Is it possible? 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.
. 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.