Red Ranger 1

Alf's episode count this week:Two. Having been critical of Alf yesterday, I was pleased with him today.He made an effort with Eliza, even going so far as stepping in when Roo wanted to give up and drag her off home and pointing out they need to get her out of the house.I wasn't keen on Roo apologising to Levi for Eliza yesterday, but she handled things better with Harper today, even if Eliza wasn't exactly co-operative.Eliza stealing the knife isn't a good thing but it's most likely it's down to a curious fascination rather than a sign she actually intends to use it. Marilyn gets stuck in a scene just to be sneering and dismissive towards John. I notice she didn't feel the need to butt in when Tane and Levi said much the same thing. Justin was ultimately proved right but has to learn to back off and let Theo make his own mistakes.Theo might be less inclined to carry on looking for cheap parts if he didn't feel he had something to prove, although he should perhaps see it as a sign to be more cautious.

My feeling is that they wouldn't have made a point of giving Xander last scenes with Mackenzie, Rose and Dana if they thought he was coming back. Well, Eliza's not one for making friends easy, is she? Roo seemed to jump very quickly from telling Eliza she's going to school, to deciding to home school her. I did wonder about them bringing in a school age character when we don't see the school anymore, then it occurred to me that we don't actually need to see them at school: Plenty of UK soaps have school age characters who we never or hardly ever see in school, they just head off to school in their uniforms and then come back. But perhaps that way of thinking hasn't made it across to their Oz counterparts, given they felt the need to come up with an excuse for not showing Eliza in school. Marilyn's obviously struggling with someone who's not immediately run over by her supposed charm but you'd think Alf would have been around the block enough times not to get immediately jittery.Is he seriously expecting Roo to send Eliza back? Incidentally, how long is she meant to be there for, if it's an emergency placement? Seems to be the week for thinking you're being cheated on, with Abigail jumping to conclusions about Mali and Rose.At least it got smoothed over quickly again. (Incidentally, I'm fairly sure Bree's known Rose longer than Mali has. She's certainly been around longer.) I hope Justin isn't too high-handed with Theo over the car part.

Well, I guess that answers the question of who's running Salt at the moment: Levi did promise Mackenzie he'd keep an eye on it.Eden probably should have let Abigail finish before assuming she'd be useless.But hey, at least it seems to have brought this often fractured set of siblings closer. I have to side with Mali over Kirby here, she shouldn't have been sat scribbling her in her notebook when she had work to do, including the phone call that he took the class purely so she could handle. But anyway, it seems Sonny's comments have inspired her. Even though she was being less obviously obnoxious, I was still annoyed at Dana stealing Xander's robot and hoped Rose would call her out on it. Otherwise, just a lot of set-up for Mali to decide to play white knight.

Well, Tane has gone from not saying he loves Harper to outright saying he doesn't. It's hard to say how naive he's being here. Yes, you can get married and fall in love afterwards, but there's no reason to be doing that here. A friendship isn't the worst basis for a relationship, but I think he's kidding himself if he thinks he'd be marrying Harper or even with her if she wasn't pregnant. Despite him trying to put it on Harper here, I think Tane is the one pushing to get married before the baby's born, and it feels like he's doing it to put a symbolic claim on her and the baby as his family. So, as it turns out, Sonny, with a bit of help from Kirby, did push Remi over the line to realise punishing Eden for making a relationship choice he disagrees with doesn't help anyone. And he seemed to make a few points to Kirby about her life as well. My sympathy for Dana got less and less as the episode went on and she behaved more and more like a spoiled brat.I know she's hurt, and I know Xander put her in a difficult position, and I know letting off steam about your ex is a right of passage, but she should have had more self-awareness than to stand there badmouthing him to Rose and expecting her to nod in agreement or be fine with Dana trying to get rid of his stuff (even taking back a present she gave him was unnecessarily petty). She gets points for at least apologising and trying to support Rose.

Well, Harper's continuing to get herself into a tizzy over marrying a man that probably doesn't love her.Would it be better if Tane was honest about it rather than skirting around the issue? Cash probably handled things the right way by agreeing to be best man while also asking Tane a few pointed questions about how he thinks it's going to work out. Elsewhere, even Sonny's clowning won't make Remi thaw towards Cash and Eden.I both do and don't see where he's coming from.Cash has behaved very badly and treated Eden appallingly, and even though he's apologetic now, he's giving very little assurance that it won't happen again.(His complaining that Remi can't see that Eden meals the world to him missed the point by a mile: She did before, and he hurt her despite that, maybe even, perversely, because of it.) On the other hand, what exactly is Remi hoping happens? That Cash breaks Eden's heart all over again and, because he never supported them, he gets the satisfaction of saying "I told you so"? Even if he doesn't forgive Cash, and I'm not entirely sure he should, you'd think he'd support Eden and hope things work out for her. I'm not sure what to make of Theo's decision to order the car part against Justin's advice.I can understand Justin being ultra-cautious about only buying parts for paying customers from people he can definitely trust, but this is meant to be a side project for fun.Yes, it may end up being a waste of money, but maybe that's all part of it.I do think Theo probably should have asked Sonny's opinion before buying, since he seems clued up on that sort of thing.

Alf's episode count this week:Three. I think Google is pretty much universal! Except maybe in China... It struck me during that opening scene that Tane initially suggested a beach wedding last time round until he realised it wasn't what Felicity wanted and switched to a country one. So maybe this is more the sort of wedding he wanted than appears! But yeah, the bells and whistles don't really interest him (although frankly, if someone asked me if I wanted the rings to be "white gold", I'd probably nod politely in a slightly bemused manner as well), and it's perhaps starting to dawn on Harper that they're not really what she's concerned about either and have just been a handy thing to focus on in order to avoid the real issue of whether this is the sort of marriage she wants. Leah admits the photo is Tane and Felicity's wedding cake, but is at least diplomatic enough not to add "and I got impaled with a metal bar while going back to fix it"! I'll say this for Sonny, at least he's honest. I can understand John being concerned (he almost seemed to go into a panic at the sight of Remi freely handing over his credit card!), but Sonny doesn't really need to steal Remi's money since Remi seems happy to spend as much on him as he wants. Anyway, they had some decent catch-ups and I guess we'll see how much trouble he causes. It's not entirely clear just how many of those posters Kirby and Mali have got (that initial envelope Kirby emptied out only seemed to have one copy of each picture?), but at least they're getting to do the advertising campaign they originally wanted.

As I understand it (and I'm not sure I really do understand it), Australian law only allows "no blame" divorces.Anyway, Levi manages to follow up an excruciating phone message with an equally excruciating phone call: We've all had that moment where you're preparing to leave a message only to suddenly find a living human being on the other end! Mali and Abigail were a bit lucky that Kirby was so easy going about them sloping off for afternoon delight. Mali finally reacts to Kirby's protest! Justin and Leah had a few things to say but Theo's committed to this plan.It was quite a sweet moment when Justin silently joined Theo. So, Remi and Kirby have a new friend, who I notice is credited as a regular so I guess he'll be sticking around.People might have to start locking their doors now he's around!

Well, it's good that Leah was honest with Justin and Theo reasonably quickly, after another pointed look from Marilyn.It did feel like they were a bit quick to decide that selling the car was the only option, although I'm not sure that Theo's alternative is any better and he really didn't seem to get the point of Leah's reaction! I liked the scenes between Rose and Dana, which remain eerily reminiscent of the relationship between Jasmine and Felicity. Rose's calm demeanour and wry sense of humour contrast nicely with Dana's blabbermouth tendencies. I'm glad that Levi and Abigail took Eden and Cash's reunion in their stride.To be fair, Levi has been pushing for this so it makes sense he'd be on board, and we got some nice sibling scenes between them.So I guess we now know why the show SORASed Levi and Mackenzie's relationship at the end of last season: So they can pretend Levi and Imogen have been separated for a year when in fact it's only been ten months again!

Of course he wasn't, he was going to jail. Honestly, I'd like to say that was the point where Colby became irredeemable in my eyes, but frankly he was halfway there pretty much from the start. He'd already either killed someone or left him to die (they were always a bit vague on that one), he was a bent cop who'd only joined the force for selfish reasons to misuse their resources (no-one was looking to "rescue" Bella because no crime had been committed except in Colby's head, and the ones that he didn't even know about, in fact Colby was the one that ended up kidnapping her because he thought the law applied to other people), and in the end he killed Ross because he thought sending him to jail wasn't enough. I must admit, I've thought about this topic but the truth is that most of the characters who crossed the line in my eyes either did it right at the start or I never liked them that much to start with!

Dana was better today, to the point she actually had a bit of a point. The wedding was largely irrelevant, the key point was that Harper shouldn't be marrying Tane if she can't be honest with him about what she wants.Once she was honest, he was rolled over quite easily. He does seem to care about her and want her to be happy with this arrangement, although the question of whether that's enough for them to be getting married remains open. Cash pushed way too hard, way too fast in demanding an answer from Eden.Fortunately, despite his faux pas in pushing himself forward as the celebrant for a non-existent wedding, John proved his worth as the show's resident surrogate father figure by giving Eden some good advice.So Cash has backed off and hopefully that's lesson learned. Eliza remains a bit of an enigma.Her defensiveness over Roo asking how she can afford things is kind of undermined by the fact we know she did steal that money from Marilyn. But for all her defences, it's just possible that hug with Roo is genuine and she's appreciating what Roo's offering her. Well, I guess they wouldn't have made such a big deal about Xander leaving if he'd been coming back.Good news for him but a big blow for Rose and Dana and...well, actually, Mackenzie's away at the moment, so I guess we'll have to wait for her reaction.Not that I necessarily want rid of the character but I wouldn't be against Dana leaving to be with her, it'd be a nice end for them.Of course, Dana might not want to leave with things so up in the air with Harper.

Well, it's a new week, so time for Cash and Eden to emerge from their bubble and have to deal with other people's opinions.Tane is supportive but asks some questions that Cash hasn't thought about before.Remi is concerned but prefers to go out and get drunk with Dana (or at least at the same table as her) rather than have a full conversation.It did at least lead to Cash and Eden talking.I wasn't expecting Cash to be quite as forward as he was and it's probably sensible they don't try and immediately jump back to where they were.I'm glad Cash is acknowledging he hurt her, at least.Has he always been like this?It felt as though, despite apparently coming out the other side, he was still acting as though he's not quite in synch with the rest of the human race. He's a cheap date too: I wondered if his "surprise" dinner would just mean Salt but they didn't even make it that far! Harper wimps out of talking to Tane and is quick to back off when she does broach the subject.Dana's intervention really wasn't helpful. It still feels like she's fixating on giving Harper the wedding she wants rather than worrying about whether Harper's going to have the marriage she wants. I loved the reference to Maddy, who is probably the person Roo's treated most like a daughter over the years.Eliza...well, I'm not sure if we're meant to deduce that she started the fire or if she's just become a bit obsessed as the result of it.Despite her seeming withdrawn, there's hopefully someone in there that a bit of Summer Bay magic can reach.

Alf's episode count this week:Four. Tane didn't appear at all: Did I miss a line saying he was out of town? With Irene, Xander. Bree and now apparently Mackenzie all away, and possibly Justin, Theo and Remi too although they'll probably come straight back next week, the town's looking a bit sparse! It still feels like Dana's focusing on the wrong issue, ignoring how fast this is all happening and instead thinking the important thing is to give Harper a big wedding.I dunno, maybe Dana's convinced herself that Harper and Tane will work out in the long-run? Harper did get very defensive with her (what's wrong with talking to Mackenzie?) but seems to have come round to her way of thinking by the end.I did like Dana being the annoying but well-meaning sister. Well, turns out some calm and measured talking from Kirby was the best way to stop Leah's self-destructive publicity bid in its track and even shame Contract Advertising into making an apology: It's a relief that they're not another Stunning Organics! No word on if they're going to take the billboard down though... Mackenzie's still-unseen mother provides another excuse for her to leave town! Is it really going to be down to Levi and possibly Eden to run Salt if Xander doesn't come back? It's been so long since Roo mentioned applying to be a foster parent, not helped by her being absent for half of last year, that I wondered if it would be quietly dropped but nope, seems "the famous caravan park" (as I believe Shannon once put it) is opening its doors for business again!

I can't help feeling Dana is focusing on the symptoms rather than the cause here. Harper probably would like a big wedding, but she'd also probably prefer a basic wedding that she thought Tane really meant, than having a big event while still suspecting he's getting married for the wrong reasons. They should indeed have listened to John, who could see that an ambush wasn't what she needed.I did like John and Marilyn's utter confusing at Dana's announcement about a mood board from a prior engagement, and Dana was quite sweet in the annoying-but-well-meaning-little-sister role. I liked Justin and Theo acting like a pair of nervous schoolboys, trying to flatter Leah while not mentioning what could be major sticking points. They really do work well as a family unit, knowing full well that she's the boss.Of course, they probably should have questioned Leah telling them to support her doing something crazy a bit more.I'm glad that Alf not letting Roo know that he knows got wrapped up and hopefully without any retaliation this time!

I can well understand Remi having misgivings about Cash but lying to Eden and letting her think he just hadn't come back was a step too far. At least he owned up as soon as she challenged him.I liked Cash and Eden before the show did a number on them last year, but I have certain misgivings about how they got back together and I really hope Cash means it about not breaking her heart again.I'm not confident that his rationale seemed to be that she nearly died and didn't so the curse is broken (really, how many times did Felicity come close to death?!), rather than admitting that he shouldn't have let superstition ruin their lives in the first place. I felt it was right that Eden didn't take Cash straight back, but she didn't last to the end of the episode.When Remi returned home and found Eden wasn't there, I wondered if he'd go over to Cash's looking for her: He might have been in luck (or not!) if he did. Despite pushing Remi to give Cash and Eden a chance, it seems John is not feeling so optimistic about Tane and Harper.It's never a good sign when the bride's shedding tears of disappointment rather than joy, and Marilyn declares "It's all about the baby" as if that's somehow a good thing, unshaken in her belief that because they managed to conceive a child during a roll on the office floor, that means they're made for each other. Whilst I'm not having as much of a crisis about it as Justin and Theo did, I'm disappointed that Lyrik's latest comeback hasn't made it out of the gates.It feels like they've been treading water for a year now and we're just facing more of the same.

It does kind of feel like there were a lot of big coincidences that went unexplained, notably Nerida being able to zero in on her targets like they're wearing tracking devices. (We even see someone asking how she knew where Abigail was in the recap...but then we don't get an answer!) But otherwise, I think the situation played out well and I think it's unfair to expect Tim, an untrained civilian who should be in hospital (not that he showed any sign of impairment here!), to act like an action hero. I do kind of wonder what the police's plan was before Cash went off script: Were they waiting for Tim to convince Nerida to come outside so they could run up and grab her? Not that Cash's plan of "Point a gun at the crazy lady and hope she doesn't do anything crazy" worked any better, but oh well, no harm done. Rose did a decent job of pulling Cash back into line, at least temporarily.She was right to reject that call from Mali (seriously, what was he thinking?), although it feels like he and Levi should have been updated sooner rather than having to wait around at the police station for the plot to find them.And Rose gets a well-deserved apology from Townsend, who let his own prejudices convince him he should ignore her prejudices. I guess it's right that Tim ends up being the better man, so hopefully his words will convince Cash to stop making a bad situation worse and hurting all the people he claims to care about.Another set of characters in need of a guest appearance but again it was nice to see how this is affecting the wider community with the reactions back home.

It's an interesting thought but the more I think about it, the harder it is to see what exactly such a contract would say. (I'm struggling to remember the original transmission pattern but I seem to remember there was something odd about the omnibuses right from the start.) It can't say that it has to be shown on Channel 5 in the original blocks, because there were plenty of times that it was out of synch, especially in the early days. I'm not even sure that it can say every episode has to be shown on the main channel, because there were two episodes only shown on 5Star when Elizabeth II died, although it's possible there's a caveat that there can be exceptions in extreme circumstances like that.

Well, Nerida has totally lost it now.I can see why Abigail thinks pandering to her delusions is a good idea but it's extremely debatable as to whether it actually is.Nerida's got an idea in her head as to how things are and how they're going to be and nothing's going to shake her out of it.We don't get an explanation for how she knew Abigail was at the caravan park, hopefully that will come later! I can't say I had much sympathy for Cash and, frankly, neither he nor Tim have covered themselves in glory over all this.Cash's way of "protecting" Eden is to constantly leave her on her own, try and break up her new relationship, and point a paranoid psychopath in her direction, and even last week he was dumping her at the hospital rather than actually looking after her himself. Tim, meanwhile, risked his career and Abigail's recovery to hook up with someone was clearly on the rebound, and if he hadn't been so blase about Nerida, this might not have gone as far as it has. Rose did a good job of staying professional and keeping Cash in line again. When we saw it in the promo, I assumed Cash was tracking Nerida's phone but seems it was just a lucky coincidence that he was standing within earshot of it when he rang it! Whilst episode counts probably play a part, it was a nice touch to let us see the wider community's reaction to the sisters' disappearance.

Alf's episode count this week:Two. Now that he's finally found the right end of the stick, Townsend is back to being refreshingly blunt with Cash and pointing out the flaws in his behaviour.He did a better job than Levi, who just seemed to turn up to rant about "Why aren't you doing anything?" without having any real idea what exactly it was he wanted Cash to do.He did have some better points about the way Cash has treated Eden.Even here, Cash has basically fobbed Eden off and expected her to hang around Tim instead of actually taking responsibility for himself, blind to how problematic it all is.Despite her beating herself up, I don't think Eden's indiscretion here is really on a par with how Levi behaved with Mackenzie and Imogen. Still, it's understandable Tim would be upset about it, even if he's hardly a saint and maybe he should have had a think about whether an inappropriate relationship like that was likely to work out. Cash did at least take some overdue responsibility for kicking this hornet's nest and go to apologise to Tim. Given Eden's reluctance to leave the hospital before, it was a bit much that she suddenly decided to go wandering around on her own in the dark: Couldn't she have called Levi or Remi and asked them to pick her up? It's like she wanted to be attacked! Whilst I can understand her concerns, Dana is better off staying out of Harper's business here. It's not like her advice has done much good (she was pretty much convinced this was a fairy tale not too long ago) and if Harper's determined to go down this route, keeping quiet and letting her make her own decision is about all you can do.

Ha, yes, I forgot to mention that scene of Levi and Bree geeking out about emergency brain surgery, thanks for the reminder! I twigged faster than Mali did that Abigail was mostly concerned about wanting to be safe from Nerida, as seen when she was practically begging Levi not to leave her alone.They took an awfully long time to realise that the thing to do with that text wasn't to ignore it, it was to give it to the police! Levi really has been out of the loop recently, as demonstrated when he didn't know what was going on with Tim a while back, and has to be filled in on absolutely everything that his sisters have been doing for the last month or so here, despite it being on the front page of the paper! Harper's house of cards seems to be crumbling now. Even her schoolgirl infatuation isn't enough for her to get excited about Tane treating their "big day" as an exercise in box-ticking to get a transactional marriage. He doesn't want to marry her as a person, he just wants to marry the mother of his child and that just happens to be her. His response to be putting on the spot about whether he loves her is becoming more and more transparent.It was nice, after all those odd references to her being his ex-wife and him no longer being his next of kin last year, to finally get confirmation that there was no way Tane and Felicity could have got divorced in the time frame given. Justin and Remi tried their best to be non-commital but Remi's ended up making a promise that he might not be able to keep...

Abigail's had much the same reaction to Tim recovering as Cash did, and unfortunately Cash isn't obsessed with her, so he's left her to worry about her own protection.Theo finally twigs about Abigail and Mali.It's hard to say what was behind Mali's awkwardness around Theo: Is he jealous that Theo was first choice or just uncomfortable about the idea of having to break it to him? Oh well, moot point, given their habit of kissing within view of anyone wandering out of the surf club.Abigail announcing she's moving in with Mali seemed like a bit of a kneejerk reaction, I wonder if he even knows.She was unnecessarily rude to Levi about letting him know where she was but did apologise. Turns out being arrested makes Leah and Justin frisky, but then most things do! I was expecting more of a follow-up to that, but maybe they need the police actors for other episodes... It was amusing seeing Marilyn try very very hard not to say anything to Alf while Leah refused to play along. So, that's Bree off then. We seem to be entering one of those periods where there's hardly any characters left in the Bay, the actors must have all booked their holidays at the same time. I can see why Mackenzie would want Lyrik back but it's really not the best time, given Kirby and Eden are still busy with other storylines! Maybe they can manage to all appear in the same episode again some time soon?

Townsend isn't showing much more competence even now the victim has pointed him in the right direction, given that he still couldn't find Nerida even though she was wandering around the Bay bold as brass. (What was the point of a radio announcement to people to look out for her? Unless you know Nerida personally, "mid 20s" isn't much of a clue!) Oh well, at least he's belatedly got a police guard in place and, despite his bravado to Gary, apologised to Cash.Gary off again, despite his reluctance to leave a job half done.I guess we'll see if any of his parting words to Cash sunk in.I did quite like the relaxed camaraderie between Rose and Townsend despite everything. Given the words upthread about Stunning Organics, I'm hoping this doesn't end with someone getting blown up.Contract Advertising haven't managed to put the genie back in the bottle and the protest seems to be free of backlash online so far, even if the law aren't quite as forgiving.It was kind of amusing watching Justin and Theo trying to keep track of what Leah's got herself involved with now as if she was an errant child.

Cash did seem to be pulling away when Gary interrupted and is back to his "I'm cursed to being miserable and so is everyone around me" sulk. Good news for him in a sense that Tim has come round and cleared him (hopefully he's someone Townsend will finally have to listen to), but it shows how daft his deal with Nerida was when it could all fall apart so easily. If he'd kept proper tabs on her instead of giving her what she wanted and hoping she'd go away, the police might be able to take her into custody without any trouble now.Gary leaving Cash and Eden alone was nicely honest. Well, I prefer Kirby standing up to herself than hiding away with low self-esteem. Getting her story out there was an obvious response to the ad agency's media blitz and Contract Advertising really should have thought of that one and chosen a photo whose subject wouldn't object. Still no reaction from Mali, who's in the photo right alongside her and thus being associated with this.

Alf's episode count this week:Four. Gary meets Townsend and is as unimpressed by him as I am, although the feeling very much seems to be mutual.Cash was being typically pig-headed and typically overly macho in insisting it would be Gary's fault if anything happened to Eden.It's put Gary and Rose very much on the back foot, as they discover that Cash (at least in his eyes) has a vaguely rational reason for not wanting to clear his name.And he actually manages to treat Eden like a human being (and the rest!) which may have confused him further. Eden was being melodramatic in insisting she and Remi are over for good, so I'm glad she's sorted it out by the end of the episode, even if it was in a half-hearted "Well, if Cash is okay with it, so am I" way. Looks like that's the end of Remi's moving plans though. Kirby should probably have a word with Mali about reading the small print, but he's used up his three episodes so it'll have to wait until next week. Leah and Marilyn get points for good intentions but they really need a better plan than "We fight." It feels like maybe they should have told their side of the story on the photo, but from what little I know of social media, that might have been like putting blood in the water for sharks.

Well, Mackenzie and Dana pretty much said what I was thinking. There's a distinct lack of passion from Tane and it's pretty obvious he doesn't love Harper and is talking around any attempt to pin him down.Yes, he cares about her, and yes, he fancies her enough to use her for a rebound hook-up, but he wouldn't dream of being a couple with her, much less married, if he didn't see it as a chance to be a family. And Harper is just deluding herself that she's got what she wants.Yet in the midst of it we get Dana saying she think they could be a good people, so I wouldn't be surprised if the show tries to insist Tane does love her not too far down the track.Personally, I think Felicity was the love of Tane's life and Harper will never measure up. Remi has the germ of a good idea in there but is going about it all wrong.He should not have presented moving as a fait accompli without consulting anyone, and he's ironically stepped into Cash's role of insisting he's the one protecting Eden when he's focusing on all the wrong things (although at least, unlike Cash, he isn't actually making the danger to her worse).Even if they decide against moving, this warehouse could make a good rehearsal space. Abigail's used up her three episodes so Mali can only tell her about his move over the phone and it's left to Mackenzie to react to it.I'm not sure he really convinced her. Bit of a slap in the face to Kirby to use her altered photo like that.

Things seem to be progressing between Sally and Flynn.Nice of Jesse to help Hayley look for Nick and Kirsty.