Episode 37 - 8/16/66

Roger paces in the dark of the drawing room. He picks up the phone and calls Sam Evans. He wants Sam to call Burke to cancel the portrait setting—at 1:00 in the morning! He hangs up and is surprised to see Vicki standing in the doorway. Roger accuses her of spying on him. Roger threatens to send her away. Vicki explains that Liz may not go along with that.

  

Maggie asks her Dad who called, as the phone woke her. Sam tells her not to worry about him. She returns to bed and he sits down to write a letter. She comes back out and asks him about the letter. He says it's for her. He asks her to put it away, unopened, unless something happens to him. 

In the middle of the night, a woman's sobs can be heard through the halls of Collinwood. It wakes Vicki, who explores the house looking for whoever it might be. She makes her way down to the basement, and hears the voice behind the locked door. Roger finds Vicki in the basement. He tells her he won't put up with her snooping around the house. His outburst is interrupted by the phone ringing upstairs.

Roger answers the phone. It's Ned Calder. Roger tells him to call back at a reasonable hour. Vicki tries to interject that Liz is expecting the call, and Roger yells at her. She finally has enough and begins to storm upstairs to wake Liz. At that, Roger immediately softens and begins to beg her forgiveness. He blames his behavior on all the stresses of the events of late. She agrees to forgive him if he admits he heard the sobbing. He says he did, and he doesn't know if it's one of their ghosts.

Our thoughts

John: It looks like the production took a day off. This is the first episode not shot exactly two weeks before airing. Considering they worked on the 4th of July, I'm curious why they skipped shooting on August 2nd.

Christine: I wonder how they will reconcile it. This episode was also lacking a closing theme and end credits.

John: Vicki was quite the haunting figure when she startled Roger in the middle of the night. But not as haunting as the crying woman in the middle of the night. What's up with that? And now Roger has admitted to hearing it, and says even he can't explain it. Who is the crying woman of Collinwood?

Christine: I thought it was Josette Collins crying herself to sleep at night, just like the story Sam related to Vicki during their first meeting in Episode 5. Or it could have to do with what is locked up in the basement. It's about time we got back to that storyline. Roger has got quite a range of emotion. In the span of one episode he goes from raving maniac to charming gentleman, telling Vicki he'd go to any lengths to restore her good favor.

John: I can't believe Maggie didn't immediately open her father's letter. To think that the info we've all been waiting for that ties her father to Roger Collins and Burke Devlin's accident is within reach!

Christine: Maggie must be too honest for her own good. Sam should really cut back on the drinking though, because how dumb is that to write down whatever shameful thing he and Roger did to Burke Devlin ten years ago. Will Maggie read the letter or will it be discovered by someone else?

Bandage Watch Day 13. Maybe Roger is uptight because he's had that on so long. It doesn't seem to be sticking very well.

Roger, finding comfort in his bottle...

...as Sam does likewise. These two really have a lot in common.

Deep thoughts from Sam: "Ghosts of the past don't live in a home, they live inside each man. They fight for his soul, twist it into something unrecognizable."

Perhaps the sobbing is from the ghost of Isaac Collins, whose portrait is still nowhere to be found. The globe lamp that used to light up his portrait has also been removed. Things aren't looking good for Isaac.