The Portrait

I am a viewer who appreciates the Waltons highly, but I fully admit that there are some weak episodes. This episode is somewhat interesting because it is unusual compared to other Waltons episodes. It deals with a one-shot character, an artist who is a complex and disturbing man. He might well be a tortured artist in the usual sense. But he is also traumatized by war ... and ultimately a bit dangerous. The episode has an eerie foreboding tone.

There's no reason such a character couldn't appear in the Waltons' Mountains community. I can respect that the creative team was stretching to do something innovative. But they didn't quite pull it off successfully. This episode lacks the authenticity of the more down-to-earth drama that characterized most earlier seasons.

It is at least somewhat interesting to have an episode that spotlights Erin. Erin's distinguishing mark (at least in later episodes) of being "the pretty one" figures greatly in this episode. She is indeed attractive, in a refreshingly wholesome way. But I never could quite buy into her supposedly being a standout beauty. It always seemed to me like a weak attempt by the writers to give Erin some distinguishing characteristic, as all the other siblings had theirs.

But there is one thing I will praise this episode for. We see several examples of the paintings created by the artist character. I thought they were quite striking, especially the final wall mural that contained Erin. I might even play selected parts of the episode on DVD some time just to see those again. I would be curious as to what the story might be as to who actually painted them, and how the crew obtained them.

Nine seasons of The Waltons were produced, and most of it was excellent. Season 7 has some very good episodes. It also had weak ones (like this one) that mark the start of a gradual descent of quality into the unfortunately very mediocre seasons 8 and 9.

My final take: this episode has some good points. But if you're up watching some good episodes of The Waltons, you can do a lot better than this.

This was not as much about the Walton family but a young man who has seen and experienced things too intense to forget or to live with. They haunt him no matter where he goes. Erin is a reminder and he pulls her into his pain. She helps him begin finding a way out.

I must disagree with the writer of the one other review for this episode. I see it as an intensely vivid portrait of a very troubled man, obviously suffering from what we now call PTSD. Perhaps it's true that none of the regular characters were "advanced" as the other reviewer put it, but this episode wasn't really about them; it was about Derek, and the horrors of war. Jared Martin gave a strong performance and Mary McDonough was excellent in support of his storyline. As for the secondary story about Grandma's bird, well, there needed to be some occasional relief in the episode, and that was as good as anything else might have been.