Vicki works with David on his reading lessons, who is fixated on going to jail for trying to kill someone.
Roger spells out his theory, but the constable isn't so quick to believe everything, particularly in that he waited so long to contact him, after going to see Burke himself. He asks to speak to Vicki, and Liz goes to get her to prevent Roger from being alone with her. When Liz goes upstairs and mentions the constable is downstairs, David all but freaks out.
David creeps down the stairs and peeks into the drawing room.
The constable asked if Burke had threatened Roger. And then the constable goes on to say how he did that exact thing 10 years ago. He doesn't believe Devlin is a murderer. Vicki tells the constable that she believed Devlin when he denied it.
Outside the drawing room, David is terrified.
The group goes out to the garage to examine the scene of the crime. Liz waits until the foyer is empty to tell David, hiding in the shadows, to go back upstairs. David asks Liz if they'll arrest someone for having fingerprints on a wrench. The constable comes back in with the wrench and sets it down. David knocks it onto the ground and grabs it. Roger is furious with him, not realizing why he needed to justify why his prints would be on it.
Our thoughts
John: I couldn't tell if the constable was serious when he said David was, "Probably just impressed with the dignity of my badge."
Christine: Constable Carter seems quite intelligent and level headed, despite only having experience with faulty traffic lights and barroom brawls in Collinsport. He asks Roger, "Was my phone out of order?" when he found out Roger waited 12 hours to call him. When questioning Vicki, he asks Liz to tell her brother to let Vicki answer his questions. He seems more irritated with Roger for delaying the investigation than with David for contaminating evidence.
John: I have to give him credit. David was pretty smart to cover for his fingerprints on the wrench. Maybe he's smarter than we think he is.
Christine: Yes, he is a clever boy. When asked, Vicki tells David the worst thing she ever did was to get into a fight with a girl and give her a bloody nose. David follows up by asking if she ever tried to kill somebody and she responds curiously by smiling and saying, "I'm afraid not," and turns back to the history of Maine lesson. I found that a rather odd response to his disturbing question. David wishes he knew why his father never liked him. Perhaps this attempted murder will end up bringing them closer together.
John: It's nice to see Liz backed into a corner. We'll have to see if Vicki will get a chance to speak to Roger before Liz is able to ensure his story matches hers.
Christine: As Roger says, his sister has "a whim of iron." Roger seems to be quite adept at covering for Elizabeth's falsehoods, so I don't think Vicki will get anywhere with either of them.
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| David, engaged in intellectual pursuits. |
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David: "Did you ever try and kill somebody?" Vicki: "I'm afraid not.
David, which state do you think is the largest of all the New England
states?"
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| Vicki prevents David's first attempt at tampering with evidence. |
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David may be deprived of affection, but is not deprived of toys.
The portrait of Isaac Collins has been moved from its location in yesterday's episode. Where is Isaac now?
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Constable Carter is played by Michael Currie, who you may recognize from Sudden Impact, Halloween III, The Philadelphia Story, and many appearances on TV.
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I don't agree that Constable Carter seems intelligent. He greets David by asking his name. If a cop has been on the job for over ten years in Collinsport, a town under the shadow of a big house called Collinwood, home of the the Collins Cannery and the Collins Fishing Fleet, and he still doesn't know the four members of the Collins family, he's an idiot.
ReplyDeleteOf course, he is sensible when he's demanding to know why Roger waited twelve hours before coming to him and expressing incredulity at Roger's visit to Devlin. Characters in soaps and suchlike productions are always declaring they have to do their own investigations before they can go to the police, and often this is treated in the story as if it were a reasonable thing to do. But every step of the way they've lampshaded the preposterousness of it. Vicki kept telling him it was a bad idea before he did it, last episode Sam reacted scornfully when he told him what he repeats to the constable here, that he wanted to give Devlin a chance to leave town and never come back. And the constable shows the same scorn for the idea today.
Those scenes make Vicki, Sam, and the constable look smarter than Roger, but we've seen enough of Roger to know that he isn't a fool. Something is clouding his judgment, something more complicated and slipperier than the stories that have been suggested to us so far. Roger is hiding more than one thing, and he doesn't trust himself with his own secrets.
David looks at the camera again today, when he's eavesdropping on the conversation with the constable. An effective tactic- we the audience know what he knows, and he seems to be pleading with us to keep quiet.
Another meaningful look at the end of the episode. When the constable, who is an idiot, says cheerfully that now we'll know how David's fingerprints got on the wrench, Vicki gives David a grim little glance. Just for a second- but not only is it the last moment of the episode and therefore emphatic, it is also the second time we've seen her give David that look. The first time was in his room, when he was betraying himself with some remarks about how terrible it would be to go to prison. We can see a terrible idea starting to form in the back of Vicki's mind.