The ghost of the evil Quentin has driven the living members of the Collins family from the great house on the estate of Collinwood. They have taken refuge in the Old House on the estate, home to their distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas. Quentin wants to take possession of children Amy and David. Knowing of his plans for them, David and Amy sneak into the great house to recover and destroy the antique telephone Quentin first used to communicate with them. The children do not find the telephone there, and governess Maggie comes to the house and takes them away. Later, Maggie goes to their rooms in Barnabas’ house. She discovers that the children are missing, and Quentin’s telephone has appeared in David’s room.
Dark Shadows first became a hit in the late spring and early summer of 1967, when Barnabas was a vampire and Maggie was his victim. That story was chiefly modeled on the 1932 film The Mummy. As Boris Karloff’s Imhotep saw Zita Johanns’ Helen as the reincarnation of his lost love Ankh-Esen-Amun, so Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas saw Kathryn Leigh Scott’s Maggie as the reincarnation of his lost love Josette. As Imhotep took Helen prisoner and tried to replace her personality with Ankh-Esen-Amun’s, so Barnabas took Maggie prisoner and tried to replace her personality with Josette’s. As the movie showed us flashbacks to Imhotep’s time as a living being with Zita Johanns playing Ankh-Esen-Amun, so from November 1967 to March 1968 Dark Shadows became a costume drama set in the 1790s and featuring Miss Scott as Josette. Even Frid’s acting style and mannerisms were strongly reminiscent of Boris Karloff’s.
Since those days, Maggie’s memory has been repeatedly erased and Barnabas has been cured of vampirism. More than once, there were stories suggesting Maggie’s memory might come back and blow the whole show up, but those always ended with yet another mind-wipe. Several times lately, the show has gone out of its way to emphasize that they will not be revisiting that theme. There are two such moments today. David complains that the Old House is “like a prison”; Maggie, who was for long weeks kept in the barred cell in the basement, doesn’t miss a beat before replying “For a very good reason!”
In 1967, Barnabas’ only interest was recreating the history of the Collins family. His attempted Josettification of Maggie was part of that antiquarian project. Today, we catch a glimpse of what he might have been hoping for in that period. He and Maggie are sitting in the parlor reading family histories, and she glances at him with a fond smile. Granted, if his original project had been successful Maggie would have forgotten her own name, they would both have been vampires, and no living human would be safe from their creeping terror, but between feedings the two of them would probably have sat around like this.
Dark Shadows Commentary 
Barnabas has always “forgotten” the fact that when given the choice of eternal life (as a vampire) with Barnabas, or going off Widow’s Hill, Josette chose to Swan Dive off the cliff. Josette was, frankly, roofied and raped when she married Jeremiah. She chose to live with the guilt, Jeremiah did not, leaving her with more guilt. When Barnabas married her maid, very quickly with no explanation, Josette took it in stride and was not unkind to Angelique, in spite of Joshua being very judgemental. She spent centuries trying to protect the Collins family, who frankly did zippo for her, possibly because she felt guilty about the whole marry Jeremiah then get conned by Barnabas (we will live in darkness, and I won’t mention the whole bloodsucking, serial killer part) into agreeing to his very undefined plan. She really WAS the Gracious Josette and I don’t think suddenly finding her consciousness forced into the body of an innocent woman would make her happy. It does seem like it is hard for vampires to wait for the sunrise in order to commit suicide, or maybe it was just Barnabas being stopped by Angelique and her curse, but Josette might well have given it a try and let’s face it, Angelique’s ghost would have been more than happy to give her a helping hand.
Barnabas was a selfish, violent jerk before he became a vampire. The Curse just gave him and excuse as to why he was that way. Josette was none of those things, so becoming a vampire wouldn’t have changed HER basic personality either.
All in all, I do think that Barnabas’s idea that he could recreate Josette was a pipe dream. I know Danny Horne detests the character of Josette, but I have always thought that for a young, naive girl she showed a lot of grace and strength. I don’t think she would have just gone along with Barnabas’s plan. At the very least she would have run away and worked on drinking the blood of cows, and other animals. Hey she could have founded the Discworld League of Temperance where they all have a little sing song around the piano and drink hot chocolate and avoid the B word.
I know Danny Horne detests the character of Josette, but I always liked her. The loss of Jeremiah in the 1795-96 storyline hurt her character and made the Collins Family History a bit of a joke. We were told that Jeremiah ordered Josette be buried away from the family plot due to her suicide, which would have been hard considering he died before she did. In any case, I view her has a young girl, compared to Barnabas, Jeremiah and even Joshua who falls in love with a guy and then has to deal with her live becoming a nightmare and STILL managing to remain kind.
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I think a lot of Danny’s impatience comes from KLS’ decision to play her in such an understated and stylized way, but I don’t think she had a choice. It was a daring move to show Josette as a living being when her ghost had been such a big deal in the first 39 weeks of the show. She had to be simultaneously the young bride, the gracious lady, and the future ghost.
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