Still no fashion notes, because you see, it's still Day 2. Yes, a good two or three weeks have gone by for the contemporary viewing audience, the actors are toiling away in the same clothes--both they and the wardrobe looking worse for wear, and it's still the same bloody day. We're at least into the night time hours, so I feel hopeful that eventually we'll progress onto day 3 before I lose my mind totally.
So when last I wrote before the holidays, stomach flu, my own car troubles, and my work duties reared their ugly head, Roger was planning on heading into town to meet Burke at the Blue Whale. David was being particularly cunning and creepy, and demonstrated a penchant for mechanical periodicals. Carolyn was busy using her current boyfriend so she could make a play on another man. In between her attempts at making friends with the hired help and her charge, Vicki discovered her employers' sworn enemy hanging out in the garage holding a wrench. And Elizabeth was quietly wringing her hands in her best boarding school manner.
Nothing has changed. Just thought I'd get us all up to speed.
You know there are times when I feel compelled to dig down deep and write a check. Sometimes it's something tragic like disaster relief (Amazon has a nice link where you can contribute for the victims of the tsunami). Sometimes it's for NPR. And sometimes, it's watching two people who so very desperately need therapy. Of course, David and Roger are fictional characters and could afford their own therapy, but you get what I mean. It's quite sad really. Neither has a clue how to communicate with the other. When the one reaches out, the other doesn't want to hear it; and vice versa. Here we have two deeply damaged lonely people who need professional help desperately. David's big obsession is that his father plans to "send him away." I never really got this before, but it makes a lot of sense. His mother was "sent away" too. David clearly doesn't understand why or where and no one is doing anything to clear that up. He knows, quite correctly, that his father hates him--just as he hated his mother. So he concludes that he's next on the chopping block.
Vicki, blithely unaware that her fifteen minute "break through" was a snow job, tries to persuade Roger to buy David some of the Mechano magazines he loves so much. At the moment, Roger has apparently abandoned his theory that she's Burke's spy, and thinks she just fell off the turnip truck. He makes a couple of astute points.
1. Vicki could make a living doing a lot of other things elsewhere.
2. David is a very troubled child.
3. And you can't buy somebody's friendship.
As messed up as Roger is--and he is messed up--he's right about this.
It finally occurs to Vicki that she should tell someone about finding Burke in the garage. Why she chooses Elizabeth and not Roger, I'm not sure. She also makes it seem very harmless, which I so don't get: she saw the guy in a part of the property where he was not supposed to be, holding a wrench, standing in front of his arch enemy's car. Moreover, he was making relatively weird conversation at the time.
Roger and Liz go at it. She is not at all happy about this sudden trip into town to go get chatty with Burke. Can't say I blame her. It's not as if Burke and Roger had no place to go talk privately. I mean, come on, that house has enough rooms. Burke couldn't have suggested they go find one and talk? Roger defends his decision. It's interesting really. Elizabeth demonstrates that she is a much more defensive player, and although he connects that with her self-imposed isolation on the estate, I don't think that's it. Roger is all over the game board. He switches strategies right and left. He's a panic player and it shows.
Back in the Bleeding Heart/Social Worker/I-Just-Want-to-Be-Your-Friend bedroom, Vicki is still trying to capitalize on this non-existent breakthrough with David. David is positive that not only does his father not love him, but also that his father won't be buying him any mechanic magazines any time soon. He's still hipped on his theory that dear old dad is going to be sending him into the same void as his mother. What Davy really wants is for Roger to die. All of this is said in David Henesy's best creepy voice, which for those of you who haven't seen these episodes, is way creepier than any of the times when he gets possessed later on in the series. I think this has to do with the fact that in the Quentin episodes or the Gerard/Daphne or even the Leviathan mess, we all know he's being possessed and that it's the fault of the ghosts or whatever, and that underneath he's this poor kid. Here? Now? It's all David.
I have a hard time with Vicki's naivete in these scenes. Of all people, she should know very well that not all parents love their children. She treats David to this thinly veiled story about her own childhood, which he finds as problematic as I do. David tells her that everyone hates him except for his mother, and possibly (and he's not convinced of this) his Aunt Elizabeth. Now obviously this is not true, but Vicki, if she had any sense at all, should realize that a fifteen-minute warm and gushy chat is not going to solve anything. I don't know. I suppose her insistence on staying in this very nasty job has something to do with her need to fix her own problems. She understandably wanted a family more than anything. Never got one. Working as a secretary or in a store or even in a conventional school wouldn't give her the same illusion of family that she gets working as a governess. What she wanted was somebody to ride in and rescue her so now she's going to do that for David. Unfortunately, he's got issues with a capital "I." David does decide to give Roger a chance, but I don't think it has a lot to do with Vicki's version of reaching out.
It's really an interesting scene in some respects. David Henesy does a fantastic job in this part. By the time he's done here, he's hammered this one out of the park. You know his David is a troubled, deeply disturbed child, but at the same time, you still feel sympathy for him. That's hard to do really. He's also very funny at times. There is doubt (which will be expressed in depth by several characters) about Davy's parentage, but he's just as sarcastic as Roger more than once.
Roger's main purpose at the moment is to find his car keys, and he completely brushes David off (and are we surprised? It's just like Vicki to pick the most inappropriate time for this--she sends the kid on in even though not ten minutes ago, Roger brushed her off).
It's exposition time, folks! Something Wallace ordinarily excels at. Today is an off day in a fairly large way. Elizabeth picks up the phone to find out that Burke is still waiting for Roger at the Blue Whale. Fine. Then we have a rather odd scene between Elizabeth and Victoria. Wallace needed to establish certain facts again for us--that David is a troubled child, that she's worried about Carolyn; Burke; the car, the drive down the hill and so on. All for setting up what's to come, and of course, to clue in new viewers. But it's strange because suddenly Elizabeth is all buddy buddy with Vicki, confiding in her, and soliciting her opinion. This just after her having fits that Vicki's been poking around and trying to get Matthew to gossip.
Santa's coming early for David! He's awfully excited about Roger's impending death.
Some film footage of Roger's drive down the hill and his brake failure. Then CRASH!
It's worth noting that they were taping on the fourth of July. The announcer guy (the one with the voice of god there) even wishes someone a happy independence day. So was this common practice then? Even when I worked retail, we had curtailed hours on the fourth. It was a national holiday back then still, right?
Sinister footage of a ringing phone, which works about as well as it sounds. I mean, the estate is supposed to be on the outskirts of town. This is well before the days of the cell phone. So Roger's car goes careening off into the side of the road as he's leaving the estate, and not only does someone find him ASAP, but this person traipses off to a phone and not up to Collinwood to tell the news??? Go figure.
We learn that Roger escaped with some bruises. Liz darkly conjectures that the car wreck was no accident. She's decided that it was Burke and we learn that the brakes failed. In another moment, she's damn certain that Burke did it. Vicki, who did just see the man with a wrench standing over the car, can't believe that! After all "Carolyn thinks Burke is a nice guy." Let's pause here to remember that Carolyn said the exact same thing to her about Roger when he was going off and screaming at her. Liz just sort of looks at Vicki and scoffs that Carolyn is a child. Heh. I love bitchy Liz. I really do.
At the Blue Whale, Burke is still on Joe and Carolyn's date. Joe, quite understandably is less than thrilled. He is after all in an exclusive relationship, and his date is all but throwing herself at another man, while he's sitting there.
My main man, the one and only Bob Rooney, saunters on over, cigarette dangling out of his mouth to serve the drinks. I really like Bob. It has to do with local color or something. I mean, the actor says about two words his entire run on the show, but he fits.
Carolyn has some seriously juvenile ideas of what constitute romance. She seriously wants someone to come along and drag her out of Collinwood by her hair. It's the old rape fantasy, which is fine when you're twelve and you don't understand that rape is a crime of violence and hate and not a gesture of love, but she's supposed to be 18. In any case, she wasn't raised in a barn and she should know that what she's doing now? is very, very wrong.
Yay! And we're back in the kitchen set, which like Bob Rooney, always makes me happy for some reason. Elizabeth isn't happy though. She's back to being moody again. Matthew gets out of bed and comes up to be interrogated about how he services the Mustang (which sounds dirtier than I intended, but you know what I mean). Matthew really is an interesting guy. He admits to disliking Roger, but insists he didn't harm him. He wouldn't hurt anyone. Unless (and this is where Vicki and Elizabeth should have been going uh oh) they were out to hurt Mrs. Stoddard. The sun, the earth, the moon, everything revolves around Mrs. Stoddard for Matthew. And if anyone causes trouble for Mrs. Stoddard . . . well. It would be bad.
From this rather interesting conversation we wander into the dangerous waters of auto repair. This would be a subject about which I know something. I suspect it is a subject with which most motor vehicle owners are conversant. However, unless it's happening to you and your car, it really, well, it's boring. Right now, it's exposition because we need to establish that the brakes didn't fail by conventional means. As the former owner of a Ford (albeit a mere Escort and not a snazzy sports car), I am less than convinced. In four years I owned it, my little piece of junk was subject to all kinds of weird recalls: the cars were spontaneously combusting, deadly problems with catalytic converters, and such. However, Roger's car was presumably made in the sixties, when men were men and the cars were not made out of tinfoil. So I'll go with Matthew's pronouncement that "them brakes were sound!"
"I Need a Man!" is playing on the jukebox at the Blue Whale. Just kidding, but Carolyn continues on her pursuit of a new boyfriend, in front of her old boyfriend. Although, I have to admit, I feel slightly disappointed that Carolyn did not persuade Burke to hit the dance floor, because the sight of Mitchell Ryan in his three-piece dress-for-success suit doing the Twist or the Watusi or whatever would have been vastly entertaining. Carolyn calls Joe out for being rude. Honey, take a long look in the mirror if you want to see who's breaking every known rule of etiquette. Joe finally takes off in disgust and leaves Carolyn there with Burke. And I just want to slap the little bitch upside the head. You. Do. Not. Do. This.
To her surprise, Burke seems less than thrilled about being saddled with her. He tells her that they're going after Joe. And failing that, well, she seems to think he'll be dragging her by her hair off to his room, but I didn't quite read his expression like that.
More stuff with the phone and it's less than compelling television viewing. Supposedly reporters are calling because word's out that a Collins was in a car accident and the Collins family is big news. Except. Again, essentially the guy crashed his car in his driveway (okay, a very long driveway). This is supposed to be a small town with one taxi, and yet, they evidently have their reporter making calls to the wire services??? Whatever. Vicki demonstrates her social ineptitude by handing the phone to Elizabeth with her bright, "it's a reporter." Sweetie, the woman's brother nearly got killed in a car accident; would you want to talk to a reporter about it? Hell, what am I saying? Of course Vicki would. After all, this is the same woman with absolutely no sense of personal privacy.
In the middle of all this drama, we find out from Matthew the whole side of the car caved in. Ouch. Elizabeth, who is just not having a very good day here, starts wondering where Carolyn is on her date. Vicki narks on Carolyn, clearly feeling guilty about it, but hey, not to worry, because Burke is so friendly! Liz lets her have it, calling into question Victoria's judgment. She points out that Vicki doesn't know Carolyn--not really, and that again, Carolyn has no idea what she wants or what she's doing. Too bad she might as well be talking to the wall.
