Quentin and his women

[Josette]

What I could never understand about Quentin is:

Supposedly he loves Beth.  He still makes a play for any other pretty woman who comes his way.  Then, Angelique blackmails him into agreeing to marry her.  He knows what she is and that he has no choice.

So, he lets Beth get hurt because there's nothing he can do about Angelique.

Then, suddenly there's Amanda, whom he's only seen a few times, and suddenly she's the love of his life, even more so than Beth, enough for him to risk Angelique's wrath to have her.  It just doesn't make sense!!

If he was willing to go against Angelique, how come he hadn't already tried it for Beth, for one thing.

[ROBINV]

Given that they're trying to establish that the character of Quentin is reforming from bad to good at this time, it's unfortunate that TPTB chose to have him fall in love with the gorgeous but vapid Amanda.  It undermines the entire concept of redemption.  Having Quentin turn from the loyal, long-suffering Beth to the two dimensional, Tate-created Amanda makes Quentin appear to have taken three steps back in his development.

I suppose, however, that the male-hormone-driven powers behind DS figured Amanda was prettier than Beth and should therefore be Quentin's one true love.  The problem is, it happened so rapidly, it does nothing but make Quentin look like a superficial fool.  They do the same thing with Barnabas later in the series when he falls for the "sleeping beauty", Roxanne.  She might rev up the male teens with those Grand Teutons, but it makes Barnabas look like a fool--unwise character development, to be sure--again!

Love, Robin

[dom]

I think Quentin was incapable of honest love before he became a changed man. He was married and still persued Beth, had a tryst with his brother's wife, etc. Now that he is a changed man, he is truly able to fall in love "for real". So I think that it fits into the scenario.

dom (who "fell in love" every Friday and Saturday night for 20 years - those were the days, )

[jennifer]

i always thought it was because Amanda was suppose to be the most beautiful woman in the world who really isn't real and a "spell" is put on every man she sees! it is the only explanation i can understand
LOL!

spoilers


i always found her as Oliva Corey more annoying as she had so many pictures of herself around.

jennifer

and dom where those the "disco' years? LOL   

[Julia99]

Given that they're trying to establish that the character of Quentin is reforming from bad to good at this time, it's unfortunate that TPTB chose to have him fall in love with the gorgeous but vapid Amanda.

I suppose, however, that the male-hormone-driven powers behind DS figured Amanda was prettier than Beth and should therefore be Quentin's one true love.
Love, Robin

gorgeous?  I have to say I didn't think anyone on this show wore more eye makeup than Grayson and then here comes Donna. . .those eyelashes are an absolute NIGHTMARE!  It's the look we women have spent years running from. .clumpy lashes!  And to continue my snide commentary, I have to say, I think Ms. M must've had an 'inside' connection .. .  i say this as its obvious her dramatic skills are uhh 'maturing' and the storyline makes little sense in the overall flow of the show.  Is she another Mrs. Dan Curtis find?  It was obviously a last-minute patch-in piece.

[ProfStokes]

Then, suddenly there's Amanda, whom he's only seen a few times, and suddenly she's the love of his life, even more so than Beth, enough for him to risk Angelique's wrath to have her.  It just doesn't make sense!!

If he was willing to go against Angelique, how come he hadn't already tried it for Beth, for one thing.

This is an excellent point, Josette!  This subplot also irritates me.  Quentin has always been a womanizer, but I find his treatment of Beth to be shameful.

It's actually not just him though; all of the main male characters seem to have a habit of falling madly in love with multiple women.  In Barnabas's case, I could justify the infatuations with Maggie, Vicki, Rachel, and Kitty: he saw each as his "true love" Josette, and I could accept that it was really her he was chasing.  Once Roxanne came along, however, that excuse no longer worked.  These people fall in and out of love so often that, especially with such short acquaintances as Amanda and Roxanne, it's to the point where I no longer take any of these "romances" seriously.  Thus, it's harder for me to become involved in the plot or develop much sympathy for the plight of the characters.

ProfStokes

[kuanyin]

Here is how I see it. Quentin liked Beth and cared for her, maybe even loving her. But he was never IN LOVE with her, as you noticed, he still put the moves on any other pretty woman he saw.  Angelique certainly never did any more than intrigue him, and her bossiness grows wearisome in short order. Still, I think he was telling the truth that he would have married her if he hadn't happened onto Amanda. Suddenly, he is head over heels in love for the first time. Whether this is because of his redemption or because she is just the prettiest, most empty-headed thing he ever saw, is debatable. I vote for it being because she is supposed to be the prettiest. And yes, he would HAVE to be in love to not want to yank those muskrat eyelashes off.

[Cassandra]

Josette wrote:

What I could never understand about Quentin is:

Supposedly he loves Beth.  He still makes a play for any other pretty woman who comes his way.  Then, Angelique blackmails him into agreeing to marry her.  He knows what she is and that he has no choice.

What's even sadder is how hard Beth had tried to resist him in the beginning and how Quentin chased her persistingly to win her love.

I don't get all the fuss over Amanda either, especially when there's so many other attractive women on the show.  Take Angelique for example, aside from Barnabas, (who knows what she is) I find it really strange that the only man who seems to show any attraction tendicies towards her is Count Petofi!![hdscrt] And yet Amanda has more than half the men in Collinwood chasing after her?

Then, suddenly there's Amanda, whom he's only seen a few times, and suddenly she's the love of his life, even more so than Beth, enough for him to risk Angelique's wrath to have her.  It just doesn't make sense!!

Perhaps with Quentin, it's the thrill of the chase that keeps him going.  When he first met Angelique and found out about her engagement to Barnabas I can still remember him saying to her, "why couldn't you choose me to fall in love with?"  Im sure he's sorry now that he ever said that.

What I really don't get is how on earth Jenny managed to bring him to the altar?  He didn't learn about the children until well after she died so the reason couldn't have been that he was obligated to her. Yet, he did marry her.


Cassandra[/font]

[IluvBarnabas]

All the Collins have had failed relationships, too many to count!

They all were just looking for love but all too often they looked in the wrong place or didn't know a good thing when they had one.

I always wished Barnabas woke up one day and realize Julia was the only woman who constantly laid herself on the line for him on an almost daily basis, and therefore, more worthy than any of his SYTs he continually falls for.
Had he not been constantly mooning for Josette or trying to make every woman he meets into his image of Josette maybe he would have returned Julia's deep feelings for him.

Quentin was a womanizer, he was really more interested in one-night stands than any lasting relationships, at least at first. I always wanted to believe Beth was his real true love, but looking on it, I wonder if he really was in love with her at all, considering how callously he tossed her aside for Angelique, then Amanda. I think Quentin did care for Beth, and maybe he thought he was in love with her, (I certainly liked her and Quentin better than him and Amanda) but as someone always said Quentin loved the chase. Beth played hard-to-get and maybe Jenny had to.....Amanda certainly didn't, and Quentin falls for her....go figure.

Carolyn seems doomed to elude any lasting relationship with any man. Joe, Burke, Tony,Chris, even Adam all those relationships ended badly. In the case of Joe, she treated him very badly when she started making goo-goo eyes at Burke, it was no wonder Joe dumped her. Burke only wanted to use her to hurt her family, by the time she realized it she lost Joe for good. I actually thought she and Tony could have made it, [spoiler]if Cassandra hadn't made Tony her slave....[/spoiler]Tony just disappeared without explanation. She was never really romantically interested in Adam though he loved her badly. She didn't know how to deal with that situation with Adam, who couldn't understand that you can't make someone love you (unless you're Angelique lol). With the  werewolf curse hanging over Chris, he and Carolyn were doomed from the start. Carolyn was interested in him from the start but Chris obviously didn't want to take the chance that he might hurt/kill her and kept her at a distance all throughout their relationship and had to keep her in the dark. Jeb was the closest Carolyn came to having a lasting relationship (they actually wed) but was shortlived [spoiler]when Jeb fell off of Widow' Hill.[/spoiler]

Roger had a phoenix and a witch for wives....poor guy couldn't seem to find a HUMAN woman to be the kind of wife he was seeking.

Elizabeth married one man whose character left a lot to be desired and who deserted her....and then almost came close to being blackmailed into marrying his scumbag friend. Can't really blame Elizabeth for staving off men after the last two men in her life turned out to be such creeps. Would have been nice to have seen her wind up with some man worthy of her affections....maybe Richard Garner?


All of the Collins seemed doomed to never really achieve any long-term relationships.

Edited by moderator

[Pansity]

i always thought it was because Amanda was suppose to be the most beautiful woman in the world who really isn't real and a "spell" is put on every man she sees! it is the only explanation i can understand
LOL!

That's the only way I could think of to make the character and that part of the story work.  For her to have EVERY one of those very different men (CDT, Tim Shaw, Trask AND Quentin) all so besotted by her with NOTHING shown on screen to justify it means it has to be supernatural.  My best theory is it could have worked if we were shown something like in the classic Trek ep "Mantrap" where three different men are besotted over what is in reality a saltcraving monster who needs them for their salt. Sort of like the hypnotic powers of classic vampires.

[Pansity]

oh, there's a LOT to comment on here!  I recently wrote and finished two works with Quentin and Beth, so I had to think about a lot of the issues brought up here, like Jenny, and Beth and where Amanda fits in and who, if any did Quentin really love.

First of all, I totally agree that the Amanda thing made NO sense, and that he and Beth were the best suited.  As to whether he loves Beth while he is tomcatting around?  Well, both he and Barnabas came from times when men of their class and wealth tended to have love and sex completely compartmentalized.  Wealthy men tended to marry and keep mistresses -- it was considered the way it was.

So, I don't feel that the tomcatting tells you whether Quentin truly loved Beth or not; the way he was raised the culture encouraged married men to have sex outside marriage, and a spoilt brat like Quentin would of course look to have anything he could get.

Then there's Jenny.  There's that one scene with Magda, when he has gone thru the first night of the curse and is blind drunk.  He is talking to her about Jenny and how he loved her.  Considering how drunk he was, I dont' think he was lying or telling Magda what she wanted to hear.  I think it was coming uncensored from the brain to the mouth; with him remembering things between him and Jenny before everything that went wrong, went wrong.

Ok as to the general issues:  I see him loving Beth in a way he didn't love Amanda, and one reason is his totally different reactions to their deaths.  When Beth died, he was horrified, guilty, he could barely face Beth's ghost cause he couldnt' forgive himself, much less deal with her being able to forgive him.  He mourned for her as a mature man mourns for someone he loves.  Compare this to his reaction with Amanda's death -- the threats to Best, etc. reminded me more of a spoilt brat having a tantrum over a broken toy and demanding it be replaced NOW.

One thing I suspect (IF you look at this as a real timeline rather than blame stuff on bad writing, plotting etc.) is that Amanda showed up at a time when [spoiler]Quentin and Beth had had a terrible argument.  When I look at the series, and remembering off the top of my head, I think that Amanda showed up right after Quentin found out that Beth had kept the fact that he had children from him.  He's very smart and quick -- just how long does anyone think it took him to figure out that Beth HAD to have known about the kids from the very beginning.  I can't see there being anything but a spectacularly ugly scene between them over that -- especially since she would likely have been the one to have to show him where the boy's grave was. (In a scene with Edward, where he begged Edward to explain to him why he was considered so vile that he didn't even deserve to know he was a father, he said he had just come from his son's grave. The hurt and grief he shows, close to the point of tears, are heartbreaking.  He knew Edward loathed him and he still felt that way; how much more betrayed and hurt must he have felt that even BETH didn't trust him to know he had children.)[/spoiler]

I'm probably forgetting a lot of stuff, but maybe next time.