Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A Reaction You Didn't Expect

The screencap at right is a revealing one, because it shows the only time in "It Happened One Nut" that Quinn Morgendorffer expresses fear at being within arm's reach of a boa constrictor. In fact, when she later discovers Joanna the python has escaped, she doesn't run off. She places a half dozen puppies on a table out of harm's way, taking time at one point to walk over and look into the empty snake container, wondering aloud how it could possibly have gotten away once she took the lid off its cage. Other people in the store run. She doesn't.

Still later, she is still in the pet shop with the snake still on the loose somewhere inside, organizing the Three Js into a search party to capture the boa. When Joey is caught by Joanna and is running around Lawndale Mall screaming with the snake wrapped around him, he passes right by Quinn, who doesn't blink an eyelash and merely watches him run off, pursued by the other two Js and the store owner.

We have definitely underestimated Quinn's willpower, fearlessness, and poise in the face of danger. She probably gets that from dating so much. (She did once run away when she thought the Rattling Girl was coming, but she was afraid then of becoming unpopular, not of losing her life.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Or maybe it was that she didn't know what a boa constrictor was, and she feared to have to look in a dictionnary.
By the episode's end, she could still not be aware that a boa can be dangerous.

Anonymous said...

But most shallow, fashion-conscious girls her age wouldn't need to look in a dictionary to know they didn't want to be anywhere near a giant snake.

The Angst Guy said...

I was thinking that even Quinn's fright reaction looked more like an exaggerated startle response. She got over it quickly and took it in stride. It was one of the least cartoonish cartoon responses I can ever recall seeing.

Lorenzo Sauchelli said...

If she's so fearless, she could be a Tomb Raider when she grows up.

Zing!

Oh. Mmm, gotta write.