This years finale certainly split opinions between the staff member with a mixture and positive responses. To read more responses, read here
BTTB-ROX!
I wasn't overly amazed at the season finale I must admit. But not every season finale has to amaze, to be good. I think that the storylines were really left open for 2008, which will create alot of speculation over the next 6 weeks or so. I think quite a few suspected Reverand Hall to be the attacker, so it wasn't too suprising that it was him. I'm really looking foward to how the whole storyline is going to pan out next year. Poor Rachel ...no one in Summer Bay is ever safe! I just hope that everything is resolved fairly quickly into the 2008 season. It would be sooo boring if it carried on for months and months on end. The original stalker storyline was great because we hadn't seen anything like it before, but now, after numerous villans in the Bay, everything just seems a bit samey.
All the Dom stuff was quite interesting. He freaks me out though .
It was the first episode i've seen with Roman in it and something's telling me that he's going to become one of my new favourite characters . He seems like a really decent character with a very caring attitude. If there is one thing that I could have changed about the episode, it would have been the ending. I think the shot of Miles standing in the sand should have lasted just a bit longer. I was really, really hoping that the finale would end with an overall shot of Summer Bay e.g a camera shot coming upwards from the sand where ''Milco'' was written. That would have made the perfect ending, IMO.
DEAN
Having only just seen the episode, I can agree that it wasn't very fast paced or explosive etc. But I really did enjoy the storylines of Drew/Belle/Dom. I think he has made it through surgery and that they have to inform next of kin anyway. The last five minutes really picked it up. Although I couldnt see him due to the quality of youtube, I heard Rev Hall's voice. I think he was the obvious canditate for it, he was brought in, we might of not invested in him yet, but he was close to the town through Jack, Sam, Annie & Geoff. And then Pippa & Sal on the beach was so cute, mucking around. The way they ended it was very subtle, hinting that this derelict is Milco, but I would have liked to see Sally see the sand writing and looked shocked and then end it. Wasn't the best finale but it certainly wasn't the worst.
EMMASI
That was powerfully lame. We learned NOTHING. We don't even technically know what happened to Dom! I'd assume he's dead because of Rachel having to contact the "next of kin," but jeebus, how hard is it to actually SAY "He's dead."
The stalker was LAME! So we ASSUME it's Rev. Hall. Do we know it for a fact? NO! Did we get ANY explaination AT ALL? NO! For God's sake, how hard is it to give us SOMETHING!? EDIT: The above comments also show what a stupid choice the reverend is anyway.
Milco... What the? Heaven help the people that haven't been watching religiously and/or haven't read the spoilers. I don't believe that Sally said the name of her imaginary friend during that episode, so seeing some random write "Milco" in the sand would mean absolutely nothing to you if you didn't know that name. Second... who cares if he's writing Milco? He's nobody! We don't even know his name! For all we know, his daddy was a milkman and Sally was on his morning route. IT MAKES NO SENSE!!!!!
And how in the hell is that a season finale cliffhanger? There was nothing that happened in this episode that made me think "Oh my GOD they can't end it there! I need to know what happens!!!!!!!" Belle and Drew came close, but they already (supposedly) resolved the drama by having Dom die. Worst. Finale. Ever!
RYAN
I didn't enjoy that as 20 minutes entertainment, pure and simple. Perhaps it's because few a number of sources the Milco storyline was overhyped, perhaps because I wanted continuation of the Martha storyline and never got it. Perhaps because I found the Dom/Drew/Belle storyline uninteresting and took up too much airtime. Perhaps because I didn't think the episode flowed or made sense are reasons for disliking this episode.
To rate the 8 cliffhangers I've seen for best to worst would be 2002, 2006, 2004, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2003, 2005. They're seems to have been some insinuations that we were supposed to automatically like this cliffhanger. Take positives. At least I can remmeber the cliffhangers or they've not been randomly thrown down a mineshaft. 2001 was really quite a low key finale, but it also helped that I was interseted at the time with one of the main thrusts of the episode. Unfortunately my main interests were missing from this episode.
Behind the Scenes pages are read at your own risk, and I risked and one particular finale has been spoillt for me. That question is answered and whilst the might be more to come from that storyline, has it got me wondering over the next six weeks? No. Not like I was wondering if Ailsa really was still alive or whether Sally was going to survive or even whether Ailsa would survive. Am I interested about what's happening in 2008? Well, I'm not going to try and read nothing remotely bordering a spoiler. Maybe it will make the experience better, maybe not. I have my own expectations of what 2008 will bring. Maybe these storylines will "blow me away" or "rock my socks" or whatever phrases we have been fed when bigging up the 2008 season. Maybe I will set my expectations too high and ultimately be left disappointed. However, I'm not a cheerleader for the show as such and when I've watched something, no matter how excellent or groundbreaking or however much work has gone into it, I'll come on here and voice my dislikes.
SKYKAT
I do have one criticism though so I'll start with that first. For me there needed to be more of a build up to the Dom/ Drew/ Belle storyline, it had kind of been forgotten this week to be bought up in the finale episode.
That said, I enjoyed the episode. It reminded me a bit of an episode of 'Lost' in that it asked more questions than it answered. I think that's good though because it left me wanting to know more and it wasn't all about one character, there was more than one storyline which will keep me interested next year. When Coral was giving tips about scripts for the competition she said that good scriptwriting always opened more potential storylines and this episode certainly did this.
The Dom/ Belle/ Drew story aside from being neglected in the run up and making me hate Drew even more, left questions unanswered too. Is Dom alive or dead? if he is or isn't what will happen to Drew and Belle? Also does Belle have feelings for Drew? I can't help thinking there's more to this storyline than meets the eye, thew writers obviously have something up their sleeves to put it in the finale and I want to know why.
The stalker revealed, I've read the spoilers so maybe wasn't as surprised by who it was as I should have been but I thought it was well done. I loved the keeping us in suspense, only showing Rachel's point of view, you just knew that whoever she was with was the stalker and it did create dramatic tension. What shocked me most though was the way he just went for her, I was genuinely scared for Rachel and it did leave questions unanswered. What happens to Rachel? Why is he targeting her? What's his motive? If it is to do with babies what happens when he realises Rachel miscarried?
And the Milco storyline, I agree it maybe wasn't that much of a shock because of the spoilers but its still a great storyline. As someone who has watched the show from the beginning and knew of Milco I was genuinely surprised when the spoilers leaked that he'd be a real person. I agree the spoilers did kind of spoil the big reveal but it still left a lot of questions unanswered. Why is he so down on his luck that he's eating from bins? Just how is he related to Sally? all these years we've thought she was an orphan and I really think her having family will be a huge character changing thing for her and the storyline potential is enormous. I thought the ending was quite nice and I loved the montage with all the old memories.
I'm not sure the Dom storyline deserved to be in that episode without any build up but if it comes to a toss up between that and the Jack/Martha/Sam storyline I'd have had it the way it was. I'm not saying that because I'm not a Jack/Martha fan but because I liked that that storyline, the wedding had its own episode, it did create tension and as much as I don't like her I did wonder whether Martha would crash the wedding or not. Maybe it might have been nicer to hold it over but I quite like the way it was tied up but also not at all tied up if that makes sense.