DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '06 I => Topic started by: arashi on June 19, 2006, 04:54:25 AM
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Is it possible? :o Could it be that I find myself actually liking Amanda Harris?
I just hit the end of boxset 15 which contains among other things, the introduction of Amanda Harris. As I watched, I came to the sudden realization that I liked her character here! Putting her up against Trask is just absolutely fun to watch. I'm not sure how much my feelings will change after the writers suddenly decide to throw she and Quentin together... I mean there's interest from his behalf right off the bat, but we never see any pursual (that I recall) and suddenly they're madly in love with each other after Sept. 10th.
It's actually a bit disconcerting watching the episodes on DVD, as I remember these events unfolding slowly as I watched them on SciFi, but here I can watch a months worth of episodes in about 3-4 days.
I happened to be watching/working on the computer (work related crap) when my Mom came upstairs for a minute, she got sucked into the episodes I was watching and sat down for a few. We both had to laugh hysterically at Thayer David's inability to decide where his hands should be as the comatose Count Petofi. And not just in one scene! I had to laugh because as much as I love Thayer, all he had to do in this episode is lie on a table and he couldn't stop moving.
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I also wanted to add though, that I find that Quentin's theme gets quite annoying after you hear it for the 40th time in as many episodes.
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Thayer had the same trouble with his hands in House of Dark Shadows
when he was suppost to be dead. LOL
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DC wouldn't even reshoot scenes for a film?
Well, they still all had to get back to work on the TV show, too. It's not as if they really had the time needed.
Amanda isn't a compelling character, but we definitely are on her side as she rolls her eyes at Trask's obvious weaselishness. She acts a little too much... she could take it down a step or so, as if I'd know, but she seems to overenunciate, or say things slightly too intensely, sort of like M Stroka.
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It's actually a bit disconcerting watching the episodes on DVD, as I remember these events unfolding slowly as I watched them on SciFi, but here I can watch a months worth of episodes in about 3-4 days.
Yikes! :o You're over-indulging!
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I do the same thing. Once I start watching it's hard to stop. :)
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I do the same thing. Once I start watching it's hard to stop. :)
Especially if it's a good storyline! :D There have been sets where I've watched two discs in a day.
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Especially if it's a good storyline! :D There have been sets where I've watched two discs in a day.
Uh, yah, like when I was watching pre-Barnabas and Leviathan! Couldn't get enough. ;)
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no soori arashi i still run from the room when she is on
the screen :o
jennifer
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Is it possible? :o Could it be that I find myself actually liking Amanda Harris?
I just hit the end of boxset 15 which contains among other things, the introduction of Amanda Harris. As I watched, I came to the sudden realization that I liked her character here! Putting her up against Trask is just absolutely fun to watch. I'm not sure how much my feelings will change after the writers suddenly decide to throw she and Quentin together... I mean there's interest from his behalf right off the bat, but we never see any pursual (that I recall) and suddenly they're madly in love with each other after Sept. 10th.
I'm coming in on this one late because I had to think about it a bit. I make no bones about not liking the character due to the poor development of both the character and the deux ex machina nature of Quentin's "once in a lifetime love" for her.
In thinking, I believe the problem is that in these early episodes, the character did some interesting things. She wasn't one dimensional yet. The feeling I get is that somewhere along the line when they decided to make her CDT's (and by extension every male in sight's) ideal woman, they didn't know how to put that across. So, we get the wonderful perfect character that all the men adore. [Rant_Emote]. As I said in another topic, in fanfiction people would scream MARY SUE.
Interesting thing is when she becomes Miss Wonderful and Quentin falls in love, one of the reasons it doesn't work for me is that she is NOT consistant with the type of woman we saw him with before and since. Jenny (from what little we see of the SANE Jenny), Laura, Beth (before they stole her backbone) and Pansy/Charity are all relatively strong women -- especially for the era -- who stand up to Quentin and have minds and opinions of their own. Angelique also fits this, as he was very attracted to her before she started trying to play him.
But Amanda? She is a helpless damsel in distress, more like one of Barnabas' SYTs than one of Quentin's previous women. As a matter of fact I have a running joke with friends that there was a typo in the script and she WAS supposed to be for Barnabas, not Quentin.
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Don't know if I have ever mentioned it before, but I loathe Amanda Harris.
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Don't know if I have ever mentioned it before, but I loathe Amanda Harris.
Really? [laughing1]
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I wonder if some peoples' intense dislike of Amanda Harris is not so much the superficial sluttiness of the character, but the fact that Quentin is "in love" with her. Up to this point in the storyline we've seen Quentin slowly growing and maturing as a person, then all of a sudden he's in love with Amanda -- makes him look like an idiot.
People don't seem to mind her relationship with Tim Shaw. They're both scheming opportunists and fit each other a little better.
And speaking of idiots, I can't see why Amanda is any more annoying than Rachel Drummond. The Innocent Babe Lost In The Woods - "Oh Dear, I Don't Understand" stuff, and then nosing around in everyone else's business, is a bit more than I can stomach at times.
[wave]
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Don't know if I have ever mentioned it before, but I loathe Amanda Harris.
Really? [laughing1]
Yeah, really! ;) What did she used to call her in #Collinwood Midnite? AFH?! LOL! ;)
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too bad amanda couldnt have seanced herself back to 1967 collinwood...man would buzz have tamed that attitude of hers bigtime with a ride on his harley....it was a harley wasnt it.....
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Dear Amanda's hairpiece would have gone FLYING had Buzz ever taken her for a ride on his hog.
I can see Roger in one of his drunken bouts of hot-rodding down the hill thinking it (the errant hairpiece) was a wandering armadillo, swerving dramatically, and winding up with another band-aid on his forehead.
G.
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I can see Roger in one of his drunken bouts of hot-rodding down the hill thinking it (the errant hairpiece) was a wandering armadillo, swerving dramatically, and winding up with another band-aid on his forehead.
[stfl]
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Up to this point in the storyline we've seen Quentin slowly growing and maturing as a person, then all of a sudden he's in love with Amanda -- makes him look like an idiot.
People don't seem to mind her relationship with Tim Shaw. They're both scheming opportunists and fit each other a little better.
And speaking of idiots, I can't see why Amanda is any more annoying than Rachel Drummond. The Innocent Babe Lost In The Woods - "Oh Dear, I Don't Understand" stuff, and then nosing around in everyone else's business, is a bit more than I can stomach at times.
You hit it right on the head -- at least in my mind Connie. All that nice character development all gone for nothing, as he looks like a superficial idiot in falling for her WITH NO REASON FOR IT OTHER THAN LOOKS ESTABLISHED ON SCREEN. For some fanfiction I was working on for some time (I got stuck on this very point, and in the course of trying to reason it out the first story went and birthed another one), I had to try and understand where he was coming from on this. Even after power watching all their eps and looking for all the throwaway lines they used to establish character, the best explanation isn't all that great -- but you do what you can. Keep in mind that your mileage on this may vary.
The way I figured it is that he fell for Amanda not long after he found out that Beth had known of the children and never told him. Quentin at that stage was very slow to trust, and he had trusted her, and in his mind felt betrayed. Then along came Amanda, all worshipful, only seeing the exterior, knowing nothing about the curse and all that. With her he could be a normal man again -- as opposed to with Beth, who knew all the dirty secrets. I think that echoes in his exchange with Beth's ghost too -- where she forgives him and he has this combination of anger frustration and self hatred where he tells her he can't forgive himself. She accepted things about him that he was never able to accept about himself -- and I think that scared the living daylights out of him.
As to what Quentin was seeing in Amanda? She saw only the face he was showing the world, and, being a fairly shallow little golddigger, wasn't interested in digging further to see the PERSON. I think the closest analogy to Quentin's position with the two would be Scarlett O'Hara at the end of GWTW -- if he looks deeper he will see that he was in love with the ILLUSION of Amanda; a dream that didn't really exist. Beth is sort of in Rhett Butler's role -- the one who had always been there and helped him solely because of her love for him, but has that love and support taken for granted. This of course leaves Q at the end of 1897 in an even sadder position than Scarlett, as he had obtained the empathy and maturity to realize too late what he had lost.
Oh, another point of difference I noticed. When Beth died, Quentin cried for her -- considered a very unmanly thing to do in that time. When he thought Amanda was dead in 1970, he didn't cry or mourn -- he had a temper tantrum like a child who had lost a toy.
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pansity--- i think you did a good job of explaining your way out of your earlier confusion as to Q/AH. If you think of Q as the romantic hero millions of teenage girls were coming to see him as at the time, then Amanda will seem like a frustrating, stupid mistake. But I think they started liking him as the scoundrel, and the impulsive boy who wouldn't grow up, but then as positive feelings grow, Q gets enobled in their imaginations. Q does grow, but no one grows him/herself into simply being a flawless good guy. Whatever you were at any time sticks with you to a certain extent.
It makes perfect sense that Q would fall for someone very different from all the others. I haven't seen (except maybe a third of a century ago) early 1897 yet, but I'm guessing he wasn't really in love with Jenny either.
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I'm sorry, but I just can't like Amanda. Part of it has to do with the fact that she showed up one day, an hour later, bam! she and Quentin were in love and were completely devoted to one another, and poor Beth seems to have been completely shoved to the back of Quentin's memory.
The other thing is there didn't seem to be much substance to her character.. She was just a surface kind of girl who I really couldn't form any sort of liking to.
I agree that Quentin probably didn't truly love Jenny, shame on him then for marrying her, but Beth I believe he really loved. Her death really struck him hard, that is until Amanda comes in to the picture, then she's all he can think about. IMHO, she appeared much too soon after Beth's death, and while we're still mourning the loss of Beth, a person we cared for and hoped would have a future with Quentin, we're expected to instantly adjust to a new character, who is now the new love of his life. :o
These are simply my opinions though. :)
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I won't go into why I didn't like Quentin and Amanda as a couple yet again, but I will talk about Amanda and her "other man" Tim Shaw.
I definitely think Amanda had more chemistry with Tim than she did with Quentin. I don't think Amanda was quite the scheming opportunist that Tim had become though I can see why some see her that way. She certainly didn't mind Tim making her money or buying her jewels. But deep down I think the two grew fond of each other (though Tim was more focused on getting Trask and Evan at the time). They were in a way loners. Amanda had no past to remember and Tim had an all-too-painful one not to mention he had recently [spoiler]lost his best friend Rachel Drummond.[/spoiler]
I definitely would have preferred it if the writers had explored the Tim/Amanda relationship a lot more. They were far more interesting to watch.