Dark Shadow Diary, Episode 45

Episode 45: "Word Gets Around"
Aug. 26, 1966

Burke Devlin arrives at the Blue Whale before Roger, and finds an increasingly cryptic Bill Malloy lurking in the shadows. Malloy warns Devin that the Collins family are catching on to his game, an admission that prompts a lot of obligatory drinking from them both.

Malloy offers up Roger as a sacrificial lamb, even though it doesn't appear he's got evidence that Roger's done anything besides abuse his liver during the last decade. We find out that Malloy gave Devlin his first "man's job" years before, and that Malloy is holding a "hole card" in their present negotiations. Devlin's still infatuated with the idea of burning down Collinwood and pissing on its ashes, so it's going to be tough to sell him on armistice.

When Roger fails to show at the Blue Whale, Malloy goes to the cannery and demands a conversation with him. It's always difficult to keep track of time on DARK SHADOWS. I was convinced it was nighttime, but it's apparently early in the day if Roger's at work. I guess.Who the hell knows with this show. When Barnabas Collins joins the cast later in the series, forcing the show to move most of its goings on to nighttime (i.e. "vampire") hours, things get even more squirrelly.

Carolyn makes a brief appearance at the cannery under the pretense of visiting Joe Haskell, and is quickly dismissed in favor of some Roger-on-Malloy verbal fistacuffs. Malloy reveals his "hole card" is Sam Evans, the town's pretentious drunk. I kinda wish the show had taken this plot idea to screen, just to see the baffling, stilted dialogue that actor David Ford would have had to spew while Sam "testified" in front of a jury. I like to imagine he'd (wrongly) quote a lot of Baudelaire while going through DTs in court. It would have let the show go full-on MACBETH.

At Collinwood, Carolyn shows Roger the silver pen given to her by Burke, and he flips out. "I told you he wanted something from you," he tells her. "He's paying in advance." Malloy calls the house to remind Roger that the clock is ticking on his ultimatum, thankfully ending Roger and Carolyn's creepy conversation.

After acting like a jackass, Roger tries to make amends (which is his way) and Carolyn admits she's mostly interested in Burke because he pisses everyone off. Also, she took note that Devlin was meeting with someone who was recently asking a lot of uncomfortable questions about their family business. Roger went  all "creepy uncle" when he found out Carolyn had lunch with Devlin, but doesn't seem all that upset when he gets validation that his rival is drawing up plans to financially attack his family. Weird.

Devlin and Malloy meet again at the Blue Whale to ... well, it's not exactly clear why then needed to meet, except to pad the episode a bit more. They arrange to meet at Roger's office later that night "to get this whole thing settled once and for all."

I think we're getting close to saying farewell to Mr. Malloy.