving strangely.  And Vicky didn't force Matthew to confess; he did so of his own accord.  But Matthew is fixating on Vicky and saying his problems are all Vicky's fault.  I don't see any impediment in his mind to murdering Vicky.  As for rape, it would be a form of asserting power over everything that she represents to him.  I'm having trouble imagining it happening – but the fault for that may lie in my inadequate imagination.

[MagnusTrask]

I think Matthew is gradually becoming out-and-out deranged after losing everything that matters to him, whereas he existed in this grey area between being disturbed and just sort of naturally stupid, earlier.   The world's full of bad reasoning and shifting of blame away from oneself, whatever one's sanity level...

To say that someone's deranged does not automatically mean "anything goes" for that person, and doesn't mean that he will commit any and all vile acts without hesitation or regret: murder, rape, anything.   Matthew was agonizing over what he mistakenly believed was an inescapable conclusion that Vicki had to die for him to survive, when he had her as a prisoner at his cottage.    He takes killing very seriously, won't let Roger joke about it, and despite a few close calls in his life probably, he's never killed anyone intentionally yet.   Deranged or not, Matthew's on record as having been racked with guilt over the idea of murder back at the cottage, so why not at the Old House too?   

[Lydia]

Whether or not Matthew was racked with guilt at the cottage, he was still going ahead with breaking Vicky's neck.

[MagnusTrask]

Yeah, but he took forever to work his way up to it, actually discussing it with her (which just-plain-murderers don't do, they just act), as if begging her to explain some way he could have avoided doing it, and still not have total disaster come down on him.   He was like some cornered animal with the survival instinct taking over, and few smarts to work out why it would even mean disaster for him too.   He's half-animal in a lot of ways.   I think he's a kind of person who's just not equipped to live in society, and he was extremely fortunate that Liz gave him this safe niche to live in quietly and harmlessly, for all those years.   It's really a very sad story, Matthew's, and I'm closer to having Liz's attitude than Vicki's.   It's strange how Thayer could (for me anyway) make the character both scarier and more sympathetic than the previous actor did.

[alwaysdavid]

A cab driver comes for Vickie even though she said earlier she was taking the bus.  The Frank calls and says that she didn't get off the bus.  Thus alerting the inhabitants of Collinwood that something may be up.
Mrs. Johnson states she is bitter towards Matthew. Seems llike a normal day in her world.  Vickie sneaks out of the room, but fails to think that she might need a weapon to use against Matthew who she knows can overpower her.