In July 1970, Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman came unstuck in time and spent two weeks in the far-off future year 1995. They found that the great house of Collinwood was in ruins, its residents either dead, missing, or insane as the result of a mysterious disaster that took place before 1970 was out. Since returning to their own period, they have been making fruitless efforts to learn what is happening and prevent the disaster.
Today, we see Julia sitting on the couch in the drawing room, reading a book and picking her teeth. Barnabas is pacing nearby. I am not making this up, the ABC network actually broadcast this on national television.
This thrilling scene follows an exchange in which Barnabas and Julia talk about a place called Rose Cottage that they heard about in 1995 and have been trying to find for the last six weeks. Julia tells Barnabas that it has just occurred to her that the place may not be known as Rose Cottage now. Barnabas does not understand what she means. Julia tries to explain that it might be possible for people to use one name for a house at one time and a different name for the same house at a different time. Barnabas has difficulty with this concept. Grayson Hall and Jonathan Frid, highly trained and much-honored actors, play this exchange with great emotional tumult, focusing our attention on the precise level of cognitive ability it suggests the characters have.
Just as we are thinking that the show has finally come to a dead halt, Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes enters. Julia and Barnabas notice that Carolyn seems to be in a good mood, to which they make it their business to put an immediate stop. They say Carolyn must not have heard about the latest crisis concerning teenagers Hallie Stokes and David Collins:
JULIA: Carolyn, how are you feeling?
CAROLYN: Quite well, thank you. But both of you look so terribly distressed. Whatever’s the matter?
BARNABAS: Well, hasn’t anyone told you?
CAROLYN: Told me what?
BARNABAS: Well, the children are missing.
CAROLYN: Oh, that. Yes, I know.
JULIA: Well, aren’t you the least bit concerned about it?
CAROLYN: No.
JULIA: Why, Carolyn? Why aren’t you concerned? Carolyn, do you know something about David and Hallie you’re not telling us?
CAROLYN: Perhaps.
JULIA: Well, you must tell us. Do you know where they are?
CAROLYN: They’re gone. David and Hallie are gone.
BARNABAS: We told you that!
JULIA: Carolyn, we believe they’re in some terrible danger, the children.
CAROLYN: The children, in danger? No, no, that’s not true.
JULIA: How do you know it’s not true?
CAROLYN: Because I know the children are alive and well.
JULIA: If you know that much, then you must know where they are.
CAROLYN: No, that’s all I can tell you. They’re alive and well. Now, you must excuse me, I’m really very tired. (Exit)
BARNABAS (watching Carolyn go): Do you think she knows what she’s talking about?
JULIA (wonderingly): I have no idea.
They say that if a performer is really present in a scene, there is always a chance that when you throw the light on them something wonderful will happen. What Nancy Barrett does here is as pure an example of this I could hope to find. Carolyn’s blissed-out insouciance is so great to watch that it redeems everything that went before. I wonder if Frid and Hall’s ferocious overplaying was deliberate, meant to give the sharpest possible contrast to what they knew Miss Barrett was about to do.
Later, Barnabas encounters Carolyn in the little-used west wing of the great house:
BARNABAS: Carolyn, what are you doing up here?
CAROLYN: What, I just went to get something from my room.
BARNABAS: Your room?
CAROLYN: Yes, just down the hall.
BARNABAS: But your room isn’t up here in the west wing, it’s downstairs in the house proper.
CAROLYN (laughing): Don’t be absurd. You know perfectly well I’ve always lived in the west wing. I do think it the most enchanting part of the house.
BARNABAS: Carolyn?
CAROLYN: May I ask why you keep calling me that?
BARNABAS: Because it’s your name.
CAROLYN (laughing): You know very well my name is Leticia, and I live in that room just down the hall.
BARNABAS: Leticia?
CAROLYN: Of course.
BARNABAS: Well, Leticia, perhaps you can tell me where the children are. Can you do that?
CAROLYN: What an odd question.
BARNABAS: What’s odd about it?
CAROLYN: Do you realize how late it is? Where else would the children be but in bed? You are a strange one! (exits, laughing.)
In 1995, Barnabas and Julia found that Hallie and David had died in 1970, and that ghosts which looked like them were in fact the ghosts of teenagers named Carrie and Tad who died in 1841. So when they find that David and Hallie are not in the house, they fly into a panic. In that same year, they found that Carolyn was alive, and that she had gone insane in 1970. So far as they could tell, Carolyn believing herself to be someone named Leticia who lived in the west wing of Collinwood was no part of the disaster. So they stay focused on Hallie and David, and let Carolyn/ Leticia go her own way.
Barnabas takes “Leticia’s” suggestion and goes into David’s bedroom. There, he finds the young fellow asleep in bed. Later, Julia has gone to Hallie’s room and found her bed also occupied. Julia woke her and herded her into David’s room, where Barnabas confronts both teens. They claim that they ran away from home because all the talk about ghosts and whatnot had unsettled them, and that they came back because they realized they were being silly. Barnabas mentions the names of some of the ghosts; they claim never to have heard those names. Barnabas is startled by this denial. Returning viewers know that Julia has mentioned the names to David and Hallie, and it is likely she told Barnabas she had done so. They are trying to play dumb, but in fact reveal that something is very wrong.
Carolyn enters. Barnabas leaves her alone with the teenagers. He is still just outside the door when he hears the three of them bid each other goodnight. Carolyn calls them Carrie and Tad; they call her Leticia. Barnabas bursts back in and declares “You are both possessed!” All three of them are possessed, but what he saw in 1995 leads him to disregard Carolyn’s possession and to focus on David and Hallie’s.
Early in the episode, we saw what it means when Carolyn says “David and Hallie are gone.” They no longer exist. Their bodies are now the vessels through which Tad and Carrie have resumed living. Carrie and Tad talked about the importance of keeping up the appearance of being Hallie and David; Tad said that one slip would be enough to expose them, and then “the game will be over.” We might wonder how. What can the living characters do to defeat the ghosts, if they know what the ghosts are doing? Nothing we’ve seen in the last six weeks suggests an answer to that question. For all we can tell, Julia, Barnabas, and the rest of them are so completely helpless that the ghosts may as well throw all discretion aside and operate openly.
Dark Shadows Commentary 