I'm late posting some thoughts I had about recent episodes -- this is my first day out my sickbed ... (I finally got whatever everyone else on this board seemed to have multiple times during the winter ...
)
I really, really like the way the portrait of Quentin was interwoven into this storyline, and the Quentin and Amanda in the Underworld sequence is one of the most memorable of DS, in my opinion ... probably because I've always loved Greek mythology ... But I'm also fascinated with the way DS portrayed Death's Waiting Room ... I wonder if the idea of a luxury hotel lobby was original with the DS writers, or if it might have been lifted from some old movie? ...
The series of traps in the underworld was OK considering the budget, but I think it would have been more effective if they had only shown the spider's shadow, as they did at first, instead of going all the way with the "horror" of the hairy thing!
Incidentally, none of the characters ever seems to have realized that it was
Barnabas who was responsible for Quentin's loss of memory, not the accident! Interesting that everyone seemed to remain in the dark about that, and surprising that Julia didn't catch on ...
Something I found confusing was the way the portrait of Olivia Corey was revealed when the second painting was sponged away using solvents, but with the Quentin/New South Wales painting(s), they "lifted off" the New South Wales landscape ... apparently this was painted on a
separate canvas that had been stretched over Quentin's portrait's canvas ... thought that might have been explained a little better ...
I've always been fascinated with Quentin's portrait (i.e., since these episodes last ran) and "The Picture of Dorian Gray" themes ... and found it interesting that the uncredited DS artist who created the portrait of the aged Quentin basically duplicated the famous Dorian Gray portrait by Ivan Albright that hangs in some museum in Chicago (have any Chicagoans out there ever seen this?).
Too bad DS never saw fit to give the portrait artists credit ... they certainly gave "the bat" enough credit, and I would think that the portraits of Barnabas, Angelique, and Quentin took at least as much time and skill to create ...
Wasn't it funny that the old art professor didn't provide some kind of warning in advance about what the portrait of Quentin Collins showed? It must have been somewhat of a surprise even to him when he unveiled it ...
The deeper meaning of this sequence of Quentin's portrait, showing the ravages of "sin" (I think that was the word they used) and time made me ponder: What would a portrait of
me look like if it showed all of my transgressions?
(Though I'm sure the halo around my head is only somewhat faded and tarnished
)
