Red Ranger 1

Yeah, I kind of accepted the first scene of Justin saying they're not going to solve it in one night, but then when he threw a tantrum about Leah talking to Marilyn it was just "Do you know what show you're in?!" Anyway, they've used up their three episodes for the week, so hopefully they'll spend a couple of days off screen sorting things out. So, after sorting things out with Kirby, Abigail has apparently decided to blame everything on Eden instead.There was at least a bit of energy to their scenes, even if Eden was struggling to read the room at times. Cash and Harper's scenes kind of frustrated me a bit, because they reminded me that if we'd seen more of this side of Harper, and less of her constantly mooning over and enabling Tane, then I wouldn't have gone off her as much as I have this year. As much as I've disliked Bree recently, I was kind of uncomfortable with Marilyn telling Levi to give her what for, even though I can see where she's coming from.

Not that I remember? I guess she had her moments like any character but I think she and Irene got on well in the early days.

I think Rose has, for the most part, always found a balance between professionalism and compassion.She did, after all, let Mali and Harper off the hook in similar circumstances (although Theo did more than they did), but when it comes to a potential murder charge, she's not going to have the final say, just be the one to gather evidence and pass it on to the prosecutors.Anyway, it did at least bring Justin and Leah together.It irks a bit that Theo takes all the responsibility while Tane dodges punishment again, although looking at it objectively, Tane confessing wouldn't do Perri much good. I'm glad Tane admitted he was wrong about Jane, who's cleared the first hurdle.Sadly, we still get silliness like Tane giving Harper all the credit for getting him to fight his own charges, when her involvement seemed to largely consist of acting like an idiot in court, giving him a sympathy boink and repeating some stuff Felicity told her to say. I'm sorry but killing Felicity to give Harper a free run at Tane killed any support I might have had for the pairing, and making Cash chief shipper on deck for them doesn't help. I did like the stuff between Mackenzie and Xander; I still feel like she was let off the hook a bit much but I'm glad to see them on friendly terms anyway.There was an echo of her first scene in her "Mine, all mine" moment at Salt, except now she has a friend to come out there and share the moment with her.

The more the personality vacuum that is Harper becomes involved in a storyline, the less interest I have, which has been the problem with Perri pretty much from the start.It doesn't help that we still have Tane griping about the police not putting Carl away and ignoring the fact that it's partly down to him abandoning Perri in court to go running to Harper's side just because Dana was being melodramatic.Anyway, for all Tane's grumbling, Perri's lawyer does seem professional if nothing else.How competent she is remains to be seen.I do agree that the "accessory to murder" thing (and, indeed, the way people are throwing the word "murder" around) is rather overblown, although they're guilty of assisting a fugitive and lying to the police at least. I've been on Justin's side up until now but ye gods, he really was looking for something to object to here: Leah makes perfectly innocent small talk and he treats it like an accusation. Marilyn was being pretty annoying as per usual.So, sounds like even the characters didn't know Alf was going!

Alf's episode count:Four.And it seems that's the last we'll see of him for a while! So, despite Tane repeatedly claiming that he'd tell the police the moment he knew where Perri was...he didn't. I can understand him not wanting to have Perri dragged to the police station against his will, but he took a heck of a risk just leaving him alone like that.Theo did what he had to do to break the impasse.It didn't go as well as they'd all hoped and things might have gone better if Perri had managed to tell his story before the evidence came back.The police are being rather picky here: Do they really expect Perri to have gone rushing to Carl's side when he was likely in shock and when there was a good chance Carl would have attacked him again if he'd had the chance? Harper continues to alternate between annoying and bland. I can only assume her high showing in the poll was because fans of the even higher placed Tane are fans of her by default, given she's pretty much just a plot device to give him a family these days. Fair play to Abigail, she did seem to be being polite to Kirby until forced to confront her grudges.It's to be hoped that Mali's word had some effect.I assume that Abigail's recount of events was a simplification, given that Kirby and Remi knew Levi when he turned up so must have already known Eden when the family split up.

So following on from three episodes of Leah being up herself, we get three episodes of Bree doing the same.They really are spoiling us with this first week back.She seemed to be on a quest to treat everyone as badly as possible here, using Remi as a convenient punchbag while trying to manipulate Levi and Dana and then turning on them when they wouldn't play ball. It's all right her saying medicine is her life, but people's actual lives were at risk. Meanwhile, Abigail is in the running to take the obnoxious prize away from her.I felt a bit of empathy for her when she was chatting with Levi about her counselling but she's soon taking liberties and sniping at Kirby and Remi over manufactured grudges.Mali really needs to pull her into line. How on earth did Xander end up being the one apologising to Mackenzie? Mackenzie was in the wrong for going behind his back and cutting him out of the deal. I guess he's decided he's not interested in Salt anymore so that's okay, but Mackenzie doesn't even seem to have acknowledged she did the dirty on him. Meanwhile, the more Dana whines about how much trouble Perri's causing poor ickle Harper, the more I want someone to shut her up. Is she seriously moralising about hiding from the police? (Okay, Dana was hiding from people a lot more threatening than Rose, but she didn't know that at first.)

I think Eden was absolutely right to handle things the way she did. I don't believe she meant to hurt Cash but she could see Cash was hurting Michelle and it couldn't go on. And once he'd stopped lashing out, Cash understood that, even if he was still a bit cold towards her. Bree continues to be a couple of steps away from a padded cell with her warped sense of reality. Even Remi doesn't seem willing to take things on trust, especially now he knows she's lied to him. I'm still not sure how Alf missed Bree abandoning him but Marilyn's filled him in now.Bree being shut down by first Marilyn and then Mackenzie was very satisfying. I don't think Alf's really helping things by providing Leah with a convenient bolthole to avoid her problems in.I'm glad Justin was blunt with Leah about why he didn't feel able to be honest with her about Claudia.I do want Leah and Justin to make up in the long term, but for the moment, I can't say I'm disappointed at Leah getting a taste of her own medicine.

Weirdly, I was the other way round. I was 25 at the time and, to me, Ric and Cassie looked young. I was shocked to learn Sharni was 22 in real life and that 22-year-olds looked that young to me. Mind you, I was the same with Peta, who was actually older than me in real life, about five years earlier, so maybe I'm just not the best judge!

Incidentally, since when does the Parata/Newman house have a drive like that? It almost looked like a different location!

Alf handled things better than I expected, although it's not clear how much he'd have enabled Leah if she hadn't had a rapid change of heart: He was quick to question her complete lack of evidence that Justin had cheated and to try and get her and Justin talking. Marilyn seemed to have snapped back in her old "My husband cheated on me so everyone else's does too" stance from 1995 (except we now know she was lying about most of that, so who knows!). Anyway, Leah saw sense eventually and I'm glad Claudia wasn't the person Eric painted her as. I can understand Justin being hurt at how quick Leah was to take a stranger's word over his but he seemed to fixate on the wrong thing: Didn't Leah only meet Eric because she was trying to get hold of him and/or Claudia? I sympathise with Rose, who's trying to do her job when other people aren't making it easy and are treating her like the enemy. Tane doesn't get any sympathy, and Harper quickly being needy and clingey leaves me wishing more than ever it had been her and not Felicity that had something horrible happen to her. So yeah, Cash just can't let go of Michelle and it seems only Eden's looking out for her. When Cash did his usual thing of blaming her for everything, Eden really should have pointed out that he's the one interfering in Michelle's life.

I believe it was Paula's decision to leave and the original plan was to have Rhys and Shelley stay together, hence why their marriage suddenly ends over the course of about two episodes at the end of the season. I'm not so sure about Michael Beckley. I seem to remember Coral Drouyn had big plans for Rhys and Beth, but when Dan Bennett took over all of that got thrown out and Rhys, Dani and Max all got written out in quick succession, leaving only Kirsty to survive into 2005.

We also saw her when Kirsty and Kane split up for a bit and Kirsty came to stay with her. She didn't really leave until about a year and a half after she stopped being a regular, she was always popping up.

Welcome back and, given that Lyrik seem to be what lapsed and disgruntled viewers are fixating on to hate, was it really the smartest idea that the UK's first sight of the characters in 2025 is Theo and Remi jamming together? Guess we'll start with Perri, and maybe it's because it's been so long since we saw what he's just been through, but it was hard to have much sympathy for him as he does everything he can to make things as hard as possible for himself and everyone else.It was hard to have any sympathy for Tane either, since I still think none of this would have happened if he'd actually given Perri the support he needed instead of fawning over Harper, what with abandoning him during the court case and then failing to pick up on everything that's been happening since. Even here, he decides to wander out of the house and leave a traumatised youngster on his own. I can understand Theo supporting a friend but he's not making things any better for everyone. Rose was pretty reasonable right up until the point Perri did a runner and changed the whole situation, although I do think she's being a bit blind about his likely reasons. Another year and Leah's still being a mardy cow. I take it we're meant to deduce the scene of Justin and Claudia making out was a dream, even though it wasn't remotely clear given that we then cut to Leah sitting asleep: The usual television grammar is to cut from a dream to someone waking up. (And how would Leah know where Justin was anyway?) I'm glad that Claudia has snapped back from her rather erratic behaviour last episode. I know how I want Alf to deal with Leah's dramatics but I don't expect he will. I'm surprised Alf was so friendly to Bree as well: Does he not remember her walking off and leaving him in distress? Marilyn was absolutely right to give her that serve. The way she gave a self-serving version of events to Remi shows she's still not taking responsibility.

It's a few years ago now since I saw these, but definitely after he married Ailsa. We weren't given an exact date or anything, and I can't quite remember what he said about how things were between Roo and Ailsa at the time.

I think you're misremembering several key details of the retcon there. Roo didn't know Martha was still alive until 2018 (so her behaviour in the 80s was defined by what she believed to be true), Alf didn't know until 1988 when Martha wrote to him (so again, it doesn't make any difference to the way he treated Bobby prior to the series, since he believed Martha to be dead). I'm struggling to remember the details of the 1989 retcon but I think Alf was only supposed to have worked out Morag was Bobby's mother a few months before we found out?

Although to be pedantic, both got back together for their exits.

Firstly, my thanks to @Chris J, @Dan F and Matt for all their hard work in collating the results and turning my commentary into such an excellent presentation. I always feel I have the easy job while they have to handle the technical stuff! Secondly, my thanks to everyone that's been following the reveals and posting their thoughts on the results and my commentary in here: It's been interesting seeing the reactions! As ever, a few mentions for characters who've gone missing since the last poll: As noted, no Fin, the highest placed character not to return. No More Recent Chloe (thanks, @atrus!), the most recent regular not to get votes. No Kit, who usually picks up points from someone. And no Zac, meaning only three of Leah's four husbands got votes!

I almost said in the first update but I thought it might be a bit redundant. But yes, all of the current cast received votes. The first ones will appear in the next update!

I guess, to flip things, it's not fair for Shelley to expect Jade to react the same way as her either. I wonder if Nick and Kirsty have really gone for good or if their families are going to drag them back.

It's interesting to compare with the way 2021 Home and Away treated Matthew Montgomery, who seemed no worse than Kane and had no more sinister intention than wanting to get to know his daughter, but because he'd done one rape twenty years earlier (in a similar case of convincing himself he had consent when he didn't), the show seemed to assume we'd automatically see him as a monster and be fine with him being bashed to death with rather flimsy justification.

Noah really isn't going to win himself any friends there. I can understand how Jade feels about Kirsty but she can't expect her parents to just forget they've got another daughter.

I disagree. They could have made a clean break and had her sell up, not have her take a step backwards.

It was actually Greg Snelgrove who made Leah redundant after taking over from Zac. Dan Bennett made a lot of good decisions about the school when he returned to the show, but taking away the one piece of development Leah had had in years and sticking her back in the Diner was not one of them, although to be fair, the show has done a good job keeping Leah at the forefront since then rather than letting her be part of the furniture again.

Thinking about it, I think they've done this before since the 6pm showing's been on 5Star. (It is still my go-to time for watching the show now I'm back on early shifts.) I guess they have their "Home and Away hour" from 6-7pm and it's easier to find an hour long programme to fill that slot for a few weeks than to find a half hour show to fit into the schedules at 6.30pm on the UK cliffhanger day. Yes, we're back 6th January.

Well, it was broad daylight when Claudia first threw them away, so I don't know why he found it so difficult and apparently searched for so long! Definitely 6th January, someone must have got confused. They arranged to meet for a beer, in the usual television manner of just saying "We'll meet for a beer later" without specifying where and when!